Bedlam on the Streets

What happens when the mad are let out of the asylum and there is nowhere for them to go? This hard-hitting and controversial new book traces the terms on which the mad occupy the city’s streets, homeless shelters, shopping centres and fast food outlets. This social geography of madness is situated within the broader parameters of systems of social welfare and globalization, arguing that the ‘community mental health care’ system is actually a system of neglect. Bedlam on the Streets is a richly textured ethnography combining stark photographic images of people and places with an examination of city space and the voices of those that we label mad .