science

Psychiatric survivors movement

Psychiatric survivors movement is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Psychiatric survivors movement rather than just read about it. In short: The psychiatric survivors movement (more broadly consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement) is a diverse association of individuals who either currently access mental health services (known as consumers or service users), or who have experienced interventions by psychiatry that were unhelpful, harmful, abusive, or illegal. The psychiatric survivors movement arose out of the civil rights movement of the late 1960s and ea…

Key takeaways

Psychiatric survivors movement belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Psychiatric survivors movement to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Psychiatric survivors movement from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The psychiatric survivors movement (more broadly consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement) is a diverse association of individuals who either currently access mental health services (known as consumers or service users), or who have experienced interventions by psychiatry that were unhelpful, harmful, abusive, or illegal. The psychiatric survivors movement arose out of the civil rights movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the personal histories of psychiatric abuse experienced by patients. The key text in the intellectual development of the survivor movement, at least in the US, was Judi Chamberlin's 1978 text On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System. Chamberlin was an ex-patient and co-founder of the Mental Patients' Liberation Front. Coalescing around the ex-patient newsletter Dendron, in late 1988, leaders from several of the main national and grassroots psychiatric survivor groups felt that an independent, human rights coalition focused on problems in the mental health system was needed. That year the Support Coalition International (SCI) was formed. SCI's first public action was to stage a counter-conference and protest in New York City, in May 1990, at the same time as (and directly outside of) the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting. In 2005, the SCI changed its name to MindFreedom International with David W. Oaks as its director. Common themes are "talking back to the power of psychiatry," rights protection and advocacy, self-determination, and building capacity for lived experience leadership. While activists in the movement may share a collective identity to some extent, views range along a continuum from conservative to radical in relation to psychiatric treatment and levels of resistance or patienthood.

History

Precursors The modern self-help and advocacy movement in the field of mental health services developed in the 1970s, but former psychiatric patients have been campaigning for centuries to change laws, treatments, services and public policies. "The most persistent critics of psychiatry have always been former mental hospital patients", although few were able to tell their stories publicly or to openly confront the psychiatric establishment, and those who did so were commonly considered so extreme in their charges that they could seldom gain credibility. In 1620 in England, patients of the notoriously harsh Bethlem Hospital banded together and sent a "Petition of the Poor Distracted People in the House of Bedlam (concerned with conditions for inmates)" to the House of Lords. A number of ex-patients published pamphlets against the system in the 18th century, such as Samuel Bruckshaw (1774), on the "iniquitous abuse of private madhouses", and William Belcher (1796) with his "Address to humanity, Containing a letter to Dr Munro, a receipt to make a lunatic, and a sketch of a true smiling hyena". Such reformist efforts were generally opposed by madhouse keepers and medics. In the late 18th century, moral treatment reforms developed which were originally based in part on the approach of French ex-patient turned hospital-superintendent Jean-Baptiste Pussin and his wife Margueritte. From 1848 in England, the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society campaigned for sweeping reforms to the asylum system and abuses of the moral treatment approach. In the United States, The Opal (1851–1860) was a ten volume Journal produced by patients of Utica State Lunatic Asylum in New York, which has been viewed in part as an early liberation movement. Beginning in 1868, Elizabeth Packard, founder of the Anti-Insane Asylum Society, published a series of books and pamphlets describing her experiences in the Illinois insane asylum to which her husband had her committed.

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Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Psychiatric survivors movement

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Psychiatric survivors movement claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Psychiatric survivors movement before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Psychiatric survivors movement ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Psychiatric survivors movement

In research: Psychiatric survivors movement appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Psychiatric survivors movement in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Psychiatric survivors movement is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Anti-psychiatry, Health movements, Human rights by issue, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Psychiatric survivors movement outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Psychiatric survivors movement in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Psychiatric survivors movement means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Psychiatric survivors movement out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Psychiatric survivors movement in simple terms?

Why does Psychiatric survivors movement matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Psychiatric survivors movement?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Psychiatric survivors movement.