Yearly Archives: 2008
Yip yip Martians
An unusual and little known recorded interaction between the beings of Mars with earthlings. This undeniable proof of extraterrestrial intelligence was first broadcast on the respected science education program, Sesame Street. Click below.
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It’s almost time
for Mad Liberation by Moonlight. There are times (like tonight) when I am really dragging to get myself to showtime. But Daniel says, “the show must go on” or some such rot. Tonight I am hoping to get some calls from my friends at the Interactive Theater project- From the Inside Out.
On the other hand, I am very excited about getting my 3rd (third) comment since starting this blog. Woot! And I’m not sure but I think that only the first one was from someone I know.
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Oregon State Hospital Caught with it’s Pants Down
SALEM, Ore. — The U.S. Department of Justice has found numerous civil rights violations of patients at the Oregon State Hospital. In a report released Wednesday, federal investigators listed inadequate conditions and practices at the mental hospital ranging from life-threatening use of restraints to widespread patient-on-patient assault. Federal law entitles patients to certain standards of care. State health officials say many improvements have been made since the investigation took place in 2006, but acknowledged problems still exist. “The conditions reported on … are completely unacceptable,” said Dr. Bruce Goldberg, director of Oregon’s Department of Human Services. “It’s unacceptable as a state and its unacceptable for us as a state hospital for the health and well-being of our patients.”
The Oregon State Hospital is the state’s primary psychiatric facility for adults, which has a main hospital in Salem and other satellite facilities. Officials found violations in Salem and at its smaller Portland campus, which is used for psychiatric rehabilitation. Some of the cases highlighted in the 48-page report include:
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Post MLK Day post
This in from David Oaks:
Repeatedly, in the last two decades of his life, Rev. King said in
speeches and essays that he was proud to be “psychologically
maladjusted” to oppression, war and poverty.MLK said the “salvation of the world lies in the hands of the
maladjusted!”More than 10 times MLK said the world desperately needed a new
organization, the International Association for the Advancement of
Creative Maladjustment (IAACM)!As far we know, the IAACM never officially formed. Time Magazine
called it a “half joke.”
But last year, in 2007, MindFreedom International helped launch the
IAACM at its international conference as part of the “Mad Pride”
movement that celebrates the right to be nonviolently different, odd,
crazy, nuts, strange, weird, or whatever term society would like to
toss our way.
Who else could have intentionally and consciously formed the IAACM,
in reality, other than psychiatric survivors?
The Mad Pride movement asks you a simple question:
By MLK’s 80th birthday in 2009, what action will you take to show
your “creative maladjustment”?
For a decade “Mad Pride” celebrates each and every human being’s
creative uniqueness and right to be nonviolently different, including
we people who have survived the psychiatric system. Like Gay Pride,
Mad Pride events have included parades, theater, “bed pushes,”
concerts and more.
From the Inside Out:
In Portland we are fortunate to have a group called “From the Inside Out”. Led by Cathy Clemens, FTIO provides workshops and produces community events using interactive theater to explore issues and solutions related to mental health and it’s accompanying stigmatization. Based on the techniques of Theater of the Oppressed as developed by Augusto Boal, Interactive Theater participants create small plays that engage the audience in creatively changing the outcomes through active involvement with people who have mental health issues.
I will try to keep FTIO events posted as they come up. The group is currently working on planning for the coming year.
Reminder:
Mad Liberation by Moonlight is coming this Friday night, 1:00 a.m. PST on KBOO radio, 90.7 on your FM dial (to the left of NPR). Also streamed live on KBOO.org- set your alarm. This time your radio really is talking to you.
Martin Luther King on “Normalcy”:
“The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy that
recognizes the dignity and worth of all of God’s children.
“The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy that
allows judgment to run down like waters, and righteousness like a
mighty stream.
“The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy of
brotherhood, the normalcy of true peace, the normalcy of justice…
“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with
itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be
a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the
day of [hu]man as [hu]man.”
-from MLK’s 25 March 1965 speech in Montgomery, Ala.
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Lets see if this works
Sound bite- Daisy, a blue front amazon who is part of my family, claims that she is a good bird. We know otherwise.
If this doesn’t work, I’ll try another way.
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Another thing
For people in Portland this Friday evening:
January 25th 7-9 pm
4312 SE Stark, Portland
“The Challenges Facing Religion Today”
Speaker Imam Mamadou Toure of Institute of Islamic and Interfaith Studies will explore the guidance we can draw from the Gospels, the Torah, and the Koran to answer the question “What is it that God demands of us in these troubled times?”
The program will begin with a few moments of silent worship (Quaker style).
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I almost forgot
This coming Friday night will be another episode of Mad Liberation by Moonlight on KBOO radio. See post below for more information. I will post an update/ reminder before the end of the week.
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Mostly Mad News
I received this information from David Oaks at MindFreedom International:
Hi MindFreedom Oregon TALK list,
We got a call from an individual locked up in a Salem psychiatric
facility who is pretty frustrated about getting any advocacy from
anyone.
I talked with her for a while, gave her some leads.
If someone is inspired to network with her, she could use the call.
She understands a volunteer doesn’t necessarily represent us, but
sounds like she could use any support.
Her name is JANIE.
She is locked up in Salem Hospital in Oregon where she’s been locked
up for a while.
She was FORCIBLY DRUGGED.
Her focus is mainly on the legal aspects of her case, to appeal, but
she doesn’t have an attorney or money to hire her own so that can be
tricky.
If anyone reading this would want to get involved in helping this individual or perhaps being in contact as a supporter, email me at
I will help serious and trustworthy folks who want to be active in assisting Janie in her cause.
PBS show investigates the drugging of children
From: Senior Editor
Ken Dornstein, PBS, FRONTLINE
This Week: “The Medicated Child”
*THIS* Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2008 at 9pm on PBS (check local listings)
Live Discussion: Chat with producer Marcela Gaviria, Jan. 9, 2008, 11am ET
This summer, FRONTLINE producer Marcela Gaviria set out to answer a question that has been troubling parents, doctors, and government regulators: Why are millions of American children being prescribed increasingly powerful, behavior-modifying drugs that have not been adequately tested in kids?
In “The Medicated Child,” airing Tuesday night, Gaviria takes us deep inside the world of child psychiatry where a debate is growing about how early to diagnose mental illness in children, and which drugs are safe for treatment. At the heart of the story is the dramatic rise of a controversial new diagnosis–bipolar disorder–which, until recently was thought only to exist in adults, but now has been found in over one million children, including a growing number of toddlers.
Watch a preview at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/
Gaviria finds many who challenge the validity of child bipolar disorder, and others who charge it’s being overdiagnosed. But, ultimately, it’s parents who are stuck with the hard choices about whether to treat their children with the potent psychiatric drugs prescribed for the disorder.
Meet Jacob Solomon, for instance. A preschool teacher urged his parents to medicate him for hyperactivity, but the diagnosis progressed to bipolar disorder and Jacob soon found himself on a cocktail of prescription drugs that came with serious side effects his doctors don’t yet fully understand. “It all started to feel out of control,” Jacob’s father tells FRONTLINE. “Nobody ever said we can work with this through therapy and things like that. Everywhere we looked it was, ‘Take meds, take meds, take meds.'”
Then there’s four-year-old DJ whose parents reluctantly agreed to treat him with a new “anti-psychotic” drug for his extreme mood swings. “If he didn’t take [the medicine], I don’t know if we could function as a family,” his mother tells FRONTLINE. “It’s almost a do-or-die situation over here.” DJ’s doctor explains: “It’s really to some extent an experiment, trying medications in children of this age. It’s a gamble. And I tell parents there’s no way to know what’s going to work.”
So who’s monitoring this experiment on our children?
How do doctors decide when a toddler’s tantrums cross the line into mental illness?
What are scientists learning about genetics and brain development that might one day remake the entire field of child psychiatry?
Gaviria talks to a broad range of child psychiatrists and researchers, then heads to Washington where she learns something that’s sure to give any parent pause at the pharmacy: The Food and Drug Administration knows shockingly little about the effects of most prescription drugs on children.
“Parents need to be aware that all products haven’t been studied in children,” one top doctor at the FDA tells FRONTLINE. “As a matter of fact, I’d say too high a percentage of time we don’t know what we’re doing, and we need to study it in kids and get the dosing right and know whether it works in them.”
I hope you’ll watch this important and timely program Tuesday night, and then visit online to watch it again, explore the extended interviews with experts, read a parents’ guide on psychiatric medications for children, or get answers to some “frequently asked questions.” And, join the discussion at:
http://pbs.org/frontline/medicatedchild/
Mad and Non-Mad Radio: Some Different — Very Different — Radio Shows
submitted by David W. Oaks — last modified 2007-11-06 10:32
Here are several Mad radio shows and one Non-Mad radio show you may listen to about changing the mental health system, all hosted by MindFreedom members who are psychiatric survivors! All may be heard on the web.
Mad and Non-Mad Radio: Some Different — Very Different — Radio Shows
Oryx and Will at the madness radio controls.
MINDFREEDOM NEWS HOUR:
Of course!
MindFreedom’s own show each Wednesday at 4 pm ET for more info click here.
That’s one… here are three more!
NORTHAMPTON, Massachusetts, USA:
Listen to Madness Radio: Voices and Visions from Outside Mental Health, produced by Freedom Center and the Icarus Project. Madness Radio is broadcast weekly on Pacifica affiliate WXOJ-LP FM Wednesdays at 6 to 7 pm Eastern Standard Time in Northampton Massachusetts.
Their podcast can be heard at:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/madnessradio
Listen live and to archived shows and podcasts at madnessradio.net.
COLORADO:
Mary Van Pelt has done a number of radio productions… For info about the link to her web site, click here.
PORTLAND, Oregon, USA:
Talking about “being nuts” on Portland, Oregon radio- Mad Liberation by Moonlight
By Rick Snook and Daniel Flessas
History:
It all started when I was in the 5th grade and Dan Flessas was my best friend. Our favorite activity was to get on the radio by making prank calls to talk radio stations, usually with the intent (and some success) of getting some racy language or crude joke past the 3 second bleeper. Time flies and years later Daniel became a host of a regular Friday night program on KBOO- The Outside World. He has been doing the show for at least 23 years.
In the fall of 2006 I suggested to him that we start having a monthly feature on his show where we would discuss mental health related topics and request callers to join in with their stories of struggle with the system. He said- “great”- so we did it.
So, on the Friday following the full-moon the lunatics take over KBOO and talk about being nuts. I usually bring some news items to read, sometimes some poetry related to the subject or a personal story. We often have guests. The show is from 1 am to 2 am (approximately- sometimes longer and we rarely start right on time). We are gradually gathering steam; more callers each month. KBOO is streamed on the internet so we can get some calls from far away places.
We play some music that seems appropriate. We sometimes have live music in the background (folks who stop by the station after their club sets).
For more information see
Or contact me, Rick Snook-
NON-MAD Radio
The following radio show host, who is a psychiatric survivor, prefers that his show not be called “mad” radio… Host Don Weitz is a and legend in Toronto and internationally for his decades of work against psychiatric human rights violations, so his preference is fine with us.
Says Don, “Antipsychiatry should not be confused or conflated with madness!” Don’s biography describes some of his writing to newspapers as “angry,” so duly noted, Don can be angry, but not mad!
TORONTO, Ontario, Canada:
by Don Weitz
Antpsychiatry Radio is a unique and powerful program on CKLN (88.1FM, http://www.ckln.fm, an independent community radio station in Toronto.
It airs on the last Friday every month at 6:30-7pm (EST).
Hosted and produced by antipsychiatry activist and psychiatric survivor Don Weitz, the program features interviews with psychiatric survivors re their personal stories of psychiatric abuses including electroshock, forced drugging and involuntary committal; victories over human rights violations in the psychiatric system; grassroots resistance, and movement news.
Don can be contacted at:
Peer Operated Recovery Treatment and Support (PORTS)
A Mental Health Recovery Model Developed by Michael Hlebechuk
PORTS is a mental health self-directed care model that combines mental health brokerage services with a peer counseling/advocacy education program and a couple of evidence based practices that actually work. There are no outcome studies to demonstrate the efficacy of PORTS. It has never been implemented. I drafted it up in response to a question for a job interview. I firmly believe, however, that if implemented this model would help people along the road to recovery in ways we haven’t seen yet through a formal program. The 2 page draft that outlines PORTS is located at:
http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/mentalhealth/consumers-families/ports.pdf
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The poetry of Rabindranath Tagore
I’ve spent some time reading some of my favorite poetry. Tagore was a 20th century poet, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature and considered by many to be the most important writer in the modern history of India. What follows are excerpts from two books I love. Reading these makes me cry.
Selections from Stray Birds
THE mystery of creation
is like the darkness of night–
it is great.
Delusions of knowledge are like
the fog of the morning.
*
WHAT you are you do not see,
what you see is your shadow.
*
MY heart beats her waves at the shore of the world
and writes upon it her signature in tears with the words,
“I love thee.”
*
HE has made his weapons his gods.
When his weapons win he is defeated himself.
*
I THANK thee that I am none of the wheels of power
but I am one with the living creatures
that are crushed by it.
*
From Gitanjali:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow
domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought
and action–
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
*
Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat,
only thou and I, and never a soul in the world would know of this
our pilgrimage to no country and to no end.
In that shoreless ocean, at thy silently listening smile my songs
would swell in melodies, free as waves, free from all bondage of
words.
Is the time not come yet? Are there works still to do? Lo, the
evening has come down upon the shore and in the fading light the
seabirds come flying to their nests.
Who knows when the chains will be off, and the boat, like the
last glimmer of sunset, vanish into the night?
*
Languor is upon your heart and the slumber is still on your eyes.
Has not the word come to you that the flower is reigning in
splendour among thorns? Wake, oh awaken! let not the time pass
in vain!
At the end of the stony path, in the country of virgin solitude,
my friend is sitting all alone. Deceive him not. Wake, oh
awaken!
*
What if the sky pants and trembles with the heat of the midday
sun–what if the burning sand spreads its mantle of thirst–
Is there no joy in the deep of your heart? At every footfall of
yours, will not the harp of the road break out in sweet music of
pain?
*
Let all the strains of joy mingle in my last song–the joy that
makes the earth flow over in the riotous excess of the grass, the
joy that sets the twin brothers, life and death, dancing over the
wide world, the joy that sweeps in with the tempest, shaking and
waking all life with laughter, the joy that sits still with its
tears on the open red lotus of pain, and the joy that throws
everything it has upon the dust, and knows not a word.
*
When I bring to you coloured toys, my child, I understand why
there is such a play of colours on clouds, on water, and why
flowers are painted in tints–when I give coloured toys to you,
my child.
When I sing to make you dance I truly now why there is music in
leaves, and why waves send their chorus of voices to the heart of
the listening earth–when I sing to make you dance.
When I bring sweet things to your greedy hands I know why there
is honey in the cup of the flowers and why fruits are secretly
filled with sweet juice–when I bring sweet things to your greedy
hands.
When I kiss your face to make you smile, my darling, I surely
understand what pleasure streams from the sky in morning light,
and what delight that is that is which the summer breeze brings
to my body–when I kiss you to make you smile.
*
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the
earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous
waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of
life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my
blood this moment.
*
If it is not my portion to meet thee in this life then let me
ever feel that I have missed thy sight–let me not forget for a
moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in
my wakeful hours.
As my days pass in the crowded market of this world and my hands
grow full with the daily profits, let me ever feel that I have
gained nothing–let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the
pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours.
When I sit by the roadside, tired and panting, when I spread my
bed low in the dust, let me ever feel that the long journey is
still before me–let me not forget a moment, let me carry the
pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours.
When my rooms have been decked out and the flutes sound and the
laughter there is loud, let me ever feel that I have not invited
thee to my house–let me not forget for a moment, let me carry
the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours.
*
Like a rain-cloud of July hung low with its burden of unshed
showers let all my mind bend down at thy door in one salutation
to thee.
Let all my songs gather together their diverse strains into a
single current and flow to a sea of silence in one salutation to
thee.
Like a flock of homesick cranes flying night and day back to
their mountain nests let all my life take its voyage to its
eternal home in one salutation to thee
*
If thou speakest not I will fill my heart with thy silence and
endure it. I will keep still and wait like the night with starry
vigil and its head bent low with patience.
The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish, and thy
voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky.
Then thy words will take wing in songs from every one of my
birds’ nests, and thy melodies will break forth in flowers in all
my forest groves.
*
A couple links to more Tagore:
http://www.poetseers.org/nobel_prize_for_literature/tagore
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/tagore/index.htm
Maybe I’ll share some of my most favorite Carl Sandberg poems one day.
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moon soup 