ABSTRACT

By drawing broadly on international thinking and experience, this book offers a critical exploration of Mad Studies and advances its theory and practice.

Comprised of 34 chapters written by international leading experts, activists and academics, this handbook introduces and advances Mad Studies, as well as exploring resistance and criticism, and clarifying its history, ideas, what it is, and what it can offer. It presents examples of mad studies in action, covering initiatives that have been taken, their achievements and what can be learned from them. In addition to sharing research findings and evidence, the book offers examples and insights for advancing understandings of experiences of madness and distress from the perspectives of those who have (had) those experiences, and also explores ways of supporting people oppressed by conventional understandings and systems.

This book will be of interest to all scholars and students of Mad Studies, disability studies, sociology, socio- legal studies, mental health and medicine more generally.

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

part 1|73 pages

Mad Studies and political organising of people with psychiatric experience

chapter 1|11 pages

The international foundations of Mad Studies

Knowledge generated in collective action

chapter 4|12 pages

A crazy, warrior and “respondona” Peruvian

All personal transformation is social and political

chapter 6|3 pages

Speaking for ourselves

An early UK survivor activist's account

chapter 7|3 pages

Fostering community responsibility

Perspectives from the Pan African network of people with psychosocial disabilities

chapter 9|10 pages

The social movement of people with psychosocial disabilities in Japan

Strategies for taking the struggle to academia

chapter 10|14 pages

Re-writing the Master Narrative

A Prerequisite for Mad Liberation

part 2|41 pages

Situating Mad Studies

chapter 13|11 pages

Mad Studies and disability studies

chapter 14|13 pages

Weaponizing absent knowledges

Countering the violence of mental health law

part 3|69 pages

Mad Studies and knowledge equality

chapter 15|7 pages

The subjects of oblivion

Subalterity, sanism, and racial erasure

chapter 16|12 pages

Institutional ceremonies?

The (im)possibilities of transformative co-production in mental health

chapter 17|12 pages

“Are you experienced?”

The use of experiential knowledge in mental health and its contribution to Mad Studies

part 4|101 pages

Doing Mad Studies

chapter 23|12 pages

Madness in the time of war

Post-war reflections on practice and research beyond the borders of psychiatry and development

chapter 24|8 pages

The architecture of my madness

chapter 25|10 pages

Re-conceptualising suicidality

Towards collective intersubjective responses

chapter 27|10 pages

Upcycling recovery

Potential alliances of recovery, inequality and Mad Studies

part 5|72 pages

Inquiring into the future for Mad Studies

chapter 31|12 pages

Interrogating mad studies in the academy

Bridging the community/academy divide

chapter 33|11 pages

Navigating voices, politics, positions amidst peers

Resonances and dissonances in India

chapter |7 pages

Afterword

The ethics of making knowledge together

chapter |7 pages

Postscript

Mad Studies in a maddening world