Article ID: CBB475527847

MIND, Anti-Psychiatry, and the Case of the Mental Hygiene Movement’s ‘Discursive Transformation’ (2020)

unapi

During the 1970s the National Association for Mental Health (NAMH) re-labelled itself MIND, becoming a rights-based organisation, critiquing psychiatry and emphasising patients’ citizenship. Its transformation has been coloured by attributions of the influence of anti-psychiatry. This article argues that the relevance of anti-psychiatry has been over-simplified. It examines MIND’s history as part of the psychiatric strategy known as mental hygiene. This movement’s agenda can be understood as paradigmatic of much that anti-psychiatry renounced. However, building on the sociologist Nick Crossley’s description of the interactional nature of Social Movement Organisations in the psychiatric field, this article shows that a ‘discursive transformation’ can be deduced in core elements of mental hygienist thinking. This transformation of discourse clearly prefigured important elements of anti-psychiatry, and also fed into MIND’s rights approach. But it must be appreciated on its own terms. Its distinctiveness under MIND is shown in its application to people with learning disabilities.

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Authors & Contributors
Tompkins, Andrew S.
Emiliano Treré
Francis, John
Paul Williams
Brian Edgar
Jonathan M. Berman
Concepts
Political activists and activism
Protest movements
Social movements
Psychiatry
Mental disorders and diseases
Patients
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
19th century
Places
United States
France
Canada
West Germany
Nova Scotia
New York City (New York, U.S.)
Institutions
Friends of the Earth
Scottish Union of Mental Patients
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