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Formats
Paperback Details
  • 01/2026
  • 978-0996514309
  • 402 pages
  • $18
Ebook Details
  • 01/2016
  • 978-0996514309
  • 402 pages
  • $
Will Hall
Author
Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness
Will Hall, author
Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness reveals the human side of mental illness. In this remarkable collection of interviews and essays, therapist, Madness Radio host, and schizophrenia survivor Will Hall asks, "What does it mean to be called crazy in a crazy world?" More than 60 voices of psychiatric patients, scientists, journalists, doctors, activists, and artists create a vital new conversation about empowering the human spirit by transforming society. An expansive set of interviews and essays that offer a unique perspective on mental health. Hall, a professional therapist, a former psychiatric patient, and the author of Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs (2011), has been interviewing patients and therapists on his Valley Free Radio show, “Madness Radio,” for a decade. This book assembles more than 60 of those interviews with patients, therapists, and mental health activists who share their very personal and often poignant experiences with psychiatric drugs, hospitalization, and the social stigma of mental illness...readers will learn much about autism, attention deficit disorder, and bipolar disorder and about controversial treatments, such as electroshock therapy... Hall’s interview questions are sensitive and perceptive, and the answers that he receives are frank and sometimes sobering... Hall’s own emotional essay, “Letter to the Mother of a Schizophrenic,” sums up his focus on the humanity of his subjects: “Again and again I am told the ‘severely mentally ill’ are impaired and incapable, not quite human....[W]hen I finally do meet the people carrying that terrible, stigmatizing label of schizophrenia, what do I find? I find a human being.” A troubling and illuminating collection. - Kirkus Reviews "This book is required reading for anyone who cares deeply about mental health and its discontents." -Jonathan Metzl, MD, author of The Protest Psychosis: Schizophrenia and Black Politics "Bold, fearless, and compellingly readable... a refuge and an oasis from the overblown claims of American psychiatry" - Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became an Illness "A terrific conversation partner." - Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness "Brilliant...wonderfully grand and big-hearted." - Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America "Must-read for anyone interested in creating a more just and compassionate world." - Alison Hillman, Open Society Foundation Human Rights Initiative "An intelligent, thought-provoking, and rare concept. These are voices worth listening to." - Mary O'Hara, The Guardian "A new, helpful, liberating-and dare I say, sane-way of re-envisioning our ideas of mental illness." - Paul Levy, Director of the Padmasambhava Buddhist Center, Portland, Oregon "You will find clarity, grace, insight, compassion and most of all wisdom in these powerful interviews and writings assembled by long time mental health advocate Will Hall." - Gabriella Coleman, author of Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy "A fantastic resource for those who are seeking change." - Dr. Pat Bracken MD, psychiatrist and Clinical Director of Mental Health Service, West Cork, Ireland

Finalist

Plot/Idea: 9 out of 10
Originality: 10 out of 10
Prose: 10 out of 10
Character/Execution: 10 out of 10
Overall: 9.75 out of 10

Assessment:

Plot/Idea: Hall’s construct is creatively defined and flows smoothly from the start. The idea of restructuring mental health, with a strong emphasis on mental diversity, is both relevant and noteworthy.

Prose: Powerful, almost lyrical prose drives the message home, and Hall’s style is equally comforting and intense.

Originality: Hall offers a novel and innovative take on mental wellness—focusing on empowerment as a tool for healing—that will provoke deep thought and influence systemic change.

Character Development/Execution: The diverse stories that Hall offers glide across the pages, immediately drawing readers in while generating profound reflection. The intimacy Hall elicits brings his subject to life; in artistic fashion, he paints evocative portraits alongside a meaningful and well-executed call to action.

Date Submitted: October 23, 2022

Reviews
This urgent, eye-opening collection of interviews gives voice to mental health patients, activists, therapists and others about who share, with welcome frankness, their experiences within and without what one interviewee calls the “dehumanizing psychiatric system.” Hall, in an impassioned preface, draws on his own history of a diagnosis of schizophrenia and how, after years of feeling abused by traditional treatments, he “prov[ed] a team of psychiatric medical experts completely wrong” and eventually found greater strength, control, and understanding of his mind outside of their care. The powerful interviews that follow, an outgrowth of Hall’s work as the host and creator of the community radio show Madness Radio, reveal similar experiences from people who have found relief outside the system. One attests, “It’s profoundly disempowering to be told there is essentially nothing you can do to help yourself except take medication and hope for the best.”

Hall’s subjects challenge the medical establishment on issues like overmedication—Mad in America author Robert Whitaker makes a compelling case that powerful economic incentives have united the pharmaceutical industry, the American Psychiatric Association, and others in “storytelling” “that psychiatric disorders were due to chemical imbalances in the brain.” Others discuss how the medicated life can leave one “profoundly emotionally, physically, and existentially disconnected from” the self. Therapist Arnold Mindell argues “medication is used just to calm people down. But everyone goes through these same states at least a little bit.”

Many of Hall’s interviewees find peace and control through meditative practice and spirituality. The discussions of depression, suicidal ideation, what it’s like to live with “voices,” and other pressing mental health issues are nuanced and sensitive. These revealing discussions call for a more balanced approach to treatment, one that recognizes that altered states are part of the human experience and offers something beyond what one interviewee characterizes as “I was told there was something deeply wrong with me that will never go away.”

Takeaway: Powerful interviews about mental-health patients finding peace outside the medical system.

Great for fans of: Robert Whitaker’s Mad in America, DJ Jaffe’s Insane Consequences.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A

Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness

Will Hall’s Madness Radio has long been for many a refuge and an oasis from the overblown claims and corporate interests of American psychiatry and Big Pharma. This collection of interviews and writings—bold, fearless, and compellingly readable—captures Madness Radio’s importance and fierce independence, urging us to think differently and anew about the “thought disorders” involved in illness and wellness, sanity and recovery. Required reading.

Gabriella Coleman
, Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at Mc

Clarity, grace, insight, compassion and most of all wisdom: these are the qualities that you will find in these powerful interviews and writings assembled by long time mental health advocate Will Hall. The lessons that spring forth from these interviews are innumerable but one recurs time and again: without true choice, in other words without freedom, there can be no health, healing and recovery.

Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a

A terrific conversation partner.

Kirkus Reviews

An expansive set of interviews and essays that offer a unique perspective on mental health.

Hall, a professional therapist, a former psychiatric patient, and the author of Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs (2011), has been interviewing patients and therapists on his Valley Free Radio show, “Madness Radio,” for a decade. This book assembles more than 60 of those interviews with patients, therapists, and mental health activists who share their very personal and often poignant experiences with psychiatric drugs, hospitalization, and the social stigma of mental illness...readers will learn much about autism, attention deficit disorder, and bipolar disorder and about controversial treatments, such as electroshock therapy... Hall’s interview questions are sensitive and perceptive, and the answers that he receives are frank and sometimes sobering... Hall’s own emotional essay, “Letter to the Mother of a Schizophrenic,” sums up his focus on the humanity of his subjects: “Again and again I am told the ‘severely mentally ill’ are impaired and incapable, not quite human....[W]hen I finally do meet the people carrying that terrible, stigmatizing label of schizophrenia, what do I find? I find a human being.”

A troubling and illuminating collection.

Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of An Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Dr

This is a brilliant book… Nicely written, and wonderfully grand and big-hearted in its exploration of the world of mental health and much more. Remarkable in scope, Outside Mental Health delves into autobiography, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and spirituality. Will Hall elevates the radio interview format into an art.

Formats
Paperback Details
  • 01/2026
  • 978-0996514309
  • 402 pages
  • $18
Ebook Details
  • 01/2016
  • 978-0996514309
  • 402 pages
  • $
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