The last decade has seen an explosion of zines as rebellious acts of self-publishing, and specifically perzines: handcrafted mini zines which focus on individual experience. Self-publishing in the form of pamphlets, manifestos or magazines (to name just a few forms) has always been central to social movements and I would argue that zines are the latest iteration of this impetus. What is new about zines, and particularly perzines, is their uniquely personal form, and the expression of experiences which remain marginal and outside of accepted norms – even within social movements.
DIY material, like small press magazines, pamphlets and manifestos, have often been referred to as ‘grey’ literature or ‘ephemera’ and zines, as their latest iteration, have been similarly categorised. However, more recently this kind of material has been taken more seriously. For example, many institutions and libraries are developing their own zine collections and academics are using them as part of their teaching and research. This has brought unique opportunities, as well as challenges – highlighting their significance, whilst also risking co-option and extractivism.
Here I want to explore mental health survivor zines or madzines and identify both their uniqueness and their links to earlier iterations of DIY publishing within the mental patients’ movement. It is important to note that individuals deemed ‘mad’, both inside and outside the Asylums, have always found creative ways to document their experiences and challenge their predicament. However, the organised collective patients’ movement is usually considered to have begun in the early 1970s, and it is from here I trace a history of madzines in the UK.
Like other new social movements that preceded it, the emerging patients’ movement was inspired by radical self-publishing expressing a rage at a system that oppressed individuals whilst reaching for collective responses and action. The feminist, LGBT+ and civil rights movements highlighted the impact of oppression on mental health and resisted the pathologisation of difference. For example, early LGBT+ literature challenged the psychiatrisation of different sexualities and genders as well as early ‘conversion’ practices like aversion therapy. For example,Arena Three (1963-1972), a small circulation, subscription-only magazine was sent out to individual lesbians helping to prevent isolation, build community and collective identity.
Those early social movements provided a template for the emergence of the independent patients’ movement. In the early 1970s patients and ex-patients established Mental Patients Unions throughout Scotland and England. Although the Trade Union Congress was not interested in supporting the proposal for a Patients’ Union, the idea of being a union resonated with the 1970’s political zeitgeist and helped to galvanise patients’ into organising for their collective interests. The rapid spread of these unions was driven by radical booklets, pamphlets and manifestos literature. Most notably ‘The Need for a Mental Patients Union’, which became known in the movement as the ‘fish pamphlet’ because of its striking cover image and quote from Karl Menninger about a fish struggling on a hook.
This image became a powerful leitmotif of the emerging patients’ movement drawing attention to the ways ‘madness’ might be intelligible if we could appreciate the conditions people are struggling with. This idea was later used by Mike Lawson, an early survivor activist, in describing and animating his experience of agoraphobia. The fish pamphlet could be described as one of the early ‘zines’ of the patient movement.
At that time, a key focus of activism was on organising in psychiatric hospitals to demand patients’ rights, resist detention, and provide information. In 1975, members of the Mental Patients Union (MPU), including Joan Martin (Hughes), who was a former chemist as well as an ex-patient, got together to create a pamphlet about the Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs. This was ground-breaking at the time as there was widespread denial about the effects of medication and it helped to validate patients’ experiences. The DIY spirit wasn’t just confined to self-publishing; it also extended to support and mutual aid. For example, the MPU and other grassroots radical organisations set up ‘crash pads’ for patients who had escaped from hospital or wanted to avoid hospitalisation. Given frustrations with top-down hierarchical forms of psychotherapy, like psychoanalysis, activists tried to establish more egalitarian types of psychotherapy like co-counselling and DIY ‘barefoot’ psychoanalysis like Red Therapy.
Up to this point, literature tended to focus on collective rights and demands. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, activists started to reclaim and render meaningful certain specific ‘mad’ experiences, like hearing voices and self-harm. Booklets like Self-Harm: Perspectives from Personal Experience brought together feminist and psychiatric survivor activists to locate self-harm within broader oppressive relationships and systems, and helped to create space for people who self-harm to demand recognition and rights for the first time.
This literature used a variety of styles and media to challenge mainstream psychiatric practice such as poems, stories and single-panel cartoons, as well as articles. However, they tended to be in standard size booklet or pamphlet form, created by small groups of activists with shared interests, experiences and agendas, and were designed to be circulated and shared for maximum impact.
At the turn of the Millenium survivors began to create and circulate material which is more likely to be associated with the term ‘zines’ today. This marked a broader resurgence in zines and DIY culture in general which marked the development of newer social movements like the neurodiversity, #MeToo, and trans movements. The move away from mass produced photocopied zines to limited run products is often linked to the Riot Grrl scene where crafting was reclaimed as part of a third-wave feminism. Alongside a lack of faith in digital media, we’ve seen a notable shift towards the creation of small, individually crafted mini zines about the makers personal experiences – often referred to as perzines.
The individually handcrafted nature of many perzines helps survivors to express very personal, often painful, individual experiences that, despite the wider politicisation of mental health, still remained marginalised, hidden and pathologised. For example, zines have enabled survivors to express experiences like dissociation and dissocative identify disorder which are still deeply misunderstood, both in society and in mental health services. This is significant as these misunderstandings tend to lead to the abuse and neglect of sufferers.
Handcrafted perzines are also a manifestation of what has been referred to as craftivism, a gentle, modest and more implicit form of activism. Contemporary madzines do not just use specific crafting techniques but also embody ‘craftiness’. Many mad activists such as Dolly Sen and Rachel Rowan-Olive often use satire, humour, and cunning in their zines to gently poke fun at mental health services. For example, Rin Flumberdank’s zine ‘Shitfulness’ which mocks the uncritical rolling out of mindfulness in services.
The turn to the personal is often criticised as an apolitical byproduct of the rise of therapy and self-help culture. Whilst this might be partly true, it is often the articulation of very personal experiences which not only enables critique, but also generates recognition, solidarity, and community. Whilst contemporary zines highlight very individual and personal experiences, they can be politicised through being creatively articulated and shared. Moreover, taken together, individual zines can amount to collectively produced experiential knowledge. Indeed, developing theory from personal experience, often referred to as autotheory, has long been considered a feminist praxis and is an increasingly important part of Mad praxis too.
More recently, we’ve seen the evolution of the contemporary mini-zine format to express more collectivised grievances and demands. In addition, individual perzines sit alongside collectively produced zines, where small groups of like-minded folk come together to collectively produce a zine in one voice, or which present multiple experiences which don’t always align, allowing for conflict, difference and diversity to be contained.
Recently, for example, activists have used zines to creatively challenge contemporary practices or polices, develop mutual support, and share alternative resources. Similar to its early manifestations in the 1970s, DIY publishing has also gone hand-in-hand with a corresponding resurgence of DIY support and therapy. In its contemporary manifestation, this has been influenced by a broader abolitionist politics. This has led to the creation of collectively produced zines about the possibility of independent grassroots mutual support. For example, the Mad Kin zine (“we keep us safe”), the Recovery in the Bin zine (supporting “the unrecovered”) and the Mad Menu zine (“food ideas for when you’re too mad to shop, cook or do any washing up”).
Whether the turn to zines will lead to more collective actions and demands is hard to determine. Some critics are sceptical of the often-hyperbolic claims made about the political efficiency of zines and zine culture. However, these seemingly small acts of resistance can have a cumulative effect, building momentum over time, and this can lead to more public organised acts often through the formation of counter-communities and cultures. Indeed, a key feature of zine culture is the spirit of community, exchange and emulation which creates and nourishes resistant subcultures even if they don’t have the larger impact they desire.
One thing is clear: zines are not ‘grey’, frivolous, or marginal, but sites of great significance in the history of communication, democratic participation, and social movements. At the very least, exploring both the content and style of DIY literature is a useful way to trace the long history of patient resistance. Taking zines seriously expands what counts as knowledge and helps to highlight the importance of experiential knowledge. It also helps to broaden the debate about what constitutes activism and what activism can do.
For further discussion of the mental patients’ movement see Hel Spandler’s History Workshop article on the radical mental health magazine, Asylum.