A History of the MH Consumer Movement
I am going to try and blog a bit on the history of the mental health consumer movement and get feed back if possible from folks.
The history of the mental health consumer movement starts in the 1980s. Our movement definitely had ties to the earlier movement, known as the mental patients’ liberation movement, but was in many ways a new effort.
Many of us involved in those early days wanted to see an organizing effort that met the needs of people who were mostly users of the public mental health system. My own experience was that of a person who spent a good amount of time in both inpatient and outpatient services. I also had gotten a job at an outpatient clinic as the liaison to the local large public psychiatric hospital. The folks involved in the early day of organizing were interested in seeing if some of the self-help programs that were so helpful to people with other issues, such as alcoholism and drug abuse, would also be helpful to us. We were also concerned about protecting our rights as people caught up in a system of mental health services that many times did not pay much attention to our rights.
One big issue for many of the early efforts was the right to community care versus hospitalization. Community care meant not just medications but housing, employment, and help with our income, as so many of us were – and are – very poor.
more to come..........
The history of the mental health consumer movement starts in the 1980s. Our movement definitely had ties to the earlier movement, known as the mental patients’ liberation movement, but was in many ways a new effort.
Many of us involved in those early days wanted to see an organizing effort that met the needs of people who were mostly users of the public mental health system. My own experience was that of a person who spent a good amount of time in both inpatient and outpatient services. I also had gotten a job at an outpatient clinic as the liaison to the local large public psychiatric hospital. The folks involved in the early day of organizing were interested in seeing if some of the self-help programs that were so helpful to people with other issues, such as alcoholism and drug abuse, would also be helpful to us. We were also concerned about protecting our rights as people caught up in a system of mental health services that many times did not pay much attention to our rights.
One big issue for many of the early efforts was the right to community care versus hospitalization. Community care meant not just medications but housing, employment, and help with our income, as so many of us were – and are – very poor.
more to come..........
Labels: History
2 Comments:
The National Empowerment Center has some great articles under the Consumer Survivor History Project section at:
www.power2u.org/articles.html
Thank you fro bringing such nice posts. Your blog is always fascinating to read.
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