Making The Case for Multiplicity & Mad Studies
My Interview on the Mad in America Podcast & an invitation to join me in September!
If you don’t know, Mad In America is one of the biggest online news sources for critical psychology, mental health, and social justice. I’m thrilled I got to a guest on their podcast. In this episode I talk about:
my early experiences surviving complex trauma, psychosis, and an autoimmune disease
5 frameworks to navigate psychosis and the mental health/chronic illness overlap
the existential and spiritual lens of psychosis
why mad studies is one of the most promising emerging fields of study
ways I bridge critical neuroscience with mad studies
I hope you enjoy!
P.S. (NEW YORKERS) I have an in-person workshop coming up September 22nd, (my only one in the USA in 2024), and I’d love to see you there if you’re interested in embodied breathwork for trauma healing!
Details are down at the bottom and you can register here.
Full transcript on Mad In America. The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the audio of the interview here:
A Crisis of Meaning
Justin Karter: I received an advanced copy of some chapters from the Mad Studies Reader. In your chapter, Making the Case for Multiplicity, you start by discussing your first episode of psychosis and the subsequent crisis of meaning. Could you share a bit about your personal journey and how you connected these experiences with complex trauma, psychosis, autoimmune disease, and how they’ve influenced your path in the mental health field?
Jazmine Russell: Let me take you back a little further, before what I call my “first episode of psychosis.” I’m a survivor of complex trauma—childhood sexual abuse, incest, and a whole slew of other traumatic experiences. Like many of us, these experiences were a primary driver behind my interest in psychology and the work I do today.
Fortunately, I didn’t have any acute encounters with psychiatry early on. My first real encounter came when I started having flashback memories of childhood sexual abuse at 17. These memories marked a massive shift in my life, like someone had flipped a switch in my mind, and everything changed after that.
Growing up in the 90s, I was exposed to all those infomercials that said, “If you’re experiencing [this or that], go see a psychiatrist.” So, that’s what I did. After a 15-minute consultation where I shared my history of trauma, I walked out with a prescription for Abilify, a powerful antipsychotic. The psychiatrist told me I likely had depression, bipolar mania, and potentially schizophrenia because I was also experiencing occasional catatonic states. And that was it—no further information, just a diagnosis and a prescription before I was shown the door.
Even at 17, I had enough awareness to recognize that something was seriously wrong with that experience, that there was something fundamentally flawed in the way we treat people. I had enough trust in my own experience to know that the issue wasn’t something inherently wrong with my brain—trauma played a huge role in what I was going through.
Fast forward, I ended up attending NYU for applied psychology. It was there that I met Brad Lewis, an incredible mentor who was not only a psychiatrist but also a professor of cultural studies. He introduced me to the Mad Movement and organizations like the Icarus Project. After graduating, I was determined to work in the public mental health system, so I became a crisis counselor for children and families on a mobile, home-based crisis team. I dove straight into the belly of the beast—it was like, “We’re doing this.”
I knew going in that there would be things I disagreed with and that the way mental health is approached in these settings would be challenging for me. But I had no idea just how stark the reality would be. I discovered that despite our good intentions—despite the fact that most, if not all, of us, get into social work, counseling, or psychology because we genuinely want to help—the system often forces or coerces practitioners into actions that I believed were more harmful than helpful.
I saw children and families coming out of inpatient units. We would conduct psychosocial assessments, learning about their long histories of trauma and the root causes of their distress. Yet, despite this knowledge, I was still instructed to “psychoeducate” people about their disorders and to send them back to the psychiatric ward at the first mention of suicidality. It felt like we weren’t really addressing anyone’s deeper concerns. Instead, I felt complicit in a system that was re-traumatizing the very people we were supposed to be helping.
As a junior clinician, the experience was traumatizing for me as well. I often found myself looking around, thinking, “Is anyone else seeing this? Is anyone else thinking what I’m thinking here?” I sometimes joke that this experience really led me to “go crazy” because it was during this time—along with my own trauma processing and other factors, which I’ll describe in a moment—that I experienced what is often labeled as my first episode of psychosis. For me, it wasn’t the intensity of the work with clients that burned me out; it was the moral injury, so to speak.
Suddenly, I started seeing and hearing things that other people didn’t see or hear. I began having what are called delusions or hallucinations. The first instance is particularly important to what I’ll go on to discuss about the mind-body connection. My first break, so to speak, happened when I was alone in my room at home in New York City. I suddenly started seeing these entities, these beings—I thought they were demons—who were trying to poke holes in my gut. I genuinely felt like there were holes in my gut, and I ran, trying to escape them. My roommates found me in that state.
What I learned later on, about three months later, was that I had an undiagnosed autoimmune disease. Even though no doctor had been able to identify this up until that point, I believe those “demons” were my mind’s way of telling me that something was viscerally wrong—that there were indeed holes in my gut lining. This was before the term “leaky gut” became common, but it aligns with what I was experiencing. I had already been suffering from stomach ulcers and other related issues. Once I began addressing the underlying autoimmune disease, things started to get easier.
In my analysis of psychosis, and after working with many individuals experiencing psychosis—both in private practice and through programs like Parachute and the Open Dialogue approach—I’ve come to see that there are so many complex, interrelated factors contributing to such experiences.
For me, psychosis was not just one thing; it was a convergence of many factors. It was also a state that allowed me to understand and process my trauma on a deeper level. The hallucinations and delusions I experienced seemed to carry a certain wisdom.
For me, trauma-processing psychosis was providing crucial information about the state of my body. It was also a profound spiritual experience that led me to make significant life changes. I should also acknowledge the privilege I had during this time. I consider myself incredibly fortunate that, because of my work in the mental health system, I was able to avoid the psychiatric ward. Despite the pain and severity of my experiences, I wasn’t on medications, nor was I receiving clinical treatment in the traditional sense. Instead, I managed to scrape together some peer support and found people who could support me through that difficult time.
5 Frameworks for Understanding Psychosis
Karter: In your chapter, you mention that you draw on multiple frameworks to make sense of both your own experiences and those of others. Could you walk us through the five frameworks you outline in the chapter and explain how they connect, particularly in relation to your own lived experience?
Russell: At this point, many people are aware that trauma is a major factor that can lead to psychosis. A trauma framework is definitely one of the key frameworks I draw on. I believe that not only can trauma lead to psychosis, but psychosis can also be the body-mind’s way of processing trauma, revealing important, and perhaps sometimes hidden, information about the trauma.
Related to trauma, there’s growing research and interest in ancestral or intergenerational trauma as well. This was a huge factor for me. I have deep spiritual practices and often connect with my ancestors and ancestry, but this experience really amplified that connection. I started to understand that not only were my individual and familial traumas at play, but also traumas from many generations back, still living in and through me.
The third framework I draw on is the mind-body connection, specifically psychoneuroimmunology. There’s a lot of research now showing how deeply intertwined psychosis and autoimmune diseases are. Autoimmunity increases the risk of having a psychotic episode, and if you’re labeled with psychosis or schizophrenia, you’re also much more likely to be hospitalized for an autoimmune disease. Diving into that research was fascinating for me.
I’ve seen many people recover from psychotic episodes through interventions like metabolic or nutritional changes and by addressing their autoimmune diseases.
The fourth framework I draw on is a spiritual one. I often refer to it as spiritual/existential because, when dealing with the mind and mental health, inevitable questions arise about the meaning of life, where we go from here, and concepts of death and transformation. For me, this was a significant opportunity to deepen my spiritual practice and to receive guidance through that process.
Karter: That reminds me of the really powerful experience you shared about being carried and put into a coffin—an extremely existential moment. Would you mind sharing more about that experience and how you made meaning of it, perhaps within a spiritual or existential framework?
Russell: Yes, one of the “episodes” I experienced involved a moment where I was unaware of where my body was in space. I saw these beings or entities come to me, and they were actually quite friendly. Not all of my hallucinations were as friendly, but this one was. They were encouraging me, cheering for me, saying, “We’re so glad you’re here.” These beings were engaged in what seemed like a ritual practice. They led me into a coffin and closed the lid. Naturally, I was quite afraid of what I was seeing and experiencing. They then placed the coffin in a river and sent me downstream. At the bottom of this river, other beings from the same group took me out of the water, out of the coffin, and celebrated me.
One of the ways I’ve made sense of that experience is by understanding that there were many parts of me that needed to die or were ready to transition or take new form.
During psychosis, there were countless moments where I was overwhelmed by the stark, terrifying feeling that I was going to die, or that something was trying to kill me. That fear of death was intense. But each time, I was able to relax into it and tell myself, “Okay, maybe it’s not my physical body that’s going to die, but rather a part of me that needs to move on,” I found a release from the suffering.
Karter: One of the other existential questions you raise in the chapter is about how much of the experience is “me”—the self—and how much is “psychosis.” You talk about navigating different frameworks to understand this. Is this, as the psychiatric narrative suggests, a chemical imbalance that isn’t really “me,” or is it something deeply personal and integral to who I am, connected to my ancestry and experiences of structural oppression? Could you elaborate on how you’ve grappled with this question of what’s “me” and what isn’t in these experiences?
Russell: Yeah, I think a key aspect of this spiritual-existential framework is something I’ve noticed that many psychosis survivors carry with them long after the acute phase, during what I call the integration period. Maybe you’re no longer actively seeing or hearing things, but you’re still grappling with the aftermath of such a profound crisis. There’s this feeling of thin-skinnedness, a boundarylessness between yourself and the world or yourself and other people.
A lot of folks, including myself, describe feeling like they could sense too much of everything around them, as if there was no clear separation between “me” and everything else. My identity completely dissolved. When someone asked me questions about who I was as an individual, I had no idea how to answer for quite some time afterward. I think that’s a really challenging but important part of the process.
There’s a line from Thomas Moore that has stuck with me. I won’t get the quote exactly right, but he talks about how any mental health concern is asking you to make necessary changes. For me, that idea really resonated. I found myself asking, “What is this experience demanding of me?” In many ways, it was pushing me to develop better boundaries and become more grounded. I realized I needed to make some significant life changes. I had to move away from the city and relocate upstate. I became interested in herbalism and, for a while, couldn’t even read existential philosophy, which I used to love. I joke about that now, but it truly was a huge turning point in my life. It felt like my spirit was asking me to make these necessary changes.
Karter: I realize I didn’t let you finish talking about the fifth modality you mentioned earlier. Can you elaborate on that for us?
Russell: Yes, the fifth framework is through the lens of structural oppression. This framework can intersect with all the others. Our physical health deteriorates when we experience structural oppression, and this is often tied to ancestral or intergenerational trauma—what our ancestors endured, including things like enslavement, displacement, and other forms of trauma. I had to confront not only the oppression I faced personally but also the moral injury of being put in situations where I was expected to perpetuate that oppression within the mental health system. I found myself in a role where I was being asked to be an agent of oppression in a system that I believe isn’t adequately serving people.
Transformative Mental Health
Karter: I think this brings us to the founding of IDHA. Can you tell our listeners about your involvement in founding IDHA, its goals, and what it has grown into?
Russell: As I mentioned, working within the traditional crisis system was a deeply shocking experience for me. My job was essentially on the front lines, and I found myself constantly looking around, trying to identify who else might be seeing and feeling the same things I was. After I recovered enough from my first episode, I started to think seriously about how I wanted to channel my energy into advocacy and activism. That led me to join the New York City Icarus Project, where I found a community of people who were already thinking critically about these issues. It was eye-opening to discover that people in the Mad Movement had been doing this kind of advocacy work for a long time. I got really excited about the possibilities, and through the Icarus Project, I made some great connections and began conducting workshops in various areas.
At one point, I did a workshop on psychiatric advance directives, and Peter Stasny, a radical psychiatrist, happened to be in the audience. Afterward, he approached me and said, “You know, I think we both have a deep investment in education, in educating people on different modalities in mental health. Do you want to maybe do something together?” And that’s how it started. We put our heads together, realizing that while there were already so many strategies and modalities out there, a lot of mental health professionals, advocates, and family members just didn’t know about them. We were both passionate about finding a way to get this information out because, as I said, I believe that mental health counselors and social workers genuinely want to be effective. We want our work to matter and to address people’s deeper needs, but the education we were receiving wasn’t supporting that. It was more focused on the idea that people have a biomedical brain disease and that our role was mainly case management.
Peter and I pulled together folks from our respective networks, collaborated, and organized our first training. The response was overwhelming—people attended and found that it was addressing a real need in the community. Neither of us had set out to start a nonprofit; it was just this scrappy project we were passionate about. I was really young at the time, and I remember being in the room with all these seasoned movement folks—people whose work I had read and admired—and they were all looking at me, like, “All right, Jazmine, what’s next? How do we do this?”
We got more trainings off the ground, and more amazing people joined us. However, at that time, we were a very white-led organization and weren’t doing things the right way. Others stepped in and said, “Hey, we need to incorporate an anti-racist and anti-oppression lens, and we need to really center the most marginalized voices.” That led to a lot of restructuring, strategic visioning, and planning. Now, the Institute is over eight years old, and we’ve expanded from being New York City-focused to having an international scope and audience.
We currently offer a comprehensive online training called the Transformative Mental Health Core Curriculum. This curriculum features lessons from over 50 experts, many of whom have been featured on the Mad in America podcast. I often say that I pretty much grew up in and through IDHA, learning everything I know from all these incredible people.
IDHA’s Core Curriculum Now Open For Enrollment in Fall 2024 Cohort! Enrollment for live sessions ends August 30th!
Mad Studies - An Emerging Field
Karter: Many of these people also contributed to the new Mad Studies Reader. You mentioned that one of the most exciting moments for you was realizing there was a long history of people with similar thoughts, experiences, and critiques of the system. Could you share a bit about the rich history of Mad Studies and why this book is so important right now?
Russell: The Mad Movement is really complex and constantly evolving. It’s an ever-shifting group, and the same goes for Mad Studies—the scope and the questions people are asking are continually changing. The Mad Movement, as many people involved in this work know, emerged from several different movements, including the Consumer Survivor Ex-Patient Movement, Disability Justice Movements, LGBTQIA Movements, and it was particularly strong in the 60s and 70s.
However, I believe there was a shift at some point from directly critiquing psychiatry from an anti-psychiatry perspective to asking deeper questions—not just about whether madness or mental health is real, but more about who gets to define what madness is and how power is shared or not shared in these spaces. This shift brought up important questions around epistemic justice, around how we come to understand what it means to be mad, and around cultural norms of what is considered normal versus abnormal.
Mad Studies now has a very broad scope, but one of the reasons I’m excited about it is because it’s very emergent, with many different stakeholders involved. With IDHA, our goal was to bring together people with lived experience and those with “professional experience,” which was something missing from most mental health trainings. Similarly, Mad Studies is highly interdisciplinary. It includes researchers, clinicians from various fields, activists, artists, and people with lived experience. For me, this bridge-building is really exciting, as is the recognition of the potential for growth.
There was a time before, for example, disability studies existed as a field, or before women’s studies became established. Now, you can go into your local anarchist bookshop—maybe not a mainstream one, but at least an anarchist bookshop—and find entire sections dedicated to these topics. I’d like to see a world where we can do the same with Mad Studies—where it has its own section filled with books and resources.
Karter: You mentioned that the interdisciplinarity of the movement is crucial. That seems closely connected to the idea of epistemic justice—these questions you’ve outlined about what madness is and who gets to decide. Even within the Mad Studies Movement, there are people with very different perspectives, whether they identify as mad, psychiatric survivors, consumers, service users, or something else entirely. It seems like an important part of the movement has been the ability to keep that space open, allowing individuals to define their own experiences rather than having it dictated by someone else.
Could you speak a bit about the importance of interdisciplinarity and how it connects to this idea of epistemic justice, especially considering the diverse voices included in the reader, from artists and people with lived experience to critical scholars and clinicians?
Russell: People who are labeled as mad or as having mental health concerns have historically been excluded from any scholarly relationship to defining their own experiences. Sanism, which is the discrimination against people perceived to be mentally ill, is one of the remaining “isms” that society is still reluctant to confront.
Thankfully, anti-racism is becoming more central, especially in Mad Studies and the Mad Movement, where it wasn’t always present. But Sanism is still pervasive—just by being considered mad, you’re often deemed irrational, illogical, and incapable of making decisions for yourself or engaging in discourse about your own experiences. I think we’re starting to see a shift, but this issue of epistemic justice—who gets to speak and be part of the knowledge-creation process—is still very much alive. This is true not only in institutions like academia, which is slow to change, although there are lived experiencers within academia, but also in other spheres.
The interdisciplinarity and ally-building nature of the movement are crucial. I’m always asking myself, “Who are we missing? Who are we excluding from the conversation?” Even within activist and Mad Studies movements, are there disciplines or people we haven’t yet connected with who could support us in addressing these questions? That curiosity and openness to collaboration are vital for advancing the goals of epistemic justice.
Karter: There’s an intriguing irony in how the typical clinical perspective views madness or psychosis as a closing down of reality—holding beliefs that are disconnected from reality and not tolerating other perspectives. The irony is that while traditional fields in the psy-disciplines often insist there’s only one valid way to understand these experiences, Mad Studies embraces a multiplicity of views. So, who’s really being obstinate about reality now? In Mad Studies, there’s a rich openness to various perspectives, whether it’s an artist’s interpretation or a neuroscience viewpoint. It’s as if you’re building a bridge between these diverse perspectives.
What’s Neuroscience Got To Do With It?
Speaking of that bridge, you’ve mentioned your work connecting Mad Studies with critical neuroscience. Could you share more about your journey in that direction and what you’ve discovered?
Russell: My curiosity in this area began with acknowledging that rigidity or dogmatism can happen across the board. It definitely occurs in traditional biomedical spaces, but it can also happen in Mad Movements and Mad Activism. The chapter I wrote for the Mad Studies Reader is really about embracing multiplicity, even within myself, and how I came to understand my own experiences. At the same time, I started seeing more and more clients who were at the intersection of chronic illness and mental health concerns. I began to question whether this overlap was common, and it turns out that it is.
Although there isn’t a ton of research on this, it seems that around 60% to 70% of people with a mental health concern also have a chronic physical illness. The lines are really blurry because we have bodies, and we live in the world. This got me really curious about the disability justice perspective, especially as I observed that some interventions, which were purely physiological in nature, actually supported people with their mental health concerns. This was somewhat the case for me as well. It turned out that I have celiac disease, an autoimmune condition triggered by gluten. People with celiac disease are at a much higher risk for developing psychosis or experiencing a psychotic episode, and this is now well documented in the research.
I also had clients with conditions like PANS or PANDAS, which are viral onset OCD experiences typically starting in childhood. These realizations about the mind-body connection became increasingly interesting to me. Even for those who aren’t familiar with these specifics, I think the connection piece is clear—trauma, which we now understand to be a huge factor in mental health concerns, doesn’t just happen to our minds; it happens to our bodies. Trauma is the story of the body being revealed. Starting to understand, both philosophically and scientifically, the very fluid link between mind and body—or what we traditionally consider mental versus physical—became really important to me.
Neuroscience is asking some fascinating questions in this area, especially regarding the mind-body problem. There are critical neuroscientific interventions that I’ve explored, such as metabolic psychiatry and functional psychiatry, where I’ve noticed significant overlap between what critical neuroscientists are finding and what the Mad Movement has been saying for some time. Modern critical neuroscience emphasizes the environmental and context-dependent aspects of our lives.
Many critical neuroscientists have pointed out that it no longer makes sense to maintain a rigid distinction between nature and nurture. We’re learning more about neuroplasticity and adopting a more systems-oriented approach to understanding the brain and body. I still have a lot of questions and a long way to go, but I find this exploration fascinating. Yes, perhaps I am trying to build a big bridge here, but it’s a journey that captivates me.
Karter: Could you share a little bit more about what you’re currently working on and where you’re headed in your studies and work?
Russell: Sure. Right now, I’m really excited about the Mad Studies Reader coming out. It’s set to be released around October of this year. We’re planning a big launch event, and we’ll also have several people who contributed to the Reader featured on the DEPTH Work podcast. Additionally, it looks like we’ll be hosting a Mad Studies symposium, which will bring together advocates for this work. I hope folks will join us—it’ll be online and accessible to everyone.
I’m currently at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and I’ve been living in Germany for the past two years. I’m really interested in international organizing and connecting with people here as well. Mad in America has a significant international reach, so it’s been exciting to see how this work is resonating globally.
My biggest question these days is, “Where else can we make connections? Where else can we collaborate between activism, academic work, and clinical practice?” There’s so much to be excited about right now—there are so many innovative interventions happening. I think this is a really critical time for psychiatry and mental health. We’re starting to think about things in ways we never have before, and I believe that openness and curiosity are key.
I’m looking forward to connecting with anyone interested in discussing these topics further, whether it’s psychosis, autoimmunity, the mind-body connection, or trauma.
JOIN ME - SEPTEMBER 22nd 3pm-5pm
@ Roselyn Salt Cave - LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK
The body is the bedrock of our intuition, emotions, and life force. When we can step out of the mind and drop into the wisdom of the body, we can access the most powerful insights and clarity toward deeper healing. Embodied breathwork and movement makes it easier to access our innate wisdom, in a safe and supportive container while remaining in the driver’s seat of our own experience. It is a way to get back into deep relationship with yourself, your creativity, purpose, curiosity, joy, and aliveness.
This workshop bridges Holotropic Breathwork with somatic movement and is co-facilitated by my beautiful partner, David Bantje, who is a natural movement educator, parkour artist and dancer, helping people connect to their inner wisdom, to each other, and a sense of playfulness through somatic practice.
Hope you can join us!