Mad Studies: The Basics

Mad Studies: The Basics provides an introductory account of a field that emerged from, and must remain grounded within, community knowledge, activism, and the perspectives of those who have experienced madness and mental health systems.

It is a concise text that introduces the field through an exploration of some origins of Mad Studies, as well as two interrelated queries: what does Mad Studies help us understand, and what does Mad Studies help us do? This exploration reveals that Mad Studies is an interdisciplinary, intersectional, and multi-vocal field that demands different answers to the very meaning of the beliefs, behaviours, and bodymind experiences that are currently characterized as being indicative of mental illness. At the heart of Mad Studies is a liberationist desire to resist, transform, and abolish the systems that create marginalization, and implement responses to madness that are grounded in the collective knowledge of those deemed Mad. This book shows that the contributions of Indigenous, Black, racialized, queer, and trans people must be understood as central to, and already embedded within, Mad Studies and activism rather than as add-ons, expansions, or efforts to make Mad Studies more inclusive.

It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, social work, gender studies, education, health sciences, sociology, and psychology, as well as practitioners in mental health care, and those with lived experience of madness and mental health systems.

Merrick Daniel Pilling is Assistant Professor in the School of Disability Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is the author of Queer and Trans Madness: Struggles for Social Justice and co-editor of Interrogating Psychiatric Narratives of Distress: Documented Lives.