The term m/Mad has been reclaimed by people who have been pathologized, psychiatrized and defined as 'mentally ill'. Many m/Mad people push back on the language of mental illness because of how it des not take into account how systemic and symbolic violence by the state and psychiatric systems can lead to the categorization of poor individuals, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people of color. m/Madness as a term originally created in the activist sphere has given rise to Mad Studies.

m/Madness

Mental disability - in the extent that diagnosis has existed as a way to define mental disability - has always had diagnosis interplay with racism. Schalk notes that Jonathan Metzel's work "The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease" traces the socio-political circumstances that lead to the American Psychiatric Association changing the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia - a change that lead from schizophrenia being a condition considered a common and benign diagnosis predominantly given to white housewives to a violence mental disability assoicated with Black men in civil rights activism.

Diagnosis criteria for mental disabilities construct norms of abledmindness that are muilt on what white male middle class norms assume is appropriate behavior, approaptiate eotions to have, and approproate ways to address and express said emotions.

Interplay of Mental Disability Diagnosis and Racism 

Schalk uses Margaret Price's defintion of mental disability. Price defines mental disability as a category of disability that includes intellectual, cognitive and psychiatric disabilities, mental illness, m/Madness, and a/Autism, along with brain injury or psychiatric survivorship. This term was created to enable coalition.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

In this chapter Schalk addresses the Panthers' fight against psychiatric abuse and how this work overlapped and intersected with their work against the prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex, and other forms of state violence. Schalk argues the BPP protested psychiatric abuse through:
(1) Collaborating with existing networks of activist groups
(2) Publishing of pieces in the Black Panther
(3) participation in public interest lawsuits to sue Oakland area nursing homes.

BPP Critiques of Mental and Carceral Institutions

Schalk, Sami. Black Disability Politics, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478027003

Black Disability Politics

Schalk uses the term psychiatric abuse as an umbrella term for the violence practices within the psychiatric industrial complex. This includes but is not limited to forced pharmaceutical treatment, psychosurgery, use of electroshock therapy, prolonged restraint or confinement, coercion, unpaid labor, and denial of access to food or human contact. Psychiatric abuse is more likely to be targeted at marginalized peoples especially those with diagnosed or assumed mental disabilities.

Schalk's Definition of Psychiatric Abuse

Schalk's Definition of Mental Disability

1. "Principles of Radical Psychiatry" by Claude Steiner
2. Connections between Prison and Mental Institutions

How the Fight Against Psychiatric Abuse fit into Larger BPP Ideology

- Articles Putting Pressure on Vacaville
- David Hilliard Autobiography
- "Tearing Out Our Thoughts: Psychosurgery and the Black Community"
- California State Senate Hearings
- Stories Run Concurrently with 504 Sit-In

Black Panther Party Fight Against Return of Psychosurgery

- Centering of Disabled People of Color
- Critical Stance Towards Medical Professionals
- Not Distancing Blackness from Disability
- Critique of the Black Panther's Coverage

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