Mad Pride - A Celebration of Mad Culture

[Kire]

About Mad Pride

MAD PRIDE is committed to ending discrimination against psychiatric patients, promoting survivor equality and celebrating Mad culture. WHAT IS MAD PRIDE? Mad Pride is an idea which came out of the 1997 Gay Pride Festival in London. A few survivors of the mental health system said "we could do with a festival like this". And so a motley collection of individuals got together and slowly started organising themselves so as to put on events. These Mad Pridesters did some research on the Name and Aims of the thing. Then they set about forming a non-profit-distributing company to develop MAD PRIDE. In 1999, they organised a series of gigs and concerts.

Mad Pride now sees itself as part of the newest (but probably not the last) Civil Rights movement.

Come to gigs. Organise your own festival, concert or event. (Just let us know you are doing this). Perform at MAD PRIDE's gigs and concerts. Let MAD PRIDE use your venue. Or just send a message of support to this webpage. Get involved in some way. Contact us now or read on.

Aims

MAD PRIDE is a not-for-profit organisation. The objects for which MAD PRIDE was established are:-

• To promote positive images of mental health
• To counteract discrimination and prejudice towards people who have experienced mental distress.
• To educate the public in mental health issues
• To campaign for better mental health provision
• To campaign for less oppressive and more enabling legislation and practice guidelines.
• To promote economic, social, environmental and cultural integration of user/survivors into mainstream society and our active participation and integration into community life.
That Mad Pride Name Again

At the 1999 MIND Conference in Blackpool there was quite an extensive debate about the use of the word Mad, and we realised that there was still a significant proportion of user/survivors in the UK who were uncomfortable with the word.

Dr Rachel Perkins - a clinical director of rehab at Pathways Mental Health Trust (SW London) said famously while chairing a Plenary of perhaps 900 people "I am proud to be Mad. I am a Mad Dyke!" But people have written to Mad Pride, saying that they are not proud of mental distress "I am not proud of having been mentally ill," writes one. Now that is not what we mean at all. The word "mad" is basically a term of abuse. Remember so once was the word "black".

But people reclaimed the word and used it as a proud badge to be worn along the long march to freedom. There was Black Power. There is Black Pride.

So the committee at their October 99 meeting has agreed to model the word more closely along the lines of the Black struggle and to encourage the use of the word "mad" but to capitalise it!!!!!! It therefore is always to be written Mad to distinguish it as a deadly serious political word - a constant reminder of how we were treated by others, how we are treated by others, but sending out a message that the day has now arrived when we are not going to be treated like this any more.

Another criticism is that because we often deal with pop music and popular culture we are being lightweight and frivolous. We need to campaign and campaign hard!!! Well we do not agree that pop music and culture is frivolous. The UK is very good at this line of activity and what's more there are many user/survivors working in the field. One of our aims is to leave the psychiatric ghetto and begin to get a bit mainstream. In a sense what Mad Pride does rather than what it says is the campaign.


http://www.madpride.org.uk/

[undergroundpanther]

1. pride

I saw a sign that pissed me off yesterday, an at a gas station..

It said Referring to their coffee..

"shock therapy in a cup."

Har har..I got it.. I get the humor but somehow it doesn't make me laugh

In dunno what you all think,but it kinda pissed me off... when I know how they give shock to people in places like India,Shock therapy is NOT funny_at all_..When I think of how awful the history of shock therapy was and the brutality of early psychiatry in general it's kinda well nauseating. When I remember with Shock Therapy sometimes to think that people died, got injured or lost memories with shock therapy.. It makes me disgusted Shock Therapy is an ad campaign trying to be funny..
To me it felt stigmatizing,ignorant, like making a joke about torture.

[NMMNG]

2. This is a great idea

Anything that goes to promote the destigmatization of mental illness is good in my book. I'm a fan of Mouth Magazine as they speak for 'mislabeled' (not 'disabled') people, including those with mental illnesses in a 'no holds barred' fashion:

http://www.mouthmag.com/







:thumbsup: