The psychiatric survivors movement (more broadly consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement) is a diverse association of individuals who either currently access mental health services (known as consumers or service users), or who consider themselves survivors of interventions by psychiatry, or who identify themselves as ex-patients of mental health services.

The movement typically campaigns for more choice and better services, and/or empowerment and user-led alternatives, and against prejudice in society more generally.

Common themes are "talking back to the power of psychiatry", rights protection and advocacy, and self-determination. While activists in the movement may share a collective identity to some extent, views range along a continuum from conservative to radical in relation to psychiatric treatment and levels of resistance or patienthood. This can in turn relate to an individual's experiences of the mental health system, particularly if subject to Involuntary commitment and/or forced medication or electroshock.

Human rights[link]

People diagnosed with mental disorders may "suffer from widespread systemic discrimination and are consistently denied the rights and services to which they are entitled". According to members of the Psychiatric Survivors movement, coerced and/or forced psychiatric interventions are a violation of a person's basic human rights; including the right to autonomy, the freedom to make one's own choices, the right to liberty and security of the person, the right to physical and mental integrity, freedom from torture, the right to health care on the basis of free and informed consent.

According to Heinz Katsching, the “survivor of psychiatry” concept implies that psychiatry should not exist at all. Or, individuals diagnosed with mental disorders are victims of some form of crime and / or abuse which another may fail to report to escape criminal prosecution.

Actual valid (or exaggerated emotional response, etc.) reactions to events induced by another may be deemed as characteristics of a psychological disorder when actual crime has been committed. Forms of direct hostility, outbursts and eruptions from an individual stemming from anothers culpable act(s) may be incorrectly diagnosed as a mental disorder induced by another's false report creating a socially unfit situation to which reclusion, error and low or no income situations procure a hostility which is declared or labelled as a psychological issue.

For example, non-delusional thoughts of grandeur, mania or rapid thought from what could be labelled as a bi-polar disorder may stem from a personal failing at achieving a desired response or result to a certain situation or outcome. Occasionally, mania or elation alleviate or assist with coping through actually depressing events/circumstances in an individual's life course of events. In addition, coming to accept terms with one's own mortality and the reality of death may not be an overarching appendage of a psychological analysis for Depression or other requiring a prescription or anti-depressant. Victims of psychological analysis after fleeing crime or abuse, particularly in monetary issues, trust funds, forgery, theft and children's issues regarding abduction or custody have graver concerns as to pertaining to law over needs for psychiatric treatment.

History [link]

Precursors [link]

The modern self-help and advocacy movement in the field of mental health services developed in the 1970s, but former psychiatric patients have been campaigning for centuries to change laws, treatments, services and public policies. "The most persistent critics of psychiatry have always been former mental hospital patients", although few were able to tell their stories publicly or to openly confront the psychiatric establishment, and those who did so were commonly considered so extreme in their charges that they could seldom gain credibility. In 1620 in England, patients of the notoriously harsh Bethlem Hospital banded together and sent a "Petition of the Poor Distracted People in the House of Bedlam (concerned with conditions for inmates)" to the House of Lords. A number of ex-patients published pamphlets against the system in the 18th century, such as Samuel Bruckshaw (1774), on the "iniquitous abuse of private madhouses", and William Belcher (1796) with his "Address to humanity, Containing a letter to Dr Munro, a receipt to make a lunatic, and a sketch of a true smiling hyena". Such reformist efforts were generally opposed by madhouse keepers and medics.

In the late 18th century, moral treatment reforms developed which were originally based in part on the approach of French ex-patient turned hospital-superintendent Jean-Baptiste Pussin and his wife Margueritte. From 1848 in England, the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society campaigned for sweeping reforms to the asylum system and abuses of the moral treatment approach. In the United States, The Opal (1851–1860) was a ten volume Journal produced by patients of Utica State Lunatic Asylum in New York, which has been viewed in part as an early liberation movement. Beginning in 1868, Elizabeth Packard, founder of the Anti-Insane Asylum Society, published a series of books and pamphlets describing her experiences in the Illinois insane asylum to which her husband had had her committed.

Early 20th century[link]

A few decades later, another former psychiatric patient, Clifford W. Beers, founded the National Committee on Mental Hygiene, which eventually became the National Mental Health Association. Beers sought to improve the plight of individuals receiving public psychiatric care, particularly those committed to state institutions. His book, ''A Mind that Found Itself'' (1908), described his experience with mental illness and the treatment he encountered in mental hospitals. Beers' work stimulated public interest in more responsible care and treatment. However, while Beers initially ****ed psychiatrists for tolerating mistreatment of patients, and envisioned more ex-patient involvement in the movement, he was influenced by Adolf Meyer and the psychiatric establishment, and toned down his hostility as he needed their support for reforms. His reliance on rich donors and his need for approval from experts led him to hand over to psychiatrists the organization he helped establish. In the UK, the National Society for Lunacy Law Reform was established in 1920 by angry ex-patients sick of their experiences and complaints being patronisingly discounted by the authorities who were using medical "window dressing" for essentially custodial and punitive practices. In 1922, ex-patient Rachel Grant-Smith added to calls for reform of the system of neglect and abuse she had suffered by publishing "The Experiences of an Asylum Patient".

We Are Not Alone (WANA) was founded by a group of patients at Rockland State Hospital in New York (now the Rockland Psychiatric Center) in the mid to late 1940s, and continued to meet as an ex-patient group. Their goal was to provide support and advice and help others make the difficult transition from hospital to community. By the early 1950s WANA dissolved after it was taken over by mental health professionals who transformed it into Fountain House, a psychosocial rehabilitation service for people leaving state mental institutions. The founders of WANA found themselves pushed aside by professionals with money and influence, who made them “members” of the new organization . During that period, people who received psychiatric treatment identified themselves as patients, and this term was generally unchallenged as a self-description until the 1970s. A patronizing attitude by some health care workers led to resentment among some current and former patients, which eventually found expression in more militant groups beginning in the early 1970s.

Originated by crusaders in periods of liberal social change, and appealing not so much to other sufferers as to elite groups with power, when the early reformer's energy or influence waned, mental patients were again mostly friendless and forgotten.

1950s to 1970s[link]

The 1950s saw the reduction in the use of lobotomy and shock therapy. These used to be associated with concerns and much opposition on grounds of basic morality, harmful effects, or misuse. Towards the 1960s, psychiatric medications came in to widespread use and also caused controversy relating to adverse effects and misuse. There were also associated moves away from large psychiatric institutions to community-based services (later to become a full-scale deinstitutionalization), which sometimes empowered service users, although community-based services were often deficient.

Coming to the fore in the 1960s, an anti-psychiatry movement challenged the fundamental claims and practices of mainstream psychiatry. The ex-patient movement of this time contributed to, and derived much from, antipsychiatry ideology, but has also been described as having its own agenda, described as humanistic socialism. For a time, the movement shared aims and practices with "radical therapists", who tended to be Marxist. However, the consumer/survivor/ex-patients gradually felt that the radical therapists did not necessarily share the same goals and were taking over, and they broke away from them in order to maintain independence.

By the 1970s, the women's movement, gay rights movement, and disability rights movements had emerged. It was in this context that former mental patients began to organize groups with the common goals of fighting for patients' rights and against forced treatment, stigma and discrimination, and often to promote peer-run services as an alternative to the traditional mental health system. Unlike professional mental health services, which were usually based on the medical model, peer-run services were based on the principle that individuals who have shared similar experiences can help themselves and each other through self-help and mutual support. Many of the individuals who organized these early groups identified themselves as psychiatric survivors. Their groups had names such as Insane Liberation Front and the Network Against Psychiatric Assault.

Dorothy Weiner and about 10 others, including Tom Wittick, established the Insane Liberation Front in the spring of 1970 in Portland, Oregon. Though it only lasted 6 months, it had a notable influence in the history of North American ex-patients groups. News that former inmates of mental institutions were organizing was carried to other parts of North America. Individuals such as Howard Geld, known as Howie the Harp for his harmonica playing, left Portland where he been involved in ILF to return to his native New York to help found the Mental Patients Liberation Project in 1971. During the early 1970s, groups spread to California, New York, and Boston, which were primarily antipsychiatry, opposed to forced treatment including forced drugging, shock treatment and involuntary committal. In 1972, the first organized group in Canada, the Mental Patients Association, started to publish In A Nutshell, while in the US the first edition of the first national publication by ex-mental patients, Madness Network News, was published in Oakland, continuing until 1986.

Some all-women groups developed such as Women Against Psychiatric Assault, begun in 1975 in San Francisco.

The major spokespeople of the movement have been described in generalities as largely white, middle-class and well-educated. It has been suggested that other activists were often more anarchistic and anti-capitalist, felt more cut-off from society and more like a minority with more in common with the poor, ethnic minorities, feminists, prisoners & gay rights than with the white middle classes. The leaders were sometimes considered to be merely reformist and, because of their "stratified position" within society, to be uncomprehending of the problems of the poor. The "radicals" saw no sense in seeking solutions within a capitalist system that creates mental problems. However, they were united in considering society and psychiatric domination to be the problem, rather than people designated mentally ill.

Some activists condemned psychiatry under any conditions, voluntary or involuntary, while others believed in the right of people to undergo psychiatric treatment on a voluntary basis. Voluntary psychotherapy, at the time mainly psychoanalysis, did not therefore come under the same severe attack as the somatic therapies. The ex-patients emphasized individual support from other patients; they espoused assertiveness, liberation, and equality; and they advocated user-controlled services as part of a totally voluntary continuum. However, although the movement espoused egalitarianism and opposed the concept of leadership, it is said to have developed a cadre of known, articulate, and literate men and women who did the writing, talking, organizing, and contacting. Very much the product of the rebellious, populist, anti-elitist mood of the 1960s, they strived above all for self-determination and self-reliance. In generally, the work of some psychiatrists, as well as the lack of criticism by the psychiatric establishment, was interpreted as an abandonment of a moral commitment to do no harm. There was anger and resentment toward a profession that had the authority to label them as mentally disabled and was perceived as infantilizing them and disregarding their wishes.

1980s and 1990s[link]

By the 1980s, individuals who considered themselves "consumers" of mental health services rather than passive "patients" had begun to organize self-help/advocacy groups and peer-run services. While sharing some of the goals of the earlier movement, consumer groups did not seek to abolish the traditional mental health system, which they believed was necessary. Instead, they wanted to reform it and have more choice. Consumer groups encouraged their members to learn as much as possible about the mental health system so that they could gain access to the best services and treatments available. In 1985, the National Mental Health Consumers' Association was formed in the United States.

A 1986 report on developments in the United States noted that "there are now three national organizations ... The ‘conservatives’ have created the National Mental Health Consumers' Association ... The ‘moderates’ have formed the National Alliance of Mental Patients ... The ‘radical’ group is called the Network to Abolish Psychiatry". Many, however, felt that they had survived the psychiatric system and its "treatments" and resented being called consumers. The National Association of Mental Patients in the United States became the National Association of Psychiatric Survivors. "Phoenix Rising: The Voice of the Psychiatrized" was published by ex-inmates (of psychiatric hospitals) in Toronto from 1980 to 1990, known across Canada for its antipsychiatry stance.

In late 1988, leaders from several of the main national and grassroots psychiatric survivor groups decided an independent coalition was needed, and Support Coalition International (SCI) was formed in 1988, later to become MindFreedom International. In addition, the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (WNUSP), was founded in 1991 as the World Federation of Psychiatric Users (WFPU), an international organisation of recipients of mental health services.

An emphasis on voluntary involvement in services is said to have presented problems to the movement since, especially in the wake of deinstitutionalization, community services were fragmented and many individuals in distressed states of mind were being put in prisons or re-institutionalized in community services, or became homeless, often distrusting and resisting any help.

Science journalist Robert Whitaker has concluded that patients rights groups have been speaking out against psychiatric abuses for decades - the torturous treatments, the loss of freedom and dignity, the misuse of seclusion and restraints, the neurological damage caused by drugs - but have been condemned and dismissed by the psychiatric establishment and others. Reading about the experiences they suffered through has been described as comparable to reading the stories of Holocaust survivors. Recipients of mental health services demanded control over their own treatment and sought to influence the mental health system and society's views.

The movement today[link]

In the United States, the number of mental health mutual support groups (MSG), self-help organizations (SHO) (run by and for mental health consumers and/or family members) and consumer-operated services (COS) was recently estimated to be 7,467. The movement may express a preference for the "survivor" label over the "consumer" label, with more than 60 percent of ex-patient groups reported to support anti-psychiatry beliefs and considering themselves to be "psychiatric survivors." There is some variation between the perspective on the consumer/survivor movement coming from psychiatry, anti-psychiatry or consumers/survivors themselves.

The most common terms in Germany are "Psychiatrie-Betroffene" (people afflicted by/confronted with psychiatry) and "Psychiatrie-Erfahrene" (people who have experienced psychiatry). Sometimes the terms are considered as synonymous but sometimes the former emphasizes the violence and negative aspects of psychiatry. The German national association of (ex-)users and survivors of psychiatry is called the Bundesverband Psychiatrie-Erfahrener (BPE).

There are many grassroots self-help groups of consumers/survivors, local and national, all over the world, which are an important cornerstone of empowerment. A considerable obstacle to realizing more consumer/survivor alternatives is lack of funding. Alternative consumer/survivor groups like the National Empowerment Center in the US which receive public funds but question orthodox psychiatric treatment, have often come under attack for receiving public funding and been subject to funding cuts.

As well as advocacy and reform campaigns, the development of self-help and user/survivor controlled services is a central issue. The Runaway-House in Berlin, Germany, is an example. Run by the Organisation for the Protection from Psychiatric Violence, it is an antipsychiatric crisis centre for homeless survivors of psychiatry where the residents can live for a limited amount of time and where half the staff members are survivors of psychiatry themselves. In Helsingborg, Sweden, the Hotel Magnus Stenbock is run by a user/survivor organization "RSMH" that gives users/survivors a possibility to live in their own apartments. It is financed by the Swedish government and run entirely by users. Voice of Soul is a user/survivor organization in Hungary. Creative Routes is a user/survivor organization in London, England, that among other support and advocacy activities puts on an annual "Bonkersfest".

WNUSP is a consultant organization for the United Nations. After a "long and difficult discussion", ENUSP and WNUSP (European and World Networks of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry) decided to employ the term (ex-)users and survivors of psychiatry in order to include the identities of the different groups and positions represented in these international NGOs. WNUSP contributed to the development of the UN's Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and produced a manual to help people use it called "Implementing the Disability Rights Treaty, for Users, Survivors of Psychiatry" and ENUSP is consulted by the European Union and World Health Organization.

In 2007 at a Conference held in Dresden on "Coercive Treatment in Psychiatry: A Comprehensive Review", the president and other leaders of the World Psychiatric Association met, following a formal request from the World Health Organization, with four representatives from leading consumer/survivor groups.

The National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery (formerly known as National Coalition for Mental Health Consumer/Survivor Organizations) campaigns in the United States to ensure that consumer/survivors have a major voice in the development and implementation of health care, mental health, and social policies at the state and national levels, empowering people to recover and lead a full life in the community.

The United States Massachusetts-based Freedom Center provides and promotes alternative and holistic approaches and takes a stand for greater choice and options in treatments and care. The center and the New York-based Icarus Project (which does not self-identify as a consumer/survivor organization but has participants that identify as such) have published a Harm Reduction Guide To Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs and were recently a featured charity in Forbes business magazine.

Mad pride events, organized by loosely connected groups in at least seven countries including Australia, South Africa, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Ghana, draw thousands of participants. For some, the objective is to continue the destigmatization of mental illness. Another wing rejects the need to treat mental afflictions with psychotropic drugs and seeks alternatives to the "care" of the medical establishment. Many members of the movement say they are publicly discussing their own struggles to help those with similar conditions and to inform the general public.

Survivor David Oakes, Director of MindFreedom, hosts a monthly radio show and the Freedom Center initiated a weekly FM radio show now syndicated on the Pacifica Network, Madness Radio , hosted by Freedom Center co-founder Will Hall.

A new International Coalition of National Consumer/User Organizations was launched in Canada in 2007, called Interrelate.

Impact[link]

Research into consumer/survivor initiatives (CSIs) suggests they can help with social support, empowerment, mental wellbeing, self-management and reduced service use, identity transformation and enhanced quality of life. However, studies have focused on the support and self-help aspects of CSIs, neglecting that many organizations locate the causes of members’ problems in political and social institutions and are involved in activities to address issues of social justice.

A recent series of studies in Canada compared individuals who participated in CSIs with those who did not. The two groups were comparable at baseline on a wide range of demographic variables, self-reported psychiatric diagnosis, service use, and outcome measures. After a year and a half, those who had participated in CSIs showed significant improvement in social support and quality of life (daily activities), less days of psychiatric hospitalization, and more were likely to have stayed in employment (paid or volunteer) and/or education. There was no significant difference on measures of community integration and personal empowerment, however. There were some limitations to the findings; although the active and nonactive groups did not differ significantly at baseline on measures of distress or hospitalization, the active group did have a higher mean score and there may have been a natural pattern of recovery over time for that group (regression to the mean). The authors noted that the apparent positive impacts of consumer-run organizations were achieved at a fraction of the cost of professional community programs.

Further qualitative studies indicated that CSIs can provide safe environments that are a positive, welcoming place to go; social arenas that provide opportunities to meet and talk with peers; an alternative worldview that provides opportunities for members to participate and contribute; and effective facilitators of community integration that provide opportunities to connect members to the community at large. System-level activism was perceived to result in changes in perceptions by the public and mental health professionals (about mental health or mental illness, the lived experience of consumer/survivors, the legitimacy of their opinions, and the perceived value of CSIs) and in concrete changes in service delivery practice, service planning, public policy, or funding allocations. The authors noted that the evidence indicated that the work benefits other consumers/survivors (present and future), other service providers, the general public, and communities. They also noted that there were various barriers to this, most notably lack of funding, and also that the range of views represented by the CSIs appeared less narrow and more nuanced and complex than previously, and that perhaps the consumer/survivor social movement is at a different place than it was 25 years ago.

A significant theme that has emerged from consumer/survivor work, as well as from some psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, has been a recovery model which seeks to overturn therapeutic pessimism and to support sufferers to forge their own personal journal towards the life they want to live; some argue however that it has been used as a cover to blame people for not recovering or to cut public services.

There has also been criticism of the movement. Organized psychiatry often views radical consumerist groups as extremist, as having little scientific foundation and no defined leadership, as "continually trying to restrict the work of psychiatrists and care for the seriously mentally ill", and as promoting disinformation on the use of involuntary commitment, electroconvulsive therapy, stimulants and antidepressants among children, and neuroleptics among adults. However, opponents consistently argue that psychiatry is territorial and profit-driven and stigmatizes and undermines the self-determination of patients and ex-patients The movement has also argued against social stigma or mentalism/saneism by wider society.

Well-positioned forces in the USA, led by figures such as psychiatrists E. Fuller Torrey and Sally Satel, and some leaders of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, have lobbied against the funding of consumer/survivor groups that promote antipsychiatry views or promote social and experiential recovery rather than a biomedical model, or who protest against outpatient commitment. Torrey has said the term "psychiatric survivor" used by ex-patients to describe themselves is just political correctness and has blamed them, along with civil rights lawyers, for the deaths of half a million people due to suicides and deaths on the street. His accusations have been described as inflammatory and completely unsubstantiated, however, and issues of self-determination and self-identity said to be more complex than that. Such claims have also been controverted by recent publications such as U.S.A. Today where a director of psychiatric services argues that the medical model and the way persons with mental illnesses are treated today cause people to die up to 25 years earlier on average.

See also[link]

Outline of the psychiatric survivors movement

References[link]

External links[link]

The Antipsychiatry Coalition Coalition of people who have been harmed by psychiatry and their supporters

MindFreedom International Coalition of psychiatric consumers, survivors, and ex-patients fighting for "human rights in mental health"

Guide on the History of the Consumer Movement from the National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse

Cohen, Oryx (2001) Psychiatric Survivor Oral Histories: Implications for Contemporary Mental Health Policy. Center for Public Policy and Administration, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Linda J Morrison. (2006) A Matter of Definition: Acknowledging Consumer/Survivor Experiences through Narrative ''Radical Psychology'' Volume Five

Shock Treatment - The Killing of Susan Kelly A poem by insulin/electro shock survivor Dorothy Dundas

McLean, A. (2003). Recovering Consumers and a Broken Mental Health System in the United States: Ongoing Challenges for Consumers/ Survivors and the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. Part I: Legitimization of the Consumer Movement and Obstacles to It. International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation. 8, 47-57

McLean, A. (2003) Recovering Consumers and a Broken Mental Health System in the United States: Ongoing Challenges for Consumers/ Survivors and the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. Part II: Impact of Managed Care and Continuing Challenges International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation. 8, 58-70.

American Iatrogenic Association "Promoting accountability for medical professiunals and institutions"

Transcript of interview with Peter Breggin, M.D., author of "Toxic Psychiatry," Talking Back To Prozac" and "Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex."

Psychiatry chapter from ''Heart Failure - Diary of a Third Year Medical Student'' by Michael Greger, M.D.

Category:History of mental health Category:Health movements Category:Identity politics Category:Mental health Category:Personal development Category:Human rights by issue

name	Judi Chamberlin
birth name	Judi Ross
birth place	Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.
death date	January 16, 2011
death place	Arlington, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
nationality	American
education	Midwood High School, Brooklyn College, Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y.C.
occupation	Director of Education National Empowerment CenterCo-chair WNUSP
years active	1971–2011
known for	Internationally known psychiatric survivor movement activist and author
notable works	''On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System'' (1978)''From Privileges to Rights'' (2000)
boards	MindFreedom International
spouse	Howard Cahn (divorced)Robert Chamberlin (divorced)Ted Chabasinski(1972–1985)
partner	Marty Federman (2006–2011)
children	1
awards	Distinguished Service Award of the President of the United States
website
footnotes	Ted Chabasinski and Judi Chamberlin divorced in 1985 so that he could marry his second wife. However, they separated as couple ''c.'' 1974. They remained close friends.

Judi Chamberlin (née Ross; October 30, 1944 – January 16, 2010) was an American activist, leader, organizer, public speaker and educator in the psychiatric survivors movement. Her political activism followed her involuntary confinement in a psychiatric facility in the 1960s. She was the author of ''On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System,'' which is a foundational text in the ''Mad Pride'' movement.

Early life[link]

Judi Chamberlin was born Judi Ross in Brooklyn in 1944. She was the only daughter of Harold and Shirley Jaffe Ross. Her father worked as an executive in the advertising industry while her mother was employed as a school administrator.

Psychiatric experience[link]

In 1966, at the age of twenty-one and recently married, Chamberlin suffered a miscarriage and, according to her own account, became severely depressed. Following psychiatric advice, she voluntarily signed herself into a psychiatric facility as an in-patient. However, after several voluntary admissions she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward in a New York state hospital for a period of five months.

As an involuntary patient she witnessed and experienced a range of abuses. Seclusion rooms and refractory wards were used for resistive patients, even when their forms of resistance were non-violent. The psychiatric medication she was given made her feel tired and affected her memory. As an involuntary patient she was unable to leave the facility and became, she said, "a prisoner of the system". The derogation of her civil liberties that she experienced as an inmate provided the impetus for her activism as a member of the psychiatric survivor movemment.

Activism[link]

Following her discharge, Chamberlin became involved in the nascent psychiatric patients' rights movement. In 1971 she joined the Boston based Mental Patients Liberation Front (MPLF), and she also became associated with the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University . Her affiliation with this center facilitated her role in co-founding the Ruby Rogers Advocacy and Drop-in-Centers, which are self-help institutions staffed by former psychiatric patients. and was also a founder and later a Director of Education of the National Empowerment Center. The latter is also an ex-patient run organization that provides information, technical assistance, and support to users and survivors of the psychiatric system. Its mission statement declares its intent is to "carry a message of recovery, empowerment, hope and healing to people who have been labeled with mental illness".

She was also involved with the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy and she was an influential leader in the Mad Pride movement. Having first met the current chief executive of MindFreedom International, David Oaks, in 1976 when they were both members of the Mental Patients Liberation Front, she later became a board member of MindFreedom International, which describes itself as an umbrella organization for approximately one hundred grass roots groups campaigning for the human rights of people deemed to be mentally ill.

In 1978 her book ''On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System'' was published.

She was a major informant for and assisted in the drafting of the National Council on Disability's federal report ''From Privileges to Rights'', which was published in 2000. The report argued that psychiatric patients should enjoy the same basic human rights as other citizens and that patient privileges contingent on good behavior within the psychiatric system, such as the ability to wear their own clothes, leave the confines of psychiatric facility, or receive visitors, should instead be regarded as basic rights.

Chamberlin was elected as co-chair of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (WNUSP) at the launching conference and General Assembly in Vancouver, Canada in 2001, and served in this capacity until the next General Assembly in 2004. During this period she also served on the Panel of Experts advising the United Nations special rapporteur on disability, on behalf of WNUSP in its role as a Non-governmental organization, representing psychiatric survivors.

Personal life[link]

Her marriages to Howard Cahn and then Robert Chamberlin both ended in divorce. Her third marriage in 1972 was to Ted Chabasinski, also a psychiatric survivor movement activist, whom she met at the Mental Patients Liberation Project in 1971. They married in 1972 and separated two years later. They remained close friends following this and only divorced in 1985 when Chabasinski wanted to marry his second wife. Since 2006 her partner was Marty Federman. She had one daughter, Julie Chamberlin, and three grandchildren.

Death[link]

Chamberlin died of pulmonary disease at her home in Arlington, Massachusetts on January 16, 2010.

Published works[link]

Chamberlin, Judi (1978). ''On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System''

Chamberlin, Judi (1990). 'The Ex-Patients Movement: where we've been and where we're going'. ''The Journal of Mind and Behaviour''. 11(3&4): 323-336.

Chamberlin, Judi (1993). 'Erfahrungen und Zielsetzungen der nordamerikanischen Selbsthilfebewegung' (pp. 300-317). In: Kerstin Kempker / Peter Lehmann (Eds.), ''Statt Psychiatrie''. Berlin: Antipsychiatrieverlag. ISBN 9-925931-07-4

Chamberlin, Judi (1995). 'Mental health: choice and dignity'. ''The Magazine of the World Health Organization''. 48(5): 16-17.

Chamberlin, Judi, Roger, E. Sally, and Ellison, Marsha Langer (1996). 'Self-help programs: a description of their characteristics and their members'. ''Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal''. 19(3): 33-34.

Chamberlin, Judi (1997). 'A working definition of empowerment'. ''Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal''. 20(4): 43-46.

Rogers, E. S., Chamberlin, J., et al. (1997). 'A consumer-constructed scale to measure empowerment among users of mental health services'. ''Psychiatric Services''. 48(8): 1042-1047.

Chamberlin, Judi (1998). 'Confessions of a noncompliant patient'. ''Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services''. 36(4): 49-52.

Chamberlin, Judi (1998). 'Citizens rights and psychiatric disability'. ''Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal''. 21: 405-408.

Chamberlin, Judi (2004). Preface to: Peter Lehmann (ed.), ''Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful withdrawal from neuroleptics, antidepressants, lithium, carbamazepine and tranquilizers'' (pp. 11-13). Berlin / Eugene / Shrewsbury: Peter Lehmann Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9545428-0-1 (UK), ISBN 978-0-9788399-0-1 (USA).

Awards[link]

1992: Distinguished Service Award of the President of the United States, National Council on Disability

1992: David J. Vail National Advocacy Award, Mental Health Association of Minnesota

1995: N. Neal Pike Prize for Services to People with Disabilities, Boston University School of Law

See also[link]

MindFreedom International

Psychiatric survivors movement

World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry

National Council on Disability

National Empowerment Center

Anti-psychiatry

Psychiatric survivors movement

Involuntary commitment

Biopsychiatry controversy

Involuntary treatment

References[link]

External links[link]

National Empowerment Center

Judi Chamberlin's virtual memorial

MindFreedom International: Tribute to Judi Chamberlin (David Oaks)

Judi's Tribute Book

Category:1944 births Category:Anti-psychiatry Category:2010 deaths Category:American activists Category:Mental health activists Category:Psychiatric survivor activists

Name	Thomas Szasz
Birth date	April 15, 1920
Birth place	Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary
Residence	|citizenship
Nationality	Hungarian
Field	Psychiatry
Work institutions	State University of New York Upstate Medical University
Author abbrev bot	|author_abbrev_zoo
Religion	|footnotes |signature }}

Thomas Stephen Szasz ( ; born April 15, 1920) is a psychiatrist and academic. Since 1990 he has been Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He is a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as of scientism. His books ''The Myth of Mental Illness'' (1960) and ''The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement'' (1970) set out some of the arguments with which he is most associated.

His views on special treatment follow from classical liberal roots which are based on the principles that each person has the right to bodily and mental self-ownership and the right to be free from violence from others, although he criticized the "Free World" as well as the communist states for their use of psychiatry and "drogophobia". He believes that suicide, the practice of medicine, use and sale of drugs and sexual relations should be private, contractual, and outside of state jurisdiction.

In 1973, the American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year and in 1979 he was honored with an honorary doctorate in behavioral science at Universidad Francisco Marroquín.

Life [link]

Thomas Szasz was born to Gyula and Lily Szasz on April 15, 1920, in Budapest, Hungary. In 1938 Szasz moved to the United States, where he attended the University of Cincinnati for his Bachelor of Arts in medicine, and received his medical degree from the same university in 1944. Szasz completed his residency requirement at the Cincinnati General Hospital, then worked at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis from 1951–1956, and then for the next five years was a member of its staff—taking twenty-four months out for active duty with the U.S. Navy.

In 1962 Szasz received a tenured position in medicine at the State University of New York. Szasz had first joined SUNY in 1956.

Szasz's views of psychiatry were influenced by the writings of Frigyes Karinthy.

The rise of Szasz's arguments[link]

Szasz first presented his attack on "mental illness" as a legal term in 1958 in the ''Columbia Law Review''. In his article he argued that mental illness was no more a fact bearing on a suspect's guilt than is possession by the devil.

In 1961 Szasz gave testimony before a United States Senate committee in which he argued that the use of mental hospitals to incarcerate people defined as insane violated the general assumptions of patient- and doctor-relationships and turned the doctor into a warden and a keeper of a prison.

Szasz's main arguments [link]

As Szasz said, having become convinced of the fictitious character of mental disorders, the frequent injuriousness of psychiatric treatments, the immorality of psychiatric coercions and excuses, he set himself a task to delegitimize the legitimating agencies and authorities and their vast powers, enforced by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, mental health laws, mental health courts, and mental health sentences.

Szasz is a critic of the influence of modern medicine on society, which he considers to be the secularisation of religion's hold on humankind. Criticizing scientism, he targets in particular psychiatry, underscoring its campaigns against masturbation at the end of the 19th century, its use of medical imagery and language to describe misbehavior, its reliance on involuntary mental hospitalization to protect society, or the use of lobotomy and other interventions to treat psychosis. To sum up his description of the political influence of medicine in modern societies imbued by faith in science, he declared:

''Since theocracy is the rule of God or its priests, and democracy the rule of the people or of the majority, pharmacracy is therefore the rule of medicine or of doctors.''

Szasz consistently pays attention to the power of language in the establishment and maintenance of the social order, both in small interpersonal as well as wider socio-political spheres:

"''The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines whom as troublesome or mentally sick?...[the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed.''"

His main arguments can be summarised as follows:

''The myth of mental illness'': "Mental illness" is an expression, a metaphor that describes an offending, disturbing, shocking, or vexing conduct, action, or pattern of behavior, such as schizophrenia, as an "illness" or "disease". Szasz wrote: "If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic." While people behave and think in ways that are very disturbing, and that may resemble a disease process (pain, deterioration, response to various interventions), this does not mean they actually have a disease. To Szasz, disease can only mean something people "have," while behavior is what people "do". Diseases are "malfunctions of the human body, of the heart, the liver, the kidney, the brain" while "no behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. That's not what diseases are" Szasz cites drapetomania as an example behavior which many in society did not approve of, being labeled and widely cited as a 'disease' and likewise with women who did not bow to men's will as having "hysteria" Psychiatry actively obscures the difference between (mis)behavior and disease, in its quest to help or harm parties to conflicts. By calling certain people "diseased", psychiatry attempts to deny them responsibility as moral agents, in order to better control them.

People who are said (by themselves or others) to "have" a mental illness can only have, at best, a "fake disease." Diagnoses of "mental illness" or "mental disorder" (the latter expression called by Szasz a "weasel term" for mental illness) are passed off as "scientific categories" but they remain merely judgments (judgments of disdain) to support certain uses of power by psychiatric authorities. In that line of thinking, schizophrenia is not the name of a disease entity but a judgment of extreme psychiatric and social reprobation. Szasz calls schizophrenia "the sacred symbol of psychiatry" because those so labeled have long provided and continue to provide justification for psychiatric theories, treatments, abuses, and reforms. The figure of the psychotic or schizophrenic person to psychiatric experts and authorities, according to Szasz, is analogous with the figure of the heretic or blasphemer to theological experts and authorities. According to Szasz, to understand the metaphorical nature of the term "disease" in psychiatry, one must first understand its literal meaning in the rest of medicine. To be a true disease, the entity must first, somehow be capable of being approached, measured, or tested in scientific fashion. Second, to be confirmed as a disease, a condition must demonstrate pathology at the cellular or molecular level.

A genuine disease must also be found on the autopsy table (not merely in the living person) and meet pathological definition instead of being voted into existence by members of the American Psychiatric Association. "Mental illnesses" are really problems in living. They are often "like a" disease, argues Szasz, which makes the medical metaphor understandable, but in no way validates it as an accurate description or explanation. Psychiatry is a pseudo-science that parodies medicine by using medical sounding words invented especially over the last 100 years. To be clear, heart break and heart attack, or spring fever and typhoid fever belong to two completely different logical categories, and treating one as the other constitutes a category error, that is, a myth. Psychiatrists are the successors of "soul doctors", priests who dealt and deal with the spiritual conundrums, dilemmas, and vexations — the "problems in living" — that have troubled people forever.

Psychiatry's main methods are those of conversation or rhetoric, repression, and religion. To the extent that psychiatry presents these problems as "medical diseases," its methods as "medical treatments," and its clients — especially involuntary — as medically ill patients, it embodies a lie and therefore constitutes a fundamental threat to freedom and dignity. Psychiatry, supported by the State through various Mental Health Acts, has become a modern secular state religion according to Thomas Szasz. It is a vastly elaborate social control system, using both brute force and subtle indoctrination, which disguises itself under the claims of scientificity. The notion that biological psychiatry is a real science or a genuine branch of medicine has been challenged by other critics as well, such as Michel Foucault in ''Madness and Civilization'' (1961), and Erving Goffman in ''Asylums'' (1961).

''Separation of psychiatry and the state'': State government by enforcing the use of shock therapy has abused Psychiatry with impunity. If we accept that "mental illness" is a euphemism for behaviors that are disapproved of, then the state has no right to force psychiatric "treatment" on these individuals. Similarly, the state should not be able to interfere in mental health practices between consenting adults (for example, by legally controlling the supply of psychotropic drugs or psychiatric medication). The medicalization of government produces a "therapeutic state," designating someone as "insane" or as a "drug addict".

In ''Ceremonial Chemistry'' (1973), he argued that the same persecution which has targeted witches, Jews, Gypsies or homosexuals now targets "drug addicts" and "insane" people. Szasz argued that all these categories of people were taken as scapegoats of the community in ritual ceremonies. To underscore this continuation of religion through medicine, he even takes as example obesity: instead of concentrating on junk food (ill-nutrition), physicians denounced hypernutrition. According to Szasz, despite their scientific appearance, the diets imposed were a moral substitute to the former fasts, and the social injunction ''not to be overweight'' is to be considered as a moral order, not as a scientific advice as it claims to be. As with those thought bad (insane people), those who took the wrong drugs (drug-addicts), medicine created a category for those who had the wrong weight (obeses).

Szasz argued that psychiatrics were created in the 17th century to study and control those who erred from the medical norms of social behavior; a new specialization, drogophobia, was created in the 20th century to study and control those who erred from the medical norms of drug consumption; and then, in the 1960s, another specialization, bariatrics, was created to deal with those who erred from the medical norms concerning the weight which the body should have. Thus, he underscores that in 1970, the American Society of Bariatic Physicians (from the Greek ''baros'', weight) had 30 members, and already 450 two years later.

''Presumption of competence'': Just as legal systems work on the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty, individuals accused of crimes should not be presumed incompetent simply because a doctor or psychiatrist labels them as such. Mental incompetence should be assessed like any other form of incompetence, i.e., by purely legal and judicial means with the right of representation and appeal by the accused.

''Death control'': In an analogy to birth control, Szasz argues that individuals should be able to choose when to die without interference from medicine or the state, just as they are able to choose when to conceive without outside interference. He considers suicide to be among the most fundamental rights, but he opposes state-sanctioned euthanasia. In his 2006 book about Virginia Woolf he stated that she put an end to her life by a conscious and deliberate act, her suicide being an expression of her freedom of choice.

''Abolition of the insanity defense'': Szasz believes that testimony about the mental competence of a defendant should not be admissible in trials. Psychiatrists testifying about the mental state of an accused person's mind have about as much business as a priest testifying about the religious state of a person's soul in our courts. Insanity was a legal tactic invented to circumvent the punishments of the Church, which, at the time included confiscation of the property of those who committed suicide, which often left widows and orphans destitute. Only an insane person would do such a thing to his widow and children, it was successfully argued. Legal mercy masquerading as medicine, said Szasz.

''Abolition of involuntary hospitalization'': No one should be deprived of liberty unless he is found guilty of a criminal offense. Depriving a person of liberty for what is said to be his own good is immoral. Just as a person suffering from terminal cancer may refuse treatment, so should a person be able to refuse psychiatric treatment.

''Our right to drugs'': Drug addiction is not a "disease" to be cured through legal drugs (Methadone instead of heroin; which forgets that heroin was created in the first place to be a substitute to morphine, which in turn was created as a substitute to opium), but a social habit. Szasz also argues in favor of a drugs free-market. He criticized the war on drugs, arguing that using drugs was in fact a victimless crime. Prohibition itself constituted the crime. He shows how the war on drugs leads states to do things that would have never been considered half a century before, such as prohibiting a person from ingesting certain substances or interfering in other countries to impede the production of certain plants (e.g. coca eradication plans, or the campaigns against opium; both are traditional plants opposed by the Western world). Although Szasz is skeptical about the merits of psychotropic medications, he favors the repeal of drug prohibition.

"Because we have a free market in food, we can buy all the bacon, eggs, and ice cream we want and can afford. If we had a free market in drugs, we could similarly buy all the barbiturates, chloral hydrate, and morphine we want and could afford." Szasz argued that the prohibition and other legal restrictions on drugs are enforced not because of their lethality, but in a ritualistic aim (he quotes Mary Douglas's studies of rituals). He also recalls that ''pharmakos'', the Greek root of pharmacology, originally meant "scapegoat". Szasz dubbed pharmacology "pharmacomythology" because of its inclusion of social practices in its studies, in particular through the inclusion of the category of "addictiveness" in its programs. "Addictiveness" is a social category, argued Szasz, and the use of drugs should be apprehended as a social ritual rather than exclusively as the act of ingesting a chemical substance. There are many ways of ingesting a chemical substance, or drug (which comes from ''pharmakos''), just as there are many different cultural ways of eating or drinking. Thus, some cultures prohibit certain types of substances, which they call "taboo", while they make use of others in various types of ceremonies.

Szasz has been wrongly associated with the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He is not opposed to the practice of psychiatry if it is non-coercive. He maintains that psychiatry should be a contractual service between consenting adults with no state involvement. In a 2006 documentary film called ''Psychiatry: An Industry of Death'' released on DVD Szasz stated that involuntary mental hospitalization is a crime against humanity. Szasz also believes that, if unopposed, involuntary hospitalization will expand into "pharmacratic" dictatorship.

Therapeutic State [link]

The "Therapeutic State" is a phrase coined by Szasz in 1963. The collaboration between psychiatry and government leads to what Szasz calls the “therapeutic state”, a system in which disapproved actions, thoughts, and emotions are repressed ("cured") through pseudomedical interventions. Thus suicide, unconventional religious beliefs, racial bigotry, unhappiness, anxiety, shyness, sexual promiscuity, shoplifting, gambling, overeating, smoking, and illegal drug use are all considered symptoms or illnesses that need to be cured. When faced with demands for measures to curtail smoking in public, binge-drinking, gambling or obesity, ministers say that “we must guard against charges of nanny statism.” The “nanny state” has turned into the “therapeutic state” where nanny has given way to counselor. Nanny just told people what to do; counselors also tell them what to think and what to feel. The “nanny state” was punitive, austere, and authoritarian, the therapeutic state is touchy-feely, supportive — and even more authoritarian. According to Szasz, “the therapeutic state swallows up everything human on the seemingly rational ground that nothing falls outside the province of health and medicine, just as the theological state had swallowed up everything human on the perfectly rational ground that nothing falls outside the province of God and religion.” Faced with the problem of “madness,” Western individualism proved to be ill prepared to defend the rights of the individual: modern man has no more right to be a madman than medieval man had a right to be a heretic because if once people agree that they have identified the one true God, or Good, it brings about that they have to guard members and nonmembers of the group from the temptation to worship false gods or goods. In the same vein as the separation of church and state, Szasz believes that a solid wall must exist between psychiatry and the State. Szasz has made efforts to abolish involuntary psychiatric hospitalization for over two decades, and in 1970 took a part in founding the American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization (AAAIMH). Its founding was announced by Szasz in 1971 on the ''American Journal of Psychiatry'' and ''American Journal of Public Health''. The association provided legal help to psychiatric patients and published a journal, ''The Abolitionist''.

Relationship to Citizens Commission on Human Rights[link]

In 1969, Szasz and the Church of Scientology co-founded the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) with the aim of helping to "clean up" the field of human rights abuses. Szasz remains on CCHR's Board of Advisors as Founding Commissioner, and continues to provide content for the CCHR. In the keynote address at the 25th anniversary of CCHR, Szasz stated: ''"We should all honor CCHR because it is really the organization that for the first time in human history has organized a politically, socially, internationally significant voice to combat psychiatry. This has never been done in human history before."'' Szasz, himself, does not have any membership or involvement in Scientology. In 2003, the following statement, authorized by Szasz, was posted to the official Szasz web site by its owner, Jeffrey Schaler, explaining Szasz's relation to CCHR:

"Dr. Szasz co-founded CCHR in the same spirit as he had co-founded — with sociologist Erving Goffman and law professor George Alexander — The American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization... Scientologists have joined Szasz's battle against institutional psychiatry. Dr. Szasz welcomes the support of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and any other religious or atheist group committed to the struggle against the Therapeutic State. Sharing this battle does not mean that Dr. Szasz supports the unrelated principles and causes of any religious or non-religious organization. This is explicit and implicit in Dr. Szasz's work. Everyone and anyone is welcome to join in the struggle for individual liberty and personal responsibility — especially as these values are threatened by psychiatric ideas and interventions."

Criticism [link]

Szasz's critics maintain that, contrary to his views, such illnesses are now regularly "approached, measured, or tested in scientific fashion." The list of groups that reject his opinion that mental illness is a myth include the American Medical Association (AMA), American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

According to American psychiatrist Allen Frances, Szasz “goes too far and draws bright lines where there are shades of gray”. In particular, Szasz is right that schizophrenia is no “disease”, but that doesn’t mean schizophrenia is a “myth.” Szasz is also right that psychiatric diagnosis can be misunderstood and misused, but that doesn’t mean it can be dispensed with, Allen Frances says and adds that Szasz is correct in defining many problems related to psychiatric diagnosis, but he doesn’t offer alternative solutions.

The effectiveness of medication has been used as an argument against Szasz’s idea that depression is a myth. In a debate with Szasz, Donald F. Klein, M.D explained:

“It is that elementary fact, that the antidepressants do little to normals, and are tremendously effective in the clinically depressed person, that shows us that this is an illness.” 

But as the New England Journal of Medicine reported on January 17, 2008, in published trials, about 60 percent of people taking the drugs report significant relief from depression, compared with roughly 40 percent of those on placebo pills. But when the less positive, unpublished trials are included, the advantage shrinks: the drugs outperform placebos, but perhaps only by a modest margin and for a brief period.

In the same debate Frederick K. Goodwin, M.D, asserts:

"The concept of disease in medicine really means a cluster of symptoms that people can agree about, and in the case of depression we agree 80% of the time. It is a cluster of symptoms that predicts something.” 

Szasz argues that only mental illnesses are defined based on consensus and symptom clusters. It has been argued this is not the case. Critics claim physical illnesses such as Kawasaki syndrome (a disorder of the heart and blood vessels) and Ménière's disease (a disorder of the inner ear) are similarly defined.

There is also the criticism that many physical diseases were identified and even treated with at least some success decades, centuries, or millennia before their etiology was accurately identified. Diabetes is one notable example. In the eyes of Szasz's critics, such historical facts tend to undermine his contention that mental illnesses must be "fake diseases" because their etiology in the brain is not well understood.

Russell Tribunal [link]

In the summer of 2001, Szasz took a part in a Russell Tribunal on Human rights in Psychiatry held in Berlin between 30 June and 2 July 2001. The tribunal brought in the two following verdicts: the majority verdict claimed that there was “serious abuse of human rights in psychiatry” and that psychiatry was “guilty of the combination of force and unaccountability”; the minority verdict, signed by the Israeli Law Professor Alon Harel and Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho, called for “public critical examination of the role of psychiatry.”

Awards [link]

Szasz was honored with over fifty prestigious awards including:

the ''Martin Buber Award'' (1974);

the ''Humanist Laureate Award'' (1995);

the Great Lake Association of Clinical Medicine ''Patients’ Rights Advocate Award'' (1995);

the American Psychological Association ''Rollo May Award'' (1998).

See also [link]

Antipsychiatry

Libertarian perspectives on suicide

Writings by Szasz[link]

Bibliography of Szasz's writings.

Books[link]

}} (First published in 1976 under the name: Karl Kraus and the Soul-Doctors: A Pioneer Critic and His Criticism of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. — Louisiana State University Press, 1976.)

Secondary literature[link]

The book in full is available online by click

References[link]

External links[link]

The Szasz Site published and owned by Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D.

The Thomas S. Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility

Interview: "Curing the Therapeutic State" July 2000 issue of ''Reason''

Liberty and the Practice of Psychotherapy: An Interview with Thomas Szasz Psychotherapy.net 2001

Thomas Szasz "Psychiatry as an Arm of the State"; Lew Rockwell show podcast, Nov 19, 2008 (Audio, 12 mins)

A Conversation with Thomas Szasz, University of Birmingham, October 2007: Preview Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

An interview with Thomas Szasz 2010

Category:1920 births Category:Living people Category:American academics Category:American libertarians Category:American humanists Category:American psychiatrists Category:State University of New York faculty Category:Hungarian emigrants to the United States Category:Hungarian psychiatrists Category:People from Syracuse, New York Category:American people of Hungarian descent Category:American Jews Category:Scientology and psychiatry Category:Anti-psychiatry Category:People from Budapest

bg:Томас Сас de:Thomas Szasz es:Thomas Szasz fr:Thomas Szasz it:Thomas Szasz he:תומש סאס hu:Szász Tamás István nl:Thomas Szasz pl:Thomas Szasz pt:Thomas Szasz ru:Сас, Томас fi:Thomas Szasz sv:Thomas Szasz

The Oppressed is a Welsh anti-fascist Oi! band that formed in 1981 in Cardiff. Most of the musicians in the band's various lineups were skinheads. Throughout the band's career, the members (especially vocalist Roddy Moreno) openly expressed opposition to racism and fascism — in their lyrics, interviews, on-stage comments and other actions. In 1989, Moreno visited New York City and met a few members of Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP). On his return to the United Kingdom, he started promoting SHARP ideals to British skinheads. The band has also had ties to other anti-racist groups, such as Anti-Fascist Action. Moreno is a Cardiff City F.C. supporter, and some of the band's songs express that support.

The band has split and re-formed several times. Their more recent split was in 2006, but they re-formed in 2009, and continue performing today. Roddy Moreno - Vocals / Guitar. Dom Moreno - Bass. Steve Floyd - Guitar. Tony Kizmus - Drums.

Discography[link]

EPs[link]

''Never Say Die'' (1983)

''Victims / Work Together'' (1983)

''Fuck Fascism'' (1995)

''5-4-3-2-1'' (1996)

''They Think Its All Over...It Is Now''(1996)

''Anti-Fascist Oi!'' (1996)

''Best of The Oppressed Bonus 7 Inch'' (1996)

''The Richard Allen Tribute Single'' (1997)

''Strength In Unity'' (1997)

''The Noise'' (1997)

''Oppressed / Fatskins'' (1998)

''Out on The Streets Again'' (1999)

''Football Violence'' (2009)

LPs[link]

''Oi!Oi! Music'' (1984)

''Fatal Blow'' (1985)

''Dead & Buried'' (1988)

''Dead & Buried / Fatal Blow Reissue'' (1996)

''The Best of The Oppressed'' (1996)

''Music For Hooligans'' (1996)

''We Can Do Anything'' (1996)

''Live (Llanrumney Youth Club 1984)'' (1997)

''More Noize For The Boys'' (1998)

''Skinhead Times'' (double CD) (2005)

''"Won't Say Sorry" The Complete Cover Story'' (double CD) (2005)

DVD[link]

''Brotherhood: The Oppressed/The Prowlers Live in Toronto - 4.30.05'' (2008)

References[link]

External links[link]

Official site

Interview with Cardiff City fanzine

Category:People from Cardiff Category:British punk rock groups Category:Street punk Category:Skinhead Category:Welsh musical groups Category:Anti-fascists

de:The Oppressed es:The Oppressed fr:The Oppressed it:The Oppressed csb:The Oppressed hu:The Oppressed pt:The Oppressed sv:The Oppressed