Sisters Seeking Solidarity: Incarcerated Women’s Narratives on Mental Health, Coercion, and Resistance In No More Cages (1981–1983)

Background and Purpose:

Incarcerated women have historically experienced intersecting forms of marginalization within carceral and mental health systems, yet their perspectives are often absent from dominant historical and policy narratives. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, grassroots publications emerged as alternative spaces for advocacy and expression. This study examines how No More Cages, a newsletter produced by and for incarcerated women, functioned as a platform to document experiences with mental health treatment and to challenge institutional practices. The study asks: How did incarcerated women use this publication to describe psychiatric care, articulate systemic harms, and engage in resistance within the broader context of mental health activism?

Methods:

This study employs qualitative content analysis using an explanatory-interpretive approach. Archival issues of No More Cages published between 1981 and 1983 were identified in collaboration with a university-based social welfare history archive. A purposive sampling strategy was used to select issues containing content related to mental health, incarceration, and women’s experiences. Data included articles, testimonies, editorials, and commentaries. Texts were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns and meanings related to mental health treatment, institutional control, and advocacy. Analysis was informed by feminist theory and an intersectional framework, allowing for interpretation of how gender, race, and class shaped these experiences within carceral settings.

Results:

Three primary themes emerged. First, narratives highlighted the intersectional nature of oppression within carceral and psychiatric systems, particularly for women of color and low-income women, including exposure to gender-based violence, limited access to care, and systemic neglect. Second, psychiatric practices—including forced medication, electroconvulsive therapy, and coercive treatment—were described as mechanisms of social control that restricted autonomy and reinforced institutional power. Third, the newsletter itself functioned as a site of resistance, where incarcerated women used storytelling, testimony, and collective dialogue to challenge dominant narratives, advocate for reform, and build solidarity. These accounts documented both the harms of institutional practices and the strategies individuals used to resist them.

Conclusions and Implications:

Findings suggest that concerns now central to social work—such as coercion in mental health care, structural determinants of well-being, and ethical tensions in institutional settings—were clearly identified and contested by incarcerated women decades earlier. This study highlights the importance of centering historically marginalized voices in both research and policy discussions. Implications for social work include the need to critically examine ongoing coercive practices within carceral and mental health systems, to incorporate lived experience into policy and program design, and to recognize grassroots knowledge production as a valuable source of evidence. Future research should continue to explore historical and contemporary narratives to better understand the persistence of systemic harms and opportunities for transformative change.