The Mad Students’ Society is recruiting.  The support group and advocacy group is composed of students who have experienced psychiatric problems.  And they want to get more people involved.

“It’s for people feeling alone, who think whatever is happening to them is their own individual problem.  They need to realize that it’s not just them,” said the group’s founder Lucy Costa. 

Costa is a fourth-year Individual studies student at York University.  She started the Mad Students’ Society last May, after being frustrated by the lack of understanding and accommodation in universities for people who have psychiatric issues.

“I took time off school to deal with my own madness issues and I felt isolated as a mad person going back to school,” she said.  “I wanted to meet other crazy people…people who would understand what I was going through.”

A major goal for the society is to ensure universities make adequate accommodations for students who are “psychiatric survivors.”  These accommodations range from providing support to facilitate learning, to the eliminating discriminatory language from classrooms.

Another problem, said Costa, is that although many university courses study mental health problems, none of them actually talk to the people with the problem.  “It’s like a white person talking about a black person’s experiences, or a straight person talking about a gay person’s experiences.”

The Mad Students’ Society currently has around 15 members who attend the monthly meetings.  With members from Ryerson, the University of Toronto, York, and George Brown College, the society hopes to expand in coming years.

First-year disability studies student Ruth Stackhouse is a member of the group and said society is to blame for not responding to a person with a mental health issue.

"We need to think about how many more peopel could have an education, if only there ws accommodation--if knowledge was made accessible for people who need special consideration," said Stackhouse.

Costa stressed that the Mad Society isn’t the place for students who are simply feeling stressed out.  It’s for people who have experienced more serious emotional crises, she said.