Mental health consultant and lived-experience advisor for productions. Specialisms: bipolar disorder, major depression, mania, psychosis, and spiritual emergency.Available for:- Writers' room consultancy: script accuracy, sensitivity passes, episode and recovery arcs- On-set actor advisor for performers playing characters with mental illness- On-camera expert for documentaries, features, and talking-head segments- Peer-support and alternatives-to-hospitalization advisor for acute-crisis scenes- Spiritual emergency consultant for transformative narratives often misdiagnosed as psychosis- Crisis-portrayal review: psychotic breaks, manic episodes, suicidal ideation, hospitalization, restraint, deescalationNDA-friendly. COI on request. Day rate, half-day, and per-script options. Remote nationwide and on-location across NJ and the tri-state.
Lived experience: I've personally navigated bipolar disorder, including manic and depressive episodes, psychotic features, and acute crisis states. I've also experienced what Stanislav Grof termed spiritual emergency: transformative states often misdiagnosed as psychosis. I draw a careful distinction between the two and can speak to both with first-person specificity.What I bring:- Authenticity without retraumatization. I can coach an actor through what mania actually feels like - the pressured speech, the grandiosity, the sleep displacement - without leaving them stuck in the affect afterwards. The same approach applies to depressive episodes, psychotic features, suicidal ideation, and post-episode recovery.- Crisis scenes without cliche. Most depictions of a "psychotic break" or "manic episode" rely on a handful of recycled tropes. I can walk a writers' room or director through what actually happens: the variation, the warning signs, the family dynamics, the recovery arcs that don't resolve in a single act break.- Alternatives to hospitalization. There's a peer-support model and a recovery-oriented systems-of-care framework most productions are unaware of when writing acute crisis. A character who has a "break" doesn't necessarily go to an ER. The alternatives - peer respites, in-home stabilization, intentional peer-support exchanges - make for more truthful and more interesting drama.- On-camera comfort. Available as a talking-head expert for documentaries, news, and reaction-piece work. Past on-camera and public-speaking experience available on request.Substance use experience: not a primary specialism, but personal-experience empathy and identification with addiction recovery contexts is part of my background.NDA-friendly. References available.