#I am anti psychiatry but this is useful info idk

[fountainpenchess]

— from coping with ocd: practical strategies for living well with obsessive-compulsive disorder by bruce m. hyman and troy dufrene

[librarycards]

You seem very educated in anti-psychiatry and mad studies. Do you have any readings you could recommend to someone who knows very little on these subjects?

yes! first of all, for your basic 101 type reading, i'd look to the late, great mel baggs -- hir blogs are full of basic info that everyone can understand, and which will prepare you really well as you look to engaging with more challenging readings:

https://cussinanddiscussin.wordpress.com/

https://withasmoothroundstone.tumblr.com/

then i would go to eli clare's works, 

"exile and pride" and 

"brilliant imperfection,"

 for a foundational understanding of transness&disability&trauma + the concept of pathologization. then, i'd move toward readings –– highly critical ones!! –– from psychiatric p/c/s/x (patients/consumers/survivors/ex-patients), particularly from The Icarus Project, Mad in America, and this specific post about the "burrito test." 

Read, of course, Madness and Civilization. Seriously. You have to read it. 

Read Epistemic Injustice by Miranda Fricker. Epistemic Injustice is the foundational & formational mark left by/responsible for producing "Madness" and "patienthood." 

From here I'd recommend some more titles such as the Mad Matters reader by  LeFrançois, Menzies, and Reaume (this is the citation I use when "defining" Mad studies/a Mad studies approach/conceptual framework)  Psychiatric Hegemony by Bruce Cohen, Black Madness :: Mad Blackness by Theri Alyce Pickens, Crip Theory by Robert McRuer, Mad At School by Margaret Price, The Protest Psychosis by Jonathan M. Metzl, Containing Madness by Kilty & Dej, and Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body by Lennard J Davis.

you'll notice a lot of these are focused on disability "rather than" Madness -- Mad studies is a comparatively small (sub-)field. you'll need to keyword search within other resources to find a lot of this work. start out with disability studies quarterly, searching Madness, etc. there's also some intriguing work going on in the area narrative studies, esp. with regard to Mad experimental autobiography. 

There's also *TONS* of new, exciting thesis work happening by and for and from Madpeople!! and members of otherwise psychopathologized groups! one i'd love to highlight is a 2017 paper on the pathologization of indigenous youth -- it's phenomenal.

these works can be found at "the usual sources," as it were. if you need help accessing pdfs/epubs, please message me with your email address and i can get it to you. if you find some scholarly journal article, etc. you need access to but lack an institutional login, please contact me and i will get it to you as soon as i can, with a potential slight delay as i'd need to request it from my college library.

use keywords like:

critical Mad studies

Madness

postpsychiatry

antipsychiatry

psy-critical

etc.

let me know if you have questions or need further clarification –– I am by *no means* any sort of expert on the field, only on my own Mad experiences. but this guide -- as well as reading the #survivingpsych tag on tumblr!!!!!!!!!! -- has helped illuminate a lot of stuff for me. happy reading!

ETA: adding https://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com for Mel Baggs - idk how I forgot this! And reiterating @salcristina ‘s comment that Icarus project has become liberal + assimilationist 😔 - but their old work still holds up imo!