Soteria - A Better Alternative to Psych Wards?
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California, 1971: A project called Soteria launched to study if people with psychosis fared better in psychiatric hospitals, or an environment that put listening and relationships first, medication and diagnoses second. The results were astonishing. In today's episode we talk with Betsy Hoekstra about the only Soteria House currently running in the United States today.
Betsy works for Pathways Vermont, the agency that runs Soteria House. She was on-staff at Soteria for three years, and has experienced "psychiatric incarceration" herself. She lays out what sets Soteria apart from traditional hospitalization, why having a shared understanding of reality actually isn't that important, and how her own experience with state sanctioned violence radically changed the course of her life.
To learn more about Soteria House, you can check out the Pathways Vermont website here. To see the semi-autobiographical book written about the very first Soteria House, Soteria: Through Madness to Deliverance, click here.
Find a 10 minute video of Soteria residents in Vermont telling their stories here.
For a webinar on the past, present and future of Soteria, click here.
Here's more information on some of the resources Betsy mentioned during the interview:
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This episode was edited and co-produced by Kate Rusk-Kosa. Theme music comes to us from Paul Swartzel. It was executive produced by Frank Kosa and Janet Yang.