ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the psychiatric recovery movement and the psychiatric peer support movement. A tenet of the psychiatric recovery movement is that psychiatric survivors can help and support one another, whether informally or in formal peer support organizations. The chapter explains a clearer distinction between the usefulness of some modern psychiatric medications, and the reductionist biopsychiatric model that reduces the emotions and behavior to chemicals and neurotransmitters. It describes the relationship between unhealthy economic policies, the pharmaceutical industry, and the mental health. In the mental health field, a distinction is typically made between those folks whose distress or difficulty is of one sort and those folks whose distress or difficulty is of another sort. That is, a distinction is commonly made between a "mild mental disorder" like an "adjustment disorder" and a "serious mental illness" like "schizophrenia".
