Mad Studies Reader

The last few years have brought increased writings from activists, artists, scholars, and concerned clinicians that cast a critical and constructive eye on psychiatry, mental health care, and the cultural relations of mental difference. With particular focus on accounts of lived experience and readings that cover issues of epistemic and social injustice in mental health discourse, the Mad Studies Reader brings together voices that advance anti-sanist approaches to scholarship, practice, art, and activism in this realm.

Beyond offering a theoretical and historical overview of mad studies, this Reader draws on the perspectives, voices, and experiences of artists, mad pride activists, humanities and social science scholars, and critical clinicians to explore the complexity of mental life and mental difference. Voices from these groups confront and challenge standard approaches to mental difference. They advance new structures of meaning and practice that are inclusive of those who have been systematically subjugated and promote anti-sanist approaches to counter inequalities, prejudices, and discrimination. Confronting modes of psychological oppression and the power of a few to interpret and define difference for so many, the Mad Studies Reader asks the critical question of how these approaches may be reconsidered, resisted, and reclaimed.

This collection will be of interest to mental health clinicians; students and scholars of the arts, humanities and social sciences; and anyone who has been affected by mental difference, directly or indirectly, who is curious to explore new perspectives.

"The Mad Studies Reader brings the world of mental health together with the world of critical intellectual scholarship and activism. It is invaluable reading that works out the central problem of sanism in the way we treat mental differences. I have no doubt it will be an instant classic and a 'go to' resource for people in the mad pride movement, disability studies, health humanities, narrative medicine, arts for health, critical mental health, and anyone interested in the complexities of today?s mental health concerns."
Danielle Spencer, PhD, Program in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University and author of Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity

"In the relentless quest for liberation, echoes have resonated through time?voices of scholars, storytellers, and activists narrating the tale of defiance. The Mad Studies Reader stands as a testament within the tapestry of social justice movements embroiled in this struggle for emancipation. For me, its arrival marks a critical juncture, a turning tide where the silenced voices of society's marginalized find amplification. Mad people being recognized as bearers of transformative wisdom capable of reshaping our world."
Vesper Moore, Activist and host of GET MAD! podcast devoted to transformative mental health, mad pride, and disability justice

"So many questions: Do medical models want to eradicate mental illness? What is anti-psychiatry? Could depression be poetry?  What does epistemic justice look like for mental health? Does capitalism fuel mental illness? In response to these questions and many more, The Mad Studies Reader is what our futuristic-politocized-neurodivergent-justice-fueled-(re)educational process needs to look like."
Jennifer Mullin, PhD, Psychotherapist and author of Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing your Practice

?A groundbreaking cornucopia of art, activism, and critical thought. Required reading for artists, students, scholars and anyone interested in mental health.?
Jussi Valtonen, PhD, Novelist and psychologist, They Know Not What They Do