#mad studies

[trans-axolotl]

"How to Go Mad is animated by deep concern for black people, mad people, and other beleaguered beings. If this project brings attention to people who have been persecuted because of their blackness and/or/as madness; if it alerts rationalist readers to the grave repercussions of demeaning the mentally ill; if it teaches techniques for practicing ethical, radical, critical, and beautiful madness; if it instigates righteous rage in the interest of social transformation; if it broadens understanding of who and what comprises a black radical tradition; if it encourages black studies to more carefully address madness; if it prompts mad studies to think more rigorously through blackness; if it urges black studies and mad studies to join forces; if it testifies to the possibility of bearing fruit in a "fruitless expanse" and finding home "nowhere at all"; if it models radical compassion; if it urges us toward liberation; or if it simply contributes to someone's relief or healing, then, to my mind, this book succeeds.

For some, healing might mean banishing madness. For others, healing might mean harnessing madness and putting it to good use--a readiness to rally the voices inside one's head rather than silence them. "

-How To Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity, 2021. By La Marr Jurelle Bruce, pg 34.

#personal #disability studies #black studies #mad studies #quotes #mad liberation

[trans-axolotl2]

Fuck the DSM. Seriously, fuck the DSM.

The DSM is and always has been used primarily as a method of rationalizing mistreatment of the people it labels as "deviant." When you look at the history of psychiatry, it becomes clear that things like drapetomania, protest psychosis, hysteria, and homosexuality as a disorder were not just thrown into there randomly. Rather, it showcases the power of the DSM: labeling and categorizing ways of being as mental illness opens up new paths of incarceration, social control, and curative violence. I need people to understand that the modern DSM still works like this: these classifications of madness/mental distress/neurodivergence into psychiatric labels encourage society to treat madness/mental distress/neurodivergence with the apparatuses used to eradicate "deviance." Diagnosis is not neutral.

As mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people, we deserve access to more explanatory models of madness/mental illness/ neurodivergence than what the psychiatric language of normalcy and disorder offers us. Whether this looks like rejecting diagnosis, embracing varying cultural understandings of mental experience, or any million different ways of interpreting our bodymind, we deserve the option to move beyond clinical language that tries to convince us not to trust ourselves. We deserve to view ourselves wholly, leaving room for all our experiences of madness/mental illness/neurodivergence--the meaningful, the terrifying, the joyful, the exhausting. We deserve to have our own relationship with our madness, instead of being pushed to view ourselves as an inherent "danger to self or others" simply by existing as crazy.

Here's another truth: I hate the DSM, and I still call myself bipolar, a diagnosis that came to me through psych incarceration. While I wholeheartedly reject the DSM and the system intertwined with it, I simultaneously acknowledge and believe that many of the collections of symptoms that the DSM describes are very, very real ways of living in the world, and that the distress that they can cause are very very real. When I say fuck the DSM, I don't mean "Mental distress, disability, and neurodivergence aren't real." Rather, I mean that the DSM can never hold my experience of what it is like to be bipolar, the meaning I derive from experiencing life with cyclical moods. The DSM can't hold within its pages what it's like to see my mood cycle not as a tragedy or disaster, but instead as an opportunity, a gift, to grow and shift and go back to the same place over and over again, dying in winter and blooming again in spring. The DSM can't hold the fact that even though I experience very, very real distress due to those mood cycles--they're still mine and I claim that as something that matters to me. I call myself bipolar as a shorthand to tell people that I experience many things both extreme high and low, but I do not mean the same thing when I say "bipolar" as a psychiatrist does.

When we build community as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people, I want us to have room to share, relate, and care for each other in ways that isn't calling to the authority of a fucked up system with strictly defined categories. I don't want us to take those same ways of thinking and rebrand it into advocacy that claims to fight stigma, but really just ends up reinforcing these same ideas about deviance, cure, control, and danger. I dream of the day when psychiatry doesn't loom as a threat in all of our lives, and I think part of that work requires us as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people to really grapple with and untangle the ways we label and make meaning of our minds.

ok to reblog, if you want to learn more about antipsychiatry/mad studies check out this reading list.

#personal #antipsychiatry #antipsych #mad pride #mad studies #disability justice #disability #prompted by. idk. being tangential to certain spaces lately #seeing ppl who r forming communities focused on neurodivergency #in a way that really just. reinforces and legitimizes the dsm #and constantly refers to the authority of the dsm as a reason why they r right #not going to get into the specific discourse of the week except to say that something i feel strongly. is that we get to have different #explanatory models. but also that we r allowed to critique explanatory models as a community #like i hate the indigo child shit. i think its full of white supremascist dogwhistles #that's not an explanatory model i feel like the autistic community should ever support u know #anyway. getting offtrack

[fansplaining]

You see people being really raw and open in author’s notes. ... things like, “I wanted to write about my experience with an eating disorder. I hope people find this useful to see themselves reflected back.” And then you’ll go to the comments section and it will be dozens and dozens of people saying, “Thank you, I’ve never felt myself come out of the page before.” And I think it’s something about the interaction with that meta-level, how we get to fanfiction, and also with engaging in a shared common space that is the fandom, and that world that you’re writing in. ... there’s something that grounds you there and makes it easier, or more powerful, in conveying an experience through that familiarity.

— @melodioustear on her research into depictions of Madness in fic in our “Disability and Fandom” double episode. Click through to listen to our entire conversation with her or to read a full transcript.

#fandom #fansplaining #melodioustear #disability and fandom #fanfiction #mad studies

[bfpnola]

#resources #madness #mad studies #jewish #free palestine #instagram #soul loss #indigenous #colonialism #palestine #gaza #free gaza #gaza strip #dsm v #dehumanization

[mercifullymad]

Radical compassion is a will to care for, a commitment to feel with, a striving to learn from, and an openness to be vulnerable before a precarious other, though they may be drastically dissimilar to yourself. Radical compassion is not an appeal to an idyllic oneness where difference is blithely effaced. Nor is it a smug projection of oneself into the position of another, thereby displacing that other. Nor is it an invitation to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes and amble, like a tourist, through their lifeworld, leaving them existentially barefoot all the while. Rather, radical compassion is an exhortation to ethically walk and sit and fight and build alongside another whose condition may be utterly unlike your own. Radical compassion works to impart care, exchange feeling, transmit understanding, embolden vulnerability, and fortify solidarity across circumstantial, sociocultural, phenomenological, and ontological chasms in the interest of mutual liberation. It persists even and especially toward beings who are the objects of contempt and condemnation from dominant value systems.

Most urgently, mad methodology primes us to extend radical compassion to the madpersons, queer personae, ghosts, freaks, weirdos, imaginary friends, disembodied voices, unvoiced bodies, and unReasonable others, who trespass, like stowaways or fugitives, in Reasonable modernity.

How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind by La Marr Jurelle Bruce

#how to go mad without losing your mind #la marr jurelle bruce #mad studies #mad methodology #radical compassion #dw to anyone who has followed me here from insta i will not simply repost all my quotes from there #but bruce is too good and too insightful not to share on every platform #if i knew what was good for me i would reread this book at least every two months #my readings

[melodioustear]

Let's Learn About Mental Illness and Fandom!

ETA: This survey has now closed. Thank you for so many more responses than I expected! I will announce as soon as the data is available to others to use and as I make my own discoveries in working with it.

Thank you so much everyone for your responses to my fanfiction and mental illness survey. As of posting we have 108 responses which is fantastic and very much enough for my own thesis, but I don't just want this data to be for me - I want it to be available to other fan studies researchers to work with and build upon.

This is the work I spoke about when I was on the @fansplaining podcast just a few months ago, and something that we just don't have in the fan stats community - our only related information is on whump, which whilst useful isn't by any means the same thing.

So if you'd like to help us learn more about how we read, write and interact with fanfiction about mental illness, please take the survey & share this post!

The survey will take you just 5-15 minutes, and will help to gather groundbreaking insights for fan studies. You’ll be asked about yourself, about how you read, write and find fanfiction about mental illness, and what interacting with this kind of fanfic has been like for you.

Full data on the study, including consent, privacy and GDPR information, can be found on the survey page.

Submissions will remain open until the 25th June 2023. Thank you so much!

#fan studies #fandom studies #fanfic #fandom research #fanfiction #fandom #fandom stats #phdresearch #mental illness #mad studies #fanstats #fandom meta #fandom culture #fandom history #a03 #mental health #fanfics

[chronicallycouchbound]

Guide to interacting with people with psychosis spectrum disorders and psychotic symptoms

If someone who has psychotic symptoms is talking to you about their hallucinations or delusions, do not suggest:

That they are inherently violent or dangerous Why: Statistically, people with psychosis are more likely to be victims of violence, not perpetrators. They are more likely to be killed by police than people without mental illnesses.

That their hallucinations are actually reality and everyone else can’t experience it Why: this can cause further dissonance between reality for the person, especially if they’re actively experiencing symptoms. It can lead to derealization and depersonalization, and exasperate or trigger hallucinations and/or delusions.

That they are a prophet, god, all powerful, etc. Why: along with the above reason of causing further separation from reality, many people with psychotic spectrum disorders experience delusions, one common type of delusion is called delusions of grandeur, which is a specific delusion around perceiving oneself or one’s accomplishments as greatness or of higher status than others. This specific delusion can be dangerous because it can lead to the person believing that they are immune to consequences, including physical harm to oneself. By affirming beliefs of the person being god-like, it can trigger or exasperate this delusion. This is especially common with people who have Bipolar type 1 with psychotic features and they are in manic states.

That they should just meditate Why: Meditation often isn’t safe for people with psychosis! Studies show that unguided meditation is especially risky, because without focusing on reality, people with psychotic symptoms are more likely to have hallucinations, or have depersonalization/derealization.

That you can see/hear it too, when you can’t/lying to agree with their hallucinations Why: This will absolutely exasperate symptoms, also it’s lying and is wrong and a genuinely horrible thing to do. This one should be obvious.

That they should just use cannabis or other psychoactive drugs Why: THC and other psychoactive compounds, can trigger psychotic episodes in people who have or are predisposed to psychosis, and trigger anxiety and hallucinations, which can exasperate symptoms. That being said, individual experiences may differ greatly, and they may be able to use psychoactive substances with no issues, but to suggest it as a cure-all or without a proper understanding of its possible negative side effects can be dangerous. Also, many antipsychotics and other psychiatric medications interact with many psychoactive drugs, so it’s important to know if it’s physically safe for them to use both at once.

Things you can say/do instead!

When actively experiencing symptoms/episodes:

Maintain a calm and steady tone of voice, don’t yell.

Explain what you’re doing before you do it, and try to avoid sudden movements which can scare or jump someone

If they have an action plan, follow it. I also urge you to remember that they’re scared right now. They likely don’t want to hurt anyone, but they’re terrified. Find ways to be safe, preferably that don’t involve police (there are lots of statistics around why this is unhelpful and can be dangerous)

“I understand that you feel scared right now, let’s find ways to be safe through this.” Be supportive! Psychotic symptoms are similar to symptoms of any other mental illnesses, when someone is depressed or anxious, we often reach out with kindness, remember that people with psychosis also need that compassion and consideration.

“We are at [location], I am [name] we are [relationship to person], we are safe” Talking about reality can be really helpful, most people with symptoms need some guidance around basic understandings of reality, affirming what is real can help them distinguish what is and isn’t. An important note, reality checks can sometimes be more harmful than helpful. Usually, a person who needs a reality check will just ask the questions: “Who are you?”, “Where are we?”, Etc.

Sometimes, doing reasonable things to help them feel safer is necessary to help them calm down enough that they stop having severe symptoms. For example, someone who is afraid that people are watching them might want to cover windows and lock doors, help them create a safe space for them mentally by doing that. Some requests might be a bit odd, but harmless, like putting salt in the doorways so demons can’t get in, you can do that, or find alternatives to help them feel safe. It’s important to try to create this safe space while also affirming reality.

Try not to focus on the specific hallucination, but rather on their feelings, for example instead of talking about the demons or details about the demons, talk about their feelings about the demons, and how you can make them feel safer. It can help them feel secure to have someone in reality helping them stay safe while they cope with these scary symptoms.

Ask permission before touching, consent is particularly important for people with psychosis, we are often stripped of our right to consent while in episodes.

Offer snacks, stuffed animals, or other comfort items

When talking about their experiences, diagnosis, or when not in episodes:

Ask how you can be supportive, both in and outside of episodes, some people need help with remembering medications, or someone to call when they’re scared and having symptoms. Sometimes it just helps to be able to explain what they’re going through and have someone just listen. They know their needs best.

Help them come up with a crisis/safety plan for when they have episodes, it can literally save their life, or at least make it more manageable and sometimes less scary.

Check on them if they seem off, have life changes, or are isolating.

Learn their warning signs and help them stay safe before they have episodes, and hopefully prevent them from happening or being more unmanageable.

Offer to do reality checks if that's something that helps them

Offer to do medication reminders ( if you're able to)

I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 with Psychosis when I was 18. I have many psychotic symptoms including hallucinations, delusions, derealization, and depersonalization. This was written from my own experiences, research, and recommendations from providers. I highly recommend seeking out more information and experiences about psychosis to gain a more comprehensive understanding of it. No guide is one-size-fits-all, and this is definitely incomplete in many ways, but hopefully, this provides some insight or education for you.

#chronically couchbound #guides #disability #disabled #psychosis #schizophrenia #bipolar #mad rights #actually psychotic #psychotic disorders #mania #hallucinations #delusions #bipolar mania #bipolar disorder #manic depression #mental health #mental illness #mad studies #madcrip #mad pride #anti psychotics #psychotic spectrum disorders #bipolar 1 #schizoaffective #schizo spectrum #schizophrenic #how to support #crazy #actually manic

[emohorseboy]

Shelving books at my new job and reacted to this like a vampire next to a stack of bibles

#jumpscared by the dsm while i’m trying to live my life #go away #dsm 5 #anti psych #anti psychiatry #mad liberation #psych abolition #psych abuse #psychiatric survivor #psych survivor #psych trauma #psychiatry #mad pride #mad studies

[librarycards]

hi sarah, appreciate the work you do (it is so important and compelling, i virtually discovered the concept of anti-psychiatry through your blog). i was wondering whether you could recommend some texts (of any kind: books, articles, etc) specifically focused on autism and the autistic experience from a neuroqueer/transMad perspective. thanks so much

thank you so much for the kind words!!

i've written about this in a few places:

The Queer Aut of Failure: Cripistemic Openings for Postgraduate Life

Social Skills: a transdyke autie-biography

Mel Baggs Will Never Leave Us

Some other pieces and books of note:

Mel Baggs's oeuvre. (Blog) (Another blog)

M. Remi Yergeau, Wandering Rhetoric, Rhetoric Wandering and Clinically Significant Disturbance: On Theorists Who Theorize Theory of Mind and all of their work!

Jake Pyne, Autistic Disruptions, Trans Temporalities (Pyne has a bunch of excellent work on neuroqueerness and (imo) transMadness!)

J. Logan Smilges, Crip Negativity and Queer Silence (and other works!)

Jess Rauchberg, Imagining a Neuroqueer Technoscience.

*You may notice that this list is very white and TME. Yes, and that's a massive problem. If anyone has recommendations that break this mold, I am begging you to let me know, as there are so many gaps in the still-nascent theorization around autism from a critical Mad perspective.

#ask #book rec #readings #madness #mad studies #autism #critical autism studies #eleanorvancecoded

[jamesunderwater]

have been learning more about disability justice / abolitionist frameworks for mental health care / community care / restorative justice, and the like. found this article and the first paragraph made me cry, so i thought i'd share for my fellow disabled trans babes <3

"The first time I saw Poison Ivy, I fell in love with her. She was sexy, smart, powerful. I don’t know if wanted to fuck her or if I wanted to be her. She was crazy, and I loved that, because I was crazy, too. She was a woman trespassing on the Mad scientist boy’s club, genetically engineering offspring (who needs men for reproduction?) and putting pressure on our human-centric worldview with her passion for plant-life. She was incredible.

But I didn’t get to play Ivy. I had to play Batman. And Batman punished Ivy for being a Mad queer femme. He played the role of the legal system, and the legal system punishes people like her, like me. The logic of the game was patriarchal, sanist, ableist. The game made me hurt us."

Mad/Crip Games and Play: An Intro by Adan Jerreat-Poole

#yeah no it makes me emotional to read again now. 'i didn't get to play ivy.' 'she was crazy and i love that because i was crazy too' #and calling out batman but like truly every motherfucking bad guy/good guy story for being patriarchal AND sanist AND ableist #like yeah yeah they fucking ARE. #tl;dr be the supervillain you never got to be growing up <3 #posion ivy #there is so explaining how in love with her i am #audhd #ableism #disability justice #disabled #disability #disability tag #disability awareness #mad studies #crip studies #sanist #mental health

[trans-axolotl]

Image description: [ A digital poster with a beige background and a small graphic of a book that has yellow flowers growing out of it. Text says: Psych survivor Zine. Open call for submissions from Mad Artists. Looking for pieces that explore how psych survivors resist psychiatric violence, with a special focus on transforming our medical records. Pieces exploring topics in mad studies, antipsychiatry, and peer support are likely to be a good fit. $100 Stipend. Deadline for proposals: March 31st. For more information and next steps to submit artwork, please go to https://tinyurl.com/psychsurvivorzine. For any questions, email Elliott at [email protected]]

Hello everyone! I am thrilled to announce that I'm searching for collaborators for the first edition of a Psych Survivor zine!! I've been working on this project for a while, and there are several other components that will be rolled out throughout this spring (if you aren't an artist/writer but still want to be involved, keep an eye out on my blog.) This zine is going to be physically published and hosted on a website created specifically for this project.

This zine is open to anyone who identifies as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent/psych survivor/ex patient, and any form of art is welcome, whether that's poetry, critical essays, digital art, photography, or anything else. Due to funding constraints, I will likely only be selecting 10-13 people to add to this edition. This edition is focused specifically on abolishing and transforming our medical records, and click on the link above to read the full prompt.

Please feel free to email me or message me on tumblr with any further questions, and I'm so excited to hopefully work with some of you on this project!

#antipsychiatry #antipsych #mad studies #neurodivergence #disability studies #peer support #disability #mental illness #mental health #psych abolition #psych critical #psych survivor zine

[trans-axolotl2]

So annoyed with psychiatry students that I’ve seen lately who reply to posts attacking the DSM in order to claim that “all of their professors criticize the DSM and none of us in the profession like it these days!” This is such a blatantly false statement it almost makes me laugh. Firstly, many, many professors still glorify the DSM and teach it uncritically—I’ve been in classes with many professors who love the DSM! Secondly, even if you have one class that criticizes the DSM, the DSM and ICD is still the operative paradigm through which psychiatry operates in the United States—look at diagnostic codes, billing codes, and just how the whole fucking system operates—even if you criticize the DSM, psychs are still engaging with and offering legitimacy to the medical model of psychiatry. Thirdly most of us have so many issues with psychiatry beyond just the DSM, and the DSM is just a a reflection of the larger dynamics of power and control. So even if you are a psych who is critical of the DSM, there’s still probably a million other things you do that participate in a system that harms mad/neurodivergent/mentally ill people.

if you constantly feel the need to justify that you’re “not like everyone else in your profession” maybe consider what that means about the system you work in, the ethical dilemmas you are 100% going to face when you try to work within that system, and whether the personal values you are going to have to betray are worth the benefits you might bring to people.

#antipsych #antipsychiatry #mad pride #mad studies #madness #disability justice

[fansplaining]

For me, there’s been a huge shift towards the political and towards activism. In doing my research on mental distress in fanfic, I’ve started to learn more about how things like stereotype, stigma, ableism, criticism and anti-criticism, and purity culture play out in both our stories and the communities around them… And though it might be confirmation bias or echo chambering, I’ve noticed other fans around me going on this journey towards resistance and self-reflection, too. Fans have always been a really thoughtful group, but I see a lot more activism and even rebellion going on around me than I used to.

— @melodioustear in our anniversary episode, talking about how her experience of fandom has shifted over the past year. Click through to listen to her whole voicemail or read a transcript!

#fandom #fansplaining #rebecca milton #fanfiction #mad studies #disability studies #fan activism #social justice

[diamond-in-the-ash]

"There might be something comforting about the notion that there is, deep down, an impeccable self without disorder, and that if I try hard enough, I can reach that unblemished self. But there may be no impeccable self to reach, and if I continue to struggle toward one, I might go mad in the pursuit."

- Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias

#Esmé Weijun Wang #The Collected Schizophrenias #quote #mad studies #mental health

[mercifullymad]

Sanism is based on the fundamentally flawed notion that the mere existence of madness threatens the safety and order of society. As a result, the question of "what to do" about madness prompts "solutions" that give preference to coercive and carceral practices at the expense of the individual experiencing distress. The premise of sanism relies heavily on cultural mis/perceptions of danger and disorder, a sort of pre-limiting cultural imaginary characterized by the central political goal of exclusion, justified by pathology, and reinforced by professional medical expertise.

Health Communism by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant

#health communism #sanism #ableism #madness #mad studies #my readings

[melodioustear]

Fan Studies Survey: Mental Illness and Fanfiction

ETA: This survey has now closed. Thank you for so many more responses than I expected! I will announce as soon as the data is available to others to use and as I make my own discoveries in working with it.

As part of my PhD where I am researching mental illness in interactive and immersive media types, I’m undertaking a project on how people read, write and interact with fanfiction about mental illness. The survey will take you just 5-15 minutes, and will help to gather groundbreaking insights for fan studies. You’ll be asked about yourself, about how you read, write and find fanfiction about mental illness, and what interacting with this kind of fanfic has been like for you. This data will be shared openly so that other fan studies researchers can work with it and help us better understand this huge part of the fanfiction community. Full data on the study, including consent, privacy and GDPR information, can be found on the survey page. Submissions will remain open until the 25th June 2023. Thank you so much!

#fan studies #fandom studies #fanfic #fandom research #fanfiction #fanfic stats #fandom stats #mental illness #phdresearch #mad studies #mental health #fandom meta #fandom culture #fandom