Bonnie Burstow

Bonnie Judith Burstow (née Grower; March 6, 1945 – January 4, 2020) was a Canadian psychotherapist, professor, author, feminist and anti-psychiatry activist. A professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto, she became a prominent Canadian advocate of the abolition of psychiatry and was particularly critical of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and psychiatric drugs.

Burstow rejected the conventional medical model of mental illness and argued that many experiences classified as psychiatric disorders could instead be understood as responses to social, economic, political and interpersonal circumstances.

Her later academic work continued her criticism of psychiatric theory and practice. In Psychiatry and the Business of Madness: An Ethical and Epistemological Accounting (2015), Burstow argued for the abolition rather than reform of institutional psychiatry. She also edited or co-edited works dealing with resistance to psychiatry and wrote articles about trauma, psychiatric diagnosis and electroconvulsive therapy.

Burstow also wrote fiction. Her first novel, The House on Lippincott (2006), dealt with a Jewish family in Toronto and themes including the intergenerational effects of the Holocaust. Her second novel, The Other Mrs. Smith (2017), concerned a woman attempting to rebuild her life following electroconvulsive therapy.

Scholarships and controversy In 2016, Burstow established the Bonnie Burstow Scholarship in Antipsychiatry at the University of Toronto. Awarded to an OISE thesis student conducting research in anti-psychiatry, it was described as the first university scholarship devoted specifically to anti-psychiatry.

The scholarship prompted debate at the University of Toronto about academic freedom and the scientific status of anti-psychiatry research. University of Toronto psychiatry professor and historian Edward Shorter, a critic of the anti-psychiatry movement, argued that the university had made a mistake by permitting a scholarship that, in his view, legitimized the movement. He also disputed Burstow's rejection of psychiatric illness as a medical phenomenon.

Death Burstow died at Toronto General Hospital on January 4, 2020, aged 74.

Selected works Non-fiction

Fiction

The House on Lippincott (2006) The Other Mrs. Smith (2017)