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JUDI CHAMBERLIN 1945 TO 2010
Posted by: Darrell Castle
February 03, 2010
Topic: Personal Injury
Judi Chamberlin, a woman who spent almost her entire life as an advocate for the freedom of the mentally ill, died January 16, 2010 at the age of 65. In 1966, then Judi Ross, age 22, was involuntarily committed to a mental institution in New York City with a diagnosis of chronic depression. She had suffered a miscarriage and wasn't able to get over it or deal with it as some women seem able to do. After voluntarily hospitalizing herself several times, she was involuntarily committed.
Judi was struck by the life committed people are forced against their will to live, even in one of the better hospitals such as hers. "There are real indignities and real problems when all facets of life are controlled; when to get up, to eat, to shower; and chemicals are put inside our bodies against our will," Judi told the New York Times in 1981. There was a lack of activity and fresh air. There were seclusion rooms and wards for noncompliant patients, even those who were not violent. Drugs which made her lethargic and affected her memory seemed intended to control rather than cure. She referred to herself as "a prisoner of the system."
After her release she began working with organizations in the mental health rights movement. In 1978 her book "On Our Own" was published and it became the "bible" of the movement according to Daniel B. fisher of the National Empowerment Center. The book is a set of beliefs and principles which are reflected in the subtitle, "Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System." In 2000 she was the primary author of a federal report by the National Council on Disability called "From Privileges To Rights." The report held that in the old system patients had to earn privileges and she advocated for basic rights such as the right to see visitors, to leave the grounds, and to have their own clothes.
Quoting from her book: "The public dislikes mental patients, mentally retarded people, the physically disabled, the deformed or disfigured, and often such people are incarcerated in institutions euphemistically called hospitals, schools and homes. The public's aversion to people who are different is not sufficient reason to justify locking them up."
