Madness Radio: Outside Mental Health

An hour-long interview format, Madness Radio focuses on personal experiences of ‘madness’ and extreme states of consciousness from beyond conventional perspectives and mainstream treatments. Madness Radio also features authors, advocates, and researchers on madness-related topics, including civil rights, science, policy reform, holistic health, history, and art. Madness Radio presents voices often marginalized by other media, and takes a critical approach to mental health policy, corporate marketing, and institutional medical science. Each in-depth interview challenges listeners to a new understanding of experiences that are often stereotyped and feared, and encourages reconsideration of how to improve care and truly meet human needs. The show respects all treatment and medication choices people make, while providing an opportunity to hear outsider perspectives and overcome misinformation. Madness Radio is part of the international movement for diverse-ability rights, informed consent, and self-determination, and envisions a community development rather than medical approach to human emotional distress. Broadcasting regulary since 2005 (recently producing our 100th show), Madness Radio is co-sponsored by peer run mental health communities Freedom Center, The Icarus Project, and Portland Hearing Voices. Host Will Hall was diagnosed with schizoaffective schizophrenia and works as an advocate, counselor, and educator internationally. Why “Madness Radio”? While no word can be adequate — all risk imposing an interpretation from outside a person’s experience –I chose to call the show simply “Madness Radio” to evoke a historical and open-ended perspective on what people go through and the social responses they encounter. I hope the phrase evokes thoughtful consideration of a timeless human mystery, and reaches beyond the limited language of “mental health.” Above all I want to raise the question, “who is calling who crazy?”