Speaking Our Minds

'This is a profoundly moving collection of testimonies to the ability of the human spirit not only to endure and survive but to learn and teach from the depth of experience... This book could be a powerful force for change.' - Lisa Haywood, Vice-Chair of National Mind and user of the mental health system 'The overall effect of this book is to give a picture of the real world of real people that contrasts so vividly with what goes for knowledge within traditional psychiatry. Sign, symptoms, psychopathology and diagnosis, the bread-and-butter of psychiatry, all acquire new meanings in the light of the insights that emanate from the chapters in this book. I wish this book had been around at the time I was training to become a psychiatrist. It should be compulsory reading for all mental health professionals before they are let out into the world. And if this happens... who knows... we may even get a mental health service that is geared to dealing with people rather than illness.' - Suman Fernando, Consultant Psychiatrist

Moving, sometimes funny and often dramatic, the pieces are written by some of the key activists in the mental health survivors' movement, as well as by people best known as writers and poets and others who, for a period of time, have been caught up with mental distress and have something original to say.This is an exciting collection of writings by people who have experienced mental distress. It includes accounts of psychiatric treatment, psychotherapy and alternative treatments; life in mental institutions and moves into the community; self-help methods and work to improve mental health services. Moving, sometimes funny and often dramatic, the pieces are written by some of the key activists in the mental health survivors' movement, as well as by people best known as writers and poets and others who, for a period of time, have been caught up with mental distress and have something original to say.