Antipsychiatric activism and feminism: the use of film and text to question biomedicine

Abstract

This article examines the relationships between antipsychiatric activism and feminism, paying particular attention to the civil liberties of mental health consumer/survivor/expatient (c/s/x) individuals in relation to mental health practices. It argues that a continually rigorous exploration of the complex (and at times uneasy) relationships between antipsychiatric activism, feminism and mental health practice is necessary and useful for pursuing social justice by working toward the diminishment of mental health inequalities. The article includes an overview of the ‘spectrum’ of antipsychiatric stances and a review of some of the literature covering the relationship between antipsychiatry and feminism, and uses cinematic and literary examples to highlight the complexity of addressing issues like medication ‘compliance’ and ‘non‐compliance’ among mental health users and consumers in biomedical contexts.

Feminism and a Vital Politics of Depression and Recovery

“…Advances in neuroscience, psychiatry, clinical psychology, psychopharmacology and digital health technologies all play a significant role in materialising (gendered) knowledge about the complex, invisible and immaterial dimensions of mental or emotional distress in the contemporary moment (Blackman, 2012;Rose & Abi-Rached, 2013;Ussher, 2011). What is curiously missing from public discourse about tackling depression or anxiety are the critical insights of feminist researchers who have long documented the historically situated relationships between women's emotional lives, the politics of mental health diagnosis and various forms of discrimination, inequity and violence (Appignanesi, 2011;Chandler, 2016;McDermott & Roen, 2016;Stone & Kokanovic, 2016;Stoppard, 2000;Ussher, 1991;Wiener, 2005). At stake in these debates is the key issue of how women's experiences of mental health come to be culturally imagined and felt as personal troubles, rather than as "public feelings" that are deeply entwined with historical, sociocultural, economic and political conditions (Cvetkovich, 2012).…”

Problematizing the neurochemical subject of anti-depressant treatment: The limits of biomedical responses to women’s emotional distress

“…Our aim in this article is to further a gendered understanding of the biopolitics of depression by drawing upon interpretative research with women who problematized the truth claims of psychopharmacology as they recovered. In this way we build upon feminist work that examines the gendered discourses and biomedical assemblages that shape women’s subjectivities as reflexive consumers and biocitizens (Blum and Stracuzzi, 2004; Ettorre and Riska, 1993; Fullagar, 2008b; Godderis, 2010; Lafrance, 2009; Metzl and Angel, 2004; O’Brien and Fullagar, 2008; Stoppard and McMullen, 2003; Ussher, 2011; Wiener, 2005).…”

New Kinds of (Ab)normal?: Public Pedagogies, Affect, and Youth Mental Health in the Digital Age

“…Across a range of disciplines there is a growing critique of the ways in which "expert solutions" to emotional distress are permeating formal and informal pedagogic sites in calls for alternative, critical practice and cultural frameworks (Ecclestone and Goodley 2016;Gagen 2015;Wiener 2005). In this regard, our focus on public pedagogy offers a useful way of connecting different debates about the impacts, intentions and transformations of digital mental health technologies in different contexts.…”