Our Team

Jazmine Russell is the co-founder of the Institute for the Development of Human Arts, a transformative mental health educator, trauma survivor, and host of "Depth Work: A Holistic Mental Health Podcast." She is an interdisciplinary scholar of Mad Studies, Critical Psychology, and Neuroscience, and a postgraduate student at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. Jazmine has worked in the mental health system as a crisis counselor and later as a peer counselor specializing in working with those experiencing 'psychosis.' Becoming disillusioned with the system, she became a grassroots mental health organizer and holistic counselor across many modalities since 2015. She continues to see clients as a trauma-informed holotropic breathwork practitioner. She is also a co-editor of the forthcoming Mad Studies Reader to be published by Routledge in 2024. Find more of her work at www.jazminerussell.com.

Jay Stevens (LMHC, MBA, Acupuncture Detoxification Specialist) brings a unique combination of business and social services experience to IDHA. After years in finance and struggles with substance use (and a subsequent incarceration) opened his eyes to the systemic harms caused by structural racism, classism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, Jay decided to dedicate his life to help transform unjust systems while supporting those harmed by them. Jay now serves as an Assistant Vice President of Outreach at Breaking Ground – bringing a Harm Reduction and Decarceration lens to the work of supporting those who are unhoused. He believes in the foundational power of human connection, and in IDHA’s mission to create a new transformative mental health system - led by people with lived experience - that is community-based and free from surveillance and coercion.

Celia Brown (1963-2022) was a psychiatric survivor and a prominent leader in the movement for human rights in mental health. She was the president of MindFreedom International for many years, a nonprofit organization uniting 100 sponsor and affiliate grassroots groups with thousands of individual members to win human rights and alternatives for people labelled mentally ill. She was instrumental in developing the Peer Specialist civil service title for the NYS Office of Mental Health. Celia also serves on the board of the National Empowerment Center and has co-chaired the planning committee for the National Alternatives Conference for the past few years. She was last year’s recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Alternatives Conference.

Bradley Lewis is associate professor at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and a practicing psychiatrist. He is affiliated with NYU’s Disability Studies minor, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, and Department of Psychiatry. Lewis writes and teaches at the interface of humanities, cultural studies, disability studies, medicine, psychiatry, and the arts. His recent books are Narrative Psychiatry: How Stories Shape Clinical Practice and Depression: Integrating Science, Culture, and Humanities.

Sascha DuBrul is a writer and educator that has been facilitating workshops and community dialogues at universities, conferences, community centers and activist gatherings for more than two decades. From the anarchist squatter community in New York City to the Lacandon jungle of Chiapas, Mexico, to the Earth First! road blockades of the Pacific Northwest, Sascha is a pioneer in urban farming and creative mental health advocacy. He is the co-founder of the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library, the first urban seed library in North America, and The Icarus Project, a radical community support network and media project that’s actively redefining the language and culture of mental health and illness. He is currently working in private practice and raising two children in Oakland, California.

Cindy Peterson-Dana is the Vice-President for Peer and Recovery Services at MHA. She is responsible for Peer and Recovery Support Services including the Westchester Recovery Network and the Sterling Community Center. Ms. Peterson-Dana’s involvement in the mental health field includes both personal and professional experiences of recovery. A lifelong advocate for the transformation of the mental health system, she has served as a consultant for OnTrack New York, worked in state hospitals, community clinics, on an ACT team, in residential services and in her own private psychotherapy practice in Nyack, NY. She holds a Master of Arts Degree in Psychology from the University of Missouri and a Master of Education in Mental Health Counseling from the University of Missouri.

Sarah Quinter is an NYC bred and based artist, educator, and organizer working with diverse materials in diverse communities. Whether teaching, painting, writing, organizing, or facilitating, her work promotes creativity, solidarity, resilience, and community. Her aim is to build possibilities for liberation and connection on individual as well as collective levels, through whatever means and materials are on hand.

Karen Rosenthal is the Director of Training at Community Access where she has helped develop an employee training curriculum that provides awareness and skills to avoid recreating the oppression and demoralization so common in the mental health system. She also provides support and leadership for various QI initiatives at the agency, including peer-informed practice, harm reduction and health promotion. Karen has been a Certified Auricular Detoxification Specialist since 2002, a CPRP since 2003 and has her provisional NYS Peer Specialist Certification. She has lived experience with mental health and trauma concerns and infuses this expertise into her work.