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About

How can we liberate ourselves — and truly care for each other?

I am a counselor and facilitator working with individuals, couples, and families via phone and web video. I have taught and consulted on mental health, trauma, psychosis, medications, domestic violence, conflict resolution, spirituality, and organizational development in more than 30 countries, and been widely featured in the media for my advocacy efforts around human rights in mental health care. As a therapist and community development worker I am outside dominant ways of responding to altered and visionary states of mind, and I work to develop different understandings based in human connection and real caring. My work and teaching arise from my own experiences of recovery from a schizophrenia diagnosis and learning to live with madness, and today I am passionate about new visions of mind and what it means to be human.

I hold a Diploma and Masters Degree in Process Work from the Process Work Institute, a Jungian counseling school, and my study over the years has included training with Jaakko Seikkula and colleagues in Open Dialogue at the Institute for Dialogic Practice, the WRAP facilitators’ training, certification in NADA protocol auricular acupuncture at Lincoln Recovery in New York City, and the Integral Counseling program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. I am currently a PhD Candidate at Maastricht University Medical Center – School for Mental Health and Neuroscience, supervised by Dr. Jim van Os. My work as a therapist and group facilitator focuses especially on trauma, oppression, and extreme states of consciousness that get diagnosed as psychosis; my PhD research is centered on psychiatric medications and alternatives. I also have extensive background in community organizing and organizational development, and see “mental health” as a community and social issue. I am a lifelong adherent of nonviolence as a way of life and path for social change.

As my experience has grown I have been invited to present and teach groups in a wide variety of settings. I have consulted and presented for more than 50 organizations in over 30 countries, including the Federal Office on Violence Against Women, the American Psychiatric Association Institute on Psychiatric Services, the Alaska Peer Mental Health Consortium, Menninger Clinic, Alaska Governor’s Council on Disabilities, International Network Towards Alternatives for Recovery, Oregon Health and Sciences University, New York University Gallatin School, Hearing Voices Congress, International Association of Process Oriented Psychology, New Avenues for Youth, University of Massachusetts Nursing School, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Mental Disability Rights International, Western MA Recovery Learning Community. Heart and Soul Alameda County, Portland State University School for Social Work, Smith College School of Social Work, Sigmund Freud University – Vienna Austria and Ljubljana Slovenia, Multnomah County Department of Community Justice, Empowerment Initiatives, and many more.

I have been widely interviewed and featured in the media, including New York Times “Revisiting Schizophrenia: Are Drugs Always Needed?, Radio New Zealand, National Public Radio, Newsweek magazine “Listening to Madness”, Forbes magazine, Haaretz,  Forbes philanthropy, in the books Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologists Search for the Meanings In Madness, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon, Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers, and Rebels, by Alissa Quart, and Show Me All Your Scars: True Stories of Living With Mental Illness chapter by Susie Meserve. I have written extensively on mental health, social justice, and environmental issues, including in my book Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness, the Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Medications, Research Ethics journal, the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, in Best Practices in Mental Health: An International Journal,  Turning Wheel: Journal of Engaged Buddhism, Adbusters: Journal of the Mental Environment, a profile in Research Outreach magazine, the Sierra Club anthology Call To Action: Peace, Justice, and Ecology, Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness, as investigator and co-author on the 2010 Disability Rights International Report on Asylums in Mexico, a chapter on my personal history in Way Out Of Madness, a chapter in the Oxford University Press textbook Modern Community Mental Health: An Interdisciplinary Approach, and a co-authored chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality. I’ve appeared in the films Healing Voices, Crazywise, and Coming Off Psych Drugs: A Meeting Of Minds. My radio show Madness Radio: Voices And Visions from Outside Mental Health was profiled in the UK Guardian newspaper and has more than 200 episodes.

 

More About My Background:

I grew up in an artistic family that cultivated creativity and imagination; I was a magician and performer as a kid, and games and books enthralled me. In school I became an outsider, pulled between my love of learning and my differences from other students. Growing up in a traumatized family haunted by war and violence, my sensitivity turned towards self-preservation, as I tried to make sense of the racial, class, and gender confIicts that surrounded me in the South. My father is a Korean War veteran and psychiatric survivor, and my mother is of mixed race Choctaw Indian descent and was orphaned as a girl. This challenging context ignited a lifelong personal search to embrace both the vastness of my imaginary worlds and the urgency of social justice and healing.

As a teenager I became a community organizer in the peace, ecology, and anti-racism movements, but the traumas of my childhood and longtime struggles with emotional distress landed me in a psychiatric hospital at age 26. After a difficult year in San Francisco’s public mental health system and over 15 years on a disability check, I slowly learned to live with and care for my madness by stepping away from diagnosis and meds and embracing human connection, holistic health, and spiritual practice. That recovery process inspired me to help others by founding and working with several community organizations, offering alternatives, and advocating for human rights in psychiatry. I am a mental health abolitionist and strongly believe we have the means to replace force and control with love and understanding.

Today I teach what I have learned and use my experience to help guide people to their own discoveries of healing, through my vocation as a counselor, my writing, my trainings, through student supervision and through consulting with organizations. My explorations led me to study Jung and earn a Diploma from Process Work Institute and its systems based and body-centered approach to human experience, as well as studying Open Dialogue with Jaakko Seikkula and colleagues. I am actively involved in creating a new vision of mental health based on understanding the meaningfulness of what gets labeled as psychosis and madness. I am passionate about mental diversity and welcoming different states of consciousness as vital parts of the human community.

A longtime meditator and yoga practitioner, I love books, bicycling, and being in nature, and am an avid runner, dancer, and role playing gamer and love hiking and rock climbing. I am deeply moved by the mystery, suffering, and potentials of what it is to be a human on planet earth, and I strive for a way everyone, no matter where our minds take us, can find a way home.

 

Professional Positions and Community Development Work:

Professional Association Memberships:

  • International Society for the Psychological Study of Schizophrenia and Psychosis
  • American Counseling Association
  • National Acupuncture Detoxification Association
  • International Hearing Voices Network
  • Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies – Honorary Core Team member with Evelin Lindner
  • International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry
  • Process Work Institute Diplomate Alumni Society
  • International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal associate
  • International Association for Process Oriented Psychology
  • International Network Towards Alternatives For Recovery
  • Hearing Voices Network USA
  • CMS National Provider Plan System NPI 1265808976

Awards:

“When I was growing up, I wanted to be a magician,” remembers Hall. “Then I wanted to be a biologist, then I wanted to be a psychologist, then I wanted to be a community organizer, then I wanted to be a philosopher. Now I’m sort of all of them.”
— Interview in the Portland Mercury newspaper, June 2009.

“Hall remains articulate, impassioned, and unmedicated…”
— Profile in Newsweek Magazine, May 2009.

“Hall’s style is equally comforting and intense”
— Publisher’s Weekly 2022 Booklife Prize Nonfiction Finalist

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