Radicals change the world, and this part needs changing

Ken Braiterman — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:05:13 -0400

Two themes emerged for me last weekend at the national conference of a group called Mind Freedom International. People diagnosed with schizophrenia have suffered more mistreatment by the mental health system than people diagnosed with major depression or bipolar disorder. And the creative new thinking about what’s next for the system is replacing psychiatric hospitals with small, voluntary therapeutic communities that allow people who experience a crisis to move around more freely, and get back to their normal lives faster. Even our modern state psychiatric hospital in Concord, which is as good, or better, than any in the country, makes people sicker before they start making them healthier, and takes away whatever autonomy they have left before starting to rebuild it. The traumatic, disempowering admission process itself does that. These smaller therapeutic communities would shortcut that, and free the hospital to concentrate only on people who are really an imminent danger to themselves or others.

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Radicals change the world, and this part needs changing