Olga Runciman - Moving Beyond Psychiatry
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Mad in America
4.7 • 212 Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2017
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on the Mad in America podcast we interview Olga Runciman.
Olga is an international trainer and speaker, writer, campaigner, and artist. She co-founded the Danish Hearing Voices Network and sees the role of the Hearing Voices Movement as post-psychiatric, working towards the recognition of human rights while offering hope, empowerment, and access to making sense of individual experiences.
Olga was a psychiatric nurse working in social psychiatry but today she is a psychologist and since 2013 she has had her own private practice in Denmark, working with people who have been labelled schizophrenic or psychotic. Olga is herself a psychiatric survivor and a voice hearer too.
In this interview we discuss Olga's professional and personal experiences of the psychiatric system and how she now helps and supports healing and recovery in others.
In the episode we discuss:
How Olga became a specialist psychiatric nurse in Denmark, believing at the time the reasons given for psychiatric diagnoses.
- How she came to see that there was little evidence or corroboration to underpin the diagnosis and treatment that she witnessed.
- How Olga was also a voice hearer, but kept this hidden from her psychiatric colleagues.
- How, when experiencing stress and trauma, Olga came to be admitted to a psychiatric ward, diagnosed as schizophrenic and treated with a cocktail of psychiatric drugs.
- Olga's experiences of the antipsychotic drug Clozapine.
- How Olga came to stop her psychiatric drugs which she had been taking for ten years.
- Psychiatry's story of hopelessness and chronic illness that is so often sold to patients.
- How Olga now views her work from a post-psychiatry perspective.
Relevant links:
Olga's posts on Mad in America
International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal
Postpsychiatry: a new direction for mental health
To get in touch with us email: podcasts@madinamerica.com
© Mad in America 2017
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry and social justice. |
| 0:12.8 | Hello, this is James, and welcome to episode 17 of the Madden America podcast. |
| 0:17.9 | Before we get started, I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who's gotten in |
| 0:21.8 | touch, either by email or by commenting on Madden America. Your comments, feedback and support are most |
| 0:27.5 | welcome. This week, I'm honored to have been able to interview Olga Runciman. Olga is an international |
| 0:33.3 | trainer and speaker, writer, campaigner and artist. She co-founded the Danish Hearing Voices Network |
| 0:39.5 | and sees the role of the Hearing Voices Movement as post-psychiatric, working towards the |
| 0:44.7 | recognition of human rights while offering hope, empowerment and access to making sense of |
| 0:49.5 | individual experiences. Olga was a psychiatric nurse working in social psychiatry, but today she is a psychologist |
| 0:56.3 | and since 2013 she has had her own private practice in Denmark working with people who have been |
| 1:01.9 | labelled schizophrenic or psychotic. Olga is herself a psychiatric survivor and a voice hearer too. |
| 1:07.8 | In this interview we discuss Olga's professional and personal experiences of the |
| 1:11.8 | psychiatric system and how she now helps and supports healing and recovery and others. |
| 1:16.5 | Olga, welcome. Thank you so much for talking with me today for the podcast. |
| 1:20.6 | Firstly, I'd like to ask about you and your background and how you first came into contact |
| 1:24.8 | with psychiatry. Oh, well, first of all, yeah, thank you for inviting me. |
| 1:30.4 | It's a great pleasure. |
| 1:32.4 | How did I get into contact with psychiatry? |
| 1:35.1 | Well, actually, I was a nurse. |
| 1:39.0 | I came to Denmark. |
| 1:42.6 | I became a nurse, and I became a psychiatric nurse and I became a what they |
| 1:47.7 | called a specialized psychiatric nurse here in Denmark. In other words, you're working there within |
... |
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