From Mad in Mexico: In the first meetings of the mutual support group we also defined that whoever occupied the role of coordination would do so by getting involved from their own experience as a mental health user. This allowed us to understand that the mutual support group intended to summon mental health users and insane asylum survivors. This is how I began to occupy the role of coordination with the peace of mind of trusting that if I could not ever or did not want to participate, someone would take care of the task of opening the meeting, circulating the word and closing the meeting. The first thing I learned about mutual support is that it allows the people who participate to listen to other ways to tell their stories. The ways my supporters had of telling their experiences were transforming my own way of thinking about my experiences in relation to suffering, delusions, hallucinations and crises
Read the original Spanish article here, or the full English translation here.
