From Antipsychiatry to Mad Pride: Mental Healthcare and Social Movements

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Psychiatry and mental healthcare have been the target of criticism and controversy for decades. Common critiques are that the field is not grounded in medical science, that it pathologizes normal problems in living, or that it is a method of social control. This course will focus on the social movements that have been critical of mental healthcare from the second half of the twentieth century to today. We will begin by considering questions such as: What is the proper role of mental healthcare? What is a social movement? What is the relationship between mental healthcare and politics? Then we will shift to discussing particular social movements including antipsychiatry, Mad Pride, the emergence of the concepts of disability and neurodiversity as alternatives to pathology, and other examples of service-user led activism. The goal of the course will be to better understand the ways that psychiatry has abused it power and imagine changes that could be made to the system to improve the lives of those who suffer from mental health conditions.