When Psychiatrists Arrive in May, the Bay Area Will Show Some “MAD PRIDE”
When an estimated 19,000 participants in the American Psychiatric Association’s 2003 Annual Meeting pour into San Francsico’s Moscone Center this May, how will the Bay Area respond? Will residents lie back, as if on a huge collective couch? Not if an international network led by psychiatric survivors, mental health consumers and dissident mental health professionals can help it. These activists intend to meet the APA with peaceful but passionate “Mad Pride” by holding a counter-conference and a nonviolent Freedom Rally, and the public is invited.
The three organizations that issued the call for a Freedom Fair and Freedom Rally in May are Support Coalition International, California Network of Mental Health Clients, and Mental Health Consumer Concerns. Each of the groups is rooted in the three-decade old social change movement led by mental health consumers and psychiatric survivors. The term “psychiatric survivor” is most frequently used by people who personally experienced human rights violations in the mental health system.
Many members in all three of these sponsoring organizations currently choose to take prescribed psychiatric drugs, and some of their own personal doctors will be attending the Annual Meeting. So why would they call for a protest of the APA?
On February 2, thirty of these activists held an all-day planning meeting in a psychiatric survivor drop-in center, and talked about the principles behind the protest. It was a diverse group representing several different organizations. Around the table were plenty of psychologists and counselors who wanted to deeply change the current mental health system. But most were those who had been on the “sharp end of the needle.” Planners voted on three main themes: Freedom, Choice and Unity.
The first and overarching demand of the protesters is FREEDOM. Many people with psychiatric labels feel that their basic human rights are under severe attack locally, nationally and internationally. They say winning their self-determination, dignity and empowerment are necessary for long-term recovery.
In California, after a hard-fought four-year battle, the State Assembly last year passed a law allowing courts to order people living out in the community in their own homes to take psychiatric drugs against their will. Some of these powerful psychiatric drugs used in forced drugging have been linked to brain damage and even death.
Nationally, the Bush Administration has been turning to this forced psychiatric drugging approach as its own final solution for a troubled nation. President Bush appointed psychiatrist Sally Satel as one of his mental health advisers, part of a federal committee that oversees all federal mental health service grants. Dr. Satel is also part of an enormous corporate think tank, named American Enterprise Institute. She has mocked and demeaned human rights movements led by psychiatric survivors, calling it “inmates taking over the asylums.” Her solution: A massive increased in forced psychiatric drugging, nationally.
In her book, Politically Correct Medicine, Dr. Satel condemned psychiatric survivor organizing as a “tragedy.” She said, “I realize that the political fight may itself be a form of therapy for consumersurvivors: it gives them focus, identity and a social network. It funnels their energies and large reserves of anger. They are right to want a sense of purpose; we all need one. But the price of their ‘therapy’ must not be paid by the very people they purport to protect… Some of the more absurd manifestations of PC medicine can be reversed overnight. Federal and state governments should cease funding consumer-survivor groups, for example…”
At last year’s APA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, Boston Globe reporter Ellen Barry saw Satel in action. Barry reported, “As the primary conservative critic of mental-health care in the United States, [Satel] has attacked the burgeoning ‘consumer-survivor movement’ in tones reminiscent of Nurse Ratched… But if Satel expected to fend off blows from the psychiatrists assembled in Philadelphia, she was favorably surprised. Debating on the topic ‘Resolved: Political Correctness Has No Place in Medicine,’ Satel drew delighted applause when she slammed federal funding for patient advocacy ‘whose sole purpose is to undermine psychiatry.’”
A second theme for protest planners is CHOICE. They feel that when someone is overwhelmed or homeless or feeling suicidal or in crisis, they and their families are seldom offered many alternatives. Typically, the main option offered appears to be drugs, drugs, drugs, more drugs, and — if that doesn’t work — then electroshock.
The centerpiece of American Psychiatric Association Annual Meetings is row after row of cathedral-like exhibits by the psychiatric drug manufacturing industry. These exhibits represent a manufacturing industry that is, by several financial measures, the most profitable in existence.
At last year’s Annual Meeting, Boston Globe’s Ellen Barry observed that, “In psychiatry, as in all branches of medicine, this extravaganza of marketing has become so familiar as to be almost invisible. Nearly every specialist attending a conference can expect to receive a portion of the $13 billion to $15 billion that pharmaceutical companies are likely to spend on marketing this year.
With central nervous system medications now making up almost a quarter of sales, and newly defined illnesses such as social anxiety disorder calling for a new round of prescribing, psychiatrists have become a particular target.” As just one example of drug company pay-offs at last year’s Annual Meeting, Barry noted that, “Drug companies paid between $200,000 to $400,000 apiece — plus a $60,000 direct payment to the APA — for each of 50-plus ‘industry-supported symposia.’” Some observers feel the drug industry has taken over the APA. One such critic is psychiatrist
Loren Mosher. In a widely-publicized resignation letter from the APA, Dr. Mosher wrote, “At this point in history, in my view, psychiatry has been almost completely bought out by the drug companies.
The APA could not continue without the pharmaceutical company support of meetings, symposia, workshops, journal advertising, grand rounds luncheons, unrestricted educational grants, etc. etc.”
This influence by the psychiatric drug industry is globalizing. Both the World Health Organization and the World Bank have enormous programs to export western-style psychiatric models — primarily drugs — to developing nations.
Protesters said that instead of providing basic human needs, western style psychiatry tends to medicalize human suffering. They would like to see a wide range of options available for people who choose to have support services, including peer support, counseling, nutritional approaches, housing, jobs and more.
The third underlying theme for protest planners is UNITY. They see this protest as a good time to unite with other social change movements of disenfranchised people who are especially impacted by the mental health system such as disability, youth, poor, homeless, women, people of color, peace, gay / lesbian / bisexual / transgender, and many others.
Protesters noted that this year is the 30th anniversary of the APA “pretending” to remove homosexuality from its list of diagnostic labels. They said the APA “pretended,” because in fact gender preference is still indirectly listed, if it is associated with discomfort. Many people are still surprised to hear that at their Annual meeting members of the APA actually vote labels into and out of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), which can have the force of law.
On Saturday, May 17, 2003, an all-day counterconference to the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting is being planned. This Freedom Fair will have speakers, workshops and exhibits about challenging and changing the mental health system, and alternatives to the traditional mental health system. There will also be live music and a “town hall” type summit for people who are seeking change in the mental health system to talk to one another.
On Sunday, May 18, 2003, at 1 pm, there will be a nonviolent Freedom Rally in San Francisco in front of the Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, Moscone Center. Speakers will include Judi Chamberlin of Boston and Joseph Rogers from Philadelphia, both considered leaders of the psychiatric survivor and mental health consumers movement. The demands: “Human Rights, Choice, Self-Determination & Freedom in the Mental Health System!”
To get updates & final details… or if your organization is interested in co-sponsoring or endorsing… or to join M18 planning e-mail list contact: www.MindFreedom.org. Write: Support Coalition International; 454 Willamette; POB 11284; Eugene, OR 97440 USA. E-mail: office@mindfreedom.org. Phone: (541) 345-9106 toll free 1-877-MAD-PRIDE. Also, if you want to get off the couch and stand up for your rights, and the rights of millions of people impacted by the mental health system, watch these pages for more updates.
David