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DSM69: Dolly Sen's Manual of Psychiatric Disorder
Dolly Sen is a well known artist and activist working and exploring what it means to experience mental distress and the effercts of being labelled with a psychiatric diagnosis. Her art is witty, humorous, but also cutting and corusacting subtly getting under the skin of everyday psychiatric assumptions that leaves one feeling both wiser and nourished yet still in good humour. We are all the better for her art. DSM69 is a small booklet, a notice of intent, containing a selection of Dolly's art and several manifestos.
106 pages, Paperback
Published June 13, 2017
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May 12, 2019
This is a small pocket sized book, which, as it says is taking a subversive look at psychiatry through art and mischief. Dolly Sen has been in the mental health system since she was fourteen. Sen has an Indian father and a Scottish mother, adding the extra disadvantage of race to gender when it comes to navigating the mental health system. The title is a skit on The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). It is supposed to be the book on the classification of mental disorders, but as Sen says it:
“reads much more like an Argos catalogue, where you may or may not get what you ordered, handed to you in boxes by people who don’t know you, and are just waiting for the next person in line to be a bastard to. The only difference is there is no warranty when they break your soul. … The DSN is a diagnostic tool that aims to pathologies all things human.”
This is easily read in an hour or two and contains cartoons, poems and posters (the Adopt a Nutter poster is hilarious, as is the You know you’re normal when) as well as the written word. Sen’s satire is caustic and biting and pulls no punches.
Some of it is uncomfortable and close to the edge, but it makes the links between mental ill-health and poverty, it is a social rather than medical model of mental ill health. The poetry is also hard hitting:
“Being labelled, pathologised and medicated,
I cannot claim my mind for myself
I cannot claim my life for myself
So how can I even have dignity?
Medicine does not heal
But seals the scream
Is that dignity?
Dignity is never in the side effects.
Weight gain – my arse is getting bigger than my dreams.
Too tied to reach for the day, let alone the sun.
Try having sex without coming – dignity?
Love with a lot of going – dignity?
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, but
Try it with the largactyl shuffle.
Constipation does not feel like dignity
How can I sing the song of dignity drooling?”
There is a section on mad culture and some interesting discussion on the labelling of disabled minds. The section on recovery contains a very telling critique of the recovery movement, making the point that recovery is treated as point where a person is left to fend for themselves, “Is recovery about being well enough to be thrown into the world of sharks?” Sen reshapes the recovery star (a tool used in mental health services to encourage and measure recovery) to provide different destinations which include stigma, poverty, poor housing, racism, sexism, the loss of the welfare state, inequality, loss of rights and so on. Sen argues mental ill health is as much about society and the way people are treated as it is about medical models.
Sen is engaging and passionate and asks basic questions about the mental health system and the way it treats people.
“reads much more like an Argos catalogue, where you may or may not get what you ordered, handed to you in boxes by people who don’t know you, and are just waiting for the next person in line to be a bastard to. The only difference is there is no warranty when they break your soul. … The DSN is a diagnostic tool that aims to pathologies all things human.”
This is easily read in an hour or two and contains cartoons, poems and posters (the Adopt a Nutter poster is hilarious, as is the You know you’re normal when) as well as the written word. Sen’s satire is caustic and biting and pulls no punches.
Some of it is uncomfortable and close to the edge, but it makes the links between mental ill-health and poverty, it is a social rather than medical model of mental ill health. The poetry is also hard hitting:
“Being labelled, pathologised and medicated,
I cannot claim my mind for myself
I cannot claim my life for myself
So how can I even have dignity?
Medicine does not heal
But seals the scream
Is that dignity?
Dignity is never in the side effects.
Weight gain – my arse is getting bigger than my dreams.
Too tied to reach for the day, let alone the sun.
Try having sex without coming – dignity?
Love with a lot of going – dignity?
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, but
Try it with the largactyl shuffle.
Constipation does not feel like dignity
How can I sing the song of dignity drooling?”
There is a section on mad culture and some interesting discussion on the labelling of disabled minds. The section on recovery contains a very telling critique of the recovery movement, making the point that recovery is treated as point where a person is left to fend for themselves, “Is recovery about being well enough to be thrown into the world of sharks?” Sen reshapes the recovery star (a tool used in mental health services to encourage and measure recovery) to provide different destinations which include stigma, poverty, poor housing, racism, sexism, the loss of the welfare state, inequality, loss of rights and so on. Sen argues mental ill health is as much about society and the way people are treated as it is about medical models.
Sen is engaging and passionate and asks basic questions about the mental health system and the way it treats people.
Displaying 1 of 1 review