MAD KIN: we keep us safe

My role in the creation of Mad Kin Zine was as a psych survivor and contributor, but also as an artist and editor. It is something I am incredibly proud to have been involved in, thanks to Tam approaching me with it’s initial concept. Tam Hart is a visual researcher and so much more, they have been the catalyst to so much creation and collaboration. I cannot write about the zine without crediting them for being at the very heart of it.

Mad Kin Zine is about the alternative kin we craft outside of psych spaces to keep our communities safe.

Its pages are woven with material by Mad comrades and allies, as well as archival research. It is a space to demand alternatives to psychiatry and policing, to exchange tools, to dream, and to mobilise.

Community is at the very core of Mad Kin, we wanted to feature grassroot movements, research, and alternatives to the present psychiatric system. The further we went with our research the more we found it was impossible to disentangle psychiatry from its links to policing, migration, disability rights, and gender. These are themes we have been able to highlight through different voices and contributors to the zine.

It feels incredibly important that in talking about Mad Kin, to talk about the joy that it contains alongside the distressing and painful themes behind it. A great example of this is in the way that Mad Pride brings together community, connecting people with shared experiences over a common cause.

Mad Pride is an annual festival rooted in the experiences of psychiatric survivors. After almost a decade of silence, the festival re-emerged in London in 2022, organised by the Campaign for Psychiatric Abolition (CPA). CPA is comprised of psych survivors who advocate against the violence of policing, prisons, and psychiatry, and the festival is rooted in abolitionist frameworks. Not only do their posters read ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards), but they also read APAB (All Psychs Are Bastards). — from Tam’s article ‘Spinning Hope from Fear’, Mad Kin Zine

We were able to feature over 15 different artists and poets as collaborators in the zine. This varied from illustrations depicting lived experience, to poets who were writing about psych abolition fifty years ago. There is something inherently important in interweaving research and articles with creative interpretations. The most wonderful takeaway for me was being able to access journals and magazines created by groups including Red Therapy, Humpty Dumpty, and Red Rat at MayDay Rooms Archives in Central London. Inside these journals was material that still rang true to present day campaigns, and something which they all utilised was the inclusion of creative work – from comic-style drawings depicting coercive care techniques to poets questioning the intentions of those in power over them.

One article that we chose to reprint in the zine, originally credited as being from The Sunday Times, December 1971, discusses governmental power to use mental illness to enact deportations. What we didn’t reprint was the artwork originally printed below this article – where a drawing of gun is ‘advertised’ as a cheap, effective, and ‘easily administered’ form of treatment. The dark and tongue in cheek humour of this work is biting and tells of the frustration that many patients felt and continue to feel at the hands of those trying to ‘cure’ them. Alongside this article we were able to print research findings from Lewisham Anti-Raids (2024) which looked at common tactics of control used by immigration enforcement and psychiatry.

At the root of Mad Pride is that we are not inherently the problem. Mad Kin was as much about shifting the narrative of shame around mental illness as it was about community care alternatives. I have found so much empowerment in the demanding of better treatment and alternatives to psychiatric incarceration, and to learn that the way I was treated does not take away from my humanity.

Like many people with lived experience of NHS mental health treatment, at times I still feel stuck between a rock and a hard place – I hold gratitude for the people that helped me, but I am also still healing from the harm caused by inadequate and uncompassionate care. I believe there is a spectrum between complete psych abolitionist frameworks and the desire to reform the current system. My hope is that Mad Kin creates space for all views to be heard on this topic, that it helps people feel less alone.

As I wrote in my introduction to the zine: “To know and love the Mad community is sadly to know loss and grief. I hold hope for the day that compassionate and community-led care will mean that future generations are not exposed to this level of loss, that they will have autonomy over their bodies and lives, that in times of crisis they will be able to find true safety that does not dehumanise or violate their rights.

We are not the first to take up this fight, and we will not be the last.

With love and solidarity,

Kat Hudson

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Click here to buy Mad Kin Zine.

We are also hosting a free-to-attend launch celebration in collaboration with Queercircle and support from NSUN – the event is now sold out but click here to join the waiting list.

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Kat Hudson (she/her) is an artist and writer based in London. She creates work through drawing, short prose and collections, as well as running ‘Tomorrow And…’ zine. Kat takes inspiration from her own lived experience of being a neurodivergent, disabled artist.