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Budapest W5: Performing Arts - A Mad Fight

Bradley Lewis, “A Mad Fight: Psychiatry and Disability Activism,” in Disability Studies Reader
"“Mad Pride.” This activist group is an international coalition devoted to resisting and critiquing clinician-centered psychiatric systems, finding alternative and peer run approaches to mental health recovery, and helping those who wish to do so minimize their involvement with current psychiatric institutions." p.115

Individualism - disability as a personal tragedy that is often medicalised, based on a desire to reach a level of 'normality'. Disability activists oppose these definitions of disability, preferring to reframe it as a social restriction. p.116

"Emphasizing a social model rather than a medical model they call attention to the fact that much of the suffering of different bodies comes from social exclusion, isolation, and lack of opportunity, along with the often pernicious side effects of a medical industry bent on aggressive intervention to achieve “normal” bodies" p.116

"Mental illness is not an objective medical reality but rather either a negative label or a strategy for coping in a mad world." p.120




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