Excerpt from the review: Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry functions as a powerful indictment of the failings of the mental health system and a rallying cry for more humane and authentic support services. It is driven by anger at a psychiatric system that is seen to invalidate people’s experiences and actually prevent recovery. But, rather than dwelling on negativity, it uses this anger to inspire and develop new forms of support infused with hope. We read of the experiences of Dorothea Buck-Zerchin (a 90 year old woman with seventy years experience of coercion in the mental health system), Kate Millet’s passionate re-instatement of the ‘myth of mental illness’, survivors’ personal accounts of how they survived, about examples of concrete working alternatives (e.g. Soteria House, the Windhorse Project, Hotel Magnus Stenbock, and the Berlin Runaway House) and various practical support tools. From around the world, it offers examples of innovative and creative ways of supporting people through mental health crises, but outside the conventional mental health system. (read Continue Reading…