by Jeanine Grobe
Personal tales of abusive psychiatric incarceration The torture of people who have been labeled “mentally ill” is not a thing of the past. It is happening now. Beyond Bedlam is up close and personal writing by women who have survived psychiatric abuse on psychiatric wards and in mental hospitals in the US, Canada, England, and Mexico. According to editor Jeanine Grobe, “Society blindly regards psychiatry as safe medicine, a position that is very comfortable since people who reject it are likely to wind up with psychiatric labels themselves.” Challenging the safety of that position, Beyond Bedlam amplifies the voices of women who've been locked up on psychiatric wards, and the terrifying truths they have to reveal. In Beyond Bedlam, more than two dozen contemporary women write about their experiences as inmates at psychiatric institutions: how they were mistreated, how they escaped, how they live now, and what can be done to change the system that abused them. They survived the abuse, and here in their own words - in letters, personal narratives, and diary excerpts - they describe how they did it. Their voices rise above the clamor of psychiatric jargon, treatment, and therapy. Includes bibliography, index, and a list of organizations and other resources for psychiatric survivors. “Could be the book that awakens the world to the ugly reality of loony bins. . . . It’s a book we’d like to publish in our pages, month after month, telling not just of shipwrecks on the ragged shoals of psychiatry but of reconstructing meaningful lives in the aftermath.” —Mouth “An immensely powerful contribution to the contemporary psychiatric literature.” —Dendron “Twenty-five voices loud with anger. . . . They belong to artists, writers, musicians, academics, blacks, whites, Native Americans, Hispancis, Christians, Jews, the poor, the middle-class, lesbians, heterosexuals, survivors of incest. They belong to women who have lived through being committed to psychiatric institutions, often against their will, medicated, put in seclusion, put in physical restraints, given electroshock treatments, even raped by staff in the institutions. . . . The essays, memoirs, and poems collected here can bring home the pain of being mentally ill.” - The Women’s Review of Books “It is very encouraging to read about the powerful spirit of women who have been trampled by the system, yet survive to write so eloquently and pass on wisdom to help others.” -Counterpoint
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