Let’s say you are a human being. Let’s say that means you have gotten a little upset about the way things are going here recently on planet Earth, what with war, poverty, environmental devastation and all. You may have even wondered, “Just what the heck is it that is holding back a nonviolent revolution around here, anyway?”

Martin Luther King made an observation about madness many times in his speeches. He noted that psychologists had a favorite word back then for people with psychiatric labels: The Maladjusted. King would often say that the “Salvation of the world lies in the hands of the maladjusted.” Dr. King said we should never become adjusted to oppression.

For change to happen, someone somewhere somehow needs to be “maladjusted.”

When you total up how people spend their time, you find that the average American watches about 52 full days of television a year — that is 24-hour-days. That is a lot of tube time. What if those 52 full days of TV fail in “adjusting” a person? What is the back-up control system here?

What if you or a loved one go over that edge, that ever-shifting fine line between what we think of as normality and madness? What if you stop sleeping, or eating? What if you stop going to work? What if you have a vision, or — as commonly happens with people diagnosed schizophrenic — you think the TV really is personally speaking just to you? What happens if you become mentally, spiritually and emotionally overwhelmed? Or what happens if you become so infused with passion that you are considered disruptive, and you attract the attention of the authorities?

If your family — or you — needs special support or some kind of extra help in a time of crisis, unfortunately, a lot of commonsense, humane, empowering alternatives that work are just not made readily available.

That’s because you cannot put the values of community, empowerment, self-determination, and love into a bottle and sell them.

But you can put pills in a bottle, which is why for the last 50 years one of most profitable industries in the history of the planet has been psychiatric pharmaceutical corporations.

Which leads us to the subject of President George W. Bush. President Bush has a plan for you and other “maladjusted” citizens.

If you read STREET SHEET last month you may have already met psychiatrist Sally Satel, the president’s analyst. To refresh your memory, over the objections of thousands of grassroots activists working to change the mental health system, President Bush appointed Dr. Satel to be a key mental health advisor in his administration, serving on a council that must approve all grants for federal mental health services. Dr. Satel is very close to both Cheneys, especially through the huge corporate think tank they have all worked in, the American Enterprise Institute.

Dr. Satel proposes a simple solution for the “maladjusted” that she promotes in her book, her web site, and her many media appearances and speeches: forced psychiatric drugging. On March 3, Dr. Satel was in the news again, as outrageous as ever. The New York Times published an op-ed by Dr. Satel where she again spelled out her final solution for people diagnosed as “seriously mentally ill” in the USA: more forced psychiatric drugging. Dr. Satel praised the powerful psychiatric drugs that have been used in forced psychiatric drugging for 50 years now, the so-called “neuroleptics,” also known as “anti-psychotics.” You may recognize some of the brand names such as Thorazine, Haldol, Mellaril, Navane, Prolixin — and newer varieties such as Clozapine, Risperdal and Zyprexa.

Dr. Satel went overboard in describing how wonderful she feels these drugs are. She said the common perception of neuroleptics as mind-altering is untrue, neurolepics are actually “mind ordering.”

Dr. Satel even argued that the neuroleptics “allow the personality its full expression.”

Well hold on that, Dr. Satel. I’m one of the “maladjusted,” part of the guinea pig revolt of people who have been on the sharp end of the needle. I direct a non-profit campaign — MindFreedom.org — that unites 100 grassroots groups, many of them led by psychiatric survivors. When you’ve warn that “inmates are taking over the asylum,” we’re the ones who answer, “Let’s Roll!”

I’ve experienced forced drugging, and like many of our members I found it to be a profoundly intrusive and emotionally devastating chemical lobotomy.

Medical studies now substantiate that newer varieties of neuroleptics still carry significant risks, including changing the structure of the brain, death and a “discontinuation syndrome” that I prefer to call addiction.

While a number of our members choose to voluntarily take prescribed neuroleptics, it is rational to “just say no” to government forcing mind-control drugs into non-dangerous citizens.

Dr. Satel argued in the pages of The New York Times that “freedom to be delusional is no freedom at all.” However, I note that Dr. Satel and her boss, President Bush, are free to have a belief system that we, and many other human rights activists, consider to be delusional and dangerous.

Apparently, President Bush has a split personality.

Watch the news this Spring for a report from his “President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.” One of the reports they will issue is for “mental health consumer selfdetermination and empowerment.” Luckily, Sally Satel’s NY Times op-ed was published just two days before the report was endorsed, to display the real face of corporate mental health.

MALADJUSTED MAJORITY TO PROTEST

One of the main organizations in the world promoting this psychiatric drug industry is their front group, the American Psychiatric Association.

When the American Psychiatric Association holds its Annual Meeting in San Francisco this May, you and the rest of the “maladjusted majority” are invited to peacefully protest at a Freedom Forum & Festival and a Freedom Rally.

Here’s the basic information about these two totally free events:

The Freedom Forum & Festival is an Alternative Mental Health Conference, and will be held on Saturday, May 17, 2003 from noon to 7 pm at Everett Middle School, 450 Church St., San Francisco.

You are invited to participate in a town hall forum about changing the mental health system. There will be many different workshops about alternatives to mental health system and about how to win human rights, from national and local speakers. Plus there will be exhibits and live entertainment, including the band Land of the Blind.

Keynote speakers include:

• Robert Whitaker is the award winning journalist and author of Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill. Bob is a professional journalist in Massachusetts who has written a book exposing the history and failed current treatments of the mental health system.
• Celia Brown is an African-American psychiatric survivor from New York City who is President of Support Coalition International and Board Member of the National Association for Rights Protection & Advocacy (NARPA). Celia heads up the only accredited delegation of psychiatric survivors at the United Nations.
• Dr. Loren Mosher is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCSD and former Chief of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia. Dr. Mosher has devoted his life to championing alternatives to the mental health system. He is creator of The Soteria Project — a successful non-medical alternative to psychiatric hospitalization for persons in acute crisis.

The next day will be a peaceful FREEDOM RALLY on Sunday, May 18, 2003, starting at 1 pm at the Moscone Center, 747 Howard St., San Francisco, California. This will be directly in front of the opening of the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting.

Rally speakers will include psychiatric survivors Judi Chamberlin from Boston, Sally Zinman from Berkeley, Leah Harris from Washington, D.C., David Oaks from Oregon, and many more. Psychologist Bruce Levine from Ohio, the author of the book highly critical of psychiatry, Commonsense Rebellion, will also speak.

The demand is about freedom & choice & unity! Stop forced psychiatric drugging and the expansion of forced treatment laws. Stop Bush Administration attacks on our human and civil rights through the mental health system! Our freedom is under siege internationally, nationally, and in California. Stop the globalization of the drug companies! Create alternatives that value choice and self-determination.

We are promoting unity with other movements including disability, homeless, peace, youth, women, people of color, gay / lesbian / bisexual / transgender, and others. These events are also bridging together psychiatric survivors, dissident mental health professionals, and family members who are dissatisfied with the mental health system. Everyone is invited.

It’s time to move beyond being on the defensive. The late Justin Dart, hero of the disability movement and psychiatric survivors called for a nonviolent revolution of self-determination. We will make his vision real!

UNITE FOR FREEDOM!

For more information watch the web site www.MindFreedom.org for updates, or e-mail to office@mindfreedom.org.

Organizers are matching up those who need housing with those who have free housing, for out of town visitors. If you have a couch, spare bedroom, etc. in Bay Area — or are arriving from out of town and need housing — please contact julaville@earthlink.net. Julia will also help link up rides for carpooling.

David

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