2024 marks the publication of the Mad Studies Reader, a book that brings together writing and artwork from service users, daring activists, critical scholars, concerned clinicians, and innovative artists! As people excluded from mainstream definitions of mental health and mental health care are increasingly finding ways to get their voices heard, the Mad Studies Reader explores this progress and presents us with hope as well as awareness of the challenges that lie ahead as we collectively work to build a world that embraces rather than divides.
https://www.idha-nyc.org/mad-studies-symposium
Join IDHA as we celebrate the launch of this groundbreaking book and the increasing solidarity and excitement around mad studies and allied fields. This celebration is organized to bring artists, scholars, clinicians, and activists together. We will start with an opening discussion of the term “mad studies” followed by panel presentations from each of these areas. Before each panel we will have presentations from the artists in the book. After each section we will have discussions in large and small group settings. We look forward to having you learn and journey with us as we come together to explore mad studies as a field of inquiry, a framework for transformation, and a movement for social change!
The Institute for Development of Human Arts are mental health workers, clinicians, psychiatrists, current and prior users of mental health services, advocates, artists, and survivors of trauma and adversity, who are interested in exploring the link between personal and societal transformation.
“We believe that change happens through dynamic collaboration between clinicians in the field and advocates on the front lines dedicated to shifting policy and practice while building and uplifting safe alternatives. We understand that it is time for a new paradigm in mental health: one that does not deny anyone self-determination and healing, that accounts for the complexity of personal, social, and collective traumas, that opens up our narrow definition of “normal” for the full range of human experience, and allows us to look beyond medicalized and disease-centered thinking to offer regenerative, holistic, and transformative practices.”
IDHA is advancing a new paradigm of Transformative Mental Health. This is the practice of personal and collective healing rooted in:
Systemic Change
An understanding that healing requires a critical consciousness of multiple intersecting systems of oppression and the impact our society has on our bodies, minds, and communities.
Experiential
Knowledge
A proliferation of our lived and embodied experiences as the most powerful form of knowledge creation. Best practices and trainings are created by or in direct collaboration with people who are labeled with mental health issues and those most impacted by trauma and harmful systems.
Holistic Care
Uplifting multiple voices and frameworks bring us closer to a full understanding of healing. Healing is a creative process. Health is far more than the absence of suffering. Healing must address the whole person (mind, body, and spirit) as well as the broader context in which the person lives. Holistic healing focuses on uncovering the multiple roots of pain, preventing suffering as opposed to treating symptoms, and honouring the the vast range of human experience.
Transformative Mental Health understands human suffering, mental difference, and the full range of emotion, as a catalyst for generative change, rather than a pathology. Transformative Mental Health is an evolving process, not a destination.