THE CONSUMER/SURVIVOR/EX-PATIENT

MOVEMENT
DST 500: A HISTORY OF MADNESS

DANIELLE LANDRY (SECTION 011) DLANDRY@RYERSON.CA

© Danielle Landry, 2021

AGENDA

• LEARNING OUTCOMES
• ADMINISTRIVIA
• LANGUAGE AND PRAXIS
• EARLY HISTORY & 3 PHASES OF THE C/S/X MOVEMENT
• THE CONTEMPORARY MAD MOVEMENT
• MAD POSITIVE
LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of today’s lecture, students should be able to:

• Describe and differentiate between the various ‘phases’ of the C/S/X Movement.
• (Start to) think critically about how you might position yourself in relation to Mad people
and to the Mad Movement
ADMINISTRIVIA

• LATE ENROLEMENT? EMAIL YOUR INSTRUCTOR

• MIDTERM EXAM
• Online through D2L
• One hour, one attempt
• Written during week 5
• Covers all content from week 1 through 4
 HISTORY OF THE C/S/X MOVEMENT
LANGUAGE AND PRAXIS
• Review language and self-identifiers

• Historicize these identities and situate them within the

consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement

Questions for clarification:

• What is meant by anti-sanist praxis? (Diamond 2013)
• What is praxis? What is sanism?

“To be truly visionary, we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality
while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality”
– bell hooks (2000: 110) in Diamond (2013:75).
HISTORY OF THE C/S/X MOVEMENT
LANGUAGE AND PRAXIS

Psychiatrists’ names for patients: How patients named themselves:

(1800s) Lunatics, inmates (1960s) Ex-patients, ex-inmates
(1900s – 1960s) Patients (1970s– present) Survivors
(1970s – present) Clients (1980s – present) Service users
(1980s – present) Consumers (1990s – present) Mad people
EARLY HISTORY –
INMATES AND ANTI-ASYLUM ORGANIZING
• Clifford Beers (1910s)
• Alexander Cruden (1699-1770)
• Elizabeth Packard (1816-1897)
• “Before I entered an insane asylum and learned its hidden life from the standpoint of the
patient, I had not supposed that the inmates were outlaws, in the sense that the law did not
protect them in any of their inalienable rights.” – Elizabeth Packard
 THREE PHASES OF THE C/S/X MOVEMENT
PHASE ONE: MENTAL PATIENTS’ LIBERATION
MOVEMENT

• Early 1960 to mid 1970s

• Characterized by partnerships between ex-
inmates and radical professionals
• Even the early C/S/X movement was split
between those who wanted to reform
psychiatry and those who wanted
alternatives to psychiatry
THREE PHASES OF THE C/S/X MOVEMENT
PHASE ONE: MENTAL PATIENTS’ LIBERATION
MOVEMENT

People self-identified as:

q (Mental) patients
q Inmates
q Ex-inmates
THREE PHASES OF THE C/S/X MOVEMENT
PHASE TWO: PSYCHIATRIC SURVIVORS

• Mid 1970s to Mid 1980s

• People began to call themselves psychiatric
survivors and withdrew into separatist/collectivist,
self-directed groups. The focus of many survivor
groups was on providing alternative, community-
based social supports.
• 3 main goals: Rights, self-determination and
empowerment
 THREE PHASES OF THE C/S/X MOVEMENT
PHASE TWO: PSYCHIATRIC SURVIVORS

Psychiatric survivor groups: Psychiatric survivor organizing:

v Grassroots v Rallies/protests
v Rejected professional terminology v Conferences

v Sought self-empowerment v Newsletters

v Validated members feelings
v Were seldom funded
THREE PHASES OF THE C/S/X MOVEMENT
PHASE THREE: CONSUMERISM

• Mid 1980s through 1990s

• People begin identifying as consumers
• More reformist, more entrepreneurial
• Groups began receiving funding
• Consumer businesses became sites of organizing
 A ROUGH TIMELINE OF CONSUMERISM
1985: Many survivors attend the “Alternatives” conference in the hopes of reforming psychiatry.
1989: Progressive psychiatric professionals start calling patients “clients” and “consumers” of mental health
services. Adoption of term “consumer/survivor”
1991: Consumer/survivor initiatives (CSIs) formed throughout Ontario, but not all of Canada. Ethno-racial
CSIs include Hong Fook and Across Boundaries in Toronto.
1993: First ‘Psychiatric Survivor Pride Day’ (in Toronto) staged by West End Psychiatric Survivors.
1995: Premier Mike Harris was elected. He dismantled the Ontario Advocacy Commission and many CSIs
later lost funding
 A ROUGH TIMELINE OF CONSUMERISM
(CONTINUED)
1998: Ontario begins to adopt US model of outpatient coercion known as Community Treatment Orders.
Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams are introduced to monitor patients
2001: First Mad People’s History university course taught by Dr. Geoffrey Reaume. Psychiatric professionals
start hiring patients and ex-patients as ‘peer providers’
2002: What used to be called ‘Psychiatric Survivor Pride Day’ is now called ‘Mad Pride’
REST IN POWER

Graeme Bacque
Don Weitz
(1958 – 2021)
(1930 – 2021)
Psychiatric survivor and
Anti-psychiatry activist
anti-poverty activist
VIDEO: DAVID REVILLE’S TABLE METAPHOR

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uTbEBPkAAk [5:40]

MAD ORGANIZING &
ITS CRITIQUES
Many local forms of mad activism and organizing are ongoing

Mad Pride:
• Celebrates mad identities, communities and cultures including collective and individual strengths
• Confronts the shame we are made to feel about our psychiatric histories and experiences of madness
• Resists the oppression we encounter within aspects of psychiatric/mental health systems and society
• Reminds us and others that as mad people we have rights to be ourselves – just like everyone else
- From Mad Pride Toronto
CRITIQUES

“White peoples’ experiences of psychiatry are not ‘like colonialism.’ Colonialism is like
colonialism.”
- Mad People of Colour – A Manifesto, Asylum Magazine, 2013, p.27

The risks of centering mad identity:

1) Homogenizes a large group of people
2) Decontextualizes people’s varying experiences and histories
3) Surpasses all other individual or group identities (Diamond, 2013)
MAD POSITIVE

What do you think Mad positivity, or being mad positive,

might involve?
ALLYSHIP & MAD POSITIVITY

“Being mad positive means challenging the prevailing and assumed negativity
around madness: i.e. that it is always necessarily something bad, to be prevented
and treated – but without romanticizing the potential distress involved.”
– Asylum magazine, 2014, p.4
MAD POSITIVE

What do you think the difference is between an

advocate and an ally?
ALLY-SHIP & MAD POSITIVITY

Suggestions for how to be a good (or better) mad ally:

• Yield authority
• Be open to working under survivors
• Enter into engaged relationships
• Get out of your comfort zone
- Dr. Kathryn Church

© Danielle Landry, 2021