We've Been Too Patient

Voices from Radical Mental Health—Stories and Research Challenging the Biomedical Model

By: L. D. Green - editor, Kelechi Ubozoh - editor, Robert Whitaker - foreword

Narrated by: Dara Brown

25 unflinching stories and essays from the front lines of the radical mental health movement

Overmedication, police brutality, electroconvulsive therapy, involuntary hospitalization, traumas that lead to intense altered states and suicidal thoughts: these are the struggles of those labeled “mentally ill.” While much has been written about the systemic problems of our mental-health care system, this book gives voice to those with personal experience of psychiatric miscare often excluded from the discussion, like people of color and LGBTQ+ communities. It is dedicated to finding working alternatives to the “Mental Health Industrial Complex” and shifting the conversation from mental illness to mental health.

©2019 L. D. Green and Kelechi Ubozoh (P)2024 North Atlantic Books

Critic reviews

“Justice is not possible unless we make space for the stories of the margins. What more powerful elucidation can there be than to cast light on the margins of the mind? We've Been Too Patient shreds stigma and replaces it with dignity, autonomy, and power. This anthology heralds the necessity of our messy radical neurodivergent brains, so that we might call forth a world where we are never again forced to be ‘too patient.’”—Sonya Renee Taylor, activist and author of The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Nothing beats the advocacy and ideas of someone with lived experience in a subject and this book is proof. The insights and ideas might be radical to some, but anyone who has lived experience with mental illness and/or suicide can see this is actually a long-overdue and very reasonable plea for basic human dignity, compassion, support and sense of community. This is how we should treat people who are suffering. Whether you are a loved one, someone who suffers, a politician or a mental health worker, please read it.”—Paul Gilmartin, comedian and host of Mental Illness Happy Hour

“This book's message honors the diversity of each person’s mind and body by moving us outside the limited scope of the biomedical model. This message needs to be spread to counter the stigma, labeling, and pathologizing entrenched in the current mental health system. I share the vision of this book: a mental health system that is not based on forced treatment as its default, where people choose services and supports because they serve their needs as defined by them. This would be a system that does not reduce people to chemical imbalances but sees them holistically with myriad needs and influences. We've Been Too Patient moves us all toward this substantially different perspective of mental health.”—Sally Zinman, pioneer of the consumer movement and executive director of the California Association of Mental Health Peer Run Organizations