Will Hall (born 1966), is a mental health advocate, writer, and counselor. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, he is recognized internationally as a leading organizer with the psychiatric survivors movement. In 2001 he co-founded the Freedom Center and in 2005 became a co-coordinator of The Icarus Project. He has consulted with Mental Disability Rights International, the Family Outreach and Response Program, and the Federal Office on Violence Against Women. Hall hosts the FM radio program Madness Radio, syndicated on the Pacifica Network, and in 2009 co-founded Portland Hearing Voices. He lives in Portland Oregon, where he studies Process Oriented Psychology and has a counseling practice.
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After graduating from the Community Studies program at the University of California Santa Cruz in 1986, Hall worked for the Santa Cruz Sun newspaper as a staff reporter and for the Resource Center for Nonviolence's Brazil program. In 1988 he became a Co-Director of the Earth Island Institute's Environmental Project on Central America, and traveled to El Salvador and Nicaragua during the civil wars in those countries.
In 1990 Hall began to suffer a deterioration of his mental and emotional health, and was involuntarily committed to San Francisco General Hospital in 1992. He spent a year in the public mental health system, including restraints, solitary confinement, and more than 2 months in locked wards at Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute. He was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder schizophrenia.
After leaving the traditional mental health system in 1993 Hall stopped taking psychiatric medications and began to reestablish his wellbeing using holistic health, spiritual training, and social supports. In 1996 he worked in the planning department of the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, and in 1997 became at student at the California Institute of Integral Studies. After another crisis in 1999, he left school and spent six months at the alternative residential facility Burch House in New Hampshire. In 2000 Hall moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, where he worked for five years at Broadside Bookshop.
In 2001 he began speaking publicly about his mental health experiences, and with Oryx Cohen co-founded and did peer counseling at the Freedom Center, a support, advocacy, and activism community run by people with psychiatric diagnoses. In 2004 he joined the co-coordinator collective of The Icarus Project and is author of the Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs. He is Director of Portland Hearing Voices in Portland Oregon, and has worked as a consultant for Mental Disability Rights International and done talks and trainings in 7 countries. Will is also a therapist in private practice based on Process Oriented Psychology.
In 2000 Hall wrote about the pirate radio movement for GovWorks.com, and in 2002 joined activist Ed Russell to initiate a volunteer run, low-power Pacifica affiliate FM community radio station in Florence, Massachusetts, Valley Free Radio. He is host of Madness Radio an interview format radio show begun on VFR and now syndicated on the Pacifica Network, including KBOO in Oregon.