NSUN is carrying out a piece of research exploring solidarity and the Mad/survivor movement. We are delighted to be working with Gigi El-Halaby who will be the primary researcher for the project.
The project will run from December 2025–June 2026.
Research topic
The UK is on a political precipice. With faith waning in the so-called two party system and the far right on the rise, it is more important than ever for those concerned with justice to work together. This project explores what role user-led mental health work currently plays in progressive organising, and how this could change in the future.
In the face of chronic underfunding the user-led mental health movement has done and continues to do vital work. In the policy and campaigning arena, we have achieved important wins: the language of “lived experience” is now mainstream, harm in the psychiatric system is being exposed, and privatisation is being resisted. Still, our entire health service remains in crisis, social security for Disabled people is being cut, and our own language of “overdiagnosis” is being weaponised against us.
Despite the strength of its work, the user-led mental health movement remains largely disconnected from the broader disability justice movement. It can be difficult to meaningfully build cross-movement campaigning efforts alongside those working on other issues. In this disconnection, much is lost when it comes to building solidarity and sharing campaigning strategy/learnings.
About the researcher
Gigi El-Halaby (she/they) is a community facilitator, lived-experience researcher, writer and campaigner. She is a founding member of the anti-capitalist mental health campaign Mad Youth Organise and has worked with campaigns and communities across the Southwest of England. As a second-generation immigrant with Lebanese and Colombian roots, she is particularly interested in the migrant experience, gender, intergenerational trauma and its intersection with mental distress under the Western capitalist systems of oppression.
You can contact Gigi on gigi.el-halaby@nsun.org.uk and learn more about their work at @themetalfeminist on Instagram.