Mad Pride - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Mad Pride is a mass movement of mental health

Mental health

Mental health describes either a level of cognitive or emotional well-being or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and...

services users and their allies. The first known event specifically organized as a Pride event by people who identify as psychiatric survivors/consumer/ex-patients was in Toronto, Canada when it was called "Psychiatric Survivor Pride Day", held on September 18, 1993. It was first held in response to local community prejudices towards people with a psychiatric history living in boarding homes in the Parkdale area of the city, and has been held every year since then in this city except 1996. By the late 1990s similar events were being organized as Mad Pride in London, England and around the globe from Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

to South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

and the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, drawing thousands of participants, according to MindFreedom International

MindFreedom International

MindFreedom International is an international coalition of over one hundred grassroots groups and thousands of individual members from fourteen nations. It was founded in 1990 to advocate against forced medication, medical restraints, and involuntary electroconvulsive therapy. Its stated mission is...

, a United States mental health advocacy organization that promotes and tracks events spawned by the movement.

Mad Pride activists seek to reclaim terms such as 'mad

Insanity

Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including becoming a danger to themselves and others, though not all such acts are considered insanity...

', 'nutter' and 'psycho

Psychosis

Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...

' from misuse, such as in tabloid newspapers. Through a series of mass media

Mass media

Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...

campaigns, Mad Pride activists seek to re-educate the general public on such subjects as the causes of mental disorders, the experiences of those using the mental health system, and the global suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

pandemic. One of Mad Pride's founding activists was Pete Shaughnessy

Pete Shaughnessy

Peter Anthony "Pete" Shaughnessy was an English mental health activist and one of the founders of Mad Pride, a group of mental health activists who reclaimed terms such as 'mad' and 'nutter' from misuse, and campaigned for the rights of the mentally ill.Shaughnessy was born in South London and...

, who later committed suicide. Robert Dellar and 'Freaky Phil' Murphy were among the other founders of the movement. Mad Pride: A celebration of mad culture records the early Mad Pride movement.

History

Mad Pride was launched alongside a book of the same name, Mad Pride: A celebration of mad culture, published in 2000. On May 11, 2008, Gabrielle Glaser documented Mad Pride in The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

. Glaser stated, "Just as gay-rights activists reclaimed the word queer

Queer

Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...

as a badge of honor rather than a slur, these advocates proudly call themselves mad; they say their conditions do not preclude them from productive lives." The Mad Pride (see gay pride

Gay pride

LGBT pride or gay pride is the concept that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people should be proud of their sexual orientation and gender identity...

for more on gay rights) movement was further mentioned in The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...

Mad culture and events

The Mad Pride movement has spawned recurring cultural events in Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, and other cities around the world. These events often include music, poetry readings, film screenings, and street theatre

Street theatre

Street theatre is a form of theatrical performance and presentation in outdoor public spaces without a specific paying audience. These spaces can be anywhere, including shopping centres, car parks, recreational reserves and street corners. They are especially seen in outdoor spaces where there are...

, such as 'bed push' protests, which aim to raise awareness about the poor levels of choice of treatments and the widespread use of force

Involuntary treatment

Involuntary treatment refers to medical treatment undertaken without a person's consent. In almost all circumstances, involuntary treatment refers to psychiatric treatment administered despite an individual's objections...

in psychiatric hospital

Psychiatric hospital

Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...

s. Commentaries on the Mad Pride movement have been made by such literary luminaries as the English Republican

Republicanism in the United Kingdom

Republicanism in the United Kingdom is the movement which seeks to remove the British monarchy and replace it with a republic that has a non-hereditary head of state...

Jonathan Freedland

Jonathan Saul Freedland is a British journalist, who writes a weekly column for The Guardian and a monthly piece for the Jewish Chronicle. He is also a regular contributor to The New York Times and The New York Review of Books, and presents BBC Radio 4’s contemporary history series,...

and popular novelist Clare Allan. Mad Pride cultural events take a variety of forms, such as the South London collective Creative Routes, the Chipmunka Publishing enterprise, and the many works of Dolly Sen.

Bed push

Mad Pride Week in Toronto is proclaimed as such by the city itself. Highlighted by the MAD! Pride Bed Push, the festival is now in its fourteenth year. A series of bed push events take place around London each year.

The ABC-TV show Primetime Outsiders ran a segment about Mad Pride on August 25, 2009 that included interviews with actor Joey Pantoliano; musician Madigan Shive; and David W. Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International.

History

Mad culture and events

Bed push

See also