“If you can move through life without psychiatric medication, that is a privilege. If you can enjoy and celebrate your emancipation from psychiatry’s ugly clutches, that is a privilege”

David Mordecai’s #MadCovidDiaries – January 2021 TW: Mania, Advanced Dementia I am tired (but cannot sleep). I am angry. I am frustrated. I am deeply disappointed. And I am grieving. Apologies in advance that this will be more disjointed than my past MadCovid Diaries entries. My father is at the end of a journey my

Mad Makers : Episode 3

Mail Art! Welcome back makers! This month we’re creating some mad mail art. It’s a bit of a change from the previous episodes because mail art can be interpreted in so many different ways – but that’s sort of why we think it suits Mad Makers! You can use almost anything you have around you,

Mad Covid Symposium (Mad meet-up) 28.10.2020

Winter is coming and with the looming second ‘wave’, Mad Covid are holding a mad meet up! We have 20 tickets left from 100, so if you’re interested in joining us, get your ticket quick here! We have assembled a survivor / lived experience panel to discuss the impact COVID19 has had on the mad

LAUNCHING: #MadConversations Podcast!

On the 15th of September we at Mad Covid launched our very own Podcast Mad Conversations. We’ve been working really hard on this and its taken us a while to get this far, but we got there in the end. Mad Conversations is a podcast about contemporary issues affecting the mad community. Each episode features

Secret Meetings: I’m on the margins staring at the academy’s ivory towers and there’s no door let alone window in sight.

TW: Swearing Bethan‘s #MadCovidDiaries 22.5.2020  Being left out is a big thing for me.  I’ve felt like an outsider many times in my life, starting quite early when I moved schools when I was 6 – from England to Wales.  I was kept down a year, was in a Welsh school when I couldn’t speak

Watching the @MadCovid and #MadCovidDiaries community grow has been an absolute privilege and life raft for me.

Bethan’s #MadCovidDiaries 15.5.2020  Being behind the scenes helping the cogs turn has been my kind of thing for a long while. I guess that’s what I’ve been doing with #MadCovidDiaries until now.  Hi world, I’m Bethan, the diary uploader, editor, picture selector, email replier etc etc!  Watching the @MadCovid and #MadCovidDiaries community grow has been

Squabbling and factions get in the way of progress!

Jo’s #MadCovidDiaries 4.5.2020 Jo’s seventh vlog is out now!  Jo talks about how p*ssed off she is about the factions and squabbling, particularly on twitter. She mentions a recent blog she published with others on @MadCovid in response to an article in the Guardian, which has had a lot of attention. On a positive note,

COVID-19 and the normalisation of mental illness

Ashley Curry, Jo Edge and Ruth Ann Harpur CW: references to suicide, mental illness and psychiatry Lucy Johnstone’s assertion in her Guardian letter (25 March 2020) of needing a ‘normalising approach’ to COVID-19 and that we are ‘all in this together’ risks minimising the enormous impact of the pandemic on mental health and mental illness

Routine mental health appointments are being cancelled in some parts of the UK

On the 25th of March, NHS England released guidance for mental health providers about how they should manage capacity and demand during the COVID pandemic.  It stated that… “COVID-19 and the national measures being announced to delay the spread of the pandemic will inevitably have significant impact on both demand for and capacity to deliver