'Our encounters with Madness' is a collection of user, carer and survivor narratives. These are grouped under five themes: On Diagnosis, Stories of Experience, Experiencing the System, On Being a Carer, and Abuse and Survival. The book will be of great benefit to students of mental health, professionals, service users and carers, and to those interested in narrative enquiry and the pedagogy of suffering. Unlike most other books in this genre, the narratives are unmediated. Written by 'experts by experience', there are no professional biomedical of psychotherapeutic commentaries, which often serve to capture and tame, or sanitise, such stories of direct experience.