num_pages: 244
description: Irit Shimrat went crazy as a young woman and spent two years incarcerated in psychiatric wards. Her escape and subsequent involvement in the psychiatric survivors' movement (a.k.a. the Mad Movement) is documented here, along with accounts from other activists including Don Weitz, Lanny Beckman and Pat Caponni. An international coalition of former mental patients and their allies who oppose forced drugging, solitary confinement, electroshock and other psychiatric abuses, the Mad Movement has been active for three decades. Shimrat and others put forward powerful arguments that "mental illness" is a lucrative and socially constructed myth rather than a genetic or biochemical brain defect.Call Me Crazy is a testament to the strength of the human spirit and a springboard for intelligent, creative and humane alternatives to psychiatry. It includes a comprehensive bibliography.
language: English
title: Call Me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement
titlecomplete: Call Me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement
genres: Disability, Nonfiction, Mental Health, Psychology
ratings_count: 18
publisher: Press Gang Pub