MAD ACTIVISM in ACADEMIA: Challenging Traditions – University College Cork- will be LIVE STREAMED ONLINE tomorrow (Monday April 18th 2016) – AND video recordings will be available after the day.
Awesome speakers are Jacqui Dillon, Helen Spandler, Dina Poursanidou and panellists Liz Brosnan, Rory Doody, Pat Bracken.
In November 2015, I made a poster presentation for the 1st European Conference on Supported Education in Groningen. The poster gives a summary in English about the Mad Studies reading groups in Amsterdam. You can see the poster here.
Geschreven door Grietje Keller.
Toen ik begin oktober bij de conferentie Making Sense of Mad Studies aanwezig was, maakte – onder andere – Jayasree Kalathil de aanwezigen erop attent dat deze conferentie een wit feestje is. Er waren geen zwarten, migranten of vluchtelingen (zmv) onder de sprekers en in het publiek waren de mensen met een zmv-achtergrond op één hand te tellen. Peter Beresford benoemde wel in zijn openingsrede dat het bij inclusie niet voldoet om af te wachten tot “the oppressed come to you”.
In de afsluitende keynote gaf Brenda LeFrancois aan wat de potentiële ondergang van Mad Studies zou kunnen zijn: wit privilege, eurocentrisme, racisme. Haar lezing en het benoemen van wit privilege riep heftige emoties op. Het is voor sommigen confronterend om erop gewezen te worden dat je als psychiatric survivor privileges zou kunnen hebben. Voor een uitleg van wit privilege verwijs ik naar het artikel White Privilege. Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (.pdf) van Peggy McIntosh en dit uitstekende artikel van Asha ten Broeke uit de Volkskrant. Het bewust of onbewust uitsluiten van een zmv-perspectief is niet alleen een probleem voor mensen met een zmv-achtergrond. Naast dat het leuker is om in een eerlijker wereld te leven, verrijkt, verdiept, informeert en compliceert het zmv-perspectief Mad Studies.
In de Facebook groep Mad Studies stelde Jayasree Kalathil deze literatuurlijst ter beschikking met de opmerking dat het geen volledige lijst is, voornamelijk uit het Verenigd Koninkrijk en wellicht niet allemaal Mad Studies. Onder andere om mijzelf te blijven herinneren aan het decentreren van witheid, plaats ik deze lijst hieronder. Daaronder nog meer literatuur rond dit thema die ik later gevonden heb. Aanvullingen zijn welkom! Stuur mij een email (grietje.keller@madstudies.nl) of schrijf aanvullingen in de comments.
Voor zover de lijst van Jayasree Kalathil, hierbij nog een aantal artikelen over witheid, wit privilege en intersectionaliteit.
Hieronder nog meer literatuur rond racisme en Mad Studies:
disorders among ethnic minorities in The Netherlands’. International Journal of Epidemiology 36:761–768.
“I have looked to three people in particular here at Ryerson when thinking about efforts to decolonize the whiteness in many Mad spaces. 1. Cyndy Baskin who has written copiously and beautifully about how her own experiences of pain and hearing voices get taken up as an Indigenous woman and scholar. 2. Lynn Lavallee, a Metis scholar, who is co-editor of the book Journey to Healing: Aboriginal People dealing with Addictions and Mental Health issues. 3. Idil Abdillahi who is doing similar work when it comes to anti-Black racism and incarceration. None use the term Mad because, in Idil’s words, it is too dangerous on top of the racism/sexism/colonialism/islamophobia.”
Ben je geïnteresseerd in vragen als: ben ik gek of is de wereld gek? Wat is de relatie tussen seksisme, racisme en psychiatrie? Kunnen we stigma niet beter benoemen als discriminatie? In de Mad Studies-groep lezen en bediscussiëren we teksten over psychiatrie en gekte. Zo krijg je woorden en ideeën aangereikt om je eigen positie te bepalen over diagnoses, taalgebruik, stigma, medicijnen, hulpverlening, spiritualiteit, ziekteinzicht, Mad Pride en andere psy-thema’s.
Doe mee met de Mad Studies leesgroepen in januari 2016, meld je hier aan. Of stuur een email naar: grietje.keller@madstudies.nl Continue reading Mad Studies leesgroepen beginnen in januari.
Wil je op de hoogte blijven van Mad Studies en onze leesgroepen, vul dan hier je emailadres in.
Wednesday, 30 September 2015 at 10:30 – Thursday, 1 October 2015 at 17:30 (BST), Durham, United Kingdom
Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/making-sense-of-mad-studies-tickets-17586057371
‘Making Sense of Mad Studies’ is a two day conference to be held on 30 September and 1 October 2015-funded by the Welcome Trust and hosted by the Centre for Medical Humanities at Durham University in collaboration with the North East Mad Studies Forum. The aim of the conference is to provide a platform for the development and critical exploration of the emerging discipline, Mad Studies, with specific emphasis on nurturing new researchers and collaborations in this area- both inside and outside of the University. There will be a particular critical focus on exploring the following themes:
We are delighted to announce that we already have five keynote speakers confirmed: Prof. Peter Beresford, Representatives from ‘Recovery in the Bin’, Prof. Brenda LeFrancois, Dr Helen Spandler, Prof. Brendan Stone.
We hope this conference provides space to begin and continue conversations, and for delegates to think about how we make sense of Mad Studies, reflecting on what Mad Studies has done and can do. If you have any questions about the conference please do not hesitate to contact Victoria Armstrong, one of the conference organisers at v.e.potts@durham.ac.uk. Also, if you have any particular access requirements please let Victoria know. We expect demand for places at this conference will be high so please book early. Booking for the event will close on 1 September 2015.
Do you have questions about Making Sense of Mad Studies? Contact Victoria Armstrong
Morgen lezen we een artikel over “saneism” van PhebeAnn Wolframe
“I was aware of the discrimination I had faced as a “mentally ill” person, but I accepted that oppression. I believed, at the time, that I was sick, and I believed that this sickness caused me to hurt myself and others. Should I not then, I reasoned, be restrained by the straightjacket of unequal treatment?
It was only later when I came to reject the medical model of madness 6 that I questioned my own internalization of an oppression I came to know as saneism.”
~ Andrea Daley (York University, Toronto, ON, Canada)
~ Lucy Costa (Systemic Advocate, The Empowerment Council: A Voice for Clients of CAMH, Toronto, ON, Canada)
~ Peter Beresford (Brunel University, Uxbridge, England, UK)
The editors are working with an international advisory group that includes service users/survivors from the UK, Germany and Canada.
Summary of Topic
This interdisciplinary anthology will discuss violence as manifest in the lives of diversely-situated people who identify in various ways including but not limited to mental health services users; people with mental illness, psychiatric disabilities or psychosocial disabilities; psychiatric survivors/consumers, and neurodivergent (herein referred to as ‘people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system’). We are motivated by an apparently increased discussion and coverage of violence in relation to ‘mental illness’ within the public sphere including the media, governments, community agencies, and psychiatric and penal institutions.
Our goal is to challenge common ways of talking about violence related to people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system. These common ways include biomedical frameworks and statistical assertions that position people with psychiatric diagnosis as more likely to be victims of violence and enact violence compared to people without psychiatric diagnosis. This narrow binary separates violence from its social context, often reducing it to an individual issue.
The purpose of the anthology is to broaden understandings of violence in the lives of people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system and develop current debate in ways that explore the impacts of systems and institutions that manage ‘abnormality.’ Another purpose is to examine the role of service users in legal, social, policy and medical transformations in relation to such systems and institutions.
This interdisciplinary anthology will bring together people thinking, researching, writing and taking action about new considerations of power, violence, systems and institutions in relation to people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system. It will include academic and non-academic community members, activists and allies within the consumer/survivor, ex-patient and Mad movements. We are seeking first person narratives, empirical research studies (quantitative and/or qualitative), and theoretical contributions encompassing a range of critical theories including feminist, queer, critical race, intersectional and post-colonial as informed by consumer/survivor, ex-patient, Mad and critical disability movements. We welcome a broad range of contribution styles/formats including artistic contributions including poetry, visual art and photography.
We welcome papers that utilize critical conceptual frameworks that may include topics related to the following themes:
Neoliberal discourses
o How do neoliberal discourses on ‘health’ and ‘community engagement’ depoliticize issues of social (in)justice, inequality and inequity?
o How does the neo-liberal project of medicalizing social justice issues impact people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system?
Laws, legislations& policy frameworks
o How do laws, legislations and policy frameworks serve to control and govern ‘people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system? Is this violence?
o How do questions of power, autonomy and dependency underlie: hate crime legislation; employment and disability insurance policy; immigration policy; community treatment orders (CTOs); disability and mental health acts; national security policy (e.g., border crossing), implementation of recommendations from inquests into deaths of persons involved in the psychiatric systems, state power (via laws) which exclude entire groups of people such as First Nations/Indigenous from self-governance and resources?
o How can and how does the law support and improve the possibilities for citizen participation?
o What considerations should be made on the application, relevance and utility of international law to challenge violence?
o What are the barriers to accessing justice within the lower and higher courts and/or mental health tribunals? Are these barriers a type of violence?
o Do people experience violence in legal proceedings (mental health courts and/or tribunals) as a result of intersections between Aboriginality, race, ethnicity/culture, sex/gender, class, and/or living with other evident disabilities (e.g., physical disability)?
o How does law reproduce and draw from other knowledge(s) or disciplines in order to constitute itself as valid and meaningful?
The practices of institutions and the institutionalization of practices
o How the practices of institutions and the institutionalization of practices serve to enact violence upon people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system? Practices may include those within education, social services and mental health, criminal justice and policing, and employment institutions such as institutional frameworks associated with eligibility and documentation and/or record keeping; academic program requirements and research including ethics and funding criteria; police training for, and responses to, ‘emotionally distressed people’; patient management within psychiatric hospitals/institutions; constructions of mental disorders (DSM).
Restorative justice and madness
o While people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system are often the victims of violence, and the risk of offending is statistically lower for mental health service users than the general public, this section will examine the enactment of violence by people who are mental health service users. Authors are asked to engage with difficult questions about ‘criminality’ within Mad/consumer/survivor communities while critically exploring issues related to the determination of ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims’, the allocation of community supports and community responses to violence such as strategies for redress. We invite people who have committed violence such as assault to contribute. While not necessarily conceptualized as ‘violence’, contributions that explore experiences of self-harm will also be considered.
Questions for consideration:
o How do we analyse and address violence when enacted by individuals with mental health issues/ madness without creating a culture of silence, vilification, and apologies or excuses?
o What are the best models/frameworks to address violence that move us from the biomedical discourse of risk/safety to shared social responsibility?
o What could be the contribution of people with experience of psychiatric treatment in developing an alternative framework to understand and address violence?
o What do mental health service users with a designation of “Not Criminally Responsible” or, “Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity” feel about their experiences in the forensic system?
o What are the implications of relying on oppressive institutions/structures to address violence in the mental health service user communities?
o What is the contribution of forced psychiatry (e.g., medication, restraint, seclusion) to violence committed by (ex) psychiatric patients?
Length: Chapters should be approximately 5,000 words in length (including references), but may be shorter depending on contribution style and format (e.g., poem). Authors are invited to submit a 350-500 word abstract for consideration including author’s affiliations, contact information, and brief biography by email to the editors by MAY 29, 2015:
Andrea Daley, York University, Toronto, ON Canada, adaley@yorku.ca
Lucy Costa, The Empowerment Council, Toronto, ON Canada, ms.lucycosta@gmail.com
Peter Beresford, Brunel University, Uxbridge, England, UK, peter.beresford@brunel.ac.uk
Vanmiddag bediscussiëren we bij de Mad Studies leesgroep van stichting Perceval twee hoofdstukken uit het ego-document van Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911) “Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken”, gepubliceerd in 1903. Schreber was rechter in Dresden.