#psychiatric survivors movement

[iphigeniacomplex]

My name is Camille. I am a born transgendered woman. When I was a child I said that I was a girl but the world called me a "faggot." Under the sky of pain called psychiatry I was locked away for many years and had the requisite tortures: the terror of electroshock, my bones broken, my body drugged and raped. I was not raised as a gender but as a bug of a child to be smashed. I am nobody's victim. My body belongs to me & so does my holy brain. I am the ghost of the untapped conscience of shrinks, a lurking justice, a part of the gathering truth that is rising with a common voice out of the wake of their evil blue fire. Transsexuals are born into the book of labels. We may be genetic but we are not genetically defective sub-human creatures. By the very nature of our difference, the independence of our alien spirituality, and the passion of the power of our will, we are a threat to the ruling delusions of the mental death profession. No one has our permission to debate the validity of our existence, to define our reality, to dismiss our pain, and to name us. We name ourselves. If you could look into the collective genetic memory of your humanity you would find us in the rivers of your dreams, for we were always here, we were here when Earth was a green spirit. We were a natural occurrence in a singing world. In times of absolute horror and destruction I wish for you all the transformational creativity of an utterly beautiful madness, and I offer you the blessing of a holy human freak.

"Why A Transgendered Woman Calls for Psychiatry's Destruction" by Camille Moran, published in the Fall 1993 issue of Dendron.

[traumata-heart]

Madness, Meaning and The Mad Movement. Why should you care?

Matthew Jackman, founder of The Australian Centre for Living Experience

[devinsturk]

Mad Thought: Psychiatry, Tell me the Truth

I find hypotheses about faulty neurotransmitters and genetic biochemistry and to be dreadfully uninteresting.  Psychiatry, tell me the truth.  I am waiting for you to say what I already know:  That help is so intertwined with harm.  That your pills can’t patch these wounds.  That my pain is undyingly political.  

a 50-word micro essay by Devin S. Turk

[starblaster]

October 9th is Psychiatric Survivor Pride Day

“The problems of the ex-patient are more subtle but no less pressing. Many ex-patients try to cope with what has happened to them by pretending that the experience never occurred. However, because the experience of having once been a mental patient teaches you to think of yourself as less than human, this is not a satisfactory solution. People feel emotions. They are justifiably happy or sad, angry, calm, elated, and so forth. As patients, however, we were taught to think of ourselves as permanently crippled, and we tend to react to the normal ups and downs of life as affirmations of our secret deformity. In addition, society imposes penalties upon ex-patients which affect you whether or not you acknowledge your identity. For the rest of your life, you will lie on applications for jobs, schools, and driver's licenses, and worry about being found out. Your friends and acquaintances will be divided into two groups, those who know and those who don't, and it will always be necessary to watch what you say to the latter. Ex-patients are full of anger at what has been done to them, but alone and unorganized this anger is not expressed and is often turned inward against oneself. Our anger is the fuel of our movement, and when we come together, acknowledging our identity to ourselves and to each other, we will have made the first and largest step in striking back at our oppressors.”

— "Mental Patients' Liberation: Why?  How?", originally distributed in the early 1970s by Mental Patients'  Resistance of Brooklyn, New York

[image ID] Seven photographs from antipsychiatry demonstrations. They are described below, in order of appearance: 1. a picture taken at the National Association for Rights Protection & Advocacy (NARPA) Conference on November 10, 2000 in Sacramento, California. Fifty to sixty people stand around a red sign with white text that reads: NO FORCED TREATMENT EVER. 2. a picture taken on October 9th, 1999 in Toronto, Ontario during a march for Psychiatric Survivor Pride Day. Several people march in a line, including one man at the start of the march playing bagpipes. Behind him is a hand-painted sign being held up that reads: Psychiatric Survivor Pride Day. 3. pictures taken at a demonstration outside the California State Capitol building in Sacramento on February 28th, 2000. The signs in each of these pictures say: Psychiatric drugs can kill! 4. a picture taken at a demonstration outside the American Psychiatric Association's 156th annual meeting in San Fransisco, California. The activist's sign says: PSYCHIATRY IS NOT A MEDICAL PROFESSION: IT IS A TOOL OF OPPRESSION. 5. a picture taken at a demonstration outside the Jacob Javits Center, hosting the American Psychiatric Association's 167th annual meeting in New York City on May 4th, 2014. The picture features an activist wearing a printed t-shirt and is cropped so as not to feature the face of the wearer. The t-shirt says: TO HELL WITH THEIR PROFITS, STOP FORCED DRUGGING OF PSYCHIATRIC INMATES! 6 and 7. pictures taken at a demonstration outside the California State Capitol building in Sacramento on February 28th, 2000. The signs in each of these pictures say: Psychiatric drugs can kill!, STOP expansion of forced treatment, Mental illness is NOT a CRIME, and FORCED MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT IS INHUMANE. 8. a picture taken at an antipsychiatry demonstration on May 2nd, 1998 in Freedom Plaza, Washington D.C. Two people hold a hand-painted banner-sign that says: BET YOUR ASS WE'RE PARANOID. 9. taken at an antipsychiatry demonstration hosted by the Mental Patients Liberation Alliance during Mad Pride Week in 2000, between July 13th and 16th on the lawn in front of the New York State Capitol Building in Albany. [end of ID]

[trans-axolotl]

Image description: [ a photo of the Psych Survivor zine in a bush of ivy. The cover is a collage made out of medical records, vintage flower drawings, and magazine letters spelling “psych survivor zine".]

Hello everyone! I am so thrilled to announce the launch of the psych survivor zine, now available to download on www.psychsurvivorarchive.com.

A little bit about this project:

The Psych Survivor Archive is an abolitionist organization deeply invested in mad liberation and cross-movement organizing.

We host two projects: the Psych Survivor Zine and the Digital Story Archive. The Psych Survivor Zine celebrates Mad art in volumes released twice a year, with thematic prompts for each edition. The Digital Story Archive is a more informal forum for psych survivors to write about our lives and share as much as we want, when we want, how we want. 

Through this archive, I hope to create a platform where psych survivors are believed and the psych system is held accountable for the ways it has harmed us. Our pain, resistance, knowledge, and grief are worth listening to, and I offer up this archive as a communal method of bearing witness. 

This space is for the imperfect crazy person, the noncompliant patient, those of us who trash our rooms in the psych ward and yell to ourselves on the street. This space is for our comrades still incarcerated in all kinds of institutions and prisons. This space is for anyone who has been harmed by the psychiatric system and wants to rage about it–and this space is for anyone who doesn’t have the words to talk about it. 

This space is for you.

You can download a pdf and an image described pdf for free on the website, or order a physical copy! This zine is incredible-featuring artwork by 13 different Mad artists, the 55 page zine includes collages, poems, harm reduction toolkits, and more!!

Artists include @kihnindewa, @bioethicists, @gothhabiba and @librarycards, among many more!

This project has been really vulnerable and cathartic with me, and I am so excited to share it with you. Feel free to explore the website, submit your story, and check out our resource guide.

[safety-pin-punk]

madpunk is born out of the psychiatric survivor movement! it's for anyone who is labeled as mentally ill and wants to reclaim words like crazy, insane, and mad. a lot of madpunk is born out of trauma and injuries the psychiatric industry oppresses on Mad people, including how a lot of medications prescribed to us are underresearched and harmful in ways that doctors often lie about to patients. if you are interested in madpunk, you will see a lot of people who identify as Mad as a natural variation in psychology, not as a disorder that needs to be medicated away. individual relationships vary, some madpunks are distressed by insanity and take medications or use other tools to fit in with concensus reality, that's just a general heads up for the kind of vibe madpunk spaces have and the people you are likely to meet in them!

^^^^

Thank you for info, I love learning about other punk spaces!!!!

[creekfiend]

and like -- I use "antipsych" as my tag and I use it as shorthand here on this blog but it's been widely applied to a number of different opinions and movements. adjacent terms/movements are the psychiatric survivors movement and the mad pride movement

I do not agree with everything everyone who participates in these discussions and movements has to say. if you would like to know what I agree with you can read the words in my tag really truly I promise there are so many essays and links in my tag I PINKY SWEAR if you want to know what I think about this the information that you seek is: in my tag

[faligon]

This June 26th is “International day in solidarity with Victims of Torture”… if you haven’t, consider reading up on the stories of survivors of Psychiatric torture, as well as familiarizing yourself broader with the C/S/X movement (Consumer/Survivor/Ex-Patient). Even if you don’t align yourself with these beliefs I find it important for any one user of the psychiatric system to be aware of it’s power as social political and physical control of it’s patients

[qweerhet]

reading list requests take about 10x longer to fulfill than other asks as i'm multiply disabled. if you send a request for reading recs, i will most likely get around to it eventually, but it may take several months.

this is an anonymous sideblog where i dump my political & discourseposting. i will probably not argue with you in reblogs, but i may respond to good-faith challenges in reblogs. i appreciate healthy & constructive discussion. my inbox is generally open, but i don't respond to about 50% of anons i get, so you're taking a risk by attempting to contact me that route.

i cannot tag consistently as i use this blog as a "dumping ground." however i do attempt to tag in-depth discussion of csa as "cw csa"

if you ask me for information regarding my personal life, i am going to assume you are a cop.

if there's a political opinion that is so disgusting to you that you feel the need to write callout posts about people who have it, do us both a favor and just assume i have that opinion before following this blog.

you may be interested in following this blog if you like:

post-left anarchism

youth liberation

prison abolition & transformative justice

radical disability liberation

the psychiatric survivor movement & antipsychiatry

transfeminism

radical sex positivity

this blog has a high likelihood of making you incredibly angry if your opinions on any of the above happen to include:

anarchoprimitivism

pro-child-molestation ideology

physical vs. mental disability separatism

transfem separatism

belief in the validity of the sex binary and/or utility of CASAB language

carceral solutions to mental health issues (including paraphilic disorders)

belief in the utility of callout posts, harassment campaigns, or other forms of en masse unpersoning/shunning

belief in the validity of thought crime of any form

stay safe and don't talk to cops.

[emohorseboy]

I'm so interested in all of your posts about mad liberation. I've never seen anything that puts my thoughts on the whole psych complex into words. I'm really curious to learn more about this. No pressure if not, but do you happen to know of any more comprehensive resources on this? Like books maybe?

Hi, I can definitely give you some recs! My list is a little bit UK centric because that's where I'm based but hopefully it's useful:

In terms of books:

I read 'Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health' by Micha Frazer-Carroll this summer and I can't recommend it enough.

I'm also making my way through 'Call Me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement' by Irit Shimrat, which I think is out of print but can be read as a PDF here (hopefully)

I've only dipped in and out of his books for my dissertation but Andrew Scull has written several well regarded books about the history of psychiatry ('Museums of Madness' is the one I've read bits of, 'Desperate Remedies' is on my TBR)

Some books on my TBR: 'The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease' by Johnathan Metzl, 'Drop the Disorder!', 'Searching for a Rose Garden: Challenging Psychiatry, Fostering Mad Studies', 'Anatomy of an Epidemic' by Robert Whitaker

Some really good articles:

'Abolition Must Include Psychiatry' by Stella Akua Mensah

'Mad Activists: The Language We Use Reflects Our Desire for Change' by Lisa Archibold

'Not a naughty child: people’s experiences of service responses to self-injury' by Alison Faulkner and Rachel Rowan Olive

More resources!

The Campaign for Psychiatric Abolition - UK based, they have a lot of really great resources including an extensive recommended reading list, a Psych Abolition 101 Zine, and a resource for making a crisis support plan.

Asylum Magazine - again UK based, radical mental health magazine. To read full issues you need to subscribe (I recently paid for a subscription for a year of digital editions for £10, physical copies are a bit more) but the website has plenty of articles that you can read for free so well worth exploring.

Psych Survivor Archive - US based this time, there is so much on here, the Psych Survivor Zine is the main event but they also have a really great resource list (some of the links are dead though).

Mad in America - publish a lot of really interesting and impactful stuff on their website, I also really like their podcast (particularly recommend this episode about ECT, this one about esketamine, and this one about 'prolonged grief disorder'). There is also Mad in the UK and a number of other country specific sites that exist as part of their Mad in the World Network.

Folks to follow:

Dolly Sen - UK based artist who does and is doing a lot of cool stuff, notably at the moment they are the lead artist for the Birdsong From Inobservable Worlds project. This podcast episode they did is also great.

Nicole / lacey_art_ - another UK based artist, she wrote a poem about a bird recently that I can't stop thinking about (she does a lot of other cool things too).

Rachel Rowan Olive - brilliant and funny artist, she is also on instagram and etsy.

Luna Tic - artist and activist who has been involved with a lot of really brilliant stuff, including the successful StopSIM Coalition here in the UK which managed to bring an end to SIM.

There are so many more I could name and so many more things I could recommend but this post is already so long! I really hope it was helpful. I started trying to be brief and then gave up but I did cut out a fiction and literature recs section because I thought that was overkill lmao. Thank you for giving me an excuse to make this list I had a great time.

Learning about the Mad and psych survivor movements has been so transformative and empowering for me and I could honestly talk about it all day. Please do feel free to send me a message if you want to chat about it more!

[iphigeniacomplex]

rejoice! the glbt historical society has a digital archive collecting the writing of camille moran, a transgender activist for psychiatric survivor rights who advocated for the removal of gender identity disorder from the dsm

you may be familiar with moran from her statement in the fall '93 issue of ex-patient newsletter dendron, "why a transgendered woman calls for psychiatry's destruction". (if not, it can be accessed here, on page 17.) her writing on the psychiatric abuse she experienced as a transgender woman is crucial reading for anyone interested in the psychiatric survivors movement or anti-psychiatric perspectives.

[moonsb1996]

Hello again! @the-invisible-introvert-2004 Because this time my brain was still racing with excitement. So I will continue writing about Fidelza's aunt. and his bodyguards, and let's get to know their names.

(Thank you for the picture from SB @newmria from X. You can follow her. My sister drew it for me.)

First row :

Firmin Jean

french

ErrorEffect /EE(name of our novel's special power) : Pause.

Type: Floy (I'll explain it later when I write the history of this story)

Ability: When touching a living creature or human being (only), the target person will be "paused" of their movement until Firmin will unleash the power of EE. He is the first mercenary hired and becomes the head bodyguard for the current CEO of Allmind Company.

                Firmin is a quiet person who speaks when asked. He is loyal to the organization, earning him the nickname Agent Smith because he always wears sunglasses. He also has the ability to cook food at the level of a 5-star restaurant and has excellent close-quarters combat skills. He respects the CEO so much that he is nicknamed “The CEO's favorite dog” If the CEO wants to make something disappear, he can make the problem disappear as well.

                There are rumors that Firmin and the CEO are probably secretly dating each other. Firmin lives with the CEO because he was hired to protect the CEO's niece (Fidelza Hunter), which is...somewhat true, but not related. Because Firmin is the only one who has feelings for the CEO, because he is too afraid that he will be a "psychopath" because his cell phone has secretly taken pictures of the CEO, filling up the phone's memory.

Oya/Oney Rosalind

African

EE: N/A

Oya or Oney was a female warrior from an ancient tribe in Africa. (A fictional tribe in my novel) She and all the warriors were hired by The "mysterious organization" asks people to help fight in the war of judgment according to the tribe's beliefs in exchange for water and food to survive the vultures in the village. Unaware that the “mysterious organization” is a terrorist who wants to blame the tribe for the Peace Tower bombing. (You can think of it as 9/11.)

Oney was one of the few survivors of the explosion and the collapse of the building. before being sent to prison After that incident, the people of the world and the relatives of the deceased wanted to erase her tribe from history until now there were only 20 families left and wandering refugees. Oney became the bodyguard of Allmind's CEO, according to a survivor's testimony. who spoke of survival by she protected them with her body, While she was seriously injured, she had scars all over her body.

The company's CEO paid bail (and bribed some officials), and Oney was freed and came to work as a secretary. combined with the ability to organize schedules makes CEO who doesn't want to have problems with CPS regarding the niece who required psychiatric treatment at that time was able to take the niece into care. Oney also serves as a consultant and interpreter in the native language for the CEO when he travels around Africa, thus receiving an additional salary.

Fidelza Hunter liked the legends and stories of Oney's tribe very much and often asked her to tell her legends and folktales. Oney is a woman of few words. and was not good at expressing emotions because of the emotional pain of seeing so many people dead in the building collapse incident and news of the extermination of her own tribe herself didn't know that she was being flirted by her colleague.

Second row:

Fidelza Hunter

(Since we already know about her, we'll pass!)

Victor Radnar or Mr. Vic

American

EE : N\A

Victor Radnar, or Mr. Vic, is Fidelza's mother's younger brother. Ragnar's heir and the current CEO of Allmind Company He is considered to be the most famous and youngest billionaire in history. before becoming CEO and receiving wealth from the Radnar family circle Mr. Vic met with contempt. Physical and verbal abuse This makes him hate people with special powers who abuse their power and power. (He doesn't hate everyone with special powers.)

Because he doesn't have good human relationships with other humans. (He prefers to stay in his office 24/7) so he hires mercenaries. and former prisoners of serious crimes become their own people so they can spend time with his own niece to prevent CPS from taking niece from him. Because he knew who had kidnapped his sister (Fidelza's mother) but had no evidence.

Mr. Vic is a workaholic who is so focused on his work that he can survive on coffee. and instant noodles Fidelza is worried, so she always takes care of Mr. Vic's coffee intake. However, he has little interest in the opposite sex because he is gay. (One of the reasons why he was bullied while in school until university) thus causing Vic to not easily open up to anyone, even to his niece, who is his only remaining family. except for my own sister

Ms. Vic is also aware of “him” (who is “believed” to be Fidelza's imaginary friend) and is upset that her niece is dating a long-distance boyfriend. But because he saw that his niece was happy with a healthy relationship, he chose to keep an eye on his niece's boyfriend. And secretly planned the murder of Lev King with his accomplice, Firmin. But at this time there was no satisfactory murder plan, so Lev King's head had not yet come off his neck.

Last row:

Asmon Saika

german

EE : Stamina

Type : IGES

Abilities: When using her special powers, Asmon can use her stamina for 3 hours, but cannot make her power increase, so she uses her special powers for speed instead. This allows her to run almost as fast as a Formula 1 car. But when in this special power, the body will release a lot of heat from the spine. She couldn't wear shirts or shoes (Asmon always wore shirts showing off her back) because the heat would melt most of her clothing.

Asmon is hired by Vic as a driver because of her knowledge and ability to drive fast cars. And Mr. Vic is looking for volunteers to test out the company's new equipment. (Allmind is a major technology development company that has made the Ragnar family world-class millionaires.) Asmon wears a special suit under the CEO's driver's uniform for emergencies.

Asmon is a bright and cheerful young woman. But she's insecure about her height (she's 143 centimeters tall), so she likes to look at magazines that sell high-heeled shoes in order to be as tall as Oney. But she often forgets because she is more interested in car engines. Most of the money was spent maintaining the CEO's car's engine and customizing her motorcycle. Asmon is the one who notices that Firmin "might" have a crush on Vic, so she often bothers Firmin about this. But it's not because she secretly likes Firmin. But because she wanted to blackmail him. Which at present has not been successful at all.

Jungkun Inis

Half-Korean and half-Irish

EE : Filter

Type : Floy

Ability: Can create illusions of people, animals, or things that the target cannot see or see. But when touched, the “filter” will disappear. and can also trick the eyes of CCTV cameras or photographs and a video camera that records events that occur when using "filters" as well. Jungkun was once an official who was allowed to use special powers in public before he was arrested for attacking an employee.

He was also suspected of falsifying evidence, causing him to be sent to prison while awaiting trial. So he got to know Oya or “Oney” (he called her Oney because it was easier) and when Oney received a job from Mr. Vic as a secretary. She introduced Jungkun to Mr. Vic, who accepted a job as a makeup artist. (Mr. Vic's face is very tired from lack of sleep, causing him to have to hire a makeup artist when appearing in the media or attending social events.)

He was then bailed out by Mr. Vic and came to work at Allmind Company as well as Oney. causing him to try to flirt with her But because he's not good at romance, he doesn't do anything that seems romantic. As a result, he often buys her gifts that make him think of Oney. Like the brooch pendant that Oney currently wears while working and is the only piece of jewelry she wears regularly because she likes it. And because he knew that Oney was not good at expressing herself,so he was not in a hurry to confess his love either. So only Fidelza and Asmon sat and waited for the ship to continue sailing.

[librarycards]

ik this is random but i rly wish i could be friends with my therapist and i feel weird about it. i hate this situation bc i know it would probably be an ethical violation for them. have u ever experienced this?

for sure - i actually have a friendship with my current therapist, and the way that we're able to make that work is

her explicit, ongoing anticarceral commitments

her commitment to epistemic repair, that is, revaluing and centering the knowledge production of Mad people, psych survivors, etc

and related to the above, the fact that she is disabled and Mad in terms of individual id and in terms of politics

there are other things, too, but that kind of gets at the main architecture of our movement from provider-client (which we still are) to friends - comrades - colleagues.

given that, i think it's worth asking yourself, and eventually your therapist, what it would mean to approach friendship. after all, no closeness will undermine the power they hold over you by virtue of their profession/your specific relationship (unless one day you stopped seeing them for therapy). friendships across power differences are inevitable, but to be a good friend in this context requires ongoing dialogue & self-critique, esp. on the behalf of the person afforded more privileges etc. is your therapist willing to do this, and to receive criticism - including harsh, angry criticism - from you, without resorting to carcerality? this, after all, is the foundation of any genuine friendship.

so, i think it's possible and indeed necessary to reimagine our relationships with those in relationships of care with us (another q: are you willing to receive vulnerability from your therapist, and are they willing to be vulnerable with you? cry with you?). but, of course, we still live in the shadow of the medical/psychiatric industrial complex. being immediately aware of that is necessary to build a friendship and also for your safety as a client. but, if you are able to build one, it can be incredibly transformative and meaningful.

[oopsallfictives]

I saw a post the other day that basically said "psych abolition is bad because I'm mentally ill and need treatment". I think OP was overlooking some very important things so I'm gonna talk about those

First of all, psych abolition is a movement by and for psych survivors. We're people who have been through the psychiatric system because we ourselves are mentally ill or traumatized, and who have suffered because of it. A lot of people come to this movement because psychiatry isn't safe for us, and no alternatives exist unless we build them ourselves

Our system finally stopped going to therapy because after how much harm was done to us by psychiatry we can't trust any therapist enough to actually be helped by it. We've been lowkey retraumatizing ourselves for years trying to get help from the same system that did so much harm to our body and minds. Harm that we can't heal on our own, but can't get help for because there are no alternatives

Second of all, this isn't a vibes-based movement. There are actual principles involved here. Patient autonomy, informed consent, the right to refuse treatment, the right to culturally-appropriate healing, the right to define our own experiences, pushing back against over-pathologization, and more. These things are guiding the movement, and will guide the alternatives we build now, as well as what we build in the ashes of psychiatry when it's gone

And to be clear, abolishing psychiatry doesn't mean doing away with everything that's currently encompassed within that system. Therapy and medications aren't going to go away, but the way they're handled is going to have to look a lot different. Anyone seeking mental healthcare of any sort must be informed of the potential risks of that treatment even if it means they might refuse it. If people aren't told the risks they can't give informed consent. They also need to be free to make decisions about their care without being shamed, manipulated, or threatened with a loss of care or being labeled noncompliant. People shouldn't be involuntarily incarcerated in hospitals for the crime of being suicidal or psychotic, and no one should be medicated against their will

Are there people online that will say they're for psych abolition and actually mean they think mental illness isn't real and meds should be gotten rid of? Yeah, probably. There's also a lot of people on twitter who call themselves socialists while advocating for the most right-wing shit you've ever heard of, but that doesn't mean that's what socialism really is

At the end of the day, psych abolition is about creating alternatives to psychiatry so that we can tear it down and replace it with ways to help mentally ill, neurodivergent, and traumatized people without stripping away their rights and autonomy. If you don't understand why that's necessary, you need to listen to psych survivors when we tell our stories

[mercifullymad]

Hi there! I was wondering if you had any recommendations for beginner readings about Sanism, anti psychiatry, etc? I've only recently been introduced to these ideas, but they really resonate with me and I'd love to learn more.

Hello, thank you for asking! I'm more than happy to share a list of readings I've found useful and/or important, and glad that you're interested in learning more!

Before I get into the list, one note: I identify as a mad liberationist, rooted in the principles of the Mad Pride movement and the academic (in)discipline of Mad Studies. So I don't have any recommendations that come from a strict anti-psychiatry stance, as I don’t root myself in the anti-psychiatry moment and I simply haven't read much in that tradition. Instead, my readings are mostly rooted in Mad Studies, Mad Pride, the psychiatric survivor/consumer/(ex-)patient movement, Critical Disability Studies, Disability Justice, and Crip Studies.

Without further ado, here are my recommendations (I encourage anyone else to add on in the comments/reblogs—I certainly have not read everything)!

Articles:

Mad Studies – What It Is and Why You Should Care:

“Mad Studies is an area of education, scholarship, and analysis about the experiences, history, culture, political organising, narratives, writings and most importantly, the PEOPLE who identify as: Mad; psychiatric survivors; consumers; service users; mentally ill; patients, neuro-diverse; inmates; disabled -to name a few of the “identity labels” our community may choose to use.”

Mad Studies Network – Shared Principles: From the same website as the above article. The website has many great articles and reading recommendations even though it hasn’t been updated for a couple years.

“We aim to work towards making and preserving space for mad people’s knowledges and histories within the academy and within [mental health] services.”

Mad and Queer Studies: Interconnections and Tensions:

“Mad and Queer Studies have lot of common ground – especially in terms of challenging existing binaries (for example, gay/straight and mad/sane); subverting negative connotations of Queer/Mad; and critiquing prevailing normativities (ways of being ‘normal’).”

A Psychiatric Survivor Studies Manifesto: A critique of Mad Studies and identifying as mad, instead suggesting identification as a psychiatric survivor and psychiatric survivor studies. A good read, especially as someone new to this area exploring your options for self-identification!

“Psychiatric survivors are those who have sought help and have not found it, psychiatric survivors have varying levels of belief in a separation of mind and body. Psychiatric survivors are not reducible to a single category but instead are a force to be reckoned with who have (often dysfunctionally) shut down major oppressive institutions and forced change within medicine multiple times over.”

Against Self Advocacy Part 2: Maddening Autistic Self-Advocacy: From the same writer as the above article.

“Like it or not, mad and anti-psychiatry politics do inform and are part of the history of Autistic politics.”

“The Autistic meltdown, when our bodies rebel because of sensory overload, the issues related to social impairment---many of these things have more similarity with mad politics … But those similarities have intentionally been quieted so as not to make Autistic bodies seem rebellious.”

Mad People Of Colour: A Manifesto:

“We cannot separate our experiences of racialization, madness, and other oppressions. … White people’s experiences of psychiatry are not ‘like colonialism’. Colonialism is like colonialism… Ask yourself whether your goal as a mad activist is to regain the white middle-class privilege you lost when you were psychiatrized.”

Trans Activists, Don’t Throw Mad People Under the Bus!: Article on the shared history and aims of trans and mad people.

“We know that the various psychiatric diagnoses for trans people have not been based in sensitive listening or in any kind of scientific knowledge of etiology, that on the contrary they have been nothing but arbitrary and punitive vehicles for imposing normative expectations of how a person ought to be. We know that psychiatrists and psychologists don’t listen to us, or our communities, don’t know about us, or our communities, and don’t help us, or our communities. Why would we assume things are any different for all the other kinds of people psychiatrists assert dominion over?”

The Buzzfeedification of Mental Health: This article is far from perfect in its analysis, but I think it’s still worth reading for its observations about how the internet structurally reinforces stringent diagnostic categories.

“The danger lies in how we enforce and contextualize these [diagnostic] categories. ... If we cannot commune with each other, relate to each other, love each other, argue with each other, without feeling that we are irreconcilably different because of something endemic to our psyches (you have ADHD, I have BPD, we are not the same), we lessen the chance that we will be able to build actual solidarity, and fight against the structures that cause us all to feel so mentally ill.”

An Introduction to Anti-Black Sanism: Unlike the other articles, this one is an academic article, but it’s too important to leave out.

“The historical and ongoing set of aggressions visited on Black/African people in the Global North is both anti-Black racism and a specific kind of sanism, and we have named this suffering, this particularly perilous mix of oppressions, anti-Black Sanism.”

“Anti-Black Sanism provides a framework that names the injustice, the pain, and seeks to address the historic discrimination, continued overrepresentation of Black/African-identified individuals in the mental health system… Anti-Black Sanism also allows us to join with others in de-centering whiteness in mental health as well as in the ex-patient, survivor, disability, and mad movements.”

The Next Generation of the Mad Movement in New York City Looks Like This:

“Peter Stastny finishes the first panel. As the elder of the group, he’s the self-chosen, pragmatic voice of “What works and what doesn’t work”, having been around and active since the 1980s and watched so many progressive mental health projects become defunded or co-opted or simply slip into obscurity. It’s obvious he wants this project to have a different fate.”

Help-Seeking: Where’s the Help? (tw self-harm and suicide)

“In the context of mental health, particularly intense mental distress associated with self-harm and suicide, asking for help might not only result in the absence of care, it might result in punishment and harm. … Emphasis on seeking [help] ignores not only the availability of help but crucially, the deep pain and frustration of calling for help and having nobody come.”

Un-care-able (tw self-harm and suicide)

“Stigma’ is too general, too mild a word for what is happening here. This is rejection, it is a casting out, it is the designation of ‘un-care-able’. In a sleight of hand so swift as to be both bewildering and dazzling, the more a person who self-harms needs care, the more they prove themselves to be both undeserving of it and unfit for it. Here pain is not evidence of need, and thus a prompt for care – instead, it is the signal for abandonment.”

Toward a Neuroqueer Future: An Interview with Nick Walker: Focused on neurodivergence, but a very good and important read for anyone interested in learning more about non-normative bodyminds.

“A lot of people hear neuro and they think, brain. But the prefix neuro doesn’t mean brain, it means nerve. The neuro in neurodiversity is most usefully understood as a convenient shorthand for the functionality of the whole bodymind and the way the nervous system weaves together cognition and embodiment. So neurodiversity refers to the diversity among minds, or among bodyminds.

In terms of discourse, research, and policy, the pathology paradigm asks, ‘‘What do we do about the problem of these people not being normal,’’ whereas the neurodiversity paradigm asks, ‘‘What do we do about the problem of these people being oppressed, marginalized, and/or poorly served and poorly accommodated by the prevailing culture?’’”

Books:

Unfortunately, I don't have many beginner book recommendations, although this depends on how you’re defining "beginner." If you're new to Mad Studies but not new to reading dense texts about Literary Studies, then La Marr Jurelle Bruce's "How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind" or Therí Pickens' "Black Madness :: Mad Blackness" would be great beginner texts. If you’re well-versed in the study of rhetoric, then other academic books like Margaret Price’s “Mad At School” and M. Remi Yergeau’s “Authoring Autism” can also serve as introductions. But if "beginner" means written for the general public as opposed to an academic audience, then these are the only recs I've got:

Robert McRuer's "Mad in America”: A history of psychiatry care and the psychiatry industry in the U.S. written for a general audience. Great for contextualizing and historicizing the development of U.S. psychiatry.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s “Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice”: This book does a great job explicitly connecting the Mad Pride and psychiatric survivor movement to broader disability organizing and issues. It is a great recounting of organizing efforts from both Disability Justice and the psychiatric survivor moment, grounded in Piepzna-Samarasinha’s long involvement in both.

Eli Clare’s “Brilliant Imperfection”: An extremely insightful overview of and meditation on the politics of “cure” for physically disabled, chronically ill, and mad people. Also some of my favorite writing on the utilities and harms of diagnosis.

[Textbooks] “Mad Matters” and “The Routledge International Handbook of Mad Studies”: It can be hard to get copies of these books without academic access (or spending a lot of money), but if you can somehow get them, they contain a lot of useful information and history.

[Can’t personally vouch for] James Davies’ “Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis” and “Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm than Good”: I have not read either of these books, but they are written for a general audience, so probably very explanatory/introductory in their explanation, which might be good if you are coming to this with no prior knowledge. Jamies Davies is probably the most anti-psychiatry-aligned author on this list, too, if you’re specifically looking for writing rooted in that stance. The books seem to be focused critiques of the contemporary psychiatric industry (rather than focusing on the experiences/organizing/culture of mad people, as most of my other recs do).

Finally, I would also suggest checking out collectives/orgs like Project LETS (lots of great posts on their instagram about sanism and mad pride), the Institute for the Development of the Human Arts (IDHA), Recovery in the Bin, the #StopSIM collective, and country or region-specific Mad Pride groups, Hearing Voices groups, and Alternatives to Suicide Groups. So much of this knowledge is created and spread through social networks and transient social media posts rather than in articles and books.

[trans-axolotl]

hey do you have an antipsych reading list or anything like that? i’m trying to learn more about the topic. thank you!

yes!! This is more a list of mad studies books than like, sociological theory from the 60s because disability justice + mad pride is more what I vibe with, but if you want some more in-depth theory recommendations I can do that as well. blanket trigger warning that all of these books discuss psychiatric abuse, institutionalization, and many of them candidly address topics of suicide, mental distress, and sexual assault. If anyone wants more specific trigger warnings please feel free to ask!

Books:

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang: This book is a fabulous collection of essays based on the author's own experience of schizophrenia, and explores the complexities of diagnosis and institutionalization.

Brilliant Imperfection by Eli Clare: This book is incredibly important to me and explores the concept of cure, what it means to have anti-cure politics, and all the nuances of cure. Truly a beautifully written book and I really recommend it.

Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada edited by Liat Ben Moshe: This book is an amazing exploration of institutionalization and incarceration from so many different perspectives, including the special ed to prison pipeline, segregation, psychiatric medicine within prisons, and how institutionalization functions as incarceration. This book can be challenging to read as a psych survivor, but I highly recommend it.

How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity by La Marr Jurelle Bruce: I highly recommend this book. It really delves into complex meanings of madness, how that's tied to radical tradition, aesthetics, art, liberation, so much more, and also really engages mad studies and Black cultural studies.

Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill by Robert Whitaker: I think this book can be a good foundation for learning the history of psychiatry in America in particular, and although I don't necessarily vibe with everything in this book, I think it is still absolutely worth reading and engaging with critically!

The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease by Johnathan Metzl This book does a really good job looking at the history of psychosis in the context of the United States, the civil rights movement, and how pyschosis diagnoses connects to eugenics and slavery.

Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates by Erving Goffman I have not actually read this yet, but it is a classic and it's been on my reading list since @bioethicists recommended it to me!

Open in Emergency: DSM II: Asian American Edition edited by Mimi Khúc This collection of essays has so many different fabulous perspectives on mental health, disability justice, community, and resistance.

Miscellaneous:

Girls do what they have to do to Survive: Illuminating Methods used by Girls in the Sex Trade and Street Economy to Fight back and Heal by the Young Women's Empowerment Project I'm including this on the list even though it might not connect as clearly to antipsychiatry as some of the other titles, because reading this was transformative to me for understanding my own experiences and the ways in which social services like the medical system are not our friends. I also view liberatory harm reduction as essential to building alternatives to psychiatry and YWEP is so completely foundational and groundbreaking in many ways.

Harm Reduction Guide to Coming off Psychiatric Drugs

Cutting the Risk: Harm Reduction and Self Harm I want to add an extra trigger warning for in-depth discussion of self harm and anatomy, including anatomy diagrams.

Asylum Magazine

Mad In America Website--this can be a good place to keep up with psychiatric news in America.

This is very much not a complete list, so followers PLEASE add on!