The list below contains a number of links. I will try to ensure that these links are live and don't just give you an error message by checking them at regular intervals. However, the WWW is a highly ephemeral place and sites and pages become unavailable for a variety of reasons, for example because people move ISPs, organisations break up, people don't renew their subscriptions or lose interest in the technology. Some of the people involved get arrested or sectioned and cannot maintain their pages. At the time of writing the UK Advocacy Network seems to be down. Which is a shame. Once it's back up again I'll let you know. Aha, a message reaches me that it's up again as www.u-kan.co.uk but there doesn't seem to be much on on it at present In the meantime Zyra has obliged with a temporary unofficial site www.zyra.org.uk/ukan.htm. Incidentally, this highlights the difficulty of keeping track of where everybody's sites get to.

Right, here goes: The presence of people and organisations on this list does not necessarily mean that I agree with them.

Antipsychiatry "The Antipsychiatry Coalition is a nonprofit volunteer group consisting of people who feel we have been harmed by psychiatry - and of our supporters.  We created this website to warn you of the harm routinely inflicted on those who receive psychiatric "treatment" and to promote the democratic ideal of liberty for all law-abiding people that has been abandoned in the U.S.A., Canada, and other supposedly democratic nations."

Bradford. In this ordinary northern city something extraordinary happened with mental health care in the community. No diagnoses and hardly any drugs. There are some articles off the Guardian website that explain this in more detail here

The British Psychological Society - yes I know I don't like them very much but there is an increasing amount of emancipated thinking going on especially on mental health issues. Here's a report they did recently - sadly written in a 'Janet & John' style but useful for all that.  

Antidepressantsfacts.com  is full of interesting stuff about antidepressants as the name suggests, mainly from the point of view of the unpleasant side effects they have been reported to induce and the damage that has been attributed to them. Unfortunately there seems to have been no updating of this site lately - most of the additions, new news stories and so on seem to stop a few years ago.

Peter Breggin's web site. This site is created and maintained by one of the most famous living 'antipsychiatrists' who has devoted much of his working life to documenting the iatrogenic effects of mental health interventions. OK, it's lurid and gushing and keeps plugging his books, but in the light of his work and his stature, I think we can forgive a few of these peccadilloes 

Cazie's Mental Health In the UK a site whose mission is, in the words of the creator: ". . . is to make a profound difference to everyone with mental health problems by informing and enlightening people with our creativity, talent and imagination." Lots of interesting things, including engaging choices of artwork to decorate the pages, personal experiences, poetry and more. Note how the creator describes her own experience with medications - it shows how many people's difficulties may be treated with a whole variety of drugs, some of which may partially work and many of which are accompanied by side effects which may feel worse than the problem they were intended to treat.

Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault says : 'Here you will find information about CAPA's mandate, events, and other relevant information about anti-psychiatry in Canada and worldwide'.

Critical Psychiatry Network exists to foreground critical voices in psychiatry - check their stuff on post psychiatry by my old acquaintance Pat Bracken and his colleague Phil Thomas. They've even been in the BMJ too.

ect.org: A site which seems very well organised and well informed, with a good deal of useful material about the negative effects of ECT. Includes some online texts of journal papers about ECT as well as a great many quotes and opinions. If you are interested in this topic there are a couple of useful papers in the brown library too. Seems to have recently undergone a re-vamp. Just as much fun as ever though!

Going Mental seems to be down at present "The major problem with going mental is not the illness itself; the illness is a minor problem compared to what the mental health system will do to you—those that are paid to look after you could be the death of you." You can't argue with that. Check out what this site has to say about ECT .

Hearing Voices Network is still quite a small site and its mission statement goes like this: "To ensure that people who have a voice hearing experience (auditory hallucinations) are not automatically assumed to be schizophrenic, but are enabled to explore their experiences with other voice hearers and are assisted in coming to terms with the phenomena as part of their life experience".

The Mental Health Foundation is a body which campaigns on policy issues, initiates and raises funds  Encouragingly, it foregrounds the needs of users 'we are all experts on our own mental health' 

Mental Magazine is devoted to 'campaigning for good health and social care'. The creator says: "I have seen an increasing deterioration in services for vulnerable people in hospitals and in the community, to the extent that services scarcely exist and what is provided often creates and exacerbates mental and physical problems". 

MIND - Probably the UK's largest and best known mental health charity Enough said. It has a strong record of including and incorporating the voices of service users.

Prozac Survivors - [Prozac] "was associated with more hospitalizations, deaths, or other serious adverse reactions reported to the FDA than any other drug in America." Business Week 3/16/98 p. 14. You get the general idea! Site seems to be missing at the moment but I'll keep looking.

Psychminded.co.uk is a site containing information on psychology, psychiatry and mental health matters. it seems to have good coverage of critical psychology and psychiatry issues - check out their section entitled 'critical minded'.

Rethink is the new term for what used to be the National Schizophrenia Fellowship. The approach is fairly mainstream, inasmuch as it seems to presuppose (rather quaintly) that helpful services are available from statutory agencies, but still useful and worth a visit. As well as schizophrenia the have branched out into other kinds of problems, such as anxiety disorders.

Say No to Psychiatry looks interesting, and seems to be part of a weirdly entitled organisation called 'Foundation for Truth in Reality' - how quaint - in this postmodern era they don't build epistemologies like that any more. I always thought that truths and realities were produced as social control devices by the ruling class. Objectivity is the subjectivity of a dominant elite. But that's a story for another day. 

http://www.stopshrinks.org "Psychiatry is a powerful and violent tool of social control in a deeply unjust and dysfunctional society."

Support Coalition: MindFreedom Online "Led by psychiatric survivors, and open to the public, Support Coalition membership welcomes anyone who supports its mission and goals. In fact, many dissident mental health workers, psychologists and some psychiatrists have even risked their jobs to speak out and join." A multi-national umbrella group with an anti-psychiatry agenda. Some of the contents of this site at the time of writing include interesting invective against the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) which has been funded by the drug industry and supports oppressive treatments and biological theories of mental disorder. 

Voices Forum is engagingly subtitled 'UK User Led Organisation Run by Mad People for Mad People'. Interesting, colourful and loads of personality. Useful and interesting user points of view too.

Zyra: lots of fascinating stuff here - I've only just scratched the surface. There are some mental health issues in here, somewhere. Good luck in finding them. Only kidding Zyra - it's probably easier to navigate than my site. I wish all websites were built this way. 

In addition, if you are interested in lay perceptions of mental health issues, stigma and suchlike you might wish to check the online version of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Royal Society of Medicine's efforts on this front - the changing minds programme's 'Every family in the land'.  Watch out though. Despite the apparent liberalism, most of these people really believe in the idea of mental illness. The velvet glove of understanding conceals the iron fist of new brutalist biological psychiatry.