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MindFreedom International is an international antipsychiatry organization. Based in the United States, it was founded in 1990 to advocate against involuntary psychiatric treatment. Its stated mission is to protect the rights of people who have been labeled with psychiatric disorders.

Origins and purpose

MindFreedom International is rooted in the psychiatric survivors movement, which arose out of the civil rights movement. The precursors of MFI include ex-patient groups of the 1970s such as the Portland, Oregon-based Insane Liberation Front and the Mental Patients' Liberation Front in New York. Chamberlin was an ex-patient and co-founder of the Mental Patients' Liberation Front. Coalescing around the ex-patient newsletter Dendron, in late 1988 leaders from several of the main national and grassroots psychiatric survivor groups felt that an independent, human rights coalition focused on problems in the mental health system was needed. That year the Support Coalition International (SCI) was formed. In 2005, the SCI changed its name to MFI with David W. Oaks as its director.

Many of the members of MFI refer to themselves as 'psychiatric survivors'.

In 2003, eight Mindfreedom members, led by then-executive director David Oaks, went on a hunger strike to publicize a series of "challenges" they had put forth to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the US Surgeon General and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). The eight MFI members challenged the APA, US Surgeon General and NAMI to present MFI with "unambiguous proof that mental illness is brain disorder."

In 2011, MindFreedom was recognized by the United Nations Economic and Social Council as a human rights NGO with Consultative Roster Status.

See also

  • Anti-psychiatry
  • Psychiatric survivors movement

References

  • MindFreedom.org - MindFreedom International homepage

Literature

  • Oaks, David W. (2007). ‘MindFreedom International: Activism for Human Rights as the Basis for a Nonviolent Revolution in the Mental Health System’. In Peter Stastny & Peter Lehmann (Eds.), Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry (pp. 328–336). Berlin / Eugene / Shrewsbury: Peter Lehmann Publishing. (UK), (USA). E-Book in 2018.
  • Oaks, David W. (2007). ‘MindFreedom International – Engagement für Menschenrechte als Grundlage einer gewaltfreien Revolution im psychosozialen System’. In: Peter Lehmann & Peter Stastny (Hg.), Statt Psychiatrie 2 (S. 344-352). Berlin / Eugene / Shrewsbury: Antipsychiatrieverlag. . E-Book in 2018.
  • Taylor, Dan (2007). ‘MindFreedom Ghana: Fighting for Basic Human Conditions of Psychiatric Patients’. In Peter Stastny & Peter Lehmann (Eds.), Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry (pp. 336–342). Berlin / Eugene / Shrewsbury: Peter Lehmann Publishing. (UK), (USA). E-Book in 2018.
  • Taylor, Dan (2007). ‘MindFreedom Ghana – Unser Kampf um humane Lebensbedingungen für Psychiatriebetroffene’. In: Peter Lehmann & Peter Stastny (Hg.), Statt Psychiatrie 2 (S. 352-358). Berlin / Eugene / Shrewsbury: Antipsychiatrieverlag. . E-Book in 2018.