Madness, Distress and the Politics of Disablement

by Helen Spandler (Editor), Jill Anderson (Editor), Bob Sapey (Editor)

This book explores the challenges of applying disability theory and policy, including the social model of disability, to madness and distress. It brings together leading scholars and activists from Europe, North America, Australia and India, to explore the relationship between madness, distress and disability. Whether mental health problems should be viewed as disabilities is a pressing concern, especially since the inclusion of psychosocial disability in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This book will appeal to policy makers, practitioners, activists and academics.

Genres: Disability, Psychology, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2015

Reviews

[Chris Nagel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The butler did it.

For an anthology, and one that's already pretty dated by the time I got to it, this was good. It introduced me to some stuff I certainly didn't know about the terrain of mad studies, the range of strategies around the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, strategies around the terms user/survivor (of psychiatric services/interventions).

Between this, Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child, and Foucault, and other stuff I'm reading at the same time, and therapy, and life, I am rethinking what to say about my own experience. I do that a lot anyway, but I'm doing it at a deeper level.