Class struggle and mental health: Live to fight another day

Excellent pamphlet! Thanks to those who worked for it and shared their difficult experiences.

Yes, this looks really helpful! Thanks so much to all involved in making this happen.

I read this last night and found lots to relate to and empathise with, as well as useful advice. Thanks to everyone who contributed to producing this- I'm sure it will be helpful to a lot of people.

Thanks for all the positive feedback, everyone!

Just to say that there's pretty serious talk of Freedom Press releasing this in hard copy - which is exciting news in itself! - so if you find any typos, feel free to let us know.

Thanks very much for finally posting this! One thing though, it would be really good to have each of the articles in this added as "child pages" to this (I will change the format of this entry so this can be done easily). As lots of them are very useful as stand-alone articles, and having the whole piece here in text format will make it much more readable, and will get lots more readers from Google searches etc

Thanks for the suggestion, Steven.

We are now actively seeking volunteers to help out with this....

Brilliant pamphlet in muy opinion. Big pat on the back to all involved

This look really good. Glad to see this kind of thing happening. I'll be trying to use this document when the Glasgow mental health group starts properly (which is hopefully very soon now). I particularly like Section 6. I see there is a list of helpful organisations, in any future individual text copies it might be a good idea to include the Hearing Voices Network and Counsellors for Social Change (http://www.counsellingforsocialchange.org.uk/).

Hearing Voices Network is what's up. Also for the U.S., Mad In America has this service directory....
http://www.madinamerica.com/service-directory/

And the zine is beautiful. I'd gladly help transcribe stuff to separate pages....

Arm, that would be great! Are you familiar with how to do that?

If not, this might help:

http://libcom.org/forums/feedback-content/adding-more-articles-iw-sub-section-12102014

but if not, shoot me a PM and I can try to walk you through it.

Thanks for putting this together! Can y'all upload an imposed PDF for easier printing and distribution?

Servius, glad you like it!

That's said, I'm not sure what an imposed pdf means, but I will forward the request to the layout/design team.

Great work in pulling this together.

By imposed I believe servius means instead of being

1
2 | 3
4 | 5
6 | 7
8 | 9
10 | 11
etc.

the page order would be like this

64 | 1
2 | 63
62 | 3
4 | 61
60 | 5
6 | 59
58 | 7
8 | 57
56 | 9
10 | 55
54 | 11
12 | 53
52 | 13
14 | 51
50 | 15
16 | 49
48 | 17
18 | 47
46 | 19
20 | 45
44 | 21
22 | 43
42 | 23
24 | 41
40 | 25
26 | 39
38 | 27
28 | 37
36 | 29
30 | 35
34 | 31
32 | 33

And then it can be printed (double sided A4), folded and bound easily to make it into a booklet.

Ah, well that all makes sense. If/when that comes through, I'll attach it to the OP.

Also, when/if this comes out through Freedom Press in hard copy, I'll make sure folks have the link!

Well done to everyone involved with this.

Here's a couple more links of related stuff that may be of interest - one article, two pages of support networks with some more resources etc. and a documentary on the impact of police violence at Genoa's anti-summit protest - discusses trauma of this experience and the setting up of Activist Trauma Support as a result.
I'm not sure if the Activist Trauma Support site is still maintained much but Counselling for Social Change is definitely still an active organisation that offers free or donation-based counselling.

'How do we keep going? Activist burnout and personal sustainability in social movements' by Laurence Cox:
http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/how_do_we_keep_going/

Activist Trauma Support:
https://www.activist-trauma.net/

Counselling for Social Change:
http://www.counsellingforsocialchange.org.uk/

The Black Block
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub5Cjmt-bvA

Ok, I see that counselling for social change group was already linked to above, so I guess I'm just seconding that...

Some of the other links I posted there mainly take the experience of 'activism' as the source for potential trauma, depression etc. Not to dismiss that AT ALL but what I like about what I've read so far in this pamphlet (haven't read it all yet) is it's starting as much from more generalisable everyday experiences - (from childhood, school, work, weekends, boredom, tedium and worse) and not just from within a given culture of political activism.

I'd recommend anyone who hasn't to have a look at the discussion of Plan C's 'Theses on Anxiety' here (and the original piece) - insofar as uptodate stuff on the politicisation of mental health goes:

http://www.libcom.org/blog/nervousness-politics-14042014

Big up to the pamphlet's writers also for putting a section there on tips and discussion topics for groups and organisations - should help make these contributions more practically useful.

I hope anyone doesn't mind, but I quickly converted the above pdf to a 1up pdf (1 page per page, rather than 2 in the original), which makes it easier to read on an e-reader (have to turn it sideways and zoom on a small one like a kindle) or tablet, and while I was at it I also converted it to the format requested above (64|1, 2|63...).

1up
Booklet

Obviously, this would be better done from the original, but as a quick hack they seem to look OK to me.

Omen! You are a G! I'll attach them to the OP later on today!

Omen - you are a superstar!

I'd like to add that I think the feedback had been amazing. I'd also like to shout out to all the people who contributed with their experiences. It's not easy talking about mental health struggles, even when they are done anonymously, so I'd like to thank everyone who did. It's often said that we need to talk more about mental health, that doesn't make it any less of a difficult thing to do. Also, the mental health workers who shared their knowledge, a big thank you to you too.

Where's the stuff on psychosis? And depression is an 'illness', what? The constant apologising for the medical model wtf? This is luke warm hand wringing. It's as if the mental health activist movement since the Mental Patient's Union in the early seventies never existed, let alone Mad Pride. I've known liberal, capitalist apologist, recovery evangelist mental health activists with more balls than this. Seriously. It's an affront!

Here's some tincy wincy history white washed out of this (and even if you think I'm an arse it's a great resource) http://studymore.org.uk/mpu.htm It's the most complete and respected archive of the mental health survivor movement on the web

Seriously, you think I'm having ago, but in the contemporary Western developed world, mental health activism still has the highest death rate among its comrades and not just from suicide, but from restraint, heart disease from the medication. Vast numbers of people are being imprisoned because the wards are too full. The life sentence of a diagnosis of a 'personality disorder' is nothing medical but a judgement of non-compliance. I would like to write a piece for you, but for now I just so happen to be struggling with my own mental health whilst caring for a disabled daughter under the UK coalition's propaganda attack on the vulnerable. So when I'm off the front line I'll put pen to paper. I really would like to.

Thank you Omen - the printed copy looks good!

Hi, best of luck with your current difficulties, and yes when you have some time it would be great to have something more substantial from you.

In terms of your issues with the text, above, its remit is pretty much specifically about depression, not schizophrenia, psychosis, "personality disorders" or any other type of mental ill-health.

thank you for making this

I have not read the pamphlet, and I am no longer work with people who needs help to resolve "mental problems", but can assure you that every one can get a lot of help from the (free) Do It Yourself book http://ilan.shalif.com/psychology/content1.htm

Perhaps you can try reading it though. It's not massively long. And then would be a good time to add something to it's comments field.

Just to say that we're still looking for people to post up the relevant sections to the searchable "child pages". So if anybody's looking to for something to do over the holidays....

I know I'm being lazy and I should do it myself, but feel free to PM me and I can walk folks through how to do it.

Just got word that Freedom will be coming out with a paper version of this for the upcoming bookfair!

Thanks to the folks at Freedom and the libcom poster who gave some seed money to get the project off the ground!

Some of you will already know, but after a chat with some of the people who put this together, Freedom's now printed a run of hardcopies of this in London, and have put it it up on our web shop:

http://freedompress.org.uk/store/products/class-struggle-and-mental-health/