About the Author

In 2006 David Webb completed the world’s first PhD on suicide by someone who has attempted suicide.  In it he argued that suicide is best understood as a crisis of the self rather than the prevailing view that it is the consequence of some pseudo-scientific ‘mental illness’.

Prior to his PhD (and the ‘four years of madness’ that motivated this research), David worked in the computer industry as a software developer and university lecturer.

He has been a board member of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (WNUSP) and worked as a research/policy office with the Australia Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO).

David regards human rights as the core issue in mental health and that justice will not be possible for users and survivors of psychiatry until the mental health industry moves to the social model of disability that is the basis of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability.

He has lived in New York, Delhi and London and has now ‘retired’ to Castlemaine, a old goldrush town outside of Melbourne .