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Fred Vars

Fred Vars

Law professor at University of Alabama School of Law; author of "Through the Fire: How People with Mental Illness Are Empowering Each Other"

Jun 16, 2026

18:06
Okay.
18:06
You know, people get unhoused for lots of different reasons.
18:09
But then, of course, being unhoused can actually exacerbate or cause mental illness.
18:14
It doesn't always go, you know, um, in the direction of having a mental illness causes people to become unhoused.
18:21
So coming at it from the direction of, uh, of mental illness though, I sort of started talking to people in the peer movement, people who, you know, have lived experience of mental illness who are working to help others, and pretty quickly came upon a definition of recovery that really stuck with me: living the life that you want.
18:42
Right? It's not about managing your symptoms.
18:45
It's not about staying out of the hospital, um, staying off the street.
19:26
You've mentioned peer recovery, and for the, uh, the listeners that don't know what peer recovery is, can you give us a little more explanation on that?

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