DST 500 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Mad Pride, Gay Liberation, Mental Health

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Disability Studies
• Course: DST 500
• Professor: Jenna Reid

Document Summary

Diamond, s. (2013) questions: describe and be prepared to discuss some of the tensions between consumer and survivor-identified people in terms of language, initiatives, politics, and goals. Terminology and language has been a big debate in the early days of the community. Terminology such as patient, ex-patient, psychiatric inmate/prisoner, and ex-inmate were commonly used; new terms have been introduced though such as psychiatric survivor, mad, and consumer. A tension exists between the terminology based on different ideas about institutional psychiatry and one"s relation to the institute. Something that has impacted the use of this terminology, in favour of the new language, is the government funded consumer initiatives within mental health organizations. Patients protective over the old terminology fear that the term consumer fails to communicate the reality of psychiatric violence or coercion, and evokes notions of freedom, which isn"t always the case for them. Mad pride is a movement to destigmatize mental illness and mental patients.