Mad Studies
“In a mad world, only the mad are sane.”
― Akira Kurosawa
What Is Disability Studies?
Disability studies is a cross-disciplinary field of study that prioritizes leadership and inclusion of those living with disabilities in research and in the generation of knowledge (Jones & Brown, 2013). Within the discipline there is a deliberate centering of first-person narratives and ‘disabled people’ are inherently considered ‘experts by experience’ (Faulkner, 2017).
In accordance to the Society of Disability Studies (2016), the important contributions of this field of disciple include, but are not limited to:
1. The exploration of models and theories that analyze the factors that define disability (social, political, cultural, and economic);
2. Working to de-stigmatize ‘disability’, especially those disabilities that cannot be accurately measured or explained through mainstream research methods;
3. Acknowledging the usefulness as well as limitations of medical research studies and recognizing the role of mainstream research in furthering stigma;
4. Studying how perspectives, attitudes, policies, etc. differ but analyzing a broad scale (personal, collective, national and international) and learning through these differences.
However, Disability Studies’ broad scope of “the overarching, or governing, concept of disability” has posed great limitations upon research that focuses specifically on madness and seeks to establish a more expansive understanding of mental health knowledge (Ingram, 2016, p.11; Faulkner, 2017).
Mad Studies
In response to this limitation, Richard Ingram, a Canadian activist and academic, is credited to be the first to coin the term ‘Mad Studies’ in 2016 at the Disability Studies symposium at Syracuse University. The term grew out of Ingram’s analysis on the limitations of Disability Studies in conceptualizing madness, and it is described both as an emerging discipline as well as an indiscipline (Ingram, 2016). More accurately, Mad Studies is the academic rendition of the service user/survivor or Mad Movement that has emerged across the world over the past twenty-five years (Faulker, 2017; Ingram, 2016). Kathryn Church (2015) proposes that both the community-based and academic movements should invite an understanding of mental health that predates and problematizes psychiatric research discourse by focusing on lived experience and personal narration. Mad Studies places the ongoing work and history of survivor/service user activism, as well as survivor narratives, at the forefront of its focus (LeFrancois et al 2013). Faulkner identifies the interdisciplinary nature of Mad Studies as one of its great strengths:
One of the strengths of this emerging field of enquiry is that it is drawing on many different academic disciplines: literature and critical theory, law and sociology, to name but a few. This gives it the strength to make use of different strands of knowledge and thinking, challenging the centrality of biomedical psychiatry in shaping our understanding of mental health. (2017, p. 514)
Mad Studies as a critical approach calls into question the dominance of the biomedical model, the legitimacy of clinical trials, and the self-interest of pharmaceutical companies within psychiatric care (Faulkner, 2017). It recognizes that the conventionally desired “objectivity” in the researcher or service provider has instead the potential to create further harm and possibly lead to the “distortion or misunderstanding of the experience being interpreted” (Faulkner, 2017, p. 505). In recognizing the inherent hierarchies of “expert” evidence and knowledge valued by mainstream research studies, Mad Studies advocates for the inclusion of:
experiences, history, culture, political organising, narratives, writings and most importantly, the people who identify as: Mad; psychiatric survivors; consumers; service users; mentally ill; patients; neuro-diverse; inmates; disabled – to name a few of the ‘identity labels’ our community may choose to use. (Costa, 2014, para. 3)
Mad Studies pushes up against the devaluation of experiential knowledge and seeks to recenter user experience and first-person narrative within academic dialogue. It helps us to analyze on a macro-level how mental health structures and the domination of western medicine contribute to the further stigmatization of ‘madness’. On a micro-level, within the context of social work, Mad Studies contributes to the reframing of power dynamics between service user and service provider and urges us to dismantle the hierarchy between professional and experiential knowledge and evidence. Through examples such as user-led research studies and peer support roles, Mad Studies also invites us to consider the ways in which lived experience contributes meaningfully to worker credentials.
Mad Studies is an important approach required in dismantling sanism. Sanism is described by Poole and colleagues as the “systematic subjugation of people who have received ‘mental health’ diagnoses or treatment” or those who are neurodivergent (Poole, et al., 2012, p. 20). Social workers unknowingly enact sanism within their practice because “pathologizing, labeling, exclusion, and dismissal have become a ‘normal’ part of professional practice and education” (p. 20).
Addressing Limitations
Mad Studies encounters limitations that can be overcome if practiced in combination with other critical theories and perspectives. As an example, Mad Studies encounters the tension of pursuing academic interests, while striving to maintain relationships and involvement with ongoing activist movements (Ingram, 2016). This is a difficult pursuit, but necessary for maintaining a relevant praxis. To demonstrate the significance of community work as well as the need for adopting other critical perspectives to understand ways in which Mad Studies is relevant, we look at two examples. The first demonstrates the importance of integrating critical race theory within Mad Studies. The second draws attention to the intersections between madness and the trans experience, demonstrating the importance of maintaining the relationship between queer theory and mad studies. Both cases exemplify the significant importance of Mad Studies maintaining a relationship with community-based movements, and supplementing perspectives with additional critical theories.
Critical Race Theory
Black communities maintain a strong tradition of self-help and peer support groups; one reason behind this is the severe lack of available culturally specific social services (Wilson 2001; Seebohm et al., 2010). To meaningfully engage the experiences of community mobilization, such as the tireless work of racialized communities, it is imperative to employ the critical lens of intersectionality. Faulkner & Kalathil demonstrate the importance of adopting aspects of critical race theory to supplement the approach of Mad Studies when they state:
It is important to remember that social justice movements and initiatives have an inherent danger of allowing the narrative of a given group to be dominated by individuals who are normative in all other senses, thereby marginalising non-normative voices within the group. (2012, p. 45)
For these reasons, Mad Studies needs to listen deeply to the ways in which madness is experienced differently when compounded with other lived experiences, such as racial oppressions.
Queer Theory
There is a strong resonance between Mad Studies and queer experiences. One example is the way that trans individuals experience psychiatric assessments and medical approval prior to receiving the necessary treatments required for their transition (McWade et al., 2015). In order to prove treatment eligibility, they must prove their sanity. The impact of psychiatrization imposed upon an individual who identifies as trans demonstrates the way in which “compulsory able-bodiedness and compulsory heterosexuality” dominates medical assessment procedures (p. 307).
Learn more
By integrating the approach of intersectionality and critical race theory to Mad Studies, we can begin to establish a more comprehensive mad-infused critical praxis (McWade, et al., 2015). The videos below further explore the two critical theories introduced above, and the importance of putting them in conversation with mad studies. The video on the left speaks to the need for questioning assumptions of whiteness as the ‘norm’. The video on the right provides a brief introduction to Queer Theory.
