People with Psychiatric Histories Gather, Call for Human Rights,
Dignity in Mental Health, and Honesty in Medicine
On Saturday, May 5, 2012, more than 200 dedicated human rights activists, most of whom had firsthand experience with the mental health system, gathered inside Friends Center in Philadelphia to rally before marching to hold a peaceful protest at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Annual Meeting. At the APA meeting, a key topic was the controversial proposed new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – the DSM-5 – due to be published in May 2013. The activists represented a broad spectrum of opinion and included those who had had positive experiences with psychiatry as well as those whose psychiatric encounters had been traumatic. All were united in opposing the expansion of the DSM-5.
Susan Rogers of the National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse, who had helped organize the event, read a statement of support by the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery, which included the following:
“With each successive edition, the DSM classifies more and more varieties of human suffering and emotional distress as mental disorders. Psychiatric diagnosis does nothing to address the social, economic, and political causes and conditions that have led to our suffering and our being labeled. These include trauma, poverty, abuse, and isolation. If society focused more on the injustices that cause emotional distress, we could do much more to prevent the conditions that get labeled as ‘mental illness.’
We are here to promote recovery through respectful mutual support. We envision a new dawn in mental health care, where emotional distress is not met with the one-size-fits-all approach of psychiatry: a label and a pill. Instead, people experiencing emotional distress would have immediate access to peer support, from others who understand because of their own lived experience. Individuals would have the opportunity to move through emotional distress and regain a sense of hope and possibility. People should have access to an individualized array of natural community services and supports to help them address the circumstances that led to their distress. People should have access to healing and wellness, not just maintenance. People should be met with compassion so that they know they belong and that they are embraced by the community. Every human being deserves that.
We look forward to the day when there will be no more need for endless psychiatric classification – when love triumphs over labels and we all, collectively, care for one another. Together, we are bringing that day ever closer. “
To read the full statement from the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery, click here.
The next day, about 150 people came to hear a number of speakers including Jim Gottstein, founder and president of the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights; and Keris Myrick, president and CEO of Project Return Peer Support Network in Pasadena, California, speak at the Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany in Center City Philadelphia.
Protestors, speakers, and supporters at the May 5 event called for honesty in psychiatry. Robert Whitaker, award-winning investigative journalist and acclaimed author of Anatomy of an Epidemic and Mad in America made some powerful statements in his May 6 talk: “what is the responsibility of medical doctors? It is to be honest about what we know and don’t know…we need a form of dialogue, a form of presentation to the public based on what really is known about science, and not what helps sells drugs…we need honesty in medicine.”
Whitaker’s statement is in accordance with that made by Thomas Insel, psychiatrist and Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, in a May 4 article in the Philadelphia Enquirer. “There is no biochemical imbalance that we have ever been able to demonstrate,” he said. This contradicts a long-held scientific assertion, which was embraced by the general public - that mental health issues are caused by so-called chemical imbalances in the brain.
Organizers around the world held events in solidarity with the Philadelphia protest and gathering – in locations from Boston, MA to Flagstaff, AZ to Anchorage, AK; Toronto, Canada; Ireland and the UK.
To read the article written by Susan Rogers about 5/5, click here.
The coalition that created Occupy the APA continues to organize! To get involved, join five-five@lists.mindfreedom.org
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