We have seen patterns of experiences within psychiatric institutions in the Chicago area and across Illinois.  These patterns include involuntary commitment, restriction of rights, coercive behaviors, forced drugging, and related injustices. We are specifically inviting testimonials documenting these and similar experiences.

Submit your testimony here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe3c_eIP1Xaw6eO7PcRxTeaQv3RusNC9LzyNr30ui6CdStzJA/viewform

Equip for Equality’s priorities survey is a way for individuals with disabilities, family members, professionals, and community members to share what issues matter most to them. The feedback collected helps the organization set its advocacy priorities for the year, ensuring its efforts reflect the needs and concerns of the disability community in Illinois. 

Complete the survey here: https://www.equipforequality.org/about/priorities/

Often as a patient we feel uneasy about being authentic, having completely unfiltered, honest talks, about how much we are truly hurting with our therapists.

Hierarchy is nothing more or less than the assignment of power: one person over another. The designation of less and more. A legitimized, codified human valuation system. And it’s dangerous.

Part of the vision behind Rayo is to redefine what it means to be a Community Mental Health Center. We currently have two separate systems of mental healthcare: the Community Mental Health Center (or CMHC) for those with medicaid or without insurance, and the Private Practice for the privately insured. This doesn’t work for many reasons, but I’ll try to be brief.

Psychoanalyst and writer Johanna Dobrich is credited as a pioneer in clinical thought and study regarding survivor siblings, and noted for her interest in sibling relationships as sites of profound impact. Answering a question about why clinical theory has traditionally been focused on the hierarchical parent-child relationship over the lateral, sibling relationship, she says:

The Liberation Health model is a theory of human behavior that conceptualizes the problems of individuals and families that cannot be understood in isolation from the economic, political, cultural, and historical conditions which give rise to them.