Lesson 14: Consumer Movement Readings: Video: “People Say I’m Crazy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdzHl65XPYc Campbell, J. (2005). The historical and philosophical development of peer-run support programs. In Clay, S., Schell, B., Corrigan, P. W., and R. O. Ralph (eds.) On Our Own Together: Peer Programs for People with Mental Illness. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt Press. 17-64. The President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (March 5, 2003). “Summary Report of the Subcommittee on Consumer Issues: Shifting to a Recovery-Based Continuum of Community Care.” http://www.power2u.org/downloads/consumers_issues_summary.pdf Introduction Consumers of mental health services have sought to find their voice for a long while. As early as 1873, Mrs. E.P.W. (Elizabeth) Packard published her book entitled, Modern Persecution, or Insane Asylums Unveiled. Forcibly committed to a psychiatric institution by her husband, Mrs. Packard was an early advocate for establishing rights for patients with mental disorders, founding the Anti-Insane Asylum Society in Illinois (Chamberlin, 1990). Other persons, however, were speaking out about the rights of patients with mental disorders, probably the most well-known of whom was Clifford Beers. As you may recall from Lesson 2, Beers founded the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, now called Mental Health America, in 1909. His important autobiography, A Mind That Found Itself, published in 1908 and still in print, chronicled his experiences with mental illness. He started the first outpatient mental health clinical in New Haven, Connecticut in 1913. While these historical occurrences displayed an early preface to activism for persons who experienced mental illness, the modern consumer movement did not start until almost a century later. Consumer/Survivor movement The modern consumer/survivor movement is an outgrowth of the reorganization of the mental health system from the 1950’s through the 1970’s. This reorganization resulted from “deinstitutionalization, new psychotropic drug treatments, the widening legal conceptions of patients’ rights, and the intellectual critiques associate with the antipsychiatry movement” (Tomes, 2006, p. 722). The first consumer/survivor group was founded sometime during the late 60’s or early 70’s, and was called the Oregon Insane Liberation Front, taking its cue from other liberation movements that were prevalent during that time. As we saw in Lesson 11, stigma has been a difficult problem for those with serious mental illness (SMI) to overcome. Green-Hennessy & Hennessy (2004) note that psychiatric symptoms are only some of the problems faced by persons with mental illness. Persons with mental illness also are feared and discriminated against by society, their rights are not valued and their opportunities limited, and “the mental health system . . . at times has undermined the very healing it attempts to promote” (Green-Hennessy & Hennessy (2004, p. 88). This ...