ABSTRACT
Survivor knowledge is essential to collecting, studying and exposing the ever-increasing evidence of the fraudulence and perniciousness of the “mental health” pseudosciences, and also to finding better ways of coping with difference and distress. Survivors whose work forms the basis of Mad Studies have made important contributions to the kinds of alternatives that are urgently needed in a market-driven society where inconvenient or unusual behavior can lead to psychiatric detainment, outpatient committal, and the lifelong, forced or coerced administration of harmful drugs. Because anyone can become a mental patient, survivors must teach students and others that madness is not something outside of “normal” human experience but rather part of a continuum of thought, emotion, and perception. Survivor knowledge can benefit everyone by toning down the fear of difference and the exaggerated reactions this fear tends to elicit, and reducing the resulting sense of alienation and isolation, at the root of so much of what’s wrong in the world.
