In this inaugural episode, we hear from Dr. Marina Morrow and Efrat Gold on their important work in critical mental health and the possibilities for alternative approaches that extend beyond biomedical psychiatry. We discuss coercive and damaging practices within the psychiatric discipline, as we take a close look at the role of global research collaborations in efforts to critique and resist psychiatric power and advance mental health care and policy in line with human rights legislation. We likewise engage in discussions related to the discourse of eugenics post World War II and its impact on the development of the psychiatric profession, its establishment as an institution of social control, and its legitimization and ‘facticity’ as discipline within the broader jurisdiction of medicine.

Dr. Marina Morrow is a Professor at the School of Health Policy and Management in the Faculty of Health at York University. In her work, Marina uses critical mental health and intersectional approaches to better understand the social, political, and institutional processes through which health and mental health policies and practices are developed and how social and health inequities are sustained or attenuated for different populations. Marina strongly supports public scholarship and the work and activism of the Mad movement and Mad scholars. She is the lead editor on a recent book called Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health, available from the University of Toronto Press.

Efrat Gold is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, engaging in mad and disability studies. Through her writing and activism, she challenges dominant views of mental health and illness, moving towards contextualized and relational understandings of suffering and distress. Gold critiques psychiatry, focusing on those most vulnerable and marginalized by psychiatric power, discourse, and treatments. Her work is staunchly feminist, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive. Through explorations into norms, meaning-making, and constructions of legitimacy, Gold unsettles psychiatric hegemony by returning to the sites where psychiatric certainty has been produced.