Program Overview

Mad Studies - MSc

This MSc in Mad Studies course will be particularly suitable if you are a graduate with lived experience of mental health issues engaged in the mad movement and/or mental health organisations within the third or public sectors. You may be a student, volunteer, activist or employee who wants to learn how mad studies theory and research can meaningfully contribute to your academic skills, activism and work.

The course will also be suitable for you if you are a professional who is looking to expand your knowledge, skills and practice through single CPD modules in mad studies.

The course will further develop critical thinking and generate mad studies knowledge and research. The course offers a unique dialogical space to share and expand your knowledge, skills, practice and actions with public sociologists, activists and the mad community. Graduates may be suitably qualified for a range of careers involving public engagement in the public or third sector organisations.

The course is available both full and part-time and with an option to study fully online.

Why QMU?

• A truly unique course: This is the first MSc in Mad Studies internationally. It has been designed in partnership with CAPS Independent Advocacy and academics at QMU from the Occupational Therapy and Public Sociology subject area. It has developed from the ongoing “Oor Mad History” project at CAPS and the Mad Studies short course at QMU titled “Mad Peoples' History and identity”.
• Funding opportunities: There are some funded places for people with lived experience of mental health issues.
• Flexible study options: Full-time, part-time, blended (part campus, part online), fully online.
• Learn from a range of experts: Your studies will be driven by regular engagement with activists and educators from the mad community and the close sharing of insights with your peers on the course. You’ll learn from academics and activists who have diverse community experience, and who are engaged with critical education, activism and innovative research.
• Person-centred focus: The course is part of QMU’s Person-centred Practice Framework. The Framework offers a person-centred approach to learning, fostered through four processes of engagement: experimentation, collaboration, critical discourse and evidence-informed perspectives. Specifically, the MSc course aims to ensure the centrality of mad studies to facilitate learning at master’s level.
• Industry links: There are opportunities to apply your own learning to your context. Teaching staff have a range of links with community, voluntary sector and campaign groups in civil society. This has included CAPS Independent Advocacy, Friends of the Earth, Glasgow Association for Mental Health, the Workers’ Educational Association, the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, and various faith-based, trade union and European social policy organisations. We also work in partnership with a range of activists within the mad movement nationally and internationally.

Become your best you: study at QMU