RESOURCES

​​1. Tools and Information

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Soothing & Comfort

For the days when reflection is too much and what's needed is regulation instead.

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Sensory Soothing (page and fillable download)

Spoons & Energy Envelope (page and fillable download)
Comfort TV (page including download)
Comfort Gaming (page including fillable download)

Comfort Activities (PDF to download)

Glimmers (page)

Gentle Yoga (YouTube link)

If you are having a Panic Attack (download)

If you are at Risk Right Now (page)

Creating your Safe (or Safe-adjacent) Place (download)​

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Understanding what's happening

Longer pieces, for when you want language for something rather than relief from it. Several have a worksheet attached.

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Emotional Flashbacks - (page and fillable download)

Toxic Shame and Mortification — page

Attachment Hunger (page including fillable download

Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (page including fillable download)

Dissociation (page)

Autistic Burnout (page)

Persistent Desire for Autonomy (PDA) (page)

Internalised Ableism (page)

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Questionnaires and screens

These are not diagnostic instruments. They are starting points — ways of noticing a pattern, putting language to something, or working out whether a conversation with a clinician might be worth having. A high score does not mean something is wrong with you. A low score does not mean you imagined it.

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Masking Questionnaire (PDF) 

Autistic Burnout (Fillable PDF)

The Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (Fillable PDF)​

​​​Dissociative Experiences Scale – II (DES-II - PDF)

The Somatoform Dissociation Questionnaire (SDQ-20 - PDF)

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2. Support & Practical Help

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Autism, ADHD and neurodivergence

Autism Late Diagnosis Free Six-Module Course 

Stimpunks — superb library on neurodivergence, disability and access anywhere

Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) — US-based, but the principle work is unmatched

Creating your own access rider — Unlimited's guide; useful far beyond the arts link here

ADHD UK — screening tools, Right to Choose guidance, and a clear map of the assessment routes

ADHD Foundation — resources for adults, families and employers

Autism Central — free, NHS England-commissioned peer education programme for families, carers and PAs of autistic people of all ages. One-to-one peer support, group sessions, regional hubs.

Learning Disability England — a membership organisation bringing together people with learning disabilities, families and organisations. Particularly useful for its work supporting self-advocacy and the principle that people with learning disabilities should have power over the decisions and systems affecting their lives.

ADHD Aware — adult ADHD organisation with peer-support groups and resources shaped by lived experience, offering ways of understanding ADHD beyond assessment and symptom management alone.

r/AutismInWomen — large peer subreddit for autistic women, questioning women, and AFAB autistic people.

r/AutisticWithADHD and r/AuDHD — two large, separately-cultured peer communities for the AuDHD overlap, worth having both.

PDA Society — the main UK charity for PDA, with distinct resource areas for autistic adults with a PDA profile and for parents/carers of children with one, plus a directory of PDA-informed professionals.

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Self-harm

Self-harm is a way of coping. It usually arrives because something else was unbearable and there was nothing else available. Being told to stop, by someone who has not offered you anything to put in its place, is not help. Nothing here will ask you to stop before you are ready. You are also entitled to have wounds treated without a lecture, and to ask for pain relief, dressings and aftercare like anyone else — GPs can treat minor injuries and give advice, and you do not have to explain yourself to earn that.

Sift — formerly Self Injury Support, renamed in February 2026. Non-judgemental, trauma-informed support. Helpline, text and email listening services for all ages and genders; check the site for current hours, which have changed since the rebrand.

Battle Scars — survivor-led. Online peer support groups for people who self-harm and for the people around them, including an "Inbetweeners" group for those living with urges they mostly don't act on, and groups for over-50s. Also FRESH, a one-off call with a peer support worker.

LifeSIGNS — user-led since 2002. Good, plain writing on why self-injury happens rather than how to stop it.

Harmless — user-led, offering support to people who self-harm and to families and professionals.

National Self Harm Network forum — moderated online forum, useful at 3am when nothing is open.

Calm Harm — free app for riding out an urge. Password protected.

Changing Faces skin camouflage — free specialist service for scarring, run at clinics across the UK. For when scars themselves have become the problem.

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Crisis houses and sanctuaries

Somewhere to go, in person, that isn't A&E and isn't the psychiatric ward. These are alternatives to hospital admission, staffed round the clock, non-medical in feel even where NHS-run. Crisis house provision changes constantly and varies enormously by area, so treat what's below as examples rather than a full picture — Hub of Hope is a live, searchable national directory and the better place to check what actually exists near you right now.

Daleham Gardens Crisis House, Camden — 12-bed, opened June 2026, replacing the former Rivers Crisis House as part of the St Pancras Hospital redevelopment. For Camden and Islington residents in acute crisis. Self-referral: 020 3317 6860.

Drayton Park Women's Crisis House, Islington — women only, Camden and Islington residents, up to two weeks, children can be accommodated with their mothers. 020 7607 2777.

Maytree, north London — a one-off, free four-night stay for anyone 18+ in suicidal crisis, anywhere in the UK. Non-medical, based on befriending rather than treatment. Currently accepting referrals via organisations rather than self-referral directly; check their site for the current route in.

James' Place — free, focused therapy (not overnight accommodation) for men 18+ in suicidal crisis, at centres in Liverpool, London, Newcastle and Birmingham. Self-referral or professional referral.

Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service — survivor-run since 1999. Dial House offers face-to-face crisis support in the evenings; Leeds OASIS Crisis House offers short-term residential support by referral; helpline 0808 800 1212.

Edinburgh Crisis Centre — 24/7, 365 days a year, for anyone 16+ resident in Edinburgh. Freephone, text or email; can lead to a face-to-face appointment or a short stay.

The Sanctuary, Bristol — run by Second Step, appointment-based (phone ahead, no drop-in), for anyone 16+ registered with a GP in Bristol, North Somerset or South Gloucestershire.

Crisis Cafés and Listening Lounges, Greater Manchester — GMMH's network of out-of-hours community spaces across Manchester, Bolton, Salford and Trafford, including No. 93 Crisis Café. Call NHS 111 and select the mental health option, or find current locations and hours via GMMH's site.

 

After abuse and sexual violence

You do not need to have reported anything, be certain about what happened, or be able to name it, to use any of these.

Rape Crisis England and Wales — free 24/7 support line on 0808 500 2222, or online chat at 247sexualabusesupport.org.uk. For anyone 16+, any gender, no matter how long ago. Available whatever your immigration status. Interpreters available on request.

NAPAC — the only national service specifically for adults abused in childhood. 0808 801 0331, or support@napac.org.uk. A small team, so it can be hard to get through; they suggest between 5pm and 9pm.

The Survivors Trust — directory of local specialist services, which is often what you actually need.

Safeline — separate lines for women, men and young people, plus text support.

Galop — LGBT+ specialist support for abuse, sexual violence and hate crime.

Women's Aid and Men's Advice Line — for domestic abuse, current or past.

Karma Nirvana — honour-based abuse and forced marriage.

Survivors Voices — run by survivors of abuse, and explicitly framed as mutual support rather than treatment. Survivors Pod runs a weekly online group open to all abuse survivors, a fortnightly group for people abused in faith settings, and an in-person London group for Black, Indigenous and people of colour. They also do survivor-led research and pay survivor researchers properly.

MACSAS — for people abused by clergy, ministers or others under cover of the Church. A specific and badly served group.

Survivors Network — Brighton. Two weekly face-to-face peer groups for women survivors, clear about not being therapy.

Survivors Unite — Scottish Borders, member-led, open-ended support for adults affected by childhood sexual abuse.

SurvivorsUK — for men, boys and non-binary people who have experienced sexual abuse or rape at any point in their lives. Telephone helpline 0808 801 0332 (Mon–Fri, 10am–12pm), plus webchat, WhatsApp and SMS support.

The Survivors Trust directory — 120-odd member organisations across the UK and Ireland. If none of the above are near you, start here. None of them will make you report to the police.

 

Domestic abuse

National Domestic Abuse Helpline — run by Refuge. Free and confidential, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year: 0808 2000 247. Live chat Monday to Friday 10am–10pm, weekends 10am–6pm. Support available in many languages and via BSL interpreter.

Women's Aid — federation of over 180 local services, and publisher of the free Survivor's Handbook: housing, money, children and legal rights, available in eleven languages and in audio.

Men's Advice Line and ManKind Initiative — both offer confidential support for male and non-binary survivors, including of a same-sex partner. ManKind's helpline runs weekdays 10am–4pm.

Galop — LGBT+ specialist domestic abuse support, run by and for the community.

National Stalking Helpline, run by Suzy Lamplugh Trust, is currently operating nationally on 0808 802 0300 and also offers online contact. 

Karma Nirvana — honour-based abuse and forced marriage. Helpline 0800 5999 247, Monday to Friday 9am–5pm.

Rights of Women — free, confidential legal advice for women on domestic abuse, family law and immigration. Advice lines run at set times; check the website for current hours.

Surviving Economic Abuse — the only UK charity dedicated to economic abuse: controlled access to money, sabotaged credit, debt used as a weapon. Practical guidance rather than just definitions.

Respect Phoneline — for anyone worried about their own abusive or controlling behaviour, or supporting someone who is. 0808 802 4040.

Sisters Uncut — not a service but a feminist direct-action group, campaigning against cuts to domestic violence services since 2014, with active regional groups across the UK. For anyone whose anger about the state of things needs somewhere collective to go.

 

Addiction

Not everyone finds twelve-step programmes helpful, and there are good reasons why fellowship culture or language may not suit everyone. I’m personally a big fan, and speak partly from my own experience of addiction and recovery. Most fellowships now include queer, women/men-only and neurodivergent meetings, although individual groups vary enormously.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) — free, anonymous peer fellowship for anyone wanting to stop drinking.

Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families (ACA) — A free 12-step fellowship for adults affected by growing up with alcoholism, abuse, neglect or other family dysfunction. You do not need to have an addiction yourself, or to have had an alcoholic parent. UK online and in-person meetings are available. Many folk with CPTSD find ACA especially useful. 

Al-Anon Family Groups — Free peer-support meetings for anyone affected by someone else’s drinking, including adults affected by a parent’s alcoholism. UK in-person and online meetings are available.

Narcotics Anonymous (NA) — meetings across the UK for recovery from drug addiction.

Cocaine Anonymous UK — helpline 0800 612 0225, plus face-to-face and online meetings.

Gamblers Anonymous UK — peer fellowship for compulsive gambling.

SMART Recovery UK — a secular, non-12-step alternative: self-management skills for any addictive behaviour, in person and online.

Al-Anon Family Groups — for anyone whose life is or has been affected by someone else's drinking, including Alateen for teenagers.

Families Anonymous — support for families and friends of people who use drugs.

Co-Dependents Anonymous (CoDA) — for anyone working to end patterns of dysfunctional relationships and build healthy ones. Online and in-person UK meetings.

Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA) UK — fellowship for compulsive sexual behaviour.

COSA — for partners, family and friends affected by someone else's compulsive sexual behaviour. The equivalent of Al-Anon for sex addiction.

Sexaholics Anonymous (SA) UK — fellowship for lust, pornography and sex addiction; free UK meetings, abstinence-based.

Outside the fellowship model

Not everything here is twelve-step or peer-led. These are information and treatment-referral services rather than mutual aid groups — useful if fellowship isn't your thing, or alongside it.

FRANK — honest, non-scare-based information on drugs, their effects and the law. Confidential helpline 0300 123 6600 (24hr), live chat, and a service finder for local treatment.

Release — the UK's oldest drugs charity, founded 1967. Free, confidential legal advice on drugs and the law, alongside health and welfare support. Helpline 020 7324 2989.

We Are With You — free, confidential support for drug, alcohol or mental health problems, for you or someone you're worried about. Face-to-face services across England and Scotland, plus webchat.

Adfam — information and support specifically for the friends and family of someone using drugs or alcohol, not just the person using.

GamCare — the National Gambling Helpline, free and 24/7: 0808 8020 133. Support for gamblers and for the people affected by someone else's gambling.

Alcohol Change UK — research-led, non-judgemental information on alcohol harm; independent of the drinks industry.

Naloxone

Naloxone is an emergency medicine that temporarily reverses an opioid overdose and can restore breathing long enough for emergency help to arrive. It comes as a nasal spray or injection, is safe to give if you are unsure whether opioids are involved, and does not require medical training. Free take-home kits and brief training are available through many drug treatment services and needle exchanges; Change Grow Live has a clear guide to finding one.

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Chronic illness

Energy-limiting and overlapping conditions are routinely met with suspicion rather than support, so much of what's here comes from disabled-led organisations rather than purely medical ones.

Chronic Illness Inclusion — a Disabled People's Organisation working on policy and perception around energy-limiting conditions and chronic pain. Political as well as practical.

Action for M.E. — for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).

Fibromyalgia Action UK — run largely by volunteers who themselves have fibromyalgia. Information, support, and a national helpline.

Ehlers-Danlos Support UK — the only UK charity for the Ehlers-Danlos syndromes and hypermobility spectrum disorders. Free advice line, over 50 local support groups.

PoTS UK — for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a common comorbidity with ME/CFS and Long Covid.

Long Covid Support — peer support and advocacy for people living with Long Covid.

Overlapping Illness Alliance — a coalition of the above charities plus Mast Cell Action and Long Covid Kids, working together because these conditions so often overlap and get treated as isolated rather than connected.

Scope — general disability charity; practical advice on benefits, legal matters, employment and equipment when a condition doesn't have its own dedicated organisation.

 

PMDD

Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder is a severe, cyclical, hormone-based mood disorder — not "bad PMS." It isn't part of UK medical training, so misdiagnosis as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder or a personality disorder is common, and getting taken seriously often takes years.

The PMDD Project — the UK's first charity dedicated specifically to PMDD. Awareness, support, and funding research.

IAPMD UK — launched 2026, building the UK arm of the global organisation below. Focused on research, professional education, and improving diagnosis and care pathways here.

IAPMD (International Association for Premenstrual Disorders) — the longer-standing global organisation, patient-founded in 2013. Free information and moderated peer support groups, including ones specifically for partners/caregivers and for those considering or recovering from surgery as a last-line treatment.

NAPS (National Association for Premenstrual Syndromes) — UK, longer running, PMS-focused but also covers PMDD.

Vicious Cycle — patient-led advocacy working to improve clinical standards of care, including through direct engagement with policymakers and health services.

 

Bereavement

After a death by suicide

Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide (SOBS) — 0300 111 5065. Run by the bereaved for the bereaved: nearly all volunteers have lost someone to suicide themselves, including the group facilitators. Peer-led groups face to face and online, a moderated forum, and email support at email.support@uksobs.org. Groups are searchable by postcode. Adults 18+. Listed opening hours vary between sources, so check the site.

General bereavement

Cruse Bereavement Support — the UK's largest bereavement charity, for any death in any circumstance. Freephone helpline 0808 808 1677; face-to-face, group, telephone, email and website support, all free and confidential.

After an animal dies

Grief for an animal is routinely treated as a lesser grief, which means people often carry it alone and apologise for it. It isn't lesser, and none of these services will ask you to justify it.

Blue Cross Pet Loss Support — 0800 096 6606, 8.30am to 8.30pm every day of the year, free and confidential. Phone, email, webchat, and a moderated Facebook group. The most substantial service of its kind in the UK, running since 1994.

Cats Protection Paws to Listen — 0800 024 9494, 9am to 5pm weekdays. Trained volunteer listeners, plus practical information on euthanasia, burial and cremation. Call-back available if the line is busy.

The Ralph Site — not-for-profit, set up by a vet after losing his own cat. Resources and a pet loss forum for when it's the middle of the night.

Animal Samaritans — 0203 745 9859. Free bereavement line, non-judgemental.

 

Dissociation, DPDR and plurality

Unreal — the UK charity for depersonalisation and derealisation, and the only one of its kind. Free information, a peer support programme connecting people internationally, and material for carers and families. Worth knowing about because DPDR is routinely missed, mislabelled as anxiety, or met with blank looks.

The Survivors Trust dissociation-informed helpline — 0808 801 0818. One of very few lines where dissociation won't need explaining first.

RANS — Ritual Abuse Network Scotland, though they work across the UK and with a far wider range of dissociative survivors than the name suggests. They inherited First Person Plural's legacy fund and run the Plural Futures project, including forums for people affected by trauma-related complex dissociation. (Now operating as MAIRSINN — same organisation, new name.)

First Person Plural — closed in 2023 after 26 years, but the site remains as an archive of factsheets, articles and the original Mind booklet on dissociative disorders. It was only guaranteed online until around now, so worth saving anything useful rather than assuming it will be there next year.

ESTD-UK — for finding clinicians who actually work with structural dissociation, and for their practitioner factsheets if you want to hand something to a professional who is out of their depth.

Plural communities

Power to the Plurals — The Plural Association's site. Peer-led, founded 2020, over 250 free resources. Their Plural Spectrum Tool was rebuilt as an interactive quiz in 2026: results save as an image and can be shared with a therapist.

r/plural — the largest open community

The Plural Association community — moderated Discord and monthly Zoom meetups, over 400 members. Paid, with scholarships.

PsychForums – Dissociative Identity Disorder — long-running peer support forum for DID specifically; for people with the diagnosis, loved ones and professionals.

Pluralpedia and Kinhost — plural-led reference sites for vocabulary that moves fast.

 

Distressing psychosis

Hearing Voices Network England — around 180 hearing voices groups nationwide, where voices are explored as meaningful rather than suppressed as symptoms. Most are free.

Intervoice — the international movement, for the wider theory and for groups outside England.

Voice Collective — Mind in Camden's project for children and young people who hear voices or see visions, and for their families. Also good resources for adults who started hearing voices young.

Different framings

ISPS UK — the UK network for psychological and social approaches to psychosis. Blog, events and a conference; a route into a community of clinicians who don't work biomedically.

Soteria Network UK — formed in 2004, promoting drug-free and minimum-medication therapeutic environments as an alternative to inpatient admission. Now partnered with an NIHR research programme exploring whether the NHS could offer this. They're clear that they can't offer individual support, but their resources page is worth a look.

Open Dialogue UK — the Finnish approach that works with the whole network around a person rather than the person alone, now being trialled in parts of the NHS.

 

Spiritual emergency

Some people find their experience is better described as a spiritual crisis than an illness. Naming it that way is not a denial of distress, and it does not preclude also using other kinds of support.

Spiritual Crisis Network — UK-wide, volunteer-run since 2004. Email support from trained volunteers, an online Zoom group monthly, and local peer-led groups including in London. For the London group, contact londonscn@gmx.co.uk.

International Spiritual Emergence Network crisis guide — free PDF, UK edition, inspired by the Icarus Project. Practical tools for staying safe during an episode without necessarily going through services.

 

Peer support, gathered

The peer-led groups above, scattered across sections, gathered in one place:

• Self-harm: Battle Scars, LifeSIGNS, Harmless, the National Self Harm Network forum

• Abuse and sexual violence: Survivors Voices, MACSAS, Survivors Network, Survivors Unite, The Survivors Trust directory, SurvivorsUK

• Addiction: all the fellowships listed above — AA, NA, Cocaine Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, SMART Recovery, Al-Anon, Families Anonymous, ACA, CoDA, SAA, COSA, SA

• Dissociation and plurality: RANS/MAIRSINN, Power to the Plurals, r/plural, The Plural Association community

• Eating Disorders: Beat

• OCD: OCD-UK

• Voices and visions: Hearing Voices Network, Intervoice, Voice Collective

• Spiritual emergency: Spiritual Crisis Network

• Bereavement: SOBS

• PMDD: IAPMD's moderated peer support groups

Out of the Storm — a free forum and information site specifically for survivors of Complex PTSD/complex relational trauma, run by survivors since 2014. No cost to join. The forum itself is at cptsd.org/forum.

Andy's Man Club — free, peer-to-peer talking groups for men 18+, over 300 venues UK-wide plus online, every Monday 7pm, no booking needed. Suicide prevention charity.

Project LETS — A peer-led organisation rooted in disability justice and lived experience of madness, trauma and neurodivergence. Its work focuses on mutual aid, peer support and developing alternatives to systems based primarily on diagnosis, surveillance and professional authority.

Wildflower Alliance — A peer-led community creating alternatives around extreme states, trauma, psychiatric diagnosis and crisis. Its approach to peer support emphasises mutuality, curiosity and relationship rather than assessment or interpretation.

r/CPTSD — a large, active peer support subreddit (nearly half a million members) for people living with complex trauma, and for friends and family too.  Quality varies thread to thread, but often the fastest place to find someone awake at 3am who gets it.

 

Racism and transphobia

Black Minds Matter UK — free, culturally-informed therapy for Black individuals and families, delivered by Black therapists. Referrals are currently paused due to demand outstripping capacity, but the site's resources remain open, and it's worth checking back.

BAATN (Black, African and Asian Therapy Network) — the UK's largest network of therapists of Black, African, South Asian and Caribbean heritage, with a public-facing therapist directory and community events, not just a professional membership body.

Rainbow Noir — Manchester-based, volunteer-led peer support and community action for LGBTQI people of colour, for anyone who's been made to feel like an afterthought in both spaces.

Gendered Intelligence — trans-led, works to increase understanding of gender diversity and support trans people, including a support line for people on NHS gender service waiting lists.

Not a Phase — trans-led national charity for trans+ adults specifically (as distinct from the many trans youth-focused charities), with in-person peer support, social projects and funding for trans-led initiatives across UK cities.

TransActual — practical information and a directory of trans-specific support, run by trans people, including routes into peer support for anyone currently on a gender service waiting list.

Mindline Trans+ — emotional and mental health support helpline for anyone identifying as trans, non-binary or gender-variant, and for their families, friends and colleagues too.

Galop — LGBT+ anti-violence charity; their hate crime helpline (0207 704 2040) and conversion therapy helpline (0800 130 3335) sit alongside the domestic abuse support already listed above.

Healing Justice Ldn — London, community-led health and healing work with Black, Brown, Muslim, working-class and LGBTQI communities, rooted in disability justice and somatic, trauma-informed practice rather than clinical models. Political as well as practical, aimed at repair rather than individual coping alone.

Inclusion London — pan-London disability equality organisation, run by and for Deaf and disabled people. Not a direct service so much as the connective tissue: their DDPO directory can point you to the specific disabled-led organisation in your part of London, and they hold information on reporting disability hate crime.

The Outside Project — the UK's first LGBTIQ+ shelter, community centre and domestic abuse refuge, London. For anyone who's homeless, hidden-homeless, or excluded from other services because of who they are.

Freedom from Torture — therapy and practical support for survivors of torture, across centres including London, Glasgow and Manchester. Not a crisis service, and some centres are currently pausing new referrals due to demand — but worth knowing about and returning to.

Doctors of the World UK — advice on your right to healthcare in the UK regardless of immigration status, including help if you've been refused GP registration or hospital treatment. Advice line 0808 164 7686, Tuesday to Thursday, 10am–12pm.

 

Rights, records and the system

Some people reading this have been harmed by services rather than helped by them. Knowing what you are entitled to does not undo that, but it changes what is available to you next time.

Advance Choice Documents. The Mental Health Act 2025 received Royal Assent in January 2026 and puts ACDs on a statutory footing: NHS England and ICBs must help people make them, and clinicians must have regard to them and give reasons for departing from them. Implementation is phased over several years, so the duty may not have reached your area yet — but you can write one now regardless, and services increasingly expect them. The British Institute of Human Rights has the clearest plain-language explainers.

Anti-Carceral Crisis and Safety Planning — a planning template that names the risks of police and psychiatric intervention rather than pretending they don't exist. Linked from the crisis page.

Mind's legal line — free information on the Mental Health Act, detention, tribunals, consent and community treatment orders.

Rethink Mental Illness advice service — factsheets on almost every part of the system, kept current.

Mental Health Law Online — for when you need the actual law rather than a summary.

Independent Mental Health Advocates (IMHAs) — free, and you are entitled to one if detained or on a CTO. POhWER and VoiceAbility hold most contracts.

Getting your records. You can make a subject access request for your notes; services must respond within one calendar month, free. Reading them can be clarifying and can be painful — it is worth thinking about who will be around when you do.

The Information Commissioner's Office — if your request is ignored, refused without good reason, answered incompletely or answered late, this is where you escalate. Complain to the organisation first, then to the ICO within three months of your last meaningful contact with them. Free, online, and they have template wording you can send. Helpline 0303 123 1113.

Complaints about care itself — PALS first, then the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. Different route from records: the ICO handles your data, the PHSO handles how you were treated.

 

Coming off psychiatric drugs

I'm agnostic about medication itself — which drug, for which person, in which situation, at what point in their life, is not something anyone can answer in the abstract. Sometimes it's a chemical cosh. Sometimes it's what keeps someone alive. Withdrawing suddenly can be super triggering and harmful though so here are some resources.

The Withdrawal Project — Inner Compass Initiative's lay guide to tapering. Thorough, unhurried, and written by people who have done it.

The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines — Horowitz and Taylor. The reference your prescriber may not know exists. Worth naming in an appointment.

RCPsych: stopping antidepressants — official, cautious, and useful precisely because it is official.

Fireweed Collective — harm reduction guides from a healing justice framework.

Surviving Antidepressants — peer support specifically for tapering and withdrawal, run by people who've been through it themselves. Patient-authored, not medical advice, but a substantial and detailed forum built over more than a decade. New registrations are currently limited to a set number per month, so the site may ask you to wait; existing content is open to read regardless.

 

Money, housing and food

Benefits and welfare

Turn2Us benefits calculator — free, anonymous, no login required. Tells you what you may be entitled to and how much. Worth doing even if you think you already know, and worth redoing every six months as rates change.

EntitledTo benefits calculator — a second independent calculator. Worth running both, as they sometimes differ.

Citizens Advice — benefits — for when you need a human to explain it, or help understanding a letter or decision. Free, nationwide, and covers Universal Credit, PIP, housing benefit and more.

Benefits and Work — the most thorough resource for PIP and ESA applications and appeals, written for claimants not professionals. Free newsletter and forum; detailed guides require a small membership fee but are worth it if you're navigating an assessment or appeal.

Turn2Us grants search — as well as benefits, Turn2Us searches charitable grants you may be able to apply for. Often overlooked and genuinely useful.

Disability Rights UK — factsheets and the Disability Rights Handbook.

 

Debt and money

StepChange — free debt advice, online or by phone (0800 138 1111). Non-judgmental, practical, and fee-free. The largest debt charity in the UK and consistently recommended.

National Debtline — free and independent debt advice by phone, webchat, or their online tool My Money Steps (available 24/7). Strong on self-help resources and sample letters if you'd rather manage it yourself.

Citizens Advice — debt and money — debt helpline: 0800 240 4420, open Monday to Friday 9am–8pm, Saturday 9:30am–1pm.

 

Housing

Shelter — get help — free housing advice online, by webchat, or emergency helpline for homelessness, eviction, disrepair, or being at risk. The advice pages cover most situations clearly; the helpline is for emergencies. Note: the helpline can be busy — try the online advice pages first if the situation isn't acute.

Shelter — housing advice pages — rights, renting, eviction, repairs, council housing. One of the most comprehensive free housing resources in the UK. Updated May 2026 to reflect the new Renters' Rights Act.

Citizens Advice — housing — renting, council tax, homelessness, problems where you live.

 

Food

Trussell Trust — find a food bank — postcode search for your nearest food bank. Most require a referral voucher, which can come from a GP, social worker, Citizens Advice, or other local agencies — the food bank's own page will list who can refer in your area.​

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3. Reclaiming, Resisting & Reimagining

Survivor, neurodivergent, Mad, Crip and other ways of understanding distress and difference beyond conventional clinical frameworks. These resources centre lived experience, collective knowledge, culture, history, resistance and the right to make meaning in different ways.

 

Neurodivergent Reclaiming​

Neuroqueer — Nick Walker's site. The terms and definitions page is one of the clearest short statements of the neurodiversity paradigm. Neuroqueer Heresies (2021) collects the essays. The origins of the term are contested: Remi Yergeau has argued it emerged collectively on the NeuroQueer blog and earlier on autistic Usenet forums, and that single-author attribution erases the community that made it.

Kassiane Asasumasu coined neurodivergent and neurodivergence around 2000, and caregiver benevolence in 2014. The attribution gets lost constantly, and neither term was ever meant as a synonym for autistic.

Monotropism — Dinah Murray, Wenn Lawson and Mike Lesser's theory, made by autistic people about autistic experience rather than the reverse.

The Double Empathy Problem — Damian Milton — Milton's influential challenge to the idea that autistic social difficulty can simply be located as an empathy deficit inside autistic people. Instead, misunderstanding can be reciprocal between people with very different ways of experiencing and communicating, shifting attention from individual deficit towards the relationship between differently positioned people.

NeuroClastic — autistic-run publication with a wide range of contributors.

Autistic Hoya — Lydia X. Z. Brown — disability justice at the intersections.

Authoring Autism — Remi Yergeau — on rhetoric, and on being denied the status of someone who means things.

Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking — the Autistic Self Advocacy Network's anthology.

Aucademy and the Participatory Autism Research Collective — the UK end: autistic-led education and research.

Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism — Robert Chapman — a radical history of how the idea of the "normal" mind developed alongside capitalism and productivity, and an argument for neurodiversity as a politics of collective liberation rather than simply greater acceptance of individual difference.

 

Mad Pride & Mad Culture

Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture (2000) — edited by Ted Curtis, Robert Dellar, Esther Leslie and Ben Watson. Out of print, but worth hunting down.

The UnRecovery Star — a single image that makes the argument faster than any essay: distress located in housing, poverty, racism, sexism and benefit sanctions rather than in a faulty person. Free, downloadable and Creative Commons licensed.

Asylum Magazine — the magazine for democratic psychiatry, running since 1986 and still going. A brilliant community resource.

Mad Pride has been both a political movement and a cultural one: reclaiming words such as mad, challenging shame and psychiatric authority, and creating spaces for humour, art, anger, solidarity and collective identity.

 

Mad zines & DIY culture

There is also a long tradition of Mad people making our own scruffy, funny, furious and beautiful publications — knowledge that does not have to wait for permission from journals, services or universities.

Mad Kin Zine — a collaborative zine by Mad people and allies about the kinship and alternatives we create outside psychiatric spaces to keep one another safe. Art, archival material, practical knowledge and political imagination sit together rather than being separated into "clinical" and "creative" forms.

Psych Survivor Zine / Psych Survivor Archive — an ongoing survivor-created archive and zine publishing Mad art and first-person work. The wider project describes itself as a living memorial in which psychiatric survivors create our own record rather than leaving that history solely to psychiatry.

Mad Menu Zine — created through Mad Covid: 60 illustrated pages of food ideas for times when being Mad makes shopping, cooking or washing up difficult. Funny, practical and resolutely un-clinical; available free digitally, including a plain-text version.

Madness Network News archive — the digitised archive of the radical psychiatric-survivor publication Madness Network News. Original issues are preserved alongside accessible transcriptions, providing a remarkable record of Mad organising, resistance and culture.

 

Mad Studies

Mad Studies Network — an international network connecting Mad Studies scholarship, activism, groups, courses and resources. Mad Studies centres Mad and psychiatric-survivor knowledge and history, including questions about who gets to produce knowledge about madness and whose accounts are treated as authoritative.

Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies — Brenda A. LeFrançois, Robert Menzies and Geoffrey Reaume (eds.) — an important early collection bringing together survivor scholarship, activism, history and critical work on psychiatric power.

Mad Studies is not simply the academic study of mental health. At its most interesting, it reverses the usual direction of expertise: Mad people and psychiatric survivors produce knowledge about madness, services, culture, history and power rather than appearing only as patients, research participants or case material.

 

Hearing Voices & Unusual Experiences

Hearing Voices Network England — part of the international Hearing Voices Movement. Rather than assuming voices must have one medical explanation, the movement supports people to explore our own meanings and relationships with voices and other unusual experiences. It also connects people with peer groups across England.

Intervoice — the international Hearing Voices Movement, connecting voice-hearers, groups and resources across countries and cultures.

 

Survivor Knowledge & History

Survivors History Group — Andrew Roberts's archive, begun in 2004 to rescue the physical history of the mental patients' movement from the skip. Timelines, documents and indexes of survivor history in Asylum and Openmind. Nothing else quite like it exists.

MPU Archives — the Mental Patients Union's papers, digitised through a collaboration between Andrew Roberts, a founding MPU member, and artist Ker Wallwork. The MPU was founded in 1973 at Paddington Day Hospital, following the Scottish Union of Mental Patients, and became an important part of the emerging British psychiatric-survivor movement.

Oor Mad History — a survivor-led community history project based at CAPS Independent Advocacy in Scotland, reclaiming and preserving the history of collective advocacy and Mad activism. Its archive includes oral histories, publications, photographs, posters and other material documenting the Lothian survivor movement from the 1980s onwards.

Bishopsgate Institute Survivors Network Archive — an extraordinary physical collection documenting different strands of the UK mental-health survivor movement, including Survivors Speak Out, the Mental Patients Union, survivor magazines, campaign materials, poetry and correspondence.

Self-Harm: Perspectives from Personal Experience (1994), Louise Roxanne Pembroke (ed.) — a landmark survivor-led collection in which people who self-harmed produced their own accounts of what self-harm meant and challenged explanations based on attention-seeking, pathology and assumed suicidal intent. It also developed practical demands for more humane treatment, particularly in Accident & Emergency departments.

On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System — Judi Chamberlin (1978) — one of the foundational texts of the psychiatric-survivor movement and of patient-controlled alternatives.

 

Mad Activism, Community & Peer-led Alternatives

StopSIM — a coalition led by Mad and disabled activists that campaigned against Serenity Integrated Mentoring, a model bringing policing into the care of people described as "high intensity users". The campaign argued that criminalising and restricting people in distress was incompatible with care, and became a striking example of survivor activism successfully challenging mental-health policy. The coalition has since disbanded, but its site remains an important record of the campaign.

Stop Oxevision — a patient-led campaign opposing the use of Oxevision/LIO video-surveillance technology in psychiatric inpatient bedrooms and campaigning around consent, privacy, safety and the replacement of human contact with remote monitoring. The campaign began in 2023 and continues to document where the technology is used and where NHS trusts have removed it.

National Survivor User Network (NSUN) — a membership organisation for people and groups with lived experience of mental ill-health, distress and trauma; newsletters, funding and a route into collective work.

Recovery in the Bin — critical theorist and activist collective, funny and unsparing about what "recovery" has been made to mean. Their key principles set out why "unrecovered" can be a legitimate political self-definition rather than a failure.

Mad Covid — survivor-led and born out of the pandemic. The site is now kept as an archive; the projects are no longer running.

Project LETS — peer-led and rooted in disability justice and lived experience of madness, trauma and neurodivergence. Its work focuses on mutual aid, peer support and developing alternatives to systems based primarily on diagnosis and professional authority.

Wildflower Alliance — a peer-led community creating alternatives around extreme states, trauma, psychiatric diagnosis and crisis. Its approach to peer support emphasises mutuality, curiosity and relationship rather than assessment or interpretation.

 

Disability Justice & Crip Culture

Disability Visibility Project — founded by disabled activist and writer Alice Wong, this project preserves and amplifies disabled people's stories, culture, politics and oral histories. A particularly rich place for first-person disability writing and perspectives rarely represented in mainstream health material.

#CripplePunk — a movement and culture begun on Tumblr in 2014 by Tyler Trewhella as a refusal of the respectable, inspirational or palatable disabled person: disabled anger, pride, solidarity, mobility aids, messiness and unapologetic existence.

Sins Invalid — disability justice performance project. Their Disability Justice Primer sets out the ten principles of disability justice, centring disabled people of colour and queer and trans disabled people rather than treating disability as a single-issue identity.

Sick Woman Theory — Johanna Hedva — free to read in full, and one of the best introductions to these ideas for someone encountering them for the first time: what does political resistance mean when someone cannot get out of bed?

Fundamental Principles of Disability (1976), UPIAS and the Disability Alliance — one of the foundational texts from which the social model of disability developed: disability understood not simply as something located inside an impaired body, but as something socially produced through exclusion and inaccessible environments.

Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice — Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha — essays on disability justice, care, access, interdependence and collective survival.

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) — disabled-led campaigning against austerity, welfare cuts and policies that disproportionately harm disabled people.

Together these traditions shift disability away from an individual story of defect or overcoming and towards access, interdependence, culture, collective survival, political power and resistance to ableism.

 

Healing Justice

Healing Justice Ldn — London-based, community-led work building alternatives around health and healing, rooted in racial justice, disability justice, abolition, lived experience and collective care. Its work connects personal and embodied experience with the social and structural conditions in which people are trying to survive and heal.

Fireweed Collective — a healing-justice organisation connecting emotional distress with racism, disability, poverty, gender, migration and other structural conditions, and developing peer support and resources outside narrowly clinical models.

Healing justice asks a different kind of question from individual treatment alone: what conditions, relationships, resources and forms of collective care allow people and communities to survive and flourish? It has roots in Black feminist, racial-justice and movement traditions and connects healing with struggles against structural violence.

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A note on my own position

My own work is concerned with increasing epistemic justice and human rights — including access to the hermeneutic (or understandings) resources we need to make sense of our own lives. I don't think there is one framework we ought to use. We might understand our experiences through a medical model, trauma, Mad or survivor politics, neurodivergence, punk, Crip culture, spirituality, or some mixture of these. Whatever is cool. What matters to me is that we, as survivors and neurodivergent folk, get to decide which meanings fit us. But that can only be a meaningful choice if alternatives are available to us. We cannot be authors of our own stories if we are only ever given one language in which to understand ourselves. So this section isn't about replacing one orthodoxy with another. It is about widening the available meanings, histories, communities and ways of knowing, so that we can make genuinely informed choices about how we understand ourselves.

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Love, Dr Jay x​​​

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If you come across anything that would be useful to add to this resources page as part of our mutual aid, please let me know. Ditto if anything is useful or not useful on this page.