Robert Menzies

Brenda A. LeFrançois

Geoffrey Reaume

In 1981, Toronto activist Mel Starkman wrote: "An important new movement is sweeping through the western world.... The 'mad,' the oppressed, the ex-inmates of society's asylums are coming together and speaking for themselves." Mad Matters is the first Canadian book to bring together the writings of this vital movement, which has grown explosively in the years since. With contributions from scholars in numerous disciplines, as well as activists and psychiatric survivors, it presents diverse critical voices that convey the lived experiences of the psychiatrized and challenges dominant understandings of "mental illness." The connections between mad activism and other liberation struggles are stressed throughout, making the book a major contribution to the literature on human rights and anti-oppression.

A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies

Mad Matters

Bonnie Burstow

Shaindl Diamond

There is growing international resistance to the oppressiveness of psychiatry. While previous studies have critiqued psychiatry, Psychiatry Disrupted goes beyond theorizing what is wrong with it to theorizing how we might stop it. Introducing readers to the arguments and rationale for opposing psychiatry, the book combines perspectives from anti-psychiatry and critical psychiatry activism, mad activism, antiracist, critical, and radical disability studies, as well as feminist, Marxist, and anarchist thought. The editors and contributors are activists and academics - adult education and social work professors, psychologists, prominent leaders in the psychiatric survivor movement, and artists - from across Canada, England, and the United States. From chapters discussing feminist opposition to the medicalization of human experience, to the links between psychiatry and neo-liberalism, to internal tensions within the various movements and different identities from which people organize, the collection theorizes psychiatry while contributing to a range of scholarship and presenting a comprehensive overview of resistance to psychiatry in the academy and in the community. Contributors include Simon Adam (University of Toronto), Rosemary Barnes University of Toronto, Peter Beresford (Brunel University), Bonnie Burstow (University of Toronto), Chris Chapman (York University), Mark Cresswell (Durham University), Shaindl Diamond (York University), Chava Finkler (Memorial University), Ambrose Kirby (therapist in private practice, Brenda A. LeFrançois (Memorial University of Newfoundland), Mick McKeown (University of Central Lancashire), Robert Menzies (Simon Fraser University), China Mills (Oxford University), Tina Minkowitz (World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry), Ian Parker (University of Leicester), Susan Schellenberg, Helen Spandler (University of Central Lancashire), and AJ Withers (York University). A courageous anthology, Psychiatry Disrupted is a timely work that asks compelling activist questions that no other book in the field touches.

Theorizing Resistance and Crafting the (R)evolution

Psychiatry Disrupted

Provides a provocative argument against conventional study, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of "mental illness."

Brenda A. LeFrançois

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