Bonnie Burstow - The Revolt Against Psychiatry: A Counterhegemonic Dialogue

Bonnie Burstow

The Revolt Against Psychiatry

A Counterhegemonic Dialogue

A truly outstanding contribution to critical work in this area. I simply loved reading the manuscript; by turns, questioning, thought-provoking, heart-breaking, challenging, yet always positive, sensitive to different outlooks, and with a real humanistic quality at its heart. I congratulate Professor Burstow and all the contributors to the book the text is really moving, and made me (as a mental health academic ) reflect upon a whole number of issues. So inspiring!

Bruce Cohen, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Revolt against Psychiatry is a celebration of living life on ones own terms. Defiant, relentless and radical, these anti/ critical psychiatry dialogues extol activism and commitment from the edges of a world intent on not listening. A must-read for those thinking about the impact of institutional violence and what it means to be an expert through experience. A stellar contribution. Migwetch, everyone involved, and Mazel Tov.

Jennifer Wemigwans, Assistant Professor, OISE/University of Toronto, Canada, and author of A Digital Bundle: Protecting Indigenous Knowledge Online

A terrific read, this latest book of Professor Bonnie Burstows is an exceptional contribution to her already formidable repertoire. Consisting of 15 dialogical interviews with major players in the critical and antipsychiatry fields in different parts of the world, it is highly accessible, is enormously informative, and I predict will quickly become an indispensable go-to resource both for seasoned scholars and new students trying to wrap their mind around the revolt against psychiatry. Venceremos , Bonnie

Stephen Ticktin, member of the Medical Psychotherapy Association of Canada

In this amazing book, Bonnie Burstow gathers together a wide variety of expert global players in the critical/ antipsychiatry movement. These stand-alone thought-provoking dialogues stimulate debate and offer a fascinating look into the opinions and strategies of people who challenge psychiatry. Passionate, gripping, heart-warming, and at times harrowing.

Cheryl Prax, survivor and member of the British activist group Speak Out Against Psychiatry, UK

Fantastic Work! Burstows wide-ranging and deeply engaging series of dialogues not only exposes psychiatry as a pseudoscience but provides clues on how to resist and replace it. With a solid focus on human rights and an unwavering commitment to follow where the science leads, Burstow demonstrates that psychiatry isnt a service. Its a disservice.

Irit Shrimrat, co-founder of the Ontario Psychiatric Survivors Alliance, Canada

This book is dedicated to Vern Harper a psychiatric survivor and an Indigenous man, who, in his early years, was involuntarily psychiatrically incarcerated and, in the process, subjected to an insidious combination of racism and sanism . Now during his psychiatric incarceration Vern came perilously close to being electroshocked on two separate occasionsand who can say how his story would have unfolded had they actually gone through with the highly brain-damaging procedure? What happened? As the fates would have it, both times, when the moment when he was to be shocked arrived, the psychiatrist assigned hima chap from Indiaunceremoniously entered the ECT room where Vern was lying and yanked the plug to the ECT machine out of the wall, exclaiming, Not to my people, you dont! (and no, the psychiatrist in question was not Indigenous ). Now eventually Vern got himself out of the system and went on to live a singularly productive and worthwhile life in which he contributed substantially to society. A helper and a leader of people, whose brainthank God!had never been fried, he went on to work at a huge number of social service agencies in Toronto. He became a highly respected and renowned elder, was known everywhere as the urban elderthe Toronto elder who could always be counted on to stand up for social justice. He co-organized the now legendary across-Canada trek to raise awareness of broken treaties (the Native Peoples Caravan). At the same time, he remained an outspoken member of the mad movement.

Late in his life, to the surprise of many of us, he started working at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), which is as mainstream psychiatry as you can get and where he served as in-house elder. Now while he had previously been involved in an early antipsychiatry publishing venture of mine Shrink Resistant: The Struggle Against Psychiatry in Canada at this point, I lost touch with him, saddened by what appeared to be the movements loss of him.

Fast forward ten yearsone day I heard that there had been a falling-out between Vern and CAMH and I immediately had a message relayed to him, inviting him to phone me, which indeed he did. About 15 minutes into the phone call, I inquired about the falling-out and asked Vern what he had learned from his ten years stretch working at CAMH. Without a moments hesitation, he responded, You know, Bonnie, if there is one thing that my ten years here has taught me, it is that what they do here, it is not good for my people. We schmoozed for a while, and it was during this conversation I told him about this new dialogical book on which I was working. After telling me that he was eager to contribute once again to the movement in any way he could, he expressed a particularly keen interest in being interviewed for this very book, adding that in the interview, he would like to tell the story of almost being electroshocked for he felt that the story had the potential of doing good. All good. We never did get around to conducting the interview, however, for Vern was old and ill at this point; already he was beginning to fade; and before we were able to proceed further, he died.