PsychOUT: A Conference for Organizing Resistance Against Psychiatry

PsychOUT: A Conference for Organizing Resistance Against Psychiatry

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
May 7, 2010 – May 8, 2010

Call for Papers

Over the last century, proponents of biological psychiatry have used the language of science to naturalize the medical model as an essential way of organizing and managing human experience. In contrast, collective resistance against the theories and interventions of psychiatry has intensified over recent years as psychiatric survivors, activists and community members are contesting this institution on various political fronts. Additionally, people belonging to marginalized groups who are at greater risk of psychiatrization, such as women, racialized people, queers, trans people, people with disabilities, homeless people and other people living in poverty, are resisting psychiatric oppression in different ways, as they/we recognize threats to their/our health, human rights and lives.

The purpose of this global conference is to provide a forum for psychiatric survivors, mad people, activists, scholars, students, radical professionals, and artists from around the world to come together and share experiences of organizing against psychiatry.

Dialogue about these experiences is intended:

o to foster networking and coalition building across social justice movements, disciplines and geographical locations;

o to clarify some key goals in the struggle against psychiatric oppression;

o to develop some longer-term strategies to help us achieve these goals; and

o to help us critically examine how we use specific tools for social change, such as the law, science, theory, media, art, and theatre.

This conference is focused on theory and practice that is directly related to developing strategic actions aimed at challenging the power of institutional psychiatry.

Submission of Papers, Workshops and Creative Presentations:

This global interdisciplinary, cross-movement conference welcomes academic paper, workshop, or creative presentation submissions that can include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

o Feminist organizing against psychiatry

o Anti-racist organizing against psychiatry

o Queer and trans resistance against psychiatry

o Resisting colonizing practices of psychiatry

o Resisting psychiatric interference in nations called "developing"

o Negotiating the complex space between critical disability and antipsychiatry perspectives

o Intersections between anti-poverty movements and antipsychiatry

o Networking and coalition building across disciplines and social movements

o Commonalities and tensions within the antipsychiatry, psychiatric survivor, and mad communities

o Building a global antipsychiatry movement

o Developing long-term strategies to meet antipsychiatry abolitionist goals

o Artistic and creative resistance

o Consciousness-raising initiatives

o Using the law to protect the rights of psychiatrized people

o Supporting youth and other vulnerable groups who are resisting psychiatrization

o Using science to undermine psychiatric theory and practice

o Media campaigns: Challenges, obstacles and breakthroughs

o Examining movement history to inform present-day strategy and action

o The struggle to ban electroshock: strategies, victories, mistakes and challenges

o Resisting the pharmaceutical industry

o Envisioning and creating alternatives

o Resisting the spread of psychiatric control in the community, such as community treatment sanctions

Paper abstracts, workshop or creative presentation descriptions should be between 200 and 300 words in length. Pre-formed panel proposals are also encouraged. The due date for submission is February 15, 2010. All submissions will be peer-reviewed. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, and the author would like their paper to be considered for publication in a book of conference proceedings, a full draft of the paper should be submitted by Monday, May 24, 2010.

For any further information, please contact psychout@utoronto.ca

You can submit a paper to this conference.
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