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Mad pride in paris
Mad Pride is a mass movement of the users of mental health services, former users, and their allies. The first known event specifically organized as a Pride event by people who identify as psychiatric survivors/consumer/ex-patients was in Toronto, Canada when it was called "Psychiatric Survivor Pride Day", held on September 18, 1993. It was first held in response to local community prejudices towards people with a psychiatric history living in boarding homes in the Parkdale area of the city, and has been held every year since then in this city except 1996. By the late 1990s similar events were being organized as Mad Pride in London, England and around the globe from Australia to South Africa and the United States, drawing thousands of participants, according to MindFreedom International, a United States mental health advocacy organization that promotes and tracks events spawned by the movement.
Contents
- Mad pride in paris
- Celebrating mad pride
- Mad Studies
- History
- Early Origins
- Mad culture and events
- Bed push
- Psychiatric Patient Built Wall Tours
- References
Mad Pride activists seek to reclaim terms such as "mad", "nutter", and "psycho" from misuse, such as in tabloid newspapers. Through a series of mass media campaigns, Mad Pride activists seek to re-educate the general public on such subjects as the causes of mental disabilities, the experiences of those using the mental health system, and the global suicide pandemic. One of Mad Pride's founding activists was Pete Shaughnessy, who later died by suicide. Mark Roberts, Robert Dellar and Simon Barnet were among the other founders of the movement. Mad Pride: A celebration of mad culture records the early Mad Pride movement. On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System, published in 1978 by Judi Chamberlin, is a foundational text in the Mad Pride movement, although it was published before the movement was launched.
Celebrating mad pride
Mad Studies
As noted in Mad matters: a critical reader in Canadian mad studies (LeFrançois, Menzies and Reaume, 2013), "Mad Studies can be defined in general terms as a project of inquiry, knowledge production, and political action devoted to the critique and transcendence of psy-centred ways of thinking, behaving, relating, and being". As a book, "'Mad Matters' offers a critical discussion of mental health and madness in ways that demonstrate the struggles, oppression, resistance, agency and perspectives of Mad people to challenge dominant understandings of ‘mental illness’". "Mad Studies is a growing, evolving, multi-voiced and interdisciplinary field of activism, theory, praxis and scholarship."
History
Mad Pride was launched alongside a book of the same name, Mad Pride: A celebration of mad culture, published in 2000. On May 11, 2008, Gabrielle Glaser documented Mad Pride in The New York Times. Glaser stated, "Just as gay-rights activists reclaimed the word queer as a badge of honor rather than a slur, these advocates proudly call themselves mad; they say their conditions do not preclude them from productive lives." Mad Pride was founded in the United Kingdom by Mark Roberts, Simon Barnett, Robert Dellar, and Pete Shaughnessy, whom all had previous experience using mental health services. The goal of the movement was to fight the stigmatization of mental illness. In 2002, one of the co-founders of Mad Pride, Pete Shaughnessy committed suicide. This resulted in a decline in participation, with the final Mad Pride in the UK taking place in 2011.
Early Origins
Elizabeth Packard (1816-1897) was deemed insane by her husband as she did not agree with his conservative political views. In Illinois at the time, involuntary admission to an asylum did not require a public hearing so long as it was a husband admitting his wife. Due to this, Packard was institutionalized though she saw herself to be sane. In Packard’s lifetime to be labeled as ‘mad’ was a form of social disapproval. However, she felt solidarity among Mad people due to her experience in the institution. Though she did not personally identify as Mad and had to identify as ‘sane’ in order to be an activist, it is here that we see early forms of organizing from ex-patients.
Mad culture and events
The Mad Pride movement has spawned recurring cultural events in Toronto, London, and other cities around the world. These events often include music, poetry readings, film screenings, and street theatre, such as "bed push" protests, which aim to raise awareness about the poor levels of choice of treatments and the widespread use of force in psychiatric hospitals. included British journalist Jonathan Freedland, and popular novelist Clare Allan. Mad Pride cultural events take a variety of forms, such as the South London collective Creative Routes, the Chipmunka Publishing enterprise, and the many works of Dolly Sen.
Bed push
A Bed Push is a method of activism employed by multiple mental health agencies and advocates as a method of raising awareness about psychiatric care. Activists wheel a gurney through public spaces to provoke discussion about mental health care. Mind Freedom has a recipe for a successful Bed Push on their website, urging participants to remain peaceful but also be seen by blowing horns, slightly disrupting traffic and playing music. Often patients in psychiatric care feel silenced and powerless, showing resilience in the face of that and securing visibility is a method of regaining dignity.
Mad Pride Week in Toronto is proclaimed as such by the city itself. The festivities surrounding this week are highlighted by the Mad Pride Bed Push, typically on the 14th of July. The event takes place Toronto’s Queen Street West “to raise public awareness about the use of force and lack of choice for people ensnared in the Ontario mental health system” This week is officially run by Toronto Mad Pride which partners a number of mental health agencies in the city. In recent years, some advocates have pushed for Parkdale, Toronto to be renamed MAD! Village, to reclaim pride in its surrounding communities' long history of struggle with mental health and addictions
A series of bed push events take place around London each year.
Psychiatric Patient Built Wall Tours
The Psychiatric Patient Built Wall Tours take place in Toronto, ON at the CAMH facility on Queen St West. The tours show the patient built walls from the 19th century that are located at present day CAMH. The purpose of the tours is to give a history on the lives of the patients who built the walls, and bring attention to the harsh realities of psychiatry.
Geoffrey Reaume and Heinz Klein first came up with the idea of walking tours as part of a Mad Pride event in 2000. The first wall tour occurred on what is now known as Mad Pride Day, on July 14, 2000, with an attendance of about fifty people. Reaume solely leads the tours, and they have grown from annual events for Mad Pride, to occurring several times throughout the year in all non-winter months.