Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice.

Welcome to the Madden America podcast. My name is Leah Harris. I'm a psychiatric survivor activist and a correspondent with Madden America. It is my

honor and pleasure to welcome Celia Brown to the podcast. Psychiatric survivor and human rights activist,

Celia's president of Mind Freedom International has been a long time activist in this movement.

Welcome to the podcast, Celia.

Thank you, Leah.

I'm so happy to be here.

Well, it's great to have you.

If you could please tell the listeners, how did you get involved in this work and in the movement?

Well, I stumbled onto it by chance.

I was living in a supported housing mental health program,

and the counselors thought of me as high functioning, and I hate that word, but they thought that I

could go to a conference in Troy, New York, and it was called the Self-Help Vision Conference.

So I went to the conference, and I met Judy Chamberlain. I met Howie the Harp,

Joe Rogers at night, a few people that were already in the movement. And they were talking about alternatives to the mental health system and developing

drop in centers and just sort of a self-help consciousness that everybody has a right to choice.

And I was in a program where that wasn't happening.

I had no choices, really, only the choices of what the program wanted me to do.

And I was just blown away.

And I remember saying to Judy Chamberlain, who's allowing you to do this conference?

And they said, no, we're empowered.

We're, you know, we're activist, and we can do this conference. And they said, no, when we're empowered, we're, you know, we're activist and we can do this.

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