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Bio
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Craig Wagner is a mental health author, speaker, researcher, blogger, and activist.
He helps people recover from mental distress through Integrative Mental Health, a paradigm that combines the best of conventional psychiatry with evidence-based complementary and alternative options.
Within the mainstream, he works with major mental health organizations to broaden the acceptance of nondrug approaches. As a trainer and conference workshop leader for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), he has spoken often on Integrative Mental Health topics. As a featured speaker, he has delivered full-day continuing education for the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association. He has also supported the American Psychiatric Association's Caucus on Complementary and Integrative Medicine, summarizing the latest nondrug research for psychiatrists.
Outside the mainstream, he works to advance nondrug approaches at a grass-roots level. As a leader, he has been adviser and board member of an Integrative Mental Health training organization (IMHU) and Executive Director of a leading alternative mental health web platform and practitioner forum (Safe Harbor).
As a communications specialist, he raises awareness, including helping the producers of CrazyWise craft their message for a feature-length documentary about the transformative potential of psychological crisis. As a support group leader, he has aided adolescent siblings of people with mental health diagnoses better cope. He also blogs for Mad in America, the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care, and Onward Mental Health, being one of many voices helping to rethink psychiatry.
His book, Choices in Recovery, has been called "an important contribution to psychiatric care" and "a book that will save lives." It is the first to present the full breath of evidence-based nondrug treatments in an easily understandable form for those in mental distress and their loved ones. He collaborates and shares his insights on ResearchGate, a social network for scientists and researchers.
Wagner brings a blend of evidence-based pragmatism, real-life experience, and well-grounded hope to the challenge of mental health recovery. His work is infused with a deep respect for those in mental distress, their loved ones, and the professionals who serve them.
His extended family has witnessed mental health issues up close and personal. They have experienced the dramatic mood swings of bipolar, the disembodied voices and delusions of schizophrenia, the black dog of depression, the spiral of alcoholism, the gripping fear of phobias, and the last resort of suicide attempts. Wagner entered the field of Integrative Mental Health to help a loved-one in psychiatric crisis. He chose to remain there when he discovered the tremendous unrealized potential of scientifically validated nondrug approaches.
Previously, he was a marketing communications executive in the high-tech industry and continues to offer communications services through an independent consultancy. Craig has also been president of a nonprofit that awarded grants to grass-roots environmental organizations funded through the music of contributing artists. He has a BS and an MBA and lives with his family on a small farm outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan.