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.

Table of Contents:
Introducing Mad Studies Part I. Innovative Artists Introduction 1. “National Association for the Eradication of Mental Illness” and “Taking Care of the Basics” 2. Mad Studies and Mad Positive Music 3. Woody Guthrie’s Brain 4. The Invisible Line of Madness 5. Cry Havoc: The Madness of Returning Home from War 6. Betty and Veronica 7. The Uses of Depression: The Way Around is Through 8. Inbetweenland 9. Sometimes/I Slip 10. The Mystery of Madness through Art and Mad Studies 11. Mad Art Makes Sense 12. Are You Conrad? Part II. Critical Scholars Introduction 13. Theoretical Considerations in Mad Studies 14. Obsession in Our Time 15. A (Head) Case for Mad Humanities: Sula’s Shadrack and Black Madness 16. How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Notes toward a Mad Methodology 17. Commercialized Science and Epistemic Injustice: Exposing and Resisting Neoliberal Global Mental Health Discourse 18. ‘Structural Competency’ meets Mad Studies: Reckoning with madness and mental diversity beyond the social determinants of mental health 19. The Neoliberal Project: Mental Health and Marginality in India 20. Child as Metaphor: Colonialism, Psy-Goverance, and Epistemicide 21. Beyond Disordered Brains and Mother Blame: Critical Issues in Autism and Mothering 22. Enacting Activism: Depathologizing Trauma in Military Veterans Through Theatre Part III. Concerned Clinicians Introduction 23. Mental Illness is Still a Myth 24. The Emergence UK Critical Psychiatry Network: Reflections and Themes 25. Crisis Response as a Human Rights Flashpoint: Critical Elements of Community Support for Individuals Experiencing Significant Emotional Distress 26. Sanism: Histories, Applications, and Studies So Far 27. On Being Insane in Sane Places: Breaking into the Cult of Sanity 28. Therapy as a Tool in Dismantling Oppression 29. Decolonizing Psychotherapy by Owning Our Madness 30. Creating a Cultural Foundation for Spiritual Emergence 31. The Establisment and the Mystic 32. Re-thinking Psychiatry with Mad Studies Part IV. Daring Activists Introduction 33. The Ex-Patients' Movement: Where We've Been and Where We're Going 34. The Icarus Project: A Counter Narrative for Psychic-Diversity 35. Ending Coerción 36. Language games used to construct autism as pathology 37. The Black Wisdom Collective 38. Mad Resistance/Mad Alternatives: Democratizing Mental Health Care 39. Black Resilience in the Face of Bullshit: Wellness & Safety Plan 40. Demolition, Abolition, and the Legacy of Madness 41. A Brief, Critical History of Mental Health Services in Uganda and introduction to Contemporary Human Rights Organizing and Reform 42. Letter to the Mother of a “Schizophrenic”: We Must Do Better Than Forced Treatment 43. With the Launch of Mad in Denmark, a Global Network for Radical Change Grows Stronger 44. Defunding Sanity 45. Making the Case for Multiplicity: A Holistic Framework for Madness & Transformation