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We are facing a mental health crisis. We hear this all the time, but it sometimes seems like the

left has run out of ways to talk about it. As an editor, I certainly find it difficult to

commission on the subject. We often take things at face value and approach the topic in simplistic

ways. We might support liberal attempts at awareness raising that put the owners on individuals

to destigmatise some more palatable mental illnesses that exclude others and ignore the fact

that for many it help isn't available just through asking for it. Or we acknowledge that services

are underfunded. The weight is too long for diagnosis or treatment. But in a starved,

neoliberal context, where it feels our focus must be on opposing the dismantling of the NHS,

we're too scared to interrogate the services themselves and acknowledge that we're calling for

increased spending on what many see as a carceral system, closely linked to police and prisons.

We lean heavily on diagnoses that can be a lifeline in helping us to navigate a deeply

ableist world, without reflecting on what it means to speak of something we are or we have,

rather than something that is done to us. At best, we know how capitalism is making us sick,

but we rarely interrogate what mental health and madness actually are, in order to imagine a

world where things are radically different. The Misha Fraser Carol's new book, Mad World,

does just that. How do we take the often alienating and debilitating experiences of madness,

she asks, and turn them outwards to politicise them? Misha is a journalist and writer,

who's worked for Galdem in the independent. I'm Charlotte England from the Navara Articles

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