Episode 172: Author and Mental Health Advocate Sarah Fay Returns

In this podcast episode, mental health advocate and the award-winning author Sarah Fay returns to discuss the release of the paperback edition of her book, Pathological, as well as her next project, The Recovery Movement, a deeper exploration of mental health and sharing other people’s stories of their road to recovery. This book challenges the negative connotations surrounding mental health and the notion that mental illnesses are something that people can only learn to deal with. Sarah wants the world to know that recovery IS an option and there are tools and resources to help you get there. 

 

One of the tools that Sarah advocates for is peer support. While most people don’t know what peer support is, Sarah, the now Certified Mental Health Peer Recovery Specialist, is here to shed some light on how you can take advantage of this resource.  Peer support is now being touted as the future of mental health, and there has also been discussion about creating legislation around it in the United States. 

Tune is as we discuss:

 

• The dramatic increase in the number of people receiving mental health services and the unprecedented number of youth receiving psychiatric diagnoses

• The continued lack of awareness around mental health diagnoses and self-stigma (how to use a diagnosis for, not against yourself)

• Sarah’s continued recovery from 25 years of living with mental illness, e.g., what has surprised (and delighted) her about recovery from psychiatric diagnoses is that an integral part to getting well entails moving past and not identifying with a diagnosis

• *Peer support and how it can fill in the gaps where there’s a lack of access to mental health care

• And more... 

Resources from this episode: 

 

Youth Era: https://www.youthera.org/ 

The JED Foundation: https://jedfoundation.org/

Seize the awkward campaign : https://seizetheawkward.org/ 

Ethan Cross book: Chatter : https://www.ethankross.com/chatter/

Connect with Sarah Fay:

 

IG: @sarahfayauthor 

Substack is where she is most active: https://sarahfay.substack.com/

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Connect with me on IG  @jesscording