What do we mean by Mad* Students?

Mad* Students and associated initiatives might broadly encompass:
  • Students and student initiatives (formal or informal, past or present) that explicitly self-identify with or use the language of madness and/or neurodivergence (for further elaboration of these terms, see McWade, Milton & Beresford, 2015);
  • Student efforts to connect with Mad (psychiatric survivor, mental health disability, service user), harm reduction, and/or neurodiversity social movements, histories, analyses, communities, celebrations of pride;
  • Student activism to advance justice for Black, Indigenous, racialized, queer, and trans students and other marginalized student groups that informs campus conversations on student distress/mental health and proposed remedies;
  • Peer support, mutual aid, and self-help initiatives where students support each other through shared experiences of madness/distress/addiction/neurodivergence, psychiatry/psychology/mental health services and associated trauma/oppression; and
  • Other student-envisioned alternatives to dominant approaches that pathologize, medicalize, and/or individualize student experiences of madness, distress, substance use, and/or neurodivergence (e.g., systems advocacy, human rights complaints, policy development, self-advocacy).

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