"...mental health, and in fact most kinds of health care, are seen as personal issues that are either best dealt with by professionals or through personal choices such as alternative healthcare, healing or therapeutic communities or alternative self-help groups. What we are asking is why isn’t health, and especially mental health an issue that we more regularly see as part of our anti-capitalist politics?"

from Shift magazine in the UK

More and more, the acceptance of the idea that our dissatisfaction and disease is a result of “brain chemistry” is desensitizing us to the notion that our feelings and experiences might have their roots in social and political problems. Fundamentally, if we are going to shift the current mental health paradigm we are going to need a movement that both has the political savvy to understand how to fight the system, and the tools to be able to take care of each other as the world gets even crazier.

"When Insanity is a Blessing: The Message of Shamanism," chapter from Holger Kalweit's Shamans, Healers, and Medicine Men.

https://site.icarusprojectarchive.org/files/KalweitInsanityBlessing.PDF

By Aubrey Ellen Shomo

I see it everywhere: People with mental illness need medication.  It sounds reasonable.

Today, there are even political organizations that seek to make it easy to force a person to take it.

It's easy to look at another and assume things like that.  It's human.  After all, it's compassionate to help someone who isn't able to ask for help, right?  They'll thank you in the long run, won't they?

"These stories – honest, gut-wrenching and triumphant – are told by people who, through darkness, have found wellness and healing, meaning and purpose. They teach us about finding love in a world that is often harsh and cruel. With courage and insight, they reveal how to reclaim mental health in a culture that often misunderstands the healing process. Our stories demonstrate the power of the human spirit to prevail"

"The Politics of Rationality: Psychiatric Survivors' Challenge to Psychiatry," Gabriella Coleman's chapter in the Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience book, examines the history of psychiatric survivor movement to assess its radical political position in the face of changing conditions, notably the growing legitimacy of a neurochemical model of illness and a pervasive culture of seeking, prescribing, and taking drugs.