Please take a moment to watch this animated and innovative recap of the Summit that I created after the 2024 Sozosei Summit to Decriminalize Mental Illness, which features key findings and more.
And click through the slider to see images of the graphic recordings I drew, live in real time to capture the important themes from each speaker, panel, and session.
The 2024 Summit centered on the fundamental and purposely provocative question: Do we truly believe that all people deserve access to mental health care? Held April 16 and 17, 2024 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia, the 4th Sozosei Summit to Decriminalize Mental Illness gathered leaders and people with lived experience from around the globe to offer ideas on ways to build a world where mental illness is not a crime. The Summit also addressed the following questions:
- How do we ensure that humanity, empathy and compassion are at the center of the care-coercion crossroads, and what role might psychiatric advance directives play in that effort?
- What would be the impact of building an intersectional movement to decriminalize healthcare, including the decriminalization of mental health, substance use, abortion, HIV status, trans healthcare and more?
- Paying for mental healthcare has been an ongoing barrier to treatment, so how can we accelerate change in private and public insurance to ensure access?
- What do we know about the decriminalization of mental illness (accompanied by an update on the creation of a national research framework)?
- How might a national creative communications campaign disrupt the status quo of the criminalization of mental illness?
