Irit Shimrat proudly calls herself an escaped lunatic. She has been writing, publishing, speaking out and generally trying to promote human rights within and without psychiatry since 1986, when she became editor of the national magazine Phoenix Rising: The Voice of the Psychiatrized (1980-1990 – see psychiatricsurvivorarchives.com/phoenix.html). In the early 1990s Shimrat co-founded and co-ordinated the Ontario Psychiatric Survivors’ Alliance and presented two multipart shows – “Analyzing Psychiatry” and “By Reason of Insantiy – on CBC Radio’s Ideas program. In 1997 her book Call Me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement was published in Vancouver.

Photo Credit: Ronda E. Richardson