Lucy Costa was born to Azorean parents who immigrated to Toronto, Canada in the early seventies. Currently, Lucy works as an advocate /activist in a large psychiatric institution promoting the rights of mental health service users, as well as encouraging critical analysis about service user inclusion in the mental health sector. She sits on a number of advisories and has been involved with the psychiatric survivor community for over fifteen years. Her publications include, “Mad Patients as Legal Intervenors in Court” in Mad Matters: A critical reader in Canadian Mad Studies (2013); “Recovering Our Stories: A Small Act of Resistance” (2012); and “(W)righting women: constructions of gender, sexuality and race in the psychiatric chart” (2012).
She is involved in numerous initiatives including recent projects exploring the experiences of violence by persons with psychiatric disabilities/consumers/survivors etc. Her research interests include mental health law, identity politics, service user led research as well as kink, fetish and ‘sexual deviance’ practices.
