Podcast
Mental Health is attainable for anyone—especially those labeled with mental illness. Join artist, memoir writer, and bipolar psychiatric survivor, Jen Gaita Siciliano each Saturday at 10pm, as she challenges our world’s current limited understanding of mental illness in interviews with artists, healers, educators and shamans, who offer fresh perspectives on mental health and creativity. Episodes also include Jen’s personal writing on living as a bipolar creative, as well as news commentary that exposes psychiatry as an incompatible paradigm with the true landscape of the human mind. If you are ready for a new narrative on the mental realm in a place that celebrates crazy and cool without penalty, then Not As Crazy As You Think is for you!
In the episode, ”The Vision and Voice of Janet Werner: The Documentary, the Movie, the Movement (S5, E14),” Janet joins the show to share her message on spiritual emergencies shedding light on the spiritual side of mental health, and specifically, the spiritually transformative experiences that often get misdiagnosed as mental illness.
Forty-four years ago while in her master’s degree program Janet had an astonishing mystical experience which turned into a spiritual emergency and resulted in being misdiagnosed as Bipolar, involuntarily hospitalized and required to take Lithium against her will. Twenty-five years later in 2005, Janet had another spiritual awakening, which was immediately pathologized given the prejudice from her former misdiagnosis. She was again involuntarily hospitalized, misdiagnosed as Bipolar and coerced into medication against her will. She is now speaking out to raise awareness of the spiritual side of mental health and specifically the DSM V code entitled ”Religious or Spiritual Problem”: V62.89.
Janet shares her personal journey with spiritual emergency, and how that has brought her to where she is today– the leader of a global team of mental health experts, who are developing a docuseries (Breaking Open, Breaking Down, Breaking Through) and a mainstream feature movie (Calling God to the Witness Stand).
Bio:
Janet Werner is an independent entrepreneur and the President of U Have My Word LLC (www.UHaveMyWord.com) since 1988, which is a corporate consulting firm specializing in large scale system change. She is also the founder of a Meaningful Media that Matters in Mental Health project and Her mission is to ease the journey through change, transition and on to transformation, within and around the mental health system.
Along with her team she is leading an initiative to include spiritual competency in the 988 first responder training. Janet is also partnering with her team to establish a coalition of religious & spiritual leaders in New Jersey for the purpose of including these resources in mental health crisis support and patient care when hospitalized.
#bigpharma #spiritualemergency #mentalhealth #mentalillness #forcedhospitalization
To learn more about Janet and her projects, go to:
Calling God to the Witness Stand™ –
Video sample of Calling God to the Witness Stand (2) Calling God to the Witness Stand PR Media – YouTube
Rethinking Mental Health Facebook
Media that Matters Facebook
Janet’s story recorded at Rutgers University Assessing for Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Emergency
YouTube live on 988:
https://youtu.be/zNt277TYcnQ?si=4DsBGGCpHTev3lDr
YouTube live on Psych Rights:
https://youtu.be/ADyn31uUPno?si=IoIzxLj4-32Rn29H
