On May 11, in the midst of Mental Health Awareness Month, The New York Times ran a provocative article entitled ‘Mad Pride’ Fights a Stigma, which reported on the burgeoning movement to destigmatize mental illness through proud, if not downright aggressive, acceptance rather than shame-based avoidance. Taking their cue from other previously marginalized groups such as gay-rights activists, some advocates are going public with their mental health stories, using books and online blog and video posts. There are websites such as the Icarus Project and MindFreedom International, with the latter recently forming the International Association for Creative Maladjustment (based on an idea by Martin Luther King!) whose first president, appropriately enough, is Patch Adams, MD, the physician/clown famously portrayed by Robin Williams in the eponymous 1998 movie.
According to MindFreedom International, the Mad Pride movement “…celebrates the right to be nonviolently different, odd, crazy, nuts, strange, weird, or whatever […]
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