Before the PCCS Books Anniversary Conference on Wednesday 16th October I had only met Claire Shaw a couple of times at mental health events or possibly Asylum meetings (I am not entirely sure) but I think I had not heard her perform her poetry or talk about the power of language to hurt and heal. Read more
The post in the photo above is from an anti-fascist protest in London after the murder (in cold blood) on 18th September in Athens, Greece of a Greek left-wing hip-hop artist (Pavlos Fyssas) by Golden Dawn, a far-right party that was elected and entered the Greek Parliament in 2012 (Link to Article). Read more
I understand ‘mad knowledge’ as experiential, embodied, tacit knowledge stemming from the direct, subjective, lived experience of acute mental distress. I see both individual and collective dimensions of mad knowledge. Individual dimensions of mad knowledge – in my mind-point to individual suffering and distress, whereas collective dimensions pertain to the body of experiential knowledge accumulated through the history of the psychiatric survivor movement. Read more
I read in my Care Records (covering the 3-month period of my hospitalisation and detention under the Mental Health Act back in 2009) that ECT had been considered in a ward round as a possible treatment for my severe and enduring, ‘treatment-resistant’, ‘psychotic depression’ for which a series of potent anti-depressants had been used with no signs of improvement. Read more
I was horrified to read an article in the Wall Street Journal about the overuse of antipsychotics with poor foster children -some as young as months old- in the USA. You can read the entire article Here.
I went to Liverpool for the first time 5 years ago, in August 2008… And it seems that this first trip to Liverpool has become for me a powerful psychic symbol of a time when I was severely depressed and acutely anxious, I was living in what felt like permanent panic and agitation, I was feeling constantly under threat. Read more
