91福利

In May 2012, the School of Disability Studies hosted an event entitled: Mad Positive in the Academy. This event brought engaged academics and community activists from four projects into dialogue about mad positive practices located at the intersection of mental health, formal education and social movements.

From 19 filmed interviews and roughly seven hours of footage, we have created three short videos, or 鈥榳eb docs鈥� that discuss: 

• What it means to be mad positive in the academy
• Discrimination in the neoliberal university
• How to be a mad positive ally

All are grounded in the practice dilemmas expressed by conference participants, and the activist strategies they employ in partnership with or as members of the mad community.

A grant from the Teaching 91福利 Diversity Fund at 91福利 in 2013 allowed us to translate some of what our participants said into this series of web docs. These web docs are designed for use by community groups and instructors in both online and in-person classrooms. We recognize the presence of a significant, if somewhat hidden community of mad-identified students on campus who are looking for a reflection of their own experience in curriculum. We wanted to provide some tools for thinking critically about how mental health is taken up on campus and link these concepts to other relevant social movements.

Teaching tools

Questions for discussion

Here are a few suggestions of questions you can use to facilitate a discussion about each of these web docs:

Mad positive in the academy: Early conversations

• What do you think it means to be mad positive?
• What kinds of policies and practices could universities adopt to become more mad positive?
• How is being mad positive similar to, or different from, being accessible?

Mad positive in the academy: Making space to talk about discrimination

• What is the difference between 鈥榮tigma鈥� and 鈥榙iscrimination鈥�? What are the implications of using one frame instead of the other?
• How can involving the mad community be threaded through scholarly activities, such as research and teaching, in ways that are meaningful, rather than tokenistic? Give some examples.

Mad positive in the academy: How to be an ally

• What does it take to be a good ally?
• How might teaching and learning practices shift to bring mad knowledge into the academy? 
  In what ways can people already situated within the university 鈥渨alk the talk鈥� as allies in this process?
• At one point, Steve Tilley states that revolutionaries can 鈥渟ee the cracks in the system鈥�. How does having the ability to see 鈥渢he openings for something that needs to change鈥� in a time of austerity relate to being mad positive in the academy?

Suggested reading list

Anonymous.  (2014, February 24).  

ARCH Disability Law Centre. (2014). Disability Accommodations in Post-Secondary Education.

Aubrecht, K. (2012). . Studies in Social Justice, 6(1), 67 83.

Baker, Katie J.M. (2014, February, 11). . Newsweek.

Burstow, B. (2003). From Pills to Praxis: Psychiatric Survivors and Adult Education. The Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education. 17, 1-18.

Church, K. (2015). 鈥淚t鈥檚 complicated鈥�: Blending Disability and Mad Studies in the corporatizing university. In H. Spandler, J. Anderson and B. Sapey鈥檚 (Eds.) Madness, Distress and the Politics of Disablement. University of Bristol: Policy Press. 261-270.

Cresswell, M. & Spandler, H. (2012). The Engaged Academic: Academic Intellectuals and the Psychiatric Survivor Movement. Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest, 1-17.

Hamilton Mad Students Collective. (2014). Teaching Crazily: Supporting Students with Mental Health Disabilities as a TA. 

Jones, N. & Brown, R.L. (2013). . Disability Studies Quarterly, 33(1).

LeFrancois, B.A., Menzies, R. & Reaume, G. (Eds.) (2013). Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars鈥� Press Inc.

McGill Reporter. (2013, March, 15). .

McKeown, M. (2012). Alliances and communicative action: One possibility for reframing theory and praxis. Distress or Disability? Proceedings of a symposium held at Lancaster University, November 15-16, 2011. J Anderson, B. Sapey and H. Spandler (Eds.). Bowland North, UK: Centre for Disability Research, Lancaster University.

Mullins, L. & Preyde, M. (2013). The lived experience of students with an invisible disability at a Canadian university. Disability & Society, 28(2), 147-160.

Ontario Human Rights Commission. (2009). .

Ontario Human Rights Commission. (2009). .

Ontario Human Rights Commission. (2009).  PDF

Ostrow, L. (2013 July 6). . Mad in America.

Reid, J., & Poole, J. (2013). Mad students in the social work classroom? Notes from the beginnings of an inquiry. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 24(3), 209-222.

Reimer, M. & Ste-Marie, M. (2010). Denied access: Thee focus on medicalized support services and 鈥渄epressed鈥� women in the corporate university. Resources for Feminist Research, 33(3/4), 137-159.

Russo, J. & Beresford, P. (2014). Between exclusion and colonisation: seeking a place for mad people鈥檚 knowledge in academia. Disability & Society, 30(1), 153-157.

Williams, R. (2014, January, 24) . Yale Daily News.

Wolframe, P. M. (2013). . Disability Studies Quarterly, 3(1).

Additional Resources

Mad Studies Network:

• Twitter: 

Web docs from the course Mad People's History:

 (Community Engagement and Service User Support)

Centre to Study Recovery in Social Contexts

Contact information and credits

For more information, please contact:

Kathryn Church, PhD

Director and Associate Professor
School of Disability Studies, 91福利
Email: k3church@torontomu.ca
Phone: (416) 979-5000 ext. 4592
Mail: 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3

Funding for the project Mad-Positive in the Academy: From Conference to Curriculum was provided by the Teaching 91福利 Diversity Fund at 91福利 (2013)

Principal Investigator: Dr. Kathryn Church

Research Assistant: Danielle Landry

Video Editor: Jonathan Balazs

Videographer: Kathleen Mackey

Thank you to the advisory committee members, participants, and event sponsors of Mad-Positive Activism in the Academy: An International Dialogue on Practice (May 19-20, 2012).

These videos were shot on location in Toronto, Ontario at 91福利.