Mad Studies Reader Interdisciplinary Innovations in Mental Health

Part I. Innovative Artists

Introducing Mad Studies

1. "Icarus Wing," "National Association for the Eradication of Mental Illness," and "Taking Care of the Basics"
   Icarus Project
2. Mad Studies and Mad-Positive Music
   Mark A. Castrodale
3. Woody Gunthrie’s Brain
   Issa Ibrahim
4. The Invisible Line of Madness
   Sabrina Chap
5. Cry Havoc: The Madness of Returning Home from War
   Stephan Wolfert
6. Betty and Veronica
   Emily Allan and Leah Hennessey
7. The Uses of Depression: The Way Around Is Through
   David Budbill
8. Inbetweenland
   Jacks McNamara
9. Sometimes/I Slip
   L. D. Green
10. The Mystery of Madness through Art and Mad Studies
    Ekaterina Netchitailova
11. Mad Art Makes Sense
    Lorna Collins
12. Are You Conrad?
    Sophia Szamosi

Part II. Critical Scholars


13. Theoretical Considerations in Mad Studies
    Erica Fletcher
14. Obsession in Our Time
    Lennard Davis
15. A (Head) Case for a Mad Humanities: Sula’s Shadrack and Black Madness
    Hayley C. Stefan
16. How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Notes toward a Mad Methodology: From "How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind:
    Madness and Black Radical Creativity"
    La Marr Jurelle Bruce
17. Commercialized Science and Epistemic Injustice: Exposing and Resisting Neoliberal Global Mental Health Discourse
    Justin M. Karter, Lisa Cosgrove, and Farahdeba Herrawi
18. "Structural Competency" Meets Mad Studies: Reckoning with Madness and Mental Diversity beyond the Social and Structural Determinants of Mental Health
    Nev Jones
19. The Neoliberal Project: Mental Health and Marginality in India
    Zaphya Jena
20. Child As Metaphor: Colonialism, Psy-Governance, and Epistemicide
    China Mills and Brenda A. LeFrançois
21. Beyond Disordered Brains and Mother Blame: Critical Issues in
    Autism and Mothering
    Patty Douglas and Estée Klar
22. Enacting Activism: Depathologizing Trauma in Military Veterans
    through Theatre
    Alisha Ali and Luke Bokenfohr

Part III. Concerned Clinicians

23. Mental Illness Is Still a Myth
    Thomas Szasz
24. The Emergence of the UK Critical Psychiatry Network: Reflections and Themes
    Pat Bracken, Duncan Double, Suman Fernando, Joanna Moncrieff, Philip Thomas, and Sami Timimi
25. Crisis Response as a Human Rights Flashpoint: Critical Elements of Community Support for Individuals Experiencing Significant Emotional Distress
    Peter Stastny, Anne M. Lovell, Julie Hannah, Daniel Goulart, Alberto Vasquez, Seana O’Callaghan, and Dainius Pūras
26. Sanism: Histories, Applications, and Studies So Far
    Stephanie LeBlanc-Omstead and Jennifer Poole
27. On Being Insane in Sane Places: Breaking into the Cult of the Mental Health Industry
    Noel Hunter
28. Therapy as a Tool in Dismantling Oppression
    Gitika Talwar
29. Decolonizing Psychotherapy by Owning Our Madness
    Debbie-Ann Chambers
30. Creating a Cultural Foundation to Contextualize and Integrate
    Spiritual Emergence
    Katrina Michelle
31. The Establishment and the Mystic: Musings on Relationships between Psychoanalysis and Human Development
    Marilyn Charles
32. Rethinking Psychiatry with Mad Studies
    Bradley Lewis

Part IV. Daring Activists

33. The Ex-Patients’ Movement: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going
    Judi Chamberlin
34. The Icarus Project: A Counter Narrative for Psychic Diversity
    Sascha Altman DuBrul
35. Ending Coercion
    Alberto Vásquez Encalada
    
36. Language Games Used to Construct Autism as Pathology
    Nick Chown
37. The Black Wisdom Collective
    Kelechi Ubozoh
38. Mad Resistance/Mad Alternatives: Democratizing Mental Health Care
    Jeremy Andersen, Ed Altwies, Jonah Bossewitch, Celia Brown, Kermit Cole, Sera Davidow, Sascha Altman DuBrul, Eric Friedland-Kays, Gelini Fontaine, Will Hall, Chris Hansen, Bradley Lewis, Audre Lorde Project, Maryse Mitchell-Brody, Jacks McNamara, Gina Nikkel, Pablo Sadler, David Stark, Adaku Utah, Agustina Vidal, and Cheyenna Layne Weber
39. Black Resilience in the Face of Bullshit: Wellness and Safety Plan
    Adaku Utah
40. Demolition, Abolition, and Inherited Legacies of Madness
    Leah Harris
41. A Critical Overview of Mental Health-Related Beliefs, Services and Systems in Uganda and Recent Activist and Legal Challenges
    Kabale Benon Kitafuna
42. Letter to the Mother of a "Schizophrenic": We Must Do Better Than
    Forced Treatment
    Will Hall
43. With the Launch of Mad in Denmark, a Global Network for Radical Change Grows Stronger
    Robert Whitaker
44. Defunding Sanity
    Raj Mariwala
45. Making the Case for Multiplicity: A Holistic Framework for Madness
    and Transformation
    Jazmine Russell

Biography

Bradley Lewis is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist with a background in the arts and humanities. He is Associate Professor at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and he is on the editorial board of the Journal of Medical Humanities. His books include Moving Beyond Prozac, DSM, and the New Psychiatry: The Birth of Postpsychiatry; Narrative Psychiatry: How Stories Can Shape Clinical Encounters; and Experiencing Epiphanies in Literature, Cinema, and Everyday Life (forthcoming).

Alisha Ali is Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University. Her research focuses on the mental health effects of oppression, including violence, racism, discrimination, and trauma. She is the co-editor of the book Silencing the Self Across Cultures (Oxford University Press) as well as the co-editor of The Crisis of Connection (NYU Press).

Jazmine Russell is the co-founder of the Institute for the Development of Human Arts (IDHA), a transformative mental health training institute, and host of Depth Work: A Holistic Mental Health Podcast. She is an interdisciplinary scholar of mad studies, critical psychology, and neuroscience, with experience working both within and outside the mental health system.

"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