Why Critical Mental Health Knowledge Is Essential for Ethical Practice: An Interview with Jan DeFehr
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Mad in America
4.7 • 212 Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jan N. DeFehr is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Winnipeg and an associate of The Taos Institute and a member of the Faculty for Palestine, Manitoba. She is also a member of the York University Mad Studies Hub. Before entering academia, she spent many years as a clinical social worker, working alongside people who were trying to make sense of their distress within, and often in spite of, the mental health system. Her teaching, research, and course development focus on building public access to critical analyses of that system, drawing on the work of clients and survivors of psychiatry, practitioners, and scholars.
Her new book, A Critical Mental Health Primer: Towards Informed Choice in Social Services, Education, and Healthcare(Canadian Scholars, 2025), offers a clear and accessible map of critical mental health scholarship. The book examines scientific critiques of diagnosis, the potential harms of psychiatric labels, the lack of transparency and procedural justice in services, anti-colonial critiques of mental health premises and practices, and the evidence on psychiatric drugs and the DSM. It also gathers non-pathologizing ways of helping that center relational, dialogical, anti-oppressive, and anti-colonial approaches, along with concrete tools for informed choice and everyday support outside of the dominant medical model.
In our conversation, we talk about how Jan came to adopt critical perspectives, why she sees access to critical mental health knowledge as a prerequisite for ethical practice, and what it looks like when organizations take informed choice seriously. We move through the key chapters of the book, explore its implications for social workers, educators, and health professionals, and look at how communities can build forms of care that do not depend on diagnosis or coercion.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice. |
| 0:14.8 | Jandaffair is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Winnipeg and an associate of the Tao Institute, |
| 0:22.6 | as well as a member of the Faculty for Palestine in Manitoba. |
| 0:25.6 | She's also a member of the York University Mad Studies Hub. |
| 0:29.6 | Before entering academia, she spent several years as a clinical social worker, |
| 0:33.6 | working alongside people who were trying to make sense of their distress within and often in spite of the mental health system. |
| 0:40.3 | Since then, her teaching, research, and course development have focused on building public access to critical analyses of that system, |
| 0:46.3 | drawing on the work of clients and survivors, as well as psychiatrists, practitioners, and scholars. |
| 0:51.3 | We're here today to discuss her new book. It's called A Critical |
| 0:55.0 | Mental Health Primer towards an informed choice in social services, education, and health |
| 0:59.5 | care. And it was released last year in 2025 by Canadian scholars. In our conversation, we're |
| 1:05.8 | going to talk about how Jan came to adopt a critical perspective on psychiatry and psychology and why she sees access |
| 1:13.7 | to this critical perspective as being a prerequisite for ethical practice. |
| 1:17.4 | We'll also discuss what it looks like when organizations take informed choice seriously, |
| 1:22.8 | and we'll talk through the book and look at some of the key chapters and explore its implications |
| 1:26.5 | for social workers, educators, and health professionals. We'll also take a look at some of the key chapters and explore its implications for social workers educators and health professionals we'll also take a look at |
| 1:30.7 | how communities can build forms of care that do not themselves depend on |
| 1:34.3 | diagnosis or coercion so Jan thank you so much for being here today and thanks |
| 1:38.6 | for coming to the Madden America podcast thank you so much for having me and |
| 1:43.0 | before we begin I just want to express my heartfelt thanks for Matt in America, |
| 1:48.9 | all the work that you have done to invite conversation around these important topics for so many years. |
| 1:56.1 | So many of us have taken courage and also content from your work and it matters to us. |
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