Madness, Distress and the Politics of Disablement

This book explores the challenges of applying disability theory and policy, including the social model of disability, to madness and distress. It brings together leading scholars and activists from Europe, North America, Australia and India, to explore the relationship between madness, distress and disability. Whether mental health problems should be viewed as disabilities is a pressing concern, especially since the inclusion of psychosocial disability in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This book will appeal to policy makers, practitioners, activists and academics.

Table of Contents:
Foreword ~ Jenny Morris; Introduction ~ Bob Sapey, Helen Spandler and Jill Anderson; Part One: Disjunctures between disability and madness; Unreasonable adjustments? Applying disability policy to madness and distress ~ Helen Spandler and Jill Anderson; What we talk about when we talk about disability: making sense of debates in the European user/survivor movement ~ Jasna Russo and Debra Shulkes; Inconvenient complications: on the heterogeneities of madness and their relationship to disability ~ Nev Jones and Timothy Kelly; Unsettling impairment: mental health and the social model of disability ~ William J Penson; Part Two: Theorising distress and disablement; Towards a socially situated model of mental distress ~ Jerry Tew; The Capabilities Approach and the social model of mental health ~ Jan Wallcraft and Kim Hopper; Psycho-emotional disablism in the lives of people experiencing mental distress ~ Donna Reeve; Part Three: Applying social models of disability; Psycho-emotional disablism, complex trauma and women’s mental distress ~ Shelley Briggs and Fiona Cameron; Linking ‘race’, mental health and a social model of disability: what are the possibilities? ~ Frank Keating; Social models of disability and sexual distress ~ Meg John Barker and Alex Iantaffi; The social model of disability and suicide prevention ~ Helen Spandler interviews David Webb; Part Four: Universalising disability policy; Advancing the rights of users and survivors of psychiatry using the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ~ An interview with Tina Minkowitz; UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: out of the frying pan into the fire? Mental health service users and survivors aligning with the disability movement ~ Anne Plumb; The global politics of disablement: assuming impairment and erasing complexity ~ China Mills; Disabilities, colonisation and globalisation: how the very possibility of a disability identity was compromised for the ‘insane’ in India ~ Bhargavi V Davar; Part Five: Meeting places; Neurodiversity: bridging the gap between the Disabled People's Movement and the Mental Health System Survivors' Movement? ~ Steve Graby; Distress and disability: not you, not me, but us? ~ Peter Beresford; 'It’s complicated': blending disability and mad studies in the corporatising university ~ Kathryn Church; Solidarity across difference: organising for democratic alliances ~ Mick McKeown and Helen Spandler; Beyond the horizon: the landscape of madness, distress and disability ~ Jill Anderson, Helen Spandler and Bob Sapey.