Psychiatric Survivor Movement History

The current era of psychiatric survivor and ally activism is generally considered to have begun in about 1970.

Principles adopted by 1982 gathering of psychiatric survivors. Each year for many years in the 1970’s and 1980’s, there was an annual gathering of psychiatric survivors, usually on a different college campus in the US or Canada. It became known as the “International Conference on Human Rights and Against Psychiatric Oppression.” At the 1982 gathering in Toronto, participants agreed to these principles.

Logo for Madness Network News Madness Network News, out of the Bay Area of California, helped network thousands of psychiatric survivors and allies internatioanlly. Their logo was a woman breaking free from a strait jacket.

How to download all back issues of Phoenix Rising, historic mad movement publication from Canada One of the most important publications put out by the psychiatric survivors’ liberation movement has been Phoenix Rising: The Voice of the Psychiatrized (1980 to 1990), from Toronto Canada. Here is a link to the Psychiatric Survivors Archives of Toronto web site so you can download all the back issues.

A personal history of the “consumer movement” Sally Clay is a long-time activist in the movement for a nonviolent revoluion in the mental health system, and is a past president of MindFreedom International. Here’s personal perspective on our social change movement’s history.

A history of mental health advocacy The National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA), a founding Sponsor Group of MindFreedom, published this brief overview of mental heatlh advocacy history.

Hearing Voices: Resistance Among Psychiatric Survivors and Consumers Maria Duerr presented this thesis about the history of the psychiatric survivor movement for her Masters Degree in Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in June 1996. (This PDF is 141 pages.)