OUR FEATURES

As of July 2021, Students With Psychosis collaborated videos have gained over 26 million views on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook combined in collaboration with TEDx, twice on Special Books By Special Kids, Barcroft TV, and Anthony Padilla. We have been featured in Glamour UK, Women’s Health Magazine, CBS This Morning national news, twice in Forbes, PBS documentary, USA Today College, Healthline, Daily Mail, The Indian Express, MTV University, WGBH, and Mental Health America.

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RETHINK EVENT | March 6th, 2020

In less than a year from expanding from the Pennsylvania State University, Students With Psychosis hosted its first RETHINK event in the Fashion District of New York City, including a protest fashion show collaborating with the clothing brand Schizophrenic.NYC and flying in guest speakers from outside of the United States such as Lauren Kennedy West and Rob Kennedy West from the Living Well With Schizophrenia YouTube channel with over 100 thousand subscribers. During RETHINK week, 2019-2020 Students With Psychosis Advocacy Board Members Lauren Kennedy and Rob Lim from Living Well With Schizophrenia sat down with fellow Advocacy Board Members to share their stories!

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The Students With Psychosis contact email is not a peer-to-peer support chat or crisis hotline. Students With Psychosis does not take the place of speaking with mental health, financial, or legal professionals. For questions related to creating a membership, making a donation, or having your organization collaborate with us, please contact us at team@sws.ngo.

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Luciano Bonader lives in a small province in the Northwest of Argentina and is currently studying a bachelor’s in Teaching English as a Second/Foreign language. He openly identifies as transgender nonbinary. He’s a poet and writer and has published in magazines and anthologies; he also studied music and singing for years, performed solo and as part of choirs, and has experience teaching from young children to adults. Diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder type 2 with psychotic features and generalized anxiety after over a decade looking for answers, he joined Students With Psychosis as a student leader and is part of the Executive Board since 2020, serving as Vice President of the board. A firm believer in having an open mind and the power of art, he thinks that peer support and work are part of mental health advocacy and openly talking about mental illness, when possible, is a tool to create more empathy and acceptance. He shares his story to make it known that some things are better to talk about. @cecilia_mcgough is a New York City-based mental health activist, nonprofit executive director, consultant, and former radio astronomer. McGough is autistic who also happens to have schizophrenia but does not let her diagnoses define her. McGough is the founder and executive director of the global nonprofit Students With Psychosis. As a TEDx speaker, twice Special Books By Special Kids interviewee, Anthony Padilla interviewee, CBS This Morning national news feature, and PBS Documentary “Mysteries of Mental Illness” feature, McGough’s story has been viewed over 26+ million times across multiple platforms. McGough has been featured in Glamour UK, Women’s Health Magazine, twice in Forbes, USA Today College, Healthline, Daily Mail, The Indian Express, MTV University, WGBH, Mental Health America, and more! McGough currently serves as a curator and social committee member for the Global Shapers Brooklyn Hub through the World Economic Forum. McGough finds it important to connect with health advocates across a wide range of diagnoses and currently is a Lightbulb ambassador and severed as a 2020 conference advisor for Healthevoices. McGough collaborates with industry leads and mental health researchers and clinicians; for example, McGough was a 2020-2021 think tank participant organized by One Mind to focus on early screening for psychosis in youth. McGough is an UNLEASH talent who traveled to Denmark in August of 2017 to be an active voice to attain the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and make sure people with psychosis are represented. Also, McGough has been selected as the keynote speaker for the 2022 Congress of the Schizophrenia International Research Society to take place in Florence, Italy. At the age of 17, McGough co-discovered PSR J1930-1852 leading to opportunities such as helping represent the United States in the International Space Olympics in Russia and being a Virginia Aerospace Science And Technology Scholar through the NASA Langley Research Center. McGough’s story as a radio astronomer through the Pulsar Search Collaboratory can be seen in the documentary Little Green Men. Community Meetings are hosted weekly by two of our Executive Board members. It is important to us that all of our students and advocates get the opportunity to meet with our Executive Board members and also for our Executive Board members to actively engage weekly and listen to fellow community members. Meetings are conducted similarly as a peer support group meeting and facilitated by executive board members. I’m known by different names in different spheres of my life. Maddie in my career, Mads to my close friends, and MadHaus to most online circles. I’m an elementary educator, an artist when I’m manic enough, the voice of the MadHaus Podcast, a local street performer in Indianapolis, and starting in January a tabletop streamer. I exist as both nonbinary and bisexual within the LGBTQIA+ Community, which has a number of challenges with people debating my validity to the community due to my gender expression and sexuality. But I've never been one to run from a fight, and I've never been the person to let anyone tell me who to be either. Being a sociologist, one of my favorite pastime is applying intersectional focuses to social life. Being somewhat of a narcissus, my other favorite pastime is staring at my reflection and taking pictures of myself. Alishia has been a peer support worker for the last 6 years and after taking a year break for personal recovery and healing, she finds she is more enthused to support mental health communities. She feels personal experience needs to be integrated into clinical mental health care and that more research needs to go into peer support strategies and actually be read by clinicians. She is also a writer of fiction and blogs, as well as an avid reader and tech enthusiast. She’s decided to go back to school for Cognitive Science and loves, loves, loves cats. We are so excited for this panel! Thank you @ostem.global for inviting us to participate in your virtual conference! Our panel is from 1:00-2:45 PM EST on October 29th. We will be discussing the intersection of being a student living with psychosis while identifying within the LGBTQ+ community. Visit @ostem.global for registration information. Lucien Pieraldi is a queer trans-nonbinary 22 year old from California and has been diagnosed with Schizoaffective disorder. They study medical assisting at the City College of San Francisco and have been placed on the Dean’s list. Having been symptomatic with psychosis from a young age they learned to use different platforms to share their story and spread understanding. Everyday Lucien aims to educate people they interact with at school, online, and within society to show that others with psychosis can function and should be given the space and support to do so. Lucien hopes that they can continue to do more advocating through @studentswithpsychosis. My name is Vera Muñiz-Saurré (they/them) and I am a nonbinary, queer, Peruvian-American public health professional currently working as an HIV Prevention Specialist at a mental health agency in Boston. I experience psychosis and am a survivor of gay conversion therapy. Starting in 2017, I helped found and admin the Psychosis Spectrum Server on Discord and we’re still going strong! I’m currently seeking my Master of Public Health from Boston University focusing on Community Assessment, Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation. I have a background in sexual health as a result of my time working in public health spaces and mental health from a neuroscience perspective thanks to my time doing my undergrad in Psychology at BU. I joined @studentswithpsychosis to find more community and to be more involved with psychosis advocacy! I want to use what I’m learning and have learned through my time working in public health to serve our community and to help fight the systemic barriers that keep the most vulnerable of us from accessing quality care! We have been so excited about the enthusiastic reactions to return to having @studentswithpsychosis in-person meetups. Our New York meetup will be held on November 6th from 3-5 PM EST in Manhattan, and Boston meetup time(s) will be announced Tuesday the 18th based on availabilities. For the locations and further details of this meetup, please register below. Must have a valid vaccination card to attend. So wonderful getting to meet up with @studentswithpsychosis Executive Board Member @laurakordowski and Executive Director @cecilia_mcgough for the first time IRL. They have known each other and worked together since the early days of the pandemic, so it was so wonderful to finally get to meet in-person. We have some exciting @studentswithpsychosis meetups planned. Keep an eye on our website and social media for a meetup near you. (spoiler) We are in the works of planning a meetup in Boston on October 30th and NYC November 6th. 📣📣📣 We have a familiar face this week for Guest Speaker Tuesday. Freethinker, writing enthusiast, certified storm spotter, and self-proclaimed fitness junkie, @baileighjoy is also a dedicated mental health advocate. Her passion for raising awareness and educating her community stems from a lifelong battle with depression and her more recent diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. She believes that the simple act of using her voice can help overcome the gross misrepresentations and stigmatization that come with the diagnosis of a psychotic disorder. Baileigh graduated from the University of Memphis magma cum laude with a degree in Earth Sciences and enjoyed all things outdoors. She is honored to be a member of the Students With Psychosis Executive Board and achieve side-by-side with her peers by developing ideas through creative thinking. Psychosis is a global topic. Let's remember that there is no one size fits all experience living with psychosis. For this world mental health day, let's remember that we have so much to learn from people living with psychosis worldwide. Community Meetings are hosted weekly by two of our Executive Board members. It is important to us that all of our students and advocates get the opportunity to meet with our Executive Board members and also for our Executive Board members to actively engage weekly and listen to fellow community members. Meetings are conducted similarly as a peer support group meeting and facilitated by executive board members. NEW VIDEO (link in story) I started as an outreach intern amidst the onset of the pandemic. I was able to witness @studentswithpsychosis during the rebranding and adaptation to the evident times. I saw how strong the community was through the changing times and its ability to still support and bring value into our student leaders, advocates, interns, and all those who serve. I knew there was something special about this organization.  "As a junior in high school, I told my boyfriend about my imaginary friends, and how they were having strange conversations with me and each other. While he may have been curious, he was, overall, unresponsive, dismissing my concerns with something along the line of, 'Ya know, a lot of people take drugs just to try and experience the things you do.' My name is Rei and I am a non-binary, gay, jewish disabled person living with schizoaffective disorder. I'm a student at Columbus State currently, studying in the Social and Human Services program to become a social worker eventually. However, my ultimate goal is to one day open my own non-profit focused on mental health treatment for marginalized people. I enjoy spending time with my cats, arts and crafts, listening to music, and spending time in nature. My psychosis is only one part of me and my mental health journey, but it has greatly impacted me in many ways and led me to join @studentswithpsychosis . I heard about @studentswithpsychosis through watching some videos @cecilia_mcgough was in, including her Tedx Talk from several years ago. I resonated deeply with what she spoke about, especially with how others view those with psychosis as scary, or monsters, even though we are everyday people simply living with a condition. After going to the website, I was happy to see so much programming available. I've never had social supports, and certainly not for my psychosis, so the idea that I had an opportunity to connect with people like myself excited me. Community means a safe space with people you can rely on and trust. I've always felt distant from the communities around me, especially in school and work environments. I often have felt like I don't fit in due to my mental illness and neurodivergency. That's why communities like @studentswithpsychosis are so important. They provide space for people like me who have been isolated due to how their brain functions. My leadership style is to listen fully and with an open mind before any action or response. I prefer to gently lead others into a work direction instead of commanding. A workplace environment that is supportive and empowering to people with psychosis is firstly one that is flexible. If someone has a flare-up in symptoms, they need to be allowed rest to heal from that. Secondly the environment needs to be non-judgmental, especially when someone is experiencing symptoms. Too many environments in society already unfortunately put us down for who we are as people with psychosis, we don't need that at the wo It wasn’t until college that I found treatment options through STEP and began therapy for my disorders, eventually doing a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship on “Psychosis: Gray Areas of Medical and Legal Consent.” Through that, I found a TEDx talk by @cecilia_mcgough about how people with schizophrenia aren’t the monsters society sees them as. Suddenly, I felt like I was seen for the first time. I was led to @studentswithpsychosis and became a Media Outreach and Resource Direction Intern for a year. Rose Parker @psychosispsositivity is a writer, speaker, and advocate for the Psychosis Community. Having had Schizophrenia since a young age, she has experienced the many facets of Psychosis stigma and seeks to change the way people with Psychotic illnesses are perceived and treated. She has a Bachelor’s in Psychology with Cum Laude honors and a background in neuroscience and psychological research. Her scientific background leads into her belief that education is a powerful force for improving the lives of Psychotic people. By working with Psychotic people, their loved ones, and clinicians, she believes we can change the way the world sees and treats Psychosis. Who else is excited about our new platform launch?!! 🤩🤩🤩 If you have not registered your school or as a student leader yet, register!! You can also register your school as a faculty member. Not a student or a person living with psychosis but want to be part of the movement? Apply as an advocate, brand ambassador, intern, or community group leader. (NEW!) For parents/family members out there, you can now preregister for a parent/family membership! (LINK IN BIO) www.sws.ngo We are making some new waves here at @studentswithpsychosis 🌊🌊🌊 Have you checked out our new website launch, yet? Link in bio!! Thank you @yale and STEP for having us! Looking forward to continued collaborations to come. 3 DAYS ⏳ NEW VIRTUAL PLATFORM LAUNCH THIS TUESDAY!! We are so excited! 🤩🤩🤩 Community Meetings are hosted weekly by two of our Executive Board members. It is important to us that all of our students and advocates get the opportunity to meet with our Executive Board members and also for our Executive Board members to actively engage weekly and listen to fellow community members. Meetings are conducted similarly as a peer support group meeting and facilitated by executive board members. A @studentswithpsychosis birthday celebration. Happy Birthday @cecilia_mcgough 🎂🎉 Jason Jepson grew up in Virginia.  He was diagnosed with schizoaffective Disorder while he was enlisted in the United States Army.   Jason lived in Richmond, Virginia where he served as Chair of the Veterans Council at the McGuire Veterans Hospital. Jason began his mental health advocacy with NAMI and has since gone on to volunteer with the Share Network. His story of recovery has been published in numerous online and print publications such as Yahoo News, The Mighty, Psych Central, and OC87 Recovery Diaries.  Having obtained an Associate Degree from Sergeant Reynolds Community  College in Richmond, Jason’s true love is writing.  He has written two books When We Were Young, a fictionalized memoir of his late teens, and a book of poetry called Misfires of a Lyrical Mind.  Jason is proudest, however, of his first-person accounts that are published several times a year in Schizophrenia Bulletin, an academic journal published by Oxford Press.  He is honored to be part of Students With Psychosis, and he is happy to share his life experiences in hopes of helping others. Jason Jepson has served as a Students With Psychosis Advocacy Board Member, Executive Board Member, and Advisory Council Member. Community Meetings are hosted weekly by two of our Executive Board members. It is important to us that all of our students and advocates get the opportunity to meet with our Executive Board members and also for our Executive Board members to actively engage weekly and listen to fellow community members. Meetings are conducted similarly as a peer support group meeting and facilitated by executive board members. My names Baileigh, and I go by Bails! I’ve had psychosis, depression, anxiety, and add for a long time but I don’t let that stop me from living boldly. Sometimes it feels like all I am is my mental illness but I trust that there is a future version of myself that is proud of my courage to stick around. I have become passionate in my recovery. My medical team and medication routine is important, but I believe it’s also important to pursue what sets your soul on fire. For me that is exercise, travel, skydiving, writing, and showing kindness to others. These are all invaluable activities that I believe help me stay alive 💛 Ambar is a second year Master's student of philosophy at The New School For Social Research. She's been living with schizophrenia since 2017, and has questioned the idea of patient autonomy, agency, and authenticity as they relate to illness. Also a peer counselor, she hopes to formulate valuable and dependable writing on the experiences of telling your story while living within illness through all her roles and extracurriculars. Her first self-published novel is available on Amazon, under the title "Under Delusions of Grandeur." You can also find a limited version of her life story in the AppleTV+ Docuseries "The Me You Can't See."  Thank you @mentalhealthamerica for the continued love and support. Read the full article (LINK IN BIO)