Unglamourous Expertise: Recovery from Acute Psychosis to Reflections on System Change

A conversation with Lee Davis, Alameda County Mental Health Advisory Board

Season 3 | Episode 1 | March 12, 2022

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Lee Davis is currently the chair of the Alameda County Mental Health Advisory Board. In her official bio, she indicates that she is a Civil Engineer and Journeyman Electrician by profession. She comes to her work on the Advisory Board as a woman with lived experience of a mood disorder.  

In this interview, we explore three themes about which Lee is passionate:  

1. The case for involuntary treatment

2. The lack of capacity in our so-called continuum of care

3. Her assertion that the failure to invest in the requisite infrastructure to treat people and promote their recovery is morally wrong and socially debilitating

In addition, we explore Lee’s extraordinary life journey, about which she writes with remarkable vulnerability in her blogs:

• Being Bipolar. Maybe it is my unisex name. Maybe it is… | by Lee Andrea Davis | Medium

• The Continuum of Consciousness; a Bipolar woman’s perspective on Delusions | by Lee Andrea Davis | Medium

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Resources for this episode:

• Alameda County Families Advocating for the Seriously Mentally Ill

• Link to the annual report for the Alameda County Mental Health Advisory Board

Articles about the February 2022 sleep-in organized by FASMI with which Lee was involved:

• Families of the Mentally Ill Call for Better Treatment Not Better Jails in Alameda County – CBS San Francisco (cbslocal.com)

• Oakland: Protesters sleep on sidewalk, demand mental health care (mercurynews.com)