This book inaugurates the field of Mad Studies in the Indian subcontinent investigating the barriers to recovery from the perspective of "patients" and caregivers.

Offering a radical critique of the mental health system, it questions why the phenomenon of recovery from serious mental health issues is not more widespread. Drawing from narratives of "patients", evidence from lived experiences around the globe and literature on recovery in psychiatry, mental health legislations and policies, it establishes the hitherto silenced voice of the "patient" as having testimonial viability, via an emancipatory scholarship. It highlights the repeated marginalization of "patients" and the identity prejudice they experience in day-to-day situations as a form of epistemic violence. The book examines the barriers to recovery through an interdisciplinary investigation, scrutinizing relationships between individuals and institutions at interpersonal, intersocial and global levels.

The book will be of interest to researchers and scholars of psychiatry, psychology, anthropology, sociology, disability studies, Mad Studies, law and policy, cultural studies, mental health, medicine as well as general readers.

Prateeksha Sharma did her Ph.D. at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), Hyderabad, Telangana (India). Her major areas of interest include mental health and music. She is the founder of Bright Side Family Counseling Centre, New Delhi and Faridabad, Haryana. As peer-psychotherapist, researcher and musicologist she works on interfaces between music, education, psychology and mental wellbeing among diverse demographics, via research, advocacy, services and training.

1. Realities and Representations 2. Who Speaks for Whom and Why it Matters 3. Among Peers: The Place Where One is 'Home' 4. Benign Arm of Psychiatry and Birth of the Psychiatric Subject 5. Making the Transient Permanent - How Law Disables 'Recovery' 6. from Subject to Agent: What it Takes to 'Recover' 7. Possible Futures and Removing Barriers