Blog Archives
Two Types of Mad
I self identify as a Mad person. I am someone who has a psychiatric history and I wear the reclaimed title of Mad with great pride (see where I got my blog name?)
I was very fortunate to have been brought into the amazing world of Madness while in my 3rd year of university. It was here I learned everything that now shapes how I view mental health, mental illness, psychiatry, psychology, social work and myself. The includes learning about the consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement and mad-positive teachings.
It has been a great challenge to try and bring Madness into the classroom, mostly, for now, at Ryerson University where I attended school for social work and where my other Mad activist colleagues/friends are.
Ryerson’s School of Disability Studies offers History of Madness and Mad People’s History and special this year (2012-2013), a course that I helped develop through my past research with the professor, the first ever undergraduate social work mental health course, Critical Mental Health and Madness. We hope this becomes a permanent course in the near future.
Here is a great video by Professor David Reville, from Ryerson, about what Mad People’s History is and why it is so important.
I don’t know how many of you, my amazing followers, know but what we are doing, blogging about our mental health and addiction experiences, sharing how we feel about it, is extremely progressive! We are contributing to the Mad voice that has for so long been ignored! We are doing an amazing thing and we need to keep doing it!
Mad positive, views madness, well, positively! It is about self determination, the person with the experience making decisions. Mad positive means that I define myself, that I have a voice. It does not reject out current medical system but it critiques it, challenges it, it knows that there are more options then what we are being given (way more options) and that those with lived experience need to play an active role in developing those options! The goal is to coexist and support.
I get emotional thinking about what it is to be Mad positive because it has brought me such strength and I do not think I would be the person I am today without it.
Now, I also self identify as a Mad person. I am someone who experiences anger and I’m alright with that.
How are these two Mads coming together? With these buttons.
Professors of Mad positive courses and values have been handing out these buttons to other professors they see around campus. The problem is, some professors are refusing the buttons. Of course it is within their right to not take them but it is the look on their face, the tone in their voice or the actual words they say that take it from simply not wanting a button to not supporting having an inclusive positive space for Mad students and faculty. Some professors are saying that Mad positive is something they “can’t get behind.” Some of these professors are in the disciplines that interact with Mad people such as social work and psychology. It appears that Mad positive is being treated like a silly fad, something not worthy of deep consideration. This is not the case.
Mental health doesn’t need to be all or nothing. We need to stop being so dependent on our current medical model and admit that it does not help everyone and that we need options for those who do not want the medical route. There should be nothing wrong with that.
I am very confused as to how a discipline like social work can support the critical and alternate views of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia but then draw the line at mental health! Why draw the line there? Seriously, why? I can only guess it has something to do with how loyal many professionals are to the medical model.
I have had people without a past diagnosis tell me that my views about my mental health, in terms of being Mad positive, are wrong! Yes, I am being told that I am wrong to have a Mad identity by people who have no history of mental illness. I don’t accept that.
I am a Mad Mad person and I won’t let people tell me that my identity is wrong. They can get as angry as they want but I know who I am and what I want.
More Mad Resources:
Can’t Make The Call
After raging pretty good a few days ago it has once again become apparent to me that I need to get my shit together (so do those around me but I can’t do anything about that). It’s one thing to expose my partner to my rages but if we’re going to move forward in our lives our future children CANNOT be exposed to the rages I experience. If I continue to experience anger in this way I will have my children taken away from me. That would kill me.
I have decided to get myself on the wait list at CAMH for their BPD Clinic. I’m choosing to ignore the part where it says clients are REQUIRED to have an outside primary therapist because I have heard the wait list is well over two years and who knows where I’ll be by then but I can get an outside therapist if needed I guess. But, that main problem is, is that I can’t make the call. I heard the automated message say, “Welcome to CAMH” and I hung up. I feel like I’m betraying a part of me. I have never interacted with CAMH before (minus to tell them I hated their ads) so do even inquire about this feels like I’m submitting myself to the medical model, saying I have a disease and that my brain is broken. I just don;t want to rage anymore.
I’m probably being over dramatic but all the confidence I had when I first dialed the number is gone.
Beyond The Medical Model
“If even one apple fell up, wouldn’t we have to at least begin to question the laws of physics?”
- Dr. Daniel Dormand, Psychiatrist and author of Dante’s Cure
Mad in America posted an article that shared a trailer for a new documentary by Western Massachusetts Recovering Learning Community called Beyond the Medical Model.
“The film’s message is one of freedom. It is one of the right to tell your own story and choose your own path (including the medical model), or to meander about across many paths as works for you. In order to create equal access to all the paths, we do need to recognize the oppressive ways that the medical model has been and continues to be applied and the legal, financial and other system structures that have become dependent upon it. We need to cut it down to size, so to speak, but we needn’t erase it all together.” -Susan Davidow
Stop Denying Environment
This is the final ad that CAMH has created for the Defeat Denial campaign.
This ad, like a few of the others, upsets me.
Ok, maybe I’m being to nit picky and every advertisement and campaign in the world, no matter what the topic or issue, won’t have everyone agreeing with them but I feel it is the responsibility of the advertiser to think about everywhere their ad could be spun negatively and try to counter it!
This ad is an obvious supporter of the biomedical model. The problem is in YOU!
This excludes any social and environmental factors that influence a person’s life.
I was told my depression was genetic. Other factors were never acknowledged, not even toyed with. There was something wrong with my brain. I firmly believe that my former depressive years were caused by my environment, not a brain issue. I responded to the bullying I received at school and then it all just spiraled from there.
Now, I believe my issues are strictly behaivoural. I am now dealing with behaivours that I developed as coping mechanisms or as a way to adapt what was happening to me.
We need to keep looking at the WHOLE person! Bio-psycho-social model is what is mostly used and the model I support.
Ok, I’m done ranting about these ads 
