Monica Cassani: Achieving Health in Body, Mind and Spirit
Channel: Mad in America
Date: 05/08/2017

This week, we have an interview with Monica Cassani. Monica has seen the mental health system from both sides – as a social worker and as a person whose life was severely ruptured by psychiatric drugs. She writes critically about the system, as well as holistic pathways of healing without medication.

Monica’s website, Everything Matters Beyond Meds, is comprehensive library of information containing more than 5,000 blog posts, information articles, videos, personal experiences and shares many natural methods of self-care for finding and sustaining health in body, mind and spirit. ;Her blog also deals with wider issues in the socio/political and spiritual realms as they pertain to mental health and human rights issues surrounding psychiatry.

I was keen to ask Monica about her own experiences of the psychiatric system, how a persons sensitivity can be affected by psychiatric treatment and how she helps and supports others to achieve health in body, mind and spirit.

In this episode, we discuss:

How Monica came to be involved with the psychiatric system

How treatment was repeatedly forced on Monica

That the lack of information available meant that Monica felt she had no alternatives to the standard model of treatment

That she was threatened with committal to a State Asylum

How, because of the medications, Monica became non verbal and had difficulty walking

The betrayal that Monica felt after trusting and being failed by the medical system

How she has been drug free for more than 8 years after being on a substantial cocktail of five different medications for over 25 years

That Monica became focussed on getting past the drugs and on her work and took a harm reduction approach to getting off her medications

How Monica saw her withdrawal from the drugs as a rebellion and felt emancipated once she was medication free

That Monica witnessed clients struggling with the drugs and even, tragically, dying from their effects

How Monica views hypersensitivity and its relation to her healing

That Monica feels, in some ways, far healthier now than before the drugs but in other respects she feels that she struggles with things that others may find easy

That hypersensitivity seems to be common in those who have taken or withdrawn from psychiatric drugs

That most in the mental health system do not have the necessary experience to help those who have struggled with their medications

How Monica came to set up and invest time in her blog: Everything Matters Beyond Meds

How Monica was inspired by the work of the journalist Philip Dawdy and motivated by her family

How Everything Matters Beyond Meds combines science and holistic approaches in presenting options for people to support their health and wellbeing

That Monica takes a hands off approach to helping &nbsp;and supporting others because she recognises the coercive nature of medical approaches and respects the right of the individual to choose for themselves

How people taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs tend to neglect their bodies and that preparation is important before tapering off medications

That diet is particularly important when considering withdrawing from psychiatric drugs

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 Podcast show notes: https://goo.gl/oTo3g1

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