Lucy Costa was born to Azorean parents who immigrated to Toronto, Canada in the early seventies. She is deputy executive director of a non-profit service user rights-based organization in Toronto, Canada. She works as an advocate promoting the rights of mental health service users/survivors, 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 âfifteen years.
Her publications include, âMad Patients as Legal Intervenors in Courtâ in Mad Matters: A critical reader in Canadian Mad Studies (2013); âRecovering Our Stories: A Small Act of Resistanceâ (2012); and â(W)righting women: constructions of gender, sexuality and race in the psychiatric chartâ (2012).