Fighting for Recovery: An Activists' History of Mental Health Reform

Phyllis Vine

2022-09 · Penguin Random House Audio · Skaito Sara Sheckells

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An essential history of the recovery movement for people with mental illness, and an inspiring account of how former patients and advocates challenged a flawed system and encouraged mental health activism

This definitive people’s history of the recovery movement spans the 1970s to the present day and proves to readers just how essential mental health activism is to every person in this country, whether you have a current psychiatric diagnosis or not.

In Fighting for Recovery, professor and mental health advocate Phyllis Vine tells the history of the former psychiatric patients, families, and courageous activists who formed a patients’ liberation movement that challenged medical authority and proved to the world that recovery from mental illness is possible.

Mental health discussions have become more common in everyday life, but there are still enormous numbers of people with psychiatric illness in jails and prisons or who are experiencing homelessness—proving there is still progress to be made.

This is a book for you

A friend or family member of someone with serious psychiatric diagnoses, to understand the history of mental health reform

A person struggling with their own diagnoses, to learn how other patients have advocated for themselves

An activist in the peer-services network: social workers, psychologists, and peer counselors, to advocate for change in the treatment of psychiatric patients at the institutional and individual levels

A policy maker, clinical psychologist, psychiatric resident, or scholar who wants to become familiar with the social histories of mental illness

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Phyllis Vine’s book, Families in Pain (Pantheon, 1982), was the first book to discuss family relationships of the mentally ill. As a tenured professor of American history at Sarah Lawrence College until 1989, she included courses in the History of Heath Care. In 2007 she founded MIWatch.org, an aggregate of information on mental illness, including archival materials, interviews with activists, researchers, professionals, and politicians, as well as edited guest editorials, produced podcasts and online videos, and wrote her own column. Vine was a founding member of NAMI-New York State and served on the Carter Center’s annual Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Symposium. Presently she is the President of the Board of Directors of Gould Farm, the oldest farm-based residential treatment program for people with mental illness in the US. She also the author of One Man’s Castle: Clarence Darrow in Defense of the American Dream (HarperCollins, 2004).