ALTERNATIVES 2022

Our Roots, Advocacy, Policies & Future

Thank you for attending Alternatives 2022. Please complete the conference evaluation here.

Alternatives 2022 had excellent speakers as well as passionate participants. We look forward to following up with their vision as well as plans from the Action Groups. We’ll be sending more information.

Many of the sessions were recorded and are on our youtube channel. Please subscribe to our channel (no cost), watch and like ones you are interested in, and share with others. The links to recordings are also next to the descriptions on this website.

*The schedule from Alternatives 2022 is available here.

*The speakers from Alternatives 2022 are detailed here. In addition to speakers, Alternatives 2022 included the opportunity to participate in an Action Group and networking opportunities.

All Alternatives conference sessions had Closed Captioning. Please complete the conference evaluation to receive a Certificate of Participation. Click here.

For 36 years, the Alternatives Conference has been planned and implemented for and by people in the peer recovery/liberation movement to come together and share their lived experience with one another. It is a place where peers come together to share our wisdom, strength and hope; where we make room for all the ways we experience and express life; where we turn our experience into fuel for our truth-telling. We have taken good notes about what helps and what hurts as we have navigated experiences of trauma, mental health diagnosis, and/or substance use challenges. We have become experts in our own lives, and we share that expertise with one another.

We represent a broad spectrum of perspectives on mental health and personal choices in the language we use and the types of supports we choose respond to our emotional suffering. There is room in our movement and at this conference for those who choose traditional mental health treatment, and who may or may not take medication, for those who use intentional peer support, or alternative therapies and mind-body approaches, for those who use art, movement, and creative expression, for those involved in social action, advocacy, and reform, and for those whose focus is Mad Pride and neurodiversity and for all the ways we intersect with one another.

We are aware that the right we have to make these choices hasn’t just been handed to us, but was fought for by this movement’s pioneers who were a small but fervent group of activists focused on human rights and liberation. They had the courage to stand against psychiatric oppression by taking political and social action. They created solidarity by forming mutual support groups, drop in centers and gathering in parks and universities to create what grew into this Alternatives Conference. We honor the shoulders on which we stand and know that part of what makes Alternatives so special is this history. For many of us, attending the Alternatives Conference has been like coming home. To learn more about our history go here: https://www.alternatives-conference.org/our-history

When the Board of the National Coalition was considering sponsoring the Alternatives conference this year, they began dreaming of having a conference that called people back to our activist roots and ignited people’s passions to create change in some key areas.

Now, more than ever, we need to bring our attention back to active organizing to maintain the advances we’ve made. Alternatives 2022 will be a “working conference.”

We will hear from those already involved in successful peer programs. We’ll also have a voice, and roll up our sleeves in areas we’re passionate about. We’ll find ways of working together to expand our influence and make a difference in our own communities.

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Social Media

For the Alternatives Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AlternativesConference/

We invite you to join the Alternatives Conference Announcements Facebook group to stay connected and get up to date information.

Questions? Contact info@ncmhr.org or 202-642-4480.

What is the Alternatives Conference? Watch this video.

Click here for a PowerPoint presentation on the history of the consumer/survivor movement.

Click here for an article describing one attendee’s perspective on the 2019 Alternatives Conference in the Albany Herald.

closed captioning

All Alternatives events will be on Zoom and closed captioning will be available. For more information, click here.

Additional Information

The Alternatives Conference is the oldest and largest conference of its kind, organized and hosted for more than three decades by peers for peers (people with lived experience of the behavioral health system, emotional distress/crisis, trauma, substance use, and/or addiction).

Learn More → Our Mission

Learn More → Our History

All photography provided by Jared Chambers