People with severe mental illness are among the most marginalized people in America, many of them in prison or otherwise institutionalized and forgotten, others living on the street. All of them deserve care and respect.
The Australian Disability Royal Commission was conducted in early 2019 in response to damning reports about the continuing violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation experienced by Australians with disability. There are five criteria that can potentially improve the likelihood of lived experience-led research informing public hearings and government inquiries.
Much of the existing research on disability and mental health is filtered through clinical, managerial, or policy-driven frameworks. These approaches prioritize outcomes, compliance, and recovery, often at the expense of understanding how harm is produced through everyday institutional practices.
Drawing on individual and everyday experience, even in the humanities and social sciences, remains an innovative approach – perhaps even more so in a field as specific as disability studies. Anne-Lyse Chabert makes a case for why we must give precedence above all else to the day-to-day experience of disabled individuals who reconstruct their relationship with the world in a different way.
Book review of An Autistic-ADHD Journey: Building a True Identity Post-Discovery by Rachel Vivienne Winder, reviewed by Dr. Nicholas Chown.
Individuals with severe mental illness (SMI) have been barred from “polite” society throughout history. Many will eventually find their way to prison, behind a different set of bars, where there is little incentive to treat. Have we simply traded one form of confinement for another, even more cruel one?
Nica Cornell describes her experience with Complex Post Traumatic Stress and how the accoutrements of dress can be comforting for mental illness and other disabilities.
Autism was never an accident of Tylenol or vaccines or industrial life. It is not a side effect to be managed, nor a pathology to be cured. Autism has been preserved through millennia of natural selection as our ongoing contribution to humanity’s survival.
This book “is one of the greatest testaments to human tenacity, courage, and strength that the publishing world has ever seen.” –Arvilla Fee
Autism and neurodivergent rights seem to be making an impact on our daily lives, with more emphasis on inclusion and recognition of differences. On the ground, things look very different. Autistic author Jorik Mol shares his assessment of current issues for neurodivergent communities in the Anglosphere, placing autistic rights in the context of renewed enthusiasm for eugenics in the 21st century.