Shelter request for Greater Portland region, Maine, United States. Please boost in psychiatric user and survivor/Mad Pride networks.

A friend of mine is currently facing an urgent need for temporary shelter in #PortlandME. I am requesting any assistance with the following that anyone here may be able to give.

My friend lives in Portland. They have been experiencing an extreme state for ~2–3 weeks. They want to stay at one of the peer respites in New Hampshire, but because the peer respites in New Hampshire have no vacancies, they are staying with their parents in New Hampshire. However, their parents are restricting their freedoms, including their access to their smartphone and the internet and not allowing them to leave the residence, under threat of nonconsensual psychiatric hospitalization.

My friend is an adult. Now they are trying to plan to flee and return to Portland. Is anyone here, or does anyone here know anyone who is:

🔶 currently located in or near Portland and

🔶 able to host my friend if/when they return to Portland on or around February 28?

I don't know how long they would need to stay. Based on our conversations, I think that their time frame is 2 weeks–1 month.

Basically, they need and want some time and space (1) away from some of their daily responsibilities and the people with whom they've been living and (2) in which they can go through their current mental experience and do some activities that they enjoy and/or that are meaningful to them. Some of these activities that they've mentioned to me include visiting a library and reading there, visiting a nature park, and walking to and from and shopping at stores within their walking distance.

They want services and helpers who are aligned with the psychiatric user and survivor movement, #CriticalPsychiatry (potentially #antipsychiatry), #RadicalMentalHealth, and/or #MadPride. They are explicitly trying to avoid any "mental health" services that aren't fully consensual and any helpers who would use nonconsensual "mental health" services against them.

Thank you very much in advance.

#Mad #MadMastodon #PsychiatricSurvivor

📖 Sami Schalk, *Black Disability Politics* (Durham, North Carolina, United States: Duke University Press, October 2022), https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478027003

This is an *open-access* version of *Black Disability Politics*, per Sami Schalk's wishes!

H/t Lucy Costa

#antipsychiatry #BlackPantherParty #CriticalPsychiatry #DisabilityJustice #DisabilityRights #DisabilityStudies #MadPride #MadStudies #PrisonersRights #PsychiatricSurvivors #PsychiatricUsersAndSurvivors #RadicalMentalHealth #SamiSchalk