Abstract

Keywords: Mental health, madness, online communities, health humanities, fiction, autobiography.
Citation: Baker C, The Madness and Literature Network website. J Participat Med. 2011 Feb 9; 3:e8.
Published: February 9, 2011.
Competing Interests: The author is a co-founder of the Madness and Literature Network.

The Madness and Literature Network (MLN) (www.madnessandliterature.org), funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, has been developed as part of the Health Humanities program at the University of Nottingham. Founded by Professor Paul Crawford, Charley Baker, and Professor Ron Carter of the University of Nottingham, Dr. Brian Brown of De Montfort University, and psychiatrist Dr. Maurice Lipsedge, the MLN aims to stimulate genuinely participatory and inclusive collaboration between researchers, academics, clinicians, service users, caregivers, and creative writers in order to develop an interdisciplinary, global dialogue about the issues raised by representations of madness in literature. With this network, we seek to form new methodologies, strengthen and maintain partnerships, and enable comprehensive critical dialogues across the fields of literature, linguistics, and mental health care. The term “madness” is employed deliberately to signal our alignment with literary and historical scholarship, and our commitment to a broad, inclusive approach, rather than a narrower clinical focus as may be implied by using “mental illness” or naming a specific disorder. The website, developed with the aim of internationalizing the MLN, contains a growing database of fiction and autobiography relating to all aspects of mental health, and a links section containing an array of Health Humanities related material. We welcome reviews from members of any fiction texts relating to issues of madness and mental health. These are fully peer reviewed and published on the site, with full attribution to the reviewer. With over 280 members, the site is used for education, research and health information purposes. Membership is free and inclusive.

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges funding support for MLN from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Nottingham.

Copyright: © 2011 Charley Baker. Published here under license by The Journal of Participatory Medicine. Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the Journal of Participatory Medicine. All journal content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. By virtue of their appearance in this open-access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.