I'm Leah Harris, co-coordinator of the U.S. Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (USNUSP), a newly-formed network seeking to use the language, framework, and principles of international human rights to end violations against users and survivors of psychiatry and to promote voluntary and compassionate alternatives to the traditional mental health system.

John Brodie was a Vermont man who died in an encounter with Brattleboro police in 2006 after neighbors called 9-11. At 36, John was already a Princeton PhD and world-reknowned physicist widely published in scientific journals. He was also a psychiatric abuse survivor, whose non-ordinary mental states were repeatedly met with force in hospitals. On the night of his death, he was not violent or suicidal, but was behaving in a strange way -- knocking on doors at 11pm. Confused neighbors called the police, which escalated a harmless situation into a tragedy. John ran away, terrified of the police, and went into the freezing river.

John's close friend Inez Kochius, a longtime Freedom Center supporter, was working with Freedom Center to try to support and care for John in the months before this tragic event cut John's life short. Inez shares her thoughts and feelings three years afterwards, in a society that has still not learned basic lessons of kindness towards mental difference.

Inez writes "To me John did not accidentally drown, he was driven into the water -- by all of us."

Read the Rutland Herald story about John Brodie.

Go to the Freedom Center page for more about John.

(drawing below by Charlotte Clarke)

A major new study in latest Journal of Advanced Nursing says there is no clincal evidence in research that forced drugging helps people. Instead, the practice is "taken for granted." According to the BBC, "Very few rigorous investigations of the use of coerced medication have been done despite it being widespread, the Journal of Advanced Nursing reported.

The dearth of evidence is "unacceptable" and more should be done to find alternatives, the team said"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7764512.stm