Synopsis

This work is a meditation on mental health in America and explores the deeply embedded roots linking trauma, systemic oppression, and institutionalization. While Ms. Psiuk does not have a first-hand account of the unique challenges that communities of color face, it is her duty as a white therapist to think critically about the emotional challenges related to living in a world with racism.  This book, in no way, represents the entirety of trauma caused by oppression. It represents the author's point of view based on the sole criteria of the emotional response she has to this crisis. 

This work aims to serve as a therapeutic resource that draws awareness to how trauma is perpetuated and punished binding the US in a cycle of creating and maintaining personal and societal suffering.  It is a meditation on humanity and a call to think critically and honestly about the intersectionality of race, poverty, and mental illness. 

100% of net proceeds from the pre-order campaign will go to the NAACP and the Black Mental Health Alliance for Education & Consultation.  

Outline

Forward: 

- Overview of the criminalization of mental health,  the trauma to prison pipeline, origins of psychotherapy, racial bias and white privilege in mental health care.  

-Definition of terms including double consciousness, implicit bias, Dr. Joy DeGruy's Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome, survivalism, context talk, intersectionality, decentralizing whiteness, calling in vs. calling out, and Teju Cole's The White Savior Industrial Complex. 

-Details the controversial nature of therapist self-disclosure from early origins of psychotherapy to contemporary thought.  

Part I

Chapter 1: Ex-lax, the Bible, and a circus. 

Author's childhood and adolescence.  

Chapter 2: Severe Recurrent Depression: The Sequel that No One Wanted. 

- Understanding mental illness from the inside. 

Chapter 3: All Love Becomes Service: On Becoming a Therapist

-Reflections on wounding as a white therapist working cross-culturally.

- Exploration on building resiliency for race talk including interventions based on Marsha Linehan's Dialectical Behavioral Therapy model.   

Part II: 

Chapter 4:  Intergenerational Trauma and Medical Experimentation: Detachment From Suffering. 

- Exploring historical dismissal of symptomatology via medical apartheid. 

- Systemic oppression and unconscious participation.  

Chapter 5:  Institutional Racial Bias in Mental Health Care

- How systems overlook cycles of trauma and violence.   

- When race, class, and mental illness collide highlighting POC voices. 

- Trauma and mental illness in the context of history, society, and public policy.

Chapter 6: Trauma to Prison Pipeline

- What is a pipeline?  

- Exploration and unpacking of disproportionate representations of communities of color in institutionalizations.

Part III: 

Chapter 9: A Playlist For Awakening: Awareness, community-building, remembering humanity. 

-Highlighting initiatives, organizations, startups, community based national and international models of mental health working to reduce the number of people with mental illness in jails and prisons.  

- Towards ratification of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

- Sustaining ongoing awakening processes and reclaiming human rights values.  

Chapter 10: Call to Action

-Daily interventions for interrupting the cycle of trauma and systemic oppression.   

-What to do if you or someone you know is struggling with mental illness or in crisis. 

Audience

The Therapist Next Door's target audience is those:

- Seeking to make a palpable change in their lives through deeper self knowledge and systemic awareness. 

- Interested in gaining new insight into mental health in the US. 

- Interested in learning actionable steps to prevent and heal trauma, decentralize whiteness, disrupt institutional racial bias, and decriminalize mental health. 

- Those invested in mental health wellness, personal, and social improvement. 

Readers most likely to purchase psychologically-minded books are those with a sincere desire to make personal and systemic change a reality.

According to Time magazine, many of the best nonfiction books of 2019 ask readers to make a change.  Books that give readers the context needed to make better sense of the world around are trending. 

2018 saw steady audiobook sale improvements, and studies show this will continue.  Trends show readers do not have time to read.  Millennial book lovers currently spend around three hours a day consuming content on their phone.

In response to this trend and to increase accessibility, The Therapist Next Door will be offered in audio format. 

Oprah Magazine states, "Make room on your shelves for memoirs, true crime, and feminist classics."  This book touches on all three: memoir, themes of a 'criminal' nature with a feminist theoretical lens. 

Trends show authors who market their books often and early in the lifecycle will see success. The Therapist Next Door's pre-sale campaign will build anticipation and awareness while engaging and building a targeted community of readers. 

Trends show authors are relying more on niche readers with like-minded communities.  This book distills to a specific sub-genre of mental health, social justice and activism. Targeting readers in a sub-genre increases chances for success given there is less competition, and the knowledge that people like the subject matter covered.  Ms. Psiuk belongs to a broad network of like-minded communities from progressive and cutting edge mental health workers to spiritual leaders and social justice activists.  This book will be marketed consistently throughout its campaign through publishing.  

Racial inequity in America is, unfortunately trending.  Once reaching a threshold, change becomes a must.  That time is now.  

Promotion

Ms. Psiuk will be promoting the book on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, where she has over 2,000 connections.  

The first 25 people to share this campaign on their social media sites will receive a mention in the book. 

Ms. Psiuk will also email personal contact connections, which number in the thousands.  The Therapist Next Door Facebook page was created where she will direct advertisements for the book.  The page currently has over 200 likes.  

https://www.facebook.com/alipsiuk/ 

Ms. Psiuk recently appeared on a therapist development podcast called Rebel Therapist where she highlighted the book's pre-sale launch.  Total number of downloads for Rebel Therapist: 133,643 and each episode reaches 1300-1600 listeners over time.  The episode featuring Ms. Psiuk airs August 13, 2019 and can be heard on iTunes.  She is scheduled to appear on upcoming mental health podcasts, where she will be promoting the book. 

Ms. Psiuk is connected to an extensive community of psychotherapists, psychiatrists, community mental health workers, physicians, feminists, social and restorative justice advocates passionate about The Therapist Next Door's subject matter.  

100% of net proceeds from the pre-order campaign will go to the NAACP and the Black Mental Health Alliance for Education & Consultation, Inc. 

Video Strategy: Length 2:45.  

Professional editing offered pro-bono by Kevin Martin, YouTube vlogger @30andawakeup.  

Competition

This book spans the genres of psychological memoir and social justice advocacy: 

 1. Insane (Alisa Roth)

Print Length: 287 pages
Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (April 3, 2018)
Publication Date: April 3, 2018
Sold by: Hachette Book Group
Language: English
ASIN: B074M6FZXQ

From Amazon.com: "Alisa Roth goes deep inside the criminal justice system to show how and why it has become a warehouse where inmates are denied proper treatment, abused, and punished in ways that make them sicker."

The Therapist Next Door differs in its focus on racial bias in US systems and the ways this creates and sustains trauma.  This book differs in that it explores the underlying causes of the rising numbers of people with mental illness, exploring intergenerational trauma and systemic oppression and will provide alternative voices from various sectors on approaching alternatives to incarceration.  

2. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Michelle Alexander)

Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: The New Press (January 16, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1595586431
ISBN-13: 978-1595586438

From Amazon.com: "With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that 'we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.' By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness."

This book was inspired by and serves to continue the dialogue on Alexander's work.  This book will focus on mental health, specifically how trauma is compounded and subsequently punished within our current model.  

3. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (Joy a Degruy) 

Paperback: 252 pages
Publisher: Joy Degruy Publications Inc; Revised ed. edition (September 11, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0985217278
ISBN-13: 978-0985217273

From Amazon.com: "..Dr. DeGruy encourages African Americans to view their attitudes, assumptions, and behaviors through the lens of history and so gain a greater understanding of how centuries of slavery and oppression have impacted people of African descent in America."

This book pays homage to Dr. DeGruy's work and explores how we can move as a nation from diagnosis of current human rights violations to culturally competent, socially and morally just interventions.  This book offers practical tools for what each reader can do to decrease the perpetuation of trauma caused by racial bias and systemic oppression and increase awareness around unconscious participation with the current model.  

4. Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness (Pete Earley)

Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Berkley; 1 edition (April 3, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0425213897
ISBN-13: 978-0425213896

From Amazon.com: "This is the Earley family's compelling story, a troubling look at bureaucratic apathy and the countless thousands who suffer confinement instead of care, brutal conditions instead of treatment, in the "revolving doors" between hospital and jail. With mass deinstitutionalization, large numbers of state mental patients are homeless or in jail-an experience little better than the horrors of a century ago."

The Therapist Next Door differs in balancing memoir and investigation and grapples honestly with the legal dilemmas posed by mental illness.  This book explains how institutionalization hurts more people than it helps and offers viable, community oriented replacements.

5. The School-To-Prison Pipeline: A Comprehensive Assessment (Christopher A. Mallett)

Paperback: 222 pages
Publisher: Springer Publishing Company; 1 edition (August 17, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0826194583
ISBN-13: 978-0826194589

From Amazon.com: "The expanded use of zero-tolerance policies and security measures in schools has exponentially increased arrests and referrals to the juvenile courts. This is the first truly comprehensive assessment of the 'school-to-prison pipeline' a term that refers to the increased risk for certain individuals, disproportionately from minority and impoverished communities, to end up ensnared in the criminal justice system because of excessively punitive disciplinary policies in schools."

This book differs in that it focuses on the trauma to prison pipeline, explores community building, and challenging the current model of criminalizing mental health.

 6. GIrl, Interrupted (Susanna Kaysen)

Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Vintage (April 19, 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679746048
ISBN-13: 978-0679746041

From Amazon.com: "Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a 'parallel universe' set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery."

The Therapist Next Door differs in that it aims to decentralize whiteness and advocate for human rights while exploring institutionalization. This book contains self-actualization and a roadmap for how each reader can continue to make a positive impact on the US mental health and historical racial inequity crisis. 

7. No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America (Ron Powers)

Print Length: 385 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0316341177
Publisher: Hachette Books; 1 edition (March 21, 2017)
Publication Date: March 21, 2017
Sold by: Hachette Book Group
Language: English
ASIN: B01GQIY9HY

From Amazon.com: "From the centuries of torture of "lunatiks" at Bedlam Asylum to the infamous eugenics era to the follies of the anti-psychiatry movement to the current landscape in which too many families struggle alone to manage afflicted love ones, Powers limns our fears and myths about mental illness and the fractured public policies that have resulted."

The Therapist Next Door differs in its elucidation of the challenges of today's-street level law enforcement and offer ways each reader can support those struggling with mental illness at various levels of intervention.