Contesting Psychiatry: Social Movements in Mental Health (Critical Studies in Health and Society)

Resistance and social movements in mental health have been important in shaping current practice in both mental health and psychiatry. Contesting Psychiatry, focusing largely on the UK, examines the history of resistance to psychiatry between 1950 and 2000. Building on the author’s extensive research, the book provides an empirical account and exploration of the key features including:

• an account of the key social movements and organizations who have contested psychiatry over the last fifty years
• the theorization of resistance to psychiatry which might apply to other national contexts and to social movement formation and protest in other medical arenas
• the exploration of theories of power in psychiatry.

Original and provocative in its approach, this book offers a new sociological perspective on psychiatry.