Book Report - Reclaim Your Mind: A Manifesto
You can find this book for free from the Anarchist Library here
I came across this at a radical book fair and ended up sat down for 40 minutes just reading it. It talked about some stuff that I'd seen talked about before and that I'd been thinking about since. It also did this through a very naturalist lense which I fall for easily, so I was very engrossed.
Overview
Reclaim Your Mind was originally posted in 2012 on 325.nostate.net, an anarchist forum. Its author is anonymous, as is common in these spaces. As is also just as common, this book has been reprinted by Anarchist book groups wanting to spread its message since then, hence my finding it.
The book is subtitled "An Urgent Message for all those who have or are in danger of being labelled mentally ill". This is a good summary of the books deal. It main claims are that mental health issues are often not issues at all and only in our modern society do they become a problem; that medication is often a tool out society uses to make us fit its requirements and that there are much better ways to view mental health improvement than society tells us.
I feel like these are really interesting points, I could imagine them being really freeing for someone struggling with their mental health. Interestingly, I actually learnt the shadow of these points during my psychology A-Level where one critique of modern psychological medicines was that they could be viewed as "chemical lobotomies" or as a way to bury symptoms rather than allowing a person to naturally grow and develop.