35 Destigmatizing Mental Health with The Icarus Project (Agustina Vidal & Rhiana Anthony)

Published April 23, 2019

For our first full episode back with Season 2, we talk with Agustina Vidal and Rhiana Anthony of The Icarus Project about everything mental health: why mental health is stigmatized in the first place, how it interplays with systems of oppression, suicide, ableism, medication, hospitalization, and more.

About our guests

The Icarus Project is a support network and education project by and for people who experience the world in ways that are often diagnosed as mental illness. We advance social justice by fostering mutual aid practices that reconnect healing and collective liberation. We transform ourselves through transforming the world around us. http://www.theicarusproject.net

Agustina Vidal has been part of The Icarus Project Community since 2006 and is currently the program Director. She has a master’s degree in mental health counseling, and her focus is on the development of new tools and resources for both the U.S. and Latin America.

Rhiana Anthony (she, they, boo) is a queer black girl magician working toward collective liberation through community organizing, soulful facilitation, and healing justice. Her roots run from the Third Coast of Houston, TX, and the Piney Woods of Marshall, TX. Rhiana currently works as the Icarus Project webinar coordinator and facilitator, founder/consultant of Conjure Community Healing Arts, and trainer for The Isaiah Young Institute.

Resources

  • Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations by Sharla Fett

  • The Healing Wisdom of Africa by Malidoma Patrice Some

  • Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self Recovery by bell hooks

  • The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

  • Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

  • Justice as Healing: Indigenous Ways by Wanda D. McCaslin (restorative and transformative justice)

  • Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD): https://boldorganizing.org/

  • Join Icarus Project online spaces and find more resources at http://www.theicarusproject.net

Practice: Mad Maps

Check out Agustina and Rhiana’s practice episodes where they teach us how to make our own Mad Map - a plan to support our own mental health. Mad Maps are offered both in English and in Spanish.

Support this work

Help us keep this project going: donate, become a sustaining member, and leave a positive rating and review in whatever podcast platform you listen.

Join the community

Check out our community homepage to learn about ways to get engaged in our community of practice, join our email list, and connect with us on social media.

Share the love by sharing this episode:

Season 2, ConversationKate WerningMental Health, Healing Justice, Ancestry & Decolonization, Disability Justice