The Psychiatric Survivor Clinic
In April 2023, Project LETS launched our first Psychiatric Survivor Clinic — open to anyone who has been harmed by psychiatry and psychiatric treatment. This space will offer opportunities for community care and peer support, strategizing and discussion, skill-sharing, and co-reflecting.
Offering: Closed clinic cohorts that will meet for 2 hours every other week (for 6 sessions)
Clinic structure:
Check in’s and grounding
Orientation to the topic for the week
Small group discussions
Large group share backs
Access: Live Zoom transcription will be enabled. Please email support@projectlets.org for any other access needs.
Registration is currently closed.
Meet The PS Clinic Facilitators!
Amanda Tran
My name is Amanda, and I'm a non-binary, neurodivergent, and queer Vietnamese human bean (pronouns – English: she/they, Vietnamese: chị/chanh/em). I'm the eldest child of refugee parents, and through my own lived experiences with trauma, mental health challenges, and psychiatric incarceration, I've come to embody healing as restoring interconnectedness and reciprocity within and between the personal, relational, and historical. My care work is rooted in practices of compassion, rest, and deep trust in the process itself. I currently live and work as a psychotherapist on occupied Tamien Nation and Ohlone land (San Jose, San Francisco Bay Area, CA), and I enjoy tending to my plants, warm beach days, and home-cooked meals.
Interest areas: Asian/SE Asian psychiatric survivors, children of immigrants/refugees
Nadia Naomi Mbonde
Nadia Naomi Mbonde is a Mad MotherScholar, Multimedia Arist, and Mental Health Doula living in Brooklyn, New York. She is a doctoral student in Medical and Sociocultural Anthropology at New York University. In 2018, she trained as a birth and postpartum doula and in 2020 as a peer support specialist along with additional specializations in disability and mental health as it pertains to the perinatal window of pregnancy to postpartum. An experienced peer support group facilitator, Nadia currently co-facilitates a perinatal bipolar support group for Postpartum Support International (PSI), a perinatal mental health organization with chapters in every state and worldwide. She regularly speaks and teaches about mental health and reproduction at academic conferences as well as grassroots mental health and doula organizations, such as Project LETS and Birth Advocacy Doula Trainings (BADT). Ultimately, Nadia’s research and practice seeks to integrate mad liberation and reproductive justice by providing birthing people and parents with the support, community, and resources they need for them and their families to thrive.
Interest areas: Mad parenting
Chanika Svetvilas
Chanika Svetvilas is a Thai American interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker based in Princeton, NJ. She self-identifies as having a mental health difference with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and is a mental health and disability justice advocate who embraces mad pride in her work as a psychiatric survivor. Her work is also included in Studying Disability Arts and Culture: An Introduction by Petra Kuppers and published in the Disability Studies Quarterly. For more information on her work visit chanikasvetvilas.com.
Interest areas: AAPI, psychiatric survivor, artists (all disciplines, performance, theater, dance, etc.)
Mel B
Mel B is a Mad & Disabled agender person who is invested in psychiatric liberation and disability justice. They are an abolitionist and an avid theory reader, and they are extremely passionate about building alternatives to the current systems of so-called care created by and for people with lived experience.
Interest areas: Psychiatric Medication Information, Disability Justice, International Mad Movements, Crisis Support, Complex Trauma
Allilsa Fernandez
Allilsa Fernandez is a mental health and disability advocate, activist and consultant. They have worked with companies such as Facebook, Lionsgate, Verizon, and ReelAbilities Los Angeles. In addition, they have volunteered with Sylvia Rivera Law Project on shelter organizing, with Met Council on housing justice, and NYC mutual aid providing aid to people across NYC. Allilsa has also worked with diverse organizations, companies, and politicians such as Janos Marton, to create intersectional mental health policies. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Stony Brook University with a bachelors in Psychology, and completed her fellowships with The Coelho Center for Disability Law, Policy and Innovation, and Latino Justice Law Bound. Their work has been featured in Forbes Magazine and the Laura Flanders show.
Interest areas: Spiritual Crises, Queer Mental Health, Brown and Mental Health, Disability Mental Health
Jenny
Jenny (she/they) first became involved in peer support when working at their university’s peer-run mental health hotline, and has continued to be involved in peer support efforts for almost a decade. In addition to participating in community care and mutual aid, she is an abolitionist researcher studying non-police crisis response models, and is dedicated to centering the voices of psychiatric survivors in her work. They have lived experience of PTSD, suicidality, and psychiatric hospitalization.
Interest areas: LGBTQ+ folks; survivors of gender-based violence.
Reagan Dunham
Reagan Dunham (she/her) is a community health advocate currently based on Nacotchtank and Piscataway Land (Washington, DC). Her professional work focuses on implementing Black-led health equity and HIV prevention programs, advocating for harm reduction-informed local policy, and providing case management services at a local hospice for unhoused people living with HIV. Her lived experience includes navigating medical spaces as a queer Black woman with chronic illnesses. Reagan looks forward to building non-carceral solutions to mental health crises that honor the dignity and humanity of each member of our communities.
Interest areas: Black psychiatric survivors, queer psychiatric survivors, people living with autoimmune diseases, people living with chronic illness/pain
Tasha Fierce
Tasha Fierce is a queer Black disabled nonbinary femme writer, artist, transition doula, facilitator, and mystic residing in the occupied Kizh territory known as Pasadena, California. Learn more about their healing work at liberatedtransitions.org and their art at tashafierce.com.
Interest areas: Black psych survivors, spiritual crises, autistic/ND psych survivors, multiple survivors (sexual trauma+psych), queer psych survivors, femme psych survivors