Vera A. Muñiz-Saurré

Vera A. Muñiz-Saurré, CPS, MPH (they/she/éle/ella) is a nonbinary, queer, mixed, Peruvian, masters-level public health professional with Spanish and Indigenous Andean ancestry who works on peer-focused, grant-funded projects through the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and McLean Hospital. Vera is diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a survivor of conversion therapy targeting their sexuality, and identifies as mad and a psychiatric survivor.

Starting in 2017, Vera helped found and admin the Psychosis Spectrum Discord and still helps maintain that community! Vera’s ideology and public health approach centers abolition of long-standing oppressive systems, investment in harm reduction-based support services, and reindigenization of academic epistemology, in both theory and application, through explicit centering of indigenous knowledge systems in their approach to qualitative data collection (storytelling).

Vera graduated with their Bachelor of Arts in Psychology; their Master of Public Health in Community Assessment, Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation from Boston University; and is in the process of applying to PhD programs with the goal of expanding Mad Studies and Peer Support into US graduate academic research systems. Vera uses what they learned working in public health, mental health research, and as a community organizer to strengthen community, address social determinants that create poor health outcomes, and create spaces that facilitate dialogue centering people with lived experience of marginalization through a framework of compassionate community mutual support.