Searching for a Rose Garden is an incisive critique of all that is unhelpful about sanestream understandings of and responses to mental distress. Drawing on world-wide survivor activism and scholarship, it explores the toxicity of psychiatry and the co-option and corruption of survivor knowledge and practice by the mainstream. Chapters on survivor research and theory reveal the constant battle to establish and maintain a safe space for experiential knowledge within academia and beyond. Other chapters explore how survivor-developed projects and practices are cultivating a wealth of bright blooms in the most hostile of environments, providing an important vision for the future. Referencing Joanne Greenberg’s book I Never Promised you a Rose Garden, this collection demonstrates the challenge, determination and successes of the authors in working towards a paradigm shift in the understanding of madness and distress. This landmark text is essential reading in the emerging field of Mad Studies.