Psychiatric Disability and Rhetoricity

Abstract

“Psychiatric Disability and Rhetoricity: Refiguring Rhetoric and Composition Studies in the 21^st Century” examines the ways in which mental health activists in the consumer/survivor/ex-patient (c/s/x) movement reframe medical models of mental illness by asserting their lived experience as valuable ontology. I use a mixed qualitative research methodology to analyze discussion board posts and vernacular videos as well as data from interviews I conducted with c/s/x activists. Seeking to correct the absence in rhetoric and composition of first-person perspectives from psychiatric disabled people, I demonstrate how disability studies provides a position from which the rhetorical agency of psychiatrically disabled people can be established.

In Chapter 1, “Naming Psychiatric Disability and Moving Beyond the Ethos Problem,” I contextualize the absence of psychiatric disabled perspectives in the history of rhetoric. By demonstrating that the logic of psychiatric-disability-as-an-ethos-problem functions as an enthymeme that warrants re-examination, I denaturalize discourses that assume psychiatrically disabled rhetors have ethos problems. An interchapter follows Chapter 1, and provides an overview of Chapters 2-5 and my mixed, emergent qualitative research methodology.

In my second chapter, “Interactivity and Rhetorical Ownership: The Icarus Project Discussion Board Posts,” I analyze the collaborative creation of a “mad vocabulary” taking place on an active discussion forum within a c/s/x community called the Icarus Project. Using grounded theory methods, I coded over 2,000 discussion board posts written over a span of ten years. Using this data, I demonstrate how individuals participating in the Icarus Project online draw on lived experience to claim “rhetorical ownership” over labels (Sontag 93). Chapter 3, “Vernacular Videos as Performances of Recovery: MindFreedom International’s I Got Better Project,” forges new ways of including psychiatrically disabled people in rhetoric and composition, and it does so by analyzing critical incidents within a collection of personal stories titled I Got Better that discuss recovery from psychiatric disabilities. I theorize stories from within the c/s/x movement function as performances of recovery, which contribute situated knowledge to the public discussion of mental health treatment and encourage identification with various audiences.

In Chapter 4, “Constructing a Counterpublic: C/s/x Participants and Leaders Reflect on Alternative Communities” I analyze interviews that I conducted with six c/s/x activists and/or allies. This chapter adds depth to my analyses in Chapters 2 and 3 of c/s/x activists’ online rhetorical practices by uncovering the benefits of online communities from users’ perspectives. Although online c/s/x communities are publicly accessible and talk back to dominant cultural understandings of mental illness, these interviewees cite personal connections with peers as the main benefit of participation in online communities. I characterize online c/s/x communities as a counterpublic that embraces disability as a defining attribute of the online environment.

My concluding chapter, “Creating Institutional Change by Moving Beyond the Ethos Problem: Pedagogical, Administrative, and Professional Implications,” synthesizes the findings from my research and imagines pedagogies, research projects, and administrative approaches that are designed by and for psychiatrically disabled people. I ultimately argue that first-person perspectives of psychiatrically disabled people are necessary for changing attitudes and professional practices.