Maddening Research Ethics Challenging Sanism and Biomedicalism in Institutional Ethics Discourses and Policies

Abstract

This article details the issues I encountered when seeking ethical approval for my doctoral research which engaged with people who self-harm. Drawing from mad, feminist, and Indigenous perspectives which problematize institutional ethics discourses and policies, I demonstrate the extent to which the problems I encountered with my institution’s research ethics board (REB) were more reflective of institutional risk management strategies than they were of a commitment to the ethical treatment of research participants. In this work, I offer detailed explanations of the disagreements that occurred between myself and the REB regarding the level of risk to participants, and biomedicalized strategies that I was urged to implement to mitigate and address these risks. I highlight the mobilization of sanist and biomedical discourses by the REB and argue that it is necessary to problematize the ways in which these discourses were activated to legitimize “ethical” decision-making via both the devaluation of psychiatric survivor knowledges and the active endangerment of psychiatrized people through an imposed reliance on carceral interventions to potential crises. I conclude this article with a discussion of how we might approach research ethics differently. Ultimately, I call for a “maddening” of research ethics that values and integrates psychiatric survivor knowledges and which attends to hierarchies of power and oppression as they are enforced through ethics policies.