Interrogating Psychiatric Narratives of Madness

Abstract

"Interrogating Psychiatric Narratives of Madness is fresh and disruptive, accessible and actionable. By focusing on the textual practices of mental health professionals, its contributors reveal psychiatric power as mundane, standardized and even digital/electronic. Embracing diverse social locations and identities, the book is a resource for academics and community groups alike." - Kathryn Church, Associate Professor, Disability Studies, Ryerson University, Canada. Author of Forbidden Narratives: Critical Autobiography as Social Science This book challenges the perception of the psychiatric chart as a neutral and objective text. The chapters included in this book coalesce to reveal the psychiatric chart as a text that is, in fact, "storied" by institutional ideology that reflects, reinforces, reinterprets, and, at times, resists gendered, raced, sexualized, and classed norms, values, and presuppositions. Intersectional analysis highlights the nuanced ways in which dominant ideologies are activated in chart documentation to produce qualitatively specific psychiatric narratives of distress and related responses in the psychiatric institution. The book serves as a much needed resource for mental health professionals, education and training programs, and researchers that meaningfully takes into account the social and structural materiality of people's lives and its impact on experiences of distress. It will also appeal to scholars investigating equity in health care across the fields of Critical Psychology, Disability Studies, Social Work, Allied Health, Mad Studies and Social Justice. Andrea Daley is Professor at the School of Social Work, Renison University College, at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She practices critical research methods to engage.