Call Me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement

As a young woman, Irit Shimrat went crazy and spent two years locked up in psych wards. She escaped to find support, respect, and political awareness in the Mad Movement and among queer people. This book is a personal record of her crazy episodes, her recovery, and her work as editor of the Canadian journal Phoenix Rising: The Voice of the Psychiatrized and as coordinator of the Ontario-based Psychiatric Survivors Alliance whose insistence on drug-free treatment and peer counseling has changed North American attitudes toward mental illness. Call Me Crazy also includes lengthy interviews with other leaders of this movement. Shimrat's critical analysis of society's condemnation of other-minded people and her suggestions for recreating systems of health, support, and community are inspired.