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.
Brenda A. LeFrancois is Associate Professor of Social Work at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Robert Menzies is Professor of Sociology at Simon Fraser University. Geoffrey Reaume is Associate Professor of Critical Disability Studies at York University.
* Preface* Acknowledgements* Introducing Mad Studies* Part I: Mad People's History, Evolving Culture, and Language* Chapter 1: The Movement, Mel Starkman* Chapter 2: Women in 19th Century Asylums: Three Exemplary Women; A New Brunswick Hero, Neree St-Amand and Eugene LeBlanc* Chapter 3: Democracy Is a Very Radical Idea, Lanny Beckman and Megan J. Davies* Chapter 4: What Makes Us a Community? Reflections on Building Solidarity in Anti-Sanist Praxis, Shaindl Diamond* Chapter 5: A Rose by Any Other Name: Naming and the Battle against Psychiatry, Bonnie Burstow* Part II: Mad Engagements* Chapter 6: "Breaking open the bone": Storying, Sanism, and Mad Grief, Jennifer M. Poole and Jennifer Ward* Chapter 7: Mad as Hell: The Objectifying Experience of Symbolic Violence, Ji-Eun Lee* Chapter 8: A Denial of Being: Psychiatrization as Epistemic Violence, Maria Liegghio* Chapter 9: Mad Success: What Could Go Wrong When Psychiatry Employs Us as "Peers"? Erick Fabris* Part III: Critiques of Psychiatry: Practice and Pedagogy* Chapter 10: The Tragic Farce of "Community Mental Health Care," Irit Shamrat* Chapter 11: Electroshock: Torture as "Treatment," Don Weitz* Chapter 12: Is Mad Studies Emerging as a New Field of Inquiry? David Reville* Chapter 13: Making Madness Matter in Academic Practice, Kathryn Church* Part IV: Law, Public Policy, and Media Madness* Chapter 14: Mad Patients as Legal Intervenors in Court, Lucy Costa* Chapter 15: Removing Civil Rights: How Dare We? Gordone Warme* Chapter 16: "They should not be allowed to do this to the homeless and mentally ill": Minimum Separation Distance Bylaws Reconsidered, Lilith "Chava" Finkler* Chapter 17: The Making and Marketing of Mental Health Literacy in Canada, Kimberley White and M.C. Pike* Chapter 18: Pitching Mad: News Media and the sychiatric Survivor Perspective, Rob Wipond* Part V: Social Justice, Madness, and Identity Politics* Chapter 19: Mad Nation? Thinking through Race, Class, and Mad Identity Politics, Rachel Gorman* Chapter 20: Whither Indigenizing the Mad Movement? Theorizing the Social Relations of Race and Madness through Conviviality, Louise Tam* Chapter 21: Spaces in Place: Negotiating Queer In/visibility within Psychiatric and Mental Health Service Settings, Andrea Daley* Chapter 22: Rerouting the Weeds: The Move from Criminalizing to Pathologizing "Troubled Youth" in The Review of the Roots of Youth Violence, Jijian Voronka* Chapter 23: Recovery: Progressive Paradigm or Neoliberal Smokescreen? Marina Morrow* Glossary of Terms* References* Case Law and Statutes* About the Editors and Contributors
This book carves out the terrain of a vital and robust new field of study and makes clear its many points of connection to lived experiences of madness, activist movements, and related scholarly disciplines. The writing in Mad Matters comes from diverse personal and scholarly perspectives, and covers an impressive range of relevant topics, yet it all consistently advances the volume's goal of explaining and demonstrating the scope and radical significance of Mad Studies. In short, the anthology is delightfully readable and theoretically rich." - Joanne Woiak, University of Washington
