Call Me Crazy

Eventually, they all discovered the mad movement. In Canada, the movement is a small collection of individuals and groups struggling to end abuses in the mental health system and to create alternatives to psychiatry.

Author Irit Shimrat tells her own story of locked wards, forced drugging, escape, and the reinvention of her self through political organizing. Woven into this tale are the narratives of other activists in the mad movement. With audacity and laughter they confront the system the system that once stole their lives, and work to build a world where neither suffering nor oddness is seen as disease.

In a refreshing reversal of accepted "knowledge," Shimrat and her colleagues argue that the practices of labeling, drugging and electroshock "therapy" can and should give way to kindness, patience and common sense.

The book ends with suggestions for what can be done in lieu of "professional help" when people go mad, as well as a thorough bibliography of useful texts.

Shimrat turns a grim topic -- the terrible treatment to which mental patients are subjected -- into a collection of tales brimming with hope, inspiration and the value of stubbornness.