Key mental health consumer and psychiatric survivor leaders adopted the following statement, please support it:

Bastille Day 2010 Statement – Rockville, MD

14 July 2010

The Urgent Necessity for More Non-Drug Alternatives in Mental Health Care

We are alarmed about the over-reliance on psychiatric medication in mental health care because of the undue influence of the pharmaceutical industry. We see an urgent need for a far greater range of non-pharmaceutical mental health care.

We are participants in the USA Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) meeting, “Past, Present, and Future: SAMHSA Efforts to Promote Consumer/Survivor Inclusion.” We are speaking today only for ourselves as individuals, and not for SAMHSA. We applaud SAMHSA's endorsement of the values of peer support, social justice, self-determination, trauma-informed care, and a dignified life in the community for everyone.

As leaders in the mental health consumer and psychiatric survivor movement, we affirm the principle of choice in mental health care, and continue to work towards the elimination of coercion in all mental health treatment. We support the right of those who willingly choose to take prescribed psychiatric medications.

However, the inappropriate prescriptions of psychiatric medication are harming a wide range of the USA population, including infants, vets, people of color and seniors. Severe side effects are contributing to heartbreaking suffering and approximately 25 years of premature mortality for people in the public mental health system. Advertisements, the media and far too many mental health organizations are disseminating misleading information about psychiatric medication. Some individuals are even involuntarily administered psychiatric drugs over their expressed wishes, including on an outpatient basis.

Our constituency's right to choice, empowerment and self-determination in mental health care is threatened as never before, in the USA and internationally. We call upon SAMHSA to work with their federal partners and consumer/survivors to:

• Address the conflict of interest in the current relationship between the federal government and the pharmaceutical industry.

• End direct-to-consumer advertising for psychiatric medications.

• Complete the President's New Freedom Commission recommendation to investigate the long-term effects of psychiatric medication.

• Independently research on the efficacy, safety and successful ways of reducing psychiatric medications.

• Research and fund non-drug alternatives such as mental health peer-run respite centers and recovery-oriented education.

We encourage all those concerned to speak out about this crisis.

Signed:

Ellen K. Awai
Randall Bosin
Jean Campbell, Ph.D.
Gladys DeVonne Christian
Mary Ellen Copeland, Ph.D.
Jonathan David, Ph.D.
Daniel Fisher, M.D., Ph.D.
David Fuller, CPRP
Patrick Hendry
J. Rock Johnson, J.D.
Jacki McKinney, M.S.W.
James McNulty
David W. Oaks
Pat Risser
Stephen Robinson
Gilberto Romero
Lauren Spiro
Sharon P. Yokote, HCPS

It is so refreshing that mental health parity is here. So many years it was difficult to get quality care and the care was limited depending on what the insurance company wanted to pay.
Long term disability insurance is still discriminating against people with mental healh diagnoses by being allowed to discontinue peoples benefits at 24 months while benefits for physical illnesses have no limits or discontinue time.
The insurance companies have protection under federal ERISA laws. They also have a discretionary clause in their contracts that allows the insurance companies to basically decide on their own whether someone is disabled with little input from others.

Please contact your congress and State division of insurance to prevent this type of
discrimination to continue.

Not being an advocate for the mental health community for very long it is very apparent how the community can become divided.
Some people seem to feel so strongly about thier own experience that is clouds their judgement regarding the greater good of the whole mental health care movement.
Just because medications were not successful for you does not mean they are not successful for others. People need to respect that. The same with alternative therapies, psychotherapy and any other treatment.
If one loses the viewpoint of compassion for their peer who may need medication than the
whole peer support movement is dysfunctional.

Everyone needs to be looked at as an individual and respect what treatments work for their recovery. We can not have antimedication peers, anitalternative therapy peers and antipsychotherapy peers.
If it does not work for you that is fine, you can personally be antimedication, but do not place your personal experience on the the whole community. You can affect your peers access to treatments that help them if you do that. And I don't think people would want others to affect their access to treatments.
We need to have an open mind to all treatments and research and support whatever works for that particular individual.