Madness Network News Volume 2: A Journal of the Psychiatric Survivor Movement

Volume #2 (six issues): Madness Network News (MNN) began as a San Francisco Bay area newsletter in 1972 and then evolved into a quarterly newspaper whose readership extended to a national as well as an international audience.  MNN became, in essence, the voice and networking center for the “Mental Patient Liberation Movement” in the United States, unapologetically advocating for the full human dignity, self-expression and civil rights of people diagnosed and labeled as mentally-ill. As a quarterly journal, Madness Network News published personal experiences, creative writings, art, political analysis, and factual reporting from the point of view of people who had been on the receiving end of psychiatric treatment and who now found themselves relegated to pariah status, living in marginalized and oppressive conditions and denied even the most basic aspects of personal choice, self-determination and human rights.  Known for its use of humor and sense of irony, MNN declared on its masthead that it covered “all the fits that’s news to print.”