Adventures in Psychiatric Reform: Oct 20 update
Launching psychcrisis.org/guide, and an $80K grant!
Hi everyone. It’s October. I received the Emergent Ventures grant to start Psych Crisis in March, which means it’s a little over halfway through the basically-a-year’s worth of work the grant was intended to fund. This means I’m excited to announce:
We’re launching our first practical contribution to making crisis response better–an online guide to use if someone you care about is having a manic episode
We got an $80K grant!
What did I try?
Many iterations of the mania guide, mostly!
Giving the guide to a handful of people who needed it (although I have not heard back from any of them yet).
What happened? What worked? What did I learn?
The mania guide is live! You can check it out at psychcrisis.org/guide, and bookmark the URL in case you need it. There’s a survey embedded in the guide that I would really love you to take -if- you use the guide in a real-life situation; if you don’t use it in a real situation but still have opinions or feedback feel free to email me at jess@psychcrisis.org.
This version of the guide has now been used in two real-life crisis situations, and I’ve had some feedback based on that (but will be getting more soon).
Psych Crisis received its second-ever grant! We’ve received $80K to develop the online crisis guide and do outreach to ensure it is accessible specifically to people doing high-impact work in ensuring humanity’s long-term survival. This has come from the Future Fund’s regranting program.
We had our inaugural board meeting! I can confirm that Jasmine Wang and David Ernst are as gorgeous and supportive in board meetings as I predicted given what I knew of them beforehand.
I had some really great help to improve the guide, particularly from psychiatry student Alec Terrana, and natural20, a self-described professional crazy person, both of whom have given invaluable advice from the manic person and clinician perspectives.
What am I doing next?
The number one priority is getting feedback on the use of the mania guide in real life situations and using that to improve the guide, which involves promoting it in places it is likely to reach people who need it.
Secondly, I’ll be working on adding more accurate recommendations about providers, and what to do if you do find yourself in a hospital situation (one of the real life crisis situations it was used in made that clear).
How can you help?
Share the guide with people you know who are supporting someone having a manic episode, or have done so in the past. There will likely be more changes before I broadcast it to a much wider audience, so if you have a large following and would like to share it, message me beforehand so I have a heads up!
After some initial testing I’ll be working to make sure the guide is well-known in the effective altruist and longtermist communities, and if you have ideas about how to help broaden its reach there, or helpful connections, I’d love to hear about them!
One of the key things I want to do is recommend vetted mental health providers within the guide–if you know of any who have concrete data about the outcomes they get, I want to speak to them :)