Transformation in the academy by coming back a Mad person

Abstract

I entered the academy as a conventional academic and decided to leave it after two years because it seemed to me what it did was harmful, discriminatory and regressive. I felt I had to work in more equal ways and returned to work in a community setting, but ended up without funding, having to live on benefits, experiencing severe distress and having to use mental health services. I made contact with a recently established radical UK survivors’ organization, and got involved in that and 13 years after leaving academia returned now a different person and now able to have a different kind of role in and relationship with academia as a survivor educator and researcher, in a setting committed to diversity and supportive of my experience. In this piece, I write about this overall experience; the inter-relations of my change and the change in academia and the insights both for survivors and the academy I have gained from all this. I write as a cis man, member of a minority ethnic group (a non-zionist jew) and survivor activist, recognizing that my experience is unremarkable, but hopefully offering useful insights for others in their engagements with the academy as both a situation for maddened people and a maddening place for people. My involvement with the academy has always been coupled with my active involvement in survivor organisations and action – the two always feeding into each other.