"Everybody Can Recover": Fighting Psychiatric Subjectivation and Helping Others Along the Way: An Interview with Prateeksha Sharma

About this episode

Prateeksha Sharma discusses her journey from being labeled a patient to advocating for recovery and challenging psychiatric pessimism.

Psychosis and conditions like Schizophrenia have been tainted with pessimism right from the beginning. Doctors often don't know that recovery is possible and can convey this fatalism to their patients. Prateeksha Sharma's lived experience and research work challenges this pessimism. Prateeksha is a musician , a researcher, a composer, a counselor, and a writer. However, for the longest time, she was only thought of as a patient. She is a distinguished research fellow at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research in Hyderabad and the founder of Brightside Family Counseling Center. She received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder as a college student and has managed these achievements while navigating the horrors and the gifts of psychosis. Prateeksha's writings critically examine psychiatric systems and foreground survivor perspectives. She brings intellectual depth and personal clarity to what it means to move from being labeled a patient, to being recognized as a person. In this interview, we discuss psychiatric subjectivation, medical zombification, the silencing effects of diagnosis, and how lived experience completely reshapes the conversation about mental health. ***…

People in this episode

Host: Mad in America

Guest: Prateeksha Sharma

Topics covered

• psychosis
• schizophrenia
• mental health
• recovery
• psychiatric systems
• lived experience

Keywords

• psychosis
• schizophrenia
• bipolar disorder
• mental health recovery
• psychiatric subjectivation
• survivor perspectives
• medical zombification

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: National Academy of Legal Studies and Research, Brightside Family Counseling Center

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