Irit Shimrat

Irit Shimrat first went nuts and got locked up in 1978. From 1986 to 1990 she served as editor-in-chief of the national (Canadian) magazine Phoenix Rising: The Voice of the Psychiatrized – see psychiatricsurvivorarchives.com/phoenix.html. She subsequently co-founded and coordinated the Ontario Psychiatric Survivors’ Alliance. In the early 1990s she presented two multi-part antipsychiatry radio shows on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Ideas program. Her book Call Me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement was published in Vancouver in 1997.* Over the years, Irit has delivered keynote speeches at several conferences (Alternatives, NARPA, etc.). Her lifelong mission is to expose psychiatry’s use of fear, force and fraud and to promote better ways of helping people cope with extreme emotional states.

* Call Me Crazy is out of print but can be read at: http://historyofmadness.ca/media/homc/3_Articles_and_Monographs_on_Madness_History/Shimrat_Irit_Call_Me_Crazy_1997.pdf