2025 Redefining Crazy: Rewriting the Rules
Join us as we continue to challenge perceptions and inspire change in mental health at our annual RCC conference.
About the Conference
The Mental Health Association of San Francisco proudly presents our fifth annual conference: “2025 Redefining Crazy: Rewriting the Rules”. The Redefining Crazy Conference is a gathering focused on challenging traditional perceptions and approaches to mental health. It aims to explore innovative strategies, empower individuals with lived experience, and foster collaboration among mental health experts, advocates, and policymakers to create positive change in the field.
Registration includes: breakfast, lunch, and an evening reception with food and drinks.
MAY 14-16, 2025
The Grand Hyatt Hotel
345 Stockton St
San Francisco, CA 94108
Keynote Speakers
We are honored to announce our main keynote speakers for this year's RCC!
Presentations
We are still in the process of finalizing our full speaker lineup of thought leaders, industry experts, and change-makers who will bring dynamic perspectives and meaningful discussions to the conference.
Now is the perfect time to join us as a sponsor and align your brand with this exciting event that fosters impactful conversations and lasting change.
Past Year Themes & Tracks
Tracks
Hoarding Disorder & Collecting Behaviors
Peer to Peer - Weaving Our Own Safety Net
Fostering Peer Success - Tools for Every Industry
Peer Responses - Models for Prevention, Crisis & Recovery
Our 2024 Conference: “Redefining Crazy: It’s the System, Not the People,” was truly a powerful mental health community experience. April of 2024 marked MHASF’s first in-person conference in five years—and it was overwhelming to bring together peer leaders, advocates, community-based providers, stakeholders, tech innovators, and government officials. Together in a collaborative and actionable learning environment we convened to advance strategies of stigma reduction, care reform, and peer support in our mental health system. This three day conference was a vibrant symposium of ideas and inspiration, all thanks to the tireless efforts and committed experience of our community.
Our keynote presenters represented a full array of mental health, from the arts to the public sector. On day one, attendees were captivated with filmmaker, author, and activist Sera Davidow, as she illuminated the ways in which society vastly underestimates the power of loss of power and the devastating impact of treatment systems in conversation with Cherene Caraco, a psychiatric, trauma and suicide attempt survivor.
Sera Davidow is the Director of the Wildflower Alliance (a peer-to-peer support and training organization) which has received international recognition by the World Health Organization (WHO) the United Nations for providing exemplary, rights-based crisis alternatives. Wildflower Alliance is recognized across the US for their leadership and model setting Peer Support, Advocacy, and Training programs; their practices have gained widespread adoption specifically through their publication Peer Respite Handbook: A Guide to Understanding, Building, and Sustaining Peer Respite and Alternatives to Suicide trainings.
Cherene Allen-Caraco founded and is the CEO of Promise Resource Network, a non-profit designed and led by people most directly impacted by suicide attempts, labels of mental illness, incarceration, houselessness, overdose, and forced psychiatric treatment. PRN now operates 21 programs spanning mental health recovery, substance use recovery, harm reduction, housing, and jail/prison diversion including model peer respite programs and North Carolina's statewide warmline.
The following day, Director of the San Francisco Office of Transgender Initiatives, Honey Mahogany, presented an engaging historical reflection on how systems of mental health in San Francisco benefit from the advocacy of communities directly impacted.
Tracks
Hoarding & Cluttering
Communities Reclaiming Wellness
Tracks
Hoarding & Cluttering
Opportunities in the “New Normal”
Communities Reclaiming Wellness
Tracks
Progress Not Perfection
Collecting Souls
Healing Treasures & Tragedies
