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Download Brenda A LeFrançois foreword here
If you are unwaged or on an insecure wage you can buy this book for £11.50. Enter the code 'srgspecial' at the checkout or phone us on +44 (0)1600 891509 to place your order. Postage will be free in the UK, £2.50 within the EU and £4.50 for the rest of the world.
Searching for a Rose Garden is an incisive critique of all that is unhelpful about sanestream understandings of and responses to mental distress. Drawing on world-wide survivor activism and scholarship, it explores the toxicity of psychiatry and the co-option and corruption of survivor knowledge and practice by the mainstream. Chapters on survivor research and theory reveal the constant battle to establish and maintain a safe space for experiential knowledge within academia and beyond. Other chapters explore how survivor-developed projects and practices are cultivating a wealth of bright blooms in the most hostile of environments, providing an important vision for the future.
Referencing Joanne Greenberg’s book I Never Promised you a Rose Garden, this collection demonstrates the challenge, determination and successes of the authors in working towards a paradigm shift in the understanding of madness and distress. This landmark text is essential reading in the emerging field of Mad Studies.
Foreword by Brenda A. LeFrançois
Introduction
Setting the scene
1. Responses to a legacy of harm Mary O’Hagan
2. Alternatives or a way of life? Bhargavi Davar
3. The haunting can end: trauma-informed approaches in healing from abuse and adversity Beth Filson
4. The role of survivor knowledge in creating alternatives to psychiatry Peter Beresford
5. The co-optation of survivor knowledge: the danger of substituted values and voice Darby Penney and Laura Prescott
Survivor-produced knowledge
6. The transformative potential of survivor research Angela Sweeney
7. Towards our own framework, or reclaiming madness part two Jasna Russo
8. Whiteness in psychiatry: the madness of European misdiagnosis Colin King
9. Deciding to be alive: self-injury and survival Clare Shaw
10. Thinking (differently) about suicide David Webb
11. Community Treatment Orders: once a rosy deinstitutional notion Erick Fabris
Survivor-controlled practice
12. Becoming part of each other’s narratives: Intentional Peer Support Shery Mead and Beth Filson
13. We did it our way: Women’s Independent Alcohol Support Patsy Staddon
14. Sexual violence in childhood: demarketing treatment options and strengthening our own agency Zofia Rubinsztajn
15. The Personal Ombudsman: an example of supported decision making Maths Jesperson
16. Kindred Minds: a personal perspective Renuka Bhakta
17. The Sunrise Project: helping adults recover from psychiatric drugs Terry Simpson
Working in partnership
18. More voice, less ventriloquism: building a mental health recovery archive Dolly Sen and Anna Sexton
19. Teaching (like) crazy in a mad-positive school: exploring the charms of recursion Danielle Landry and Kathryn Church
20. Peer workers in the mental health system: a transformative or collusive experiment? Celia Brown and Peter Stastny
21. Dilemmas of identity and power Alison Faulkner
22. Is partnership a dirty word? Cath Roper
23. Co-creating the ways we carry each other: reflections on being an ally and a double agent Reima Ana Maglajlic
The search goes on
Download a pdf of Brenda A LeFrançois' foreword here
'As a survivor of the psychiatric system and of electro convulsive therapy, yet feeling uncomfortable with the term "Mad Studies", I was eager to read and learn from this ground breaking new book. Richly vibrant, it brings together a collection of reflections and discussions by contributors who have lived experience and who all write in a clear and engaging way. The authors challenge the tyranny of psychiatry and bring authenticity to the wave of awareness that is now providing more enlightenment and meaning to the study of "madness" and emotional distress. Each section of the book sets out arguments contributing to and developing the conversation which drives this movement of change. The fact that so much of the book is written by survivors breaks down barriers and contests and questions psychiatry. Whereas psychiatry is eager to control suppress and medicate, while ignoring the underlying trauma, and failing to listen; the contributors have produced material which is liberating, educational, thought provoking and life changing for the mental health movement. In a single sweep this brilliant collection of writings destroys the myth that psychiatry can provide meaningful help. I recommend this book highly as essential reading for mental health professionals, students and the general reader. Its scope is wide-ranging, fact filled and relevant. It is an empowering read for survivors everywhere who will find validation, support and above all, hope within its pages.' Judith Haire, Our Encounters with Suicide (PCCS Books); http://www.judithhaire.wordpress.com
‘… an exceptionally insightful collection in which contributors reflect on the successes, setbacks, and ongoing challenges in contesting and supplanting psychiatry… The transformative effects of the collective knowledge woven together in this book will reverberate for decades to come.’ Dr Richard Ingram, Independent Mad Studies Researcher.
‘… a vital contribution to the building of Mad Studies as a discipline grounded in activist scholarship [and] a comprehensive and accessible must-read for those interested in building real alternatives to the limited, and often damaging, approaches to madness and distress that dominate today.’ Dr Brigit McWade, Sociology Department, Lancaster University.
‘A profoundly important volume and a herculean effort. Comprehensive, modern, bold, accessible, survivor-produced research, knowledge and practice. Searching for a Rose Garden offers concrete examples of people rejecting and altering “mental health” systems around the world. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever heard the word “psychiatry”.’ Lauren J Tenney, PhD, MPhil, MPA, Psychiatric Survivor.
Jasna Russo comes from the former Yugoslavia and is based in Berlin, Germany, where she works as an independent researcher. She is a long-term activist in the international user/survivor movement. Jasna has an MA in clinical psychology and has worked on both survivor-controlled and collaborative research projects, including several large-scale international studies. Her articles have been published in anthologies and journals in Germany and the UK. In 2011 Jasna was the main organiser of the international conference “Searching for a Rose Garden. Fostering Real Alternatives to Psychiatry” which inspired this book. Her main interest is in exploring the accumulated knowledge of people treated as mad or ‘mentally ill’ and whether we can connect across the globe to jointly develop our own, first-person defined model of madness.
Angela Sweeney was part of her local survivor movement as a teenager and young adult, and conducted her first survivor research project as an undergraduate student in 1998. Sometime after graduating, she joined the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health to work on a study of the British Survivor Movement (On Our Own Terms, 2003) before moving to the Service User Research Enterprise at the Institute of Psychiatry where she gained a PhD in medical sociology. She has a particular interest in survivor controlled research, trauma-informed approaches, survivors' perspectives on and experiences of psychiatric services and treatments, and alternatives to mainstream biomedical psychiatry including trauma and social models of causation. She is currently undertaking a five year Post-Doctoral Fellowship exploring assessment processes for talking therapies. She has two young children, a partner, and a cat.
