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Book Review
Searching for a rose garden: challenging psychiatry, fostering mad studies
Andrea Daley
Pages 1540-1542 | Published online: 06 Dec 2018
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2018.1504479
Indeed, Searching for a Rose Garden: Challenging Psychiatry, Fostering Mad Studies accomplishes its purpose of both challenging psychiatry and fostering Mad Studies. This collection of 24 chapters written by survivors (and one survivor ally) from the UK, Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and the US constitutes a critical record(ing) of survivor knowledge(s) in action across global regions. As a critical record(ing), it reveals the power and potential of centring survivor knowledge(s) and practices to the conceptualization, development, and implementation of alternative and politicised healing practices and services at both the grassroots and institutional levels and to decentring the dominance of psychocentric (Rimke Citation2016) understandings and responses to distress. As importantly, it also serves as a cautionary tale of the co-optation of survivor knowledge(s) and practices by psychiatry and associated institutions. As such, the chapters coalesce into a guidance (not instructional) document, of sorts, raising important theoretical and practice considerations and questions for survivor movements about ongoing strategies to challenge psychiatry and foster (or by fostering) Mad Studies. In this regard, Searching for a Rose Garden offers readers four key themes, woven between chapters, that are relevant to the project of survivor liberation vis-à-vis challenging psychiatry and fostering Mad Studies.
First, the extent to which language matters as a strategy of resistance. In Part 1: Setting the Scene, Bhargavi Davan and Beth Filson each use the language of ‘healing’ rather than ‘cure,’ signalling a political commitment to understanding, and responding to, distress in a more holistic manner. Davar questions the language of ‘alternatives’ itself in his analysis of the ongoing impact of Western psychiatry in India as it infiltrates faith-based healing centres, usurping indigenous community and cultural practices. Longstanding community and cultural practices based on indigenous knowledges become ‘alternative’ only when positioned next to the dominance of Western psychiatry. Peter Beresford speaks to the power of language as a strategy of resistance, making the important distinction between the language of ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’ underpinning the social model of disability. And, Darby Penney and Laura Prescott highlight the use of the terms ‘consumer’ and ‘secondary consumer’ by US public mental health officials; terms that obfuscate psychiatric violence (e.g., involuntary hospitalization and treatment) and that challenge survivor authority while imposing a capitalist rather than political logic on survivors’ experiences of the psychiatric system. Each of these examples, among others, underscore the vital role of language to challenging the dominance of psychiatric discourses and producing ‘a form of knowledge production or collective intellectual contribution that is embedded in Mad communit[ies]’ (LeFrançois, p. v).
Second, the need to further develop and promote social models of madness (Beresford), self-harm (Shaw), suicide (Webb), alcohol use (Staddon), and other expressions of distress to resist the dominant biomedical model of ‘mental illness’ that is perpetuated by psychiatry. Collectively, authors argue that social models of ‘x’ have the potential to centre marginalised survivor knowledge(s) based on lived experiences. In Part 2: Survivor-Produced Knowledge, Clare Shaw notes the relationship between marginalised survivor knowledge(s) and the sustaining of non-relevant models of distress (i.e., the biomedical model) in her exploration of self-harm as survival, ‘[T]he unhelpful theories that surround self-injury are [both] a consequence [and a cause] of the marginalisation of our voices’ (p. 80). Colin King’s analysis, as an African man, of how whiteness operates in and through psychiatry underscores the need for a social model of madness that centres lived knowledge of the ways in which racism is implicated in distress. Chapters written by Angela Sweeney and Jasna Russo offer readers a survivor research framework to systematically centre survivor knowledge(s) towards the development of social models of ‘x’. Both authors consider the possibilities and limitations of a knowledge production movement based on a collective Mad identity. Of significance are their respective considerations of ensuring that the complexities of diversity and difference within survivor and Mad movements are included in ‘collective accounts of collective experiences’ (Russo, p. 62).
Third, the necessity of politicised survivor knowledge to effectively challenge psychiatry and as fundamental to Mad Studies. The need for not simply lived knowledge but a politicised lived knowledge is a theme echoed across the book’s chapters. In Part 2: Survivor-Produced Knowledge, Angela Sweeny, for example, describes the underpinnings of survivor research as a ‘unashamedly political activity’ (p. 51). In Part 3: Survivor-Controlled Practice, Zofia Rubinsztajn reflects that the concept for an alternative survivor-controlled program for survivors of sexual assault was ‘grounded in the experiential knowledge and (my emphasis) politicisation of a group of women who decided to openly identity as survivors of childhood sexual abuse’ (p. 128). In Part 4: Working in Partnership, when discussing their partnership in relation to the teaching of a ‘Mad People’s History’ course Danielle Landry and Kathryn Church emphasise the need for not simply instructors with lived experience but politicised mad instructors. And Celia Brown and Peter Stastny identify principles upon which to redevelop the role of the Peer Specialist while calling for its (re)politicisation: ‘peer specialists should be connected to the movement, either individually or collectively’ (Brown, p. 186).
Fourth, concern about the inevitability of the co-optation, and subsequent depoliticising, of ideas and practices that emerged through survivor liberation movements by psychiatry and formal psychiatric services. In Part 1: Setting the Scene, O’Hagan bemoans the cooption of the recovery movement’s principles by psychiatric institutions as just one of many experiences that lead to her disbelief in psychiatry. The co-optation of peer support by mental health policy makers and psychiatric institutions is underscored by several authors. Celia Brown’s and Peter Stastny’s archeology of the Peer Specialist project demonstrates the way in which survivor knowledge(s) are co-opted by institutions in the absence of structural change that reflect its values and principles. Collectively, the chapters raise the critical question most succinctly posed by Penny and Prescott of whether survivors and survivor groups can ever collaborate with governments and ‘sanestream’ institutions without survivor knowledges, values, and practices being co-opted.
The collective contribution of Searching for a Rose Garden to disability and Mad scholarship extends well beyond the themes explored above. Various chapters provide concrete examples of survivor knowledge(s) in action through descriptions of survivor-controlled practices and services, including the principles and tasks of Intentional Peer Support (Beth Filson and Sherry Mead); promising practices in trauma-informed care (Beth Filson); establishing ‘supportive decision-making’ for survivors (Maths Jesperson), and maintaining the autonomy of racialized survivor projects within predominantly White organisations (Renuka Bhakta), among others.
At the beginning of Searching for a Rose Garden, Mary O’Hagan calls for an alternative vision that is peer-led and a fundamental shift in the way the mental health system and society respond to people with major mental distress. This collection of writings is a good start in this direction.
Andrea Daley
School of Social Work, Renison University College, Waterloo, ON, Canada
andrea.daley@uwaterloo.ca
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Searching for a rose garden: challenging psychiatry, fostering mad studies
Andrea Daley
Pages 1540-1542 | Published online: 06 Dec 2018
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2018.1504479
Indeed, Searching for a Rose Garden: Challenging Psychiatry, Fostering Mad Studies accomplishes its purpose of both challenging psychiatry and fostering Mad Studies. This collection of 24 chapters written by survivors (and one survivor ally) from the UK, Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and the US constitutes a critical record(ing) of survivor knowledge(s) in action across global regions. As a critical record(ing), it reveals the power and potential of centring survivor knowledge(s) and practices to the conceptualization, development, and implementation of alternative and politicised healing practices and services at both the grassroots and institutional levels and to decentring the dominance of psychocentric (Rimke Citation2016) understandings and responses to distress. As importantly, it also serves as a cautionary tale of the co-optation of survivor knowledge(s) and practices by psychiatry and associated institutions. As such, the chapters coalesce into a guidance (not instructional) document, of sorts, raising important theoretical and practice considerations and questions for survivor movements about ongoing strategies to challenge psychiatry and foster (or by fostering) Mad Studies. In this regard, Searching for a Rose Garden offers readers four key themes, woven between chapters, that are relevant to the project of survivor liberation vis-à-vis challenging psychiatry and fostering Mad Studies.
First, the extent to which language matters as a strategy of resistance. In Part 1: Setting the Scene, Bhargavi Davan and Beth Filson each use the language of ‘healing’ rather than ‘cure,’ signalling a political commitment to understanding, and responding to, distress in a more holistic manner. Davar questions the language of ‘alternatives’ itself in his analysis of the ongoing impact of Western psychiatry in India as it infiltrates faith-based healing centres, usurping indigenous community and cultural practices. Longstanding community and cultural practices based on indigenous knowledges become ‘alternative’ only when positioned next to the dominance of Western psychiatry. Peter Beresford speaks to the power of language as a strategy of resistance, making the important distinction between the language of ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’ underpinning the social model of disability. And, Darby Penney and Laura Prescott highlight the use of the terms ‘consumer’ and ‘secondary consumer’ by US public mental health officials; terms that obfuscate psychiatric violence (e.g., involuntary hospitalization and treatment) and that challenge survivor authority while imposing a capitalist rather than political logic on survivors’ experiences of the psychiatric system. Each of these examples, among others, underscore the vital role of language to challenging the dominance of psychiatric discourses and producing ‘a form of knowledge production or collective intellectual contribution that is embedded in Mad communit[ies]’ (LeFrançois, p. v).
Second, the need to further develop and promote social models of madness (Beresford), self-harm (Shaw), suicide (Webb), alcohol use (Staddon), and other expressions of distress to resist the dominant biomedical model of ‘mental illness’ that is perpetuated by psychiatry. Collectively, authors argue that social models of ‘x’ have the potential to centre marginalised survivor knowledge(s) based on lived experiences. In Part 2: Survivor-Produced Knowledge, Clare Shaw notes the relationship between marginalised survivor knowledge(s) and the sustaining of non-relevant models of distress (i.e., the biomedical model) in her exploration of self-harm as survival, ‘[T]he unhelpful theories that surround self-injury are [both] a consequence [and a cause] of the marginalisation of our voices’ (p. 80). Colin King’s analysis, as an African man, of how whiteness operates in and through psychiatry underscores the need for a social model of madness that centres lived knowledge of the ways in which racism is implicated in distress. Chapters written by Angela Sweeney and Jasna Russo offer readers a survivor research framework to systematically centre survivor knowledge(s) towards the development of social models of ‘x’. Both authors consider the possibilities and limitations of a knowledge production movement based on a collective Mad identity. Of significance are their respective considerations of ensuring that the complexities of diversity and difference within survivor and Mad movements are included in ‘collective accounts of collective experiences’ (Russo, p. 62).
Third, the necessity of politicised survivor knowledge to effectively challenge psychiatry and as fundamental to Mad Studies. The need for not simply lived knowledge but a politicised lived knowledge is a theme echoed across the book’s chapters. In Part 2: Survivor-Produced Knowledge, Angela Sweeny, for example, describes the underpinnings of survivor research as a ‘unashamedly political activity’ (p. 51). In Part 3: Survivor-Controlled Practice, Zofia Rubinsztajn reflects that the concept for an alternative survivor-controlled program for survivors of sexual assault was ‘grounded in the experiential knowledge and (my emphasis) politicisation of a group of women who decided to openly identity as survivors of childhood sexual abuse’ (p. 128). In Part 4: Working in Partnership, when discussing their partnership in relation to the teaching of a ‘Mad People’s History’ course Danielle Landry and Kathryn Church emphasise the need for not simply instructors with lived experience but politicised mad instructors. And Celia Brown and Peter Stastny identify principles upon which to redevelop the role of the Peer Specialist while calling for its (re)politicisation: ‘peer specialists should be connected to the movement, either individually or collectively’ (Brown, p. 186).
Fourth, concern about the inevitability of the co-optation, and subsequent depoliticising, of ideas and practices that emerged through survivor liberation movements by psychiatry and formal psychiatric services. In Part 1: Setting the Scene, O’Hagan bemoans the cooption of the recovery movement’s principles by psychiatric institutions as just one of many experiences that lead to her disbelief in psychiatry. The co-optation of peer support by mental health policy makers and psychiatric institutions is underscored by several authors. Celia Brown’s and Peter Stastny’s archeology of the Peer Specialist project demonstrates the way in which survivor knowledge(s) are co-opted by institutions in the absence of structural change that reflect its values and principles. Collectively, the chapters raise the critical question most succinctly posed by Penny and Prescott of whether survivors and survivor groups can ever collaborate with governments and ‘sanestream’ institutions without survivor knowledges, values, and practices being co-opted.
The collective contribution of Searching for a Rose Garden to disability and Mad scholarship extends well beyond the themes explored above. Various chapters provide concrete examples of survivor knowledge(s) in action through descriptions of survivor-controlled practices and services, including the principles and tasks of Intentional Peer Support (Beth Filson and Sherry Mead); promising practices in trauma-informed care (Beth Filson); establishing ‘supportive decision-making’ for survivors (Maths Jesperson), and maintaining the autonomy of racialized survivor projects within predominantly White organisations (Renuka Bhakta), among others.
At the beginning of Searching for a Rose Garden, Mary O’Hagan calls for an alternative vision that is peer-led and a fundamental shift in the way the mental health system and society respond to people with major mental distress. This collection of writings is a good start in this direction.
Andrea Daley
School of Social Work, Renison University College, Waterloo, ON, Canada
andrea.daley@uwaterloo.ca
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.