May 20, 2025 • 60 mins
Nothing About Us Without Us with Carolie Mazel-Carlton
Caroline Mazel-Carlton is a suicide attempt survivor who, since moving out of a staffed psychiatric group home in 2009, has worked tirelessly to create change in the mental health system and has developed and re-defined peer roles in a number of settings in the public and private sector. She works with Wildflower Alliance, which “supports healing and empowerment for our broader communities and people who have been impacted by psychiatric diagnosis, trauma, extreme states, homelessness, problems with substances and other life-interrupting challenges.” They do this through peer support, alternative healing practices, providing education, and advocacy. Essential to their work is “recognizing and undoing systemic injustices such as racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, transmisogyny, and psychiatric oppression.” On this program we talk about the incredible healing value of peer support and harm reduction around suicide.
Music by Shari Ulrich and We Three
Caroline Mazel-Carlton is a suicide attempt survivor who, since moving out of a staffed psychiatric group home in 2009, has worked tirelessly to create change in the mental health system and has developed and re-defined peer roles in a number of settings in the public and private sector. She works with Wildflower Alliance, which “supports healing and empowerment for our broader communities and people who have been impacted by psychiatric diagnosis, trauma, extreme states, homelessness, problems with substances and other life-interrupting challenges.” They do this through peer support, alternative healing practices, providing education, and advocacy. Essential to their work is “recognizing and undoing systemic injustices such as racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, transmisogyny, and psychiatric oppression.” On this program we talk about the incredible healing value of peer support and harm reduction around suicide.
Music by Shari Ulrich and We Three
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Vancouver co Op Radio cfr OH one
hundred point five FM. We're coming to you from the
unseated traditional territories of the Squamish, Muscream and sleighwy tooth
nations around Vancouver, BC. I'm your host, Bernadine Fox, and
this is this show that dares to change how we
think about mental health. Welcome to Rethreading Madness.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
When ever been fer.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
No?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
What the hell I'm gonna do when I can't seem fine?
Away under over.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver co Op Radio
cfr OH one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernadine Fox,
and today I have the pleasure of speaking with a
woman by the name of Carolyn Masel Carlton, who is
a suicide attempt survivor who also, since moving out of
a staffed psychiatric group home in two thousand and nine,
(01:03):
which is quite a long time's about fourteen no, sixteen
years ago, has worked tirelessly to create change in the
mental health system and has developed and redefined peer roles
in a number of settings in the public and private sector. So, Carolyn,
you are with the Wildflower Alliance, and before you tell
us about that organization. Can you tell us a little
(01:27):
bit more about who you are?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah, So, I think some of the most important, the
most important information about me is I come to this
work really as a survivor, a psychiatric survivor. So I
did first interact with psychiatry when I was eight years
(01:53):
old and have experienced things like force treatment, police involvement.
When I was having a distressing moment in my life,
when I was hearing voices other people did it. That
was already a tough experience for me, and it became
(02:14):
tougher when someone chose to call the police and have
that be the support of intervention.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
It did not go well.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
So for me, it's really been this kind of lifelong
journey of trying to figure out, you know, how does
the mental health system really live up to the goal
to provide healing for folks.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
I think a lot.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Of what I've seen as a patient but also as
someone who has worked in clinical settings is a lot
of times the mental health system retain this value of
social control rather than creating healing environment. So I just
(03:11):
want to say, you know, before that I start talking
about my work with Wildflower Alliance, which I'm super excited
to do that. A lot of it is drawn from
personal experience on either side of the clinical model and
seeing some of the failures and harms that can occur.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Can you tell us a little bit about what Wildflower
Alliance is and also tell us where you are in
the world, because our audience comes from all over the
world and where are you? Where are you coming to
us from?
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah, well, I'm super excited that we have a global
audience because at this point Wildflower Alliance is quite global.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
But I am. You know, our main area of where.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
We really got started, the place where we have our
roots is in western Massachusetts and that's.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Where I am now.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
But because Wildflower Alliance, we have been able to innovate
in many ways much more quickly than other organizations. We
don't we don't employ clinicians, and we don't use a
clinical model. A lot of our innovations are now worldwide,
(04:33):
so we do a lot of work in Australia. For example,
I'll be heading to Iceland on Sunday. So one of
the things we say is we're about people, not places.
We're about people that are holding shared values like self
determination versus like being confined to a particular building.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Right which is of course what we do here at
Rethreading Manna. So we're really excited about having you here
to talk about what it is you do. One of
the things when we talked before, one of the things
you talked about was the importance of peer support, and
so I'm hoping we can spend a little time here
talking about why that's important. I know why it's important,
(05:21):
lots of people know why it's important, but I'm not
sure everybody in our audience understands how important peer support
is in the process of healing or changing or modifying
your life however you might want to do that. Can
you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, I think peer support has such power and potential
to really sort of bring us in a different direction
than the older social control, disease based clinical models, those
(05:58):
models that I really had to grow up in. I'm
forty two years old, so when I was first in
the system, peer support was mostly just alcoholics anonymous and
that was it. But I think peer support at its
(06:21):
most powerful is it provides for us a real alternative
to clinical models where there are these extreme hierarchies.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
So what am I talking about here?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So when I would be hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital,
what I would notice is it could be very tribal
in terms of the different staff people nurses versus psychiatrists
versus social workers.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
It could be really tribal.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
But also the higherarchy would be especially huge. So in
a clinical model, for example, the person who had the
most power and sway over my treatment was the psychiatrist
who had the most medical training. But often that person
(07:22):
knew very little about me, and the psychiatrists would would
spend often the least amount of time with me and
then make these major decisions about my care. I remember
one time they took me off of benzo diazepines once,
really really fast, this doctor did, and I ended up
(07:44):
almost dying of a grandma seizure because of the you know,
the way that they made that decision. So peer support,
I think, can really level the higher archy. Peer support
can help people tap into their own lived wisdom, and
(08:10):
we can build really strong connections when we let go
of like holding a powerful role and just focus on
listening and making eye statements rather than diagnosing people, writing
treatment plans or telling them what to do.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
But isn't that the psychiatrist's job. Isn't that like their
whole job is to diagnose, write treatment plans, and tell
them what to do.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, I think in a lot of settings, absolutely, you know,
they and you know, certainly when I was in the system,
they prescribed a lot, a lot, a lot of neuroliptic medications,
(09:02):
some of which caused me, as I've shared already, some
pretty extreme side effects.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
But one of the things I'll.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Say, like, yeah, that ultimately my concern is less about
pills and more about power. So I think in the
medical model, often psychiatrists therapists have just so much more
power than the person they're supporting. They're the ones that
(09:34):
are often defining what the situation is or what the
problem is, and sometimes the real fears and concerns of
the patient might get lost.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
So just an example of what I mean by that.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
When I was in the system, one of the things
that people really were concerned about and they wanted me
to stop with self injury.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
So I'm someone that would cut my skin also.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Pull out my hair, and those were really looked at
by psychiatrists and therapists as problems that they needed to stop.
But in my view, you know, in my life experience,
you know, cutting myself was not the problem. Cutting myself
(10:34):
was actually my solution to deal with really difficult emotions
from abuse and feeling dis empowered. So I would go
to these like therapy sessions or med checks and we
wouldn't even be on the same page about what the
biggest issue in my life was. And so in your
(10:58):
support we actually do the opposite. We ask the person
we're supporting, what's hardest for you right now? What are
your biggest concerns? And that's what we focus on.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
So kind of what you're saying there is if the
clinical model is focused on stopping you as cutting, which
is your solution, and they succeeded that, what really happens
then is you have to create another solution that isn't
cutting because it hasn't really gotten to solving the problem
exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So what would happen is they would take away or diagnosed.
So I received this diagnosis a borderline personality disorder, which
was really difficult like to carry around. It affected how
people treated me, but absolutely like moving those things or
(12:01):
removing my coping strategies or pathologizing my strategies that never
actually helped me and it never addressed my root problem.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
How did you get to the root problem. I'm not
suggesting that you need to disclose your own personal stuff here,
but how do people get to the root problem if
it's not through this clinical model.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah, well, actually i'd be you know, as someone that
works in a peer role, like I really believe in
just the power of stories and speaking our truths.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
So I'm really happy to share what's worked well for
me in my life.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I think fundamentally, one of the things that I was
dealing with was sort of this crisis of belonging and
feeling like an outsider. So I experienced abuse and bullying
at a young age, and then when I ended up
in the mental health system, often I would feel like
(13:11):
an even greater outsider because I would end up locked
in a hospital or locked in a jail cell I
was told things that I had a genetic abnormalty.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
I was once told that I shouldn't have children.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Because I would pass on to them this genetic brain
disease that I had, and so more and more I
became very isolated. So for me, what actually was a
transformative moment in my life was finding a community where
(13:50):
I belonged. And for me, that big community was actually
finding a roller Derby team. So, yeah, something completely outside
of the mental health system that most people wouldn't identify
as therapeutic in any way.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
You know, you don't.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
You don't see like clinicians putting Roller Derby in people's
treatment plans. But for me, that community joining it was
really healing. It helped me move a lot of trauma
and pain out of my body. It helped me find
a place where I belonged. Instead of being called, you know,
(14:39):
bipolar with psychotic features, I was given a roller Derby name,
which was muzzle top cocktail, faster, faster than a spinning dradle,
and that was a positive identity. And so that became
a real community of support for and it really transformed me,
(15:04):
and it transformed how I see sort of healing and
re envisioning society. I think, yeah, creating more spaces for
belonging is much more important than building more psychiatric institutions
(15:25):
like some of the ones I've been held in.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, And of course you're touching on the whole notion
that you know, psychiatry, psychology, they're all about controlling people.
And of course what you're suggesting is let us, let
us be with people where we belong and of course
that's the fear that if you take someone who, as
(15:48):
you call it, has a mental disease, and I say
that in quotes because we don't really use those terms
on this station or in this program. You know, they're
worried that if you are among other people like that,
that it would be encouraging, it would be encouraging the
mental quote disease rather than controlling it. So their whole
(16:13):
idea of healing is is very backwards to what really
has been helpful for you and for so so many people,
is to find people who are like them, who who
who are who experience the day in the same way,
who all of that stuff, to find out that your
normal given the context, is a very powerful thing.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
And yeah, another thing I noticed, like beyond just the control,
was the tendency to center the problems in us as individuals.
So you know, I was often told, for example, Caroline,
you need to focus on your own recovery, and I
(17:00):
was often told that my problems were a result of
my borderline personality or brain disease. So in some ways
they wanted to kind of keep us isolated and focused
on ourselves. But I think that was the completely wrong
(17:20):
direction for me, and what made me feel much better,
for example, was learning that I wasn't the only one
who had heard voices during an intense time in her life.
I wasn't the only one for whom self injury was
a way to bring a little more power and control
(17:44):
into her life. There were so many things that I
thought I was just alone in and the system actually
sort of reinforced that in some ways, like focus on
yourself and only talk to professals.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
But for me, really the opposite is what was healing.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
And they've actually found that peer support, for a large
group of people have presented to people with who live
with mental health challenges is one of the most profound
healing tools that they have found in their lives. We
need to just take a little break, folks, but we'll
be right back with Carolyn Mozzel Carleton.
Speaker 5 (18:25):
If you want to listen to us anywhere you travel,
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Speaker 1 (18:38):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver call Up Radio
CFR one hundred point five FM. I'm going to name
block speaking with Carolyn Mazzel Carlton about Wildflower Alliance but
also the work she does around peer support. So Carolyn,
tell us a little bit about what Wildflower does.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Yeah, So Wildflower Alliance is special, and I think one
of the things that makes it so is kind of
how it was initially.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
Envisioned and founded.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
So Wildflower Alliance when it was funded in two thousand
and eight was really the manifestation of like decades of
advocacy of people standing up and saying nothing.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
About us without us.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
You know, we need services and supports and communities that
take our input into account and just instead of just
listening to academics say, oh, this is what people diagnosed
with mental illness need, this is what people who struggle.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
With substances need.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Like all those different silos, the trauma silo, the housing silo,
we kind of like broke a lot of those down
and for a year Wildflower Alliance, a large group of
people met who had all been impacted by you know, trauma,
psychiatric diagnoses, disability. There was a large contingent from the
(20:15):
deaf community was there. Everyone really got together and shared
experiences and decided like what what the values of Wildflower
Alliance would be.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
So we knew that we were going to be.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Non clinical and we weren't gonna employ people in clinical roles.
But you know what I love was people that people
sat down and said, it's it's not enough to just
say we're not going to hire into those roles. We
really need to define what our values are because otherwise
(20:52):
we might just replicate the things that were done to us.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
That is always the danger of what happens. If you
aren't being conscious about what you're doing and where you're going,
you can in fact re establish the harm. Absolutely, yeah,
it was part of you.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
So we really wanted to be intentional and values driven first.
So for example, like people would talk about, hey, you know,
like when I was having the worst moment of my life,
I really didn't like it when I had to show
up in a place with like fluorescent lights, a vinyl floor,
(21:39):
like a puke green wall, like sleeping on a plastic mattress.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Like.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
We talked about the environment.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Itself and wanting to truly create environments that were healing
versus what are actually more institutional.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
So that was a big conversation.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Another conversation was how people really struggled when they were
in crisis. But folks would take even more of their
power away and not listen to them.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
How you know, they would.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
End up sitting in front of someone like with the
clipboard and a plastic name badge and having to answer
these like questions that they were reading off the clipboard,
like are you having thoughts of harming yourself for others?
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Do you have a plan? Do you have lethal means?
Speaker 3 (22:40):
You know? All those interactions were so inauthentic and so
genuine human relationships became one of our values. Also, self
determination and personal strength was a real value, and so
I encourage people to actually come to our website Wildflower
(23:03):
Lions dot org and check out all of our defining
principles that we have in our mission statement, which in
contrast to the clinical Western individualists model, we're very much
aware and seek to undo issues like systemic oppression, not
(23:28):
just the systems of oppression that people with psychiatric diagnoses experience,
but also misogyny, racism, classism, the way that the war
on poor people in our country, like all of those things.
We wanted to center those conversations instead of just saying, oh, yeah,
(23:51):
that's something outside of your quote unquote mental illness. So
those were a lot of our key values, and then
once we had our values established, it was only then
that we began to develop a lot of our supports.
(24:15):
So one of those supports that I'll highlight one that's
pretty well known globally is our alternatives to suicide model.
So we started very early on in Wildflower Alliance, we
partnered with a harm reduction organization, a local needle exchange,
(24:39):
to fund and support totally confidential support groups for folks
dealing with thoughts of suicide, and that would be facilitated
by others who had had that same experience, so no
clinician in the room, completely confidential groups where people could
(25:02):
share and get support, but where no one would be
taking over, no one would be calling the police, for example,
And so those groups were life changing for so many
people that actually we now do educational opportunities for clinicians
(25:26):
not to facilitate those groups, because those groups are just
for folks with lived experience, but we give clinicians now
harm reduction tools for supporting people that are suicidal, for example,
you know, not relying so much on these risk assessment
(25:50):
tools that focus on, like, you know, all those risk
assessment tools that are asking you like if you're gonna die,
how you're gonna die? Like, we put those down and
instead we focus on talking about why this person wants
to die? Why do you want to leave this world?
(26:12):
You know, what's going on? Is there something in your life,
for example, that needs to end or die for you
to go on living? And so we focus more deeply
like on that story. And so that's something we did
for years in these groups, but now we also train
(26:36):
others on the types of questions we ask people that
can be just so much more helpful than.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Do you have a plan?
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, those vague suicidal assessment tools are are misleading and
people can get tripped up in them and end up
in the psychord when they weren't really thinking of harming themselves.
And it's you know, we actually on this program, did
we bruke down the suicide assessment tools and said this
(27:06):
is the question, and this is what they're looking for.
And you know, if if you had a suicidal idea
three months ago or two years ago or five, don't
say yes, because that's not important right now. They're looking
you know, so and I really as doing that. I
really got it just how vague that tool is and
how easy it would be for someone to end up
(27:29):
in the psych word for something that's really not true
for what's happening for them right now. And I think
one of the things you're touching on is that people
don't understand just how much people are silenced around the
idea of suicidal ideation. You know, you feel like you
cannot talk about it, and so you have a really
(27:49):
hard time working it through because you can't find the
people that aren't going to call the police the moment
you say I feel like I want to die, you know,
which has all kinds of permutations in that whole one sentence.
I mean, it could mean a thousand different things. But
people become terrified of it in the same way they
become terrified of the notion of cutting, you know, and
(28:10):
not getting it. Like you said that it's a solution,
it's not the problem. What do you say to people
who believe that those who have a mental health challenge
can't be depended on or shouldn't be allowed to make
decisions or self define because they aren't well. As Freud
(28:32):
would say, we're not We're not really capable, And of
course he didn't say it exactly that way, but that
certainly was the message that he left. So what do
you say about that? For you know, when an organization
tells you, well, how can we trust them to make
those decisions?
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
So, and of course I'm sorry I'm interrupting you, but yeah,
that goes into the whole notion of saanism. You talked
about racism and ableism and all of those things that
deal with in our lives, but there is a saism
that implies that that is based on the colonial based ideas.
I think you mentioned it. You had a different term
for it, which is a clinical not based on a
(29:12):
clinical model. We talk about it as not being based
on a colonial based idea of hierarchy of power. And
certainly saanism is where somebody who believes that they're mentally
well looks down upon somebody who has lives with a
mental health challenge. So what do you say about that?
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah, so, you know, obviously, yeah, I think you're right
that such if someone expresses such an idea, that it
really is rooted in this pervading system of oppression that
dictates that you know that there's some people out there
(30:00):
there that are biologically different than others. So I was
told I had a genetic disease. And it's this idea
that there's people that are biologically different than others and
are somehow less human or less insightful than the other
(30:21):
group that they're being excluded from. And certainly, you know,
there's a lot of danger when when we espouse or
hold some of these views. If I believe that someone
is biologically different than me, doesn't have the same level
(30:43):
of wisdom or even worth, it's going to be really hard,
you know, to treat that person well, let alone, let
alone meet the goal of support them on their healing journey.
(31:04):
So you know, I think, yeah, fundamentally, we in peer
support and at Wildflower Alliance we kind of flip that
script where say, you know someone you're supporting someone that's
hearing voices.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
Well, you know, you can't hear that other person's voices,
So to believe that you might have more insight into
what they mean or what should be done about them.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Than that person, Like, actually, that begins to sound really
really ridiculous, delusional. I do think it's delusional to assume
the fact that you went to a lecture in a
(31:59):
graduate program to think that that is the equivalent of
the wisdom of someone who has lived their entire life
and carries that story of what they've experienced, what has
been difficult for them, what has been helpful for them
in the past. You you're if if you discount their experience,
(32:28):
you're discounting someone that has you know, for PhDs, you know,
in in.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
Their own life.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
So definitely, I think a problem with you know, any
type of colonialism is just sort of the lack of humility.
But it can be It can make me really ineffective
(33:00):
as a supporter if I'm not coming into this interaction
with deep curiosity about the experiences, needs, and hopes of
the person I'm supporting. And yeah, I'm sure people ask you,
just as they ask me all the time.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
They're like Caroline, like, you know, how.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
How do I get people to engage in mental health services?
But my question, you know, I answer that with a
question of my own, which is, are these services you're
providing are they actually addressing the needs, desires, hopes and
fears of the people you're supporting. Is that is that
(33:48):
what's on offer or is it just mostly like warmed
up Western you know, medical theory people, they're not going
to engage. Ultimately, they're going to stop engaging if they
feel ignored.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Or condescended to, or disrespected or or being made to
do something that they intrinsically know is going to be
harmful for them.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
Absolutely, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah, it's the idea that sort of the white cisk gendered.
I'm sort of generalizing here, a person that's gone to
school has been endowed with some great insight into others,
and that they are norming who they are on what
(34:38):
is healthy and therefore are taking these poor souls. I'm
being very general and extreme poor souls to help them
become like them, not realizing that they aren't the the
the role model necessarily of what is mentally healthy for
that person they're hoping to help. Yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry,
(35:04):
go ahead, We just need to take a little break,
but we'll be right back, folks, with this incredible conversation
with Caroline masil Culton. So we'll be right back.
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Speaker 1 (35:46):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver co Op Radio
cfr oh one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernardine Fox.
Rethreading Madness is coming up to its sixth anniversary of
being on air. We produce an air each week out
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(36:07):
around Vancouver. Bc RTM was one of the first radio
programs to focus on mental health issues here in Canada,
in an area swamped with statements from therapists rooted in
colonial ideas about mental health and trained in the DSM.
RTM works to ensure that the voices of those with
lived experience have agency and opportunity to define who they
(36:30):
are and what is true for them who listens to us.
Beyond those with lived experience, our audience includes their friends
and partners, along with therapists, counselors, and students of psychology.
Since twenty twenty two, all of our programs have been
uploaded to the Mental Health Radio Network and can be
downloaded from all podcast platforms. So if this show was
(36:52):
of interest to you, you might find the rest of
our programs informative as well. You can find them by
searching for rethreading Madness, where every listen to your podcast?
Speaker 7 (37:03):
Can you call my life flying Zagi and I'll raise
my wife like and just scaled because I'm barely pretty,
didn't get no reason for grief and it's just how
(37:26):
well feeling. I'm just trying to be real.
Speaker 8 (37:33):
We shock a TRN and switch on, leave it on
all day, on day long, get it tattooed on my
arm just because they told me not to. We shake it,
turn your hold off, stay without going soft. But we
don't know that I'm not.
Speaker 7 (37:47):
I want to tell you have got to.
Speaker 8 (37:50):
Sho fill it, take it, breg it, magg it, what
you want to use it, choose it, find it, find it, boosey,
use it.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
How you're going on?
Speaker 4 (37:59):
Shoot you ain't take it? Beg it, beg it what
you want?
Speaker 9 (38:03):
Lousy you find it? Mighty booty?
Speaker 8 (38:05):
You how you gone?
Speaker 9 (38:08):
And you call on that side is outside bras got
no reason dreaming.
Speaker 10 (38:27):
Let's just go off.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
How I'm not shrying to be re.
Speaker 8 (38:40):
I'm shining with wish iver't leave the things up for
a nine times out of tenant to please check or
I wouldn't get for it. Play too way. Men's still
no sleep and the numbers and figures don't add. But
I'm not really shut of the madness because lady lets
on the disasters five A and men's still no sleeping.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
St feeling.
Speaker 8 (39:00):
Take it, bring it, bing it what you want to
lose it, choose it, fight it, mighty use it using hell,
you're gone t my life.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
Fighting because that.
Speaker 9 (39:16):
Can be all flag and stream come back.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
You have no reason the great and let's just sell.
Speaker 9 (39:27):
On the sill. Come bring on the best jowie body
fell on me.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
I'm just trying to be.
Speaker 11 (39:48):
On the side of the res.
Speaker 8 (40:01):
I'm just trying to.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Be you're listening to read threading Madness on Vancouver called
Radio CFR one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernardine Fox
speaking with Carolyn Masel Carlton from the Wildlife I'm sorry
I keep saying that from the Wildflower Alliance. Carolyn, you've
talked about peer support and I know you have a
(40:24):
peer respite program. What is that?
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Yeah, so peer respite is.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
What we consider to be an alternative to a psychiatric institution.
So instead of being in a cold, clinical environment, a
peer respite is just a nice house embedded in neighborhoods
in our communities, and people can call the peer respite.
(40:58):
We actually don't take referrals at all. So if a
social worker calls, like with their client and is saying, like,
I think my client would be a good candidate for
peer respite, what we say is, actually we need to
speak to this person themselves, because the only person that
(41:21):
can make that determination is them. And so you know,
at our peer respite house, you know, it's people can
stay for up to two weeks and there's twenty four
hour support there. But it's all peer support, and unlike
(41:43):
a psychiatric facility, no one is locked in the house.
People have their own rooms actually, and they can lock
their door, so that they feel more secure. But other
than that, there's no there's no lock or keys in
a pure respite.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
And yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
I'm just going to take that to all the fears
that people out there have about psychiatric survivors. And I
say that because I don't like that term at all,
not that they're not survivors. I don't like the term psychiatric.
It grates on me. But their fear is going to
be that you have some serial killer, paranoid, psychotic person
(42:31):
coming in and you know, how do you you know
this is the first thing. How are you going to
make sure everybody is safe? And I know and you
know that how to do that? But would you say
to people who have that as their biggest fear?
Speaker 4 (42:46):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
I find that if like, I'm just gonna say something
really honest here is some people need to stop watchings
many like TV shows.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
No, I could say that about so many things.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
It sucks, but yeah, like often people like myself who
have like a diagnosis you know that includes like psychotic
in the name. I don't even I don't even like
that word because it brings up so much fear. But yeah,
a lot of people are getting their information about you know,
(43:30):
these conditions through TV or other media outlets that stoke fear.
So you know, sometimes I just wish I could invite
people to like our peer respite, to just hang out
with us and see that we're not so scary.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
And the times where you know.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
People have become like really activated, like I see all
the time, like incidents in psychiatric facilities that really could
have been avoided, but because staff was approaching the person
with so much control and fear, there was a power struggle.
(44:17):
But it's interesting how if you eliminate a lot of
the power differentials, you're not having the same power struggles.
So if someone comes to the house and they talk
to me about like the voices that they're hearing, instead
(44:41):
of treating that person with fear, I'll just say, hey,
do you want to talk more about what your voices say?
Are some of the things they say, like, how do
you know how does it feel to like hear them?
Speaker 4 (44:56):
Are they helpful? Are they scary?
Speaker 3 (44:59):
Like winner your voice is louder, And instead of trying
to control the situation, we just talk about it.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
It sounds like you move into it rather than trying
to call it.
Speaker 4 (45:10):
Yeah, yeah, we just we just explore it.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
And we just honor it as that person's experience and
we treat them with respect as someone that lives with
these voices and is looking to maybe forge, you know,
a better path forward with them. So there's no there's
no diagnosing, there's no telling people you're wrong. Don't listen
(45:36):
to that. Like if I I'll say, like Bernadine, if
I've learned like anything in the past sixteen years of
like supporting people like professionally, it's number one, people don't
like being told that their thoughts or feelings are wrong,
(45:58):
and number two, they don't like being told what to do.
But you know, if you have an environment where none
of those things are happening, where I'm not telling people
what to do, where I'm not telling people their feelings
are wrong, it can be a pretty jaill place. Yeah,
(46:18):
you know, we're making some really great connections. And so
I'll share like our first peer respite a FEA has
been around for thirteen years and there's only been one
time where there was an act of really severe violence.
(46:38):
But what I'll say about that was when we reviewed
what had happened, we found that that person actually hadn't
wanted to be at the house. They had just been
assessed by a social worker. The social workers said that
they were not violent, but also made the determination that
(47:00):
needed to be at.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
A FIA house.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
So the one time that there was like a major
act of violence, it was because a person had been coerced.
And so what we try to do is create environments
where people are treated with dignity and trust in their
(47:26):
own experience. And when you do that, yeah, like I said,
you have a pretty powerful environment where there's not a
lot of power struggle.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
You talked about having online support groups. What are those?
Speaker 4 (47:46):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
You know, we have many different support groups that meet online.
Our most popular ones are our Alternatives to Suicide groups,
those purely confidential groups that are by and for people
who are experiencing suicidal thoughts. So we have many of
those groups, including affinity groups. For Black and Indigenous people
(48:14):
of color, there's an Alternates to Suicide group specifically for
that community. There's a Young People's group, an LGBTQ group.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
But we also have.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Other support groups just on kind of surviving the current
historical moment we're in with rising authoritarianism in the United States.
Speaker 4 (48:38):
We have Hearing.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Voices Groups, a group I facilitate that I love facilitating
is actually called spiritual.
Speaker 4 (48:46):
Explorations, where.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Those of us have who have been told that we
have like severe mental illnesses, can come and look at
our life through a spiritual lens, including our voices and visions,
without having to worry about being called.
Speaker 4 (49:06):
Crazy because it can be hard. Like in the psych system, they.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Often don't want to talk about spirituality, but in many
spiritual communities now those are becoming psychiatrized and if you
talk about voices and visions they.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
Might end up like referring you out.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
So I love this group as kind of like, yeah,
a true alternative where we can set the western medical
model aside and talk about, you know, these other human experiences,
whether it's our ancestors talking to trees, talking to God,
(49:47):
feeling like we're we're called as a Messianic figure, all
those things that there's just nowhere else to talk about.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Yeah, no kidding, that sounds fabulous. Quite frankly, I don't.
I we have never heard of anyone providing that kind
of online support for people, because it is, it is
frowned upon and if you have anything that is an
experience outside the norm, even if it's something that seems
quite accepted like a past life. It's still something that
(50:19):
people will think as part of your quote unquote craziness,
so exactly. Yeah, So how do people find out about
Wildflower and these support groups? What do people what would
people do? Say from Canada or somewhere other than the
United States, how or even in the United States? How,
(50:39):
how would people find out about you?
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Yeah, Well, we pride ourselves on being low to no barrier,
So a lot of our support groups you can just
find our online support groups. You can find right on
our website and there is a link provided and you
just click on the link at the time the group
you want to join meets. There are just a couple example,
(51:05):
I'm sorry, there's just a couple exceptions where we might
need you to email the facilitators first because of the
nature of the group. Like our Hearing Voices group and
our psych Drugs group, we have an additional sort of
(51:26):
like privacy setting just so the groups don't get crashed
by We want to know what people's intention is. But
it's really it's just a simple email. And another thing
I'll share is we do have a lot of online
(51:47):
training opportunities as well. So if you are interested, if
you're listening to this and you feel like, Hey, I
want to learn harm reduction approaches to suicide or harm
reduction approaches to self injury or voice hearing. I would
check out the training page of our website because we
(52:07):
have really accessible online training opportunities that we offer at
a at a sliding scale.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
So how can people find Wildflower Alliance?
Speaker 3 (52:21):
Yeah, so I really recommend going to our website Wildflower
Alliance dot org, and while you're there, making sure to
sign up for our newsletter. Another thing Wildflower Alliance does
quite a great deal of is advocacy, like, for example,
(52:44):
advocacy for the rights of people who are incarcerated in
psychiatric units, advocacy for you know, against force treatment, like
on federal and state level. So definitely sign up for
our newsletter because it'll provide you information about some of
(53:07):
those actions that we're involved in, as well as you know,
just what's going on in our communities in terms of
support and training and all that.
Speaker 1 (53:20):
So I know that I caught you in the middle
of packing to go to Iceland. What are you doing there?
Speaker 3 (53:26):
Yes, so I'll be going to Iceland where there'll be
people gathering from around the globe that are interested in
applying social justice principles to mental health support. So you
know what I'm going to be talking about. There is
(53:50):
sort of this reframe in the trauma informed world. There
was a great reframe between what's wrong with you to
focusing on what's happened to you, And my talk is
going to be about expanding that even further to not
just what happened to you, but what's happening to you
(54:15):
and also what's happening to us. So I'm a big
fan of repoliticizing mental health, and so we're going to
be talking about how we do that, including I'll be
sharing some about our newest peer respite, which is specifically
(54:35):
for the LGBTQ community, not because this is a community,
not that being LGBTQ is is a mental health problem,
but we start this community, sorry, we started this peer
respite because that community is politically.
Speaker 4 (54:54):
Under threat right now, It's true.
Speaker 3 (54:58):
So we'll be talking more about, well, how can mental
health support catch up and be more relevant to the
social context that we're in and the intersecting systems of
oppression that you know most of us are struggling under.
Speaker 1 (55:15):
And all the power to you, Carolyn, and doing it
because it is so necessary, especially in this political climate
that we are facing. And while it's still you know,
mostly in the US, I think that because of the
position the US has had in globally, we're all kind
of watching it unfold and worrying about how will it
(55:37):
impact on us? So I'm here in Canada, but I
know across the globe people are all kind of watching
and worried for you all.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
Absolutely, And yeah, I think it's going to take all
of us, you know, banding together to yeah, thwart rise
of authoritarianism and othering.
Speaker 4 (56:05):
And I think really those of us that work in
this field of like.
Speaker 3 (56:10):
Advocating for people with psychiatric diagnoses and disability, it's so
important for us because historically those are groups, like along
with immigrants, that you know, experience like the brunt of
these oppressive forces.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
Yeah, yeah, it's true. Thank you, Carolyn. Yeah, chatting with me,
and I wish you luck in Iceland. I hope that
when you get back we'll get to hear how it went.
And yeah, and I'm so happy Wildflower Alliance is out there,
and I'm glad that we're able to let people know
(56:53):
about it on this program.
Speaker 3 (56:55):
Yeah, so excited to be invited. Thank you for we're
holding these conversations.
Speaker 1 (57:02):
They're important. They're important conversations, so go knock them dead
in Iceland chat hopefully when you get that. Okay, okay,
all right, bye bye, We'll be right back folks.
Speaker 11 (57:15):
Here, turn you up. Qui gate Euons Queen Sna Hi, everybody,
my name is quigate Ywon's. I'm a member of the
Squamish Nation and the Yaglanisklan of the Hyda Nation. You're
listening to co Op Radio CFRO O one hundred point
five FM. We live, work play and broadcast from the
traditional ancestral and unseeded territories of the Musquiham, Squamish and
(57:37):
Slavetooth nations.
Speaker 1 (57:39):
And that's our show. My thanks to Caroline Maselcarlton for
speaking with us today about Wildflower Alliance and the pure
support they offer. Our music today was by Sherry Alrich
and We three and our thanks goes out to you
for joining us today. Stay safe out there. You've just
listened to Rethreading Madness, where we dare to change how
we think about mental health live on Vancouver co Op
(58:01):
Radio CFRO one hundred point five FM every Tuesday at
five pm or online at co opradio dot org. If
you have questions or feedback about this program, we want
to share your story or have something to say to us,
we want to hear from you. You can reach us
by email rethreading Madness at co opradio dot org. This
(58:21):
is Bernardine Fox. We'll be back next week.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
Until now we have ever been further. No, what the
hell I'm gonna do when I can't seem to find
my way under over too?
Speaker 4 (58:46):
Just when I'm ready to give the lie, there you are.
Speaker 10 (58:52):
When we turn out the lights in It's sorry, it's
all right, to really be alright?
Speaker 9 (59:05):
Why don't I always believe.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
beWhen you jelly, everything's gonna be all right? Yeah, Why
don't I wonder how you know?
Speaker 4 (59:26):
Surely you don't have all of the facts.
Speaker 10 (59:31):
You could be just making it up.
Speaker 4 (59:36):
Why don't I ever think of that? It's some kinda imagine.
Speaker 8 (59:43):
In the words that you read.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
Saying, baby taking it.
Speaker 4 (59:49):
From me, It's all right, it's all
Speaker 10 (59:53):
Right, don't to really be all right
You're listening to Vancouver co Op Radio cfr OH one
hundred point five FM. We're coming to you from the
unseated traditional territories of the Squamish, Muscream and sleighwy tooth
nations around Vancouver, BC. I'm your host, Bernadine Fox, and
this is this show that dares to change how we
think about mental health. Welcome to Rethreading Madness.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
When ever been fer.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
No?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
What the hell I'm gonna do when I can't seem fine?
Away under over.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver co Op Radio
cfr OH one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernadine Fox,
and today I have the pleasure of speaking with a
woman by the name of Carolyn Masel Carlton, who is
a suicide attempt survivor who also, since moving out of
a staffed psychiatric group home in two thousand and nine,
(01:03):
which is quite a long time's about fourteen no, sixteen
years ago, has worked tirelessly to create change in the
mental health system and has developed and redefined peer roles
in a number of settings in the public and private sector. So, Carolyn,
you are with the Wildflower Alliance, and before you tell
us about that organization. Can you tell us a little
(01:27):
bit more about who you are?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah, So, I think some of the most important, the
most important information about me is I come to this
work really as a survivor, a psychiatric survivor. So I
did first interact with psychiatry when I was eight years
(01:53):
old and have experienced things like force treatment, police involvement.
When I was having a distressing moment in my life,
when I was hearing voices other people did it. That
was already a tough experience for me, and it became
(02:14):
tougher when someone chose to call the police and have
that be the support of intervention.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
It did not go well.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
So for me, it's really been this kind of lifelong
journey of trying to figure out, you know, how does
the mental health system really live up to the goal
to provide healing for folks.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
I think a lot.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Of what I've seen as a patient but also as
someone who has worked in clinical settings is a lot
of times the mental health system retain this value of
social control rather than creating healing environment. So I just
(03:11):
want to say, you know, before that I start talking
about my work with Wildflower Alliance, which I'm super excited
to do that. A lot of it is drawn from
personal experience on either side of the clinical model and
seeing some of the failures and harms that can occur.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Can you tell us a little bit about what Wildflower
Alliance is and also tell us where you are in
the world, because our audience comes from all over the
world and where are you? Where are you coming to
us from?
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah, well, I'm super excited that we have a global
audience because at this point Wildflower Alliance is quite global.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
But I am. You know, our main area of where.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
We really got started, the place where we have our
roots is in western Massachusetts and that's.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Where I am now.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
But because Wildflower Alliance, we have been able to innovate
in many ways much more quickly than other organizations. We
don't we don't employ clinicians, and we don't use a
clinical model. A lot of our innovations are now worldwide,
(04:33):
so we do a lot of work in Australia. For example,
I'll be heading to Iceland on Sunday. So one of
the things we say is we're about people, not places.
We're about people that are holding shared values like self
determination versus like being confined to a particular building.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Right which is of course what we do here at
Rethreading Manna. So we're really excited about having you here
to talk about what it is you do. One of
the things when we talked before, one of the things
you talked about was the importance of peer support, and
so I'm hoping we can spend a little time here
talking about why that's important. I know why it's important,
(05:21):
lots of people know why it's important, but I'm not
sure everybody in our audience understands how important peer support
is in the process of healing or changing or modifying
your life however you might want to do that. Can
you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, I think peer support has such power and potential
to really sort of bring us in a different direction
than the older social control, disease based clinical models, those
(05:58):
models that I really had to grow up in. I'm
forty two years old, so when I was first in
the system, peer support was mostly just alcoholics anonymous and
that was it. But I think peer support at its
(06:21):
most powerful is it provides for us a real alternative
to clinical models where there are these extreme hierarchies.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
So what am I talking about here?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So when I would be hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital,
what I would notice is it could be very tribal
in terms of the different staff people nurses versus psychiatrists
versus social workers.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
It could be really tribal.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
But also the higherarchy would be especially huge. So in
a clinical model, for example, the person who had the
most power and sway over my treatment was the psychiatrist
who had the most medical training. But often that person
(07:22):
knew very little about me, and the psychiatrists would would
spend often the least amount of time with me and
then make these major decisions about my care. I remember
one time they took me off of benzo diazepines once,
really really fast, this doctor did, and I ended up
(07:44):
almost dying of a grandma seizure because of the you know,
the way that they made that decision. So peer support,
I think, can really level the higher archy. Peer support
can help people tap into their own lived wisdom, and
(08:10):
we can build really strong connections when we let go
of like holding a powerful role and just focus on
listening and making eye statements rather than diagnosing people, writing
treatment plans or telling them what to do.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
But isn't that the psychiatrist's job. Isn't that like their
whole job is to diagnose, write treatment plans, and tell
them what to do.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, I think in a lot of settings, absolutely, you know,
they and you know, certainly when I was in the system,
they prescribed a lot, a lot, a lot of neuroliptic medications,
(09:02):
some of which caused me, as I've shared already, some
pretty extreme side effects.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
But one of the things I'll.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Say, like, yeah, that ultimately my concern is less about
pills and more about power. So I think in the
medical model, often psychiatrists therapists have just so much more
power than the person they're supporting. They're the ones that
(09:34):
are often defining what the situation is or what the
problem is, and sometimes the real fears and concerns of
the patient might get lost.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
So just an example of what I mean by that.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
When I was in the system, one of the things
that people really were concerned about and they wanted me
to stop with self injury.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
So I'm someone that would cut my skin also.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Pull out my hair, and those were really looked at
by psychiatrists and therapists as problems that they needed to stop.
But in my view, you know, in my life experience,
you know, cutting myself was not the problem. Cutting myself
(10:34):
was actually my solution to deal with really difficult emotions
from abuse and feeling dis empowered. So I would go
to these like therapy sessions or med checks and we
wouldn't even be on the same page about what the
biggest issue in my life was. And so in your
(10:58):
support we actually do the opposite. We ask the person
we're supporting, what's hardest for you right now? What are
your biggest concerns? And that's what we focus on.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
So kind of what you're saying there is if the
clinical model is focused on stopping you as cutting, which
is your solution, and they succeeded that, what really happens
then is you have to create another solution that isn't
cutting because it hasn't really gotten to solving the problem
exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So what would happen is they would take away or diagnosed.
So I received this diagnosis a borderline personality disorder, which
was really difficult like to carry around. It affected how
people treated me, but absolutely like moving those things or
(12:01):
removing my coping strategies or pathologizing my strategies that never
actually helped me and it never addressed my root problem.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
How did you get to the root problem. I'm not
suggesting that you need to disclose your own personal stuff here,
but how do people get to the root problem if
it's not through this clinical model.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah, well, actually i'd be you know, as someone that
works in a peer role, like I really believe in
just the power of stories and speaking our truths.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
So I'm really happy to share what's worked well for
me in my life.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I think fundamentally, one of the things that I was
dealing with was sort of this crisis of belonging and
feeling like an outsider. So I experienced abuse and bullying
at a young age, and then when I ended up
in the mental health system, often I would feel like
(13:11):
an even greater outsider because I would end up locked
in a hospital or locked in a jail cell I
was told things that I had a genetic abnormalty.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
I was once told that I shouldn't have children.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Because I would pass on to them this genetic brain
disease that I had, and so more and more I
became very isolated. So for me, what actually was a
transformative moment in my life was finding a community where
(13:50):
I belonged. And for me, that big community was actually
finding a roller Derby team. So, yeah, something completely outside
of the mental health system that most people wouldn't identify
as therapeutic in any way.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
You know, you don't.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
You don't see like clinicians putting Roller Derby in people's
treatment plans. But for me, that community joining it was
really healing. It helped me move a lot of trauma
and pain out of my body. It helped me find
a place where I belonged. Instead of being called, you know,
(14:39):
bipolar with psychotic features, I was given a roller Derby name,
which was muzzle top cocktail, faster, faster than a spinning dradle,
and that was a positive identity. And so that became
a real community of support for and it really transformed me,
(15:04):
and it transformed how I see sort of healing and
re envisioning society. I think, yeah, creating more spaces for
belonging is much more important than building more psychiatric institutions
(15:25):
like some of the ones I've been held in.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, And of course you're touching on the whole notion
that you know, psychiatry, psychology, they're all about controlling people.
And of course what you're suggesting is let us, let
us be with people where we belong and of course
that's the fear that if you take someone who, as
(15:48):
you call it, has a mental disease, and I say
that in quotes because we don't really use those terms
on this station or in this program. You know, they're
worried that if you are among other people like that,
that it would be encouraging, it would be encouraging the
mental quote disease rather than controlling it. So their whole
(16:13):
idea of healing is is very backwards to what really
has been helpful for you and for so so many people,
is to find people who are like them, who who
who are who experience the day in the same way,
who all of that stuff, to find out that your
normal given the context, is a very powerful thing.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
And yeah, another thing I noticed, like beyond just the control,
was the tendency to center the problems in us as individuals.
So you know, I was often told, for example, Caroline,
you need to focus on your own recovery, and I
(17:00):
was often told that my problems were a result of
my borderline personality or brain disease. So in some ways
they wanted to kind of keep us isolated and focused
on ourselves. But I think that was the completely wrong
(17:20):
direction for me, and what made me feel much better,
for example, was learning that I wasn't the only one
who had heard voices during an intense time in her life.
I wasn't the only one for whom self injury was
a way to bring a little more power and control
(17:44):
into her life. There were so many things that I
thought I was just alone in and the system actually
sort of reinforced that in some ways, like focus on
yourself and only talk to professals.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
But for me, really the opposite is what was healing.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
And they've actually found that peer support, for a large
group of people have presented to people with who live
with mental health challenges is one of the most profound
healing tools that they have found in their lives. We
need to just take a little break, folks, but we'll
be right back with Carolyn Mozzel Carleton.
Speaker 5 (18:25):
If you want to listen to us anywhere you travel,
you can go into your Google Play Store and then
download the radio player Knada app and you can then
you can listen to your favorite radio station co Op
Radio CFRO one hundred point five FM.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver call Up Radio
CFR one hundred point five FM. I'm going to name
block speaking with Carolyn Mazzel Carlton about Wildflower Alliance but
also the work she does around peer support. So Carolyn,
tell us a little bit about what Wildflower does.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Yeah, So Wildflower Alliance is special, and I think one
of the things that makes it so is kind of
how it was initially.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
Envisioned and founded.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
So Wildflower Alliance when it was funded in two thousand
and eight was really the manifestation of like decades of
advocacy of people standing up and saying nothing.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
About us without us.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
You know, we need services and supports and communities that
take our input into account and just instead of just
listening to academics say, oh, this is what people diagnosed
with mental illness need, this is what people who struggle.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
With substances need.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Like all those different silos, the trauma silo, the housing silo,
we kind of like broke a lot of those down
and for a year Wildflower Alliance, a large group of
people met who had all been impacted by you know, trauma,
psychiatric diagnoses, disability. There was a large contingent from the
(20:15):
deaf community was there. Everyone really got together and shared
experiences and decided like what what the values of Wildflower
Alliance would be.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
So we knew that we were going to be.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Non clinical and we weren't gonna employ people in clinical roles.
But you know what I love was people that people
sat down and said, it's it's not enough to just
say we're not going to hire into those roles. We
really need to define what our values are because otherwise
(20:52):
we might just replicate the things that were done to us.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
That is always the danger of what happens. If you
aren't being conscious about what you're doing and where you're going,
you can in fact re establish the harm. Absolutely, yeah,
it was part of you.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
So we really wanted to be intentional and values driven first.
So for example, like people would talk about, hey, you know,
like when I was having the worst moment of my life,
I really didn't like it when I had to show
up in a place with like fluorescent lights, a vinyl floor,
(21:39):
like a puke green wall, like sleeping on a plastic mattress.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Like.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
We talked about the environment.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Itself and wanting to truly create environments that were healing
versus what are actually more institutional.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
So that was a big conversation.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Another conversation was how people really struggled when they were
in crisis. But folks would take even more of their
power away and not listen to them.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
How you know, they would.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
End up sitting in front of someone like with the
clipboard and a plastic name badge and having to answer
these like questions that they were reading off the clipboard,
like are you having thoughts of harming yourself for others?
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Do you have a plan? Do you have lethal means?
Speaker 3 (22:40):
You know? All those interactions were so inauthentic and so
genuine human relationships became one of our values. Also, self
determination and personal strength was a real value, and so
I encourage people to actually come to our website Wildflower
(23:03):
Lions dot org and check out all of our defining
principles that we have in our mission statement, which in
contrast to the clinical Western individualists model, we're very much
aware and seek to undo issues like systemic oppression, not
(23:28):
just the systems of oppression that people with psychiatric diagnoses experience,
but also misogyny, racism, classism, the way that the war
on poor people in our country, like all of those things.
We wanted to center those conversations instead of just saying, oh, yeah,
(23:51):
that's something outside of your quote unquote mental illness. So
those were a lot of our key values, and then
once we had our values established, it was only then
that we began to develop a lot of our supports.
(24:15):
So one of those supports that I'll highlight one that's
pretty well known globally is our alternatives to suicide model.
So we started very early on in Wildflower Alliance, we
partnered with a harm reduction organization, a local needle exchange,
(24:39):
to fund and support totally confidential support groups for folks
dealing with thoughts of suicide, and that would be facilitated
by others who had had that same experience, so no
clinician in the room, completely confidential groups where people could
(25:02):
share and get support, but where no one would be
taking over, no one would be calling the police, for example,
And so those groups were life changing for so many
people that actually we now do educational opportunities for clinicians
(25:26):
not to facilitate those groups, because those groups are just
for folks with lived experience, but we give clinicians now
harm reduction tools for supporting people that are suicidal, for example,
you know, not relying so much on these risk assessment
(25:50):
tools that focus on, like, you know, all those risk
assessment tools that are asking you like if you're gonna die,
how you're gonna die? Like, we put those down and
instead we focus on talking about why this person wants
to die? Why do you want to leave this world?
(26:12):
You know, what's going on? Is there something in your life,
for example, that needs to end or die for you
to go on living? And so we focus more deeply
like on that story. And so that's something we did
for years in these groups, but now we also train
(26:36):
others on the types of questions we ask people that
can be just so much more helpful than.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Do you have a plan?
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, those vague suicidal assessment tools are are misleading and
people can get tripped up in them and end up
in the psychord when they weren't really thinking of harming themselves.
And it's you know, we actually on this program, did
we bruke down the suicide assessment tools and said this
(27:06):
is the question, and this is what they're looking for.
And you know, if if you had a suicidal idea
three months ago or two years ago or five, don't
say yes, because that's not important right now. They're looking
you know, so and I really as doing that. I
really got it just how vague that tool is and
how easy it would be for someone to end up
(27:29):
in the psych word for something that's really not true
for what's happening for them right now. And I think
one of the things you're touching on is that people
don't understand just how much people are silenced around the
idea of suicidal ideation. You know, you feel like you
cannot talk about it, and so you have a really
(27:49):
hard time working it through because you can't find the
people that aren't going to call the police the moment
you say I feel like I want to die, you know,
which has all kinds of permutations in that whole one sentence.
I mean, it could mean a thousand different things. But
people become terrified of it in the same way they
become terrified of the notion of cutting, you know, and
(28:10):
not getting it. Like you said that it's a solution,
it's not the problem. What do you say to people
who believe that those who have a mental health challenge
can't be depended on or shouldn't be allowed to make
decisions or self define because they aren't well. As Freud
(28:32):
would say, we're not We're not really capable, And of
course he didn't say it exactly that way, but that
certainly was the message that he left. So what do
you say about that? For you know, when an organization
tells you, well, how can we trust them to make
those decisions?
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
So, and of course I'm sorry I'm interrupting you, but yeah,
that goes into the whole notion of saanism. You talked
about racism and ableism and all of those things that
deal with in our lives, but there is a saism
that implies that that is based on the colonial based ideas.
I think you mentioned it. You had a different term
for it, which is a clinical not based on a
(29:12):
clinical model. We talk about it as not being based
on a colonial based idea of hierarchy of power. And
certainly saanism is where somebody who believes that they're mentally
well looks down upon somebody who has lives with a
mental health challenge. So what do you say about that?
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah, so, you know, obviously, yeah, I think you're right
that such if someone expresses such an idea, that it
really is rooted in this pervading system of oppression that
dictates that you know that there's some people out there
(30:00):
there that are biologically different than others. So I was
told I had a genetic disease. And it's this idea
that there's people that are biologically different than others and
are somehow less human or less insightful than the other
(30:21):
group that they're being excluded from. And certainly, you know,
there's a lot of danger when when we espouse or
hold some of these views. If I believe that someone
is biologically different than me, doesn't have the same level
(30:43):
of wisdom or even worth, it's going to be really hard,
you know, to treat that person well, let alone, let
alone meet the goal of support them on their healing journey.
(31:04):
So you know, I think, yeah, fundamentally, we in peer
support and at Wildflower Alliance we kind of flip that
script where say, you know someone you're supporting someone that's
hearing voices.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
Well, you know, you can't hear that other person's voices,
So to believe that you might have more insight into
what they mean or what should be done about them.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Than that person, Like, actually, that begins to sound really
really ridiculous, delusional. I do think it's delusional to assume
the fact that you went to a lecture in a
(31:59):
graduate program to think that that is the equivalent of
the wisdom of someone who has lived their entire life
and carries that story of what they've experienced, what has
been difficult for them, what has been helpful for them
in the past. You you're if if you discount their experience,
(32:28):
you're discounting someone that has you know, for PhDs, you know,
in in.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
Their own life.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
So definitely, I think a problem with you know, any
type of colonialism is just sort of the lack of humility.
But it can be It can make me really ineffective
(33:00):
as a supporter if I'm not coming into this interaction
with deep curiosity about the experiences, needs, and hopes of
the person I'm supporting. And yeah, I'm sure people ask you,
just as they ask me all the time.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
They're like Caroline, like, you know, how.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
How do I get people to engage in mental health services?
But my question, you know, I answer that with a
question of my own, which is, are these services you're
providing are they actually addressing the needs, desires, hopes and
fears of the people you're supporting. Is that is that
(33:48):
what's on offer or is it just mostly like warmed
up Western you know, medical theory people, they're not going
to engage. Ultimately, they're going to stop engaging if they
feel ignored.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Or condescended to, or disrespected or or being made to
do something that they intrinsically know is going to be
harmful for them.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
Absolutely, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah, it's the idea that sort of the white cisk gendered.
I'm sort of generalizing here, a person that's gone to
school has been endowed with some great insight into others,
and that they are norming who they are on what
(34:38):
is healthy and therefore are taking these poor souls. I'm
being very general and extreme poor souls to help them
become like them, not realizing that they aren't the the
the role model necessarily of what is mentally healthy for
that person they're hoping to help. Yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry,
(35:04):
go ahead, We just need to take a little break,
but we'll be right back, folks, with this incredible conversation
with Caroline masil Culton. So we'll be right back.
Speaker 6 (35:13):
Hi, folks, this is Steve ferguson your twenty first century
Schizoid Man, and I'm coming to you on behalf of
Prog Rock Alley. We are hitting up your airwaves every
Tuesday night at seven o'clock PM running that whole hour,
bringing you the very best of progressive rock that includes
art rock, math rock, experimental, alternative, a little bit of everything,
and sometimes I just sneaking a favorite song of mine
(35:35):
just for the hell of it, because I can every
Tuesday night at seven pm. If you want it, I
got it. Just name it out played. That's Prog Rock
Alley on CFO one hundred point five FM.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver co Op Radio
cfr oh one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernardine Fox.
Rethreading Madness is coming up to its sixth anniversary of
being on air. We produce an air each week out
of CFRO one hundred point five FM on the unseated
traditional territory of the Squamish, Muscriham and Sligwey Tooth nations
(36:07):
around Vancouver. Bc RTM was one of the first radio
programs to focus on mental health issues here in Canada,
in an area swamped with statements from therapists rooted in
colonial ideas about mental health and trained in the DSM.
RTM works to ensure that the voices of those with
lived experience have agency and opportunity to define who they
(36:30):
are and what is true for them who listens to us.
Beyond those with lived experience, our audience includes their friends
and partners, along with therapists, counselors, and students of psychology.
Since twenty twenty two, all of our programs have been
uploaded to the Mental Health Radio Network and can be
downloaded from all podcast platforms. So if this show was
(36:52):
of interest to you, you might find the rest of
our programs informative as well. You can find them by
searching for rethreading Madness, where every listen to your podcast?
Speaker 7 (37:03):
Can you call my life flying Zagi and I'll raise
my wife like and just scaled because I'm barely pretty,
didn't get no reason for grief and it's just how
(37:26):
well feeling. I'm just trying to be real.
Speaker 8 (37:33):
We shock a TRN and switch on, leave it on
all day, on day long, get it tattooed on my
arm just because they told me not to. We shake it,
turn your hold off, stay without going soft. But we
don't know that I'm not.
Speaker 7 (37:47):
I want to tell you have got to.
Speaker 8 (37:50):
Sho fill it, take it, breg it, magg it, what
you want to use it, choose it, find it, find it, boosey,
use it.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
How you're going on?
Speaker 4 (37:59):
Shoot you ain't take it? Beg it, beg it what
you want?
Speaker 9 (38:03):
Lousy you find it? Mighty booty?
Speaker 8 (38:05):
You how you gone?
Speaker 9 (38:08):
And you call on that side is outside bras got
no reason dreaming.
Speaker 10 (38:27):
Let's just go off.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
How I'm not shrying to be re.
Speaker 8 (38:40):
I'm shining with wish iver't leave the things up for
a nine times out of tenant to please check or
I wouldn't get for it. Play too way. Men's still
no sleep and the numbers and figures don't add. But
I'm not really shut of the madness because lady lets
on the disasters five A and men's still no sleeping.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
St feeling.
Speaker 8 (39:00):
Take it, bring it, bing it what you want to
lose it, choose it, fight it, mighty use it using hell,
you're gone t my life.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
Fighting because that.
Speaker 9 (39:16):
Can be all flag and stream come back.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
You have no reason the great and let's just sell.
Speaker 9 (39:27):
On the sill. Come bring on the best jowie body
fell on me.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
I'm just trying to be.
Speaker 11 (39:48):
On the side of the res.
Speaker 8 (40:01):
I'm just trying to.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Be you're listening to read threading Madness on Vancouver called
Radio CFR one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernardine Fox
speaking with Carolyn Masel Carlton from the Wildlife I'm sorry
I keep saying that from the Wildflower Alliance. Carolyn, you've
talked about peer support and I know you have a
(40:24):
peer respite program. What is that?
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Yeah, so peer respite is.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
What we consider to be an alternative to a psychiatric institution.
So instead of being in a cold, clinical environment, a
peer respite is just a nice house embedded in neighborhoods
in our communities, and people can call the peer respite.
(40:58):
We actually don't take referrals at all. So if a
social worker calls, like with their client and is saying, like,
I think my client would be a good candidate for
peer respite, what we say is, actually we need to
speak to this person themselves, because the only person that
(41:21):
can make that determination is them. And so you know,
at our peer respite house, you know, it's people can
stay for up to two weeks and there's twenty four
hour support there. But it's all peer support, and unlike
(41:43):
a psychiatric facility, no one is locked in the house.
People have their own rooms actually, and they can lock
their door, so that they feel more secure. But other
than that, there's no there's no lock or keys in
a pure respite.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
And yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
I'm just going to take that to all the fears
that people out there have about psychiatric survivors. And I
say that because I don't like that term at all,
not that they're not survivors. I don't like the term psychiatric.
It grates on me. But their fear is going to
be that you have some serial killer, paranoid, psychotic person
(42:31):
coming in and you know, how do you you know
this is the first thing. How are you going to
make sure everybody is safe? And I know and you
know that how to do that? But would you say
to people who have that as their biggest fear?
Speaker 4 (42:46):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
I find that if like, I'm just gonna say something
really honest here is some people need to stop watchings
many like TV shows.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
No, I could say that about so many things.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
It sucks, but yeah, like often people like myself who
have like a diagnosis you know that includes like psychotic
in the name. I don't even I don't even like
that word because it brings up so much fear. But yeah,
a lot of people are getting their information about you know,
(43:30):
these conditions through TV or other media outlets that stoke fear.
So you know, sometimes I just wish I could invite
people to like our peer respite, to just hang out
with us and see that we're not so scary.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
And the times where you know.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
People have become like really activated, like I see all
the time, like incidents in psychiatric facilities that really could
have been avoided, but because staff was approaching the person
with so much control and fear, there was a power struggle.
(44:17):
But it's interesting how if you eliminate a lot of
the power differentials, you're not having the same power struggles.
So if someone comes to the house and they talk
to me about like the voices that they're hearing, instead
(44:41):
of treating that person with fear, I'll just say, hey,
do you want to talk more about what your voices say?
Are some of the things they say, like, how do
you know how does it feel to like hear them?
Speaker 4 (44:56):
Are they helpful? Are they scary?
Speaker 3 (44:59):
Like winner your voice is louder, And instead of trying
to control the situation, we just talk about it.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
It sounds like you move into it rather than trying
to call it.
Speaker 4 (45:10):
Yeah, yeah, we just we just explore it.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
And we just honor it as that person's experience and
we treat them with respect as someone that lives with
these voices and is looking to maybe forge, you know,
a better path forward with them. So there's no there's
no diagnosing, there's no telling people you're wrong. Don't listen
(45:36):
to that. Like if I I'll say, like Bernadine, if
I've learned like anything in the past sixteen years of
like supporting people like professionally, it's number one, people don't
like being told that their thoughts or feelings are wrong,
(45:58):
and number two, they don't like being told what to do.
But you know, if you have an environment where none
of those things are happening, where I'm not telling people
what to do, where I'm not telling people their feelings
are wrong, it can be a pretty jaill place. Yeah,
(46:18):
you know, we're making some really great connections. And so
I'll share like our first peer respite a FEA has
been around for thirteen years and there's only been one
time where there was an act of really severe violence.
(46:38):
But what I'll say about that was when we reviewed
what had happened, we found that that person actually hadn't
wanted to be at the house. They had just been
assessed by a social worker. The social workers said that
they were not violent, but also made the determination that
(47:00):
needed to be at.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
A FIA house.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
So the one time that there was like a major
act of violence, it was because a person had been coerced.
And so what we try to do is create environments
where people are treated with dignity and trust in their
(47:26):
own experience. And when you do that, yeah, like I said,
you have a pretty powerful environment where there's not a
lot of power struggle.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
You talked about having online support groups. What are those?
Speaker 4 (47:46):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
You know, we have many different support groups that meet online.
Our most popular ones are our Alternatives to Suicide groups,
those purely confidential groups that are by and for people
who are experiencing suicidal thoughts. So we have many of
those groups, including affinity groups. For Black and Indigenous people
(48:14):
of color, there's an Alternates to Suicide group specifically for
that community. There's a Young People's group, an LGBTQ group.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
But we also have.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Other support groups just on kind of surviving the current
historical moment we're in with rising authoritarianism in the United States.
Speaker 4 (48:38):
We have Hearing.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Voices Groups, a group I facilitate that I love facilitating
is actually called spiritual.
Speaker 4 (48:46):
Explorations, where.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Those of us have who have been told that we
have like severe mental illnesses, can come and look at
our life through a spiritual lens, including our voices and visions,
without having to worry about being called.
Speaker 4 (49:06):
Crazy because it can be hard. Like in the psych system, they.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Often don't want to talk about spirituality, but in many
spiritual communities now those are becoming psychiatrized and if you
talk about voices and visions they.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
Might end up like referring you out.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
So I love this group as kind of like, yeah,
a true alternative where we can set the western medical
model aside and talk about, you know, these other human experiences,
whether it's our ancestors talking to trees, talking to God,
(49:47):
feeling like we're we're called as a Messianic figure, all
those things that there's just nowhere else to talk about.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Yeah, no kidding, that sounds fabulous. Quite frankly, I don't.
I we have never heard of anyone providing that kind
of online support for people, because it is, it is
frowned upon and if you have anything that is an
experience outside the norm, even if it's something that seems
quite accepted like a past life. It's still something that
(50:19):
people will think as part of your quote unquote craziness,
so exactly. Yeah, So how do people find out about
Wildflower and these support groups? What do people what would
people do? Say from Canada or somewhere other than the
United States, how or even in the United States? How,
(50:39):
how would people find out about you?
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Yeah, Well, we pride ourselves on being low to no barrier,
So a lot of our support groups you can just
find our online support groups. You can find right on
our website and there is a link provided and you
just click on the link at the time the group
you want to join meets. There are just a couple example,
(51:05):
I'm sorry, there's just a couple exceptions where we might
need you to email the facilitators first because of the
nature of the group. Like our Hearing Voices group and
our psych Drugs group, we have an additional sort of
(51:26):
like privacy setting just so the groups don't get crashed
by We want to know what people's intention is. But
it's really it's just a simple email. And another thing
I'll share is we do have a lot of online
(51:47):
training opportunities as well. So if you are interested, if
you're listening to this and you feel like, Hey, I
want to learn harm reduction approaches to suicide or harm
reduction approaches to self injury or voice hearing. I would
check out the training page of our website because we
(52:07):
have really accessible online training opportunities that we offer at
a at a sliding scale.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
So how can people find Wildflower Alliance?
Speaker 3 (52:21):
Yeah, so I really recommend going to our website Wildflower
Alliance dot org, and while you're there, making sure to
sign up for our newsletter. Another thing Wildflower Alliance does
quite a great deal of is advocacy, like, for example,
(52:44):
advocacy for the rights of people who are incarcerated in
psychiatric units, advocacy for you know, against force treatment, like
on federal and state level. So definitely sign up for
our newsletter because it'll provide you information about some of
(53:07):
those actions that we're involved in, as well as you know,
just what's going on in our communities in terms of
support and training and all that.
Speaker 1 (53:20):
So I know that I caught you in the middle
of packing to go to Iceland. What are you doing there?
Speaker 3 (53:26):
Yes, so I'll be going to Iceland where there'll be
people gathering from around the globe that are interested in
applying social justice principles to mental health support. So you
know what I'm going to be talking about. There is
(53:50):
sort of this reframe in the trauma informed world. There
was a great reframe between what's wrong with you to
focusing on what's happened to you, And my talk is
going to be about expanding that even further to not
just what happened to you, but what's happening to you
(54:15):
and also what's happening to us. So I'm a big
fan of repoliticizing mental health, and so we're going to
be talking about how we do that, including I'll be
sharing some about our newest peer respite, which is specifically
(54:35):
for the LGBTQ community, not because this is a community,
not that being LGBTQ is is a mental health problem,
but we start this community, sorry, we started this peer
respite because that community is politically.
Speaker 4 (54:54):
Under threat right now, It's true.
Speaker 3 (54:58):
So we'll be talking more about, well, how can mental
health support catch up and be more relevant to the
social context that we're in and the intersecting systems of
oppression that you know most of us are struggling under.
Speaker 1 (55:15):
And all the power to you, Carolyn, and doing it
because it is so necessary, especially in this political climate
that we are facing. And while it's still you know,
mostly in the US, I think that because of the
position the US has had in globally, we're all kind
of watching it unfold and worrying about how will it
(55:37):
impact on us? So I'm here in Canada, but I
know across the globe people are all kind of watching
and worried for you all.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
Absolutely, And yeah, I think it's going to take all
of us, you know, banding together to yeah, thwart rise
of authoritarianism and othering.
Speaker 4 (56:05):
And I think really those of us that work in
this field of like.
Speaker 3 (56:10):
Advocating for people with psychiatric diagnoses and disability, it's so
important for us because historically those are groups, like along
with immigrants, that you know, experience like the brunt of
these oppressive forces.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
Yeah, yeah, it's true. Thank you, Carolyn. Yeah, chatting with me,
and I wish you luck in Iceland. I hope that
when you get back we'll get to hear how it went.
And yeah, and I'm so happy Wildflower Alliance is out there,
and I'm glad that we're able to let people know
(56:53):
about it on this program.
Speaker 3 (56:55):
Yeah, so excited to be invited. Thank you for we're
holding these conversations.
Speaker 1 (57:02):
They're important. They're important conversations, so go knock them dead
in Iceland chat hopefully when you get that. Okay, okay,
all right, bye bye, We'll be right back folks.
Speaker 11 (57:15):
Here, turn you up. Qui gate Euons Queen Sna Hi, everybody,
my name is quigate Ywon's. I'm a member of the
Squamish Nation and the Yaglanisklan of the Hyda Nation. You're
listening to co Op Radio CFRO O one hundred point
five FM. We live, work play and broadcast from the
traditional ancestral and unseeded territories of the Musquiham, Squamish and
(57:37):
Slavetooth nations.
Speaker 1 (57:39):
And that's our show. My thanks to Caroline Maselcarlton for
speaking with us today about Wildflower Alliance and the pure
support they offer. Our music today was by Sherry Alrich
and We three and our thanks goes out to you
for joining us today. Stay safe out there. You've just
listened to Rethreading Madness, where we dare to change how
we think about mental health live on Vancouver co Op
(58:01):
Radio CFRO one hundred point five FM every Tuesday at
five pm or online at co opradio dot org. If
you have questions or feedback about this program, we want
to share your story or have something to say to us,
we want to hear from you. You can reach us
by email rethreading Madness at co opradio dot org. This
(58:21):
is Bernardine Fox. We'll be back next week.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
Until now we have ever been further. No, what the
hell I'm gonna do when I can't seem to find
my way under over too?
Speaker 4 (58:46):
Just when I'm ready to give the lie, there you are.
Speaker 10 (58:52):
When we turn out the lights in It's sorry, it's
all right, to really be alright?
Speaker 9 (59:05):
Why don't I always believe.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
beWhen you jelly, everything's gonna be all right? Yeah, Why
don't I wonder how you know?
Speaker 4 (59:26):
Surely you don't have all of the facts.
Speaker 10 (59:31):
You could be just making it up.
Speaker 4 (59:36):
Why don't I ever think of that? It's some kinda imagine.
Speaker 8 (59:43):
In the words that you read.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
Saying, baby taking it.
Speaker 4 (59:49):
From me, It's all right, it's all
Speaker 10 (59:53):
Right, don't to really be all right
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