Oor Mad History: A Community History of the Lothian Mental Health Service Users Movement

Abstract

This is a book of many voices, all of them telling an important story – the history of ‘the Lothian mental health users movement’ from the vantage point of the ‘users’. The speakers and authors stand in an important tradition – one dedicated to emancipation. What makes this book so compelling is that survivors and allies involved have essentially turned traditional history on its head. In place of conventional history about psychiatry, which centres the psychiatrists, this was to be a history about survivors – in this case, the movement of the survivors, primarily told by survivors, and indeed, from the vantage point of survivors. It is part, moreover, of a larger project, and one which unites them with survivor groups throughout the world – the claiming of history. This claiming of voice is important for all disenfranchised communities, none more so than the mad, whose voices have traditionally been invalidated and silenced.