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Brigit McWade (Lancaster University) Stop ‘Sucking off the Stigma’: Refusing Mental Health Anti-Stigma Campaigns

This paper examines the cultural and political economy of stigma and anti-stigma in mental health. Mental health anti-stigma campaigns present stigma as something produced by myths circulated within media-cultures; myths which can be dissipated through the dissemination of 'the facts' of mental illness and personal testimonies of those with lived experience. Rather than focus on the individual stories of 'the stigmatised' as Goffman’s work has inspired many to do, I will instead explore how this anti-stigma industry determine the limits of what might be said about mental health and by whom, in effect depoliticising distress and capitalising on the further disenfranchisement of Mad-identified people.

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