Believing in Bedlam. Memories of Pete Shaughnessy by friends and colleagues
There’s too much pressure now for things to slip back to the way they were. Rob Dellar, Mad Pride writes…
Depression, Psychiatry and the Use of ECT by Pat Bracken
When I was training in psychiatry in the 1980s I was taught that depression was an illness like any other. Like appendicitis or disorders of the gall-bladder it could be investigated, diagnosed, measured and treated through different sorts of medical intervention. It had sub-types, a described course and with the right expertise, a prognosis could be given to the patient.
Conference Calls for Survivor Workers Union
1ST UK Conference for Survivor Workers Manchester Mechanics Institute 28th February 2001: The event was, in fact, was launched the evening before, most appropriately, with a social and entertainment hosted by Mad Pride. Conference opened, not so much with an air of expectancy, but rather one of achievement – wonder even. Read more
Behavioural Therapy from Hell by Adam James
Debbie Holden was 16 when she first started to slip into the lonely, nightmare world of anorexia. She won a competition with school friends over who could lose the most weight. And it was from this ominous beginning that the eight stone teenager became trapped in a cycle of binging, vomiting and laxative abuse. Read more
Trains, Voices, Possible Narcoplexy Onset, I the Not Necessarily Divine, A New Theory Buds? By Matilda Melbert
There we were on a train, my son and I. Second row in, on the left. I was in the window seat. Behind my son, a man. In front of me, a lady in a pink coat, with pink nail varnish, on a pink mobile. Opposite us sat a man by the window. Behind him, on the first row, by the window, another man. I was aware of two ladies further up on our side and one lady further up at the end of the carriage, on the right. Well I do have SAS blood in me, ipso factso! Ridiculous, but a safety habit. Oh Bruce, where is the conveyor belt! Read more
Challenging Psychiatric Coercion by Bob Sapey
During the 1980s I was an Approved Social Worker, and I cannot quite understand how so much power was invested in me. I now understand how little I knew and how little I needed to know in order to satisfy the authorities that appointed me. Read more