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WelcomeSubmitted by admin on Wed, 02/21/2007 - 04:21.
 Freedom Center is a support and activism community run by and for people labeled with severe 'mental disorders.' We call for compassion, human rights, self-determination, and holistic options. We create alternatives to the mental health system's widespread despair, abuse, fraudulent science and dangerous treatments."The Freedom Center is one of a collection of grassroots organizations springing up across the country in reaction to the prevalance of medication in America. It alerts people to the downside of psychiatric drugs but does not try to force people off them: it seeks instead to help sufferers find the best methods of coping, even if their solution is unconventional by the standards of the medical establishment." Forbes magazine, Sept. 6, 2004 p.122 Freedom Center's goals are:
Please check our Resources page for info on these issues and the movement we are part of, and our About Us page for answers to questions about our work. Also, download our general brochure (legal size paper) for info about us.
Subscribe to our radio show podcast by adding this link to your iTunes or other music player "subscribe to podcast:"http://feeds.feedburner.com/madnessradio Freedom Center is the only Pioneer Valley advocacy group run by and for people labeled with severe 'mental illnesses.' We are also a member of the Mindfreedom Support Coalition International, a United Nations-recognized Non-Governmental Organization network of grassroots groups worldwide working to transform psychiatry and the mental health system, and part of M-POWER, the state-wide advocacy group of people receiving mental health services in Massachusetts.
If you try to reach us but don't hear back right away, please be persistent and just try again. The best way to contact us is in person, especially through our events and classes. Mindfreedom psychiatric protest 1998  In order to learn more about the problems of psychiatric disability, the National Council on Disabilities conducted a hearing specifically on this topic and heard testimony from mental health professionals, lawyers, advocates, and relatives of people with psychiatric disabilities. However, unlike most investigations on the topic of psychiatric disability, the primary participants in this hearing were people with psychiatric disabilities themselves... The testimony pointed to the inescapable fact that people with psychiatric disabilities are systematically and routinely deprived of their rights, and treated as less than full citizens or full human beings. -- National Council on Disabilities Report: From Privileges to Rights: People Labeled with Psychiatric Disabilities Speak for Themselves ...Restoring mental health does not mean simply adjusting individuals to the modern world of rapid economic growth. The world is ill, and adapting to an ill environment cannot bring real mental health. Psychiatric treatment requires envionmental change and psychiatrists must participate in efforts to change the environment, but that is only half the task. The other half is to help individuals be themselves, not by helping them adapt to an ill environment, but by providing them with the strength to change it. To tranquilize them is not the Way. The explosion of bombs , the burning of napalm, the violent death of our neighbors and relatives, the pressure of time, noise, and pollution, the lonely crowds—-these have all been created by the disruptive course of our economic growth. They are all sources of mental illness, and they must be ended. -- Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist peace activist, from  The Icarus Project was created in the beginning of the 21st century by a group of people diagnosed in the contemporary language as Bipolar or Manic-Depressive. Defining ourselves outside convention, we see our condition as a dangerous gift to be cultivated and taken care of rather than as a disease or disorder needing to be "cured" or "eliminated." With this double-edged blessing we have the ability to fly to places of great vision and creativity, but like the mythical boy Icarus, we also have the potential to fly dangerously close to the sun—into realms of delusion and psychosis--and crash in a blaze of fire and confusion. At our heights we may find ourselves capable of creating music, art, words, and inventions which touch people's souls and shape the course of history. At our depths we may end up alienated and alone, incarcerated in psychiatric institutions, or dead by our own hands. Despite these risks, we recognize the intertwined threads of madness and creativity as tools of inspiration and hope in this repressed and damaged society. We understand that we are members of a group that has been misunderstood and persecuted throughout history, but has also been responsible for some its most brilliant creations. And we are proud. -- The Icarus Project Website, www.theicarusproject.net  ...neuroleptics [psychiatric drugs] are a medical treatment with roots in frontal lobotomy and the brain-damaging therapeutics of the eugenics era... If we wanted to be candid today in our talk about schizophrenia, we would admit this: little is know about what causes schizophrenia. Antipsychotic drugs do not fix any known brain abnormality, nor do they put brain chemistry back in balance. What they do is alter brain function in a manner that diminishes certain characteristic symptoms. We also know that they cause an increase in dopamine receptors, which is a change associated both with tardive dyskinesia and an increased biological vulnerability to psychosis, and that long-term outcomes are much better in countries where such medications are less frequently used. Such candor...might lead us to rethink what we, as a society, should do to help those who struggle with 'madness'. -- Robert Whitaker, Pulitzer Prize nominated author of Mad In America The Low Road by Marge Piercy What can they do to you? Whatever they want. They can set you up. They can bust you. They can break your fingers. They can burn your brain with electricity, blur you with drugs till you can't walk, can't remember. They can take your child, wall up your lover. They can do anything you can't stop them from doing. How can you stop them? Alone, you can fight. You can refuse. You can take what revenge you can. But they roll over you. But two people fighting back to back can cut through a mob, a snake-dancing file can break a cordon, an army can meet an army. Two people can keep each other sane, can give support, conviction, love, massage, hope, and sex. Three people are a delegation, a committee, a wedge. With four, you play bridge and start an organization. With six, you can rent a whole house, eat pie for dinner with no seconds, and hold a fund-raising party. A dozen make a demonstration. A hundred can fill a hall. A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter; ten thousand, power and your own paper; a hundred thousand, your own media; ten million, your own country. It goes on one at a time. It starts when you care to act. It starts when you do it again after they said "No." It starts when you say "We" and know who you mean and each day you mean one more. * Mental health and "mental illness" (and different types of mental "illness") shade into each other and are not separate categories. Ten to 15 per cent of the population have heard voices or experienced hallucinations at some point in their life. These are frequently triggered by extreme experiences such as sleep deprivation. * It may be appropriate to think in terms of "stressvulnerability" when explaining psychotic experiences. People may have greater or lesser levels of vulnerability to this type of experience, which are triggered by greater or fewer numbers of stressful events experienced. * In some cultures hearing voices and seeing visions is seen as a spiritual gift rather than as a symptom of mental illness. * Services need to adopt an individual and holistic approach. * Services must respect each individual’s understanding of their own experiences. * Service users should be acknowledged as experts on their own experiences. * The use of coercive powers (for instance detention under ‘Section’ and forcible treatment) should not be further extended. * Prejudice and discrimination against people with mental health problems should become as unacceptable as racism or sexism. -- "Recent advances in understanding mental illness and psychotic experiences: A report by The British Psychological Society Division of Clinical Psychology" ( categories: )
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If you are labeled with 'mental illness,' are a psychiatric abuse survivor, or go through extreme mental and emotional states, we invite you to join us. Allies and supporters willing to share their personal experiences are also welcome (mental health staff allies are welcome but should contact us first). We alert people to the serious dangers of psychiatric drugs so that they can make truly informed decisions, and we oppose how the system pushes drugs on people, but we support everyones' choice in their own recovery as they define it for themselves. We don't judge people. Whether you take psychiatric drugs or you don't take psychiatric drugs, you are welcome at the Freedom Center. We respect self-determination and choice, and approach all drug use and lifestyle choices from a harm reduction philosophy. 
