Launching the Psych Survivor Archive!

A stack of multicolored disability themed books.

I am incredibly excited to announce the launch of the Psych Survivor Archive and the first edition of the Psych Survivor Zine. This project was conceived in November 2022, during my fourth month institutionalized in a treatment facility. Every week brought a new form of dehumanization, and months spent in that facility surviving carceral violence taught me a lot about what it means to bear witness. Somewhere between the CBT worksheets and meal completion sticker charts shoved in a box underneath my bed are the memories that existed outside of the 30 minute checks. There may be no official documentation of it, but my recollections of the cruelty of staff alongside the growing collective frustration with our confinement reverberate louder in my mind than any medical record could ever hope to speak.

As patients, when we started having  more conversations about the damaging impact of institutionalization, we uncovered a common thread in the way the official narratives of the hospital only compounded the harm we were experiencing. We were told that what was happening to us was “treatment” and that we were too impacted by our illness to understand what was necessary for us, while we watched psychiatrists wield diagnosis as a weapon to label us as dangerous. 

Much to the dismay of the administrators, the community we built allowed us to create a counternarrative centered in our rage, solidarity, and love for each other. These people who weeks ago were strangers became incredibly dear to me: hours spent outside of group therapy allowed us to learn intimate details of each other's lives, laugh together as we cartwheeled down the hallway, and cherish the times we hugged out of sight of security cameras. I cannot speak enough about the importance of this community. The people I was institutionalized with supported me in ways I didn’t even know were possible, and showed me the power of no longer being the only one standing up to the psychiatrist. “Noncompliance” became a shared narrative that provided true possibilities for healing. 

For the Psych Survivor Archive project, I wanted to offer psych survivors a space to create our own record where we are believed and celebrated in all the complexities of our madness. Our community needs space to accompany each other into the depths of what it means to have survived, mourn everything we have lost, and affirm that our histories, our dreams, our wisdom, are lifegiving. For the first edition of this zine, I asked participants to transform their medical record, and was astounded with the incredible variety of creative responses generated by that prompt. Embracing Madness as an artistic method, this zine highlights some commonalities (we really like nonlinear storytelling, collage, and cutout techniques,) but also diverges in aspects such as subject matter and experience (some artists have been published many times before, while others are new at creating). I am so incredibly honored and grateful to present the artwork from the 13 contributors selected for this first edition, who amazed me with their thoughtful and unique approaches to this zine. 

I so often feel haunted by the trail of diagnoses, hospitalizations, and therapy notes that follow me beyond the four walls of the institution. Many days I find myself returning to a line from a journal entry written in the hospital: “It feels both painful and necessary to dream of abolition while locked up in this space where every day there is a new kind of violation.” For me, the process of creating this zine has reinvigorated my capacity for dreaming. Thank you, for accompanying us into this space of transformation, and I hope you find your own meaning and catharsis within these pages. 

About the Editor: 

Elliott (he/him) is a Mad artist who cares deeply about noncarceral suicide prevention, harm reduction, and abolitionist peer support. He has survived multiple instances of institutionalization and now works in his community to build anticarceral models of care. Elliott is white, intersex, disabled, and trans, and much of his art is connected to exploration of queerness, madness, and survival. When he’s not fighting for psych abolition, you can find him dancing and spending time with friends. Check out more of his writing + art at https://wewerecrazyhere.wordpress.com/.