Reframing Madness

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Being harmed by forced psychiatry, survivors seek not only to end that system of torture and arbitrary detention, but also to create better ways of responding to people who are struggling with life or society. Remembering our own anguish and need for support, or the misunderstanding of others when we were opening new pathways in our lives, we want to build something better.

Our new ways include:

  • Peer Support (also known as mutual support)
  • Alternative practices on margins of mental health system
  • Survivor research
  • Understanding our struggles on our own terms
  • Exposing the harms of psychiatry from scientific and journalistic standpoints
Alternative Practices

Hearing Voices Network – UK website and international – non-dogmatic approach to working with voices and visions

Beyond Belief – Tamasin Knight

Intentional Peer Support – a practice based in learning together in relationships and making meaning outside the narratives of the mental health system

Sarah Knutson’s Peer Support Unsponsored: 12 Steps for People of Conscience (2017) and see the rest of her Peerly Human blog (to 2018)

ISPS-US – International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis, US Chapter

Soteria Houses – one of the oldest ongoing models to create respite spaces for people experiencing madness, being supported empathetically – see also this recent webinar (2025)

Mad in America and affiliated Mad in the World sites are a prime resource for alternative practices, critiques of psychiatry, survivor advocacy and first-person experiences

Trauma-Informed Support

Materials from 2010 WNUSP/MFI side event at CRPD Conference of States Parties:

Mad Pride and Community

YouTube Channel of RedEsfera Latinoamericana por las Culturas Locas, la Diversidad Psicosocial, la Justicia, el Buen Vivir y el Derecho al Delirio – videos discussing de-medicalization, human rights, suicide, mad pride – en español

Madness Radio by Will Hall – eclectic podcast with interviews ranging across the survivor movement and alternative practices

ALCE in Colombia – ‘AboliciĂłn de LĂłgicas de Castigo y Encierro’

Lokapedia – cultura loca y feminismo website by Greta Guzman MartĂ­nez

by Ailsa Rayner
Survivor Research

Beatriz PĂ©rez PĂ©rez, Una genealogĂ­a de la matriz de poder moderna. Lo humano, el derecho y la locura (2023) – history of the development of psychiatry and resistance to it, including our work on CRPD – en español

Rethink Psychosis – an ongoing project to gather first-person accounts of several categories of experience labeled as psychosis:

Conceptualizing Support

Minkowitz, Support in Crisis to Replace Forced Psychiatry (slides) (2019)

Minkowitz, Reimagining Crisis Support: Matrix, Roadmap and Policy (2021) and translation Reimaginar el Apoyo en Crisis: Matriz, Hoja de Ruta y PolĂ­tica (2023)

CHRUSP Recommendations to Avoid Replicating Coercion in Crisis Support (2026)