The Summer 2026 Issue of the @asylummagazine.bsky.social is out Thank you for your contributions and your support 😊 Special thanks to Nicola Field and Max Pogrzeba for their help with the design & the overall look of the magazine 💜❤️
Hel Spandler
@hspandler.bsky.social
Editor, Asylum the radical mental health magazine. Prof at University of Lancashire. Ambivalent mental health politics. Mad Studies. Madzines. They/them. ❤️🐶 🌈
📚 Someone actually tried to ban a book because it promotes the “ideology” of… coming out Yes, apparently, being honest about who you are is now a dangerous political agenda Truly, we are living in the golden age of nonsense
Someone tried to ban a book because it supports the "ideology" of coming out. They got shut down. - LGBTQ Nation
"When people look at the world through a filter that says there is a gay agenda, they will find one."
lgbtqnation.com
We know that this conversion practices are being built into the pathways for trans youth via the Cass model, via mandatory psych evaluations before allowing any referral, via the incorporation of conversion therapists and training materials.
New Young People's Gender Clinic hires controversial Gender Exploratory Therapist
New educational lead at Great Ormond Street Hospital has previously trained psychiatrists to direct families to resources from conversion therapy groups
transsafety.network
Excellent programme - but media coverage, so far, is erasing the fact that this cruel 'treatment' was used to convert people's gender expression as well as their sexuality. Trans erasure 🙄 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
BBC One - Shock Treatment
How electric shock therapies were used by the NHS to try to change victims’ sexuality.
bbc.co.uk
LGB+T folk were subjected to cruel & harmful aversion therapy. Survivors demanding justice www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
LGBT survivors tell of 'barbaric' NHS electric shock therapy
More than 250 people were subjected to painful electric shocks in NHS hospitals, the BBC discovers.
bbc.co.uk
'The technocrats / are taking over the asylums...' I am very glad my poem 'A psychiatric hospital is not a factory' is in the new issue of Asylum. Big thanks to @hspandler.bsky.social & all at @asylummagazine.bsky.social for supporting my work & for campaigning so consistently over so many years ❤️❤️
Pleased to have a chapter about mental health activism in this exciting new book about Ambivalent Activism. Out now! bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/ambivalent-a... @brisunipress.bsky.social
Ambivalent Activism
Ambivalent Activism - Working with Contradiction, Hesitation and Doubt for Social Change; What if doubt, hesitation and ambivalence weren’t barriers to activism but powerful tools for change? This bol...
bristoluniversitypress.co.uk
"Ambivalence is pervasive in #Activism but has far too long been neglected by scholars. This important and original collection explores the potential of ambivalence in a wide range of contexts." - Silke Roth, University of Southampton
Ambivalent Activism
Ambivalent Activism - Working with Contradiction, Hesitation and Doubt for Social Change; What if doubt, hesitation and ambivalence weren’t barriers to activism but powerful tools for change? This…
buff.ly
Amazing issue of Asylum Magazine out just now. So much valuable insight within its pages. If you don't experience mental illness, reading Asylum is one way to approach understanding it a little more. The only mag I subscribe to anymore. @asylummagazine.bsky.social
www.thenorthernrose.com/p/the-northe... With a focus on the situation in Manchester, this podcast discusses how austerity in the UK has systematically decimated inpatient and community mental health care
The Northern Rose Podcast Ep.5: A National Scandal - Neglecting Our Most Vulnerable with Dr. John Mulligan
In this episode we're joined by Dr. John Mulligan, a Unite Representative and clinical psychologist to explain how over a decade of austerity has systematically abandoned society's most vulnerable.
thenorthernrose.com
"Machines have no empathy" (Sherry Turkle) But if people say ChatGPT is kinder than almost every clinician they have come across, this says a lot about the quality of therapeutic alliances nowadays Brilliant blog by Wren Avez www.psychiatryisdrivingmemad.co.uk/post/chatgpt...
The Silence feels Safer: Why I Trust ChatGPT More Than Mental Health Services
When ChatGPT becomes the mental health crisis care you wish you had all along
psychiatryisdrivingmemad.co.uk
Attacking the rights of a marginalised group isn’t a win for feminism. Demanding that women be defined by our biology isn't a win for feminism. The people driving this are not acting in the interests of women. They're taking us all backwards and ushering in the far right.
Important thread "For as long as critical psychiatry fails to engage with critics, it can & never will be different" So many survivors are saying this. Its time to be taken seriously.
The Mental Elves@thementalelves.bsky.social · last yr.For the record, my issue with critical psychiatry is this. Baseline, they think they are so different but actually are one of the same. 1. It stops seeing me. It assumes everything I say is to maintain the "sick role". From this position, anything I say is warped. 1/
A disabled art activist has sent a powerful message to Labour over its DWP benefit cuts Dolly Sen is sending Labour a clear, and harrowing message that its DWP cuts will lead to countless more deaths of disabled people. www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2025...
A disabled art activist has sent a powerful message to Labour over its DWP benefit cuts
A disabled art activist has sent a powerful message to Labour over its DWP benefit cuts from Canary on 21 March 2025
thecanary.co
Wherever we sit on the psychiatric culture wars, I think psy professionals & academics need to admit we've collectively failed to create a compelling, compassionate & unifying narrative about mental suffering (regardless of what damn words you use to describe it). Shame on us! 😟
How many times do we have to say it? *Austerity doesn’t work*. More cuts to public spending is economically illiterate and morally indefensible - people didn’t vote Labour to get more Tory austerity. FFS tax extreme wealth, don’t slash public services @patmillsuk.bsky.social
The Guardian@theguardian.com · last yr.Reeves to reveal biggest UK spending cuts since austerity in spring statement
Professionals using their platforms to legitimise government oppression, whether deliberately or not, are a part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
Richly well deserved 👏 If you haven't listened to this, I'd thoroughly recommened it
Alexis Quinn@aquinnunbroken.bsky.social · last yr.#patient11 based on my story of violence (especially sexual violence) in psychiatric 'warehouses' has been shortlisted for the @amnestyuk.bsky.social International Media Awards. Thanks Robert Mulhern (Sky) & Rebecca Thomas (The Independent) Listen to patient-11 here: news.sky.com/story/patien...
The good news is there is already a team of actual interdisciplinary experts putting together detailed advice around data collection on sex and gender, informed by medical science as well as feminist and trans perspectives. They are the MESSAGE project and you can learn more here:
Medical Science Sex & Gender Equity
The MESSAGE (Medical Science Sex and Gender Equity) project aims to improve the integration of sex and gender considerations across data collection, analysis and reporting in biomedical, health and ca...
messageproject.co.uk
Good to see a more nuanced approach to simplistic & dangerous "overdiagnosis" debates www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Culture warriors see not sick Britain, but a plague of 'overdiagnosis'. How convenient | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
Instead of dismissing huge swaths of the population, how about a nuanced conversation about neurodivergence and mental health, asks Guardian columnist Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
theguardian.com
US study on sustainable menstruation products cancelled cos it *mentioned* that trans folk menstruate too. www.advocate.com/news/usda-sc...
Trump officials kill federal research on safer period products over mention of transgender men
The study is meant to improve health during menstruation.
advocate.com
Co-authored a chapter on ambivalent mental health activism for this new book which will be out soon. Looks great. Looking forward to reading all the other chapters. bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/ambivalent-a...
Ambivalent Activism
Ambivalent Activism - Working with Contradiction, Hesitation and Doubt for Social Change; What if doubt, hesitation and ambivalence weren’t barriers to activism but powerful tools for change? This bol...
bristoluniversitypress.co.uk
Do join us tomorrow, if you want to know more about @StopOxevision or just hear some mad poetry come along. Register here us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
This is a truly terrifying take on #MAGA, but despairingly plausible ...
George Monbiot@georgemonbiot.bsky.social · last yr.Could it be that the destruction of the habitable planet is not just an accidental outcome of Trump's policies, but is in fact the policy? My column this week asks another question that most people, I think, would rather not face. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
"We mustn't let the narcissism of small differences prevent us from uniting to do what is required of us at this crucial historical juncture...Whether we will, as a society, choose solidarity or abandonment & whether we will meet suffering with care or with cruelty" newrepublic.com/article/1918...
RFK Jr.’s Mental Health Bait and Switch
The newly anointed HHS secretary is weaponizing legitimate anger at the failures of current psychiatric care to gut public services, abandon poor and disabled people, and expand the police state.
newrepublic.com
