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Asylum to Action offers an alternative history of a libertarian therapeutic community at Paddington Day Hospital in West London in the 1970s. Helen Spandler recaptures the radical aspirations, as well as the conflicts, of the early therapeutic community movement, radical psychiatry and the patients' movement. The author's account of the formation of the Mental Patients' Union, the first politicised psychiatric survivors group in the UK, raises questions about the connections between the service user movement, therapeutic communities, critiques of psychiatry and psychoanalytic models of interve

Direct payments enable individuals to purchase their own care rather than have directly provided services. This article unpacks the complexities involved in the implementation of direct payments by addressing the need to reconcile the strong evidence of their benefits with emerging concerns about the wider consequences of their implementation. One practice that highlights the conflicts at the heart of direct payments is the employment of personal assistants. While directly employing personal assistants offers maximum benefit for recipients, it also produces the strongest concerns. Therefore, an understanding of the context of direct payments, specifically the practice of employing personal assistants, is used to explore these complexities in greater depth. The discussion concludes by arguing for a more critical awareness of the wider context in which direct payments are being developed in order to understand how this context can open up or limit opportunities for greater self-determination. It suggests a number of factors that need to be addressed to ensure that direct payments continue to be a progressive strategy. These include reconciling conflicting ideologies such as those advocating individual choice and/or collective provision; the need for political action to secure adequate resources; and the development of alternative strategies such as cooperatives to address the collective needs of direct payment recipients and workers.

This article explores the relationship between lesbian activists and the "psy professions" (especially psychology and psychiatry) in England from the 1960s to the 1980s. We draw on UK-based LGBTQIA+ archive sources and specifically magazines produced by, and for, lesbians. We use this material to identify three key strategies used within the lesbian movement to contest psycho-pathologisation during this 30-year period: from respectable collaborationist forms of activism during the 1960s; to more liberationist oppositional politics during the early 1970s; to radical feminist separatist activism in the 1980s. Whilst these strategies broadly map onto activist strategies deployed within the wider lesbian and gay movement during this time, this article explores how these politics manifested in particular ways, specifically in relation to the psy disciplines in the UK. We describe these strategies, illustrating them with examples of activism from the archives. We then use this history to problematise a linear, overly reductionist or binary history of liberation from psycho-pathologisation. Finally, we explore some complexities in the relationship between sexuality, activism and the psy professions.

This article explores the relationship between lesbian activists and the "psy professions" (especially psychology and psychiatry) in England from the 1960s to the 1980s. We draw on UK-based LGBTQIA+ archive sources and specifically magazines produced by, and for, lesbians. We use this material to identify three key strategies used within the lesbian movement to contest psycho-pathologisation during this 30-year period: from respectable collaborationist forms of activism during the 1960s; to more liberationist oppositional politics during the early 1970s; to radical feminist separatist activism in the 1980s. Whilst these strategies broadly map onto activist strategies deployed within the wider lesbian and gay movement during this time, this article explores how these politics manifested in particular ways, specifically in relation to the psy disciplines in the UK. We describe these strategies, illustrating them with examples of activism from the archives. We then use this history to problematise a linear, overly reductionist or binary history of liberation from psycho-pathologisation. Finally, we explore some complexities in the relationship between sexuality, activism and the psy professions.

This article explores the contribution of Liz Davies to the radical social work tradition in the UK. We describe two key aspects of Davies's activism: her early mental health activism, supporting foundational organisations like the Mental Patients Union; and her child protection activism, promoting children's rights and obtaining justice for victims and survivors of child abuse. We explore three critical debates specifically arising from her most sustained child protection work: debates about prevention and/or protection; the accusation of child abuse activism as moral panic; and the idea of the 'heroic' social work activist.

AbstractThe focus of this special issue is on how everyday or mundane materialities actively mediate health and care practices. This article extends this concern with the mundane to care itself and explores how specific materialities, such as shared spaces and everyday objects, not only mediate mundane care but enable it to happen. Our focus is on mundane help in the context of ill health, between people who are not immediate family, such as neighbours, acquaintances and others with whom we interact in our daily lives. Drawing on recent empirical studies of low‐level support in two different parts of theUK, we show how the materialities of care can mediate the affective risks associated with receiving such help. Specifically, we investigate how materialities help people to balance the expression of their vulnerability with a need to retain their dignity, a practice referred to as 'holding one's own'. In doing so, we argue that materialities are not just the conduits for care – what care passes through – or things that mediate care. We suggest instead that materialities are part of how relationships of mundane care are constituted and maintained.

Recent years have seen a resurgence in radical mental health politics and accompanying social movements. This article identifies two tendencies. The first, the Mad Studies tendency, indicts psychiatry as a branch of medicine and asserts a politics of identity based upon the experience of 'madness'. The second, the Psychopolitics tendency, defends the value of welfare and medicine and asserts a politics of alliance between service users and mental health workers. Using three recent texts, Mad matters (2013), Psychiatry disrupted (2014) and Madness, distress and the politics of disablement (2015), this article analyses the solidarities and tensions that exist within and between these tendencies.

This article offers a theoretical exploration of the growing trend in the United Kingdom to utilize football (soccer) practices and ideas in various health and welfare programs, primarily as a means of engaging men. Drawing on critical men's health studies, profeminist critiques of sport, and the notion of hegemonic masculinities, we survey the "field of play" to elucidate the perils and possibilities of using football in health and welfare programs. We theorize gender as a social relation, inseparable from the way that football operates as a contested and gendered space. We outline the way that football acts as a means not only to reassert, but also to reconfigure, dominant gender relationships and hegemonic masculinity. If health and welfare initiatives are to use football to address welfare issues, then the paradoxes of football, masculinity, and health need to be taken seriously when these initiatives are developed and theorized. We propose the idea of football welfare programs as potential "paradoxical spaces" where participants might be able to consciously reflect on the conflicts and possibilities of using football as a vehicle to improve welfare.