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Mad Pride 2007 in Accra, Ghana included a large street march!
A few highlights of 2007 events include:
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Bonkers Fest was celebrated earlier
this month in England with Mad Pride events planned from
now until early October. |
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The Great Escape Bed Push. For the
third year, activists in England will symbolically
escape psychiatric institutions, dressed in pajamas and
'hot tail' it with a psychiatric bed to a place of
safety and celebration while raising awareness about the
over-use of forced treatments in mental health services
and the need for holistic choice based services. This
year the Great Escape goes international with bed pushes
scheduled in Canada and the US. |
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The first-ever Mad Pride parade in
Belgium. |
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A street march and other Mad Pride
events in Ghana. |
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Several events in Toronto and
Vancouver Canada. |
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A vigil in Albany, New York and a
rally in Buffalo, NY. |
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Mad Pride celebration at
MindFreedom's Creative Revolution conference. |
Much of the literature around mental health has focused on
the ‘victim’ status of mad people. “Mad Pride” on the other hand
celebrates madness largely from the perspectives of people
labelled with mental illness who refuse to be classed as victims.
It asserts the rights of ‘mad’ people without pleading for them,
in the belief that we should not push meekly for minor
concessions, but instead change the world into a fit place for
us to live in.
What is Mad Pride?
Mad Pride counteracts some of the discrimination and prejudice
often shown towards people who have experienced mental distress
and difference by promoting the economic, political, social, and
cultural integration of users/survivors of psychiatry into the
larger society. Mad Pride celebrates the creativity, strength
and resilience of the human spirit. Mad Pride empowers
psychiatric survivors and raises public consciousness through
various activities such as art, theatre, music, poetry, protests,
vigils and more.
http://mindfreedom.org
MADNESS: THE NEW ROCK 'N' ROLL...
MAD PRIDE is set to become the first great civil rights movement
of the 21st century. Sick of discrimination, marginalisation,
medication and being treated like shit, psychiatric patients are
preparing to rise from the ghettos and make the world a fit
place to live in.
Featuring 24 authors boasting about wild things they've done
when they've been losing it and sharing their accounts of
liberation through madness, this ground-breaking collection
celebrates madness in all its forms as a means to all-out social
revolution.
Shocking, uncompromising, subversive and very funny, this is a
book that no one in their right mind will read. It reveals that
madness, normally considered an unglamorous subject, is in fact
all about sex. drugs and rock 'n' roll.
Mad Pride.
Mad Pride events are opportunities to reclaim stigmatized
language and to celebrate Mad Culture. They bring passion, hope
and comical relief as both the content and process builds
communities.
Arana offers event co-ordination and management, with a
community development focus. He is also a highly talented
musician who performs throughout Australasia. For more
information on Mad Pride™ visit our website.
Valuing Mad-ness Language began in Australasia with the Consumer
Run Conference in Adelaide where "I'm just a little Mad" song
was written in 1998. Arana recorded that song and began
performing it throughout Australasia in 1999. Concerts have
already been successfully sponsored in Sydney, Melbourne,
Auckland, Rotorua, Lower Hutt and several events held in
Wellington.
An event held late in 2004 celebrated the life of long time
campaigner for human rights in New Zealand: Arnold Brooker. Key
performers included Shona Laing and Mahinarangi Tocker.
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