I wanted to share something really special and personal with this community. 🐵💛 This is Rafici, my childhood stuffed chimp who has been with me through so many chapters of my life. I I’m sharing a few photos of the original Rafici, including one of me as a child holding him, along with photo of the needle-felted recreation I’ve been working on. I didn't have a good childhood, but he was a dear part of my family that stood with my and helped make it a little bright. Recreating him by hand has been such a meaningful and emotional process. Every little detail brings back memories and feels like a way of reconnecting with a piece of my childhood. He’s still a work in progress, but I’m really happy with how he’s coming along so far. I'm still going to make his body rounder and such, but this is what I have so far. Thank you for letting me share this little piece of my story. 💛✨

Hi everyone! 💙 Our Unlock Psych Reading Circle meets this Thursday at 5:30 PM Pacific, and I’d love your input before we gather. We’ve been reading Mad in America by Robert Whitaker, but since we haven’t gotten very far into it, I wanted to check in with everyone. Would you like to continue with Mad in America, or would you rather start fresh with a new book? When we first started the Reading Circle, this was our original list of books we were considering: 📖 Unlock Psych Reading Circle Books - Mad in America — Robert Whitaker - Committed — Dinah Miller & Annette Hanson - Desperate Remedies — Andrew Scull - Experiences of Mental Health In-Patient Care — Mark Hardcastle, David Kennard, Sheila Gradison, & Leonard Fagin - Healthy Minds in the Twentieth Century: In and Beyond the Asylum — Steven J. Taylor & Alice Brumby - Narratives of Recovery from Serious Mental Illness — William Tucker - Speaking Our Minds: An Anthology — Jim Read & Jill Reynolds - The First Resort — Mathew Smith - The Source & Development of Social & Community Psychiatry — David G. Satin You’re also welcome to suggest any other book you’d love for us to read together! I’m very resourceful when it comes to finding free, legal digital copies or library access, so don’t hesitate to recommend something that’s meaningful to you. There will be no need to purchase the book unless you want a physical copy for yourself as I will likely be able to get a digital copy of the book for us. I also have a quite a large personal collection of digital mental health books such as books on philosophy, recovery, therapy workbooks, psychology, somatic healing, therapeutic modalities, self-help, fiction, autobiographies etc. if you would like any ebooks. Please message me if you would like any access to it. Please leave your thoughts in the comments preferable before the Reading Circle on Thursday. Since we likely won't have a definite book from many answers by Thursday since today is Wednesday, I'll plan on just continuing to read Mad in America or perhaps some poetry tomorrow until we gather more responses for the final decision later on. Or perhaps we can sample some of the books tomorrow and explore what we might want to decide on. That might be a good way to decide what to choose! 🤗

A community collage of survival, creativity, healing, and truth • May 2026 May is Mental Health Month, and it felt like the perfect time to begin creating something together as a community: a digital Unlock Psych zine called Out of Their Grip. (I'm calling it that because my initial idea for a cover illustration featured a pair of grippy socks!) For anyone unfamiliar, a zine is a community-made DIY magazine filled with creative expression, writing, art, reflections, and shared experiences. Zines are often deeply personal, raw, funny, emotional, political, healing, or all of the above at once. They’re a way for people to tell their stories in their own words and create something meaningful together. This will be a digital zine created by our community and shared online so everyone can contribute to and experience it together. We may not finish this by the end of May, and that’s okay. What matters is that we start. The process itself can be cathartic, connective, and powerful. I think there’s something healing about seeing our experiences side by side and recognizing that we are not alone in what we’ve survived. My hope is that this can become an annual Unlock Psych Mental Health Month project — and next year we can start earlier and maybe even have a completed zine ready by the end of May. 🌱 I would LOVE submissions from the Unlock Psych community. This can be serious, funny, artistic, emotional, messy, reflective, hopeful, angry, creative — whatever feels real to you. Some ideas for submissions: • Poetry • Digital art or hand-drawn art • Photography • Collages • Meaningful quotes or mantras you love • Reflections about your experiences in Unlock Psych meetings • Reflections about psychiatric hospitalization or hospital trauma • Thoughts about healing, mental health, growth, recovery, or survival • Funny reviews of the worst psych hospital experiences you’ve had • Lists of things you wish psych hospitals actually had to make them helpful • Recipes for your favorite “first meal home” after getting out of the hospital

Will the book be on screen? Thanks. Kathleen