Mad knowledges and user-led research

This book presents a critical examination of the development of user involvement within research, and investigates the issues currently preventing a productive integration of Mad knowledges within research and practice. Drawing on social, linguistic and critical theories, it proposes the conditions needed to address the development of Mad epistemologies. The authors unique approach deliberately highlights her own positionality and draws on decades of experience as a service recipient, survivor, activist and researcher to illustrate the structural and symbolic barriers faced. Employing concepts including epistemic injustice, individualization, normalization and structural violence, it suggests a radically new way of articulating whats the matter with us? In doing so, the book itself goes some way towards enacting the radical challenge to academic and epistemic hierarchies which, it is argued, will be required to further advance mad knowledges and user-led research. Crucially, it demonstrates how this approach can be both methodologically and conceptually rigorous. This novel work holds important insights for students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences; particularly those working in the areas of critical psychology, disability studies, Mad studies, feminist studies, critical race theory, and Queer theory. Diana Susan Rose retired in 2020 and is now Distinguished Honorary Professor at the Australian National University. She has had two academic careers, interspersed with a period of living in the community having been retired from her first position on mental health grounds. She pioneered user-focused research in a London NGO and subsequently worked at Kings College London where she became Professor of User-Led Research in 2013. Her previous works include This is Survivor Research (2009 co-edited with Peter Beresford, Alison Faulkner, Angela Sweeney, and Mary Nettle).

Intro -- Prologue -- A Note on Terminology -- Who Are 'the Mad'? -- Who Am I? -- References -- Acknowledgements -- Praise for Mad Knowledges and User-Led Research -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Part I: Setting the Scene -- 1: What Does Madness Articulate? -- Background -- When Madness Begins to Speak What Does 'It' Say? -- Mobilising as Speaking Back? -- Non-uniformity -- Who Speaks? -- The Underground -- The Field -- The 'Mainstreams' of Survivor Voices-Psychiatry -- The Academy and 'Psy' Research -- Speaking Back to Austerity -- Conclusion -- References -- Unclassified References

2: Mental Challenges as Constitutive of Marginalisation? -- Background -- Collectives -- The Clinical Encounter -- Out of the Hospital -- Can Communities be Developed? -- Psychiatric Facilities and Policies as Obstacles to Forming Groups -- Survivors as a 'Marginalised Community' -- Counter-Narratives from the Mainstream -- Activism -- What Is to be Done? -- Conclusion -- References -- Part II: User Involvement in Research-England as a Case Study -- 3: History of Patient and Public Involvement in England -- Background and Summary -- Language and Representation -- Who Is the Public?

Can I Apply? -- Wh…