NAMI President
Steps Down

Freedom Center has learned that Jane Moser, who was President of the Western MA chapter of the National Association for the Mentally Ill for the past ten years, has stepped down and is no longer President.

Moser says the reasons for her decision are unrelated to the Freedom Center, but the news comes not long after the Freedom Center publicly called for her resignation, as reported on the cover of the Springfield Union-News Republican. Moser had made the false and libelous claim to the Union News, which she has apparently repeated elsewhere, that two Freedom Center members committed suicide after we recommended they go off their medication. (The claims are a complete fabrication -- Freedom Center never makes such recommendations, and there have been no such deaths.) NAMI also called a Mt. Holyoke College film series "dangerous propaganda" in a letter to Professor Gail Hornstein. This extremism was so off the charts that Freedom Center felt only Moser's resignation could help clear the air.

While NAMI and the consumer-survivor movement have many differences, we are the mentally-labeled people NAMI claims to represent, and we deserve respect, not maliciousness and slander. Holistic alternatives and peer support are becoming more and more popular around the world, and NAMI -- despite its financial ties to corrupt pharmaceutical companies -- needs to accept that. We hope NAMI - Western MA will conduct itself more honorably now that Jane Moser is no longer President.

Read the Springfield Union News Republican front-page article about Moser's resignation.