Survivors History
Recommended web address http://studymore.org.uk/mpu.htm
Survivors

Mental health and survivors' movements and context

A history organised by the Survivors History Group in association with
the survivor history internet forum and network and
the mental health history timeline

The Survivors History Group was founded in April 2005 to value and celebrate the contribution that mental health service users/survivors have made and are making to history. It is working towards a comprehensive history on this site and in a book. It will also preserve historical material in digital form on this site, and in printed and other forms.

Jessie looks into the future with Hannah.

Alphabetical index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z     Home

Joan Hughes' drinking
habits
Joan Hughes 1928-2008 Survivor historian

Survivor timeline   1373   1393   1417   1533   1539   1620   1621   1651   1654   1738   1772   1803   1812   1830   1834   1835   1836   1837   1838   1839   1840   1841   1842   1843   1844   1845   1858   1859   1860   1861   1862   1873   1890   1892   1884   1894   1900   1908   1913   1916   1926   1927   1928   1929   1939   1940   1941   1942   1943   1944   1945   1946   1947   1948   1949   1950   1951   1952   1953   1954   1955   1956   1957   1958   1959   1960   1961   1962   1963   1964   1965   1966   1967   1968   1969   1970   1971   1972   1973   1974   1975   1976   1977   1978   1979   1980   1981   1982   1983   1984   1985   1986   1987   1988   1989   1990   1991   1992   1993   1994   1995   1996   1997   1998   1999   2000   2001   2002   2003   2004   2005   2006   2007   2008   2009   2010   2011   2012   2013   2014   2015   2016   2017   2018
leaflets and downloads
contact
Annual Reports
members' forum
Survivors Speak Out project
Critical Perspectives
Community Archives Conference
Manchester 2011
Preston 2011
Edinburgh 2011
Health rights 2011
Nottingham 2010
Manchester 2010
Birmingham 2010
Kingsley Hall 2010
Asylum 2010
Birmingham International 2009
Hendon 2009
Brighton 2009
Bristol 2009
Canterbury 2009
London 2009
State of Mind
Manchester 2008
May 2008 conference report
Essex 2008

Under contract with a publisher, and with the help of other members of the Survivor History Group, Peter Campbell is working on a book about survivor history. Andrew Roberts is writing a series of manuscript articles, based on this website, which may assist the book project.
This website will be preserved by the UK Web archive and the (international) Internet Archive. See links from Andrew Roberts' home page or go directly to the 11.7.2007 archive of this page. The UK Web Archiving Consortium, who run the web archive, aim to preserve sites for at least one hundred years. Andrew Roberts plans to preserve the orginal location for ten years or more.
The website includes, or will include:

  • The story/stories of the movement in the form of a timeline.

  • Individuals' stories inter-related to the story of the movement. See, for example, Charlotte and Freda Mew - Eric Irwin - Joan Hughes - Valerie Argent - Frank Bangay - State of Mind.

  • Information boxes about particular features such as Survivor's Poetry

  • Indexes such as that of survivor history features in Asylum magazine.

  • Reviews and summaries of books, articles and other printed material that record and discuss the story. See, for example, Contesting Psychiatry (2005)

  • Copies of articles about the movement and its history. Some of which are listed in the leaflets and downloads section. Others - for example, Mark Cresswell on the self-harm movement - are listed separately.

  • Copies of documents from the movement's history. Including - Perceval's narrative (extracts) - Ken - The General Grievances of Patients in Hartwood - the Fish Pamphlet - MPU Declaration of Intent - Edale Charter -

  • Lists of paper records about groups in the movement that individuals and others have preserved - See histories - libraries - archives

  • Book and pamphlet lists. See libraries - especially the Anne Plumb Collection

  • Records of where papers, books and pamphlets are preserved.
    See listed archive listed archives

    Building this record has to be a collective effort, and we hope you will help us.

  • Leaflets and other material to download

    About the Survivors History Group

    Leaflets - newsletter/leaflet - leaflet - exhibition

    Articles - Survivor History

    General histories

    From the Survivors History Group: Survivor Voices 1908-2008 - A timeline from the Survivors History Group

    From Beyond the Water Towers Sainsbury Trust 2005 From Little Acorns - The mental health service user movement by Peter Campbell

    From the Mind website: user/survivor empowerment leaflets

    Report on Conference with Historians - May 2008
    Celebrating our history - Valuing ourselves. A pdf of the whole report
    Part one as a web page

    Histories with a special theme

    From the Greater Manchester Survivors History Group: Greater Manchester leaflet and timeline

    History of Survivors Speak Out

    From Time Together (Together: Working for Wellbeing) - Andrew Roberts' articles relating individual survivor lives to the movement - "The Story of Valerie Argent" Winter 2008 - "The Story of Joan Hughes" Summer 2009 - "The Story of Freda and Charlotte Mew" Winter 2009 - "A Celebration of Survivor History" Summer 2010 - "The Story of Frank Bangay" Summer 2011 - Emotional journeys December 2011

    Judy Chamberlin (1944-2010) Psychiatric Survivor Activist, from Asylum September 2010 pp 20-21

    "Scotland the Brave - User movement roots" by Andrew Roberts

    Tools for teaching survivor history

    Compiled by Clare Ockwell for CAPITAL:

  • A reading list
  • A Quiz
  • 1973 Demands - What have we achieved?

  • Where have We come From? - Appreciating our roots

    By Peter Campbell

  • Teaching and learning survivor movement history

    Questions for discussion

  • Five questions
  • Lots of questions

  • Survivor Timeline

    Several items in this timeline (chronology) link to fuller items further down the page or on other pages. Use it as one index to the page. There is another index in the margin.


    about 1373 Margery Kempe born Margery Brunham. She was the daughter of John Brunham, sometimes mayor of Lynn, in Norfolk. She married John Kempe, who became a town official in 1394. They had fourteen or more children at least one of whom (a son) survived into adulthood.


    The 1995 USA paperback (left) of her medieval story has been sub-titled "autobiography of the madwoman of God"

    A chapter by chapter analysis of the book is available on the mapping Margery Kempe website


    about 1393 Margery Kempe had a child and went "out of her mind" for about eight months.

    " And in this time she saw, as she thought, devils opening their mouths all inflamed with burning waves of fire, as if they would have swallowed her in, sometimes ramping at her, sometimes threatening her, pulling her and hauling her, night and day during the aforesaid time. Also the devils cried upon her with great threatenings, and bade her that she should forsake Christendom, her faith, and deny her God, His Mother and all the Saints in Heaven, her good works and all good virtues, her father, her mother and all her friends. And so she did. She slandered her husband, her friends and her own self. She said many a wicked word, and many a cruel word; she knew no virtue nor goodness; she desired all wickedness; like as the spirits tempted her to say and do, so she said and did. She would have destroyed herself many a time at their stirrings and have been damned with them in Hell, and in witness thereof, she bit her own hand so violently, that the mark was seen all her life after.

    And also she rived the skin on her body against her heart with her nails spitefully, for she had no other instruments, and worse she would have done, but that she was bound and kept with strength day and night so that she might not have her will. And when she had long been laboured in these and many other temptations, so that men weened she should never have escaped or lived... "

    Margery was relieved of her madness through a vision of Jesus, and against the advice of her "maidens and keepers" her husband returned to her the keys of the domestic cupboard and her freedom to communicate with her friends.

    1413 (soon after her father's death) Margery Kempe left her husband to take a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She returned via Rome and left Rome in Easter 1415

    "She had so much affection for the manhood of Christ, that when she saw women in Rome bearing children in their arms, if she could ascertain that any were man children, she would then cry, roar, and weep as if she had seen Christ in His childhood.

    ... If she saw a seemly man, she had great pain in looking at him, lest she might have seen Him Who was both God and man.

    ... the Father of Heaven ... told her that she should be wedded to His Godhead.

    ... 'I take thee, Margery, for My wedded wife, for fairer, for fouler, for richer, for poorer, so that thou be kindly and gentle to do as I bid thee'"

    1417 left on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, via Bristol. On her journey back through England she was twice interrogated and imprisoned. She returned to Lynn sometime in 1418

    "Kempe recounts several public interrogations during her travels. One followed her arrest by the Mayor of Leicester who accused her, in Latin, of being a "cheap whore, a lying Lollard," and threatened her with prison. After Kempe was able to insist on the right of accusations to be made in English and to defend herself she was briefly cleared, but then brought to trial again by the Abbot, Dean and Mayor, and imprisoned for three weeks. She returned to Lynn some time in 1418." (Wikipedia)

    "During the 1420s Kempe lived apart from her husband. When he fell ill, however, she returned to Lynn to be his nursemaid. Their son, who lived in Germany, also returned to Lynn with his wife." (Wikipedia)

    1431 Death of John Kempe and the Kempe's son.

    1436 Margery Kempe finished dictating a book about her spiritual experiences.

    Thomas Moore and the beating of the frenzied heretic

    In his apology (1533), Moore explains which heretics he had ordered to be beaten whilst Lord Chancellor (October 1529 - May 1532):

    "Another was one which, after that he had fallen into that frantic heresy, fell soon after into plain open frenzy beside. And albeit that he had therefore been put up in Bedlam, and afterward by beating and correction gathered his remembrance to him, and began to come again to himself, being thereupon set at liberty, and walking about abroad, his old fancies began to fall again in his head. And I was from divers good holy places advertised, that he used in his wandering about to come into the church, and there make many mad toys and trifles, to the trouble of good people in the divine service, and specially would he be most busy in the time of most silence, while the priest was at the secrets of the mass about the elevation. Whereupon I, being advertised of these pageants, and being sent unto and required by very devout religious folk, to take some other order with him, caused him as he came wandering by my door, to be taken by the constables, and bounden to a tree in the street before the whole town, and there they striped him with rods therefor till he waxed weary, and somewhat longer. And it appeared well that his remembrance was good enough, save that it went about in grazing till it was beaten home. For he could then very well rehearse his faults himself, and promise to do afterward as well. And verily, God be thanked, I hear none harm of him now."

    1539 Juan Ciudad Duarte

    Known examples of collective action are exceedingly rare before the 19th century. A 1620 "Petition of the Poor Distracted Folk of Bedlam" is often mentioned. The primary sources for this (see below) are ambiguous. Whilst it is possible to read them as evidence of collective action by patients, they can also be read as evidence of complaints by others being investigated. By contrast, the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society, founded in 1845, is well documented.

    1914 The Story of Bethlehem Hospital by Edward O'Donoghue, page 160. The "court books" refers to the Bethlem Court of Governors Minutes

    The relative of a Bethlem patient, Elizabeth Slater, complained about her treatment in 1620:

    "In April 1620, a committee was appointed to hear the complaints made by a Mr Slater about his daughter's mistreatment and abuses in general; in July, three Governors were ordered to discuss and investigate further alleged abuses." ( Andrews etc 1997 (Kindle Locations 2007-2008).

    "The Governors undoubtedly expected inmates to be looked after in a way that did not damage them. When the father of Elizabeth Slater, a woman transferred from Bridewell to Bethlem in August 1620, complained that 'her foote was rotten . for want of good looking to' a mere three weeks later, they immediately ordered a committee to investigate this and any other possible abuses." ( Andrews etc 1997 (Kindle Locations 3594-3596).

    From A transcript of the registers of the company of stationers of London; 1554-1640, A. D. Edited by Edward Arber. Volume three. available in the Haithi Trust Digital Library

    In 1635 William Jones was one of the twenty two master printers of London (same source). He may have had a printer son who died in 1627. The family were puritans and one or other was prosecuted in 1609 in a case that the king (James 1st) took an interest in. William Jones (the father?) died in 1643. His printing business was a continuation of that of Ralph Blower and was continued by Thomas Paine (See Library of Congress name authority file)

    Peterson 1982 refers to this. In his bibliography he lists "Anonymous The Petition of the poor Distracted People in the House of Bedlam London 1620 No known copies remain" (p.355) and on page 47 he says

    "I know of only one piece of protest writing from the seventeenth century, a pamphlet entitled The Petition of the poor Distracted People in the House of Bedlam, which was registered in 1620 but then lost"

    Other people tell different stories: "as far as we know the existence of a 1620 Petition of the Poor Distracted Folk of Bedlam is no more than a rumour" - "the existence of a document called a 'Petition of the Poor Distracted Folk of Bedlam', supposedly composed by patients and submitted to the House of Lords. Although widely reported (including a reference in the book Personal Development and Clinical Psychology) ... does not appear in Bethlem's archives, and as far as the archivist, Colin Gale, knows, it is a 'phantom reference'. ... if the first genuine patient perspective of Bedlam dates from as late as 1818" (Madness and the Theatre blog)

    1621 Robert Burton

    1651

    Winter 1651 George Fox's vision of blood in the streets of Lichfield

    assasination 1651 or 1652 Birth of Christoph Haizmann (died 14.3.1700) who became a painter and, in 1669, engaged in what he saw as a "pact with the devil".

    The pact is said to include the words "I, Christoph Haizmann, subscribe myself to this Lord as his bounden son till the ninth year. Year 1669"

    1654 John Pateson

    1677

    assasination 29.8.1677 In church, in the Seignory of Pootenbrunn, near Vienna, painter Christoph Haizmann was seized by convulsions. Shortly afterwards he confessed to a pact with the devil made nine years before.

    The picture of the first meeting with the devil, a genial genleman walking his dog, is taken from a three part (Triptych) thanksgiving painting by Haizmann which shows the exorcism of the devil in the centre.

    1738 Alexander Cruden

    1772 Pageant: James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw's life narrative

    1803

    14.2.1803 John Thomas Perceval, founder of the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society born (Gault, H. 2010, p.49). He died 1876.

    1805

    26.3.1805 Birth of Luke James Hansard, original founder of the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society. His father (James Hansard 23.3.1781-1849) was the second son of Luke Hansard (5.7.1752-29.10.1828), founder of the firm that printed reports of parliament. See 1820 - 1828 - 1845 - 1846 - 1847 - 1848 - 1851 -

    assasination
    Monday 12.5.1812: John Thomas Perceval's father assassinated

    1820  

    Luke James Hansard working in his grandfather's printing firm?

    1824  

    June 1824 Edward L. Peithman, aged about 20, came to England from Germany. In 1827 he published Peithman's Latin composition, in 1830 Peithman's Latin grammar and in 1832 Peithman's French grammar. See 1840 - 1854 - 1855

    1825  

    1826  

    December 1826 First of the Albury conferences in which an elite group gathered in a Sussex banker's house to discuss the "unfulfilled prophesies". Spencer Perceval junior took part.

    1827  

    11.5.1827 The new Caledonian Church in Regent Street, minister Edward Irving, built for 1,700, was full filled to overflowing at its opening.

    1828  

    29.10.1828 Luke Hansard died at the home of James Hansard in Southampton Street. He had returned to London from Worthing 10.10.1828 and had been "carried up-stairs" by James, Luke Graves Hansard (a brother of James) and Luke James Hansard (aged 23). The firm became "James and Luke G. Hansard" (Trewin and King 1952 p.162.

    1830

    March 1830 At Row (now Rhu) on the Gareloch and the Clyde coast:

    "On Sunday, 28th March, 1830, Miss Mary Campbell spoke in tongues and some days later was miraculously healed of consumption at her home at Fernicarry on the Gareloch in the parish of Roseneath, Dunbartonshire." Strachan, The Pentecostal Theology Of Edward Irving, p.13.

    June 1830 John Thomas Perceval went to Scotland to enquire about the Row Miracles

    7.10.1830 Begining of Spencer Perceval's busy month of London madhouse visiting

    Christmas 1830 In Dublin, John Thomas Perceval was "unfortunately deprived of the use of reason". He was admitted to a private asylum (in England) in January 1831

    1831  

    January 1831 John Thomas Perceval confined in Brislington House.

    14.2.1831 Spencer Perceval's first motion (withdrawn) calling for a day of national fasting.

    1.3.1831 First Reform Bill introduced into the House of Commons

    March 1831 Spencer Perceval making some London madhouse visits

    July 1831 Second Reform Bill in the House of Commons

    October 1831 cholera in Britain

    December 1831 Third Reform Bill in the House of Commons

    1832  

    21.3.1832 Spencer Perceval to the House of Commons:

    "I tell you that this land will soon be desolate; a little time and ye shall howl one and all in the streets. I tell ye that the pestilence, which God is now holding in, will be let loose among ye, and that the sword will follow it ... I tell the house more than this: the Church of the land shall be laid low, for she hath corrupted her way before God ... trouble yourselves not with this Bill; for this which I have told you is your doom ... God looketh into your hearts, and seeth that you care not for him. He seeth that ye think that ye have got your Sovereign into a net, but..."
    and later
    "Ye may think me mad, and ridicule me as a man beside himself ..."

    (Quoted Gault, H. 2010, p.125)

    21.3.1832 National day of fasting and prayer

    May 1832 John Thomas Perceval moved to Ticehurst Asylum

    7.6.1832 Royal Assent to the Parliamentary Reform Act

    1833  

    1834

    31.3.1834 John Thomas Perceval , married Anna Lesley Gardner, a cheesemonger's daughter, who was described by his family as "quite out of his station in life". They went to Paris, where their first two daughters were born: Jane Beatrice, April 1835-1893 and Alice Frederica, June 1836- 1941 (1921?). Their third daughter, Selina Maria, 1838-1925, married her cousin Sir Horatio George Walpole, assistant under-secretary of state for India. Fanny Louisa Charlotta, 1845- 1862, died when she was 17.

    1835

    John Thomas Perceval's elder sister, Isabella, married Spencer Walpole who, as Tory Home Secretary, in 1859 set up an inquiry into lunacy laws that John Thomas gave evidence to.

    1838 Birth of Herculine Barbin (1838-1868), who became Abel Barbin after 1860, otherwise known as Alexina B. He killed himself in February 1868. (Wikipedia - Foucault)

    1838 A narrative of the treatment experienced by a gentleman, during a state of mental derangement: designed to explain the causes and the nature of insanity, and to expose the injudicious conduct pursued towards many unfortunate sufferers under that calamity by John Thomas Perceval published anonymously.

    24.8.1838 Richard Paternoster's confinement reported in The Times

    5.10.1838 Advertisement?

    MR PATERNOSTER

    TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES

    Sir - It is due to Mr Richard Paternoster, whose seizure and confinment an insane person have excited so much interest, that the public should be informed that after a full investigation of the circumstances by the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy (set on foot immediately upon their being acquainted with the fact) and after a detention of six weeks in Mr Finch's Lunatic Asylum at Kensington, he has been released. We are, Sir, your most obedient servants, LAKE AND CURTIS. Solicitors to Mr Richard Paternoster. 11 Basinghall-street, October 5, 1838

    Nicholas Hervey (1986) appears to suggest that this was an advertisement "for others to join him" and that it brought John Thomas Perceval and Paternoster together, to be joined in 1839 by William Bailey and Richard Saumarez.

    1839

    Marquis of Normanby Home Secretary 30.8.1839 to 3.9.1841 - Preface p.x to 1840 Narrative, Perceval says that "since the present work was placed in the hands of the printer", the Marquis (in contrast to others previously) had attended to his suggestions "with as much courtesy as good will". Perceval speaks of the confidence inspired in him by his previous publication had enabled him to approach the Marquis.

    22.9.1839 Letter from John Thomas Perceval in The Satirist. The letter was written in Paris in August 1839

    1840   16.2.1840 Letter from John Thomas Perceval in The Satirist. The letter was written from Kensington.

    10.6.1840 Edward Oxford fired shots at the carriage of the newly married Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He was found insane and sent to Bethlem.

    1840 A narrative of the treatment experienced by a gentleman, during a state of mental derangement: designed to explain the causes and the nature of insanity, and to expose the injudicious conduct pursued towards many unfortunate sufferers under that calamity by John Thomas Perceval published with his name on. [Different content]

    9.8.1840 Perceval's Narrative reviewed in The Examiner

    29.6.1840 Edward Peithman sought an audience with Prince Albert and found himself detained in Bethlem.

    October 1840 The assault on his wife (below) led to Arthur Legent Pearce being confined in the criminal lunatic wing of Bethlem, where John Thomas Perceval used to visit him. It appears to have been in visiting Pearce that Perceval met Edward Peithman (above). The conditions in Bethlem led Perceval to protest and in the early 1850s this led to inquiry into Bethlem and Peithman's release. For Arthur Legent Pearce see 1843 and poems in 1851.

    "ATTEMPTED MURDER.-On Friday week the neighbourhood of Kensington Gravel-pits was thrown into a state of considerable excitement, in consequence of a report that a lady had been shot by her husband under circumstances of a peculiarly painful nature. The lady in question is Mrs. Elizabeth Pearce, the wife of Mr. Arthur Legent Pearce a respectable surgeon, residing at No. 23, Bedfordplace, Kensington. Mrs. Pearce, who is about 36 years of age, has been married to her husband some years, and has three or four children, one of whom is still an infant in arms ; and she has possession of considerable property in her own right. For the last week or two an alteration bad manifested itself in the conduct of Mr. Pearce. He had been heard accusing his wife of unfaithfulness to him, and also with having made repeated attempts to poison him, by introducing arsenic into his food, &c. On the afternoon of Friday they were visited by a friend, who remained, with the intention of taking an early dinner with them. Between two and three o'clock, just as they had sat down to the dinner-table, Mr. Pearce suddenly rose, and, complaining that the room was insufferably hot, pushed up a window behind where his wife was sitting, and at the same instant discharged a pistol at her. Mrs. Pearce immediately fell off her chair, and while the friend who was sitting with them ran towards Mr. Pearce, she contrived to creep out of the room, and escape into the street, where her cries and her appearance, her hair hanging dishevelled about her ears, without shoes, and her dress (a light muslin one) on fire, soon brought several of the neighbouring residents to her assistance, when, her burning clothes having been extinguished, she was assisted to the residence of Mr. Taylor, her medical attendant, in High-row, Kensington Gravel-pits. On Saturday, at the sitting of the magistrates, at their office in Kensington-square, Mr. Collison, the solicitor of Mr. Pearce, applied for an adjournment of the case, it being essential that his client should have counsel. Before doing so, however, he would have an interview with Mr. Pearce. Mr. Collison, after an absence of nearly an hour, returned, and said it was still his wish that the case should be postponed for a day or two, that he might consult with the friends of Mrs. Pearce, who he must say had met him with the greatest consideration in the matter. Mr. Jennings, on behalf of Mr. Pinto, the guardian of Mrs. Pearce, had no objection to the postponement of the case on the grounds stated. The magistrates determined to hear some evidence before they adjourned the case, and Mr. Pearce was placed at the bar. He appeared greatly agitated and much dejected, holding a handkerchief before his face during the investigatimi. Mr. Rodes, apparently a military man, stated that he was on a visit at the prisoner's house, and, as they were about to sit down to dinner, Mr. Peace complained of the sultriness of the day, and threw up the window with some violence '  at that instant he heard the report of a pistol, and Mrs. Pearce fell to the ground. She then crawled from the room, and running through the garden, reached the street, her clothes being then in flames from the lighted wadding catching them. In his examination by the bench, the witness said he did not see the pistol in the prisoner's hands at the time, nor did he see him fire it off. Mr. Taylor' the surgeon, deposed that Mrs. Pearce was wounded in the breast, but he could not say that it was by a ball ; it might have been by the wadding ; no ball was found on probing the wound ; she was much burned about the arm. He further stated that Mrs. Pearce was suffering very severely from the wound and the burns. Mr. Pilkington adjourned the further examination until Wednesday, and the prisoner was taken in a fly to the New Prison, Clerkenwell." (The Tablet 24.10.1840)

    25.10.1840 Letter from John Thomas Perceval in The Satirist. Refers to the suicide of Edward Perceval

    1840 Sir John William Lubbock (Age 36) and his family moved into High Elms, Downe, Kent. From 1842 they were neighbours and friends of Charles Darwin and his family. In 1846, John William Lubbock was one of the three trustees of the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society.

    1841  

    June 1841 Proposal for an association of asylum doctors

    December 1841 Richard Paternoster's The Madhouse System

    1842  

    1843  

    21.11.1843 Arthur Legent Pearce, now an inmate of Bethlehem Hospital [Bedlam] in the parish of St George, Surrey: commission and inquisition of lunacy, into his state of mind and his property. The National Archives, Kew C 211/20/P205

    "LUNACY.-On Tuesday an inquisition, in the nature of a writ de lunaticø inquirendo, issued against Mr. Arthur Legent Pearce, at present an inmate of Bethlehem Hospital, St. George's-fields, was opened bcfore Mr. Commissioner Winslow, at the Horns Tavern, Kennington. The jury, without requiring the learned Corninissioner to sum up, returned a verdict to the effect "That Mr. Pearce was of unsound mind, that he was ncapable of managinghimself or his affairs,: and that he had been so from the 16th of October, 1840."

    12.6.1844 Pageant: John Clare's The Nightingale

    1844

    Perceval's letter to the Home Secretary about William Bailey

    1845

    Perceval's letters upon the reform of the law affecting the treatment of persons alleged alleged to be of unsound mind

    3.1.1845 Start of a conflict between Luke Graves Hansard, who was controlling the printers, and Henry Hansard, who considered he should be a partner.

    6.6.1845 Lunacy and Lunatic Asylums Bills to be introduced to the House of Commons by Ashley, James Graham (the Home Secretary) and Vernon Smith

    25.6.1845 House of Commons at the Committee stage of the Lunacy and Lunatic Asylums Bills

    1.7.1845 Perceval's petition presented to the House of Commons by Thomas Slingsby Duncombe MP, calling for an inquiry "into the treatment of Lunatic and other patients and ... the laws affecting their seizure, detention and release" before the Lunacy Bill became law. If that was not possible Perceval wanted specified amendments be made to the bill to provide greater security of civil liberties.

    2.7.1845 Duncombe stated that if the Bill was not postponed to the next session, to allow for an inquiry, he would "divide the House on every stage". He was supported by Sharman Crawford and Viscount Duncan and secured 15 votes (to 117) for postponement.

    3.7.1845 Petitions of Lewis Phillips, Joseph Digby and William Bailey

    7.7.1845 Alleged Lunatics Friend Society formed. (Gault, H. 2010, p.190) - See above and below - See publications of the society - publications of John Thomas Perceval (and index of sources about)

    Thursday 14.8.1845 First meeting of the new Lunacy Commission

    1846

    1846 A Report of the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society published covering the period 7.7.1845 to 7.1.1846

    Perceval became (honorary) secretary to Alleged Lunatics Friend Society in succession to Luke James Hansard".

    "Luke James was withdrawing into an eccentric world of his own. He was only mad nort-north-west: when the wind was southerly he could still govern Turnstile and Parker Street with his own shrewdness. But there were now periods of blurring when he thought merely in cloudy symbols". (p.229)

    March 1846: From an advertisement:

    ALLEGED LUNATICS' FRIEND SOCIETY, founded July, 1845 - At a meeting of several Gentlemen feeling deeply interested in behalf of their fellow creatures, subjected to confinement as lunatic patients. It was unanimously resolved :-

    That a Society be now formed, to be entitled "The Lunatics' Friend Society," and it has subsequently been agreed to name the same "The Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society,"

    That this Society is formed for the protection of the British subject from unjust confinement, on the grounds of mental derangement, and for the redress of persons so confined, also for the protection of all persons confined as lunatic patients from cruel and improper treatment.

    That the Society will receive applications from persons complaining of being unjustly treated, or from their friends, aid them in obtaining legal advice, and otherwise assist and afford them all proper protection.

    That the Society will endeavour to procure a reform in the laws and treatment affecting the arrest, detention, and release of persons treated as of unsound mind.

    VICE-PRESIDENTS

    Lord Viscount Lake - James Ackers, Esq., MP - W. Bagge, Esq., MP - Sir H. Winston Barron, Bart., MP - Peter Borthwick, Esq., MP - Col. Henry Bruen, MP - R.A. Christopher, Esq., MP - W. Sharman Crawford, Esq., MP - Hon. W.N. Ridley Colborne, MP - T. Slingsby Duncombe, Esq., MP - Major-Gen. W.A. Johnson, MP - Sir John W. Lubbock, Bart, - S.C. H. Ogle, Esq., MP - John Patrick Somers, Esq., MP - Edmund Turner, Esq., MP - The Hon. C. Pelham Villiers, MP.

    [MORE]

    26.3.1846 The Alleged Lunatics Friend Society was noted at the weekly meeting of the Lunacy Commission, attended by Ashley and professional commissioners. At the same meeting, Haydock Lodge became an issue.

    27.11.1846 entry in the Visitors Book on the Criminal wing of Bethlem Hospital

    I visited the Hospital this day for the purpose of seeing my Friend Mr. Pearce, and being ushered into the waiting room, & finding this upon the table, I beg leave to call the attention of the Governors to the following observation. Having myself been confined some years back from a temporary derangement of the understanding, I knew the irksomness of long confinement without hope (except that which inwardly maintained me from a confidence in the reasonableness of the views I entertained, when I was of opinion that my liberty ought to have been restored to me, and my trust in the Power and Wisdom of a Divine Providence) and the depressing influence of such a confinement & of every circumstance that rudely called it to my recollection. Amongst the most painful of these circumstances was the constant sight of heavy bars to my window, which in my extremely nervous state even produced a sensation of physical pain to the visual organs. I observed the bars to the windows in this Asylum are peculiarly massive-and they remind me so much of the horrors of my former situation, that it is with a considerable effort, that I am not persuaded by my feelings from fulfilling my intentions, when I come to the gate of the Asylum. I think the Committee might safely remove these bars, and substitute windows with small sashes in iron frames-or adopt in some cases, the plan pursued in many private asylums, of having Venetian blinds to the windows. This would give a more cheerful appearance to the Hospital outside, and relieve in a greater degree than can be conceived by those who have never secluded under such circumstances, its heartsick inhabitants.

    1847

    15.5.1847 Luke James Hansard's advertisement in The Times attacking Joseph Hume MP which led to his losing the contract for printing parliamentary reports.

    19.5.1847 Notice in The Times from Henry Hansard saying that the partnership between himself and [his older cousin] Luke James Hansard "is this day Dissolved, and that the business will henceforth be carried out by me alone". Luke James denied in the press that Henry had ever been a partner, he said he was just "an Allowance Clerk". Luke James' father (James Hansard) took legal action against him - [which may have been to apply to Chancery for a Writ de lunatico inquirendo] - Henry and Luke James fought the issue of the partnership out. It was resolved in Henry's favour in October 1847 and the firm recovered the printing contract. (See Trewin and King 1952 p.231).

    1848

    25.12.1848. Entry in the journal of Henry Hansard:

    "The Times of this day contains an advertisement from Luke James being entitled 'An Appeal to the People of England of All Classes of the United Queendom!' The only opinion that can be passed upon it is that it a confirmation - were confirmation necessary - of his condition... This wretched man has been enabled to prolong the Chancery suit for nearly two years, to bring his father from worry and vexation to the brink of the grave, to involve the concern and myself in enormous expense and perhaps destroy my fondest hopes in life and to be in all probability - amounting almost to certainty - the ruin and means of degradation to his own family consisting of six or seven children" (Quoted Trewin and King 1952 p.232).

    1850

    1851

    1851 A Report of the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society published

    28.1.1851. Entry in the journal of Henry Hansard:

    "Saw an advertisement in the Times by Mr L. J. Hansard to the Governors of Christ's Hospital asking for a presentation for her child, reciting the numerous charites of her husband and his having been 27 years Printer to the House which appointment he had lost owing to his having neglected his own interests in the cause of philanthropy and stating that he is now absent from the country from inability to meet his pecumiary engagements" (Quoted Trewin and King 1952 p.235).

    1851 Poems by a Prisoner in Bethlehem (Arthur Legent Pearce) published by Perceval

    1852

    1853

    1854

    Autumn 1854 Edward Peithman, having been released from Bethlem, saw fit to approach Prince Albert again, and was detained in Hanwell. He was allowed to leave the country in the company of John Thomas Perceval.

    1855

    1855 Case of Dr. Peithman published by Perceval

    5.5.1855 Ann Tottenham taken to an asylum. 28.6.1855 Inquiry into Ann Tottenham's case.

    21.8.1855 [Walter] Abraham Haigh born Mayfield, Derbyshire, to James Haigh, cotton merchant, and Sarah Crompton Haigh. Living with his parents as lodgers in Over, Cheshire, in 1861. Matriculated at St. John's College, Cambridge, 8.10.1876 (of Stafford). Received his BA from Cambridge University (not Oxford) in 1881. A school tutor at May Place, Main Road, Hanley Castle, Worcestershire in 1881. At this time, his father James was a patient in St Thomas's Hospital, Lambeth, London. Walter A. Haigh was admitted to Bethlem Royal Hospital on 18.10.1882 and discharged 20.7.1888. See 1884. Ordained deacon (London) 1889; priest, 1890; Curate of Bromley, Kent, 1889-1891. Curate of Christ Church, Chelsea, Middlesex, 1891-1892. No address given subsequently, and disappears from Crockford, 1902. [Mostly from Cambridge University Alumni] (Museum of the Mind and Sarah Chaney 2015)

    1856

    4.1.1856 Ann Tottenham escaped

    1857

    1857

    1858 Herculine Barbin an assistant teacher in a girl's school. She became the lover of Sara, another teacher. Excruciating pains led to a medical examination in 1860 and a decision that Herculine was a man. She changed her name to Abel Barbin.

    17.7.1858 Release of Rosina Bulwer-Lytton from Inverness Lodge

    Friday 23.7.1858 Mrs Mary Jane Turner at Acomb House near York. Not only was she insanely jealous, or just jealous, but also, should the asylum keeper degrade a lady?

    Late 1858: Mr Laurence Ruck at Moor Croft House, Middlesex. Was he drunk or insane when he abused his wife and other people? Should doctors profit from recommendations?

    Late 1858? Case of Reverend William Leach confined in Sussex House. Was he mad to want to marry a servant girl? Was she a gold-digger? How close to God was he?

    1859

    1859 A Report of the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society (for 1858) published

    January 1859 Public Meeting at Exeter Hall (The Strand, London) called by the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society in the wake of the cases of Rosina Lytton, Mary Jane Turner, Laurence Ruck and William Leach. A resolution was passed to petition for a government inquiry into the operation of the lunacy laws. (Wise, S. 2012 p.286)

    April and August 1859 and July 1860: Three reports from a Select Committee of the House of Commons "on the operation of the Acts and Regulations for the care and treatment of lunatics and their property"

    1860

    18.7.1860 news item in L'Écho Rochelais about a modest and pious woman of twenty-one who believed herself to be feamale and was so believed by everyone else who had been found to be male on medical examination. "une erreur de sexe a été reconnue... La jeune fille était tout simplement un jeune homme". (source)

    1861

    John Thomas Perceval living at 3 High Street, Herne Bay, Kent. Their youngest daughter died in 1862, aged 17 ( Gault, H. 2010

    1862

    John Bull 25.1.1862: Letter from John Thomas Perceval quoted ( Gault, H. 2010, p.252:

    "In your paper of the 4th of January... you allude to the horrible treatment of a paralysed patient in the county asylum at Hanwell. I am sorry to have to remind you that this is not a solitary instance... for a few months ago inquests were held on another patient in that asylum who had died after receiving very dreadful injuries, as well as on one who was accidentally scalded to death. And only lately... two keepers were tried for the murder of a patient at Colney Hatch, who had died with eleven of his ribs fractured, their ligatures separated, his breast bone broken in, and his liver ruptured"

    1860

    1864

    1865

    1866

    1867

    1868

    1868 August Natterer born in Schornreute near Ravensburg, Germany. He studied engineering and became an electrician. A 1907 vision led to a suicide attempt and confinement. He spent much subsequent creative energy drawing his vision. Died 1933 - Wikipedia

    February 1868 Abel Barbin committed suicide by inhaling gas from his coal gas stove. His memoirs were found beside his bed.

    1869

    1870

    23.6.1870 Selina Maria Perceval, daughter of John Thomas Perceval married Sir Horatio George Walpole, son of Rt. Hon. Spencer Horatio Walpole and Isabella Perceval. She died 5.11.1925

    1871

    1872

    1873

    21.5.1873 murder

    Lunacy Law Reform Association

    1874

    1875

    1876

    28.2.1876 Death of John Thomas Perceval (Gault, H. 2010, p.194).

    1877

    1878

    "Rachel" met her husband to be "Martin Grant-Smith". She became Rachel Grant-Smith (pseudonym) in 1881. - See Cheadle 1900 - 1914 - The Experiences of an Asylum Patient 1922

    1879

    1880s Charcot's work on hysteria. Foucault (23.1.1974) says "we salute the hysterics as the true militants of antipsychiatry".

    1880

    [Archibald] Archie Meek, who first suggested a union of mental patients to Thomas Ritchie, was born about 1880. He died in Shotts, Lanarkshire in 1973, aged 93. [569/331]

    1881

    1882

    One of Vincent van Gogh's early drawings of an old man with his head in his hands. This one has the title "worn out". [Pencil on watercolour paper The Hague: November, 1882. Now in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam]. The drawing is one of a series of studies of Adrianus Jacobus Zuyderland (pensioner 399) on which Van Gogh commented: "The poorest woodcutter, heath farmer or miner can have moments of emotion and mood that give him a sense of an eternal home that he is close to."
    Van Gogh used this picture as the inspiration for the oil painting called
    At Eternity's Gate , painted shortly before his own death in 1890

    1883

    1884

    Hippolyte Bernheim published De la suggestion dans l'état hypnotique et dans l'état de veille. Foucault (1974) argues that "the age of anti-psychiatry begins with the suspicion that... Charcot actually produced the hysterical fit he described"

    1884 Birth of Sabina Spielrein, an asylum patient who became a psychoanalyst.

    1885

    1886

    1887

    1888

    1889

    1890

    1891

    1892

    Johanna Stuten-te Gempt published a pamphlet "Mijne ervaringen in het Haagsche Krankzinnigengesticht" (in Dutch) [My experiences in the mental asylum]

    1893

    1894

    click for Charlotte Mew The sisters' kiss - both sublime and ghastly - A page of the gospel which the priest never read.

    1895

    1896

    1897

    1898

    1899

    1900

    1901

    July - September 1901 Birth of a James Ollier registered in Chorlton, Lancashire. Born Widnes. Father John James Ollier (born about 1877). Mother Elizabeth (Previously Collins. Born about 1882). In 1911 they lived in five rooms at 3 Roscoe Street, Hulme, Manchester. John James was a General Carrier and an employer. In 1924 a James Ollier (literate, with a neat hand) organised collective action by inmates in the Royal Albert at Lancaster. The James Ollier born 1901 died (aged 66) in Haslingden, Lancashire in July-September 1967. He may have run a taxi service in Delamere Street, Winsford, Cheshire, from 1939 to 1962.

    1902

    1903

    1904

    1905

    1906

    1907

    survivors' history 1.1.1907 August Natterer (Neter) (1868-1933) saw a vision lasting about half an hour and including about 1,000 images.

    This pencil picture depicting one of the images was drawn about 1911. It is catalogued as "witch with eagle, crocodile and cornucopia". Inventory number 151 in the Prinzhorn Collection

    This is one of the images by Natter that featured in 1922 in Hans Prinzhorn's Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the Mentally Ill)

    1908

    March 1908 America A Mind that Found Itself. This was published by Longmans Green in New York - But London, Calcutta and Bombay are also listed. The date is shown as 1908, but the copyright as Clifford Whiitingham Beers 1907. The book was published in New York and London and reviewed in British papers.

    1909

    21.10.1909 Rose Nuttall born. About 1953 she had a "complete cure" following a pre frontal leucotomy", which she spoke about on Radio 4 in 1972. She died Winchester, aged 72, in December 1981.

    1910

    1911

    1912

    "Arnold Schoenberg composed Pierrot Lunaire, a suite of semi-spoken songs for a moon-touched loon" (Ben Wilson 14.11.2002) - Listen over the internet

    10.11.1912 William Smart Harnett admitted to a private asylum - In 1922 he was awarded damages.

    1913 Charlotte Mew had written Ken, but it could not be published because magazine editors "believed in the segregation of the feeble-minded"

    1914

    1915

    12.6.1915 Christopher Paget Mayhew born London. As chair of the National Association for Mental Health from 1969 to 1978, in which time it became Mind, he is said to have drawn "on his own experiences of psychiatry in the 1940s and of his television work", including one into the mental effects of hallucinogenic drugs in 1955." (Robert Ingham DNB). Sometime in 1956 he spent a few days in a ward at Warlingham Park Hospital in preparation for the television series The Hurt Mind, which he presented in January 1957. He spoke in the debate on the Percy Report in July 1957.

    1916 Charlotte Mew On the Asylum Road published

    1917

    10.6.1917 Birth of Stephanie [or Stephani] Mary Allfree, daughter of Alice Mary [born Godwin] and Geoffrey Stephen Allfree, Cherry Allfree's uncle.

    With her husband, Stephanie created a fantasy world called Thessyros (desired?) which included "Cupid and Cherry". The story is told in The Starlight Years: Love and War at Kelmscott Manor 1940 - 1948 (Dovecott Press March 2015) edited by her son, Joscelyn Godwin

    See 1940 - 1944 - 1948

    1918

    16.4.1918 Terence Alan [Spike] Milligan born in Ahmednagar, India.

    1919

    "In 1919, Nijinsky became mad. He expressed himself solely through his "diary", a story and a mystical quest, and through numerous drawings declining endlessly a single geometric figure, the circle." (source) "During the early part of his breakdown Nijinsky would shut himself away all night, feverishly drawing and writing. Many of his drawings include stylised human figures and portraits, all based on the circle." [The Mask] "seems to belong to a group of less figurative drawings which he produced as his mental state approached a crisis, described by Romola in her biography of him: His study and rooms were literally covered with designs; no longer portraits or scenic or decorative subjects, but strange faces, eyes peering from every corner, red and black, like a bloodstained mortuary cover. They made me shudder. "What are those masks?" "Soldiers' faces. It is the war." (source)

    1919 Citizen soldiers: "in the aftermath of the war... ex-servicemen were drawn into recording their embittered experience at the hands of official agencies such as the war pensions authorities"

    1920

    30.6.1920 Edith Morgan born, County Durham. Her husband, William Morgan (Farmer, poet, economist) was born Breconshire in 1916. - Good Practices in Mental Health - "Edith worked for Mind head office and was director for Local Mind Associations. Through this role she was aware of very many good local mental health initiatives and she felt that these were never given the credit they were due. The newspapers, if they covered mental health at all, just had stories about large psychiatric hospitals and how bad they were (from various inquiries in the 1970s). So Edith had the idea for Good Practices in Mental Health, which she raised money for and ran herself when it started. Inevitably GPMH involved service users in its local projects but not in a planned way - more just because they were sometimes involved in the local projects. So, for example, Eastbourne GPMH was coordinated by a man who was an unemployed service user who was keen to do the work" (Thurstine) - 21.7.1982 - Edith died 21.8.2003 aged 83. William died Highgate 1990. Edith died Hampstead.

    1921

    21.4.1921 Sidney Isadore Briskin born in Bethnal Green, London. In 1965 he established Kingsley Hall Asylum. He died 10.2.2010 at Golders Green, London. Obituary by Leon Redler (offline)).

    September quarter 1921 Alfred Charles Barnes married Kate Marshall in Portsmouth. [Her mother called her 'Kit' - p.15]. Their first child, Mary Barnes, was born in 1923. "Mother would tell me how she met father at a church Bible study group. Then he went away to war, came back, asked her to marry him. At first she said no". (p.24)

    21.12.1921 William Sinclair Warwick (Bill Warwick) born, probably in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland. His family moved to England before he was six. His maternal grandmother, Susan Williams (born 1880) died in Fife District Asylum on 13.3.1941. Bill served in the RAF pay corps during the war, but was committed to a mental hospital in England whilst on leave from North Africa. He was in a manic state of happiness in relation to a romance. Bill was treated with Electro Convulsive Treatment, without anaesthetic in 1945/1946 - diagnosed Schizophrenic 1959 - wrote "This Mad World" February 1963 - April 1973 MPU - 1975-1976 plans awry - Visited Janet Cresswell 15.8.1976 - Parliamentary Commissioner - Pension tribunal - PROPAR and PROMPT - 1981 list - Matthew O'Hara Committee News 16.6.1981 - moved to Wirral Autumn 1982 - died June 1999

    1922

    about 1922 Edith Haithwaite born. See - See Rampton 1939 - Rampton 1957 - Rampton 1959

    1923

    2.2.1923 Mary Barnes born - (parents) - Peter Barnes 1925 - 5 in 1928 Uxbridge - Ruth Barnes 1930 - Dorothy Barnes 1935 - war and pre-nursing 1939 - 22 in 1945 - Mary and Peter 1945 - 8.12.1949 - 8.12.1951 - 1953 - 1962 - 5.6.1965 Kingsley Hall Asylum - crayons - Christmas 1965 - June 1966 - Autumn 1966 - Christmas 1966 - Spring 1967 - Mary and Peter 1967 - 1968 - 1969 First exhibition - 1971 First book - Psychiatric Oppression 1984/1985 - death of Peter 1984 - 1989 Second book - Died 29.6.2001 - Bow exhibition 2015 MaryBarnes

    1924

    5.3.1924 Jean Oury born

    The Royal Albert Institution for the Feeble-minded of the Northern Counties - Collective action 18.7.1924
    Patient James Ollier

    This statement is written by a patient and signed by patients.

    On July 18th 1924 Patient James Ollier reported to the Chief Attendant the bruise of patient William Dugdale on hip (penus) which Dugdale had said Mr Hully had done it with kicking him.

    The undersigned patients were present when the Chief Attendant replyed saying he did not believe it. Mr Hully would not do such a thing.

    Also informed him to mind his own business.

    J. Ollier
    J. Holmes
    A. Batty
    G. Hilton
    J. Morris
    R. Longmore

    1925 Evidence to the Royal Commission on Lunacy and Mental Disorder

    "The National Society for Lunacy Reform brought forward a number of ex-patients who wished to give evidence. After the first day's hearing in public, the Commission decided that the atmosphere was one of 'recrimination and controversy', and directed that future hearings of this kind should be held in camera. 'We do not find,' they record, 'that the evidence received from this source made any constructive contribution to the main purpose of our Inquiry" - "This evidence was published among the minutes of the Royal Commission" - Again, the Commission received over 360 letters from patients. 'Some of these,' they note, 'were unintelligible.' (Jones, K. 1960 pp 107-108

    13.9.1925 Peter George Barnes born Portsmouth - Mary and Peter 1945 - Mary and Peter 1967 - Kingsley Hall June 1969 - died 1984

    1926

    1926 Anthony O'Donnell (Tony O'Donnell) born. Whilst serving as an engineer in the merchant navy (mid-1940s), had voices in his head of the Chief Engineer telling him he was useless. Furious, he burst into the Chief Engineer's cabin, was put of the ship at Vancouver, sent back to England (Scotland?) and committed to a mental institution where he received ECT without anaesthetic. Mental Patients Union 1974 - Robin Farquharson House - married Nina Ramage late spring 1976 - Hackney Union of Mental Patients 1987 - died 2.12.2007

    1926 Pageant: Eric Irwin's life narrative
    Eric Irwin 1.8.1926 Eric Samuel Irwin born in Belfast - Left school aged 14 (1940?) - Left for Australia 1950 - Back from Australia 1954 - no Leucotomy 1956 - 1959 Mental Health Act - anyone a psychopath 1960 - London hostels: Willesdon from 1962 - Islington 1964 - Bromley 1965 - Cane Hill? - Paddington Day Hospital - 1973: Fish Pamphlet - taped first MPU meeting - May 1975 Mind Conference - Eric's Info 23.1.1976 - Frank Bangay 1980s - Psychiatric Oppression - PROMPT Fund Raising - CAPO March 1985 - What They Teach in Song 1986 - Autumn 1987 - Before Christmas 1987 - Mike Lawson's poem -

    1927

    15.3.1927 Frederick Alexander Jenner (Alec Jenner or Frederick A. Jenner) born, Brentford, Middlesex. Mother's maiden name Young . Nick Crossley's Interviewee 1? - Lived (2004) Manor Farm, Brightholmlee, Wharncliffe Side, Sheffield, S35 0DB. Died 1.7.2014

    1928

    11.3.1928 Thomas Ritchie (known as Tommy), founder of SUMP, born in Lanark, Scotland. [In 1971 he said he was 43. Exact date from death registration]. His brother John Ritchie was born about 1923. By the time Thomas arrived, his father was drinking heavily. This led to the family separating: John with his father and Thomas with his mother and a Roman Catholic aunt. The aunt pressured him to take technical rather than artistic subjects, but he did not last long studying engineering at the Royal Technical College (18 in 1946). Thomas came to London in the early 1950s and "drifted into photography". Arrested for drink driving in Aylesbury, he served three months in prison. In 1953-1954 he went to Ireland, living in Belfast (where he had a photography shop) and Dublin. About this time he became dependent on mood changing drugs. He moved back to England, establishing a photography business in Brighton. In January 1960 he began a three months sentence in Brixton for drink driving, during which his photography equipment and business books were stolen from his flat and dormobile in Brighton. He returned to Lanark and became a voluntary patient in Hartwoodhill Hospital. Court sent him to Crichton, Barlinnie Prison, and then Hartwood in 1963. [See SUMP box] In Hartwood he wrote a life-story Summer 1966, and life in Hartwood and personal grievances in September 1967 (box) - In 1968/1969 he completed a three-months course at a Rehabilitation Unit and passed two A level exams. (box) - From 1969 he shaved other patients, one of whom suggested the idea of a union (box) - His problems seeking work for rehabilitation in 1970/1971 became an important grievance (box) - After an unlicensed trip to Edinburgh, he was confined to "Ward 7" on 14.7.1971. - Tommy compiled collective grievances, dated 26.7.1971, which he posted to GAP on 30.7.1971. As a result, the Scottish Mental Welfare Commissioners visited Hartwood and "several personal grievances have been redressed". The signatories of the grievances were later taken as founding members of SUMP (Scottish Union of Mental Patients - Discharged (summer 1971) he continued to organise. The first public annoucement that he had started a Scottish Union of Mental Patients came in the undergroung newspaper Ink on 16.11.1971. The article reproduced te full text of Tommy's paper "Advantages of patients in mental hospitals having their own fully democratic and autonomous national association or union". Tommy used the Ink article to publicise the union in Hartwood and secured support from the Scottish Council for Civil Liberties and another article in The Glasgow Herald on 23.3.1972. On 7.4.1972 Tommy began a "Journal of SUMP Days" - phoning his MP on 28.4.1972 - visiting Gartnavel 7.5.1972 and Gartnavel and Gartloch 4.6.1972 - In June, Tommy decided he would have to go to London to find paid employment. He talked to th SSCL about continuing the work in Scotland, made a final visit to his colleague Bill Ferguson in Gartnavel and on the way to London decided to see if he could sell his story to the Daily Mirror. (See 20.6.1972). Tommy became a member of the London based Mental Patients Union in 1973, who published an article about SUMP in February 1974. From 1974 to 1976, he was a founder tenant of MPU house in Woodford. - After this he found work cleaning toilets in Hackney and died in Islington on 18.11.1983

    Joan Hughes' drinking
habits 25.2.1928 Joan Martin [Joan Hughes from October 1975] born. See - her autobiography - preservation of archives - Movements in the 1970s - 5.1.1993 - died 13.12.2008 - Joan was a pioneer of women in science - of the mental patients union - and of survivor history. She was joint author of A Directory of the Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs (October 1975)
    About 1989, Joan wrote her own "Obit". So here it is:
    "
    Born in 1928 in a warm working class street where all the children played together. Did well at school. Remained child-like all her life, because that was fun, but had an adult side. She did some original work in chemistry. Had great fun in doing laboratory work. Studied and achieved a chemistry degree. Later on in life, after a break down, became concerned about other people with breakdowns in a house for homeless people from mental hospitals. Worked tirelessly to give people a better life. The policies worked out in these houses later became Government policy, and people who had breakdowns, when better, were able to have community care and live as equal members of the community. She was a catholic who was pro- life and against nuclear weapons. Worked in the peace movement and lived to see the withdrawal of nuclear weaponry by the super powers. Joan had a lot of friends, who were of all different types. Almost everyone came to the funeral, but I wouldn't expect those with more important duties to the living to come. The friends made friends with each other. The cat was also brought to the funeral, and scratched for joy on the grave."

    2.2.1928 Mary Barnes five years old. "When I was five years old we moved to a bigger semi-detached house with a long garden. It was in the country about twenty miles from London, in those days in a rural area" (p.15) [Alfred Charles Barnes and Kate Barnes were at 2 Winter Villas, Money Lane, West Drayton, between 1928 and 1935]

    27.6.1928 Peter Michael Whitehead born in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, Hammersmith - See 1935 - St Joseph's and Besford Court - 7.12.1944 - 14.1.1946 Canning Town - Rampton 1946 - NCCL 1947 - NCCL 1.11.1954 - 1955 - Rampton 1956 - 1958 David Roxan's Sentenced without Cause

    1929

    4.8.1929 Birth, Salford, of Hugh Lionel Freeman. Assistant Editor British Journal of Psychiatry 1978-1983, when he bacame editor. Vice-Chair Mind 1984 to November 1988.

    1930

    15.4.1930 Ivy Buckland born. Died 11.12.2011, aged 81. "A great person, full of gentleness, compassion, dignity and humour". A long-serving officer of Contact at Tontine Road Community Centre, Chesterfield. Very involved with the development of Survivors Speak Out. See January 1986 - Spring 1986 - August 1986 - Summer 1986 - Manchester Mind Newsheet - August 1987 - Edale - Edale attendance - Barker and Peck 1987

    3.10.1930 Robin Farquharson born (died 1973). See - 1958 - 1959 - 1961 - 1964 - Kingsley Hall - 6.11.1967 - 1968 - 1968 - PNP - 1972 - 21.3.1973 - Bitman - 6.4.1973 - 4.7.1973 - See Wikipedia

    Late summer 1930 Michael Barnett born. Father (probably) Bearon Barnett a Jewish "bookmaker" (a binder of books in leather) and mother Joyce E Simmonds. They lived on the western borders of what is now Hackney and Michael went to Dame Alice Owen's school in Islington. After the army (National Service) he studied Maths and Law a Pembroke College Cambridge. He went into business and then travelled with his wife, Pamela. In Australia, in 1965 (35 years old), he was prescribed medication for his mental problems. They returned to London in June 1967 and the birth of their son, Shem, was registred in Hampstead in the spring of 1968. Through Aaron Esterson Michael was led to work at "Q Hospital" [Henderson]. In May 1969 he joined forces with Peter Stumbke in the Campaign Against Psychiatric Atrocities, before Sidney Briskin told him it was "connected with Scientology". Withdrawing from this, he wrote a manifesto for "People for a New Psychiatry" that was published in International Times in July 1969.
    This triggered People Not Psychiatry and he published a book with that name in 1973 which began "all writing is about oneself". He set up a "Growth Centre" that he called "Community". In 1974 he became a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), and ran seminars in Poona (India). In 1982 he set up his own "Energy Field" known as "The Wild Goose Company". He and his commuity wandered from Switzeralnd to Italy, to France, and to Germany. He now operate under the trade name "OneLife". Michael Barnett in 2014

    December 1930 Ruth Barnes born Uxbridge (see p.27) "My sister, Ruth, is still alive with her family in South Africa. My parents died there, my brother died in London and my younger sister Dorothy died in Australia" (Mary's Finale November 2000)

    1931

    About 1931 Kathleen Rutty born. She was detained illegally as a mental defective from from 21.6.1948, to 21.2.1956 - See Rampton 1956. At the time of her discharge on 21.2.1956, she was on licence in the care of her half-brother and in remunerative employment. See Hansard 8.12.1958 re review of people detained under that section.

    29.3.1931 Janet Myra Coleman (later Janet Cresswell) born at Bushey, Hertfordshire. Only child of Myra Coleman, a school teacher. Her father was a research chemist. After Watford Grammar School she became a secretary. She married John W. Cresswell, an architect, in the spring of 1956, in Watford. Their daughter was born in the summer of 1961, by which time they were living in London. Admitted to Horton February 1965 - assault November 1970 - first letter to MPU 17.4.1974 - petition October 1975 - Friern November 1975 - assault March 1976 - Holloway - trial 24.6.1976 - Bill Warwick visited 15.8.1976 - Sylvia Jeffares: Day School and Janet's 1981 petition - Matthew O'Hara Committee News 2 Summer 1981 - Lawletter 1983 - Phoenix 1984 - The One Sided Wall 1989 - Asylum Spring 1993 - Asylum 1994 3 - Asylum Spring 1995 - Asylum 1997 3 - Asylum 1998 2 - death of Bill Warwick June 1999 - Asylum 2001 4 - Transfer from Broadmoor 2003 - November 2006 release - death of Tony O'Donnell 2007 - Janet died 24.11.2015.   Janet's own ideas are outlined in a box.

    1932

    Myra Garrett Community Champion 1932 Myra Garrett born.

    See Friends of St Clements - F.E.E.L.

    Birth of F.E.E.L. article

    2014 Community Champion

    1933

    Peter Thompson born. - Pakenham-Thompson Report 1961 Broadmoor 1965 - Books 1972 and 1974 - Matthew Trust 1976 - UK Federation of Smaller Mental Health Agencies 1996 - died 2003

    About 1933 Noele Arden born. See Rampton 1948 - about 1953 - Moss Side 1954 - Rampton 1955 - Rampton 1957 - Child of a System 1977

    1933 Mary Betteridge born

    1934

    Peter Sedgwick born - on Schizophrenia From Within 1975 - PsychoPolitics 1982 - died 1983 - See also Mental Health and Civil Liberties and external link to memorial website

    1935

    March quarter 1935 Dorothy J Barnes born Uxbridge. Her mother nearly died and had a life after death experience. It was about this time that Mary Barnes "really started to talk to myself, to God, to be always praying" (p.37). Dorothy went to the Far East and Australia, but also lived with her daughter in Welwyn Garden City. Her daugther was a friend of her (aunt) Mary. Dorothy died in Australia: (Mary's Finale November 2000)


    early 1935 Wolfgang Huber born. See Heidelberg 1964 - Patientenkollektivs 1968 SPK February 1970 - 7.11.1972 - Fresnes June 1973

    20.7.1935 Ursel Schaefer, born in Cologne. She became a doctor and married Wolfgang Huber

    In the long letter of 22.10.1993, Wolgang Huber refers to Ursel and himself as "two Frontpatients"


    Under the 1921 Education Act, Special School education had to be provided from the age of seven for children who were defective or epileptic, considered cabable of education, but not considered suitable for normal school education. [See the 1927 description by Monsignor Thomas Newsome of high-grade defectives] Local authorities could provide this education by boarding a child in an area that had a special school. In Peter Whitehead's case he was moved from Southampton to Worcestershire:

    " Peter Whitehead... has been certified as unsuitable for education in an ordinary elementary school, but not incapable by reason of mental defect of receiving benefit from instruction in a special school for mentally defective children." (minutes of Southampton Borough Council 27.6.1935 [Peter's seventh birthday], quoted by David Roxan 1958, p. 23 [See 1921 Education Act].

    Finding a place took 15 months. See St Joseph's 1937

    1937

    1936

    2.2.1936 Marion Beeforth born - See Mindlink 1990 - Sainsbury 1990 - Mental Health Task Force 1993 - 1.3.1994 - died 29.7.2000 - obituary by Jan Walcraft

    1936 Jean-Claude Polack born

    1938

    About 1938 Birth of Peter Richard Jameson, President of the Oxford Union Debating Society. "He suffered from schizophrenia and so was in and out of hospital, but he maintained lifelong friendships". First chair (1986) of the National Voices Forum. "He enjoyed the Edinburgh Festival and performed in theFringe". Died 11.2.2008, aged 70.

    1938 Jill Molyneux born. Testimonies Project Died 2002.

    1938 Judith Holt born Neasden, London. Testimonies Project

    25.1.1938 Victor Finkelstein born. Died 30.11.2011. (Wikipedia)

    SheilaBeskine June 1938 Sheila Anne Beskine born in Croydon. She became a student at the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, Wiltshire (closed 1986) and an occupational therapist at St Clements Hospital, Bow. She wrote poems working with other Art therapists, including Edward Adamson. Sheila thinks across categories, using pictures, objects, poems and associations. She has inspired may discussions of Art at Survivor History Group meetings.

    4.12.1938 Ken Smith born in Rudston, Yorkshire. He co-edited Beyond Bedlam with Matthew Sweeney - In the poetry archive he reads some of his poems.

    1939 First edition of Alcoholics Anonymous - Also known as the Big Book. 300,000 copies were printed. They took sixteen years to sell out. (external link) - archive

    Some people argue (See external link) that Alcoholics Anonymous and Neurotics Anonymous are the grandparents of the recovery movement.

    about 1939 Mike Llywelyn Cox (Mike Cox) born. See The Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (CPPIH) - PPeyes - Desmond Curley - blogspot - first posting for Survivors History Group - 23.7.2012

    26.4.1939 Matthew Paschal O'Hara born (in Dublin?). See 1956 - MPU November 1974 - March 1976 - June 1980 death

    Sunday 3.9.1939 Britain declared war on Germany.

    Mary Barnes says (p.38) "The day the war started, father was sent away, out on the North Sea on minesweepers, and I was sent away, to school as an evacuee". (16 on 6.2.1939. She was on a pre- nursing course). "This was the beginning of the physical split-up of our family. Mother was left with my brothers and sisters. Sometimes father came home during the school holidays. He was in the Home Guard and used to get us on the kitchen floor, practising unarmed combat. Battered about as I felt, mad an angry and often homesick, it was not me but my brother who then broke down"

    1940

    1940- 1948 Edward and Stephanie [born Allfree] rented Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire, to escape the war in a drug induced state using Benzedrine, which they called Starlight. "There they created an aesthetic and erotic paradise based on a fantasy land called 'Thessyros'

    "Edward Fell Scott-Snell and Stephani Mary Allfree met in 1935 and set about cultivating Thessyros, a fantasy land Edward had already sown with overripe imagery and peopled with priapic cupids, ageing debauchees and, Godwin explains, 'assorted gardeners, priests, and organists who gleefully seduce their willing, under-aged charges'" (Chris Fletcher, The Spectator 2.5.2015)

    1941

    About 1941 Lewis Mantus born - 1973 - 1988

    About 1941 Jenny James born. From a very political (communist) family, she was active politically from 1958 (aged 17), "firstly in the Communist Youth movement and then in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament". She also had several personal relationships. Her first child, Rebecca James [Becky], was born in the late summer of 1961 in Exeter, Devon. Being in "very radical left wing movements, with very radical left wing boyfriends" was not enough and she sometimes felt suicidal. She was therapy with David Boadella, a follower of Wilhelm Reich in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Convinced that "radical social change couldn't take place without a deep emotional healing" she "became involved with the People Not Psychiatry (PNP) Movement and for several years ran a free, drop in therapy house in London" (online biography). Speaks of her "community" being "founded in London in 1970" (Green Letters).   People not Psychiatry 1974 - Jenny was based at 12 Villa Road from 1974 to 1978 - At the same time, she established the Atlantis commune in Burtonport, Ireland. Nick named "The Screamers" by the local people. - 1977 - In 1980 the community moved to the island of Inishfree. In 1988 they moved to Colombia in South America. 1997. In 2000 one of Jenny's grandsons and his friend were murdered.

    Peter Blackman Spring 1941 Peter Scott Blackman born, Hammersmith, London. His mother (maiden name Scott) was of Jamaican and English descent. His father was Barbadian. His mother had become the first black nurse in England (?). He was evacuated to Yorkshire and later sent to Glasgow.

    He returned to London aged seven (?), but his parents had temporarily separated and he and his brother were sent to a children's home in Essex.

    After two years the boys rejoined their younger sister and parents, who had rented a flat on Heath Hurst Road in Hampstead. Peter's father was a priest turned communist activist and among his many visitors was Paul Robeson, whom he once accompanied to Russia in the early 1950s. At 30 he suffered a breakdown and was sent to
    Henderson Hospital in Surrey. Formed Steel an Skin in 1975 Chief executive of the Afiya Trust in 1999. Died 1.3.2012 Camden Journal obituary - latest.com - video

    1941 David Brandon born. See North West Mind - Voices of Experience - Consumers as Colleagues - Died November 2001 - biography online

    1941 Ken Lumb born - He "grew up in the Freehold area" of Rochdale, Lancashire, "living his early years in Talbot Street. He developed muscular dystrophy in his late teens and because his brother was also disabled, the family moved into one of Rochdale's first specially adapted homes in Rooley Moor Road". - "confined to a wheelchair from the age of 20" (1961) - November 1964 - Rochdale Sculptures - "He met Anne at the Ronald Gorton Day Centre - Scope - Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation - Rochdale Voluntary Action - 1977 married Anne Plumb "moving to Shelley Avenue, Boarshaw," [Middleton] "where they have remained ever since" - 1981: International Year of Disabled People - 1983 Greater Manchester Disability Action Group - helped found Middleton DIAL (Disablement, Information and Advice Line) Constitution 9.6.1983 - "Their daughter Hazel was born in 1984" - 1985 - 1985 A founder member Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People - 1986 - "a governor at Boarshaw Primary School for several years". - "for 12 years edited local magazine Coalition, which covered the issues affecting people with disabilities." - "admitted to North Manchester General Hospital suffering from bronchial pneumonia". Died 19.2.2009, aged 67. external link to obituary from which quotations are taken. A Tribute was held for Ken at the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People on Tuesday 10.3.2009, followed by a private cremation

    1942

    Spring 1942 Julian H Barnett born Bathavon, Somerset. His mother and father came from Stepney in the East End of London, which his where his siblings were born. Presumably his mother was living in the country to escape the bombing. See PROMPT

    1943

    1944

    about 1944 Patsy Staddon born. See 2003 (Women's Alcohol Dependency) - 2009 (authenticity in a hostile environment) - 2013 (editor research book) - and 2015 (alcohol)

    1944 Gabrielle Cox born. See 1971

    27.1.1944 Kevin Coyne born. Died 2.12.2004. Wikipedia

    29.1.1944 Andrew Roberts (me) born in London during the final air raids of the second world war. How did this little baby gain his identity as a mental patient? He was very young when he started looking at the world upside down. From about eleven years old he sometimes had intense suicidal desires, but at other times was equally intensely over-enthusiastic about life. Runwell Hospital, Wickford measured the waves of his brain about 1955. Before he left the school for failures, he wore academic dress on the back of a lorry. By 1963 he was standing at the door of a psychiatric centre (Ingrebourne), looking on a sunlit lawn, with his mind set on dying, but his heart responding to the grass. When you leave a mental hospital you have to choose to cover up or be open about it. Andrew does not remember ever covering up. In 1964, Valerie Argent was sent to Belmont (mental) hospital to get her away from Andrew. It did not work: On his 21st birthday, they were married. In 1969 he started studying social science at Enfield College of Technology. Another breakdown. He and Valerie helped found the Mental Patient's Union in 1973. Another breakdown and another suicide attempt. Just survived. Still alive. Ambition to die a natural death. See stereotype. More potty biographies

    September 1944 First issue of The Broadmoor Chronicle - Broadmoor patients' magazine

    October 1944 An exhibition at Ryman's in Oxford of the paintings of Edward and Stephani [born Allfree] Scott-Snell [soon Godwin] at which privately printed copies of Stephani's poems Thessyros were on sale. In the fantasy world of Thessyros, Cupid and Cherry are adolescent lovers. "During the autumn... friends and relations loyally flock to the exhibition (page 136). Amongst them may have been uncle and aunt Bernard and Dorothy Allfree of Hercies Road, Uxbridge, who named their youngest, and last, daughter "Cherry" in 1948. See the illustration "Cupid and Cherry in the Ivory Tower", which illustrated Thessyros.

    7.12.1944 Peter Whitehead was "unaware ... that he had been certified... At Besford Court the month's dragged past. The Germans surrendered" [8.5.1945], "and Hiroshima and Nagasaki heralded Japan's downfall. Peter's life was not affected: his world was limited to the bounds of the institution." (Roxan 1958, p.73)

    1945

    8.5.1945 Allied victory in Europe.

    "just after the war", Mary Barnes was wondering about going to Russia to become a doctor and have a baby as a single mother. She considered her ideas "fantastic, must be crazy" and went to Europe as a midwife with the United Nations Relief Organisation, before becoming a District Nurse and then "to be content just to travel, and get married in order to have a baby. I decided to become an Army Nursing Sister". It was at the point when she was "ready to enter the army" that her brother Peter entered her room at night and said he had come to sleep with her. This event led, eventually, to his hospitalisation. (pages 42-43)

    "When I was twenty-two the Army stationed me abroad, first to Egypt and then to Palestine. Peter remained locked up in a mental hospital" (Mary Barnes, p.48)

    28.11.1945 Alistair Cox born. See PNP Manchester 1971 - Tony Riley - 42nd Street 1979

    Peter Beresford 1945 Peter Beresford born - 1967: BA from Oxford College, Oxford University - 1975 to 1977: lecturer in social administration at Lancaster University - 1976 married Suzy (Suzie) Croft - eight years poverty as a Battersea community activist - [Peter calls North Battersea "my own home town"] - 1978 Peter and Suzie's Battersea Community Action report, no. 1. - 1980 to 1992 mental health service user
    5.10.1982 Battersea, Newcastle and Nottingham dissenting voices at
    Community Challenge Conference - Summer 1987 on Steering Group for MIND Consumer Advisory Network - July 1988 article "In Care in North Battersea" published - 1990: Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at Brunel University - Survivors Speak Out - "Psychiatric System Survivors and the Disabled People's Movement" - Doing Disability Research - take hold of our past - Literature - Professor in 1998 - chair, Shaping Our Lives 1999 - INVOLVE - History meetings - User Controlled Research - 18.7.2005 - October 2005 - May 2006 - Manchester 2008 - individual or collective? - 20.10.2010 it's the poor what gets the blame - keeping Mad Studies safe .

    1945/1946 In 1978 Bill Warwick wrote that he was "still suffering from the effect of the dose" [of ECT} "meted out to him in 1945/46". In 1979, however, a Pensions tribunal denied he had received ECT and said he was treated the drug Somnifane: "It was used quite a lot in the Military Lunatic Bins"

    1946

    1946 The Association of Parents of Backward Children formed

    Special Educational Treatment
    Post war legislation meant that Besford Court became just a Special School and had to close it Mental Deficiency Institution activities. That meant that residents like Peter Whitehead who were no longer children had to be discharged, either to supervised places in the community or to other institutions. In January 1946 Peter was sent on a trial licence to work amongst the bomb damage of the East End of London. A fight with another boy resulted in his recall after fourteen days.

    14.1.1946 Peter Whitehead left Besford Court "for a trial period of licence in London. He worked in the kitchens at the Dockland Settlement in Canning Town. "It was all a terrible shock to me. I realized how shut-in my life had been, while people were dying when the bombs came down. I had seen photographs in newspapers, but none of them had prepared me for what things were really like. Walking through streets that were only paths through the rubble, all my old fears about my mother being buried after an air raid came back to me". Peter was taken back to Besford Court following a fight with another boy. He was in Canning Town for 14 days - His first period outside an institution since he was a baby. (Roxan 1958, pp 73-74)

    17.9.1946 Anne Plumb born. See Anne Plumb by Anne Plumb - Anne Plumb Collection and books - 1970 moved to Rochdale - 1977 married Ken Lumb - archive start - Letter on racism, Autumn 1986 - Edale September 1987 - DATA Distress Awareness Training Agency. May 1988 - Survivors Speak Out June 1989 - Treasurer Survivors Speak Out 1991-1993 - London 10.4.1992 - Distress or disability? February 1994 - Manchester 2008

    December 1946 First Rampton Board of Visitors' review of Peter Whitehead's case. "The future years were to teach him the bitter truth that a man inside Rampton, fighting for his liberty, can achieve nothing by himself. He is lost without outside help and outside pressure" (Roxan 1958 p. 125)

    1947

    1947 British textbook still says "In my opinion it would be an economical and humane procedure were their existence to be painlessly terminated"

    1947 Birth of Terence McLaughlin, editor of Asylum

    1947 Rodney Wiley born Leytonstone, London. He went to sea during the sixties as a merchant seaman to see the world. On his return, his life revolved around drugs and creative people. Met his wife, had a son and moved to Southend. One day he came back from work and fell ill with mental health problems and have had them ever since. It is only in the last few years that he has had a breakthrough from his breakdown, which includes OCD. (2012) His book Fighting Madness took twenty years to write.

    About 1947 Christine Andrew born - See - picture - experience - meaning - ECT - Voices and Survivors Speak Out

    16.1.1947 Elaine Murphy born. Grew up in Nottingham. Qualified at University of Manchester Medical School in 1971. 1972-1996 Psychiatrist. With three year gap with George Brown. Foundation Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals in 1983-1986 and District General Manager for Lewisham and North Southwark Health Authority, and Personal Advisor to the Chief Medical Officer. As District General Manager she was partly responsible for closure of Bexley and Cane Hill - 1987/1988 BMJ articles on Community Care - - mid 1990 three months writing After the Asylums - 1997-2000 PhD.

    David Kessel photographed by Natalie Fonnesu about 2013 2.4.1947 David Kessel born, Hampstead, London.

    1970 Emily Bronte - 1976 - 1980 -

    1981 - Hungering - Hackney Mental Patients Association - 1983 - Hackney Mental Health Action Group - Phoenix 1 - Phoenix 2 - Minstead Lodge 1986 - Hackney Union of Mental Patients - 1987 Vixen

    Phoenix 3 - 1999 Life Against Death - 2000 Summer Rain - Hillside, Llangattock - Friends of East End Loonies

    2010 Pageant - 2013: Ravaged Wonderful Earth

    26.4.1947 Tony Riley born in Manchester. His niece Linda was born 16.9.1951. They grew up together and were very close. From 1958 to 1964 Tony attended St Clares Secondary School, Alworth Road, Higher Blackley, Manchester 9, where he became head boy, but did not tell his family. He left without completing his A level course. In 1966 Tony was diagnosed as being manic-depressive (age about 19). He was admitted to Gaskell House, the (small) psychiatric unit of Manchester Royal Infirmary. Tony was a hospital in-patient on two occasions, the second time in Prestwich. At some time, he developed an intense dislike of (Withington?) hospital because of its treatment of patients. He and Justin Larner of Manchester Mind made a trip to witness demolition at the hospital in celebration. In 1971, when Tony was living in a men's therapeutic community in Plymouth House, he met another ex-patient, Mary Walmesly, at a social in the women's therapeutic community at Forrester House. Tony and Mary Walmesly were members of the PNP network which, in Manchester, stood for "People Need People" as well as "People Not Psychiatry". Tony came into contact with PNP as an indirect result of moving into a group home. Tony finished his A levels part time, financing this by a job as a cook at Daisy Bank Road Day Centre. From 1974 Tony studied sociology at Sussex University, graduating in 1977. In 1979/1980 he studied for a Post Graduate Certificate in Youth and Community Work at Manchester Polytechnic. From 1980 he worked as a volunteer at the new 42nd Street, founded by Alistair Cox, and served on its management committee. Mary and he were married on 3.10.1981. From 1981 Tony was Senior Youth Worker at the Harphurhey Neighbourhood Project in Manchester and from 1983 Senior Youth Worker with Manchester City Council. He moved from youth work to be (part-time) development worker at Rochdale Mind and later fulltime development worker at Manchester Mind, where he remained until 1990. Projects he developed included a drop-in centre and legal support groups that gave access to a solicitor. June 1987 facilitating Harpurhey users group - Whilst working for Manchester Mind, Tony was sent to America for two weeks to study "normalisation" in Atlanta, Georgia. - In May 1988 He founded Distress Awareness Training Agency (DATA) with Andrew Hughes and Anne Plumb - Manchester Users' Support Group - DATA box - Employed by Having a Voice from 1990 - In 1994 Tony helped Nigel Rose to launch the Schizophrenia Media Agency - 24.7.2004 - 31.3.2006 Retired from Having a Voice, aged 60. A commemorative DVD was made - 2012 died of cancer, aged 65, - Funeral 18.6.2012, 12pm, St Edwards Catholic Church, Thurloe Street, Rusholme, M14 5SG. Alistair Cox spoke about Tony. About 60 people attended.

    November 1947 Alan Hartman born. See Hackney Hospital MPU July 1974 - Manchester 1985 - Springfield Hospital - Manchester Mind 1986 - Manchester Users Support Group - 24 hours support 1987 - The Patients' Case 1988 - Asylum April 1989 - Hackney 1997- 2000 - Hackney Users Support Group - about 2001 Manchester Users Support Group became Manchester Users Network - 24.7.2004 Patient and Public Involvement Forum - 2008 Manchester Users Network website

    1948

    1948 Ann Davis born.

    1948 Brian Taylor born See Rochdale Mind

    1948 Liz Davies born. Married Tim Durkin. See 1972 The Need for a Mental Patients' Union. Now Liz Davies. - website - Liz Davies collection

    1948 Brian Douieb born. See 1972

    2.3.1948 Cherry Virginia J Allfree born, Uxbridge, Middlesex. Her father was a professional artist specialising in paintings of garden flowers in vases to hang in one's sitting room. He died in Folkestone, aged 75, when Cherry was only ten years old. Her older sister (born 1937) was called Myrtle Ellen, so her parents liked beautiful plant names and, hopefully, cherished their new daugter. She also appears to have been named from "Cupid and Cherry", pictured in her cousin's book of poems and plates, published privately in 1944, and publicly in the year she was born, and this has more sinister tones.

    After her father's death, Cherry lived with her mother who was 20 years younger than her father and she had a lot of time off from school because of sickness.

    About 1965 (17?) she was removed from her mother's care by a court on an allegation that her mother had permitted sex between Cherry and a lodger. Cherry said it was rape. Cherry was in a remand home for six months and then placed with a foster lady for six months, who registered as mentally handicapped because she was slow at school. She was then admitted to the first of a group of units in Colchester. She went to a small home, Kingsmead for two years. (1966 - 1967 - 1968?) - Aged 19 Lexden House for a year, Essex Hall for three years (1969 - 1970 1971?) , back to Lexden House for three years (1972 - 1973 - 1974?) and finally back to Kingsmead for two years (1975 - 1976?) , making a total of 12 years (about 1965 to 1976) in some kind of institutional care or foster care. Leaving Kingsmead for hotel work when she was 28 years old, she had a hole in the heart operation following a taxi accident, went to Manchester for work, and came back to London. Living in hostels in Kings Cross, friends took her into a squat in Hornsey (Welby House) - "Cherry met Julian Barnett in the mid 1970s. They formed a partnership whereby Julian would produce the PROMPT books and Cherry would sell them. (Frank Bangay, email 5.4.2010). - 1977 - 1978 - 1979 - 1980 - R.D. Laing - A Day in the Life - 1981 - PROMPT Dulwich - 1982 - Mixed Emotions - 1983 - "Cherry was the PROMPT representive who would go over to Holland to meet the Dutch survivors". (Frank Bangay, email 5.4.2010). - 1984 - 1985 - 1986 - in hospital 2002 - Died, aged 57, around March 2005 in Lambeth area of London.

    Wednesday 21.4.1948 Valerie Pamela Argent born at home. Her father and mother were living at 54 Avenue Road, Bexleyheath, Kent. Her father was a librarian. - See also preservation of archives. Summary of life compiled summer 1985. An account in Time Together December 2008 specifically relates her personal biography to the development of the mental patients' movement. See 1962-1965 medical file - Essex Hall and Ingrebourne - Escape from Belmont - shared house - CHAMH - Community Health Council - discarded poems - Patients Committee - Family History Group - death

    25.5.1948 Mike Lawson born. External link to Testimonies Project archive summary - full text - Born in an internment camp Timatowal [Temirtau?] outside Karaganda, in Kazakhstan. - Berlin - August 1955 Ambler Junior School in Finsbury Park - Haverstock Comprehensive School - 1965 (17) "I'd had four years in and out of Napsbury" - "I'm nineteen. Nineteen for the first ECT". Napsbury - November 1969 (about 20) Napsbury - Paddington Day Hospital - MPU: First meeting, working group and second meeting: lived with Jill at 56 Connaught Road, Craven Park, NW10. Often at Harlesden Community Project. Had a typewriter, tape recorder, and facility to duplicate using stencils. - PROMPT Fund Raising - Mind 1985 - What They Teach in Song - Capital Radio "Breakdown" 1986 - We're not Mad - We're Angry - narrative poem - Vice-Chair Mind 1988 -1994 - Crisis Cards - 23.8.1991 - an archive of his website - See SUN website

    15.8.1948 Sylvia Rachael Jeffares born Islington. See Day School 1981 - friendship with Joan Hughes - Janet Cresswell's 1981 Petition and Sylvia's death.

    1.9.1948 Peter Barham born - See Literature Review - Winterton group (1969-1972) - schizophrenic thinking (thesis 1977) - thesis (1977) - schizophrenia and human value (1984) - Hamlet Trust (1988) - patient to person (1991) - Poland (1990) - closing asylums (1992) - human value new preface (1993) - Open Society Institute - patient to person relocated (1995) - Pathways to Policy 2002 - forgotten lunatics (2004) - 8.10.2004 - Albania (2005) - 27.4.2007 - March 2008 - 9.11.2012 -

    9.10.1948 Hilda Turner born

    7.12.1948 Jan Wallcraft (Janet Wallcraft) born. Jan was chair of Islington Women and Mental Health in the early 1980s. She became a student at Middlesex University in 1983. In 1985-1986 she spent six months at Mind (Harley Street) on a student placement. She took part in We're Not Mad We're Angry in 1986. She graduated from Middlesex University (BSc Hons Science Technology and Society) in (the summer of?) 1987. She was Mindlink Co-ordinator from December 1987 to late in 1992 - In October 1992 she was MINDLink representative in talks about the Mental Health Task Force - a freelance mental health consultant from 1992 to 1997 - In September 1993 she joined the Coordinating Group of Survivors Speak Out, editing the newsletter in December 1994 - She worked with the Mental Health Foundation from 1997 to 2001 - Doing Disability Research - Literature - Senior Researcher, User Focused Research, Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health from 2001 to 2005 (See 2003 History) - Her Ph.D Thesis in 2002 was on Recovery - Fellow for Experts by Experience respecting users and carers (National Institute for Mental Health in England) 2002 to 2006 - Operational Manager for SURGE (Service User Research Group in England), from 2005 to 2007 - See her own account on the SUN website and her online CV - offline copy)

    1949

    About 1949 Peter Lindley born in Yorkshire - archive of profile

    15.1.1949About 1949 Kevin Richard Sutton, known as Richard Suton, born, Tonbridge, Kent. He met Peter Campbell in April 1986 and joined Survivors Speak Out "there and then" and took part in planning the Edale Conference in Derbyshire in September 1987. The first membership of Survivors Speak Out enrolled at a meeting in Ivy Buckland's hotel bedroom at a conference in Newcastle in the Spring of 1986. Richard was Survivors Speak Out's first Information Officer (unpaid) and was known to everyone who went to its AGMs because he provided "lovely food for lunches" ... "at a price people could afford" (Peter Beresford Community Care 18.10.2001). On Saturday 27.1.1996, Richard and Peter hosted a Ten Year Celebration Party at the Survivors Speak Out Office. Money had run out for the Information Service and so they gave a farewell present to Gloria Gifford, the paid information worker. A web site created to replace the Information Service remained online for many years without being updated. In retrospect, the ten year celebration may have been the beginning of the end. When Richard died in Bromley in June 2001 he was still representing mental health service users. - Died, aged 52, 2001 Registered Bexley

    1949 Peter Campbell born in Logierait, Scotland - "a regular recipient of NHS psychiatric services since 1967" (Brackx and Grimshaw 1989). - See September 1970 - Testimonies - June July 1983 first letter in OpenMind - September 1983: activist - Camden Mental Health Consortium - November 1985: Spoke at MIND conference and his life begins a rapid change from obscurity to privilege - an officer of Survivors Speak Out from 1986 to 1996 - See his summary of Survivors Speak Out - Spring 1986: preparing for We're not Mad - We're Angry" - 17.11.1986 We're not Mad - We're Angry - historian of the movement - 27.6.1987 "dance floors of everyday life" - September 1987: holding the Edale Conference together - Brackx and Grimshaw 1989 describe as "actively involved in self-advocacy ... a member of Camden Mental Health Consortium ... Secretary of Survivors Speak Out and a nursery nurse" - November 1991: Survivors Poetry - 18.2.1992 - 10.4.1992 - Summer 1992: (Survivors Speak Out funding) - Speaker at Derby November 1994 - 1996 employed on Open University K257 - 1997: interviewed by Nick Crossley - 28.2.2001: UK Survivor Workers' conference Manchester - Martha Robinson poetry prize 2002 - 2003: On Our Own Terms - 14.1.2005: Survivors History Group - 17.5.2006: Diamond Champion

    7.3.1949 Malcolm Chisholm born. Labour MP for Edinburgh Leith from 1992, (Edinburgh North and Leith from 1997). Member of the Scottish Parliament for Edinburgh North and Leith from 1999. CAPS, Edinburgh Users Forum and Advocard are located in his contituency. From November 2001 to October 2004 he was Minister for Health and Community Care in Scotland.

    8.12.1949 Mary Barnes "received into the church, into the mystical body of Christ, was the most important event in my life... Making confession and receiving communion bound me into the body of Christ. That same body that carried the cross to Calvary had I received into myself. My mother was curious. A year later she became a Catholic" (pp 49-50)

    1950

    Nelsy, author of Standing up to madness - An autobiography, born in Bogota, the capital of Colombia. See 1948 - 1957 - 1966 - 1978 - 1988 - 1998 - 2010 - 2015

    1950 Peter Lehmann born - external link

    1950 David Pilgrim born. See literature - 1991 - 1993 - 1993 - 14.1.2005 - 2005 - (external link)

    1950 Denise Winn, editor of Mind Out, born.

    20.5.1950 Patrick Joseph Kelly (Joe Kelly) born "in St Mary's Hospital Praed Street, Paddington London where Penicillin was invented". "Joe has been a service user/survivor for 48 years and an activist for over 30 years". (NSUN 6.9.2017). A co-founder of Footsteps Art in 1998. Nominated a champion in March 2007 - fundraising to go to Africa - One of two Brits who attended th WNUSP Conference in Kampala Uganda on 2009 - Started his blog - 9.11.2012 a new vision of disability.

    June 1950 Renata [Erica] Edge born. She became a language tutor and a Church of England Minister. Living in Derbyshire before moving to Scotland about 2007 (?). Canal boat enthusiast, photographer and quilt maker: "I am a very busy person". See June 2012.

    29.6.1950 Mr E S Irwin, 24 year old Radio Serviceman from 8 Grove Park, Bangor, Belfast, Northern Ireland, sailed from Tilbury on the Ormonde for Sydney, Australia.

    1950 Philippe Bernardet born. (Died 15.4.2007, aged 57) - See Groupe d'information sur le Asiles

    1951

    Barbara Taylor 2013 1951 Barbara Taylor born in Western Canada. She moved to London in 1971. "Women in the London Feminist History Group heard the story of the Owenites in regular installments over the years". See 1981 - 1983 Eve and the New Jerusalem -

    1988 Friern - "Mary Wollstonecraft and the Wild Wish of Early Feminism"

    24.10.2010 - 6.2.2014 The Last Asylum - 26.6.2015 archive questions

    1951 Matthew Sweeney born in Donegal, Ireland. He co-edited Beyond Bedlam with Ken Smith - In the poetry archive he reads one of his poems.

    14.1.1951   Frank Bangay born Wandsworth. Many of his poems relate back to growing up in a working class area of London. Frank left school at fifteen and in his early twenties started suffering from severe depression and anxiety. Expressing himself through poetry helped to disperse the gloom and he performed at Troubadour coffee house in Earls Court. His poem Spring is Rising was first published in a hospital magazine. At the end of the 1970s, he collaborated with musicians in the Fighting Pigeons band. His work often combines either words and music or words and pictures. In 1979: he first read PROMPT booklets. From the early 1980s he distributed hand made poster-poems such as Solidarity (October 1982). Frank's poetry and music events to raise money for PROMPT began in 1984 and continued, on behalf of CAPO in 1985. By January 1985, Frank believed in "causing a fuss". Following an historic gatecrash in May 1985, Frank organised entertainment at the Mind conferences in the autumn of 1985 and 1986. Frank's obituary of Eric Irwin, who died in December 1987, is an early source of survivor history. Survivor poetry and music convinced Frank that "our poetry and other forms of creativity are our only voice, and the only way we really have of communicating our experiences." (Interview with Xochitl Tuck). The "original inspiration for Survivors Poetry" in 1991 derived from Frank "who organised numerous poetry events and published poetry magazines with great love and dedication throughout the 1980s". Frank was one of the four principle organisers. From 1992 to 1997 he organised workshops in hospitals, day centres, sheltered housing and similar grass-roots places. But as the organisation moved away from such activities, Frank relocated himself to work with Core Arts, in Hackney. In March 1995 Frank drafted an "ongoing statement" in connection of with meetings of CAPO that were taking place. In May 1996, Frank wrote "The old poet rediscovers his youth, he learns from his wisdom". Poems like And We Can Learn, relating to his working class childhood, reflect on its influence and limitations. Frank was interviewed by Nick Crossley in 1997:. Naked Songs and Rhythms of Hope, his collected works in 1999, contains in its annotations a history of the movement. It was launched at the first Mad Pride event. In 2000, Frank surprised the Mad Pride collective by pointing out that their movement had a long history. As a result, the "Fish Pamphlet" was republished in Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture and Frank contributed "An Uphill Struggle, But It's Been Worth It". In 2005 Poetry Express published "The Importance of Being Frank" by Xochitl Tuck. Working with Core Arts, Frank has published several CDs. These include Jewels in the Pound Shop in August 2005. Frank provided harmonica backing for some of Brian (Smiley) Sims songs. Frank's 'Punk Gardener' rambles were first published in August 2007. In Summer 2009 he published Songs, Poems And Prayers, performed with support from gospel singer Sophie Mirrel and other Core Arts artists. Articles in 2011 and 2012 explore the madness history of the musical world of which Frank is part. Frank has contributed many items to the Survivors History archive. See, for example, August 2016.

    1.3.1951 Carol Batton born. Carol came to poetry relatively late, prompted by being prescribed lithium in 1983. This was a pivotal moment in her life: "I went on medication; first it sent me to sleep and then I started jotting down poetry. "The medication is by far the worst thing that ever happened to me but it gave me poetry." See Survivors Speak Out newsletter One - Asylum 2000 and Asylum 2002

    24.4.1951 Terry [Terence Robert] Simpson, born near Garforth, Leeds, to a working- class family. His father worked on the railway, and both sides of his family were heavily involved in the mining industry. He went to Leeds Grammar School and then to University College, Aberystwyth in 1969, gaining a degree in Philosophy in 1972. "I continued postgraduate studies into "the nature of mind" through psychiatric hospitalisation in Leeds several times from 1975 to 1985, (diagnosis "acute paranoid schizophrenic episodes") at which time I discovered re-evaluation counseling (also known as co-counselling), which I think has helped me stay out of the mental health system since then".
    TerrySimspon Terry Simpson survived psychiatry before working as an advocate for Leeds City Council Health Unit from 1989 to 1993, during which time he helped set up the Leeds Mental Health Advocacy Group. He was Co-ordinator, then National Director, of the UK Advocacy Network from 1993 to 2002, rejoining the board in 2004. He has written two plays about the mental health system and is an active member of Survivors Poetry. Martha Robinson poetry prize 2001

    8.12.1951 Mary Barnes entered a convent of Carmellite nuns in Wales. (p.51)

    1952

    1952 Terry Conway born Islington. In-patient Friern Hospital 1972-1973. Lived in Hackney from 1984. City and Hackney Mind (?) volunteer from April 1993. Co-founder of Hackney Patients Council 1994. Chair for three years. Contributor to Mad Pride 2000

    David (John) Hill (Dave Hill) born. See allies - 1983 - The Politics of Schizophrenia - British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry - "Psychiatric Oppression" - Mind 1985 - 12.1.1986 - 17.5.1986 - Director Mind in Camden - London Alliance for Mental Health Action (October 1987) - 19.11.1988 - 20.6.1989 - 13.1.1993

    1952 Anne Beales born - CAPITAL - Together Service User Involvement Directorate - Survivor History Group - Early 2006 - May 2006

    Tony Glynn 3.2.1952 Birth of Tony Glynn. External link to staff profile at Birmingham University - named Suresearch in 2000 - Co-authored Two Decades of Change in 2006 - died 5.3.2008 - Glynn Rooms

    25.4.1952 Howard John Mingham born Norfolk. Moved to Hackney aged ten (about 1962). Patient in F Block 1976. Resident Arbours, Norbury 1977/1979. Hackney Writers Workshop 1980/1981. See 1984 - 2012 - 2014

    11.7.1952 Ray Rowden born. First chair of Mad Pride

    1953

    1953 Edna Conlan born. See 1990 - National Advocacy Network 1991 MBE 12.6.1993 - See Mental Health Task Force 1993 - Have We Got Views for You 1994 - Scottish Users Network AGM 1994 - Advocacy - A Code of Practice 1994 - National Advocacy Network 1998 - Royal College of Psychiatrists 1999 - died 19.8.2010

    About 1953 Jackie Biggs born: See August 1987 - Edale - Edale Letter - 6.2.1988 working party - Crisis Cards

    About 1953 Premila Trivedi born. She has been a medical research biochemist - a primary school teacher - a member of the group who developed the Mental Health National Service Framework, which she describes as a "horrendous experience" - an interviewer on the Testimonies Project (an inspirational experience). She helped set up SIMBA (Share in Maudsley Black Action) - See 18.7.2005 - 15.9.2005 - 2016 Christmas Card - articles

    About 1953 Mark Roberts born

    Child of a System about 1953 Noele Arden told her fellow inmates in Rampton that
    "I'd write a book and let the outside world know what went on behind those high walls and locked doors. Although I meant it, I hardly thought I would ever get the opportunity to do so" Child of a System p.62
    Her book was published in 1977

    1953 Mary Barnes a patient, for a year, in St Bernard's Hospital. (p.52 following)

    16.1.1953: Mary Nettle born in "a small village nestling at the foot of Bredon Hill in the Vale of Evesham... I am very lucky to have secure roots in such a lovely place. I was sent away to a convent boarding school at the age of 10" See SUN website - 1970s market research - 1977 a horrible Victorian asylum - 1987 Edale "I felt myself a survivor of life" - 1992 Mental Health Task Force - December 1992 Mental Health User Consultant - 29.5.1993 DATA - 1994 Building on Experience - 1996 chair of MindLink - 1997: Mental Health Act Commissioner - February 2000 - INVOLVE 2003 - Chair European network 2004 - Mary's story at two decades of change 2006 - Recovery In Sight Centre 2009 - Health Rights 2011

    20.5.1953 Andrew Hughes born - see North West Mind - visited Oldham Schizophrenia Fellowship - Oldham Mind - memories of 1985 - Rochdale Mind - Founder of Distress Awareness Training Agency May 1988 - Survivors United Network 1999-2002 - worked on On Our Own Terms in 2003 -

    1953-1954 Thomas Ritchie went to Ireland. "I was taking the occasional Drinamyl". This needed a prescription, so early in the summer of 1955 he moved to Preludin. "It soon became a daily requirement and that is how regularly I took it until the year 1960", when it was restricted. A conviction for forging prescriptions led to his confinement in 1963, when he learnt about using Benzedrex inhalers, which he was still using in the mid 1970s. In a 22.8.1971 paper he refers to all of these as "Speed" (deleted) "Amphetamine". He says he is addicted and that it is of equal importance as air and food to his life. "Much more than half my waking hours" in hospital "and more than 80%" of his money were consumed in acquiring it.

    1954

    1954 Liz Sayce born. See 1983 - 1988 - 1990 - 2000 - 2012

    28.2.1954 Winston Basil George Rose born in Jamaica. He married Thora H. Paul in St Pancras, London in September 1976. In 1979 he was an electrician living in Leytonstone when he was admitted to Claybury hospital for a short period. In May 1981 he became redundant and depressed and in July 1981 he died being taken to Claybury by the police. - Inquest file

    13.3.1954 Valerie Ann Amos born British Guiana (now Guyana) in South America. She was involved in the Black Health Foundation (Afiya Trust) at the time that she became a member of the United Kingddom House of Lords in August 1997

    Fabian Tompsett Spring 1954 Fabian Tompsett born? Brentwood School about 1964 to 1970. From 1984 to 1994 he worked at Union Place Community Resource Centre, a radical print shop started in 1974 in Vassall Road, Lambeth. "A co-operative serving the various communities of Lambeth". It had offset litho (A3 and A4 and later A2), screen printing and 35mm darkroom facilities. In 1985 he left th politcal group Class War (French Wikipedia).

    22.8.1992 London Psychogeographical Association re-formed (a development of the situationists who influenced the May 1968 Paris events) with an address at Centerprise (Box 15, 138 Kingsland High Street, London E8 2NS). Fabian was a very active member.

    In May 2006 he is listed as an Advisory member of THACMHO

    University of East London 2010-2015, gaining first a BA in Social Enterprise and then an MSc in ICT and Development. Since 2008 Fabian has been involved in exhibitions of Class War Games. See 2016 "Wikipedia" and his website -

    21.5.1954 Chris Barchard born. See 1992 - 21.7.2005 - 13.7.2007 - 14.7.2007 - Perceptions Spring 2008 - November/December 2013

    23.7.1954 Eric Irwin, Radio Mechanic, arrived at Southampton, England, from Sydney, Australia, aboard the ship Fairsea. He was travelling to 13 Sandhill Gardens, Neills Hill, Belfast.

    2.9.1954? Celia Hughes born. See 10.1.2005

    October 1954 Be Morris born. See 8.1.1988 - 26.9.1988 - June 2012

    1.11.1954 Peter Whitehead, having escaped from Farmfield and seeking refuge with his uncle, was taken to the National Council for Civil Liberties offices in Westbourne Grove, Bayswater. Later the same day he was examined by a woman doctor who wrote "I cannot see how he can be deemed certifiably defective" [See Intelligence]

    1955

    about 1955 Carole (later) Murray born. She became a director of Capital Project Trust on 1.3.2012 at 57 years of age.

    April 1955 Roberta Mary Graley (later Wetherell) born. "I have worked as an advocate and helped to establish advocacy servoces in secure hospitals since 1990..." (The Advocate October 2003 page 9) See 1993

    1955 Rachel Perkins born

    19.12.1955 Rick Hennelly born. See allies - Tontine Road - Survivors Speak Out 1985 - Survivors Speak Out 1986 - Asylum Spring 1986 - Asylum Summer 1986 - Edale 1987 - Interview 11 (before 2005).

    Peter Whitehead The struggle inside

    January 1955 Peter Whitehead in solitary confinement at Rampton

    "I decided I was being wrongfully shut away, because I knew I wasn't mentally defective, and in spite of what had happened at Farmfield, I was not violent. I knew that I must go on believing this, and go on hoping that one day I would be set free. No matter how long I was imprisoned in Rampton, I was determined never to give up".
    Peter Whitehead advised other patients to
    "Write letters. Get people outside interested in you. Tell them you've been wrongly shut away. If you stay quiet, nobody will lift a finger to help you, however long you stay here"

    About twenty patients began writing letters and staff complained that Peter's campaign meant they had to spend all their time reading (and censoring) patients letters. Several time, Peter was warned:

    "Carry on like this, and you're heading straight for trouble"

    The struggle outside

    "As soon as he received a written notification that his nephew had been recaptured" Dennis Whitehead called on the National Council for Civil Liberties, determined to get Peter released". He wrote to the Board of Control and was told (3.2.1955) Peter's next review would fall on 25.12.1956. On 2.3.1955 The NCCL wrote to the Board about its independent medical report on Peter, but the Board expressed no interest.

    Roxan describes these letters as the first two shots to be fired in what was to prove a protracted battle in which Dennis Whitehead would have to sign more than a dozen letters of authority "so that the National Council could wring one more piece of information from sources often most reluctant to part with it" (Roxan 1958 p.227).

    1956

    "In 1956, Eric Irwin says he narrowly escaped a leucotomy. At the time he was a voluntary patient, and he claims a doctor told him "I wish you were psychotic so I could do it". Irwin is convinced that under the "liberal" 1959 Act, he would have been put on a section and operated on"

    1956 Ben Watson born. See Mad Pride 2000 - June 2000 - Asylum 2000 issue 2 - 14.11.2002 -

    1956 Lorraine Bell born. See allies - Frank Bangay believes that Lorraine was at the Brighton Congress in July 1985, as was David Hill, but not Peter Campbell. She and Helen Smith may have secured funding for the meetings that established Survivors Speak Out after the July 1985 World Congress, and before the November 1985 Mind Conference. See MIND 1985 Seminar B4. In 2006 it was said of her that "In 1987 she published 'Survivors speak out' as a chapter in Good Practices in Mental Health; from this, she developed the national self-advocacy group for people with mental health problems, adopting her chapter title as their organisational title." See 1987 - 1988 - 2006 -

    12.1.1956 Sixteen year old Matthew Paschal O'Hara arrested on suspicion of killing his 26 year old brother Peter in Ballybough House, Fairview, Dublin. It was one of only four violent deaths in Dublin in six years. (Dublin since 1922 (2016) by Tim Carey, page 168). Matthew was convicted by the Central Criminal Court, Dublin on 19.4.1956.

    December 1956 Peter Whitehead released from Rampton. "... after ten years at Rampton, had to go to a Ministry of Labour Training Centre to learn a practical trade following his release."
    In 1957 he took part in a NCCL "investigation into Rampton Hospital and insanity laws" with another ex-patient, James Stanton. Picture shows James Stanton and Peter Whitehead at the National Council for Civil Liberties Conference. Copyright Pathe News (not used).

    "A crowded meeting in the Conway Hall with some 400 People present, many of them parents of Rampton patients; others ex-patients-two of them, embittered, on the platform; both, though previously labelled 'feeble-minded; as able platform contenders as I have seen at many an election meeting". Donald Johnson MP Spectator 27.9.1957

    Frank Haskell, Elizabeth Allan and Dr Donald Johnson

    1957

    1957: United Kingdom Consumers' Association (publisher of "Which?") founded. In 1961 Kathleen Jones expained why it was not possible to do consumer resarch in mental hospitals. In 1971 the Consumers Association published Treatment and Care in Mental Illness

    1957: Recovery groups, now known as Grow began in Hurstville, Sydney, Australia. Started by former mental patients who met through Alcoholics Anonymous. Described now (2008) as a "community of persons working towards mental health through mutual help and a 12 step program of recovery. Small groups of people who have experienced depression, anxiety or other mental or emotional distress, come together on a weekly basis to help each other deal with the challenges of life. Some people come to GROW while struggling with the loss of a job, a loved one or a relationship". The organisation started in Ireland in 1969

    Veronica Dewan born 1957 - See Capital and 14.1.2005

    1957 Altaf Ramtoola born.

    About 1957 Alan Leader born. See Hackney WEA - December 1980 - Survivor activist 1986 - Hackney Day Hospital Patients Committee - 9.5.1986 - 21.11.1986 - 5.9.1989 - Survivors Speak Out 1989 AGM - 1992 - 13.4.1994 - Direct Power 1995

    January 1957 "Put Away", was the first programme of The Hurt Mind, the first British television series about mental illness. Much of it came from inside Warlingham Park Hospital, where the presenter, Christopher Mayhew, spent a few days "to get the feel of the place". No faces of patients were shown - Some individuals were pictured from the neck down, a group of patients were interviewed around a table without showing faces, one or more individuals were interviewed back to camera.

  • Gerald describes how the war drove him to alcoholism

  • Sidney describes how he became "persecuted by a wizard and became possessed by a familiar"

  • Mary, a teacher, tells of her "irrational fears" and how her parents found it "difficult to understand"

  • Mary also speaks for Marcia, a silent young woman; Mary says that Marcia "can't do anything without being told"

  • A woman explains that peculiar thoughts were put into her head by someone other than herself, how she had hallucinations of red devils and religious figures.

  • A young male patient speaks of his aversion to close proximity to other people, inordinate concerns about cleanliness, and a phobia about dirt and infections

  • A female patient talks about how she suffered deep depression after childbirth, her indecisiveness, her mistreatment of husband and child and unhappy childhood
  • John Zammit - Outsider poet

    About the Author

    He was placed on earth in 1957,
    on the 16th of August.
    The town he was selected to breath in
    was Bethnal Green, this place is a small
    town, in a massive city called London, or
    help me, I can't see the fucking sky!

    4.11.1957 Alison Faulkner born. See Rogers and Faulkner 1987 - Faulkner, A. and Field, V. 1993 - 1994 - user led research - February 1997 - Strategies for Living - A. Faulkner, 2000 - September 2002 - INVOLVE - 24.7.2004 - 16.11.2004 - 1.6.2009

    1958

    1958 Mary O'Hagan born Winton, Southland, New Zealand. See 1987 - 1991 World Federation chair - 1993 - 2001 Comissioner - box

    1958 Helen Smith born. See allies - July 1985 - Minstead Lodge - Collaboration for Change -

    1958 Ron Coleman born - See 1991 - 13.4.1994 - May 1994 - Handsell Publishing - Hearing Voices 1996 Conference - 1999: Recovery: an alien concept - 2001-2002 Victim to Victor workshops - 29.5.2002 Bristol Hearing Voices Network Self-Help group - 2006? Working to Recovery Ltd - Essex April 2008

    1958 Clare Ockwell born. See Society for the Advancement of Research into Anorexia - Eating Disorders Association 1992 - CAPITAL

    1958 Paul Ripley born. See Having a Voice coordinator and then Media Project worker - Manchester Social Media Director ID : 912430416 in 2008.

    28.1.1958 Joseph Lodrick Watts born. "My brother was Joseph Watts and he died in Broadmoor, he was always told that he would never walk free and that he would die in Broadmoor,and this is exactly what happened. R.I.P. Joseph Watts" (Yvonne Fitzgerald 17.1.2013). In June 1989 "Following the death of black Londoner Joseph Watts" on 23.8.1988 Inquest was "one of several groups which have been helping Mr Watt's parents to find how he died".

    July 1958 Colin Hambrook born. 16 in 1975. Established Disability Arts Online. - 2012 - 2013

    About 1958: Mark Greenwood born. After completing a degree in history at Cambridge University, he then (1982- 1985) trained as a psychiatric nurse at North Manchester General Hospital. Towards end of training, carried out oral history as part of the Getting To Know You project. Staffed on Springfield's long-stay wards before being appointed as one of the first community support workers in the Harpurhey Resettlement Team (1987 -1992). "During his 5 years on the team he was also heavily involved in mental health politics, including visits to Trieste and other European centres of radical psychiatry, involvement in Asylum magazine and helping set up the Hearing Voices Network." See Asylum July 1989 - "I was involved in producing Asylum with Paul Baker and Nigel Rose between 1989 and 1994" In 1992 he moved back into Springfield Hospital as a senior nurse manager, overseeing the closure of the remaining long-stay wards. - Asylum Summer 1993 Defence of Italy (See March 1993) - He left Springfield in 1994 to become development manager at Creative Support (Registered 18.1.1991 as Manchester Housing Consortium. Name changed to Creative Support Ltd on 24.2.1994) Mark has has been involved in the Kwan Wai (Mental Health) Team of Wai Yin Chinese Women Society since its beginning in 1999 and has worked at Wai Yin as Health and Social Care/Well being manager since 2002. Interview 5.

    1958 Robin Farquharson's Doctor of Philosophy thesis An approach to a pure theory of voting procedure Nuffield College, Oxford

    In the neurosis unit at "Northtown" a psychiatrist tried to organise group therapy by meetings which included "a patients' committee, and a patients' general meeting"

    "The patients' committee was stopped because it apparently ran a great deal too well. It developed a group entity of its own which became set in opposition against the staff - as one doctor said, 'It was at us the whole time, agitating'"

    "The patients' general meeting collapsed because the doctors felt the verbalisation level was too low for it to have any real value. A few patients from the patients' committee dominated it. The rest could not take any active part in it, and tended to sit passively."

    One reason the psychiatrist thought the groups failed was "the lack of any real delegation of responsibility - 'we just expected them to sit and talk'" (Jones and Sidebotham 1962 p.76)

    1959

    1959 Edward Peck born. See Nottingham Summer 1985

    1959 Robin Farquharson wrote the chapter "South Africa 1958" in David Butler's Elections Abroad (Macmillan; St. Martin's Press, 1959).

    1959 Bill Warwick "received the distinguished label Schizophrenic. My mistake was going to my doctors in search of an explanation of an experience that produced a somewhat bold statement in writing: 'Fear is at the root of all illness both Mental and Physical'."

    February 1959 Adrienne Sinclair Chalmers born. See Awareness (1989) and June 2012

    29.7.1959 Royal Assent to the 1959 Mental Health Act. Eric Irwin argued, from his experienced of being a patient, that this Act removed patient's rights. It follows that he had experience of English mental hospitals before, as well as after, the Act.


    2001 website Zyra gazes at the stars from his 2001 website 11.11.1959 James "Jim" Graves, also known as Jim Felix and Zyra born. He went to Boston Grammar School between 1971 and 1978 (where he was known as the "professor". Graduated in Computer Science from the University of Manchester in 1982. About 1983 he established Felix Computers in Boston. This included open access to his Free Association Machine. Eventually he opted for the internet and made his fortune (from 2000) with zyra.org

    See National Voices Forum - 30.9.1999 - 2001 - Summer 2005 - 2008 DVD - December 2010 - Went to Panama as a tax exile on 22.1.2012. He died in Panama in October 2012 (aged 52). See archive of website


    1960s Breakdown in the taboo of silence - people with conditions usually regarded as taboo talking about their own experiences

    1960

    "In 1960, [Eric Irwin says a] psychiatrist told him he was a psychopath and that psychopathy was inborn and incurable. 'I was shattered by that. But when I came out I looked it up in every textbook I could find, and found it meant so many different things that anyone could be one'"

    From 1960 to 1962, Shulamit [Shula] Ramon was a student at the School of Social Work, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. See 1983 - MIND 1985 B2 - Interview 3 - Literature - December 1988

    5.2.1960 David Roy Bennett was born in Jamaica. He came to England in 1968 to join his family who were already living in Peterborough. His father worked as an engineer with the London Brick Company. David became known as Rocky Bennett. He died 31.10.1998

    Spring 1960 Thomas Ritchie discharged from Brixton Prison found his Brighton photography business had been destroyed by a burglary. He returned t Lanark, Scotland to live with his aunt. "I went to Hartwoodhill Hospital as a voluntary patient", but discharged himself within a month. Unable to find work in Lanark, he went to friends in Coventry [*], but still could not find work. "My chronic depression deepened and I was admitted to Leigh House, an offshoot of the Central Hospital, Warwick (again voluntarily)" for six weeks of treatment including ECT. On discharge, he had three months work selling ice-cream, and when this finished, with the winter, returned to his aunt in Lanark.

    "to my best friend of all, Kate in Coventry, who maintained faith in me through the bleakest of those bleak years" [1971]

    1.5.1960 Someone had suggested to Moyna Peters' parents that psychiatric treatment might help her keep a job.

    19.6.1960 Orville Blackwood born Jamaica. Mother Clara [Buckley]. Orville moved to London "at an early age" and "in trouble with the police at an early age". His psychiatric history began when he was 22. See 28.8.1991
    The picture shows Clara holding a framed photograph of Orville. It may be from the Caribbean and African Times in December 1992.

    October 1960 Carol (Susan) Jenkin born. Started BUDDIES in 1994 - A Director of The UK Federation of Smaller Mental Health Agencies from 1.9.1998 to 7.4.2005. Correspondence address: 45 Wood Lane, Swain House, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD2 1JU. Occupation: Trainer and Voluntary Mental Health Worker - 7.10.2000 an article about her life and Buddies - UKAN Chair - User Survey Steering Group 2003 - On Our Own Terms Research Team - Advocate June 2004

    "It is not possible to do 'consumer research' in mental hospitals, for although patients often have very decided views, these are frequently conditioned by their illness and their own subjective experiences. Nevertheless, it is very important that the patients' own viewpoint should not be lost among the welter of administrative and statistical considerations, and we were fortunate in that a number of patients, meeting us in the ward and in the corridors, took a considerable interest in the project. They contributed observations and anecdotes from their own experience, and these were carefully checked by reference to medical or nursing staff, or to records. We are grateful to these patients - many of whom are now back in their own homes, and living normal lives at the time of writing - for a constant reminder of the human values which underlie this or any other piece of research into mental illness." Kathleen Jones and Roy Sidebotham. Dated 1961, referring to research between June 1958 and June 1959. (Jones and Sidebotham 1962, p.x)

    About 1961 Daniel Iga Mwesigwa born in Uganda. "Mentally ill since he was thirteen" (Basic Needs 2004) - Mental Health Uganda - The photograph was taken at the Disability Rights Promotion International Africa regional training workshop in Kigali, Rwanda (28.1.2011 to 2.2.2011).
    1961

    Problems of the Ex-Prisoner. Report of the Pakenham/Thompson Committee published London, 1961 by the National Council of Social Service (Great Britain). 91 pages. Frank Pakenham Longford (1905-2001) (chairing) and Peter Thompson (1933-2003).

    January 1961 Michael Dummett and Robin Farquharson "Stability in Voting" Econometrica 29, pages 289-286. Stability in Voting'. Pp. 33-43 in: Econometrica, Vol. 29, No. 1, January 1961.

    In 1961, Robin Farquharson's thesis was awarded the Monograph prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the field of the social sciences.

    Richard 'Cartoon' Campbell 11.3.1961 Richard Campbell born to Paulette Campbell in Stockwell, South London. As a young man (19 when he died) "he was a popular guy in South London helping to run the Mafia Sound System. He was a witty and good-natured youth - the reason for his nickname 'Cartoon'". See arrest and death 1980 - Inquest file - 29.4.1981

    13.3.1961 Colin Sylvester Roach born Stepney to Pamella C. V. Roach (Ireland before their marriage in Poplar in December 1958) and James Martin Roach (born 1.4.1928, died November 1997 in Tower Hamlets. In 1983, James was described as "a 54 labourer from Exmouth House, Bow". Christmas 1982 in Pentonville - Died 12.1.1983 - Inquest file.

    24.9.1961 Birth of Michael Dean Martin who died in Norfolk House, Broadmoor, aged only 23, in July 1984.. "Consideration had been given to the possibility of a planned transfer of him back to Bexley hospital".

    December 1961 Incentive contained an account by Bertram A. Miller of the orgin (1960) of the Sheltered Workers Group. This was rewritten for the June 1963 edition. See Ingrebourne box

    1962

    By 1962 Eric Irwin had returned to London. 1962/1963 Living in a Church Army hostel, Livingstone House, in Willesdon. 1964/1965 living in a Richmond Fellowship hostel in Islington. In 1965 also shown in a communal house at 2 Wells Road, Bromley.

    1962 Patrick Wood born.

    About 1962 Peter Bullimore born. See: 2003 Paranoia Network - 19.10.2007 - Asylum 2010 - 2012 Pumpkin

    About 1962 Simon Barnett born. See 2003

    1962 Mary Barnes visited her parents in South Africa, where they had been for three years. (p.60) She returned to England after six months and went to stay at the convent in Wales. Peter came to stay. Dorothy was travelling to the Far East and Australia. "Soon after this Peter wrote saying he was in a mental hospital". (p.62) Corespondence with Anna Freud and James Robertson .

    February 1962 Birth of Abena [Ade Dansu] Simba-Tola. See September 1980 and March 1981

    14.9.1962 Birth of Peter [Anthony] Shaughnessy [mother's maiden name Bell] in Lambeth, London - His parents were "Irish working class" and Peter's childhood ambition was to become a bus driver. Instead, he studied drama at the Rose Bruford College in Sidcup from 1983 to 1986. His first child was born at about the time he left the college. He worked in a children's home and as a carer for people with disabilities, before becoming a bus driver in 1990 on route 36 from New Cross to Queens Park. In 1992 he went on a silent hunger strike outside his bus garage in protest at the privatisation of the service. By the end of the year he was hospitalised with "manic depression". On 2.10.1995, one of Peter's sisters, Evelyn (born 2.1.1970) was killed by her "psychotic boyfriend", who stabbed her fifteen times whilst her sister tried to save her. Peter says "when Brixton police let me back in the flat, they let me find the bloody duvet that she was attacked on". Peter punched a policeman and was admitted to Robert Gillespie Ward, in Guys Hospital. He joined Southwark Mind in 1997, helping to consolidate it as a user group, and came to prominence with the street drama of Reclaim Bedlam in the autumn of 1997. From early 1998, Peter was groomed as Mental Health Media's lead performer: See National Headlines 12.2.1998 - 8.10.1998. In 2000, Peter told his own story in the Mad Pride book. He married married Penny L. Mount, Worthing, Sussex, December 2000 - Suicide 14.12.2002 (age 40). Death registered Wandsworth - Inquest 10.4.2003 - Asylum tribute issue - Advocate. Mental Magazine records. Frank Bangay recorded (Survivors History Group Meeting 30.9.2015) that Peter's death took a lot out of the momentum of Mad Pride. Peter, he said, was "a one-off who turned campaign into theatre". He "moved mental health demos forward".

    Autumn 1962 Valerie Argent confined in Essex Hall. She was later moved to the Ingrebourne Centre (a therapeutic community). Her Ingrebourne medical notes say:

    "She has been an in-patient of the Royal Eastern Counties Hospital, Essex Hall, Colchester, which is a hospital for mental defectives. She was sent there as other suitable accommodation was not available, following an attempt at suicide by holding her head in a basin of water. She is an intelligent girl with an IQ of 120 and has been attending Hornchurch Grammar School" - "We really took her because it seemed so terrible to leave her in this environment"

    1963

    About 1963 Graham Morgan born - He became a mental health activist in the 1980s in Sheffield after witnessing the harsh and often undignified treatment of people with a mental illness. He initially became a volunteer with an organization helping young people live in the community. After this he helped set up a a user run drop in centre (McMurphys) for young people in Sheffield. He was a Director of McMurphys. Moved to Edinburgh about 1988 where he quickly became involved in a campaigning group. Graham Morgan
    Graham was active in
    Awareness a collective advocacy group in Edinburgh and then worked in Lothian with CAPS where he helped establish the Lothian Users Forum and a network of other advocacy groups. He moved to the Highlands in 1997. MBE 2004 when he had had "over 20 years experience in the field of mental health". See 2012 and 2015.

    February 1963 In about 20 minutes, Bill Warwick was "instrumental" in writing This Mad World, a six page spiritualist cosmology that included "look to the mental hospitals to see the havoc some are creating to what could be some good and desirable instruments to us" [spirits] "if they but know how to help themselves and us ... Some of you already know from experience that the treatment meted out to those unfortunates only frightens the life out of them and is completely unnecessary. Raise you voices. Ask for permission to cooperate with the mental authorities to rescue those poor souls from the ignorance of mankind".

    Monday 11.2.1963: Suicide of Sylvia Plath. 6am. Yeats' House. Freda Hughes, daughter of Sylvia and Ted, was two years old. She grew up in Devon.

    April 1963 Lanark Court sent Thomas Ritchie to Crichton Royal Hospital at Dumfries "on a year's probation". He was there for five months. "... it was discovererd that I was again taking drugs (brought by a friend from Dublin)". "I quite enjoyed my stay there, being able to get some drugs most of the time". This was seen as "a breach of probation, for which offence I did 30 days in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow" On release, Tommy went almost directly to Hartwood.

    18.5.1963 Edward Christopher Clunis [known as Christopher Clunis, who sometimes called himself Allajah] born Muswell Hill, London, N10. His father, Lester Oswald Clunis (born Jamaica 20.4.1924 /39 years old) and mother, Daisey M. McClarey (also born Jamaica. Died Jamaica 1985), lived with several other people at 54 Rathcoole Gardens, Hornsey N8 in 1964. Christopher was their only child, but had 4 half brothers and sisters on his father's side and a half brother on his mother's side. "He came from a supportive and loving family". Lester and Daisey were "able to marry" in the spring of 1968, just before they moved to Luton, where his father worked at the Vauxhall car plant. He went to school in Luton. His ambition was to be a jazz guitarist and he toured the Aqua Vita Showband. His parents returned to Jamaica, where his mother died in 1985. Christopher joined his father in Jamaica in 1986 and was admitted to Bellevue Hospital, Kingston, Jamaica, with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Returning to England, he stayed with (half) sisters in Birmingham and then north London.
    During 1987, Christopher had several admissions to Chase Farm Hospital in Enfied. This was close to his family, but in 1988 he was admitted to Dulwich North Hospital (South London). In 1989 St Charles' Hospital, Kensington and Chelsea. He then lived largely in hostels. August/September 1992 Guys. Murdered Jonathan Zito 17.12.1992

    28.5.1963 4pm: Inauguration Committee of The Ingrebourne Society by patients of the Ingrebourne Centre. Its first aim was to "help maintain contact after discharge, and to allow useful relationships to continue". A future aim was to "organise and run a Hostel for the rehabilitation of persons after mental illness".

    June 1963 Incentive edited by Jenny - Rosemary Glendenning having left for the Richmond Fellowship - [Described as "the Centre's magazine". The centre was Ingrebourne. The two copies owned by Andrew Roberts (June 1963 and November 1963) were produced entirely by patients, with very occasional, and minor, written contributions from two of the doctors]

    3.7.1963 Andrew Roberts admitted to the Ingrebourne Centre following a suicide attempt. He had (foolishly) taken an overdose in the catchment area of Warley Hospital. Fortunately, the ambulance took him to Romford.

    "I had three books that I was using to try to understand what was happening: Thomas Szasz, 1961 The Myth of Mental Illness (A library book) - James Drever, 1952 (Revised edition 1964) A Penguin Dictionary of Psychology and David Stafford-Clark, 1952 (second edition 1963) Psychiatry Today (Both bought in a Brentwood bookshop). Ingrebourne staff discouraged an academic approach. My habit of carrying the book I was reading around with me, and putting it by my chair in group, drew unfavourable attention - especially to Szasz."

    28.7.1963 Start of a camping holiday in France that had been planned in the Ingrebourne Centre by patients. In the event, three patients/expatients went. At one time it was thought half the centre's patients would go.

    September 1963 Thomas Ritchie detained in Hartwood Hospital, Shotts Lanarkshire under Part 5 of the Mental Health (Scotland) Act, "with a restriction on my discharge which could only be lifted by the Secretary of State for Scotland". "On the very night of my release from Barlinnie I was arrested and charged with Breach of the Peace, once again at Lanark Court. The Sheriff sent me to this hospital, Hartwood, nearly three years ago, and here I still am. Ward 22, Hartwoodhill Hospital. Summer 1966"

    November 1963 Incentive edited by Jenny

    17.11.1963 Katherine Sirockin (Kathy Sirockin) born Edmonton, London. She died in August 1991: Kathy taught us to hear with our eyes.

    2.12.1963 The Beatles live on the Morecombe and Wise show. It meant a lot to Valerie. Nothing to me.

    1964

    1964 Dr Wolfgang Huber began work at the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Heidelberg.

    1964 GIHP: Groupement pour l'Insertion des personnes Handicapées Physiques (Group for Integration of Physically Handicapped persons) established by Gerard Crombez a quadriplegic student at the University of Sciences in Nancy. (See France)

    Ireland index 1964 Brian Hartnett born Limerick - 1991 - 1996 - Phrenz - 2003 - Phrenz of the Media - Hearing Voices Ireland (2006) - (external link to personal recovery story)

    1964: Robin Farquharson's Research Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge. "the wrench I felt resigning my Churchill College fellowship after one year and three nervous breakdowns. Marvellous folk, they gave me £3,000 journey money... under the control of two trustees... [who] let me take it out of the trust account to present to the Home Office, a little disturbed already by my two certification orders, with proof of my means". (Drop Out pages 10-11) [Robin had his South African passport withdrawn in 1965 and became a British Citizen in 1968]

    In 1964 (and 1965) Eric Irwin was registered as living at [St George's House] 263 Camden Road, Islington - A Richmond Fellowship residence. But in 1965 he is also registered as living in Bromley.

    31.1.1964 Sarah Wheeler born, Leicester. Declared a girl by the doctor. However "until the age of five, Sarah Wheeler identified fully and unquestioningly with the role of being a boy. She liked cap guns, cowboy hats, bows and arrows, bicycles, climbing trees, wearing shorts, all that kind of thing. She was happy. Between the age of five and fifteen, environmental pressures being what they are Sarah Wheeler gradually morphed into the feminine identity... she became during this time strangely unhappy, with the first depersonalised symptoms emerging in her mind, inexplicably, when she was about ten. During her childhood, Sarah Wheeler always knew that if she had been born a boy she would have been called Thomas Tobias. Sarah was admitted to Springfield Hospital in 1990. Late on Christmas Day in 2002 she was released from the six month grip of psychotic depression. To calm and focus her mind she read a poem called Mental Fight by Ben Okri. She started the Mental Fight Club in Southwark on 1.2.2003 and this led to starting the Dragon Cafe on 21.3.2011 in the Crypt of St George the Martyr Church, Borough Hill.

    Tuesday 31.3.1964 to Wednesday 27.5.1964 Valerie Argent (aged 15/16) was a patient in Belmont Hospital. "... she was treated with Electro Convulsive Therapy and drugs, and it was suggested to her that the only way she would escape from her depressions would be a brain operation (Leucotomy). She was very tempted to accept this suggestion, but eventually decided to escape from the hospital instead" (source). Valerie's medical records show that Valerie was sent to Belmont to separate her and Andrew Roberts.

    Summer 1964 Harry Cumberbatch arrived at Bow Bus Garage from Barbados to start work as a conductor, later driver. Through the Territorial Army he made contacts that "helped in getting my next job as a chauffeur for the Director of the Royal Mint". He qualified as a mechanical engineer, but in the 1970s became a Newham Youth Worker. In 1994 he began retraining in person-centred therapy and began work as a counsellor with Mind in Tower Hamlets. See THACMHO and MBE

    2.7.1964 Jasna Russo born.

    12.7.1964 Esther Leslie born - Archives of her CV - Archives of the whole militantesthetix website - Mad Pride on militantesthetix - Current University web page

    end November 1964 Norman was admitted to Clyde Ward, St Bernards, Southall. "Very good treatment and nursing. Discharged after 13 weeks". The next November he went in for four and a half weeks and then, after a week, was readmitted for thirteen weeks. He was readmitted after four weeks and discharged after six weeks. He was admitted to another hospital in 1971:

    "My only complaint about hospitals is that some stroppy night nurses bully one back to bed when one cannot sleep. Instead they should be allowed to brew up and sit in the day room. I believe females get a rougher deal in this and many other respects than males... I have had some hairy episodes, but find the system works."

    16.12.1964 Robert Dellar born Watford. - 1987 onwards working for local Mind associations - 1983: City and Hackney Mind Advocacy Service - May 1994: Hackney Patients Council - April 1996: Spare Change Books and An Anthology of Punk - 1998? Development worker for Southwark Mind - June 1998: Seaton Point - June 2000: Mad Pride (the book) - 14.11.2002 exhausted - 2014 Splitting in Two: Mad Pride and Punk Rock Oblivion - died 17.12.2016

    1965

    1965 Disablement Income Group (DIG) formed

    1965 Following a knife attack on three au pair girls, Peter Thompson was sent to Broadmoor under Section 60 of the 1959 Health Act. He was released by a Mental Health Review Tribunal in 1969.

    1965 Patricia Chambers born. See Odessa Chambers - Patricia entered the mental health system in 1990 - In 1996 Patricia conducted her own research into "different ways, pathways or reasons that young black men were coming into the mental health system". [See Bugs and 2007] Through her local user group, she took part in "a study of the current provision for housing for mental health patients in the borough". - In 2006 Patricia reported from a group of black mental health service users in London on the importance of Service User Networking. - 2009 seminars - Patricia was appointed the Catch-a-Fiya Manager in 2009. Patricia led work on the Dancing To Our Own Tunes recommendations to develop the TOOTS charter - died 2016 - Friends and colleagues gathered at the Rose Pub in Vauxhall on 25.2.2017 to remember and celebrate her life. "For some of us, the endless discussions and strategizing we've had with each other and with other friends around the dining table at the Afiya Trust have been transformative. But the Afiya Trust, too, has passed away, and so has Catch-a-fiya", (Jayasree Kalathil) - legacy

    13.1.1965 Philip Lee Morgan born in the London Borough of Lambeth. After an insecure childhood in foster homes and institutions he became homeless. With counselling and social work help he was rehoused and became a pioneer of "health through history", which explores recovering yourself through knowing who you are and who you relate to. See Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation - 14.5.2008 interview - met Sam Shakes - 30.10.2009 F.E.E.L. presentation - Pageant - Birmingham 2010 - messages - died 6.5.2017 - funeral - spirit - legacy

    15.3.1965 Letter about Eric Irwin's French translation to 38 Masons Hill. 38 Masons Hill was the address of Stepping Stones House, a Psychiatric Day Hospital in the same area (Bromley) as Cane Hill. In 1965, Eric Irwin is shown in a communal house at 2 Wells Road, Bromley, after being in a Richmond Fellowship House in Islington - .

    2.3.1965 Cherry Allfree seventeen. "There has been a lot written about ... institutions for the so-called subnormal. But little has been written about the reasons why people end up in these places. I want to tell you what happened to me when I was 16 years old. It all began in the year 1965" (Cherry explains why she wants her story published) - After 1975: "I am one of the homeless people of Welby Squat. I Demand Rehousing. I have been shoved around in different homes and hostels since I was 16.. I had a heart operation a year or more ago.." (Published Peace News. Date not known)

    May 1965 "9 p.m. on a Friday night was definitely the wrong time to be admitted". Judith Watson

    Saturday 5.6.1965 Mary Barnes first saw Kingsley Hall

    early summer 1965 "Unfortunately, the doctor decided to send me to Horton Hospital for a rest" - August 1965 "the doctor... informed me that he had already called an ambulance to take me to Rubery Hill Hospital". (Joan Martin - See also winter 1967)

    1.1.1965 All Saints Day. "In the Games Room it suddenly piereced through me about the convent" Mary Barnes p.164

    Toward the end of November 1965 "one Saturday.. Joe gave me a round toffee tin of grease crayons whih he had found in the house" (Mary Barnes p.142)

    "I took to my bed for four months until Joe (Dr Berke) got me out. He would sit me in a chair and I would stay there for hours until he moved me again. One day Joe gave me a set of 'grease crayons and told me to scribble something. I did, on and on. Suddenly a picture emerged, a woman kneeling with a baby at her breast. I found some tins of paint, left over from decorating, and I painted picture stories about mermaids, tramps and children on the back of old wallpaper." (Sunday Times 13.4.1969)

    Mary Barnes "this time over Christmas '65 through the spring of '66 was a time of being up and out, of doing, of exploding, of running and screaming. The house was a minefield..." (p.224)

    1965 The Sir John Cass School of Art, formed through a merger, moved into newly built premises at Central House, opposite the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Mary Barnes started classes in January 1966.

    1966

    1966 Paul Hunt's book Stigma; The Experience of Disability is published. See UPIAS

    1966 Fortnightly International Times (IT), alternative newspaper, founded in London.

    "I begged my GP to get me into hospital so as I could get some care and help" Daniel Morgan

    "the spring of '66 saw Mary enter a 'down' from which she did not emerge for almost a year... her 'down' began in February, accelerated in March, held steady in April, and plunged forward in May. By june she had taken to her bed and was refusing to eat. Her body had begun to look like a bunch of bones loosely covered with skin" (Joseph Berke, p.274)

    March 1966 Mary Barnes encouraged by Felix Topolski. The works he saw were oils on wallpaper backing paper. He showed her hardboard he was painting on.

     

    Feeding the five thousand (1966) by Mary Barnes is the earliest in the Glasgow collection of her work.

    "The Feeding the Five Thousand was the first one I did on canvas. Stretched on the wall above my bed, a mattress on the floor, it was about seven feet across and six feet high" (Mary Barnes, p.152)

    2.3.1966 Cherry Allfree eighteen. About 1966 that Cherry was admitted to Kingsmead in Colchester.

    Sunday 10.4.1966 Easter Sunday

    "On Easter Monday, in the dining-room, I painted a big canvas of the Mother of God. Her breasts were revealed, the succour of men... My paintings had emerged from black lines and breasts on the walls and paintings in shit, to moving figures and scribble on paper: from undercoat paint and wall brushes, to pencils, crayons, charcoal, poster paint, water colour, and oils." (Mary Barnes, pp 157-158)

    Thursday 21.4.1966 Andrew and Valerie Roberts (and daughter) and another Ingrebourne patient (Valentine) moved to Swanage in Dorset

    Summer 1966? Frank Bangay left school, aged 15.

    Mary Barnes "June '66 down, in bed, going inside myself..." (p.224)

    Scotland index Summer 1966 On Ward 22 of Hartwood Hospital, Thomas Ritchie wrote an account of his life up to his admission to Hartwood.

    Ireland index In Cork, Ireland, Tessa Redmond started "Friends Anonymous", a self-help therapy group in September 1966. It was run on the lines of Alcoholics Anonymous - whose open meetings Tessa attended, "to give me the right ideas". The group was the first of its kind in Cork. At least one doctor and a dentist used to send their nervous patients to the group.

    "I mentioned it when I appeared on a television program about 'phobias'. Sadly, it was an entertainment program, and not at all respectful towards us. Participants were asked about their specific phobias, and then unexpectedly presented with the object of their fear, which of course terrified them - I found this disgraceful" (Tessa Redmond)

    Recovery Groups (now Grow) in Ireland started in 1969.

    Mary Barnes Chapter 12: "Autumn 1966 - coming insight - how I used my paintings to seduce people - bonfire night" (p.194) - "Up a bit as if to breathe. Writing and pastelling in the autumn of '66' Then down again, the third time, less body now, more mind, understanding coming. Moving away out of the web, getting separate. (p.224)

    "I feel it's just possible, so great was my state of self- deception, so clever was I at deceiving others, that if God had not resuced me through mental breakdown I might have worn a habit, been a 'nun' outwardly, without ever really encountering all my anger, jealousy, sexual feelings and guilt." (Barnes and Berke 1971/1973 p.225)

    7.10.1966 Ronald Laing's 49th birthday. Mary Barnes wrote her story The Hollow Tree as her birthday present.

    October 1966 Trace Methods for Sulphate and Nitrate by J.M. Martin, Graduate of the Royal Institute of Chemistry, a candidate for the degree of Master of Science. University of Birmingham. Joan's autobiography describes how her degree was preceded by a period in a mental hospital.

    November 1966 Mary Barnes' Baby Bear

    Mary Barnes Chapter 13: "Christmas 1966 - Further experiences with Noel and Paul"

    December 1966 Birth in Poplar of Sarah Jane Yiannoullou who became manager of the National Survivor User Network (NSUN) in March 2009. See 14.11.2017

    1967 Declaration of a summer of love

    2.3.1967 Cherry Allfree nineteen. After her nineteenth and before her twentieth birthday, Cherry was admitted to Lexden House in Colchester.


    Mary Barnes "This last, fourth time of going down was in the spring of '67. It was short and drastic, six days without food and water" (p.226) "since the spring of '67, I have grown up" (p.227)

    "May 1967 saw the start of my finger painting with Peter before Christ. Using more and more colour I raced on, through the Red Sea with the Children of Israel, to the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Ascension and across the dining room wall came Christ Triumphant, done with my fingers as all my work since then."


    Stephen Ticktin graduated B.A. Philosophy June 1967 - M.A. Philosophy December 1969 - M.D. June 1973 (University of Toronto, Canada). See May 1982 - 1983 - Psychiatric Oppression - MIND 1985 - Asylum Spring 1987 - Autumn 1987 - literature - Asylum Summer 1991 - Asylum Autumn 1991 - Asylum Spring 1992 -

    June/July 1967 Release national drug helpline established in London "by Caroline Coon and Rufus Harris, who established it as a direct response to the growing number of young people being arrested and/or imprisoned under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1965". [Archives description] The ideas about mental distress and its relief that were expressed in COPE were often related to the images of drug experiences. People "freaked out" and needed a "crisis centre" to come through their experience in the friendly company of people who knew what was happening to them. Release groups also formed in Germany and the Netherlands where they have been credited with playing a part in the mental patients' movement and/or the anti-psychiatry movement.

    15.7.1967 to 30.7.1967 Roundhouse Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation. Some of Mary Barnes' paintings were exhibited at this. In the spring of 1968, Mary was given the old posters "to cover the floor and benches of the Games Room so I could paint without spoiling the room, which had then been newly decorated" (p.297)

    September 1967 In "The Sick Room, Ward Seven" of Hartwood Hospital, Thomas Ritchie wrote an account of his life in Hartwood, concluding with his "grievances for redress". His case for a union (later) included that such individual grievances got him nowhere, but the collective complaints of patients were attended to.

    autumn 1967 Mary Barnes took Joseph Berke to visit Peter Barnes in hospital. (p.338)

    6.11.1967 Robin Farquharson dismissed from his job in computer programming for "taking liberties" - decision to "drop out" (leaving his money in the bank and his furniture with friends). The first entry in his book about this is Monday 20.11.1967 - Which may have been the day he walked into Anthony Blond's office and secured a £2 a week advance on a book about his experiences.

    Joan Martin: "I spent the winter of 1967 at Rubery Hill Hospital but did not get on too badly, because during this period I was not given heavy tranquillisers" - See November 1969

    1968

    1960 USA: We Shall Overcome the freedom song. In 1965/1966 a group of mental patients living in Abbs Cross Lane, Hornchurch, regarded this as their "national anthem".

    1968 "We Shall Overcome" started in Norway by mental patients and ex- patients in 1968 continues to represent users and survivors of psychiatry in the 21st century. website - facebook ["Landsforeningen We Shall Overcome (WSO) - Bruker- og interesseorganisasjon for menneskerettigheter, selvbestemmelse og verdighet innen psykisk hels" means in English "The National Association We Shall Overcome (WSO)-user and interest group for human rights, self-determination and dignity within mental health"]

      The first edition of Drop Out by Robin Farquharson was published in 1968. Its cover had this cartoon of Robin. In the preface (dated 30.1.1968), he wrote
    "I am a manic-depressive. When I'm up, I have no judgement, but fantastic drive; when I'm down, I have judgement, but no drive at all. In between I pass for normal well enough." (See Chaos Invocation)

    At Heidelberg, Wolfgang Huber developed a Patientenkollektivs (Patient Collective) in 1968. Later development: Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv (Socialist Patient Collective). This published SPK - Aus der Kranheit eine Waffe Machen [Make Your Illness a Weapon] in April 1972.

    External link to web page
    Wikipedia: Original 14.6.2006 entry by Milla from Ireland - current entry

    January 1968 Meeting of Mary Barnes with her parents (chapter 19). After this meeting, Mary "discovered her hands" and began to use hands and fingers instead of brushes and palette knife. (Joe Berke, p.368). Mary says her finger painting began in May 1967

    February 1968: Start of the democratic "anti-university". The mental health meetings, in which R.D. Laing and David Cooper were active, were called "anti-psychiatry". After the collapse of the anti-university (by 1969) the anti-psychiatry group continued to meet in a flat in Belsize Park. The term anti-psychiatry has also been used generally for the movement critical of the orthodox psychiatry of the 1960"s. (See Mental Health and Civil Liberties Article) In this very lose sense, COPE and even the Mental Patients Union have been described as part of the anti- psychiatry movement. However, some MPU members would warmly reject the title on the grounds that MPU groups were open to all patients and ex- patients, irrespective of their views on psychiatry and psychiatric treatment. The use of the term in the sense of holding society and psychiatry responsible for what is called mental illness was developed by PROMPT - which was not, initially, a patients' organisation.

    2.3.1968 Cherry Allfree twenty. Before her twentieth birthday, Cherry was admitted to Lexden House in Colchester.

    Spring 1968 Mary Barnes painted Christ Triumphant, depicting three stages of sacrifice, on the dining room wall at Kingsley Hall.

    May 1968 Paris student rising

    16.5.1968 Article by Richard Boston in New Society about the Anti-University.

    June 1968 BIT 24-Hour Free Information and Help Service (London) started. Its name indicated that it evolved out of International Times (IT) and also related to BIT=Binary Information Transfer 'the smallest unit of information that can be processed by a computer'. COPE evolved out of BIT. They had similar styles of publication, with similar names (Bitman and Copeman for their magazines) and, at times, shared offices.

    Summer 1968 Grace Conner's friendship with Mary Barnes. They went to the cinema and to the Matisse exhibition [Hayward Gallery to 8.9.1968]. "I painted He Shall Come as the Sun and a huge sun on hardboard for the Hampstead Open Air exhibition" (p.297).   August 1968 Hampstead Open Air Exhibition was amongst the listings in the first edition of Time Out.
    9.8.1968 to 1.9.1968 "Art and Mental Health" at the Commonwealth Institute.

    The squatting movement began to develop in London from 1968. Initially it was housing families. Eventually, a diversity of people and groups were living in squats or short life properties "licensed" from councils. The death of Robin Farquharson, which overshadowed the start of the Mental Patients Union, was against the background of squatting. The first headquarters of the MPU at Prince of Wales Road, Camden, was in a squat. Robin Farquharson House was on a short life licence agreement.

    " Robin Farquharson in full cry was able to wreck havoc in a commune of freaks as well as in a straight organisation and when this happened to us and we could not get through to him or calm him down we also ended calling for men in white coats. It must have been a terrible blow for Robin to be rejected by his own tribe and although he did not bear a permanent grudge, I understand now he would rather anything than fall into the hands of the men in white coats. I heard he put up a good fight when they cornered him and about ten men were needed to subdue him on this occasion, tho' on the grapevine the story may have growed a bit I dunnow. Three years later in 1971 Robin came to Bath..." George Firsoff archive (1944-10.11.2004) in Bitman 8, September 1973

    1968: Nick Crossley born. BA and PhD in Sociology, University of Sheffield. Lecturer in the sociology and philosophy of psychiatry, in the Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies (part of the Deptartment of Psychiatry) at Sheffield from 1993 to 1998. Helen Spandler his student from Autumn 1992. Had begun research into mental health movements by 1997. Joined Manchester Sociology in September 1998. Professor 2005. Head of sociology summer 2007 to summer 2010. Co-founded Mitchell Centre for Social Network Analysis. Also involved with Social Movements Research Group. Involved in a project on complexity theory with colleagues in the Institute for Social Change, and on the advisory board of the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research. (2010) See January 1998 - 19.6.1998 - Literature - 1999 - Contesting Psychiatry (2005) - information box

    1968 Clare Allan born. See Lost decade - East Anglia - Poppy Shakespeare - Guardian column - Disability Living Allowance 2010

    1969

    Ireland index Recovery Groups were started in Ireland in 1969 by Father Seán O'Hanlon who had come in contact with the organisation whilst working as a missionary in Papua, New Guinea. He held the first meeting in Athea, Co. Limerick with the help of another Sacred Heart priest, Father Brian Dunleavy. From there, groups formed throughout the country, especially in the areas of Limerick, Cork and Dublin.

    Seán O'Hanlon was curate in the parish of Athea from 1971 to 1977. He died 8.2.1978. (parish website)

    Eamer O'Keeffe worked as an artist and film-maker in Ireland. She came to London in 1969 and "decided to stay after discovering feminism" - See 9.3.1999 - 25.10.2008

    1969 to 1972 - Peter Barham interviews and group discussions with patients diagnosed as schizophrenic in Winterton Hospital, Sedgefield, County Durham. Peter was researching "schizophrenic thinking"

    1969 Jacobus Gerrit (Koos) Postema (born Rotterdam, 17.8.1932) made Dutch television programsfrom 1969: "A small hours You" and "You A large hour" in which taboo-breaking issues were discussed such as abortion, sexuality pedophila, assisted suicide and transsexuality. (See Netherlands) - Wikipedia

    1969 Birth of Joseph Atukunda, whose father, Mzee James Kahigiriza, was the last prime minister of Ankole until 1967.
    "I studied at
    Kings College Buddo secondary school and in my final year in 1989, I had my first episode of mental illness". 1990-1991 - 2003 - A founder of Heartsounds in 2008. - 2009 - 16.5.2011 facebook started - 26.5.2011 interview - visiting - in Britain - 14.5.2013 - 16.9.2013 interview - 20.9.2013 video - 15.12.2014 interview - 21.2.2015 interview

    January 1969 The first "claimants union" met in Birmingham. This rapidly developed a participatory democracy style of organisation. A National Federation of Claimants Unions was formed in March 1970 by Birmingham, Brighton, East London, North London, West London and North Staffordshire claimants unions. Some members of the Mental Patients Union (1973) had experience in claimants unions.

    By 1969, the Anti-University had collapsed - the "Anti-Psychiatry" group was meeting at Ken Smith's flat in Belsize Park, and David Cooper rarely came, because he found members wanted therapy, not political action. Andrew Roberts went once.

    end of February 1969 Mary Barnes returned from a trip to Paris and began to prepare for her exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre.

    February 1969 Tower Hamlets Art Group, Members Exhibition, included some work by Mary Barnes.

    2.3.1969 Cherry Allfree twenty-one. After a year in Lexden House Cherry was admitted to Essex Hall in Colchester. "Why were you at Essex Hall? I ran away from Lexden House" (more than once) "Because I didn't like it there" I asked about going somewhere different, and they said there wasn't anywhere else at the moment". "Speaking up for our rights" was "playing up". I used to insist that I was quite capable of going out by myself; so I used to go out by myself without their permission". Cherry was in Essex Hall for three years before moving back to Lexden House for two years and then to Kingsmead for two years.

    11.4.1969 to 25.4.1969. Exhibition of the work of Mary Barnes at Camden Arts Centre, London.

    The works on display (listed in the catalogue) were

    1. Birth - 2. Back of the Cross - 3. Disintegration *. 4. Angel on the Verge of Hell. 5. Crucifixion. 6. Moon. 7. Moon Surface. 8. Sun. 9. Wheat. 10. Spring. The Resurrection. 11. The Vine. 12. Fatima 1917. 13. Fire. 14. Gathering Manna. 15. Resurrection *. 16. Mountains and Clouds. 17 He shall come as the Sun [With Healing in his Wings]. 18. Time of the Tomb *. 19. Our Lady of Africa *. 20 Break Through *. 21. Triptych.

    * Illustrated in Something Sacred 1989

    13.4.1969 The Sunday Times "Making the Break" review of the Mary Barnes exhibition by Atticus

    end of June 1969 Peter Barnes moved into Kingsley Hall

    July 1969 People Not Psychiatry - See 24.12.1971 - PNP Manchester 1971 -

    Robin Farquharson wrote to Michael Barnett from a mental hospital in Pretoria, South Africa, where he had read Michael's article in the International Times. In his letter he spoke of the Situationist Housing Association which he had set up in the hope of providing a "house like Kingsley Hall", but with support, which would be a "sanctuary" for him. Eventually (in London), Rhaune Laslett found a "small mews house" for him (18 Russell Gardens Mews), apparently a short life tenancy for about three years. This was the "PNP House". The first tenants were Jenny James and Becky (about nine years old?), Robin Farquharson, Chris Cade and Graham Spowatt. Robin's tenancy seems to have lasted no more than a few weeks before he was admitted to an Epsom Hospital and the other tenants moved someone else in.

    David Crepaz-Keay had his first psychiatric diagnosis in 1969.
    He worked at the Treasury and in the water industry from
    1982 to 1991.
    He was Consultant on service user involvement, various health and social services departments from 1990 to 1998
    A Coordinating Group member of Survivors Speak Out from September 1990 to September 1995 (Chair 1992, Secretary 1993, Chair 1994)
    At Mental Health Media from 1997 to 2005 (A consultant, then deputy director for 3.5 years (1999?). Became Chief Executive at the beginning of March 2003)
    Speaker for Survivors Speak Out in 12.12.1998 media blitz
    thepsychotic.org.uk 27.6.2002
    Commissioner, Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (January 2003 - August 2007).
    Head of Patient and Public involvement for the Mental Health Foundation from June 2005.

    6.8.1969 Helen Spandler born. See 1974 - July 1990 analysis of anti-psychiatry and mental patients movements - BA (East London) by Independent Study 1992 - Asylum Autumn 1992 (Socialist Patient Collective) - Sheffield University from 1992 - Helen became involved with Asylum and has remained so since - - MA (Sheffield) Psychiatry, Philosophy and Society (1994) - 42nd Street 1994-1996 (based there as a research worker from August 1994 to August 1995) - worked for Having a Voice from 1995-1998 - July 1995 - 1996 - advised Nick Crossley - Manchester Course in Group Psychotherapy (Institute of Group Analysis) 1997 - PhD Manchester Metropolitan University Discourse Unit, Department of Psychology and Speech Pathology 2002 - Asylum to Action - Spring 2006 - Post Graduate Certificate (UCLAN) Research Student Supervision 2007 - 2008 - 29.5.2008 - Literature Review Notes - Helen Spandler Literature

    Late 1969 "My second admission, nearly five years later, was a quite different and much more positive experience." Judith Watson

    "Nothing that has happened to me since has ever been as bad as those two years between November 1969, and November 29th 1971." (Joan Hughes)

    1970

    In the United Kingdom, the 1970s saw the birth of several independent democratic organisations of mental patients, organised locally, but attempting to link together. These unions formed inside and outside of mental hospitals. There were similar developments in several other countries, including Camada and the United States. In European countries other than Scotland and England, the patients movement appears to have been generated by psychiatrists (sometimes called anti-psychiatrists). In Scotland it was started by patients. In England, some professionals (not psychiatrists) were involved in a pilot group. But much research is needed in all countries because the names of psychiatrists and anti-psychiatrists often attract an attention that those of patients do not.

    Anne Plumb moved to Rochdale in 1970, following eighteen months of emotional and mental crisis while at university that placed her in hospital on several occasions.

    About 1970 Lesley Mitchell (later Lougher) qualified as an Occupational Therapist. See 1972

    Hans Wiegant, in 1985, traced Dutch organisation back to 1970. A web history says that in 1970 "the first official patiëntenraad" (patient council) was formed in the (large) psychiatric hospital at Coudewater (western Netherlands) and says that "creating opportunities to participate in the psychiatric hospitals is a first important step towards recognition of the empowerment of patients". (See Netherlands) Organisations include the Clientenbond - "de Cliëntenbond in de geestelijke gezondheidszorg" (Customer/client association/union in the mental health care system), formed 11.1.1971 [11.9.1971?] , and De Gekkenkrant - [See external link to history: Geschiedenis van de Cliëntenbond - an archive - complete list ]

    Recovery began to change to GROW about 1970 when the name G.R.O.W. (Group Recovery Organisations of the World) was adopted by an international federation of Recovery groups which included Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

    1970 Anthony Kendell and Glen Thompson founded Centerprise. Glen was working for the Hoxton Cafe Youth Project. The project was an ILEA one for "detached youth", that is young people who did not join orthodox clubs and classes. Glen and Anthony founded Centerprise as a project where one had to walk through a bookshop to get to the cafe. This was the plan of the building in Dalston Lane, where I first knew it in 1973. One of the functions of grassroots community centres like this was to make community publishing possible. Groups and individuals could use the centre's typewriters and duplicator and more advanced facilities, like the Silk Screen Workshop (in Dalston) were linked to the project. Mental Patients Union publications from early in 1974 tended to use Centerprise.
    Centerprise and the Mental Patients Union

    February 1970 At Heidelberg, patients held several "assemblies", some with the press present. This may have been the origin of the Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv (Socialist Patient Collective)

    2.3.1970 Cherry Allfree twenty-two.

    April 1970 (France) First issue of Cahiers pour la Folie, decribed by Jacques Lagrange as "a journal of the extreme left... which sought to struggle against 'class psychiatry'". (Foucault 1973/1974c p.365) Notebooks anti-psychiatriques and Marxist. 15 numbers from 1970 to 1974. No. 5 was April-May 1971. Editor Jean Claude Polack psychiatrist [Sometimes given as Jean-Yves Pouilloux]. Each number 12 or 14 pages illustrated. See Fresnes Conference June 1973

    Bit Information Service (London) published Bitman. numbers 1 to 6 from May 1970 to May 1973. COPAC lists in British Library. No 6 (May 1973) was the "special Robin issue) following the death of Robin Farquharson. The British Library does not have numbers 7 and 8 (Late September 1973) - AandV Archive includes some extracts

    May 1970 The Phobics Society established

    September 1970 to November 1970 Peter Campbell a patient in Murray Royal Hospital, Perth, Scotland

    October 1970 The Gay Liberation Front held its first meeting (At the London School of Economics). Seventeen people attended. (external source archive) - See 1971 and 1997

    18.10.1970 Alastair Kemp born. See Asylum Summer 2012 - Newhaven Journeyman

    19.11.1970 Janet Cresswell appeared before Hampstead Magistrates charged with assault on Dr Henry Stoll (1913-2006), her G.P. She had hit him over the head with a milk bottle, causing lacerations to his scalp. Janet was committed to Friern Barnet under section 60 (1) of the 1959 Mental Health Act. [Date from 1976 Court transcript, but Janet dates 1972]. She was released in May 1971 (Bill Warwick 16.6.1981, Janet did not question the 1970/1971 dates on her annotated draft).

    1971

    Campaign for the Mentally Handicapped started in 1971. Its name changed in turn to Campaign for Mentally Handicapped People, CMH) - CMH (Campaigning for Valued Futures with People who have Learning Difficulties) - Values into Action (VIA) - (External link to present website) - Almost from the beginning, CMH ran small scale "participation events" for people with a mental handicap.

    Early 1971 GAP (Glasgow Advisory People) information and advice shop started at 190 New City Road, Glasgow, by Felicity Harris, a Glasgow graduate. (See SUMP 1971) A legal clinic, Claimants Union, Black Box news agency, White Panther group, Seed Centre and Drug Care unit, all found a base there. The base collapsed under financial and other pressures in October 1971, reforming briefly as "Forever People", after which groups that had been part of it reformed as separate entities in different parts of Glasgow. [See International Times, January 1972]. Paul Ramsay and "all the young people of GAP" played an important role in the formation of the Scottish Union of Mental Patients.

    SUMP Stamp January 1971 Raza Griffiths of Kindred Minds born. BA English and German, University of London 1993. In the second year of a post-graduate thesis he was forced to give up his studies by a "life threatening breakdown" (See survivors CV 7.6.2005). He has worked as a freelance journalist since 1997. Trent Radio sponsored him to study Investigative Journalism (MA distinction) at Nottingham Trent University from 1998 to 1999. From January 2001 to October 2003 he worked for Mental Health Media.
    See
    7.6.2005. Worked for the National Survivor User Network from July 2012. See See 14.11.2017

    9.1.1971 In London, a very gay [meaning cheerful] contingent from the Gay [meaning homosexual] Liberation Front joined a march against the Industrial Relations Bill calling the slogan "Poof to the Bill". This proud, self-confident, public appearance was one of the inspirations for some MPU members who saw themselves as "coming out" publicly as mental patients rather than hiding it.

    8.2.1971 (France) Manifesto of the Le Groupe d'information sur les prisons (Groupe Information Prisons or GIP) (Group for information on the prisons) signed by Jean-Marie Domenach, Michel Foucault et Pierre Vidal-Naquet. (French Wikipedia)

    2.3.1971 Cherry Allfree twenty-three.

    16.7.1971 Informationezentrum Rote Volksuniversitat [Information Centre of the Red People's University] formed in place of Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv. See Fresnes 1973

    SUMP Stamp 26.7.1971 "Petition for the Redress of Grievances put forward by the patients in Hartwood Hospital, Shotts Lanarkshire". - "The signatories to the petition are the Foundation and Permanent Members of SUMP" [Scottish Union of Mental Patients - see mental patients unions]

    SUMP archive - SUMP box

    Undated: "Tabulated grievances and some suggested remedies - These are for the attention of the Mental Welfare Commissioners" [inside "These list are for presentation to the commissioners in Edinburgh who came to Hartwood to redress the complaints of the petitioners of July, 1971.] See Thomas Ritchie

    11.9.1971 (See Netherlands)

    Tuesday 27.9.1971 Politics of Psychology Conference. London School of Economics

    29.9.1971 Feast of St Michael the Archangel. Mary Barnes wrote "The Miracle of Mary. A Baby Bear Story for Michael" for Michael Dempsey who edited Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness.

    "Baby Bear, safely in her lair, was making pictures, with paint and papers, wood and canvas. Big Bear got them hung in an exhibition, so she got recognition. - Michael from the land of green bears, wondered what this rainbow was. He thought, maybe she can paint in words. Big Bear told her, you can growl, you lick and sniff, and paint with shit. You can put the world in words. - Big Bear was very pleased, because without catching Baby Bear he had saved her from extinction. She was so free, she danced with glee. - Together, they wrote all about it. Michael, moving to another cave, took with him all that they had made. There he cooked it to a book, and when all was set and served, Baby Bear leapt with delight for the 'colour' was just right"

    Monday 18.10.1971 The Times "Going down to come up again straight" "Victoria Brittain reviews a new book on madness". (Mary Barnes. Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness. Mary Barnes and Joseph Berke. Mac Gibbon and Kee, £2.95,) - "Mary Barnes lives alone in an attic in Hampstead painting with furious energy picture after picture, often of Christ crucified or The Resurrection."
    SUMP Stamp
    This is one of a series of pictures taken in Mary Barnes' flat in Hampstead in connection, I think, with the Sunday Times review.

    November 1971 In discussion with Noam Chomsky, on Dutch television, Michel Foucault said

    "I admit to not being able to define, nor for stronger reasons to propose, an ideal social model for the functioning of our scientific and technological society. On the other hand, one of the most urgent tasks, before everything else, is that we are used to consider, at least in our European society, that power is in the hands of the government and is exerted by some particular institutions such as local government, the police and the army, These institutions transmit the orders, apply them and punish people who do not obey.

    But I think that political power is also exerted by a few other institutions which seem to have nothing in common with the political power, which seem to be independent, but which actually are not. We all know that universities and the whole education system that is supposed to distribute knowledge, we know that university and the whole educational system maintain the power of a certain social class and exclude the other social class from this power. Psychiatry, for instance, is also apparently meant to improve mankind, and the knowledge of the psychiatrists. Psychiatry is also a way to implement a political power to a particular social group. Justice also.

    It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the working of institutions, that appear to be both neutral and independent. To criticise and attack them in such a manner that political violence that has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so one can fight against them. If we want right away to define the profile and the formula of our future society, without criticising all the forms of political power that are exerted in our society, there is a risk that they reconstitute themselves, even though such an apparently noble form as anarchist unionism." (Transcribed from You Tube)

    The first public annoucement that Thomas Ritchie had started a Scottish Union of Mental Patients came in the undergrounD newspaper Ink on 16.11.1971

    30.11.1971 "THREAT TO A COMMUNITY SERVICE" - Statement by Pam Elliot-Lord - Jane Pimlott - Jill Rynveld and Howard Taylor "Patients in the joint staff/patient protest group - Paddington Clinic and Day Hospital"

    10.12.1971 "Staff and patients at the Paddington Clinic and Day Hospital have formed a protest group"

    Friday 24.12.1971 "Christmas Day in the Nuthouse" edition of Time Out - [The film Family Life opened 13.1.1972] End piece said that 500 people a month go to Release, BIT, and Street Aid because they "feel themselves to be in kinds of mental trouble". An alternative to the NHS was being sought with "People not Psychiatry as the possible basis to the existing out-patient system... housing associations like the Philadelphia Association as alternative to the existing in-patient system."

    PNP Manchester: In 2006 Gabrielle Cox (Gay Cox) had lived in Moss Side for 34 years. Alistair and Gay (226 3258) were contacts for PNP (People Need People - People Not Psychiatry) in Manchester about 1971/1972. "PNP is a loose network of friends with a number of focal points. The current focal points are the Basement of Gaddum House," [Closed 1973] "Queen Street (off Albert Square), Manchester, next door to the Rising Sun, where we gather every Tuesday evening from 7.30 onwards; and a number of homes of individual members where we gather as the spirit moves us."

    " Tony, Mary and myself encountered the radical mental health group People Not Psychiatry and we attended its weekly meetings between approx 1971 - 1983. These offered support and debate to a wide range of mental health users and activists. Jack Housden was another influential member and I still have some of his writings about PNP somewhere. (It was written up from a London perspective in 'People not Psychiatry' (Barnett, 1973)). I think it did help to forge at that time some of Tony's later thinking about the role of the user movement in both support and campaigning activities". (Alistair Cox 14.8.2012)

    Alistair Cox met Tony Riley while Tony was living in a "(then called) Group Home for people with mental health issues around 1971", run by a small voluntary charity called Community Action Projects. Tony became involved with Alistair in the organisation of its work. Community Actions Projects expanded into providing housing for homeless young people and Paul Baker, Alistair and others wrote up its approach in a small book called Beyond the Hostel (1982). Tony met Mary in 1971.

    24.11.1971 Incorporation of Community Action Projects Ltd as a company limited by guarantee. Registered address 47 Upper Lloyd Street, Moss Side, Manchester, M14 4HY (Alistair Cox's adress). Registered as a charity 16.3.1972: To provide ... living accommodation and associated amenities ... persons in necessitous circumstances, including persons in receipt of or in need of psychiatric or medical treatment and persons who for any reason are unable to maintain themselves without supportive care, and to promote, aid and further rehabilitation of such persons in the community and their welfare generally." See Bowker Street and Egerton Road

    1971 (First edition?) Treatment and Care in Mental Illness edited by Edith Rudinger. Consumers' Association, London. 168 pages including index. A revised edition, with 176 pages, was published in 1973.

    Frank Bangay: "In my early twenties, through looking for work I took on employment in the Health Service as a Hospital Porter, then as a Hospital Orderly. Here I worked alongside people from the Caribbean and got to understand how hard these people worked, thereby getting away from the myth I grew up with, that these people were lazy and scrounging of the Welfare State. During this period I also experienced depression and started taking tranquillisers, which later led on to a dependence on anti-depressants and seeing psychiatrists on a regular basis. This later led to a breakdown and hospitalisation. Through this I learnt what it was like to be prejudiced against and stigmatised. (1997 footnote to "And We Can Learn" (August 1996), Naked Songs and Rhythms of Hope p.129)

    1972

    (France) Groupe d'information sur le Asiles (Groupe Information Asiles or GIA) (Group for Information on Asylums) formed in 1972. Jacques Lagrange says that this was formed, on the model of Groupe Information Prisons, by "young psychiatrists whose less pronounced corporatist concerns allowed them to take a more political position". He says it was "soon taken over by the 'psychiatrised' themselves to denounce the scandals of arbitrary confinement" (Foucault 1973/1974c p.353). At Fresnes in 1973, Lesley Mitchell said that the French Groupe Information Asiles and the English Mental Patients Union were the only groups "organised solely by patients and ex-patients".

    External link to the history website of the Groupe Information Asiles. It was founded by Dr Dimitri Crouchez (intern in psychiatry), with some colleagues of the CHS Perray-Vaucluse, in the Essonne (south of Paris), who disagreed with the traditional practices of psychiatry. They referred frequently to Roger Gentis (psychiatrist with the CHS Perray-Vaucluse), and his pamphlet: Les murs de l'Asile (The walls of the asylum) (Maspéro, 1970). They were joined by Philippe Bernardet, who joined as a student in 1973, was a long- time actvist. The first indication that it might be a group of the psychiatrised (psychiatrisés) comes in 1975: First [constitution?] under the official name of "APLP (Association pour la liaison des psychiatrisés). From 1975 to 1979, publication of journal of the GIA: Psychiatrisés en lutte - (See France)

    Peter Thompson's Bound for Broadmoor published. It was followed, in 1974, by Back from Broadmoor

    1972 Women and Madness by Phyllis Chesler published by Doubleday and company, Garden City, New York. A copy given to the Mental Patients Union by Pam Edwards in September 1974.

    Ellen Malos, Garden Flat, 1 Apsley Road, Bristol, BS8 2SH given as the contact for a Bristol woman's group that had been "going for some time" in The Body Politic - Women's Liberation in Britain 1960-1972. No details of group given. "Ellen became the hub of the thriving Bristol Women's Movement in the early 1970s. The basement of her house in Waverley Road became the Women's Centre" [See ] "where meetings of all sorts took place. It also became a refuge for women who were victims of domestic violence, the first of its kind in Bristol. On Saturdays the same space functioned as a pregnancy testing centre (in the days before home testing kits). After two years of campaigning the group acquired and managed three houses. So Bristol Women's Aid was born." (source). See also 1972 - Bristol University profile and Bristol Women's Studies Group

    SamShakes 25.1.1972 Sam Shakes born in the maternity unit of Hackney Hospital, London. Her parents had come to London from Montserrat and Jamaica. She was the first of their four children. She started her education at London Fields Primary School and then went to Kingsland Secondary School in Shaklewell Lane (now demolished), re-sitting GCSEs at the Sir George Monoux Sixth Form College in Walthamstow. She began her career as a sales clerk in 1989, first selling bathrooms in the City of London and then with Dudley Stationers (now defunct) in Bow.
    An Access course in Humanities, at Waltham Forest College led to her begining an English Literature degree on the Enfield Campus of Middlesex University in September 1997. In her second year she was "hit with raging Ulcerative Colitis... Struggled to be well and study on medication, but ended up having her colon cut out in November 1998. It was the start of a new life. See
    1999 - 2000 (madness) - 2002 (graduated) - 2008 (paintings) - 30.10.2009 at Philip Morgan's F.E.E.L. presentation - 2010 (first book) - 14.7.2010 Birmingham Seminar - 2011 wrote first fairy story - roaming India - 2.1.2013 Philip on fairy story - 2014 first fairy story published - Rev. Lucy Winkett - 2016 Fish in Head fairy story - 6.5.2077 death of Philip - Christmas greetings 2017 - Spirit of Philip Morgan

    February 1973 [1972? CHECK Community Action Projects took on three short life properties in Bowker Street, Salford. [To August 1975]

    Friday 3.3.1972 Paddington Day Hospital meeting

    12.3.1972 Politics of Psychology News Letter Number 3.

    SPK - Aus der Kranheit eine Waffe Machen [Make Your Illness a Weapon] written by the Socialist Patient Collective of Heidelberg University and published by Trikont Verlag, Munich, 1972. - April 1972. In a letter published with the Socialist Patient Collective book (above), Jean Paul Sartre described it as "the sole possible radicalisation of anti-psychiatry" and "also a coherent praxis which aimed at abolishing the alleged 'therapeutic methods' for mental illness". - Being translated into English Spring 1973

    1972 Diana Rose (born 1950), a psychology student at Aberdeen University, had her first experience of treatment under the mental health services. She took the exams in a psychiatric hospital and obtained her first degree in psychology. In her academic posts, from 1972- 1986, she kept quiet about her experience of distress and hid her ongoing distress. See Grunwick picket line 1976 - Eventually (1986) "she was medically retired from a research and teaching post at the age of 35 "due to being mad" (email from Diana). She then spent five years 'living in the community', an experience which was very distressing. In 1985 she became part of the fledgling service user /survivor movement in the UK." (source) - In 1996 she went to the Sainsbury Centre and developed User Focused Monitoring, a user-led model of research. 1998 - 1998 Workbook - 2.11.2000: Proposed research (completed by others) on the user movement - In 2001 she went to be project coordinator at Service User Research Enterprise (SURE), Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London - SRN 2001 - 23.1.2001 - January 2005 "patients' perspectives on electroconvulsive therapy" in British Journal of Psychiatry - In 2005 Diana was promoted to Senior Lecturer in User-Led Research and co-director of SURE. 21.11.2006 - 19.10.2007 - 12.1.2009 - In 2011 she was promoted to Reader in User-led Research. "I don't think anyone else in the world has this title". (email from Diana 21.12.2011). Professor March 2014

    2.3.1972 Cherry Allfree twenty-four.


    By March 1972, Thomas Ritchie had secured the support of the Scottish Council for Civil Liberties for the concept of a union of mental patients. The Journal of SUMP days (April below) begins "SUMP is associated with S.C.C.L" and list the names of its secretary, Robert Thompson; Chairman, Peter Wallington; and Vice Chairmen: Edgar Prais and James J. Wilson (Solicitor).

    The Journal was started two weeks after The Herald published an article on 27.3.1972 (page 2) "Special Union to be formed for mental patients".


    SUMP Journal

    SUMP (Scottish Union of Mental Patients).
    Tommy Ritchie's "Journal of SUMP Days" begins Friday 7.4.1972, but the prefatory note says "We are late in the starting of recording SUMP's activities - But the Manifesto is only half finished and not yet recorded. Moreover we have had no General meeting yet." - See also 26.7.1971

    Friday 28.4.1972 Tommy Ritchie rang his Member of Parliament. "I told him I was speaking for Sump not Self". "Was he in favour of Sump being autonomously in the hands of patients?". He was not sure on this till he consulted experts. (Journal page eight)

    SUMP membership records (page one below) were kept at the back of the journal

    SUMP membership

    00001 Thomas Ritchie * wards 7 and 15 (Hartwood). Following to 00025: Ward 7: 00002 James Corrigan - 00003 Robert Forrest - 00004 George Henderson - 00005 Hugh Crosbie - 00006 James Lee * - 00007 Charles Brunton [not on typed list] - 00008 David McCaughtree [not on typed list] - 00009 James Mailey - 00010 Thomas Bell - 00011 Roderick U. Reid - 00012 William Murray - 00013 J. Hannah - 00014 Andrew Daisley * - 00015 Fred McLaughlin - 00016 Hugh Murphy [not on typed list] - 00017 Hugh McMullen [not on typed list] - 00018 R. Mannering [spelling on typed list] - 00019 Hugh Reilly - 00020 John Maxwell - 00021 George Patterson * - 00022 Richerd. R. [Dickie] Dobie - 00023 Robert Waddell - 00024 William McCourtney - 00025 Robert Cameron * - 00026 A. Stewart. [Also on Ward 7 is M. Malroony, on the typed list but not in the journal] - Next page: 00027 "Gemmel"? [James Taylor on typed list] Ward 8 - 00028 James Mcguiness Ward 10 - 00029 John McCahon * Ward 8 - a red line - 00030 Bruce McKenzie Ward 15 [Typed list "In addition to the Petitiners, Bruce McKenzie is also a Permanent Member"}

    * Thomas Ritchie - James Lee - Andrew Daisley - George Patterson - Robert Cameron - and John McCahon made individual grievances, along with James Urquhart [00053]

    Typed list said following membership numbers "will be reserved for all the generous people and organisations on the outside who donate one guinea or more" [In practice, I do not think this was followed, but Tommy did use membership as a means of raising money. The last member is 00100]

    Robin Farquharson is member number 00034 in the SUMP membership list. He is the first not from Hartwood. Under "hospital" it says " Gartloch (7) transferred to Epsom". The story I remember being told is that Robin was confined (on this occasion) after successfully ordering a (military?) aeroplane - or aeroplanes.

    Bill Ferguson is member number 00034: ex-patient Hartwood, 12 Rutheren Street.


    11.5.1972 Press conference launching PROP (Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners) in the Prince Arthur pub on the Caledonian Road opposite Pentonville Prison. Platform: Dick Pooley, Ted Ward (London organiser), Douglas Curtis (anonymous - Mike Fitzgerald fronted for him), and Pauline (no second name given). The language of PROP was adopted in an adapted form by the Mental Patients Union in March 1973 and and April 1973: "Statement of Intent" and "Charter of Rights" with "demands". Ted Ward the London organiser of PROP was a founder member of the MPU and he was the person who spoke most effectively on the control of the MPU by patients only.

    May 1972 Alternatives to Holloway published by the group Radical Alternatives to Prison, which had been estblished in 1971. (See alternative projects)

    7.5.1972 Thomas Ritchie first visited Gartnavel

    after 20.6.1972 Thomas Ritchie came to London

    4.8.1972 PROP (Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners) called the first national prison strike [The Prison Strikes were called by the dates being given in reply to questions in television and radio interviews. It took the Home Office a long time to realise the simplicity of this - They were looking for a complex communication organisation. In the formation of the Mental Patients Union, Radio Four's Today Programme played an important role.]

    September 1972 Spare Rib "Agoraphobia" "At sixteen Carolyn Maniford became a patient in a psychiatric hospital because she was too frightened to leave home"... "At seventeen Carolyn Maniford is a patient in Goodmayes... and has been in hospital for three months"... "I don't think I'll ever get better. Sometimes I think I'm in here to get worse"...

    September 1972 Nathalie Fonnesu born in Italy. (Now resident London). See Nat 2001 - F.E.E.L. - 2001 - Ravaged - 2017 walk

    20.9.1972 Letter in The Guardian from Paul Hunt, calling on disabled people to form their own organisation. " UPIAS functioned mainly through confidential correspondence and circulars circulated amongst its members, many of whom were living in residential institutions (Campbell and Oliver 1996). These exchanges led to the production of a Policy Statement and constitution in 1974. Two years later, it expanded on its thinking in the Fundamental Principles of Disability (UPIAS 1976)" (source)

    7.11.1972 to 19.12.1972 trial (and imprisonment) in Germany of doctors Wolfgang and Ursel Huber of the SPK. Each was sentenced to four and a half years in prison on 19.12.1972.

    Before Christmas 1972 The group that produced The Need for a Mental Patients Union were meeting in Liz Durkin's flat.

    America Madness Network News first published - See Anne Swan - 1981

    Fresnes Prison: J. D'Escrivain "Peut-on ne pas dénoncer l'inacceptable?" Revue Esprit :Pourquoi le travail social 4 - 5 1972 (See France)

    1973

    "it is patients themselves who are the most likely people to influence future developments. Who better to advise how to make the struggle for sanity easier than the people who have been through the experience of modern madness and survived it?"

    1973 De Gekkenkrant (Variously translated Crazy Person's Newspaper - The Fool's Paper and Mad Magazine) started in Holland. It closed itself down on 21.2.1981. See Flip Schrameijer 2002 who was co-founder and editor from January 1973 to January 1979 (6 years 1 month): "One wintery Sunday morning in 1972 my girlfriend and a friend got together to discuss the founding of a paper by and for people in mental institutions. I made them coffee and listened until I realized this was the answer to the feeling I'd had since my two years in a psychiatric asylum where I worked as a conscientious objector. The feeling was I should do something about the injustice and suffering, hidden behind the fences and shrubbery mostly in remote places. I joined the conversation; the next Summer the first issue appeared." (source) - (See Netherlands)

    Before Sunday 1.1.1973 First and last Inside Out produced by a group of mental health patients and workers from 10 Whately Road, off Whiteladies Road, Clifton. Bristol. "We fully support the hospital workers in their fight against the state". Included two pages "Woman's Realm" put together by Bristol Women's Liberation Group (Contact Betty Underwood or the Women's Information Centre at 11 Waverley Road)
    For 11 Waverley Road, see Ellen Malos - Womens Books Bristol and Mental Health in Bristol

    At Bristol Polytechnic, Mary Nettle achieved one of the first Higher National Diplomas in Business Studies (1973) and a Diploma in Advanced Marketing (1974). After college she worked in marketing research with Audits of Great Britain and Quaker Oats in Eastcote, Middlesex. She married in 1977 and became a user of mental health services in 1978.

    January-May 1973 First draft, in duplicated form, of SPK: Make your Illness a Weapon (English translation from the original German) circulated by a collective in North London. A copy was sent to the Mental Patients Union by Petra Michaels in April 1974.

    2.3.1973 Cherry Allfree twenty-five.

    March 1973 Mental Patients' Union MPU   -   Wednesday 21.3.1973 Union formed (See minutes)   -   MPU questionnaire   -   Thursday 29.3.1973 Union meeting at 97 Prince of Wales Road   -   Saturday 7.4.1973 General Meeting agrees full Declaration of Intent.

    Some names: Ralph Walley (Napsbury) - Andrew Dewar - Mike Lawson - Eric Irwin - David Bell (a Philadelphia house) - Robin Farquharson - Michael Cardew - Andrew Roberts - Valerie Roberts - Ted Ward [PROP] - Pam Edwards - Frank Wilkins - Pam Eliott Lord - Nathan Morris - Janet Forge - Vera Krishek - Richie - Brendan Maher - Geoff Thomas - Loretta Land (Marlborough Day) [All patients/ex-patients who took part in the first or second meeting and/or in the working party between meetings]

    March 1973 Martindale - The Extra Pharmacopoeia reprint (with amendments) of 26th edition (July 1972) - 2320 pages The Pharmaceutical Press, London. A copy purchased in 1974 by Joan Martin. See Directory of Side Effects

    1.4.1973 Bill Warwick, 12 Hartill Street, Stoke on Trent, first wrote to the MPU for information. He publicised it his local PNP Group. In October Stoke on Trent social services held meeting addressed by an ex-mental patient (Miss M. Rowe) on "Problems of Patients returning to the Community" at which Bill and friends distributed MPU literature.

    Spring [April] 1973 Mind Out, a quarterly Mind magazine started with Denise Winn as editor. Denise was sympathetic to the aim of forming a mental patients union and was allowed to attend one or more of the union's meetings to report on it.

    Spring 1973 A group including Petra Michaels translating Socialist Patient Collective book into English. Circulated to MPU in Spring 1974

    Summer 1973 "The squat at Villa Road, Brixton, emerged in the summer of 1973." It occupied a whole street and involved about 200 people at its peak (peak ending 1977). (Europe's 1968: Voices of Revolt 2017). BBC video 2011?. Jenny James at 12 Villa Road from 1974 to 1978. "In the hot summer of 1976, the Villa Roaders barricaded the street to fend off eviction and demolition".

    Summer 1973 Mind Out report on the Mental Patients Union

    June COPE: Community Organisation for Psychiatric Emergencies

    Fresnes Conference Friday 29.6.1973 - Saturday 30.6.1973: Organised by three French groups: Cahiers pour la Folie - Groupe d'information sur le Asiles - Association contre la repression medico-policiere - Included: Kommittee gegen die Isolationsfolten - Des prisonniere de droit commun, 12 - Mental Patients Union

    Wednesday 4.7.1973 Robin Farquharson House (37 Mayola Road). Intended only as housing at first. Meetings began to be held here from January 1974. 37 Mayola Road was named Robin Farquharson House in accordance with an earlier decision to name the union's housing after Robin Farquharson

    Monday 27.8.1973 Manchester Mental Patients Union founded. The December 1974 list of Mental Patients Unions records it as meeting weekly at 3pm at 178 Oxford Road, Manchester. See Manchester index

    Autumn 1973 Mind Out - "A Leeds and area branch of the Mental Patients Union is being formed. Any patients or ex-patients who are interested in becoming members or any interested parties who would like to take out associate membership should get in touch with: I.S. Everton, 16 Quarry Mount, Leeds, LS6 1DN. The Mental Patients Union is concerned with fighting for patients' rights."

    September 1973 Spare Rib "With a Little Help from Ourselves" by Carol Morrell. "Re-evaluation counselling - more often called co- counselling - is perhaps the most radical of the radical therapies: it is peer group therapy". Michael Barnett (1973, pages 114-15) mentions, in passing, attending a meeting at which Thomas Scheff "presented for the first time in this country the method of Re-evaluation Counselling - a lay form of therapy between peers". Initially sceptical, he came to "have far fewer doubts about this mode of reciprocal therapy, or self-disclosure. It can be extremely powerful, if limited... It has the advantage of costing nothing, and being open to all". Barnett met and liked Harvey Jackins, who originated re-evaluation counselling. See Terry Simpson

    Peer support is one of the fields into which Peter Beresford divides the history of the user movements.

    Tuesday 4.9.1973 Camden Council in court to evict squatters from 97 Prince of Wales Road.

    The Mental Patients Union met in a City office for some time, retreating to a pub across the road when that became too cold. It was during the period in the pub that I recall David Cooper (a full member by reason of his experiences in Argentina) attending meetings. In September 1973 he was a speaker at a meeting organised in Portugal to see if a European network of alternatives to psychiatry could be formed. He met Franco Basaglia and Robert Castel. Two other contacts persuaded him to move to Paris, where he remained.

    October 1973 Dundee Mental Patients Union founded with contacts inside and outside of the Royal Dundee Liff Hospital. It became the Westfield Association

    October 1973 "Women's Books, 11 Waverley Road, Bristol" Revised Literature List (MPU File Copy - 3 pages) lists Laing and Esterson Sanity, Madness and the Family (40 pence) - David Cooper Dialectic of Liberation (30 pence) and The Death of the Family (35p) and "Our Bodies Our Selves" by Boston Women's Health Collective (£1.50). There is a short list of "Journals" which includes "A Woman's Place (Brighton W.L.) 3p" - "Enough (Bristol) numbers 4 and 5 12p" - "Pent Up (Southampton W.L. 15p" - "Shrew (London W.L. Workshop) 10p" - (See Compendium 1975)

    Thursday 6.12.1973 Portsmouth Mental Patients Union founded. The December 1974 list of Mental Patients Unions records it as meeting monthly at Portsmouth Community Advice Centre, 157 Lake Road, Portsmouth, PO1 4OY.

    Wednesday 7.11.1973 to Wednesday 6.2.1974 Michel Foucault gave weekly lectures in Paris on le pouvoir psychiatrique (psychiatric power). In these he used the term anti-psychiatry to describe a movement critical of psychiatry that arose within psychiatry. Hysteria was argued to be an element in the movement. In this, patients were said to be mimicking diseases in a counterattack on the truth of psychiatry.

    Winter 1973 Mind Out - The Mental Patients Union no longer has an address in Prince of Wales Road. For any information on MPU please write c/o 37 Mayola Road, Clapton, London E.5. or (if absolutely necessary) phone 01-986-5251.

    Thursday 6.12.1973 BBC1 Play for Today: Baby Blues Seventy minutes from 9.25 (after the news) to 10.40. This dealt with post-natal depression. Response included the formation of Depressives Anonymous - This became Depressives Associated and is now Depression Alliance - (external link to history)

    1974

    Joseph Deacon's Tongue Tied published. It had been written, a few lines a day, over a long period of time.

    1974 Community Health Councils (CHCs) established. See 23.3.1981 - 9.4.1982 - July 1982 - 1.8.1984 - 20.11.1985 - 1986 - Spring 1986 - 9.5.1986 - 20.10.1986 - Spring 1988 - 5.4.1989 - June 1990 - new millennium -

    1974 News from Nowhere, radical bookshop, Liverpool, established. (website - 2004 archive). Other radical bookshops established in the 1970s include Grassroots Bookshop in Manchester and Centerprise Bookshop in Dalston, London. See PROMPT booklet 6 (1979?)

    1974 Richard Shrubb born, Portsmouth. "I lived across the UK, Europe and the US until I went to university in Southampton in 1994. In 1997 I graduated with a 3rd Class in Maritime Business and a 1st in paranoid schizophrenia. I was diagnosed with mental illness in March 1999 and had a positive experience of the mental health system. In 2004 I started a Masters degree in broadcast journalism. Graduating in 2006, I have struggled with the stigma of mental illness." (source) - See DIO Media and 24.6.2007

    Early 1974 Community Levy for Alternative Projects CLAP established. Based at BIT. For the first year of its existence, the CLAP Handbook (listing projects that needed money) was published every two months by Peace News. Mayola Road Mental Patients Union was first listed in CLAP 3 in June 1974. The biggest donor through CLAP was David Waterfield, owner of the blue-movie Exxon cinema club in Danbury Street, Islington. At about the time he was jailed (for importing the film Deep Throat) envelopes of cash were posted (without explanation) to alternative projects. [Most of this information from CLAP Handbook 4: September 1974 - cash in envelopes from my memory]

    March 1974 Women and Psychiatry group formed by Vicky Randall, 115 Cannon Street Road, London, E1.

    March 1974 Community Action Projects and Family Housing Association (Manchester) opened a "newly-converted house of bedsitters which had been planned over the past two years" in Egerton Road, South Manchester.

    Spring 1974 Mind Out - "News has been reaching the Mental Patients Union of prisons and psychiatric hospitals operating a 'censorship' policy with regard to incoming papers and magazines. If readers of Mind Out know of any hospitals where this is happening perhaps they could contact the Mental Patients Union, 37 Mayola Road, Clapton, London, E5.   NB: MPU General Meeting is to be held in Manchester on April 20, from 2.0-5.30 pm at The Music College, Manchester University, Oxford Road, Manchester 13"

    1.3.1974 South West London Mental Patients Union founded. The December 1974 list of Mental Patients Unions records that its meetings were usually held fortnightly at People Aid and Action Centre, 8 Falcon Road, SW11. - Croydon Mental Patients Union also founded - Meetings held monthly on the 18th - Horton Hospital MPU was founded earlier.

    2.3.1974 Cherry Allfree twenty-six.

    17.4.1974 First letter to MPU from Janet Cresswell, 2 Oakford Court, Nassington Road, London, NW3 who had seen it amongst groups listed in the Sunday Times none of which "could possibly be termed pro-psychiatry". Bucked her spirits because she had felt she was the only one. She had "ultimately hit the GP who was responsible" for her "unethical" medical treatment. "this action did not produce an investigation into my medical records but it did cure me of the depression I had as a result of psychiatric treatment". She was refusing to pay rates or taxes into the medical or social services until an enquiry is held: "the treatment ... made me too ill to look after my child and I lost custody of her, so it did cause a lot of trouble."

    Saturday 20.4.1974 Manchester General Meeting of the Mental Patients Union formed the Federation of Mental Patients Unions with Mayola Road MPU (Hackney) as the coordination centre.

    April/May 1974 Draft translation into English of part of the Socialist Patient Collective book sent to Mayola Road Mental Patients Union by Petra Michaels. Petra had been part of the group preparing the draft in the spring of 1973. This was used by Helen Spandler as the main source for her (1992) analysis of the theories and history of the Socialist Patient Collective.

    April 1974 Spare Rib "Liz: Alcoholics Anonymous". "They put a government health warning on cigarettes, but they don't on alcohol."

    Friday 6.5.1974 4.30pm First meeting of Hackney Hospital MPU "Alan Hartman explained what kind of things the mental patients union does. Refusing treatment, cruelty to patients, clothes grants, fighting against being discriminated against in jobs... Alice ill treated by nurses... "Resolved that a branch of the Mayola Road M.P.U. be formed in Hackney Hospital. proposed Alan Hartman, seconded Alice. 15 for - none against. Alan Hartman elected chairman.." The meeting was adjourned after the senior nursing officer attempted (unsuccessfully) to break it up.

    July 1974: Hackney Hospital Mental Patients Union won the right to meet in the hospital

    Hackney Gazette 6.8.1974

    MENTAL PATIENTS UNION IS NOW RECOGNISED

    The Hackney hospitals branch of the Mental Patients Union is the first in the country to achieve recognition. Psychiatric wings in both the German and Hackney Hospital are affected.

    The MPU aims to bring about a better deal for patients in mental hospitals, and improved status.

    Mr Andrew Roberts, of the Hackney branch, claims that several patients in Hackney Hospital psychiatric wing had spoken of better treatment by staff since the branch was recognised on July 18.

    After Hackney MPU ceased being active, Alan Hartman attempted to form a group with a slightly different name: [Not Hackney Mental Patients Association] - He went to Manchester in 1985

    Succesors within the hospital include: Hackney Day Hospital Patients Committee formed in the winter of 1984/1985 and Hackney Patients Council (1994 to the present)

    People's News Service 1.6.1974 "MENTAL PATIENTS' UNION MEMBER ESCAPES COMPULSORY DRUG TREATMENT. Last week Tony O'Donnell moved into the house of the Mayola Road Mental Patients Union in East London after a long struggle to find a place where he could live without having to undergo injections of modicate, an extremely strong drug used on people diagnosed as schizophrenic...". See also Hackney Union of Mental Patients

    5.7.1974 to 7.7.1974 A meeting held at Castle Priory College, which was reported by Paul Williams and Tim Gauntlett in Participation with mentally handicapped people, published by Campaign for the Mentally Handicapped - See 1975

    Saturday 6.7.1974 Present at Mayola Road for MPU meeting: Andrew and Valerie Roberts - Tony O'Donnell, Lillian Jordan, Joan Martin, Austin Johnson, Janet Cresswell, Tom Ritchie. Arranged that Tony would be chair at meeting and Joan take minutes regularly and prepare a partial agenda just before the meeting - First business was to discuss a meeting on 18.7.1974 with "Hackney Hospital Authorities". Second item "House at Woodford. Two large houses available - 6 or 7 rooms per house. "Agreed that Tom Ritchie and Lillian Jordan to move in as tenants" [They took the two downstairs rooms of the first house occupied. Thomas Ritchie remained there until the houses closed in 1976]

    Late August 1974: "Fear" by Frank Bangay published in Troubadour 2, edited by Patrick Hayes.

    "you tell me that I frighten you, Well I never intended to... I'm not a tough man... there are many times when I am afraid... afraid of isolation ... afraid of my superiors... afraid of love... And sometimes I'm frightened of you my friend."

    Troubadour Poets held Monday night poetry evenings at the Troubadour coffee bar, 265 Old Brompton Road, Earls Court, London, SW5. Frank also organised gigs there in the 1980s. See Wikipedia

    October 1974 Mind Out "Consumer issue". Based on a flood of letters in response to publicity that such an issue was planned. Most of the letters were negative and the editor said "We do not think psychiatrists will like being criticised by their patients". The issue also re-produced the MPU drug side effects list, but without the introduction explaining that the effects listed were possible (not necessary) effects. Ruptions in Mind.

    October 1974 First People First convention. Oregon, USA

    4.10.1974 to 6.10.1974 "First Women and Health Conference" held in Sheffield (following "Women and medicine workshop in Edinburgh"). About 250 women came. The 28 page report covers physical health (including VD - Childbirth - Breast Self-Examination - Alternative medicine - The Pill - Menopause - Nutrition). Mental health not mentioned, but a cartoon caption says "I was a well-adjusted woman 'till I discovered health conferences" (page 1).

    Friday 15.11.1974 "Paschal" (Matthew O'Hara) first stayed at 37 Mayola Road.

    The December 1974 list of Mental Patients Unions includes the following unions inside hospitals: Roundway Hospital Mental Patients Union, Wiltshire - Horton Hospital Mental Patients Union, Surrey - Broadmoor Hospital (individual members unable to meet) - Hackney Hospital Branch - Shenley Hospital (contacts) - Dundee Mental Patients Union

    3.12.1974 Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) first policy statement. external link - external link "adopted 3.12.1974, amended 9.8.1976" - See Fundamental Principles of Disability 1975.

    Christmas at Mayola Road: Joan Hughes wrote "I went home to Christmas at Mayola Road and a new visitor called Janet Cresswell called and said she wanted to cook our Christmas dinner. But Valerie had her own plans and made a pudding containing chestnuts, mushrooms and onions for Christmas and also mince pies and jellies. Rebe, another MPU member who was friendly with Valerie's daughter Lily, called and Valerie gave her some mince pies. Christmas in 1974 was quite tiring at Mayola Road". #1975 Brian Redhead pres

    1974-1978 Gardes-Fous: French organisation and journal that attempted to unite low paid mental-hospital workers with patients in radical action. (Sedgwick, P. 1982, p.235). Gardes-fous (fools guards) are parapets or railings that prevent people falling into a hole or running of the road. Published Paris: Solin ISSN: 0339-6673. Nø 1 (févr./mars 1974)-nø 11/12 (1978)

    1975

    Andrew Voyce Andrew Voyce "Paranoid schizophrenia since 1975 - freed from asylum life by Mrs Thatcher's community care - MA in social and public policy - cartoon slide show artist". "I spent my years from age 23 to 40 as a 'revolving door' patient in the old National Health Service asylums in the UK". See 6.6.1977 and Andrew's Asylum Life.

    1975 Schizophrenia From Within (an anthology of autobiographical accounts by patients) edited by J. K. (John Kenneth) Wing (1923- ) for the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, Surbiton. 65 pages. ISBN: 090485406X. Peter Sedgwick (1982, pages 242-243 and 288) comments that

    "Far more psychotic patients... must have participated in the work of the British NSF (with its 90 local groups) alongside relatives and other sympathisers, than have ever been seen in the 'patients' union' networks of more politicised repute".

    In 1975 Thurstine Basset, a student social worker at the London School of Economics, invited a mental patients union speaker. - His interest in the patients' movement continued: See May 1983 - July 1985 - November 2004 - May 2006 - 2007

    1975 Jason Pegler born. See Chipmunkapublishing

    1975 First "Dag van de Psychiatrie" (Day of Psychiatry) in Holland. Later becomes "de Week van de Psychiatrie" (the week of Psychiatry) website

    A meeting in Brussels in January 1975 launched The International Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry (Resseau Alternatif A La Psychiatrie). - See 1982

    Steel an' Skin: London-based Afro-Caribbean drum and dance ensemble active from 1975 to 1992. Founded by
    Peter Scott Blackman. This was a band formed of eleven members ranging from Trinidad to Nigeria. They toured the prisons and inner city slums of 1970s Britain with the intention of presenting a positive image of African culture at a time when popular opinion and media representations left a lot to be desired.

    early 1975 Your Rights in Camden "aimed squarely at potential claimants rather than professionals" (Foreword by Tessa Jowell, chair of social services) The addresses included at the end of the mental health section are Friern Hospital, Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, Emergencies as Whittington Hospital, National Council for Civil Liberties, Mind, Camden Association for Mental Health, The Mental After-Care Association, Mental Patients' Union c/o 37 Mayola Road (A group organised by mental patients to represent the interests of their members) and COPE "Monday to Saturday 11am-8pm. Concerned with alleviating mental distress in modern society"

    Also in 1975: The Sunday Times Self-Help Directory edited by Judith Chisholm and Oliver Gillie, with a foreword by Jack Ashley, MP. Amongst the organisations listed are Al_Anon Familiy Groups, Alcoholics Anonymous, Anorexics Anonymous, Be Not Anxious, B.I.T. (information service), Depressives Anonymous, Disablement Income Group, Federation of Mental Patients' Unions, Friend (homosexual men and women), Gamblers Anonymous, National Federation of the Blind of the United Kingdom, National Federation of Claimant's Unions, National League for the Blind and Disabled, Neurotics Nominé, Patient's Association, Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners (PROP), Simon Community (homeless people), The Open Door (agrophobia), The Partially Sighted Society, The Phobics Society.

    March 1975 Spare Rib "Stretched to Breaking Point" feature recounts (first name only) women's experiences of psychiatric hospitals. "The staff objected when Susan built up a group of friends: 'They didn't like it. You see, we were supporting one another. We'd go on strike; wouldn't go to Occupational Therapy, wouldn't go to bed when lights went out and wouldn't eat shitty food".

    2.3.1975 Cherry Allfree twenty-seven.

    April 1975 Gardes-Fous (page 39-41), special international edition, re-published the (British) Mental Patient's Union's Declaration of Intent in translation, with some background briefing. (Sedgwick, P. 1982, p.286, note 83)

    April 1975 First issue of Psychiatrisés en lutte. (See France)

    April 1975 Mind Out "Discrimination - Andrew Roberts of the Hackney Mental Patients Union takes a look at job discrimination against mental patients"

    May 1975 - Mind Annual Conference "Psychiatry and Alternative Support Systems". Cope was invited to run a seminar. It prepared a leaflet, with West London Mental Patients Union, criticising Mind. The section by West London MPU was signed by Mary Hutchinson and Eric Irwin. (Heavy Daze no.6. pages 6-7 "Mind Games and More")

    7.5.1975 Planned Manchester Mental Patients Union Conference.

    June 1975 " Compendium Sexual Politics Stock Catalogue" contains under "Health, Childbirth etc" mainly works on childbirth. Exceptions include "Women and Health Conference Proceedings, Sheffield [October] 1974 (15 pence) - "Women Against E.C.T." (10 pence) - "Migraine; Evolution of a common disorder" by O. Sacks (£1.60) - "Our Bodies Our Selves" by Boston Women's Health Collective - "Put her down on drugs: prescribed drug usage in women" by L. Fiddell. - The Psychology section included - "Open Letter to Psychiatrists" by Nicole Anthony (3 pence) - "Women an Madness" (£1.15) - Psychoanalysis and Feminism - R. Seidenberg "Drug advertising and perception of mental illness" (25 pence) - M.Weaver "Bill of Rights for Insane, Abnormals and other deviants (so called) (3 pence)

    June 1975 Campaign for the Mentally Handicapped's "participation weekend" at Castle Priory College. This was reported by Alan Tyne, Paul Williams and Tim Gauntlett in Working out: an account of CMH's participation weekend at Castle Priory College in June, 1975, with some comments published London by CMH, 96 Portland Place, W1N 4EX in 1975.

    June 1975 (Covering letter from Charles Hannam. University of Bristol School of Education)
    Mental Health in
    Bristol. Where to get help produced by Pearl Cook, Peter Durrant and Charles Hannam for the Bristol Association for Mental Health. Gives address for national Mental Patients Union. Entry for Bristol Womens Liberation Group ( The Women's Centre, 11 Waverley Road, Bristol 6) says "The Women's Centre is only tenuously involved in this field".

    5.9.1975 There is part of Colin Hambrook that has never quite come to terms with the fact that the world did not end in 1975. (BBC Ouch 25.10.2013)

    October 1975 A Directory of the Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs

    24.10.1975 (United Nations Day). Janet Cresswell presented a petition to 10 Downing Street on behalf of her Campaign for the Abolition of Forced Psychiatric Treatment. The reply was dated 18.3.1976.


    Bill Warwick explained to "Doc" (Matthew O'Hara) on 2.10.1979 the way psychiatry uprooted any efforts to plan: "In 1975 I had just started on a bit of a plan when Janet made contact about her petition which fitted nicely into my prevailing plan, which got its first set back when I got the news from Janet that she had just managed to escape from Friern Barnett where for no known reason she had been placed - KIDNAPPED - into very shortly after having handed her petition into No. 10. I was just getting my breath back, patient;y waiting requested explanation from D.H.S.S. about this un-warranted intervention in Janet's life, when I got to know, without being told why, that Janet was in Holloway, she was already in Broadmoor before I began to get the whys and wherefores".

    31.10.1975 and 1.11.1975 Mind conference at Church House, Westminster in connection with the publication of volume one of Larry Gostin's A Human Condition. The Mental Health Act from 1959 to 1975. Observations, analysis and proposals for reform.

    Heavy Daze number 6: "Mental Patients Union - A federation of Mental Patients group[s] around the country, based on the ideas that mental patients organise and support each other and fight for the rights of each other. The National Info. Centre has recently moved out of London (a good sign?) to Hull MPU, 16 Clifton Gardens, St Georges Road, Hull, HU3 3QB. Write to them for their list of contacts across the country. East London MPU, 37 Mayola Road, E5 (page 31). The same issue includes (page 28) "Society, Psychiatry and the MPU - Personal responsibility? My View", by "Mike Smith, Hull MPU" and a notice about the Directory of the Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs.

    14.11.1975 Janet Cresswell visited in her flat by Hampstead C.I.D. who called a social worker, who called two psychiatrists. She was taken to Ward 3 at Barnet on a section 25. Within three weeks she managed to escape. Her psychiatrist in Friern was Christie Brown, [Janet much later heard that the trigger for this was that a neighbour reported to the police that Janet was planning to kill a psychiatrist.]

    22.11.1975 Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation and the Disability Alliance discussion of the "Fundamental Principles of Disability". (external link)

    December 1975 Mind Out "Voluntary patient - involuntary treatment" (A personal account by Andrew Roberts)

    20.12.1975 Angela Sweeney born. See 2001 - 2.6.2003 - Recovery In Sight Centre 2009 - This is Survivor Research 2009

    1976

    1976 Peter Thompson founded The Matthew Trust

    1976 A young teacher, Shelley Harper, was on a sailing exhibition when she noticed the first signs of brain damage. The Neurological Unit at Southampton later commented "This poor girl will never achieve an independent life". (Neuropsychiatry News, January 2015). She became a campaigner for disability rights and later for mental health rights. - See 1995

    1976 David Kessel first met Howard Mingham (briefly). Howard "was an inpatient in Hackney Hospital's F Block.

    1.1.1976 Which? Books Understanding Mental Health

    11.1.1976 About half the patients at Paddington Day Hospital signed a letter of complaint, leading to an inquiry and (eventually, in 1979) the closure of the unit.

    30.1.1976 150 squatters evicted by 100s of police from Hornsey Rise, GLC Estate, Hazelville Road: (Welby House, Goldie House, Ritchie House). (Jeremy Worman 2009). Cherry Allfree was, at one time, a squatter in Welby House.

    13.2.1976 The telephone number used by the Mental Patients Union moved with Andrew and Valerie (Argent) Roberts to a house they later shared with Joan Hughes.

    2.3.1976 Cherry Allfree twenty-eight. In her 28th year she obtained a room in the hotel she worked in, and was able to leave Kingsmead. At some stage, a taxi she was ravelling in crashed into a lamppost. Subsequent pains in the chest were considered "all in my head" by a doctor who prescribed valium. She was later referred to the National Heart Hospital in London and had a hole in the heart [atrial septal defect] operation a year later. (1977/ 1978?) "After the operation, I went back to work for a while and then my heart started playing up again. Then I had a rest -- and went up to Manchester to get another job. From there I came to London. A "year or more" after her operation, Cherry was a squatter in Welby House, Hornsey Rise. (1978/ 1979?) She obtained a flat of her own in Dulwich and by 1981, this was PROMPT's address.

    29.3.1976/30.3.1976? Janet Cresswell stayed overnight with Joan Hughes at 37 Mayola Road. The following day, Janet stabbed Desmond McNeil, her former doctor, in the buttocks. Joan wrote (about 1993):

    "This news devastated me, but I had no time to dwell on it as I had to continue to occupy Mayola Road until a house had been obtained for Matthew O'Hara and others. I had to stay until the official eviction took place. In the meantime Matthew O'Hara, an amateur expert in legal matters, tried to help Janet, but she refused his offer of help. To this day Janet has remained a patient in Broadmoor Hospital."

    Janet Cresswell was released in 2006. See Independent report.

    30.3.1976 to 20.7.1976 Janet Cresswell in Holloway Prison. She first saw the visiting psychiatrist, Colin Campbell Sherry, on 3.4.1976.

    Sunday 25.4.1976. Joan Hughes' diary entry that Mayola Road closed:

    "All the troubles with Mayola Road appear to be over. The place is empty now and bath and toilet have been smashed up by demolition men, awaiting the destruction of the entire building."

    Wednesday 28.4.1976 - 7.30pm Question put to the leader of Hackney Council by Councillor Lois Jacques "Will the Leader please state what policy decision has been taken regarding the request from the Mental Patients' Union for property to be provided by the Council for their use?" - Minutes in Joan Hughes' collection)

    Spring 1976 "Spring is Rising" by Frank Bangay. This was published in Springfield Words, a magazine produced by Springfield Hospital in 1978. Frank's 1985 poem "Food and Shelter" (Naked Songs and Rhythms of Hope pages 104-106) relates to experiences in 1976 to 1978 and "the revolving door system that we can get caught up in once we enter the psychiatric system".

    June 1976: PROMPT: Protection of the Rights of Mental Patients in Therapy - Became CAPO (Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression) in March 1985.

    24.6.1976 Old Bailey trial of Janet Myra Cresswell before Mr Justice Davies. Mr Fitch prosecuting and Mr O'Rourke defending. Janet pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and guilty of wounding. Verdict of not guilty of attempted murder entered agreed. Janet pleaded "guilty of wounding", which was accepted, although the actual charge included "with intent to do him grievous bodily harm". [The trial, therefore, appears to have been about the kind of sentence that would be imposed] Order made for her admission to Broadmoor within 28 days, without restriction of time. She was admitted to York 2 at Broadmoor on 20.7.1976. [There was an appeal on Janet's case. It was handled by the NCCL who charged her £75. (Letter from Janet 3.10.1981)]

    15.8.1976 Bill Warwick visited Janet Cresswell in Broadmoor. This was they first time they met, and may have been Janet's first visit .

    1977

    1977? Dunffermline Seniors, the first of the Express Groups (Fife) started. external link - See Beyond Diagnosis 6

    Peter Barham's thesis, Thinking about schizophrenia, thinking about schizophrenic thinking and schizophrenic thinking was awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Durham in 1977. It drew on his Winterton interviews and led to schizophrenia and human value in 1984.

    1977 National "Women and Mental Health Conference", London. "as far back as the late 1970s, whilst working as a trainee social worker, I helped to plan the first and only National Women and Mental Health Conference, in the hope that crisis provision and better support services could begin to be set up for women who feature more heavily in the psychiatric system" (Helen Shoenberg, 12.4.1994 Conference speech) - chronology - archive. The conference was disrupted by conflicts between radical and other feminists. Helen Shoenberg was the only patient participating.

    Mary Nettle married in 1977. "Six months later [in 1978] I had a 'nervous breakdown', I was under pressure at work and one day had 'hysterics' in the office. I ended up in St Bernard's, a horrible Victorian asylum for three months. I had become a user of the mental health system and been given the label of manic depression. This had, as you can imagine, a profound effect on my life and of those close to me."... "There was no discussion about medication or someone's problems. Treatment was totally drug oriented".

    Ken Lumb and Anne Plumb married in 1977. Anne describes 1970 to 1985 as "Ken Lumb's early years of activism" marked by long drawn out campaigns that did not achieve the main objectives, or only on a small scale, but which "engendered a solidarity and an agenda that did not go away". These included campaigns against the withdrawl of the invalid tricycle, ill thought out pedestriastion schemes, buiding of Young Disabled Units, action for adapted housing and integrated care support, accessible environments and public transport "and so on".

    February 1977 Larry Gostin's A Human Condition. The Law Relating to Mentally Abnormal Offenders: Observations, analysis and proposals for reform, the second volume of A Human Condition, published by Mind.

    The technology of political control by Carol Ackroyd and others, (Pelican 1977) listed p.41 of Manchester MPU's Your Rights in Mental Hospital. A Human Condition is also listed, but without reference to two volmes.

    January/February 1977 Mind Out "World leader meets his match - John Hooper says that sometimes, the compulsory powers of the Mental Health Act can be a blessing in disguise" (A patient's personal account)


    2.3.1977 Cherry Allfree twenty-nine. Possibly in 1977/1978 that she had a hole in the heart operation in London and later went to Manchester.

    29.4.1977 Letter to Dave Hinchcliffe about the history of mental patients unions: "the campaign against E.C.T. and Brain surgery which is now a parliamentary issue thanks to PROMPT" - See Christopher Price MP. - Julian Barnett and Alan Saint first petitioned the House of Commons via Joyce Butler MP.


    "Here we go then. It's Jubilee Bank Holiday Monday, 6.6.1977, and you're down for 2/52 fortnightly". Andrew Voyce's Get Well Soon 2 akathisia depicts life in Hellingly asylum on that day.

    June 1977 John Rowan's interview with Jenny James published in Self and Society, The Primal Issue. "In London, in a 'leftwing' street of squats, we are frowned upon ... In Ireland who we are and what we are doing shows up in far starker contrast".

    October 1977 Joan Hughes re-isued A Directory of the Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs. Duplicated at Centerprise.

    Autumn 1977/Spring 1978 Hackney Worker's Educational Association course on "Mental Health and the Community" at Centerprise, in Dalston. It grew out of discussions at Centerprise about how to cope with customers with mental health problems. For the ex-Hackney MPU members who ran it, it grew out of a desire to create a dialogue between people of divergent views. The principle was that people could talk without agreeing and without compromising the purity of their respective principles. Psychiatrists, for example, could debate with anti-psychiatrists, and mental patients talk to mental health workers, on equal terms.

    Between the autumn of 1977 and the autumn of 1984, Hackney Workers Educational Association was involved in meetings on psychiatry and prisons - alternatives to prisons (with Alan Leader) - the local psychiatric unit - mental handicap (and the formation of Hamhp) - alternatives in mental health - mental distress in old age and a series of meetings with speakers who had physical or communication disabilities (Everybody's Hackney). Ex Mental Patients Union members were active in all of these.

    6.12.1977 Meeting arranged for this date when Manchester Mental Patients Union would show a Panorama programme about mental illness to patients.

    1978

    1978 On Our Own. Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System by Judi Chamberlin (born New York 1944 - see American index). [See Alternative Projects] Judi visited London, Holland and Iceland in 1982 - See 1981/1982 - Summer1982 - July 1985 - Barker and Peck 1987 - Her book inspired Mary O'Hagan in New Zealand - 1997: Anny Brackx prepares to publish a British edition 1988 - Summer 1990 (history) - Elsinore 1994 - Hearing Voices 1996 - National Empowerment Center (1997?) - Coercice Treatment Conference 2007 - 2009

    Start of the Anne Plumb archive

    Anne Plumb to Andrew Roberts 30.7.2007:

    "I was most interested to learn of your involvement with the MPU. Did you know any of the people involved in the Manchester MPU? I came across their phone number at the Grassroots Bookshop in Manchester in the 1970s - along with such publications as State and Mind (I have a copy which reviewed Judi's Chamberlin's On Our Own when it came out in the US). Unfortunately, by the time I got the confidence to contact them the groups was folding."

    1978 Brian Davey (Nottingham) first experienced psychosis or non- ordinary state of mind. See Nottingham Advocacy Group - 10.9.1988 - Asylum April 1989 - Asylum Winter 1990/1991 - Asylum Spring 1991 - Asylum Autumn 1991 - Asylum Winter 1991/1992 - Asylum Autumn 1993 - Ecoworks

    1978 Joyce Leeson and Judith Gray Women and Medicine Tavistock women's series. London : Tavistock Publications,

    Spring? 1978 National Women's Liberation Movement Conference Birmingham. The last UK National WLM Conference. "Despite economic resources, no group offers to organise a conference the following year. Following this, all conferences are regional, identity based, and/or topical." chronology

    2.3.1978 Cherry Allfree thirty.

    2.6.1978 Report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration on a complaint made by Mind on behalf of Janet Cresswell and Bill Warwick that Bill Warwick had been prevented from visiting, and also a complaint from Mind that a letter they sent to Janet had been opened. [The commissioner found against the complainants, but hoped better relations would be established between Mind and Broadmoor]. A point by point reply was made by Bill Warwick and attached to copies of the report he distributed.

    September 1978 Leasehold agreement between Seymour Buildings Co- operative and Westminster Council completed and signed. What had been a squat became a long term tenancy. Eric Irwin became a tenant of Seymour Buildings at some time.

    19.10.1978: Leonard Roy Frank signed a copy of his The History of Shock Treatment and sent it to to Joan Martin

    October 1978 North West Mind established with the appointment of David Brandon as North West Campaigns Officer with offices in Blackburn and Liverpool. [Later combined at Preston]. Mind already had regional bases in Cardiff, Leeds, Gateshead and Sheffield. Mentions sixteen "active local associations for mental health in the area". David to mobilise concerns of "mental health volunteers and professional workers". (Mind Information Bulletin No.36. October 1978) See Manchester Mind - North West Schizophrenia Fellowship - October 1981 - early 1980s? - 1985 - Lindsey Dyer - 1987. The North West Mind regional council brought together individuals from local associations across the region. About 1986, Irene Harris and Andrew Hughes, "two of the more active recipients of mental health services" became chairperson and vice-chairperson. (email Andrew Hughes 17.4.2010) - 1988; North West Mind Consumer Network

    1979 Nigel Rose graduated from St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, in Social and Political Science. [OR "After finishing in 1982 he moved to Manchester, and started working as a researcher for Judith Gray, initially in a voluntary capacity and then on a Manpower Services Commission grant. He was heavily involved in the Getting to Know You Project, and also identified and developed links with the local community in preparation for the opening of Powell Street CMHC." Left North Manchester" Hospital " in [1985] and spent several years working with MIND in Manchester and a number of other mental health projects. Connected to Mind in Manchester from January 1985 to January 1999, as a development worker [1985-1988], chair, and volunteer. 1988 Hearing Voices - 1991/1992 and 1992 Dutch experience - Hearing Voices Newsletter editor: Late 1993 - February 1994 - Ceased May 1994 - At Mind he developed the Schizophrenia Media Agency from December 1994 and Inroads into employment. From January 1989 to January 2000 he worked for Manchester City Council, first as of the Manager Mental Health Team ... [From " 1988, employed by Social Services to manage their community support workers on the Harpurhey Resettlement Team. In 1994 he moved to the East Manchester CMHT, where he stayed until it was disbanded in 1998."] then as Asylum Team Assessment officer. From May 2000 to November 2009 he was Area Manager for Refugee Action in Manchester. [Interview 4 See also note under Interview 5]

    1979 re-structuring society

    About here that Manchester Mental Patients Union published Your Rights in Mental Hospital - A Mental Patients' Union (MPU) Pamphlet.

    The contacts list includes "Crisis Centre" 437-4594" - "Anorexic Aid: Mrs P. Hartley, 1 Pool End Cl. Macclesfield, SK10 2LD"- "MIND 226-2623" - "Phobic Society 881-1937" - " PNP (people not psychiatry) 226-8089" "MPU Address: We are trying to set up a houses, but until then contact c/o Grass Roots Bookshop, 109 Oxford Rd., Manchester MI. Telephone 236-3112"

    1979 Frank Bangay wrote the lyrics "Pretty Girl" to a song performed by the Fighting Pigeons

    Half The Sky: An Introduction to Women's Studies edited by the Bristol Women's Studies Group. London: Virago, 1979. Chapter on "Bodies and Minds" has excerpts on "Women and Mental Health" with a review (pages 95- 96) of Phyllis Chesler's Women and Madness (1972) and excerpts from Anne Karpf (1978) on 'depression' and Cathy Haw and Rosie Parker (1977) on feminist psychotherapy from Spare Rib.

    2.3.1979 Cherry Allfree thirty-one. 1978/1979 may have been when Cherry obtained her flat in Dulwich that became the centre of operations for PROMPT. The flat is situated very close to Chris Price's constituency.

    3.5.1979 Conservatives won the General Election in the United Kingdom - Market choice and consumerism became positive themes and state welfare was suspicious - The Conservative manifesto said

    "We must do more to help people to help themselves, and families to look after their own. We must also encourage the voluntary movement and self-help groups working in partnership with the statutory services."
    From May 1979, the mental patients' movement in the United Kingdom developed in a radically different political climate. This was not only due to the change of government, but also to new attitudes to mental patients amongst local authorities, voluntary groups and others attempting to defend alternative political views or threatened services. The patient as consumer who should be listened to took a decade to enter government policy (Griffiths Report 1989). In the meantime, our language had changed. We were no longer mental patients uniting, but survivors or users engaged in a diversity of speaking out - advocacy and user involvement. Half way through the decade, mental health users began to think about being empowered. People First, the movement of people with a learning difficulty, developed a strong autonomous existence in the United Kingdom (see 1982 and 1990) and the survivors' movement, unlike mental patients union (see MPU Declaration and Mind Out 2), developed separately. Attention to mental distress in old age involved an alliance of patients, carers and professionals.

    13.9.1979 Bill Warwick's pension tribunal. "I was talked out of application to the High Court and a no no garantee, re-application for loss of memory and concentration due to treatments".

    November 1979 - 42nd Street founded in Manchester. A community mental health project for young people aged between 15-25 years, living in Manchester. [An old website said it was founded in 1980]. Alistair Cox established 42nd Street and directed it for over 20 years. In 1983, 42nd Street published Reflected images Self portraits of distress: "eleven people describe their experiences of stress and their search for understanding and support - 42nd Street, a Youth Development Trust project", Manchester: Youth Development Trust. 96 pages. By 1986 it was funded by the Urban Aid Programme. Published Principles into Practice. A developmental study of a community health service. (Aileen McDermott 1986). Tried, with limited success, to make its management structure accessible to young people in the belief that consumers of a service, should, if they wish to, participate in the decision making process.

    2.3.1990 "42nd Street - Community based resource for young people under stress" (Company 02476342) incorporated.

    Helen Spandler was based there as a research worker from August 1994 to August 1995. The report on her research Who's Hurting Who? Young people, self-harm and suicide was published in 1996. 2000: Bernard Davies StreetCred?: Values and dilemmas of mental health work with young people. Leicester: Youth Work Press. Published in association with 42nd Street. 2006 In and Out of Harm's Way by "Alex". Manchester: 42nd Street. 15 pages. Its website says: provides support service to young people experiencing stress and mental health problems.

    November 1979 Lawletter Quarterly magazine published by John Bagge, then at 90 Fawcett Estate, Clapton Common, London E5 9AX, from 1979 to 1983 (17 issues - 15 in archives).

    21.11.1979 Nottingham Post "Plea to Ministers" - "Members of PROPAR (Protection of Rights of Patients at Rampton) take letter to Health Minister in London" (Nottinghamshire Archives)

    "My first introduction to PROMPT came in 1979 when I found some PROMPT booklets in a bookshop either in Brixton or in Stratford. I might have found booklets in both places. My first PROMPT meeting in 1980 was a conference at the Conway Hall." (Frank Bangay)

    Early 1980s: Frank Bangay , a poet, became active in PROMPT alongside Julian Barnett and Eric Irwin. (The Importance of Being Frank)

    1980

    1980 Irren-Offensive (Lunatics' or Insane Offensive) established in West Berlin, by survivors.

    1980/1981 David Kessel first got to know Howard Mingham well.

    February 1980 The National Schizophrenia Fellowship appointed a group development officer (David Lynes?) for the North West based in Warrington

    The North West Schizophrenia Fellowship split from the National Schizophrenia Fellowship (NSF) in 1982, although the NSF also continued to operate in some parts of North West England too. I seem to recall that David Lynes was the 'boss' at North West Fellowship and was a very energetic figure. I think there was considerable competition between the Fellowship, based in Warrington, and North West Mind, based in Preston. I went to a meeting of the Oldham group of the NSF. It was difficult to sit through, as it was a carer support group. People present spent the evening comparing notes on the difficulties caused them by their relatives with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. I do not think they considered that the new member might have a diagnosis of his own. Ouch! Eventually Mind and the Fellowship did find a way to collaborate and then formed a quite considerable alliance." (email Andrew Hughes 1.8.2009)

    1.3.1980 Richard 'Cartoon' Campbell, aged 19, arrested in Brixton. He died at Ashford remand centre on 31.3.1980. A preliminary inquest attributed his death to dehydration resulting from schizophrenia (he had been on hunger strike). Doctors talked about his "ramblings about Jah, about going to Africa, and helping the poor". He was given Largactil and Depixol. (Hackney People's Press March 1981). House of Commons adjournment debate 8.8.1980

    12.3.1980 Bill Warwick planned to "swell the ranks" of PROPAR (Protection of Rights of Patients at Rampton) handing in their Petition to the DHSS, and then attend the PROMPT meeting at 8pm: "They are taking an interest in Janet's case". However, the PROPAR presentation was moved to 21.5.1980. "PROMPT having changed its meetings to Tuesdays" he "slipped down" on 11.3.1980. PROMPT planned a write up on Janet in its magazine and "may launch a campaign for her release".

    12.3.1980 Matthew O'Hara sent to prison for seven days for failing to pay arrears of rates.

    2.3.1980 Cherry Allfree thirty-two.

    Thursday 26.6.1980: Matthew O'Hara found dead in an "MPU" house - house closed. This was really the end of the Hackney Mental Patients Union housing. Surviving members of Hackney MPU negotiated re-housing for the remaining tenants. The Matthew O'Hara Committee: for Civil Liberties and Community Care was founded in August 1981. Much of its educational work was carried on through the Hackney Workers Educational Association, continuing activities that Matthew had been involved in.

    Wednesday 16.7.1980 Matthew O'Hara's funeral. Left 177 Glenarm Road at 3.20. Burial Manor Park Cemetery 4.00pm.

    Saturday 19.7.1980 First meeting of the State Brutality Group called by Friends of Blair Peach. Members: Groups respecting Blair Peach, Matthew O'Hara, Jimmy Kelly and Richard Campbell. Next meeting not until 7.2.1981. The State Brutality Group became Inquest.

    Saturday 23.8.1980 PROMPT Conference on Anti-Psychiatry at Conway Hall

    23.8.1980 Death of Barry Prosser (white, aged 32) a remand prisoner in the hospital wing of Winson Green prison, Birmingham "because he was suffering from a mental disorder". When found dead in his cell, "he was bruised from head to foot and died from a ruptured stomach" (Press Report 4.9.1981). - House of Commons adjournment debate 1.7.1982 - Inquest file

    September 1980 "Abena Simba Tola, a young Black Rastafarian women" released from Holloway Prison. She had "spent months in solitary confinement and on the psychiatric wing" because of her "demands for Black reading material and for respect and recognition of her Blcak culture and religion" (Hackney Peoples Press March 1981)

    The picture is by Abena. The article reviews three "recent cases" that "provide distressing evidence" that Rastafarian religious beliefs were being dianosed as schizophrenia. The other two being Steven Thompson and Richard Campbell.

    December 1980 End of Newham Alternatives to Prison (August 1974- Decenber 1980) when Home Office funds were withdrawn. Second Chance and Breakout: The Paper for Insiders (magazine) were established in its place. Ruth Wajsblum (of East London Women Against Prison) and Alan Leader ("ex-prisoner") were members of the unpaid working collective.

    1981

    International Year for Disabled People

    "The United Nations International Year of Disabled People in 1981 gave the opportunity for disabled people to find the funding to set up groups and organisations of disabled people. The decade saw the rise of the campaign for Anti-Discrimination legislation, the call for buildings and the environment to be made more accessible to disabled people, and also disabled people supporting other campaigns against oppression." (GMCDP 2010 p.12)

    "In 1980 Dorothy Whitaker who was employed by Greater Manchester Council for Voluntary Service, was given the brief of looking at what should happen in the International Year of Disabled people (1981) in Greater Manchester. She met with key disabled people across Greater Manchester and was able to introduce them to each other, so that they could share their ideas." (source) - See Ken Lumb

    1981 British Council of Disabled People established.

    "At the end of the International Year of Disabled People, a core group continued to meet together in the evenings at the St Thomas Centre, Manchester, and a decision was made to form an organisation that would work across Greater Manchester and tackle any of the issues that affect disabled peoples lives". (source)

    The Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council (VMIAC) was formed in 1981 during the International Year of the Disabled Persons and was incorporated in 1982 (website)

    Wouter van de Graaf, Jet Ibiza and Jet Vesseur met at the end of the 1970s, when they were active in the crazies movement.

    January 1981 Last number of Gekkenkrant.

    Gek'ooit was the successor to Gekkenkrant. Gek'ooit appears to be a play on words: Gek ooit is crazy ever. Gek kooi is a crazy cage, and the magazine was also known as caged. (See Netherlands)

    Also see interview with Wouter van de Graaf, who illustrated it.

    Wouter van de Graaf: See World Congress 16.7.1985 - 16.7.1985 Colin Gell - Nottingham Patients Council Support Group - November 1986 - Asylum Winter 1987 - Asylum 1994 2

    7.2.1981 Second meeting of the State Brutality Group. This time plus Group for George Wilkinson.

    2.3.1981 Cherry Allfree thirty-three.

    Friday 6.3.1981 Adjournment debate in the House of Commons on Matthew O'Hara.

    Saturday 7.3.1981 Hackney WEA Day School "Psychiatry and Prisons" jointly organised with the Matthew O'Hara Committee. Centerprise 10am to 4.30pm. 10.30am Black Prisoners. Are the members of religious groups such as the Rastafarians treated as mentally ill? If so, is this a form of persecution? The cases of Richard 'Cartoon' Campbell, who died in prison, and Abena Simba Tola, who survived, will be presented by Richard's friends and Abena herself. 2pm Workshops: Prisons and Mental Hospitals led by Chris Wallace of RAP. On the evolution of prisons and special hospitals. Which offenders go to which? Does psychiatry do more harm than good? - Joan Hughes wrote a report from the Women and Broadmoor workshop introduced by Sylvia Jeffares on the case of Janet Cresswell, now in Broadmoor.

    23.3.1981 Official launch of CHAMH (City and Hackney Association for Mental Health) - Later City and Hackney Mind. The association had been formed in 1980 with administrative help from the Community Psychiatric Research Unit and under the chairmanship of Dennis Timms, chair of City and Hackney Community Health Council. User involvement was slow to be established. "Dr David Kessel" (a mental patient) was elected to the executive on 12.7.1982. Meetings were open to members, and Valerie Argent, Joan Hughes and Andrew Roberts were amongst those who attended.

    Thursday 26.2.1981 New Society article on Matthew O'Hara by Denise Winn.

    16.3.1981 Steven Thompson (black, aged 26) from Newtown, Birmingham, released from Rampton after transfer in December 1980 from Gartree Prison, four days before his six year prison sentence for armed robbery was due to end. It had been alleged that his transfer to Rampton was "associated with his Rastafarian religion and his reputation as a militant black". (Guardian 31.12.1980) - Inquest file

    Janet Cresswell's 1981 Petition - 29.3.1981 Letter from Sylvia Jeffares to Joan Hughes - "What do you think was the success of the day school? I saw Janet yesterday and Dave". [Both in Broadmoor]. Here is a proposal from Janet "This petition calls for the repeal of the Mental Health Act and the discontinuance of psychiatry as part of the National Health Service on the grounds that this Act was declared inhuman and illegal by Strasbourg, and psychiatrists, in the full knowledge of the misuse to which they and the Act have been employed, have acted in a charlatan manner. This petition asks for: [1] The reinstatement to full citisenship without mental stigma of those committed under the Act. [2] The conviction through the legal system of those who have broken the law, those suffering from nervous breakdowns without breaking the law to be treated by neurologists without stigma. [3] Monies saved by the cessation of official psychiatry and it auxiliaries (social workers, psychiatric staff, drug industry etc) to be deployed into providing homes of good standard and amenities for the community."

    11.4.1981 Third meeting of "State Brutality Group" changes its name to Inquest (United Campaigns for Justice) The members of the group at this time were groups respecting Blair Peach (white), Matthew O'Hara (Irish), Jimmy Kelly (white?) and Richard Campbell (black). - [External link to Inquest website] - My Inquest file contains separate envelopes for Colin Roach (black), Barry Prosser (white), Steven Thompson (black), Richard Campbell (black), Newton Rose (black) and Winston Rose (black) - See Inquest workers

    29.4.1981 Start of "Mental Hospitals - Prisons - and Community Alternatives - A Hackney WEA and Matthew O'Hara Committee Class" at Centerprise. Case study one: The Death of Richard 'Cartoon' Campbell

    Matthew O'Hara's death was the first death of a mental patient following custody in prison that directly affected me (Andrew Roberts) and other Mental Patients Union members in Hackney. Richard Campbell's death was the first death of a black mental patient. Both were in 1980. Increasingly violent and/or custodial deaths of black people became a focus of Inquest's work. In July 2012 Black Mental Health UK published a list of "fatalities of mental health service users from UK's african caribbean communities" begining in 1981: Winston Rose (1981) - Michael Martin (1984) - Joseph Watts (1988) - Jonathan Weeks - Orville Blackwood (1991) - Jerome Scott - Munir Yusef Mojothi - Mark Fletcher - Rupert Marshall - Newton White - Ibrahim Sey - Veron Cowan - David Bennett (1998) - Roger Sylvester - Eugene Edigin - Ertal Hussein - Mikey Powell - Tema Kombe - Sean Rigg - Godfrey Moyo - Olaseni Lewis (2010) - Colin Holt (2010) - Fitz Hick [?? possibly Fitz Albert Francis (2009)] - Kingsley Burrell- Brown (2011).

    Saturday 16.5.1981 Centerprise 10th Birthday Party

    20.5.1981 "The Social Worker's Dilemma"

    28.5.1981 "Community Aternatives to Mental Hospitals"

    17.6.1981 "Community Aternatives to Prisons"

    America

    Madness Network News Vol.6 No.2 Winter 1981 Page one: The European Movement from an ex-inmate perspective, by Swan, an American activist travelling in Europe.

    Madness Network News Vol.6 No.3 Summer 1981 Starting page 12: European Convention on Human Rights and An Evening with Frits Winterwerp, by Swan.

    Madness Network News Vol.6 No.4 Winter 1981-1982 Page 8: NAPA Pickets Shock Shop, Berkeley, California, by Anne Boldt and Disabled Hold Law Conference, Toronto, Canada, by Judi Chamberlin. Starting page 10: The European Movement, by Swan includes PROMPT, Inquest, Matthew O'Hara Committee and Hackney Mental Patients' Association Page 16: "Democratic" Psychiatry in Italy by Swan

    May 1981 Mind Out "Consumers' issue"

    about June 1981: The Advocacy Alliance set up.

    July 1981 World Federation for Mental Health congress held in Manila, Philippines. Eugene Brody took office as President.

    July 1981 Riots. Atmosphere of fear and tension in Hackney.

    13.7.1981 Death of Winston Rose, a black electrician and amateur boxer, in Leytonstone after a struggle with police taking him to Claybury hospital. The Winston Rose Action Campaign was formed after his death. An eight day inquest found on 21.10.1981 that Winston Rose had been unlawfully killed. The Times report (13.10.1981) notes that, at the inquest, "the public gallery was full of black people".

    Summer 1981 Matthew O'Hara Committee News

    October 1981 David Brandon Voices of Experience. Consumer Perspectives of Psychiatric Treatment. North West Mind, Miller House, Miller Arcade, Preston, Lancashire. 36 page pamphlet. Thurstine Basset's collection

    25.10.1981 to 31.10.1981 Scottish Mental Health Week. LINK announced the opening and successful development in Glasgow of the Mental Health Resource Centre, LINK social clubs and the new LINK Social and Activity Centre (to open in December)

    25.10.1981 Sylvia Jeffares died in a road accident. She was knocked off her bicycle by a car. Sylvia had corresponded with and visited Janet Cresswell throughout 1981 and wanted to campaign in some way around her situation. Joan Hughes inserted the following notice in the Morning Star for 1.12.1981:

    "JEFFARES, Sylvia. Died suddenly in October 1981, aged 32. Courageous fighter for women's liberation and for human rights for all prisoners. Remembered as dear friend and comrade - Joan."

    Saturday 7.11.1981. Inaugoration of Hackney Mental Patient's Association in the basement of Centerprise. Dave Kessel in the chair. Everybody sat in a large circle and said what they thought - in turn. See below 9.4.1982 - July 1982. See also Hackney Union of Mental Patients, which was, in some ways, a continuation, and Hackney Mental Health Action Group (which included a radical social worker).

    November 1981 Tony Smythe resigned as Director of Mind. Lindsay Knight, editor of Mind Out, left to prepare programmes for Channel 4 in January 1982. Mind Out closed down in February 1982. Chris Heginbotham became National Director of Mind sometime in 1982, and remained until 1988. During that time he "was an active member of the World Federation for Mental Health" and secured its congress for Brighton in 1985. Barbara Poole was conference administrator from 1983. Larry Gostin (Legal Director) remained until 1983, when he left to run the National Council for Civil Liberties. - Apart from the May 1981 consumer issue, it is difficult to find any indication of patients voices in Mind Out at this period. The periods that Mind publications gave mental patients a platform are the mid 1970s (under Denise Winn) and after 1982.

    Barbara Taylor 2013 Sometime in 1981, a triumphant Barbara Taylor collapsed in exhaustion after attending the oral examination for her thesis The feminist theory and practice of the Owenite socialist movement in Britain, 1820-45. She entered a course of psychoanalysis that lasted twent-two years.

    1981 "My friend Cora gave me a hardback notebook. I had been in analysis for a couple of months, talking about it incessantly. 'I thought you might like to write some of this down.' That evening I made my first entry"

    "When I came to the end of the notebook I bought another. By the time I left analysis, in 2003, I had thirteen notebooks, plus various unbound scribblings. 'An archive,' Cora said when she saw the stack of notebooks." (Taylor, B. 2014, p.11)

    About here:

    London Women and Mental Health c/o AWP, Hungerford House, Victoria Embankment, WC2

    Islington Women and Mental Health, Caxton House, 129 St John Way, N19 (281 2345) [Chair: Jan Wallcraft] - "grew out of a group of local women who found existing services inadequate... Eventually the group applied for funding and in 1983 received a grant for one worker and running costs of an office." [By 1986] "We hold a weekly drop-in every Tuesday"... "We organise courses with the help of the Adult Education Institute" "We operate a women's help line" (28 trained volunteers) ... Jan Wallcraft 1986)

    Irish Women's Mental Health Group c/o Islington and Mental Health

    1982:

    1982 saw the publication of the first major UK history of the mental patients' movement, by Peter Sedgwick , and of Dale Peterson's collection of historic accounts of madness by those who experienced it from the inside. The movement also gained a new name as the USA concept of "self-advocacy" and the older concept of "citizen advocacy" were popularised in the United Kingdom by CMH The Campaign for Mentally Handicapped People. Judi Chamberlin visited patient activists in Hackney and elsewhere and The British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry was conceived in Brussels. Patients prepared criticism of the parts of new Mental Health Bill that seemed to undermine voluntary treatment and Mind's financial crisis saw the closure of Mind Out and the end of MIND Information Bulletin in the form we knew it.

    Peter Sedgwick's Psychopolitics (1982) has two parts: Part One is a critical review of anti-psychiatry. Part Two, "Psychiatry and Liberation" is a thoughtful review of "Mental Health Movements and Issues: A Survey and Prospect" including a positive review of "movements among the mentally ill" in the United States, Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, Scotland and England. Sedgwick comments that "The continental patient-groups have found particular inspirations in the work of the Mental Patients' Union in Britain"

    1982 A Mad People's History of Madness compiled by Dale Peterson includes writing by Margery Kempe - Christoph Haizmann - George Tross - Alexander Cruden - Samuel Bruchshaw - William Cowper - Urbane Metcalf - John Perceval - annonymous of New York - Elizabeth Packard - Ebenezer Haskell - Daniel Paul Schreber - Clifford Beers - E. Thelmar - Marcia Hamilcar - Vaslav Nijinsky - Thomas Henneall - Carlton Brown - Anonymous of Tennessee - Mary Jane Ward - John Custance - Lisa Wiley - Joanne Greenberg - Morag Coate - Mark Vonegut - Kenneth Donaldson.

    1982 Commonplace established by Manchester Mind. See Manchester index

    1982 Missing Link collective formed by women housing workers in Bristol to provide woman-only "intermediate second stage accommodation for single homeless women of all ages". Awarded Urban Aid for five years in April 1983 and appointed four full time workers in June 1983. By 1986 it had five communal houses in different parts of Bristol. "Most of the women we house come from a background of institutional care, Some have left home or a broken relationship; others are going through a crisis in their lives". (Finding Our Own Solutions 1986 pages 15-16). See present website.

    Thursday 7.1.1982 Hackney Action on Mental Handicap (HAMHP) formed. It included articulate local people with a mental handicap and organised its meetings so that they participated in discussions.

    About 1982? "Society for the Advancement of Research into Anorexia, (SARA)" founded by Clare Ockwell and her mother. Clare had herself been anorexic and used mental health services on and off since the age of nine. She ran the society for ten years before seeing through its merger with the Eating Disorders Association in 1992. Clare helped to found CAPITAL in 1997. On 1.9.2007 she came fourth, with 28 points, in the last edition of MasterMind. Her specialist subjects were anorexia nervosa, the Duncton novels and the rock group Genesis.

    14.1.1982 The New English Mental Health Bill A Lawletter Special Leaflet

    16.1.1982: A report of a PROMPT meeting

    February 1982 Final issue of Mind Out. Mind stopped it on financial grounds, after " run of nine years and 58 magazines". It was replaced by OpenMind in the spring of 1983.

    March 1982: Hackney Workers Educational Association "Alternatives in Mental Health" meeting in a series of "Alternatives" meetings organised by Sheila Rowbotham. Doug Tilbury, Andrew and Valerie Roberts led this one. After the meeting someone spoke about the idea of a course on psycho-geriatrics - This led to the Mental Distress in Old Age course.

    2.3.1982 Cherry Allfree thirty-four.

    Tuesday 9.4.1982 Brent Community Health Council Public Meeting on Mental Health

    "Under Pressure - racism - no money - loneliness - inadequate housing and transport - unemployment - fuel bill - too few nursery places - stress - If you can't cope with the pressures in your life should you be labelled mentally ill?""
    . Andrew Roberts prepared a talk on
    " Community Approaches to Mental Distress and Insanity"
    which concluded with "some of the things that groups have done to help themselves" - Including relatives groups
    (National Schizophrenia Fellowship mentioned), the Mental Patients Union, Hackney Mental Patients Association, "a self-help group that runs a regular weekly social in a local day hospital and is campaigning for a patients controlled social centre" and classes run through the Workers Educational Association.

    May 1982 A meeting in Brussels of The International Network Of Alternatives To Psychiatry (Resseau Alternatif A La Psychiatrie) which led to the formation of the The British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry (external link - archive). The British Network was started by Stephen Ticktin. - See Mind November 1985

    July 1982 Valerie Argent (Roberts) elected to the City and Hackney Community Health Council on the nomination of Hackney Mental Patients Association - Hackney Workers Educational Association - the Matthew O'Hara Committee

    21.7.1982 to 23.7.1982 Cosponsored Mind and World Federation for Mental Health conference in London, attended by Judi Chamberlin as a consequence of Eugene Brody's intervention

    Monday 16.8.1982 Postcard from Judi Chamberlin to Andrew and Valerie Roberts to say she had finally made it to Iceland after illness in Holland.

    July-August 1982 Judi Chamberlin visited London (staying with MPU members), before travelling to Holland to meet Dutch activists. She was following in the footsteps of her friend Ann Boldt (Swan), who had frequently reported on the United Kingdom and European movement in Madness Network News. Judi then went on to Iceland. She returned to the United Kingdom in 1985 as a speaker at the World Congress of Mental Health

    "Darby Penney: How did you get involved in doing international work?
    Judi Chamberlin: Oh, it was just something that kind of grew. I got invited to... well, we had met this woman from Holland who came to one of the human rights conferences, so I had a contact there. And I got invited to a professional meeting in England. So I got to meet some of the ex- patients from there. And somebody else invited me to Australia. It just kind of happened. And I never thought I'd be the kind of person who got to travel abroad and stuff, and it was just real exciting and I loved it." (Interview 7.11.2002)

    "Consequent to the 1982 London conference and the 1983 Congress, Judi Chamberlin (already in Australia at the invitation of an ex-patient group), was invited to visit WFMH member the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand and then to become a member of the planning committee for the 1985 WFMH World Congress in Brighton, England where, following the example of the 1983 Congress, a section was devoted to self-help and ex-patient groups." (Brody 1998 p.130)

    Summer 1982 Mixed Emotions: A Collection of Angry and Peaceful Poetry

    August 1982 Frank Bangay's Seeing and Knowing, a poem that was pubished in What They Teach in Song

    Autumn 1982 Bill Warwick moved from 12 Harthill Street, Stoke on Trent to 13 Broxton Avenue, West Kirby, Wirral, Merseyside. He moved to help his mother, Margaret Sinclair Williams (born 1902, who was becoming housebound with arthritis. She died November 1985 in Birkenhead.

    6.9.1982 (Successful) Application of Dave Leadbetter and Tony Ward to be joint workers for Inquest. Both were working for Radical Alternatives to Prison and both were members of the Matthew O'Hara Committee. They thought Inquest should "relate ... what happens in prisons and psychiatric institutions to what happens in the police station and the street" and called for "good communications" with the "black community". In a special report in 1989, they wrote "Afro-Carribean people are markedly over represented among those people who die in custody following violent incidents (other than shooting) involving the police". Of eight such deaths in London since 1980 six were Afro-Carribean, one Turkish and one white.

    Saturday 11.9.1982 The Annual General Meeting of CMH The Campaign for Mentally Handicapped People, in London, was devoted almost entirely to "Discussion of Self-Advocacy and the role for CMH in this movement" (Invitation letter from Morag Plank July 1982). We Can Speak for Ourselves. Self-Advocacy by Mentally Handicapped People, by Paul Williams and Bonnie Shoultz, published in The USA earlier in the year, was available at this meeting. [See advocacy]

    Frank Bangay's Solidarity Poster October 1982 Frank Bangay's Solidarity Poster. This was sold as A4 photocopied sheets. It has been sold and given a way in various formats since. The last stanza is

    "We cried together last night, but our tears were in solidarity with the sadness in the world, and through our solidarity through our tears we found strength"

    Another image and words leaflet self-published at this time was "Woman on a Park Bench with Birds"

    25.10.1982 Dina Ibrahim born in Sudan. Her mother is a leading campaigner against female genital mutilation, her father is the architect of the library at Ahfad University for Women. She is a descendant of Babikir Badri, who established education for women in Sudan in 1908. In her early teens, Dina came with her immediate family to live in London. She remained here whilst maintaining links with her extended family in the Sudan and the middle east. Her experience of the world was a succession of deep depression and elation, but mostly depression. Overcoming the problems this created, she studied Sociology at Middlesex University and graduated in 2012. Dina died in Egypt on Friday 24.2.2017. She was 34 years old, and one of the youngest active members of the Survivors History Group. Dina became involved with the group when she helped with the Mental Health Training and Education conference at Middlesex University in September 2009. People may also remember her selling the Asylum relaunch issue at our Pageant of Survivor History at Kingsley Hall in March 2010. After she graduated, she was planning to work on her life story exploring what it is to be a survivor in the Sudan and in London. Her survivor history activities included attending the Birmingham seminar on "heath through history" in July 2010 and, with her cousin Hagir, a remberance of survivor poet Howard Mingham in 2014. In February 2015, Dina and Andrew Roberts wrote a report on the paintings of Mary Barnes, which Dina found expressed powerful emotions.. "If I could have expressed what I was feeling so openly", Dina wrote, "I might have overcome a lot of issues". When prevented by her mental life from attending meetings, Dina would sometimes find another way to participate, on one occasion speaking to everyone via her mobile. She had planned to come to our meeting in January 2017, but decided to fly to Egypt to stay with part of her family. She is buried in the Sudan, under the orange sun over the river Nile, which she loved.

    Tuesday 2.11.1982 Launch of Channel 4 (UK Television) to cater for minority interests not met by the mainstream channels. A demonstration video, Psychiatric Oppression, was produced to make the case to Channel 4 for a programme. This led, eventually, to We're Not Mad We're Angry

    November 1982 Eighth World Congress of the International League of Societies for Persons with Mental Handicap, held in Nairobi, was the first to fully involve people with mental handicaps. Thirty participants with mental handicaps came from Canada, England, France, Gaza, Germany, Kenya, Norway, Sweden and the USA. They spoke seven languages. They held their own discussions on the way they wanted to live, but made a presentation to the plenary session and made recommendations to the closing session. (CMH Newsletter 3, Spring 1983, pages 7-8)

    Sometime between 25.12.1982 and 31.12.1982 Colin Roach was released from Pentonville Prison after serving a three week sentence for theft and possessing an offensive weapon.

    1983

    1983 to 1985 Liz Sayce studying at Royal Holloway, University of London.

    1983 Ted Curtis born

    Time to Change About 1983 Nikki Llewellyn born in Hackney, East London. She joined Time to Change and made her first Time to Change blog in June 2011. Her life story was outlined in The Guardian ("The Truth About Depression: Six People Speak Out") in March 2012.

    From December 2012 to August 2013 Nikki wrote a regular feature in More Hackney about her "journey to change minds". She was a book in the human library that people could speak to. Someone who spoke to her offered her paid employment and "in the space of a few weeks, I went from being a book titled 'Clinically Depressed and Unemployed', to being a volunteer team administrator for the Barnet Improving Access to Psychological Therapies team". She also became a full time student for three years and took a second job as Health and Well-being Coordinator for the Healthy Conversations Project, as well as getting married. Follow her on Twitter.

    1983 The Manic Depression Fellowship started. (Later MDF The BiPolar Organisation - Link to website - See Perspectives on Manic Depression 1996 - On Our Own Terms 1997 - Strategies for Living 1997 - Meeting of Survivor Groups 2.3.2000 - web archive started September 2000 - MDF The BiPolar Organisation: September 2005

    Emergence of the allies Stephen Ticktin, in 1991, says that when Survivors Speak Out was set up (after 1985) "the impetus, ironically enough, came once again from a professional". The "once again" appears to refer to his own impetus in establishing British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry. Later in the article he says that "for me the most exciting venture" was the establishment of the Asylum magazine, whose management, he says "is at present small and too top heavy with professionals". Professionals and non-users who developed the user-movement in these years acquired the name "allies". Notable allies included David Hill - Ingrid Barker - Edward Peck - Lorraine Bell (Southampton) - Helen Smith (King's Fund) - Rick Hennelly (Chesterfield)

    The British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry ran from 1983 to 1988 (dates given by Stephen Ticktin in Asylum Summer 1991). Speaking of the importance of the British Network (May 2008), Peter Campbell said it "brought radical survivors and radical professionals together." Stephen Ticktin Asylum Summer describes himself as one of the founders and says "it was a loose affiliation of users and mental health workers who met on a monthly basis for purposes of both consciousness raising and campaigning. A number of working parties formed around particular issues such as the law, women, ECT, and major tranquillisers. In addition several study days were held ... one on the Closure of the Mental Hospitals, in 1985, and another on ECT and major tranquillisers, in 1987"

    Peter Campbell said (May 2008) that it included forceful characters like Shulamit Ramon and David Hill, who had both recently completed their Ph.D. theses (Shulamit in 1972). David was very important because of his trade union and political links. He got users into the Houses of Parliament and into conferences in Chesterfield organised around Tony Benn. These links were lost after David left.

    1983 minutes of the Greater Manchester Disability Action Group (foreunner of the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People) record that they changed their name from the Independent Living Group (facilitated by the fieldworker at the Greater Manchester Council for Voluntary Service) because one of the problems of encouraging new members was that the concept of independent living was new and relatively unknown to many disabled people. (email Anne Plumb 26.9.2010)

    12.1.1983 Death of Colin Roach at about 11.25pm inside the foyer of Stoke Newington police station, from a single gunshot wound through the mouth. Early press reports said Colin had committed suicide and had a history of mental illness.

    8.2.1983 Royal Assent to the 1983 Representation of the People Act. The possibility of staff organising mental patients to vote worried those members of parliament whose constituencies contained large mental hospitals. This fear was assuaged by requiring registration from one's previous address. The movement towards enfranchising long-stay mental patients must have had some effect on the willingness of policy makers to listen to patients.

    February/March 1983 First edition of OpenMind [See index], the replacement for Mind Out. It was launched and edited by Anny Brackx who, at this time, had been a journalist for about nine years. It was redesigned and relaunched in 1997 under the editorship of Sara Dunn (now described as Executive Editor). Kathryn Perry became editor in 2002. Closed April 2010

    It was during 1983 that Barbara Poole became administrator in Mind's conference office, which, I think, was part of the Training and Education Department (Tessa Jowell head). The tutors were Corrine Brewer, Charles Patmore, Chris Borne, then Auborn Wiseman. Peter Campbell has suggested that much of the rapid change in Mind with respect to user participation was due to the tutors' interest in this.

    2.3.1983 Cherry Allfree thirty-five.

    March 1983 to August 1983 Coventry Crisis Intervention Team initial six months. [It was continued]. There was a "Follow Up Consumer Survey - 1 month after the closure of our research cases". - The "first fifty consumers" were asked to "share their views of the service they had been offered" (Ann Davis, December 1988) - "After feedback from the Consumer Research" the length of time clients could be seen for was increased from 6-8 to 10-12 weeks. [March 1984 report from S.M. Newton, Project Leader] - Featured in Speaking from Experience (1985).

    9.5.1983 Royal Assent to the 1983 Mental Health Act (England and Wales)

    Thurstine Basset trained social workers to be approved under this Act. He started the Brighton and Eastbourne Good Practices in Mental Health studies, the report of which was "especially" useful for social workers training to be approved (SSC 1985 volume 2, page 150). The training courses Thurstine ran involved clients as well as professionals (SSC 1985 volume 2, page 158).

    June/July 1983 Ron Lacey, in Open Mind claims that mental patients in France, Italy and Holland have organised lobbies. Contrasts unfavourably with England. - Also a letter form Peter Campbell.

    July 1983 Laura Mitchison born. See May 2017

    August/September 1983 Peter Cambell in Open Mind

    8.9.1983 Peter Sedgwick found dead near his home in Shipley, York

    September 1983 - November 1985 Mental Distress in Old Age (Hackney)

    September 1983, Peter Campbell moved to Cricklewood [33 Lichfield Road, London, NW2"] and became involved in Camden Mind as a "volunteer" almost at once. David Hill was not the director at Mind in Camden at that time.

    "The material for the "Psychiatric Oppression" video was shot over a period of time (after Autumn 1983 as my bit was shot in my flat in Cricklewood) and was preparatory to We're Not Mad We're Angry, but when it was actually edited together into the video I am not quite sure" (Peter Campbell)

    Monday 24.10.1983 Chamh Annual General Meeting at Shoreditch Health Centre. Amongst those nominated and seconded for the executive were a number of patient activists who were taking a leading role in suggesting resolutions to organisational problems associated with the way Chamh had been generated within the system (Community Psychiatric Unit) and did not have complete control of its own affairs. Those elected included David Kessel and Valerie (Argent) Roberts. Also active at the meeting were John Wilson, Andrew Roberts and Joan Hughes. The patient reformers brought in Felicity Tregear (not a patient) to attempt to sort out Chamh's finances.

    October 1983 Registration in West Berlin of Wildwasser EV Berlin, a self-help group of women who had experienced sexual violence during their childhood, brought together by two survivors in 1982. (Alternatives)

    18.11.1983 Thomas Ritchie died 122 Huddleston Road, Tuffnel Park, London, N7 OEG. [Last known address in MPU records matches Probate record]. "Administration Brighton 15 May Not exceeding £40000" [I would be suprised if Tommy had any significant money. Brighton suggests John Ritchie, his brother from Crawley, wound up his affairs].

    November? 1983 Annual Conference of Mind. Members of Glasgow Link Clubs attended and were somewhat amazed and angry that none of the presentations, seminars or workshops were presented by patients. They made their own presentation in 1984.

    December/January 1983/1984 Peter Cambell in Open Mind "Open Mind seems to be heavily weighted in favour of the expert".

    1984

    Multiple Image Productions Ltd., Faringdon House, Swindon (Company 1914764) operated from 1984 to 1988. We're Not Mad We're Angry (17.11.1986) was the result of a two year collaboration betwwen the company and "a collective of present and former psychiatric patients" (Channel Four Press Release). The original collective was PROMPT. Multiple images wanted a more socially diverse group, with a lot more women. PROMPT felt marginalised in the new group, and withdrew.

    Bristol "The first open meeting of Women and Mental Health in 1984 brought together well over 50 women" - See MIND 1985 - Finding Our Own Solutions 1986 - Campbell, P. 1989b. See Womankind and Bristol Crisis Service for Women

    Saturday 10.3.1984 First issue of "Waves. Women and Mental Health Newsletter" contained the entries:

    Tuesday 20th Hackney Women and Mental Health Support Group are meeting local therapist interested in working with the group. If interested phone Val 986 5251.

    Hackney Support Group. At the moment we are meeting in each others houses. We do not aim to provide each other with 24 hour support - in fact we often just chat and drink tea. However we are willing to change and are open to new ideas. If any women would like to come along please ring Val ....

    Mental Health Services Project, Chesterfield
    Tontine Road Centre
    North Derbyshire Mental Health Services Project
    Contact Support Group

    Andrew Milroy and Rick Hennelly prepared a background paper "Exploiting Infinity" for the Mind Annual Conference in September 1984 and another, "Changing our Ways", for the Mind Annual Conference in November 1985. Both published by "Mental Health Services Project, Chesterfield". Rick Hennelly (1988), page 210, refers to these as "earlier descriptions of the service and the tensions between ideology and practice"

    From beside the Chesterfield Community Centre in Tontine Road one can look up at the famous bent spire. The centre houses a large number of projects, one of which was a North Derbyshire Mental Health Services day centre for people becoming reestablished in the community. In the mid-1980s this became run on increasingly democratic lines and was known as the Contact Support Group [first half of 1985] - Ivy Buckland from the centre was the first Survivors Speak Out Treasurer. Ernie Morris, another user, produced the first Survivors Speak Out newsletter. Rick Hennelly, a social worker at the centre was very active in the formation of Survivors Speak Out

    "The Education and Action Group - a group of ex-mental patients... met in 1984 to produce a tape and slide show based on their experience of mental illness and recovery entitled Life After Mental Illness (see Inside Out Issue 6)" (Christine Cowan Inside Out Issue 8, p.5) - Presented MIND 1984 - Grimsby 11.4.1985.

    Camden Mental Health Consortium (CMHC), possibly not with that name, was founded in 1984. in response to the planned closure of Friern. (Campbell, P. 1987)

    1985? Diana Rose "became part of the fledgling service user/survivor movement in the UK" by joining Camden Consortium. See 2000 paper.

    The first Draft Constitution for Consortium is dated 1985, before the MIND conference. It contains no provision for users to be the only members, or a special, full category of member but refers to promoting a 'strong consumer voice'. ( Rose, D. 2000).

    Survivors Speak Out: See summer 1986 Asylum) -

    "Don't ask me why people in Survivors Speak Out should live in Camden" ( Rose, D. 2000)

    Before September 1987? Campbell, P. 1987 "Giants and Goblins. A Description of Camden Consortium's Campaign to Change Statutory Plans" - Peter Campbell was "Public Relations Officer of Camden Consortium and secretary of Survivos' Speak Out. - Camden Mental Health Consortium's address was c/o Emma Baatz, 8 Burgess Hill, London, NW2 2WA

    The group remained active until 2009, describing itself as "the largest User Group in the London Borough of Camden. Its members are people who use or have used the Mental Health services and live or work in the Borough. Associate Members are people or organisations who for some reason have an interest in the Mental Health Services provided in the Borough and support the objectives of CMHC. Membership is free."

    Closed 29.3.2009

    1984 Peter Barham's Schizophrenia and Human Value (based on his thesis) published.

    1984 Anne Rogers graduated from the Polytechnic of Central London. She took her M.Sc at Bedford College. "Subsequently I gained employment as a research officer in the Legal Department of National Mind, exploring the implementation of Section 136 of the Mental Health Act and became interested in a broad range of mental health issues including civil commiment, coercion, drug treatments and user involvement". (external link) - 1987 - literature - 1991 - 1993 - 1993 -

    29.3.1984 Birth of Mark Gallagher. Using material from the archives, which we copied for him in June 2012, Mark researched and wrote about the Scottish Union of Mental Patients formed in 1971. The Survivors History Group will be discussing his work in London in November 2017.

    2.3.1984 Cherry Allfree thirty-six.

    May 1984 Death of Peter Barnes (aged 58) registered Camden, London. Living in a Camden hostel at the time, he died in hospital after a sudden coronary. Mary was living "in the flat in Devon". She arranged the Requiem Mass in a church in Kentish Town. "many people from where he worked and from where he lived, came to the funeral. Joe and Leon were there, and people who knew us both when we were children". Their parents had died. Ruth was in South Africa and Dorothy in Australia. Mary arranged for the flowers from Ruth and Dorothy. "It was a very beautiful service". (Barnes and Scott 1989 p.31)

    Wednesday 9.5.1984 C. Heginbotham and Chris Shaw from Mind questioned by Social Services Committee. No mention of consumer's voice. Miss Shaw spoke about " annual conferences directed towards a very large professional audience with topical themes each year, for example the forthcoming one is going to be on the whole range of after care and is there life after mental illness and the rehabilitation services which are available" (SSC 1985 volume 2, page 142).

    Wednesday 16.5.1984 Alison Wertheimer, Tom McLean and Derek Thomas from Campaign for Mentally Handicapped People questioned by Social Services Committee. The memorandum submitted by the group contained recommendations (SSC 1985 volume 2, pages 190-191), including

    1) All policy-making and planning ... should take the principle of normalisation as the starting point

    2) Consumer involvement Far greater consumer involvement is needed at all levels of service planning, management and delivery. The consumer is primarily the person with mental handicap although some people may also need or wish others (families, friends) to advocate on their behalf. We should like to see much greater support for the growing self-advocacy movement in this country."

    Wednesday 25.5.1984: mental handicap schemes are on the move ... mental illness schemes remain ... stuck in the ... tramlines

    Summer 1984 Hackney Mental Health Action Group formed "by local patients, ex-patients and other people". Doug Tilbury, a Hackney Social Worker who had been a friend of Hackney Mental Patients Union, was a key person in this group. Apart from Doug, the activists I remember were patients: Including Cathy Pelican [Pelikan?] - Ian Ray-Todd - Lisa Haywood - Jim Read - David Kessel - Jim has suggested that the group was a spin-off from the Hackney Day Hospital Patients Committee - But that does not fit the sequence here.

    Lisa Haywood: First written mention found 14.3.1986 - Chamh AGM 1986 - Meeting with Chris Higginbottom - Day Hospital Committee - Mind Consumers Advisory Panel - 9.10.1987 election - 1989 to December 2006: Member of National Mind Council of Management - Mindlink South East Steering Group - January 1994 Advice and Outreach Manager, City and Hackney Mind - Mind election 1994 - Mind election 1995 - Vice Chair, Policies, National Mind - August 1998 - October 2004 Director, City and Hackney Mind. - January 2006 Mind support - 6.12.2006 ceased being vice-chair and management committee member of Mind. About here that Haywood Consultancy established - involvement in National Survivor User Network

    Saturday 23.6.1984 Launch of The Phoenix patients' publication at the "Conference on Normality, Normalism and Mental Health" - alternatively billed as Phoenix Cooperative Discussion on "Mental Health and Illness". 2pm-6pm Stoke Newington Community Centre, Old Fire Station, Leswin Road, N16.

    July 1984 Death of Michael Martin in Broadmoor. "Died after being stripped, injected with antipsychotics and placed in seclusion".

    August 1984 Women and Mental Health group meeting in Hackney

    1.8.1984 Following an overdose, Valerie (Argent) Roberts was admitted to Hackney Hospital. Discarded poems were rescued from the waste paper bin. She was a psychiatric inpatient until November, after which she was a day patient for several years. This was a period of poetic and organisational creativity. The organisational creativity may have been helped by her being a Community Health Council member. - See Hackney Day Hospital Patients Committee

    26.9.1984 The Guardian: "'The agony of tranquillity': Jim Read and Kath Arnold, who both once took tranquillisers and now run groups for users, cite Tamara's case to show the pitfalls of withdrawal and how to cope with them". - See - 1.11.1984 - 28.1.1985 - 3.7.1985 - 16.7.1985 - October/November1985 - 8.1.1988 - October/November 1988 - Survivors Speak Out - - 1996 employed on Open University K257 - 2003: On Our Own Terms -

    22.10.1984 to 23.10.1984 Mind Annual Conference (Kensington Town Hall). Theme "Life after Mental Illness? Opportunities in an Age of Unemployment" - Possibly the first with a user presentation (By members of Glasgow Link clubs) - Also Chesterfield presentation. The conference notices mention three "special features" this year:

    • Greater opportunity for conference members to make their own contribution to the conference.
    • Particular attention to the potential of voluntary groups like MIND associations.
    • Listening to what former sufferers from mental illness say about what really matters where life after mental illness is concerned.

    1.11.1984 Community Care "Not so tranquil" by Kath Arnold and Jim Read. It ends: "The Government recently announced life sentences for heroin pushers. What is to be done about the entirely legal, highly profitable and even more destructive trade in tranquillisers?"

    November 1984 A reading and celebration of the life of Howard Mingham, who had died in June (possibly earlier). [ Emmy van Deurzen on Twitter gives the date as 1.4.1984]

    end of 1984 Conference in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, on plans to close the mental hospitals. It "became apparent" that an open, democratic, forum for debate about all mental health issues was needed and, out of this, the magazine Asylum was conceived

    # 1984-1985 Anne O'Donnell studied Plant Science at University College, Cork. See Beyond Diagnosis - 2002 - February 2005 - 2007 - June 2012

    1985

    In the United Kingdom, the mid 1980s saw a revitalisation of locally organised democratic organisations of mental patients, linked together in networks. Support and funding for these developments from national organisations, notable Mind, meant that the movement had the potential to grow and that some user/survivors could develop a career as advocates of one kind or another.

    Something exciting beginning to happen? . The perception of dramatic national change, between September 1983 and the summer of 1986, focused on November 1985, was the subjective experience of Peter Campbell, moving from "isolation" to being "privileged at conferences". Peter argued, in the summer of 1986, that his subjective experience mirrored "the comparative rapidity of the consumer movement's advance out of obscurity" (A View from the Gatehouse, by Peter Campbell Asylum Summer 1986, pages 8-9

    For four years prior to 1989 (An October 1989 Report) "the development team at Good Practices in Mental Health (GPMH)... focused on establishing district-wide user-only mental forums. Examples include the Islington Forum, Lewisham Users Forum and, most recently, Connections in Harrow"

    Winter 1984/1985 - Hackney Day Hospital Patients Committee established. [Note that in February 1987, Lisa Haywood said this had existed for "2+ years"]. Those active in estabishing this included (I believe) Valerie (Argent) Roberts - Sheila Nash - Connie - Kathy (Cathy Pelikan?) and Sylvia. Alan Leader joined sometime later.

    1985 Alan Hartman went to Manchester. See Manchester index.

    1985 Terry Simpson "After my last hospitalisation ... I told my doctor I intended to stop takin psychiatric drugs. He laughed and said I would be ill for the rest of my life... For two weeks I had horrible flu- like symptoms... Then quite suddenly I felt better". Terry was helped by the "healing space" of a co-counselling group whose "other members were a teacher, a general practitioner (family doctor), and a student about to become a university lecturer, who all had experience of being a patient in a mental health institution" weblink provided - archive

    Ireland index Aware "formed in 1985 by a group of interested patients, relatives and mental health professionals, whose aims are to assist that section of the population whoses lives are directly affected by depression". (website)

    1985 The Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People founded. One of its founders was Ken Lumb. - External link to website - National Archive snapshot 26.1.2012 .

    January 1985 Frank Bangay's Stigma No.3, a poem that was published in What They Teach in Song - "You see, I believe in causing a fuss - at least we can... make someone think".

    28.1.1985 Social Work Today 'Fighting mad' by Jim Read, who describes it as his "personal manifesto" and comments that he "cannot imagine getting such an article into a professional journal today". It ends "But what will also be required is a challenge to the basic structures of our social, political and economic system. Capitalism depends too much on turning love and happiness into rare commodities. The change we want, the wresting back of control over our lives, will come more readily if everyone recognises the part the mental health system plays in keeping us all in place, and we challenge it at every opportunity".

    30.1.1985 Printing of the Second Report from the Social Services Committee - 1984-1985 session - on "Community Care with special reference to adult mentally ill and mentally handicapped people". [Government response was Series: Cmnd.; 9674]

    Consumer voice paragraph 31:

    "...we have had difficulty in hearing the authentic voice of the ultimate consumers of community care. There have been considerable advances in techniques designed to enable and encourage mentally ill or handicapped people to speak for themselves... But there is a long way to go. Services are still mainly designed by providers and not users, whether families or clients, and in response to blueprints rather than in answer to demand. Matching the service to the consumer rather than vice versa should be the one central aim of community care in the future. We recommend that all agencies responsible ensure that plans for services are devised with as well as for mentally disabled people and their families"

    Consumer view paragraph 148:

    "Too little attention has been paid in the past to the views of those most closely affected by the policy of community care - mentally ill and mentally handicapped people and their families... Many of the less severely disable are able to express their needs and wishes most articulately, as the Committee saw and heard on visits. For those unable to express their own wishes, some form of advocacy may be very helpful."

    We recommend that the Department lay an obligation on authorities to ascertain so far as practicable, and give due consideration to, the wishes and feelings of mentally disabled individuals for whom a service is provided, and in particular where closure of a long-stay facility is contemplated. We also recommend that efforts be made to facilitate the participation of individual mentally disabled people in the planning and management of services

    [Bold in original. In examining the report and the evidence, it is clear that the impetus for the "consumer view" did not come from organisations like Mind, but from organisations like Campaign for Mentally Handicapped People, and from the Committee itself.]

    MIND Consumer Network (idea for)
    "the idea of a Consumer Network has been around for some time and was in fact presented to the policy committee in
    January 1985. The idea was endorsed by the Council of Management in July 1985" (Ballot 1 Autumn 1986) - See 30.11.1985 - 18.4.1986 - Autumn 1986 - Summer 1987

    March 1985 PROMPT changed its name to CAPO

    2.3.1985 Cherry Allfree thirty-seven.

    5.3.1985
    Defeated miners return to work.
    Contesting Psychiatry argues that the survivors' movement is a consumers' movement that is post-unionism.

    16.3.1985 British Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry Study day on Closure of the Mental Hospitals ("in which we looked at the processes and objectives of current plans for the closure of large psychiatric institutions.)

    11.4.1985 Annual General Meeting of the Grimsby Cleethorpes and District Local Association for Mental Health Presentation of Life after Mental Illness by the Education and Action Group. In Inside Out Issue 8, p.5, Christine Cowan) adds that the show will be presented at Brighton in July. "Graham Kennedy, Christine Cowan and Thomas Graham who appear on the slide show have been invited to participate in the conference along with LINK/GAMH's Assistant Director, Jo Burns. All will be taking an active role in the presentation and anticipate a lively audience discussion afterwards. The... Congress... is a unique opportunity for users of psychiatric services to air their views and be taken seriously. Money is the real problem for financing the trip, and any donations would be greatly appreciated. Please send to Education and Action Group, LINK/GAMH, 2 Queen's Crescent. Glasgow". It is not clear if they got to Brighton. Jo Burns spoke on "New Approaches to Women and Mental health in Scotland".

    Summer 1985 Family History Group at the Hackney Day Hospital (Mondays). Members co-counselled for support. Each drew up a family chart and a chronology of his or her life. Valerie Argent's work has fed into this chronology.

    July 1985 British Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry paper "How would you plan a psychiatric service in Britain, and for what end?"

    Summer 1985 "Empowering the patient", a two day workshop organised jointly by Nottingham Mind and Nottingham Health Authority. Ingrid Peck (Ingrid Barker) was Development Officer for Nottingham Mind and her partner, Edward Peck, was Sector Team Adminsitrator, Mental Illness Unit, for Nottingham Health Authority.

    See World Congress 1985 - 16.7.1985 - meeting after the World Congress - Barker and Peck 1987 - Literature - 16.5.1988 - 22.6.1991

    "Ingrid Barker is committed to user involvement and advocacy particularly in mental health services and she led the establishment of the first mental health Patients Councils and Advocacy projects in Britain". (external source) - See allies



    July 1985 World Congress of Mental Health in Brighton.
    Speaking from Experience - a video about user involvement compiled and presented by Thurstine Basset

    Thurstine recalls that in 1985 there was very little interest in the training video and in service user participation amongst the mental health professions. This was "not on their agenda and if anything they were opposed to the idea". Barbara Poole, Mind's conference organiser, was concerned that not enough service users would come to the Patients to People conference in November. To help, Thurstine phoned a day centre in Brighton, which was known to be quite radical, and spoke to the manager. He asked her if she could get together a group of staff and service users to go to the conference. She was not keen and he thinks her response "but we go to conferences to get a break from the clients" says a lot about staff attitudes at the time.

    The following is the text of a handwritten leaflet distributed at the conference by some ex-patients from Holland:
    The Congress Mental Health 2000 is supporting injustice

    by not rejecting 'expert' knowledge of psychiatrists

    By calling human suffering illness the oppression is obscured.

    Consumers are not mad, BUT ANGRY

    By continuing the idea that you can talk for somebody else.

    Make it possible for all consumers movements to come and to speak for themselves.

    The need to change all this will be really helped by:

    - no 'generous' moneygiving to some consumers (the English CAPO was hidden away between the entrance and the elevator).

    GIVE FREE ENTRANCE TO ALL CONSUMERS

    and offer to share all their costs

    - not only rational stilted talks but moveable emotional/warm meetings too, where you can shout, scream, touch, cry, to express your anger!

    - TO CHOOSE TO CONFRONT the Conflicts rather than to pretend "harmony". Conflicts are necessary to change unequality, which is denied. But: out of their 'expert' superior position psychiatrists define real conflicts as "personal problems".

    It is significant that the elitist nature of the Congress is reflected in its having been held at such venues as the Brighton Cnference Centre and hotel Metropole etc. Why not organise it during the holidays in empty school buildings, where each group can cook once??

    Joyce, Monique, Aukje, Doetie

    Translated and corrected by Siobhan Kilgurriff

    Monique vld Mye / ex-consumer, worker in "patient movement"

    Doetie Bakker / starter of some mad things, no more consumer

    Aukje Westra / have been "mad", now working for "opatients" councils

    Joyce Huugland / starter of a run away house, unemployed full of activities

    3.7.1985 Peace News "To be ourselves - challenging the abuses of psychiatry" by Jim Read. It included a list of resources such as the videos Speaking from Experience - We're not Mad - We're Angry [??] - and Psychiatric Oppression

    16.7.1985 Jim Read attended a branch meeting of Hackney Workers Educational Association to discuss running a class on "Your Mind in their Hands - Politics of Mental Health" at Centerprise. The course ran on Tuesdays from 17.9.1985.

    Ceramic Hobs Summer 1985 Ceramic Hobs band started. Members are largely current or ex-psychiatric patients. Bedrooms and Knobsticks in 1988 contained one of their songs. After 1988 their existence ceased until relaunched in 1995. Four albums since - Psychiatric Underground (1998), Straight outta Rampton (2001), Shergar is home safe and well (2004) and Al Al Who.

    The critique by Deni is quoted in the sleeve notes of Shaolin Master (2002), a song from Straight outta Rampton on a 7". See facebook

    5.9.1985 Victoria Helen Smith born. External link to biography - 2002 website

    October/November 1985 OpenMind No 17 "Getting Back to the Starting Line" - Jim Read's personal story about being in The Cassel therapeutic community, with some more general comment about its strengths and weaknesses.

    Monday 8.10.1985 Chamh Annual General Meeting at Shoreditch Health Centre. Jim Read had been appointed as Chamh's (first) counsellor and was due to start in November.

    Wednesday 20.11.1985 Mental Distress in Old Age: Time for Action published by City and Hackney Community Health Council.

    1995/1996 was the official start of the survivor movement in England

    That is - it is the date that has been celebrated as the start by bodies such as Mind and the Centre for Excellence in Birmingham.

    Thursday 28.11.1985 and Friday 29.11.1985 Mind Annual Conference From Patients to People

    Charlie Reid (left) - Elvira Ridley (top) - Thomas 'Tam' Graham (front) - Kathy (top right) - and Vince Edkins (far right), members of Glasgow Link group, feature on the cover of Social Work Today on Monday 9.12.1985. With Viorel Vernea, they had made a presentation at the Mind conference in Kensington Town Hall. With them in the photograph are (centre) Jo Burns, a worker from Glasgow Link clubs - and a gentleman we have not identified (bottom right) who is holding the slides used to make the presentation. They are sitting on the steps of Kensington Town Hall after making the presentation.

    4.12.1985 Lord Ennals in the House of Lords: "a two-day national conference organised last week by MIND, under the heading "Patients become People"... I believe that people who are patients must be consulted about their own future. They are people as well as patients... There is no question of patient power. It is saying that patients are people. They should be consulted about their own future. Often of course they are in no position to decide their own future, but they should be consulted about it... full consumer participation in service planning and delivery should take place as of right

    Lord Mottistone House of Lords: "I have here the programme of the conference that he chaired last week. I must confess that the titles of the subjects spoken about frighten me. It seemed to be a conference more on the politics of civil liberties than on care for the mentally disabled."

    December/January 1985/1986 Peter Cambell in Open Mind "It seems MIND wants to run things on their terms. It is MIND for the mentally ill not MIND with the mentally ill."

    1986

    Finding Our Own Solutions: Women's experience of mental health care by Women in Mind, published by Mind in 1986.

    Mentions - Women's therapy in Yorkshire begining 1979 (pages 77-81) - White City Estate, West London, project, initiated by Sue Holland in 1980 (pages 81-83) - Birmingham Women's Counselling and Therapy Centre, planned 1981-1983 (pages 84-85) - Bristol Women and Mental Health (first open meeting 1984) generated Womankind (pages 102-103) - 1983 Scottish Women's Health Fair and Glasgow Women's Health Fair (pages 103-104) - Islington Women and Mental Health (grant 1983). Jan Wallcraft - Womantalk, York, Summer 1985, the first women's studies class for women receiving psychiatric treatment. Organised by Marilyn Crawshaw. A second class started in Leeds. (pages 71-4). -


    Womankind

    Womankind, Bristol Women's Therapy Centre was established in 1986 as a registered charity. "We provide counselling, group therapy and on-going support to women in the Bristol area" (2009). (website)

    Finding Our Own Solutions 1986 description: . A Woman and Mental Health group set up in May 1985 to explore funding possibilities secured "funding under the DHSS Helping the Community to Care scheme". Womankind is "based at the university settlement in Bristol" [website] "accountable to the settlement but managed by a separate committee". Aims to provide effective mental health resources for women - to initiate self-help groups - to assess need accurately - to promote health - to provide information - to liaise with other agencies. "It is a multi-racial project which aims to confront racism, oppressive stereotypes and prejudices of all kinds. Womankind evolved because women from different backgrounds wanted to gain an overall picture of how women are seen and treated inside and outside the mental health system. We hoped to develop and understanding of what it is about women's lives that leads so many to seek help from the medical, psychiatric and social services." "There are three paid workers - two development workers (one black, one white), and a coordinator". (Finding Our Own Solutions pages 102-103)

    August 1988 description: A women and mental health self-help project, employing workers with special responsibility for working [with?] Black women and women from other ethnic minorities, a volunteer coordinator and a worker helping woman coming off tranx. Support for self-help groups, information, contacts, workshops, talks on women's mental health needs, drop-in groups, resources for black women. (Mindwaves August 1988) See Summer 1986 - Asylum Summer 1987 - Address List May 1988 - Survivors Speak Out 10.9.1988


    Bristol Crisis Service for Women

    "Bristol Crisis Service for Women is a voluntary organisation and a charity. We were set up in 1986, to support women in emotional distress. We particularly help women who harm themselves (often called self-injury). This is how some people cope with their feelings and problems." (source old website, now redirects - archive - new website)

    Founder members included Maggy Ross and Diane Harrison."for the first time in my life" [I] "met other people who self-injured. I no longer felt a freak, I found some people who understood because they shared similar experiences" (Diane Harrison)

    Notes from Mark Cresswell:

    1986 - a group of women , mostly self-harmers, meet under the auspices of BWMHN [Bristol Women and Mental Health?]. At this stage the membership of the group seems to have been Maggy Ross, Diane Harrison, 'Jane', 'Sally', 'Holly' and 'Anne' (see Ross, 1988).They provide mutual support and 'begin to discuss the possibility of starting a telephone crisis line run exclusively by women for women facing these crises' (Ross, 1988: 46; see also Harrison [in Pembroke], 1994: 8).

    1987 - this planning and support continue. Tamsin Wilton (1995 p.28) informs us that she was "active in setting up and running the helpline from 1987-89"

    January 1988 Telephone crisis line started.

    1986 Brent Mental Health User Group (BUG) "is one of the oldest independent user groups in the country. The organisation was set up in 1986 by local people using services in Brent to deal with mental health issues and has since continued to go from strength to strength". website - archive - 2017 a good archive!

    Spring? 1986 Ealing Mental Health Action Group

    Probably 1986 that David Hill became director at Mind in Camden. "He is certainly signing himself as director in early 1987" (Peter Campbell)

    1986 Pageant: Survivors Speak Out
    January 1986 A series of weekend meetings at Minstead Lodge in the New Forest were paid for by the
    King's Fund, on the initiative of Lorraine Bell. Survivors Speak Out was set up. The first meeting (24.1.1986-26.1.1986) was of about twenty people - much larger numbers came to later ones (August 1986 - January 1987 - and August 1987). Users of a Chesterfield day centre were bused down, picking up people from Nottingham on the way. [Interview 11 in Contesting Psychiatry]. The Chesterfield connection was an important point in establishing the autumn 1987 event at Edale - Helen Smith from the King's Fund Centre remained an ally, and the King's Fund Centre continued to make a financial contribution to Survivors Speak Out for a period of at least four years (Anne Plumb). Lorraine described an animated discussion in which the name Survivors Speak Out was decided on - with survivor defined as

    "survivors of a mental health system which eroded our confidence and dignity, and survivors of difficult life experiences which took us into the system (Power in Strange Places p.16)"

    On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 speaks of the emergence of the "first national networks of service users/survivors" (But see the Federation of Mental Patients Unions). "Survivors Speak Out network ... initially for mental health service users/survivors and allies in UK, eventually allies' role reduced. Peak membership 950."

    Until 1988, Survivors Speak Out was the main network available to mental health service users. Mind Link formed in 1988. The National Advocacy Network (later UKAN) in 1990. Voices started in 1986, but only became a network in the 1990s.

    Survivors Speak Out
    by
    Peter Campbell February 2010

    Peter was active in the formation of Survivors Speak Out (from the November 1985 preliminary meeting). He was its first "Newssheet" editor (from summer 1986) and played a lead role at Edale in September 1987. He was (formally) elected Secretary at the first Annual General Meeting in September 1988. Louise Pembroke was elected Education Officer. Peter appears to have remained Secretary and (with assistance) Newssheet editor, until 1996, when Louise became secretary.

    Survivors Speak Out was founded early in 1986. For more than ten years it was an important networking organisation for the growing survivor movement. It owes its foundation to concerns that no UK service were represented at the important World Federation for Mental Health conference in Brighton in the summer of 1985. Some money was found to enable two [?] meetings of survivors and their allies to take place and at the second of these, at Minstead Lodge in the New Forest, the organisation was established and its name chosen. [The name was chosen at the January 1986 meeting - the first at Minstead Lodge.]

    Survivors Speak Out had an individual membership with groups being able to affiliate. There were two categories of individual membership - survivor and ally, an ally being someone who supported the group's aims and objectives but did not define themselves as survivors/service users. A number of allies played an important role in helping the organisation get on its feet but when the constitution was developed [See 1988] and voted through allies were given no vote at AGMs and could not stand for the coordinating group [See 1990]. Nevertheless, Survivors Speak Out continued to have an ally membership throughout the remainder of the 1980s and the 1990s.

    The main objectives of the organisation in the beginning was to produce a newsletter [Began summer 1986] and, most importantly, to organise a national conference where survivor activists could come together. This eventually took place over a weekend at Edale Youth Hostel in the Peak District in the autumn of 1987. The event was important as it brought people from different parts of the UK together for the first time. About 100 people attended, including a small number of allies. Not all the attendees were members of Survivors Speak Out. A Charter of Needs and Demands was unanimously agreed and a public statement opposing Community Treatment Orders was also agreed.

    In the months following the Edale Conference it became clear that Survivors Speak Out did not have the resources to adopt a regional structure. Apart from anything else, Mindlink was fast developing, building on Mind's [then] regional structure. Nevertheless, Survivors Speak Out played an important part in spreading the word about the possibilities of "self-advocacy" by sending speakers to local events where service users were discussing action and by producing and selling a Self-Advocacy Action Pack [early 1989] with practical advice about how to set up and run a local action group.

    Anne Plumb (Manchester member) says that the two activities that did most to hold the national group together were the Annual General Meetings and the newsletters.

    Although Survivors Speak Out had coordinating group members from different parts of the country, most of its core group came from London and the South East. As a result it was often seen as a London group. For the first few years [1986-1992] the organisation had no office or paid worker but operated from the Secretary's front room. Eventually it acquired an office base and an information worker [1992] who ran an information service. She was later joined by an administrative worker. Throughout its history Survivors Speak Out was being run on relatively small funds.

    Gloria Gifford was Information Network Co-ordinator from 1992 to 1996.

    In addition to the Self-Advocacy Action Pack, Survivors Speak Out produced three other publications - Eating Distress [1992] - Stopovers on my Journey Home From Mars [1993] (a comparison of service user/survivor action in the USA, United Kingdom and Europe - Self Harm: Perspectives From Personal Experience [1994]. The latter was the most successful publication, proving to be a pioneering work that is still in demand.

    Survivors Speak Out was more involved in facilitating action than in traditional campaigning. It did campaign and lobby to promote "self- advocacy". It did not, by and large, have agreed policies that it campaigned around. One exception to this is compulsion and the Mental Health Act where the group was always active, opposing any extension of compulsory powers in the Act. For some years it seemed that its work was helping to slow the move towards greater compulsory power but eventually, the 2007 amendments to the Mental Health Act, including the introduction of Community Treatment Orders proved a defeat for its long-held position. A position it shared with much of the service user/survivor movement. Survivors Speak Out's influence waned towards the end of the 1990s. This was partly due to an inability to effectively replace the original core group when they stood back from involvement and partly due to funding drying up. It seems that Survivors Speak Out was never formally wound up but it no longer plays an active part in the survivor movement as we enter the second decade of the new millennium.


    January 1986: Start of Nottingham Patients Council Support Group. This group led to the establishment of Mapperley Patients Council in September 1986 and the Nottingham Advocacy Group in 1987 - [See advocacy] - On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 says this was an early example of the "first patients' councils and user-led advocacy projects" (starting 1986). A meeting organised by Nottingham Advocacy Group, in 1990, led to the formation of the United Kingdom Advocacy Network.

    Another patients' council identified by On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 is Hackney Patients' Council. This may refer to the Day Hospital Committee (see above and below. The organisation called Hackney Patients Council dates from 1994.

    The video Speaking from Experience was used as an aid in the setting up of patients' councils in Nottingham and Newcastle in 1986.

    January 1986 DHSS Draft Circular Collaboration between the NHS, Local Government and Voluntary Organisations [See Joint Planning]

    "planning should be directed towards meeting the needs of individual patients and clients... Service providers, clients, their families and community representatives including those of ethnic minorities are to have the opportunity to make a contribution to planning, ensuring the plans are seen by consumers..." (quoted Collaboration for Change p.4)

    2.3.1986 Cherry Allfree thirty-eight.

    Friday 14.3.1986 Lisa Haywood was the contact person (it circulated each month) for the Hackney Mental Health Action Group meeting at The Old Fire Station.

    March? 1986 Barnet Action for Mental Health (BAMH) established. The Community Health Council being the prime mover. The initial input was mainly from professionals. By September 1988, more users were involved. They had grants from National Mind, the local authority and the King's Fund.

    North West Mind conference at Crawshawbooth, Lancashire
    18.4.1986 to 20.4.1986 "over the weekend of" - "concerned totally with involving consumers in Mind services" -
    Crawshawbooth resolution conceived towards end.

    Spring 1986 (Before 17.5.1986) Inside Out! Hackney's Mental Health Newsletter No.1. "Some of us have been 'inside' and now we are 'out' as survivors of the mental health system." This carried a notice about "We're not Mad - We're Angry", inviting people interested in being interviewed to contact Dee Kraijj, Andy Smith or Peter Campbell. Inside Out could be contacted at the City and Hackney Community Health Council.

    Spring 1986

    Asylum - A Magazine for Democratic Psychiatry



    Asylum sought to be "the freest possible non-partisan forum for anyone in any way involved in mental health work" - [Link to box of more information including weblinks and index]

    The first issue had substantial material on or including the Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression. The second included some opposite points of view

    Spring 1986: The first membership of Survivors Speak Out enrolled at a meeting in Ivy Buckland's hotel bedroom at a conference in Newcastle. (Survivors Speak Out Newsheet December 1988 , p.6)

    12.1.1986 A meeting of the Working Party on Major Tranquilisers, chaired by David Hill with notes taken by Douglas Gill. "As the group was unexpectedly large the table was moved into one corner of the kitchen, and everyone spoke in turn about their particular interests". Others present in order of speaking: Steve Brewer, Eric Irwin, John Hoolahan, Christopher Rourke, Mike Lawson, Frank Bangay. Also present Nick Simons, Elena, Ivan Ellingham, Jackie and Stephan Ticktin.

    9.5.1986 Meetings starting at Hackney Psychiatric Day Hospital under the umbrella of the City and Hackney Community Health Council, Mental Health Working Group. They were a developement of the Hackney Day Hospital Patients Committee established by patients over a year before. As one of the participants, I (Andrew Roberts) see this as revisiting the meetings first set up in July 1974. Valerie Argent (Roberts) and Lorna Mitchison were active in setting the meetings up and Sheila Nash chaired. There is a report of the meetings from Alan Leader in minutes of 2.11.1986 and a newsletter in Spring 1987 reported on the development of this Patients Committee.

    Saturday 17.5.1986 HMHAG (Hackney Mental Health Action Group) public meeting: Psychiatric Treatment: Are Drugs Really Necessary? Homerton Library. Andrew Roberts chaired. David Hill, Peter Campbell, Valerie Argent and many others present. Continued at 177 Glenarm Road afterwards. Andrew Roberts making the sandwiches (so does not know what was talked about).

    Saturday 2.8.1986 - Sunday 2.8.1986

    "Will anyone wanting to go to MINSTEAD LODGE for the Survivors Speak Out weekend (AUGUST 2-3) contact Peter immediately on 450 4631 - DAVE KESSEL please note !! - or you won't get a place - Peter will answer any queries." (Hackney Mental Health Action Group notice for its own meeting on Friday 11.7.1986)

    Summer 1986 Asylum number 2: page 11 notice:
    Survivors Speak Out Survivors Speak Out Conference 1986 is to be organised after discussion between members of the following groups
    Link: Glasgow Association for Mental Health
    Contact: Tontine Road Centre, Chesterfield
    Bristol Women and Mental Health Survivors Group
    Womankind, Bristol
    CAPO (Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression)
    Camden Mental Health Consortium
    British Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry
    Nottingham Mind
    Hackney Mental Health Action Group
    South West Mind

    Survivors Speak Out wishes to launch a national self-advocacy movement for users of the psychiatric services. Our first goal is to hold the national conference, for which we are currently raising funds. [Contact Ivy Buckland, Tontine Road Centre]

    Summer 1986 Survivors Speak Out No.1 - 50p

    16.7.1986 First Meeting of the Independent Living Committee of Hackney Forum for Disability. Sheila Nash represented mental health serivce users.

    Late summer 1986? Alan Leader became a mental health service user in Hackney Day Hospital - and an instantaneous patient activist.

    September 1986 United Nations launch of the International Year of Special Olympics under the banner "Special Olympics-Uniting the World". In February 1988 the International Olympic Committee signed an agreement with Sargent and Eunice Kennedy Shriver officially endorsing and recognising Special Olympics.

    Autumn 1986? Crisis Line - Bristol set up for women in distress. Took calls from women all over the country.

    November 1986 Wouter van de Graaf interviewed Eric Irwin and Frank Bangay for Asylum. The interview was arranged because of Eric and Frank's concern about criticisms of CAPO in Asylum. Wouther van de Graaf unintentionally returned to the Netherlands with the tape of the interview and, consequently, it was not published until April 1989. In the interview, Eric gave the first account I have traced of the 1973 Mental Patients Union as an origin of anti-psychiatry and the proginator of PROMPT and CAPO:

    "The anti-psychiatry movement of which CAPO is a part goes back to 1973, with the emergence of the Mental Patients' Union and also, in the same year, independently, COPE, which was the Community Organisation for Psychiatric Emergencies. Both these movements ran for three years or so. Then some of us who were in COPE and MPU got together and found PROMPT, which stands for the Promotion of the Rights of Mental Patients in Treatment. That continued until April 1986" [March 1985?] "when it was decided that we no longer wished to have the words 'patients' and ,treatment' in the title. At my suggestion we decided to change it to The Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression (CAPO)"

    Monday 20.10.1986 Chamh Annual General Meeting at Shoreditch Health Centre. Andrew Roberts listed present as a Chamh member; Lorna Mitchinson as from City and Hackney Community Health Council; Lisa Haywood and Ian Ray-Todd with their addresses rather than an organisation. Lisa Haywood was appointed to one of the two positions on the Executive Committee for representatives of "former/current users". The other position remained vacant. These positions had been created by a constitutional amendment at the same meeting, which Lisa had seconded. Jim Read was not listed as present.

    MIND's Annual Conference and AGM 1986
    Mind Annual Conference - Hammersmith 13.11.1986-14.11.1986
    Public Image - Private Pain
    Hammersmith Town Hall, London, W6
    This was another consumer dominated conference. Peter Campbell recalls that "there was a strong negative vibe with people getting up from the floor and saying how badly they had been treated. Nursing Times did an article afterwards accusing us of having nothing positive to offer." (email 4.4.2010). Full (plenary) sessions included a charismatic one by David Brandon (director of North West Mind at the time) and one run by three or four members of Survivors Speak Out. The collective who made We're not Mad - We're Angry ran a workshop about the making of the film. Survivors Speak Out and the The British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry both ran stalls. This may have been the first time survivor groups had stalls at the conference, as they did in many subsequent years (and I expect still do). Survivors Speak Out lobbied Mind for a survivor run quiet room at conferences. Peter cannot recall if one was provided at this conference (email 6.4.2010). Entertainments, organised by Frank Bangay, took place in a pub in Parsons Green, Fulham. A handbill for the survives.

    MIND Consumer Network (ballot for)
    Friday 14.11.1986 Ballot 1: "As a matter of urgency MIND (NAMH) should develop a broad based consumer network to ensure that Mind's policy and work is informed by and reflects the views of consumers of mental health services". Ballot 2: The
    Crawshawbooth resolution to Mind National Conference: "All local associations must include at least one consumer of mental health services on any management or executive committee by 1.4.1987".

    On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 says: "1986 onwards Media impact is made by the emerging movement: Many individuals speak out on radio, TV and in published articles."

    17.11.1986 We're Not Mad We're Angry 70 minute TV programme/video on Channel 4 from 11pm to ten minutes past midnight. (See Multiple Image Productions. Led by survivors, it was critical of the biomedical model of mental illness. White and black survivors give their perspectives on mental health services. Shown as part of the MIND'S EYE season (a critique of Britain's psychiatric system from the patients perspective), it is the result of two years collaboration with a collective of present and former psychiatric patients. The producer was Tim Langford and the director John Hay. - A 64 minute version is available from Concord Media

    Re-shown in September 1987

    November 1986 Breakdown on Capital Radio, produced by Peter Simmons and Mark Halliley. Mental breakdown as experienced by two young Londoners. The man is Mike Lawson, who put the programme online in August 2009. - offline - The woman remained anonymous. "A marvellous example of sound employed to open up another realm of consciousness" (The Times of London). Breakdown won Gold at the New York Radio Festival was specially commended in the Prix Futura Berlin. Mind distributed a tape of the programme. Cover illustration: Phill Ellinston. Capital Radio PLC. 1986. Thurstine Basset's collection.

    21.11.1986 Meeting of Hackney Mental Health Action Group received a report from "Alan (who is on the committee)" [Alan Leader] relating to the Patients Committee at the Day Hospital. "We also discussed the effectiveness of the Patients' commitee and the Dutch model of Patients' Councils. Jim will contact Lorraine Bell to see if she knows about videos or speakers about the patients councils. Lorraine was the contact for the next national meeting of Survivors Speak Out, noted at the same meeting.


    24.11.1986 Meeting that established The National Voices Forum. Established by the National Schizophrenia Fellowship - See 1988 - It changed its name to The National Perceptions Forum Link to website about 2007, when it celebrated its 21st birthday. This is a network "for people who have experienced schizophrenia" for mutual support and recovery, and to eliminate stigma and misunderstanding. The group never described iteslf as being for people with the "diagnosis of schizophrenia" as it considered people should be "the judge of their own experience". (Email from Graham Estop 14.3.2014). On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 gives its "peak membership" as 500, but Graham says (same email) "having worked as its coordinator, and having set up its membership database, I'd put it at nearly 800." The Forum's magazine Perceptions started in 2000 - Some web archive links: - official site started 20.4.2001 - The leaflet on the web is first recorded 3.8.2001 - Zyra's copy started on 25.12.2001.

    zyra.org.uk registered to Zyra 5.7.2000. - voicesforum.org.uk registered to "Graham Estop, National Voices Forum" 12.2.2001 - perceptionsforum.org.uk registered to Christopher Barchard 24.1.2007

    26.11.1986 "Removing labels - Psychiatric nurses were given a dressing down by the users of the service at the mental health pressure group MIND's annual conference. Martin Vousden found out why." Nursing Times. 26.11.1986. "many of those who spoke from the floor and conference platform, also appeared in the Channel 4 television programme We're Not Mad, We're Angry, transmitted a week after the conference. Which is appropriate timing because the conference was ... intended to look at how public images of mental illness are formed".

    November 1986 Meeting of patients and ex-patients of North Manchester General Hospital that started a weekly group which eventually became Manchester Users Support Group. It had this name by 1989. See 5.4.1989 Having a Voice Conference - article by Alan Hartman in Asylum April 1989 and address c/o Tony Riley in Asylum Autumn 1990. About 2001 Manchester Users Support Group became Manchester Users Network. This established its website in 2008

    Heart 'n Soul was founded in 1986 and based at the Albany Theatre in Deptford. It consisted of a small band and 12 performers. All people with learning difficulties.

    London Disability Arts Forum was founded in 1986 (website)

    See Cresswell, M. 2004 for some of the following

    1986 What They Teach In Song - Poetry About Psychiatric Experience - The first? CAPO collection.

    1987

    "Yvonne Christie lives in South East London and has been an advocate for improved changes in mental health services for two decades now.

    Yvonne has spent many years looking at addressing inequalities in a range of services with changes in mental health being a key development area. A case in point is working on 'Breaking the Circles of Fear' (SCMH) and Black Spaces (Mental Health Foundation). Yvonne works as an independent consultant and is currently looking at Recovery in relation to Black and Asian people in collaboration with Catch-Afiya and other independent consultants." (Whose Recovery is it Anyway? 2007

    See 1990 - 2008

    In 1987 Mary O'Hagan set up Psychiatric Survivors, in Auckland, New Zealand, after reading On Our Own by Judi Chamberlin.

    1987 Althea and David Brandon Consumers as Colleagues Mind. 34 page pamphlet. Thurstine Basset's collection

    From 1987, Robert Dellar was working for "various Mind affiliations". (Mad Pride 2000, p.211)

    8.1.1987 Chris Harrison minuted at a meeting of HAMHP (Hackney Action for Mentally Handicapped People). He became a regular attender. probably as senior disability officer Hackney Borough Council in succession to Karen Buck. Discussion of taped minutes discussed at next meeting. See Survivors Speak Out May 1991 - Nottingham 26.11.1991 - with Peter Beresford 1996 - April 1998 - with Peter Beresford 2002 -

    9.1.1987 Minutes of Hackney Mental Health Action Group Item 11: "Users Meeting with Chris Higginbottom of MIND Lisa [Haywood] had attended this meeting with users groups from different areas about issues of concern to them. She will now be on the Planning Group for the next MIND Annual Conference ". At the same meeting there was discussion of setting up an in-patients committee at the hospital.

    23.1.1987 - 25.1.1987 A Survivors Speak Out weekend at Minstead Lodge

    18.2.1987 Meeting: " Val Roberts spoke for the Day Hospital Patients' Committee on the problems as seen by the patients, and Lisa Heywood spoke on CHAMH and its involvement with the patients committee over the 2+ years of the committee's existence.

    Saturday 7.3.1987 British Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry Study day on the Use, Abuse and Alternatives to E.C.T and Major Tranquillisers.

    March 1987 Insight (Brighton) formed. In the summer of 1987 about fifteen people were involved and they were seeking funding. "Write to Richard Pennel, Brighton Mental health Group, 17-19 Ditchling Rise, Brighton, BN1 44L" ( Asylum Summer 1987). By September 1988 it consisted of up to 30 users/ex-users and some allies. It met weekly "bi- weekly there is a business meeting where users and workers from the locality are invited to share experiences, knowledge and initiatives". "Insight are quite involved in service planning. Members also have input to ASW training and run other workshops. Members of Insight drew up a draft Charter of Rights" and work was done on rights issues in liason with a local Law Centre. (Survivors Speak Out AGM September 1988)

    Joan Hughes, Tony O'Donnell, David Kessel Tuesday 5.5.1987 Constitution of Hackney Union of Mental Patients set up "for the purpose of obtaining or devising useful and gainful ways of work"

    Joan Hughes, Tony O'Donnell (the founder) and David Kessel prepare to leave the Old Fire Station, Stoke Newington for a Hackney Union of Mental Patients expedition to Walthamstow Marshes


    Members included - John Roberts - Tony O'Donnell - John Confidine - David Kessel - Pat Walters - and Harold Leeson

    May? 1987 Bristol Survivors started after a large meeting to find out what people wanted.

    Address May 1988:-
    BRISTOL SURVIVORS: Secretary Felicity Couch, 139 Ashley Road, Montpelier, Bristol BS6 5NU.

    Autumn 1991 Vivien Lindow: joined the (London based) Survivors Speak Out Coordinating Group

    1994 Self-help alternatives to mental health services by Vivien Lindow. (Also see DATA

    Susan Rooke Matthews and Vivien Lindow 1998

    Notes for AGM August 2005 say "Bristol Survivors Network started off as a branch of Survivors Speak Out over 20 years ago. Survivors Speak Out folded and closed its London office a few years ago, but we kept going mainly due to the commitment of Viv Lindow who unfortunately can't be with us tonight. This is our first AGM, although we have a constitution, we do not follow it to the letter. A Chair is usually decided upon at the meeting and we usually have a Secretary (thanks to Claire Barnard) and a Treasurer. This was Liz Macmin, now Pauline Markovitz with Susan Rooke-Mathews as assistant Treasurer."


    website archive 2008

    20.11.2008 Network's list of Service User/Survivor Support Groups

    Over recent years those of us suffering from mental 'illness' have started to organise ourselves in order to offer mutual support and to fight for each other. Free from the control of funding bodies or the supervision of professionals. For me they provide great hope for the future - at least as much as the prospect of the medical industry coming up with new drugs.

    Local

    The Patients Council
    Open to all survivors/service users whether they have been to hospital or not. Helen Hamilton is the paid worker for the group.
    The Patients Council, Callington Road Hospital, Marmalade Lane, Brislington, Bristol, BS4 5BT
    Tel: 0117 919 5617

    Kaleidescope
    As a mental health service user group which also welcomes carers, this is a progressive self help, lobbying and consultation group. They engage in consultation with statutory and voluntary sectors to help share services we use. Monthly meetings, guest speakers and a chance to access wider mental health arena e.g. training,, conferences and an opportunity to engage in lifelong learning, build confidence, overcome social isolation and become empowered in a friendly, supportive environment. Meetings are held monthly Marine Hill CMHT, Marine Hill, Clevedon. (Please call to check venue before you go)
    Meetings happen on the third Wednesday of the month from 2.30pm to 4.30pm.
    Contact: Sue Ricketts 01275 853 960

    Bristol Survivors Network
    This is a Bristol-wide group that helps and supports by campaigning for anyone with mental health problems. Meetings are held on the last thurs of every month (except Dec). For further information on where meetings are being held please call tel no below.
    Bristol Survivors Network, PO Box 2505, Bristol, BS6 9AJ Tel : Pauline - 0117 924 8124 (daytime only) or Susan - 0117 923 1796 (daytime only)

    S.U.N - Southmead Users Network
    This is a campaign and support group and members need not have attended Southmead Hospital or be located in the Southmead Ward for further information ring 07765 307 134 (weekdays 11am - 1pm

    Hearing Voices Network
    Every Tuesday 3pm - 4.30pm at Bristol Mind, 35 Old Market Street, Bristol, BS2 0EZ. For further information contact: Mobile: 0789 423 0207 (answer phone) Tim / Glenn @ Grove Rd: 0117 973 5142
    Website: www.hearing-voices.org

    National Groups

    Mad Pride
    Mad Pride is an exciting campaign aimed at doing for mad people what Gay Pride did for gay people.

    U.K. Survivors Newsgroup
    Very busy e-mail newsgroup of the big U.K. Survivors Network.

    National Hearing Voices Network
    http://www.hearing-voices.org Great web-site for all who hear voices. You can call their national office on 0161 834 5768


    "Bristol Survivors continues to meet monthly as a group and also has a regular social meeting. It continues to campaign and lobby for better mental health services." (Glenn Townsend email 6.4.2012)

    Bristol Survivors Network website April 2012

    MIND Consumer Advisory Network (Steering Group for)

    Summer 1987 Notice that a steering group had been set up for a MIND Consumer Advisory Network. It had been decided that the co-ordinator would necessarily be a consumer.

    Peter Campbell was a member of this steering group. Not all the members were survivors. Others who were included Lisa Haywood, Colin Gell and Peter Beresford. When Jan Wallcraft became the first paid worker (part-time), Peter Campbell decided he could not be a mindlink person and a Survivors Speak Out person, so he dropped out of any major involvement in MindLink. Although he has always been a member.

    Mind established its Consumer Advisory Panel before Jan Wallcraft's appointment. She says she

    "worked with the existing Consumer Advisory Panel, meeting a host of stars such as Peter Beresford, Lisa Haywood, Graham Estop and Anna Neeter"

    On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 says:
    "1987-present Mindlink: service-user network within Mind - peak membership 1,200." [The "1987" may refer to Jan Wallcroft's appointment in December 1987. MindLink started in 1988]

    Summer 1987 Islington Mental Health Forum, set up with assistance from Good Practices in Mental Health, was "now well established" and had "secured premises to operate from". "They are particularly concerned about the closure of Friern-Barnet Hospital and have started a Friern Interest Group which meets at the hospital". For information contact The Old Darkroom, The Laundry, Sparshott Road, Islington, London, N19 ( Asylum Summer 1987)

    Asylum Summer 1987 says
    New Patient's Council Support Group being established at Southampton.
    The Southampton group was set up after a Nottingham Patients Council Support Group Workshop. Southampton Patients Council Support Group was started by a local user group in the Department of Psychiatry. "The groups hold regular ward meetings to discuss whatever the patients want to talk about - there are no minutes or agendas, which patients do not want. There is Joint Fiance funding for three years with a promise of lifetime funding if all goes well. They have a say in Joint Planning but no office or other facilities" (Mindwaves, December 1988)

    Friday 31.7.1987 - Sunday 2.8.1987 Fourth Minstead Lodge meeting

    September? 1987 Ingrid Barker and Edward Peck, editors, (1987). Power in Strange Places - User Empowerment in Mental Health Services. London, Good Practices in Mental Health - Discussion includes patient councils and advocacy - Articles include: Colin Gell, "Learning to Lobby, The Growth of Patients' Councils in Nottingham" - Lorraine Bell, "Survivors Speak Out. A National Self-Advocacy Network" - Ivy Buckland, "Power Through Partnership. An Account of the Contact Group in Chesterfield" - Peter Campbell, "Giants and Goblins. A Description of Camden Consortium's Campaign to Change Statutory Plans" - Judi Chamberlin, "The Case for Separatism. Ex-Patient Organising in the United States - 30 pages - Anne Plumb collection. - COPAC lists copies in several libraries. - Review by Peter Tyrer in Psychiatric Bulletin

    Summer/Autumn 1987: National Council for Voluntary Organisations launched a fund to help disabled people take action to promote employment and training opportunities. Grants, limited to £1,000 for each organisation, could be used by disabled people wishing to organise a major local conference relating to employment and training opportunities. Or it could be used to establish a specific project. The main criteria was that proposals should be led and controlled by disabled people and related to training or employment.

    "The Self-Advocacy Movement in the UK" by Peter Campbell probably describes the period before Edale. He speaks of Survivors Speak Out "acting as an umbrella organisation, campaigning and fund-raising towards a national conference of service users and their allies" (page 209). People like himself had adopted the terms "self- advocacy" and "self- advocate" over the eighteen months or so since Autumn 1985 (page 209). He speaks of "over a dozen groups in this country speaking and acting for themselves in the area of mental health". Ealing, Barnet, Camden, Islington and Hackney have self-advocacy groups, CAPO and BNAP are based in London. "Outside of London" Glasgow, Chesterfield, Nottingham and Bristol also had "large and flourishing groups". "In other cities like Southampton there are the beginnings of groups run by users" (page 209) [Compare with Summer 1986 list of groups planning the conference]. He did not think "more than 400 people at the most are directly and actively in Britain at present". (page 212). "The majority of existing groups are alliances of users and workers with a small element of 'carers', each alliance weighted in a different way" (pages 206-207) Only CAPO and Sagacity in Community Care (SICC) claim to be user only (page 206).

    "In broad terms", Peter says,"there are three main types of group"

    1) The national campaign groups: CAPO (Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression) and British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry

    "Although based in London they address themselves to the whole of Britain, do not concentrate on local matters but campaign on major issues affecting the whole of the psychiatric system such as the abolition of ECT, no compulsory element in psychiatry, the provision of adequate facilities for withdrawal from major tranquillizers.They are limited in size...but increasingly active in certain areas where they are now being noticed..."
    The locality based group London examples: Camden Mental Health Consortium - Barnet Action for Mental Health - Hackney Mental Health Action Group. "...often set up with initial involvement by community health councils, concentrates on its local area and on the problems of the psychiatric systems expressed in the local services".

    "Groups connected to existing service provisions or which are themselves supplying significant services"

    " Link attached to Glasgow Association for Mental health and Contact at Tontine Road Centre in Chesterfield are examples of the former, whilst Bristol Women and Mental Health - an umbrella covering a number of services for women in Bristol - is a notable example of the latter." (page 211)

    "Finally mention must be made of the Nottingham Patient Council Support Group (NPCSG) which is establishing the idea of patients'councils within psychiatric hospitals along lines inspired by the example of the Patients' Councils in Holland" (page 211)

    Edale Conference and Edale Charter
    Friday 18.9.1987 to Sunday 20.9.1987
    Survivors Speak Out organised the first United Kingdom conference of mental health service users/survivor activists over a weekend at an Edale Youth Hostel.

    The team largely responsible for organising things were Lorraine Bell as "coordinator" - Ivy Buckland as treasurer - Peter Campbell as secretary - Jackie Biggs "publicity" - Rick Hennelly (local transport).

    Friday evening: social gathering

    Saturday Groups on topics suggested by people there, including * Women and mental health * Major tranquilisers * The Community Treatment Order * How to achieve user-involvement * Surviving without medication * The role of allies in self-advocacy and their relationship to users.

    The conference produced a list of 15 "needs and demands" (Survivors Speak Out 1987, Charter Of Needs And Demands (Edale Conference Charter), London, Survivors Speak Out)

    " Mary Nettle entered the mental health system in 1977. There was no discussion about medication or someone's problems. Treatment was totally drug oriented. One day her Community Psychiatric Nurse gave her a leaflet about the Edale conference. She felt the description "survivor" was just right and felt herself to be a survivor of life. She warmed to the friendly but efficient style in whcih the leaflet was written, and went to the conference with a group of people. It was a most amazing experience. A great array of ideas was expressed, "and there was Peter Campbell, holding it all together". Source: (Two decades of change conference)

    "The grass roots movement that created the Edale Charter, also created the UK Advocacy Network (UKAN) in the early 1990s" (Terry Simpson, UKAN)

    Manchester Survivors Speak Out formed after Edale. The formation of the Distress Awareness Training Agency (DATA) followed this. See Manchester index. The May 1988 address list says contact Steve Brown, Flat 4, 107 Withington Raad, Whally Range, Manchester, for information about the Manchester group.


    Autumn 1987 Towards the end of his life Eric Irwin spent a lot of time in the library at the Westminster Mind headquarters on the Harrow Road. It was here in the autumn of 1987 that he collapsed and was rushed to hospital. For a while, Stephen Ticktin looked after Eric in his (Stephen's) own home. Eric died in St Joseph's Hospice, Hackney (see below).

    October 1987 Publication of Asylum to Anarchy by Clair Baron.

    Thursday 8.10.1987 Inaugural meeting of the London Alliance for Mental Health Action (LAMHA pronounced llama) [Has also been stated as 1.10.1987] - See 5.12.1987 March against Community Treatment Orders - 17.9.1988 Psychiatry on Trial - 4.3.1989 SANE adverts - 20.6.1989 Robin Cook - Active until 1991/ 1992. - See Rogers and Pilgrim June 1991.

    9.10.1987
    Hackney Mental Health Action Group AGM elected Lisa Haywood and Ian Ray- Todd as co-chairs and Lisa Haywood to the "MIND Consumer Advisory Panel"

    Stichting Weerklank logo 31.10.1987 First hearing voices congress held in Utrecht, Holland. At this, Stichting Weerklank (Foundation Resonance) was formed, a collaboration between voice hearers and professionals. See Wikipedia on the Hearing Voices Movement - See below 1988

    November? 1987 Mind's first Annual Conference outside London was held in Blackpool. Alan Hartman took part in a presentation about 24 hours support with assistance from service providers Douglas Inchbold and Neil Harris (now retired)

    Saturday 5.12.1987 London Alliance for Mental Health Action anti Community Treatment Order demonstration. March from Marble Arch to the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
    Hugs Not Drugs 11.12.1987 "Hugs not Drugs" Greenford, Northolt and Southall Recorder

    There is a seven page document "The Scientific and Medical Argument Against Compulsory Treatment Orders - a report prepared for the London Alliance for Mental health Action" by "Dr M J C Brown M.B., B.S., B.SC. (Hons), B.A." Dr Mario Brown was a survivor who was a medical doctor. The Royal College of Psychiatrists report had not specified what community treatment was likely to be. Mario Brown suggested it would be "long acting major tranquillisers", and criticised their effectiveness.

    Louise Pembroke (emails 23.4.2017) recalls that Mario Brown's document was prepared after the 5.12.1987 march, for use in the 17.9.1988 Psychiatry on Trial event.

    1987 Compulsory Community Treatment Orders Survivors Speak Out Information Sheet by Dave Lowson. (Anne Plumb collection). -

    Just before Christmas 1987 Eric Irwin died in St Joseph's Hospice, Hackney after a year long struggle with undiagnosed cancer. CAPO was continued until 1991 largely by Eric's friend Frank Bangay. After Eric's death it decided to affiliate to Survivors Speak Out. Frank's tribute to Eric was published in Asylum Volume 3, No 1, Summer 1988. His poem "The Laughing Flowers" ("Never really felt so sad before - I try to reach myself through my craziness") was written in the Spring of 1988. Naked Songs and Rhythms of Hope pages 17-18)

    1988

    Mind Consumers Network
    Newsletter: Mindwaves in August

    1988: Wokingham and District Mind founded. It affiliated to National Mind in 1989. Crisis House in Station Approach, a user run crisis centre, opened by Pam (Pamela) Jenkinson on 2.4.1991. It is now West Berkshire Mental Health Association. (website)

    1988 Hamlet Trust established by Peter Barham - Its first project was to establish the Bradford Mental Health Advocacy Group (now Bradford and Airedale Mental Health Advocacy Group)

    1988 An anti-war marathon organised by athletes with intellectual disability to denounce the civil war in Lebanon. In 1989 coach Mohammad Nasser founder of Special Olympics Lebanon received the endorsement of Special Olympics International. - (source)

    Changes in organisations 1988/1989 - From Rogers and Pilgrim 1991

    Voices - the National Schizophrenia Fellowship funds an ex-patient as an organiser. It describes its meetings (Voices Forum) as a support group 'run by and for schizophrenics'. At the time of the research it had a membership of around fifty people. [Presumably just users]

    Survivors Speak Out - a national users' organisation with over fifty local groups. "It aims to facilitate communication between local groups of users and their professional allies promoting self-advocacy. In June 1988 the paidup membership of this group was 230" [Presumably, allies and users]

    Mindlink an information network facilitated by an ex-patient salaried by national MIND. At the time of the research it had around two hundred members.

    In 1988 and 1989 Barbara Taylor a patient in Friern Hospital for three periods totalling about eight months. See 24.9.2010


    1988 Nelsy graduated and moved from Colombia to London, England. She married and became a teacher of Spanish privately and created a successful Latin American dance course for beginners. Her diagram shows how, after her breakdown (1998) and self analysis, all of her life, including the politics, history and education systems of both countries, was infused with emotion.

    January 1988 Collaboration for Change - Partnership between Service Users, Planners and Managers of Mental Health Services King's Fund Centre Discussion Paper by Helen Smith. The outcome of regular group meetings of people form Good Practices in Mental Health - the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, Waltham Forest Health Authority and the King's Fund

    Democracy in Psychiatry poster 1.1.1988

    "... a student on placement at Barony called Colin Murray, who was very inspired by... Survivors Speak Out... called a meeting called Democracy in Psychiatry (Be Morris, CAPS2010 p.43) - 8.1.1988 appears to be the earliest secure date in the book Oor Mad History. There are references to the stimulus of " '85, 86 MIND Conferences, where users were very vocal" (Be Morris p.45)

    See 26.9.1988 and June 2012

    January to March 1988 Survey of City and Hackney Psychiatric Services carried out following "intense criticism" by the City and Hackney Community Health Council and others. "The patient questionnaires were distributed through a specially briefed team of patient advocates drawn from Community Health Council Staff, Hackney Mental Health Action Group, Federation of Consumers of the Mental Health Services and the Family Centre Staff (HCRE). One further advocate was an Administrative Worker from CHAMH". April 1988: "Mental Health Services - Initial Report on Survey of Views of Psychiatric Patients Mid January to End of February 1988" (CHCHC Mental Health Working Group). Later: City and Hackney Health Authority Psychiatric Services. Survey of Mental Health Facilities as perceived by the Providers and Clients 1988 Michael Lung - Support Nurse.

    Mark Cresswell describes "1988-1996" as "a period that witnessed a first phase of self-harm survivor activism in England."

    January 1988 Bristol Crisis Line opened by Bristol Crisis Service for Women - Telephone Bristol 354105 Friday and Saturday evenings, 9 to 12.30 - run by women for women in the Bristol area. Counselling service for women feeling isolated and distressed - "received media attention with articles focused on women and self-harm. The line receives up to 12 calls a night, and women who have phoned often become volunteers with the project. Volunteers are doing education work in hospitals - talking to psychiatrists and social workers - and aim to negotiate suitable consultancy fees" (Mindwaves December 1988) [Mark Cresswell says BCSW starts to run a national telephone help-line for women. - Address May 1988 - See Guardian 28.6.1988

    8.1.1988 New Society "Asylums with Long Arms: Last month mental health patients groups demonstrated outside the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Belgrave Square. Jim Read explains why". This was about opposition to community treatment orders. A brief extract: "A recent national conference of Survivors Speak Out, which attracted 100 participants, voted unanimously to oppose CTOs, and set up regional coalitions to campaign against these."

    February 1988 Conference on Co-ordinated Care organised by what became The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. Have we got views for you (1994) says "the views of service users were largely overlooked". This was illustrated in the language of "cases" and "case managment". "This led to The Sainsbury Centre's first efforts to bring in a user perspective. A group of users from around the country began to meet together to produce a response to Towards Co-ordinated Care" See 1990 - 1.3.1994 - Diana Rose - Perspectives on Manic Depression - 1998 - workbook - Jan Wallcraft (2001) - 23.1.2001 - 2.6.2003 - 12.9.2003 - 30.11.2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007

    21.4.1988 The Patients' Case: Views from experience; Living inside and out of a psychiatric hospital by North Manchester Resettlement Support Group. Editors Neil Harris and Doug Inchbold. Also Jeff Warburton. Produced by Harpurhey Resettlement Team and 'users' of Springfield Hospital Manchester. Published by the Community Psychiatric Nurses Association Publications, Rossendale. ISBN: 0948260203 22 pages. Sold for £1 by Survivors Speak Out. Includes Alan Hartman. See Asylum July 1989

    May 1988 First Survivors Speak Out Newssheet
    Survivor Speak Out Address List May 1988 (Known groups)

    survivor/user enterprises: see DATA (1988) - CAPITAL (1997) - ARISE and developing partners and Raise (2006) -

    May 1988 Distress Awareness Training Agency (DATA) established. "Individuals with personal experience of emotional and mental distress who provide service-user and survivor led training, research and consultancy". Describes itself as "the UK's longest established group of this kind". - Three founder members were Andrew Hughes - Anne Plumb - and Tony Riley. Helen Gibb joined during 1988.
    20.6.1988 Date on proposal to formally set up a Mental Health Awareness Trainers Group which accompanied the first application (late 1988?) from DATA to the Disabled Employment and Training Action Fund (DETAF) administered by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. (Anne Plumb collection). The application was to undertake initial organisational development work, to look at ways of establishing contacts within the North West, to produce a training course and to look at the type of organisational structure that might suit DATA. It was designed to create 10 weeks of part-time work for DATA members. "I had to drop out early days as I was busy with a spot of madness" (Andrew Hughes). See November 1991 - Autumn 1992 - 29.5.1993 - late 1993 - June 1994 - Asylum Spring 1995 - 6.10.2001 (website) - Asylum 2002

    21.5.1988 Oldham meeting of "North-West Mind Consumer Network" - The first of the regional networks. Irene Whitehill was a founder member.

    28.6.1988 Michelle Hanson's article in The Guardian "Letting out the big scream inside" "self-destructive behaviour is not uncommon among women. Their numbers are growing and there is little help for them", She interviewed interviewed Maggy Ross, Diane Harrison and 'Ellie'. Also about this time (mid-1988) Maggy Ross published an article in a woman's lifestyle magazine called The Company.

    8.7.1988 Consumer Advisory Panel Workshop - Harley Street

    August 1988 Issue one of Mindwaves - The Newsletter of the MIND Consumer Network. At this stage, the network claimed about 200 members. Members were entitled to two years free membership of Mind. "So do fill in the forms and send them back and you will be able to come to the AGM on 19th November in London to vote for the Council of Management" (page 1).

    23.8.1988 Death of Joseph Watts in Broadmoor: "Ward staff appeared with shields and helmets, entered his seclusion room, injected him with a drug cocktail and within minutes he was dead".

    Autumn 1988 First interviews by Anne Rogers and David Pilgrim in research that led to Pulling down churches. The names of interviewees have not been stated. Peter Campbell and Jan Wallcraft believe they were interviewed. Mike Lawson also appears to have been interviewed. Frank Bangay believes he was not. Eric Irwin was dead. See opinions and Voices

    Saturday 10.9.1988 Survivors Speak Out Annual General Meeting at Hampden Community Centre. Contact was Lorraine Bell, Southampton.

    Saturday 17.9.1988 LAMHA street theatre event "Psychiatry on Trial". See Mario Brown's paper.

    Monday 26.9.1988 to Thursday 29.9.1988 Common Concerns: International Conference on User Involvement in Mental Health Services - Brighton.

    Colin Murray, Be Morris and Anne Bardsley, were amongst those who attended the Brighton Conference in September 1988... "the theme of it was user involvement and advocacy. We started a bit behind them but we had got ahead and things were more advanced here than they were down South. I think it was me and Be and Anne sat pounding the table,
    'we are doing just as well as them in fact we're doing better' 'Let's have a national conferennce in Scotland for users'
    there is something to celebrate and shout about and bring more people together". (Colin Murray CAPS2010 p.44)
    The group to plan a national network first met in December 1988

    Autumn? 1988 "About a dozen users from all over England" met with "staff at the National Unit for Psychiatric Research and Development who are preparing a report on "The Co-odination of care for People Disable by Long Term Illness" for the DHSS"

    October/November1988 OpenMind No 35: "ECT - A controversial treatment: counsellor and former mental patient, Jim Read, argues that Mind has failed to present the case against ECT and ignored the viewpoint of many people who have received treatment." (A response to Mind's special report which 'cautiously condoned the use of ECT'.)

    19.11.1988 Mike Lawson elected vice-chair of Mind at the MIND A.G.M, replacing Dr Hugh Freeman. Served until 1994, when he was replaced by Judith Morgan-Freer. In his Testimonies' interview, Mike Lawson refers to "me being elected Vice Chair of National Mind as a collective action, you know amongst survivors and our groups and lobbies". Mike says (in an email) that his election "was immediately challenged by the Royal College of Psychiatrists because of a claim against David Hill for promoting my candidacy by mailshot from Camden Mind. So my inception was delayed and a re-election announced. However my rival failed to stand." Anne Plumb remembers "reading in the pages of The Guardian, Hugh Freeman (already/later deposed as vice-chair of Mind by Mike Lawson) defending his take on psychiatry against survivors and allies (the correspondence was carried over several days).

    Asylum Winter 1988. The cover of this edition is displayed on the wall behind the Survivors Speak Out stand at the November 1988 Mind Conference below. The edition contains a report headed "Mind 1987 Conference Report" which also reports on the AGM that elected Mike Lawson (above)

    Tam 1988 Tam Graham at the Survivors Speak Out stall at the November 1988 Mind Conference

    "A "Scottish Users Interest Group" first met in December 1988 with a view to forming a national network. From this inaugural meeting the Scottish Users Network was formed, which has a current membership of 45 people, drawn from all over the country. The Scottish Users Network adopted a constitution in October 1990, and charitable status has been obtained. (from a letter from Brian Sinclair, the then Secretary of the Scottish Users Network, undated but written in the aftermath of the 1991 conference, which he had attended." (UKAN archives). - See also July 1989 - March1994 - Asylum 1995

    December 1988 First edition of Psychiatry in Transition: the British and Italian Experiences. Contains some acknowledgment of users' opinion. Section on "The Users' Perspective" contains an article by Ann Davis called "Users' Perspectives" about Britain and one by Maria Grazia Giannicheda" called "A Future of Social Invisibility" about Italy. Both are mostly about mental health policy in their country, but the issue of a consumers' view is addressed.

    1988 Mind the Gap Theatre Company inclusive theatre group for actors with and without a learning disability

    1988 First United Kingdom Hearing Voices group established in Manchester - See Hearing Voices Network box - On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 says: "1988-present The Hearing Voices network (based on the work of Professor Marius Romme in Holland) began holding national events in 1990/1991 and now has 100 groups across the country." See Asylum July 1989 - October 1989 - Asylum Summer 1990 - Asylum Winter 1990/1991 - Conference November 1990 - Independent Hearing Voices 6.1.1991 - Asylum Spring 1991 - Asylum Summer 1991 [??] - 1991 Conference - Asylum Winter 1991/1992 - 1992 Conference - 1993 Conference - Late 1993 Newsletter 10 - February 1994 Newsletter 11 - 13.4.1994 - May 1994 - August 1994 Newsletter 13 - 1994 Conference - December 1994 Schizophrenia Media Agency - April 1995 Horizon - 1995 Conference - 1996 Conference - 1997 Conference - 2000 Terence McLaughlin Thesis - 2006 First "World Hearing Voices Day" - 2015 Conference

    On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 says: "1988 Influential publications by service users/survivors emerge: A notable influence on the movement" was the publication by Mind of a British edition of "On Our Own by Judi Chamberlin - an exploration of the rise of the survivor movement in the US." "Numerous local publications and newsletters by service user/survivor groups begin to emerge, critically examining services and describing personal experiences."

    1989

    1989 JosephAtukunda 20. "I became withdrawn, fearful and kept to myself most of the time. I started contemplating suicide," (15.12.2014 interview) - Before admission to hospital, Joseph was taken to traditional healers, "as most Ugandans are tempted to do when faced with mental illness for the first time". "I was first treated at Mulago Hospital (general hospital). I was told very little about what I was suffering from. (26.5.2011 interview) - "After spending several months on ECT treatment with no improvement, Atukunda was taken to Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with bipolar disorder". (15.12.2014 interview).

    "It was Survivors Speak Out members who came up to early meetings in Edinburgh when the movement was getting started here. Through these early meetings Lothians' first user group was formed, Awareness, in 1989." (Kirsten's blog)

    Awareness met at EAMH (Edinburgh Association for Mental Health, now called Health in Mind), 40 Shandwick Place and at Contact Point, Basement, 67 York Place. It was supported by Lothian Mental Health Forum and developed into a steering group that led to CAPS. CAPS2010 pp 46-49).

    Names associated with Awareness include Colin Murray - Adrienne Sinclair Chalmers - Anne Bardsley - Be Morris - and Graham Morgan -
    Royal Edinburgh Hospital Patients' Council
    Royal Edinburgh Hospital
    Morningside Terrace
    Edinburgh
    EH10 5HF (website)

    "The Patients' Council was set up in 1989 and continues to be based in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. It facilitates collective advocacy for patients and former patients of the hospital, bringing about change in the way that services and treatment are provided"

    1989 APSA l'Association des Psychotiques Stabilisés Autonomes

    Department of Health (January 1989) Working for Patients (Griffiths Report). (Cm. 555) London: HMSO, "recommended that consumers of health care should be involved in future developments and evaluation of services provided by the NHS" Since then "successive governments have sought to strengthen the role of patients as active participants in their relationship with those who provide services." (Mike Crawford, March 2001)

    Lucy Johnstone Users and Abusers of Psychiatry: A Critical Look at Traditional Psychiatric Practice, London: Routledge, 1989. See Asylum Spring 1992 March 1993 - OpenMind 1994 - Asylum 1994 - Asylum 1999 - Asylum 2000

    28.2.1989 to 25.3.1989 The One Sided Wall by Janet Cresswell and Niki Johnson, a one person play performed by Cindy Oswin at the Bush Theatre, Shepherds Bush. The Theatre Programme said "The play is completely fictitious, but draws on her experience.." - Her being Janet.


    4.3.1989 London Alliance for Mental Health Action anti- SANE advertising demonstration at the Imperial War Museum. Included Street Theatre.

    16.3.1989 "Mental health split" City Limits

    24.3.1989 "Groups lock horns over schizophrenia posters" Hampstead and Highgate Gazette?

    12.4.1989 Labour Briefing "We're not in-SANE"


    April 1989 Self Advocacy Action Pack: Empowering Mental Health Service Users first produced by Survivors Speak Out.

    Ireland index 1.4.1989 IMPERO (Irish Mental Patients' Educational and Representative Organisation) founded - (external link)

    27.4.1989 Jan Wallcraft's article "Winning through against fear and contempt" in Community Care described the Mind consumer network. (Anne Plumb collection).

    Having a Voice Conference

    5.4.1989 First session of Having a Voice Conference for people who use Mental Health Services in North Manchester. Organised by Manchester Users' Support Group, North Manchester Community Health Council and North Manchester Health Authority. There were three sessions in all. The other two were on 19.4.1989 and 17.5.1989. See Manchester index and Having a Voice

    OR

    "The group held its first two conferences in March this year. The first one was for users, the secnd for professionals. There was supposed to be a conference for both users and professionals but this didn'thappen. The conference provoked a lot of discussion and a documnet summing up some of the points made was typed out. The conference was aptly named 'Having a voice' Norman Howard

    20.6.1989 Members of the London Alliance for Mental Health Action were involved in setting up and participating in a meeting in the House of Commons between Robin Cook MP (then Shadow Minister for Health), Harriet Harman and Keith Vaz, and "forty or more mental health service users, representing most of the mental health action groups, Patients' Councils, Consumer Networks and advocacy projects". "The meeting was chaired by David Hill, Director of Camden MIND, who has put in a great deal of work and effort to convince the Labour Party to give greater priority to mental health issues and the importance of consulting the 'users'." (Jan Wallcraft Mindwaves Summer 1989, page 7)

    Asylum July 1989
    Nottingham Patients Council Support Group appoint a worker. [Colin Gell]
    Mention similar developments in Brighton, Leeds, Newcastle.
    Scottish Users' Network established.

    July 1989 Romme and Escher 1989. "Effects of mutual contacts from people with auditory hallucinations". Perspectief no 3, 37-43, July 1989. In 1989 they also published "Hearing Voices" in Schizophrenia Bulletin 15 (2): 209 - 216

    Paddy McGowan recovered from Schizophrenia with the support of other survivors and participated in the original study (Romme/Escher, 1989) into hearing voices. See - UKAN1992 - 1994 - Irish Advocacy Network 1999

    September 1989 Patient advocacy- Report for Public Policy Committee of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. offline - This policy was reviewed in 1999 and 2012

    August 1989 Date on Ann Scott's introduction to Something Sacred. Conversations, writings, painting (Mary Barnes). The first interview "Reflections on Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness and on Kingsley Hall" is dated May 1988 - 2. "1971-1988 and the work of the work of the Shealin Trust" is also May 1988 - 3 "households, helping and regression" is July 1988, as is 4. "Painting, writing and giving talks". 5 "'Something Sacred' religion and psychotherapy" is dated November 1988. The introduction notes that Ronald Laing died in August 1969, whilst the book was in production.

    5.9.1989 Looking at self-harm: the first national conference on self-harm to be held in the UK, "entirely organised by the recipient movement" at the International Students House in Great Portland Street in North London. Louise Pembroke organised the conference as Education Officer of Survivors Speak Out. Alan Leader spoke a few words of introduction and Louise Pembroke "chaired and co-presented with the other speakers." One of the speakers was Maggy Ross:

    "I'm Maggy and I started to cut my body 5 years ago. I go to casualty and get hauled onto the psychiatric bandwagon. I am then given a nice little 'label'. The current label is Schizophrenia. That's how the professionals see me. I'm a self-destructive Schizophrenic. But how do I see myself? I am a survivor of sexual abuse and a survivor of the system. I know why I self-injure. When I feel I am losing control, I reach for a razor and prove to myself that I can have control over my body. When I am lost for words, my cuts speak for me. They say - look - this is how much I'm hurting inside ... I'll tell you what self-injury isn't - and professionals take note. It's not attention seeking. It's not a suicide attempt. So what is it? It's a silent scream. It's a visual manifestation of extreme distress. Those of us who self-injure carry our emotional scars on our bodies." (Quoted in Self-Harm Perspectives. This is an edited quote from Cresswell, M. 2004)

    "I found it incredible to listen to individuals talking about their...inwardly directed aggression and then to learn that in accident and emergency departments some of them have been deliberately stitched up without the use of anaesthetic". (Peter Campbell reflecting on the conference in Open Mind December 1989).

    Asylum October 1989, p.16 says "Congratulations for the pioneering efforts of the City and Hackney Federation of Consumers of the Mental Health Services who went ahead and organised the conference against all the odds". It notes, on page 17, that "following the success of the Self-Harm Conference" a conference on "Hearing Voices" is being organised for 18.4.1990. Information from Alan Leader, City and Hackney Federation of Consumers of the Mental Health Services, c/o City and Hackney CHC.

    Self-Harm: Perspectives from Personal Experience (1994) was a consequence of this conference.

    Crisis cards - Launched by the International Self-Advocacy Alliance and Survivors Speak Out in 1989, crisis cards are intended as an advocacy device to be carried by the person who has written it, to be used in mental health emergencies.

    Crisis Cards were the invention of Jackie Biggs (journalist) and Mike Lawson, living at that time in Jackie's cottage in west Wales. They called themselves the International Self-Advocacy Alliance [Rhiadle, Llangrannog, Llandyssul, Dyfed SA44 6BG, Wales, UK - Telephone 0239 78661]. The idea was patented and, being short of money, Mike sold it to Survivors Speak out for about £75. (Information from Mike 31.10.2008). Survivors Speak Out launched the card at its Annual General Meeting.

    Saturday 16.9.1989 Survivors Speak Out AGM "Sixty-five members, including individuals from the UK, Holland, Italy and West Germany attended". Reference made to "more than a dozen local groups". (Asylum October 1989, p.16)

    16.9.1989: Press Release: "Crisis Card Launched" made by International Self Advocacy Alliance

    October 1989 Article by Chris Halford in Voluntary Voice explained that Good Practices in Mental Health (GPMH) "now offer a resource to mental health user groups across London"

    1990

    In the United Kingdom, the 1990s saw the further development of a recognised and professionalised user movement. There are now statutory requirements for consultation and the providers need someone to consult with. Some survivor groups received significant funding. (See King's Fund support from 1985). In June 1990, a relatively small grant from what became the Sainsbury Centre helped to start the National Advocacy Network. The substantial (and continuing) investment of The Arts Council in the users movement began in 1991. That of the Mental Health Foundation began in 1992. See £11,750 for Survivors Poetry in 1991, £30,000 for Survivors Speak Out in 1992, £50,000 for a National Advocacy Network in 1992. £25000 for Hearing Voices Network in 1994.

    One of the main reasons for the spread of practical user involvement, as opposed to theoretical, was the work of people from Nottingham going around the country in the early 1990s and supporting others to get started. Much as the Dutch folks helped us... (Colin Gell... email 1.8.2008)

    Early 1990s The idea of AdvoCard is conceived by service users and research and meetings are happening.

    1990 Whose Service is it Anyway? Users' views on co-ordinating community care Edited by Marion Beeforth - Edna Conlan - Vida Field - Brian Hoser - and Liz Sayce, London: Research and Development for Psychiatry (RDP). - Reviewed by Tony Whitehead in the Psychiatric Bulletin June 1991

    Brian Hoser was, or became, the treasurer for the National Advocacy Network - Edna Conlan, from Milton Keynes Advocacy Group, was, or became the first chair. -

    1990 Patricia Chambers was at university "away from my family and at the time a long term relationship". Stress of the course, her circumstances, accomodation and grant problems "eventually all the stress resulted in my breakdown". "Having someone to talk to it would have made all the difference". However, she completed the course, but was admitted to the local mental hospita after her return home. (source)

    Rhythm of Struggle - Song of Hope

    Justice for Women began in 1990

    1990 Hamlet Trust in Poland

    1990-1991 JosephAtukunda a student at Nkumba college of Commerce (now Nkumba University) where he obtained qualifications in Accountancy.

    Thursday 15.3.1990 - Friday 16.3.1990 User Involvement - The Way Forward conference organised by Nottingham Advocacy Group which led, eventually, to setting up the United Kingdom Advocacy Network (UKAN)

    April 1990 Relaunch of Bristol Mind. See website - Bristol index - Jeff Walker - April 2002 UFM report - 2004 -

    18.4.1990 Date for which London Hearing Voices Conference was planned.

    May and June 1990 Donations from Nottingham Advocacy Group (£400) - Survivors Speak Out (£200) and Research and Development in Psychiatry (£1,000) enabled the planning group for a National Advocacy Network to meet.

    Asylum Summer 1990

    America

    "The Ex-Patients' Movement: Where We've Been and Where We're Going" by Judi Chamberlin - (National Empowerment Center) published in The Journal of Mind and Behavior Volume 11, Number 3, Summer 1990 Special Issue, Challenging the Therapeutic State, pages 323-336 is mostly about the movement in the United States - Link to online copy

    19?.6.1990 Judi Chamberlin and Rae Ouziker (Co-ordinator of the National Association of Psychiatric Survivors) took Valerie and Andrew out to lunch in London.

    June 1990 Annual Report of Camden Mental Health Consortium (Anne Plumb collection) includes an example of user-professional research - A user for Consortium devised a simple questionnaire with a senior nurse to find out what users had been told about medications, and what information they would like, as a contribution to Bloomsbury Community Health Council's attempt to raise awareness of the need for improved practice. Results (75 respondents) "indicated much disappointment with the quality of information, and a particular need for guidance on long term effects". Action on recomendations had already been taken on acute wards at St. Pancras.

    29.6.1990 1990 National Health Service and Community Care Act first established requirement for service user involvement in community care planning. (On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4) - See section 46

    July 1990 Helen Spandler's (unpublished) paper "An attempt to analyse the anti-psychiatry and mental patients movements with regard to the social and political period of the sixties". She concludes

    "The mental patients movement in many ways helped pave the way for organisations such as Survivors Speak Out and the various "consumer networks" in Britain. Some ex-patients and activists joined Mind local groups and have helped influence them towards a more radical approach to treatment, legal rights etc. The most recent campaign was that against the proposed Community Treatment Orders in 1987 (compulsory psychiatric 'treatment' in the community)."

    Wednesday 4.7.1990 Launch of magazine Beyond Diagnosis - The first "Summer issue" "The Voice in Scotland of people who have been diagnosed mentally ill - and those with related experiences". The Steering Group, John and Anne Macdonald, Marion Donovan, Vincent Donnelly, Jeff Frew, Julia White, Jeff Haddow and Jimmy Milroy, held a wine and cheese party at the Stafford Centre, Edinburgh, to celebrate the launch. Also an autumn edition in 1990. The intention was quarterly, but issue seven did not appear until 1994. See also Asylum Summer 1992 - issue 6 - January 1994 - issue 7 - Scottish Users Network March 1994

    John Macdonald: 27.5.1994 - 2008

    August 1990 First United Kingdom People First Conference held in Twickenham. Betty Steingold, Susan Baldwin, Susan Jennings and Elani went from Hackney. They spent a whole week there and discussed many things. Betty went to a conference last year, so many people knew her. Betty, an active member of Hackney Action on Learning Difficulties (Previously Hackney Action for Mentally Handicapped People) told the Conference, that she did not want people to say "mental handicap". Other people spoke about living independently and about getting jobs. Food and the accommodation were good.

    Asylum Autumn 1990

    November 1990 First National Hearing Voices Conference held in Manchester. See Manchester index.

    Autumn 1990 issue two of Beyond Diagnosis. Editor now Marion Denovan, 146 Morningside Road, Edinburgh, EH10 4PX - who remained editor for some years.

    October 1990 Workshop on researching user involvement, Nuffield Institute, University of Leeds. A collection based on this was edited by Marian Barnes and Gerald Wistow (1992).

    Asylum Winter 1990/1991

    1991



    books
    CAPS Consultation and Advocacy Promotion Service has been working with groups of people who use mental health services since 1991. It has office bases in Edinburgh, Midlothian and East Lothian. The majority of members of CAPS management committee are people who have experience of using mental health services. Projects supported by CAPS include Lothian Users Forum - East Lothian Involvement Group (1992) - Beyond Diagnosis - Edinburgh Users Forum - Working Like Crazy UK 2001 - Service Users Midlothian - Oor Mad History (2008) - See CAPS 2005/2006

    1991 Anne Bardsley Advocacy Report Edinburgh: Scottish Association for Mental Health, 15 pages.

    Alan Baker 1991 "On Hearing Voices and other Phenomena" in Libellus Dementum (issue one?). Oxford Survivors. (Anne Plumb Collection). See Asylum Winter1991/1992. A letter was published in Beyond Diagnosis 6 from Sarah Bell, OS Publishing, Oxford Survivors, c/o Littlemore Hospital, Oxford, OX4 4XN, She enclosed "issue 2 of our magazine Libellus Dementum which mentioned Beyond Diagnosis and hoped it would mention Libellus Dementum. "Beyond Diagnosis will shortly be made available to all members of OS in our new office".

    Ireland index Brian Hartnett (in London) "Around 1991, at the same time as the company I worked for closed and I lost my job, I started to retreat into myself. I am not sure when I started hearing peoples voices and exhibiting signs of ill health. It crept into my life gradually. Thoughts began to become vocalised in my head and I began to hear voices in the babble of conversation in crowded places."

    1991 Wiltshire and Swindon User Network founded - website - Mary Nettle wrote "when I lived in Minety in Wiltshire I was in networks like the Wiltshire and Swindon User Network" with Odessa Chambers "who also had her struggles and lived in Trowbridge in Wiltshire she was also a campaigner as one of her sons was in Broadmoor". Mary lost touch when she moved away, but "it was lovely to meet her daughter Patricia occasionally". (source)

    Sunday 6.1.1991 the Independent on Sunday published a report by Christine Assiz, "Heard but not seen", on a Hearing Voices conference arranged by five mental health activists, connected to Manchester Mind. (Asylum Spring 1991)

    Ron Coleman "Any recovery journey has a beginning, and for me the beginning was my meeting with Lindsay Cooke my support worker, it was her who encouraged me to go to the hearing voices self-help group in Manchester at the start of 1991." Ron names Anne Walton, Mike Grierson, Terry McLaughlin and Julie Downs, and Paul Baker as his "navigators" to sanity. (source) - (new source)

    April 1991 "The Mental Illness Specific Grant (MISG) was introduced under the NHS and Community Care Act 1990, providing from April 1991 revenue grant for the development of social care services for individuals with mental health problems" (external source)

    2.4.1991 Wokingham and District Mind's Crisis House in Station Approach, Wokingham, a user run crisis centre, opened by Pam Jenkinson. - source

    Asylum Summer 1991

    "The Users' Voice in Mental Health Services - towards a democratic psychiatry" Asylum Summer 1991

    " Ealing and Barnet now have local Mental Health Action groups. Islington has a mental health users' forum which is trying to negotiate the setting up of a Patients' Council at the Whittington Hospital. Camden has a Consortium.

    User groups exist in Bristol index Bristol, Leeds and Manchester. Patients' Councils now exist in Nottingham, Newcastle, and Southampton.

    June 1991 Anne Rogers and David Pilgrim (1991) "'Pulling down churches': accounting for the British mental health users' movement" Sociology of Health and Illness 13, 2, pp 129-148 - See Literature List. - offline - The authors describe themselves as "professional commentators on, or allies of the MHUM" [Mental Health Users Movement]. They explain that they were members of Mind and of the London Alliance for Mental Health Action. Between Autumn 1988 and 1989, they interviewed ten people (seven users, three professionals) who were also members of the London Alliance for Mental Health Action and/or Mind - MindLink - CAPO - Survivors Speak Out - Voices - British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry - Good Practices in Mental Health - Afro-Caribbean Mental Health Association - Nottingham Patients Council.

    6.6.1991 From the Mental Patient to the Person by Peter Barham and Robert Hayward, Routledge -

    22.6.1991 Letter from Ingrid Barker (now Newcastle Health Authority) and Richard Greave in the British Medical Journal. "As part of our work establishing contracts for mental health services, both in Newcastle and in other places around England, we have attempted to get a range of users to help plan and to comment on contracts".

    23.8.1991 World Federation of Psychiatric Users - First committee meeting - This was at the World Federeation for Mental Health Congress. Mike Lawson attended the congress as Vice-Chair of Mind, but was not minuted as attending tthe users meeting

    28.8.1991 Orville Blackwood, aged 31, died after being given injection of calming drugs (150 mg of Sparine and Modecate) in a secure unit at Broadmoor after attempting to punch a doctor on 28.8.1991. He died of heart failure. Diagnosed schizophrenic, Orville was sent to Broadmoor in 1987 after attempting to rob a post office using a toy gun. - accidental death verdicts October 1991 and 1.4.1993 - High Court decision leading to second inquest, 16.11.1992. See 26.8.1994.

    Two other black men, Michael Martin (died 1984) and Joseph Watts (died 1988), died in Broadmoor under similar circumstances.

    Saturday 28.9.1991: Louise Pembroke (for Survivors Speak Out) organised an Eating Distress conference. Hampden Community Centre from 10.30am to 5.30pm (registration from 9.30am Numbers resticted to 80: 40 employed/professionals at £20 and 40 low waged/unwaged at £2. [photocopy of 4 page notice in AandV archives]
    The Eating Distress booklet published by Survivors Speak Out came out of that. (Louise Roxanne Pembroke (editor) Eating Distress - Perspectives from Personal Experience. Conference Papers. Survivors Speak Out 1992 (1st edition) - 1993 (2nd edition. 23 main pages) - 1994 (Revised and reprinted edition). ISBN: 1898002002 (paperback) - COPAC lists copies in several libraries. It is also avalable on Louise Pembroke this website.

    27.10.1991 European Network of those Affected by Psychiatry. [Europäisches Netzwerk von Psychiatrie-betroffenen] formed in Amsterdam. (Press Release 12.11.1991 - exernal link in German) - This evolved into the European Network of (ex-) Users and Survivors of Psychiatry

    November? 1991 Second National Hearing Voices Conference held in ## Manchester

    26.11.1991 Mental Health Service Users as Trainers - International Community Centre, Mansfield Road, Nottingham. A "Training the Trainers" event in Nottingham, jointly organised by Survivors Speak Out - MindLink - and the National Advocacy Network Steering Group. This, and the DATA event in May 1993, were very early examples of service user Training the Trainers events. A 20 page report was edited by Viv Lindow and available from Survivors Speak Out for £1.50 plus postage. [photocopy in AandV archives. Aslo a photocopy of "Addresses of People who Attended Users as Trainers Day in Nottingham" - 36 people]

    November? 1991 Distress Awareness Training Agency (DATA) applied for further DETAF funding to host a "Training the Trainers" event. Initially scheduled for Autumn 1992, it was delayed to 29.5.1993 whilst DATA obtained further support from Rochdale Council's Equal Opportunities and Central Training sections.

    By the early 1990s, CAPO was no longer in existence

    Survivor's Poetry

    November 1991 Survivors Poetry founded 'to foster and promote poetry workshops and performances for and by survivors of the mental health system'. 16.11.1991 Survivors' Poetry event with: Ferenc Aszmann (MC Poet) - Paulette Ng (Poet) - Raz and Sam (Music/poetry duo) - Peter Campbell (Poet) - Pauline Brady (Singer) (source) - See also Poetry index

    Survivors Poetry was Arts Council funded. It received £11,750 from Disability Projects for the financial year 1991/1992, There was no grant in 1992/1993, but from 1993/1994 there was continuous funding apart from the crisis year of 2006/2007

    On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 says "1991 Emergence of networks and groups for survivor art, poetry and drama: A major network is Survivors' Poetry, which runs workshops and performances, and publishes collections of survivor poetry."

    Asylum Autumn 1991

    Autumn 1991 Reclaim the Streets originally formed in London. (external source) Its philosophy and methods were influential in the development of Reclaim Bedlam and Mad Pride, later in the decade.

    Asylum Winter 1991/1992

    1991-1995 Rhian Thompson studied Communication at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. From September 2010 to September 2012 she was Information Officer at the Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance. See June 2012

    1992

    On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 dates (some?) user-run services from 1992. It says user-run drop-ins were established, including McMurphys in Sheffield and Brixton Community Sanctuary in Lambeth. - Brixton Community Sanctuary and Lambeth Community Fourum were projects closely associated with Alan Leader

    "By 1992 more than a hundred local survivor groups had come into being, stimulated by the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act and the introduction of Mental Illness Specific Grant (MISG) in 1991. These groups became linked up through the creation in 1992 of the United Kingdom Advocacy Network (UKAN)" (A4MHD history)

    Department of Health consultation document Inspecting Social Services (1992) said

    "There is a valuable and up to now under-recognised role [in inspection] for people who actually use the services, those close to them and able to speak for their interests, and for other lay people" [Lay Assessors]"


    In 1992, Clare Ockwell oversaw the merger of the Society for the Advancement of Research into Anorexia (SARA) into the Eating Disorders Association.

    Nigel Rose Romme and Escher : the Dutch experience : an examination of the research and development work on voice hearing in the Netherlands. Manchester : National Hearing Voices Network, 1992. 14 pages/

    Paul Monks, a local artist, used an abandoned ward at Hackney Hospital as his studio. With limited funding, an open studio was created. "Several successful exhibitions later, Core Arts was officially born, gaining charitable status in 1994."

    The first Scottish Users Conference was held in 1992. The second was held in November 1993.

    East Lothian Involvement Group ("Our voice on mental health services") formed 1992 with funding from CAPS (Consultation and Advocacy Promotion Service). The group had guest speakers from East Lothian Mental Health Forum, Disability Scotland and others) and took part in consultation processes including curriculum planning for Mental Health Nurse students at Napier University, Edinburgh. It became an independent group on 1.4.2000 - See new website 2008

    International Journal of Social Psychiatry, Vol. 38, No. 1, 30-35 (1992) "Changes ? What Changes? The Views of the European Patients' Movement" by Ed Van Hoorn - Clients' Union in Mental Health Care, The Netherlands

    "People on the receiving end of mental health services have an increasingly important role to play in the transformation of mental health care. It is argued that user involvement in itself does not guarantee a good outcome, but we need to take the views of (ex-)patients seriously without trying to fit them into theories. Dealing with the, often uncomfortable, relationship between patients and mental health professionals, and that between patients and relatives' organisations, two main strands in the European patients' movement are identified: those who seek to abolish psychiatry (abolitionists) and those who seek to reform it (reformists)." (source)

    Tuesday 18.2.1992 10-12 noon Newham Mind Mental Health Public Talks at Newham Mind, Lawrence Hall, Cumberland Road, E13. Psychiatric Survivors Speak Out! Through Campaigning/Information/Poetry. Speakers: Peter Campbell (Co-founder and National Secretary of Survivors Speak Out). A representative from Survivors Poetry.

    FNAPSY: Fédération Nationale des Associations d'usagers en PSYchiatrie. Historique: Elle a été créée le 1er mars 1992, sous le sigle FNAP Psy (Fédération Nationale des Associations de (ex) Patients des services Psychiatriques), par trois associations d'usagers, AME (Association pour le Mieux Òtre), APSA (Association des Psychotiques Stabilisés Autonomes), Revivre Paris, dont le Président était Monsieur Jacques Lombard, notre actuel Président d'Honneur. La fondation de la FNAP PSY a été encouragée et soutenue par Monsieur le Professeur Edouard Zarifian et Monsieur Joël Martinez (alors Directeur du Centre Hospitalier Spécialisé Esquirol 94). (website)

    March 1992 Tower Hamlets Union of Mental Patients - Dumpy News no.1 - (newsletter of London Union of Mental Patients). First meeting Saturday 9.5.1992 2pm-5pm. Met monthly. "Almost 20 people" attended the second meeting. Founded by Vikki, David [Kessel], and Roy. Based at Mind in Tower Hamlets. - THUMP and LUMP!

    9.4.1992 to 11.4.1992 A London conference of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, organised by Pam Jenkinson, included Judi Chamberlin, Rae and Jim Ouziker from the USA and Peter Campbell from London. Anne Plumb and Andrew Roberts involved on the sidelines.

    Friday 10.4.1992 Andrew Roberts' diary: Met Peter Campbell. Went with Judi Chamberlin, Rae and Jim Ouziker, Peter Breggin and David Cohen to an organ recital by Dewi M. Lewis at St Margaret's Church, Westminster. Heard Jackie Etheridge sing "I know that my Redeemer Liveth" (7.30-8.30pm). Afterwards to an Italian Restaurant in Greek Street, where we may have been when the IRA bomb went off (9.20pm) in the City of London.

    Asylum Spring 1992

    MINDWAVES Summer 1992, pages 8 and 14:

    National Networks

    Survivors Speak Out were recently given £30,000 by the Mental Health Foundation towards employing a worker. Their main activities at the moment include looking for an office base in London and producing the updated Self-Advocacy Pack which it is hoped will be ready for the Mind conference in November. Survivors Speak Out's Annual General Meeting will be on Saturday 31.10.1992 at Hampden Community Centre, Ossulston Street, Euston. Details from Peter Campbell (home postal address).

    National Advocacy Network Additional funding of £50,000 has been received from the Mental Health Foundation. The National Advocacy Network is also looking for an office. Elections to the first management Commitee are proceeding apace, and an inaugural General Meeting will be held on 29.9.1992 at the ICC Nottingham

    Asylum Summer 1992

    July 1992 Survivor's Poetry - From Dark to Light, an anthology edited by Frank Bangay, Hilary Porter and Joe Bidder, was the first publication of the Survivors Press (London). 124 pages. ISBN: 1874595003 (paperback). A copy in the British Library is the only one listed on COPAC. - See Mixed Emotions
    Poems by Ferenc Aszmann - Frank Bangay - Joe Bidder - Francesca Blass - Pauline Bradley - Steve Brewer - Martin Brownlee - Dawn Burgess - Lord Byro - Peter Campbell - Rosalind Caplin - David Cook - Debbie - Rosemary Dillon - Michael Francis - Paul Gerhard - Jan Guice -
    David Harley - Angela S. Hart - Colin Hambrook - Eric Irwin - Jan J. - David Keay - Bushy Kelly - Ian Kelly - Judy Kessler - Kim - Jason Kingdon - Lucy Lant - Bill Lewis - Dinah Livingstone - Laura Margolis - Jan Marshall - Paul Mayhew - Mr Social Control - Anna Neeter - Paulette Ng - George Parfitt - Eric Penrose - Hilary Porter - Razz - John Rety - Sara Rivers - Sinead - Neil Sparkes - Lizzie Spring - Sam Stevens - Peter Street - Leah Thorn - Premilla Trivedi - James Turner.
    Illustrations by Martin Brownlee - Colin Hambrook - Neil Sparkes - Frank Bangay - John Larson - Ken Mullen - Sara Rivers - Jan MarshaLucy Lant - ll - Paulette Ng - Jan J. - Michael Francis - Hilary Porter - Colin Mahoney - Jan Guice - Francesca Blass.

    August 1992 MAD premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Written and directed by Jeremy Weller. The play was based on the experiences of and acted by eight women who had suffered mental health problems. MAD was covered by the BBC's Late Show and Channel 4 News. Won a Scotsman Fringe Award and Evening News Award

    Asylum Autumn 1992 contains Helen Spandler's Socialist Patient Collective article. Helen begining her MA at Sheffield University in Psychiatry, Philosophy and Society. The course leader was Tim Kendall who was involved in Asylum with Alec Jenner. Alec, who had just retired as Professor of Psychiatry and became emeritus professor, came back for the occasional lecture. Nick Crossley taught the Sociology component of the course

    18.9.1992 to 20.9.1992 "Psychiatries' Presumptions: European Philosophy and Psychiatry". Conference organized jointly by the University of Sheffield Department of Philosophy, the Section of ... Sheffield. Reported in Asylum Winter 1992/1993 and Spring 1993 [May gave been jointly organised with The Royal College of Psychiatrist's Philosophy Group] Followed by "fat cats" correspondence in Asylum 1 1994 and 2 1994

    Tuesday 29.9.1992 Inaugural General Meeting of the National Advocacy Network It changed the name to United Kingdom Advocacy Network (UKAN).

    November? 1992 Third National Hearing Voices Conference.

    The Government set up a Mental Health Task Force in September 1992 to help build up a balanced range of locally based services. The full membership of the group and its support groups was still being finalised in January 1993
    On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 says "1992- 1994 Mental Health Task Force Service User Group (part of Department of Health's Mental Health Task Force) set up. Produced publications: guidelines for service user charters and advocacy, ran a series of regional service user conferences and Training the Trainers events."
    Anne Plumb: The User Group had three representatives each from Survivors Speak Out, the United Kingdom Advocacy Network and Mind Link; with the brief of preparing publications on Guidelines for a local Charter for users of a mental health service - Advocacy - a code of practice; and Building on experience, a training pack for mental health service users working as trainers, speakers and workshop facilitators. The Charter working group was Marion Beeforth, Colin Gell, Jim Read and Jan Wallcraft - The Advocacy working group was Edna Conlan, Colin Gell, Roberta Graley, Ian Mooney and Tony Day - The Training working group was Roberta Graley, Mary Nettle and Jan Wallcraft. See 19.10.1992 - 29.4.1993
    ... a Mental Health User Task Force organised 11 events at which over 1,000 service users got their first introduction to the possibilities of being involved. (Colin Gell... email 1.8.2008)

    See Sheffield 27.4.1994 - Manchester June 1994 - Derby 29.11.1994

    Regional acknowledgements were made in 1994 to the contributions of:

    Leeds: Leeds. Roberta Graley. Ian Mooney, Migs Noddings, Terry Simpson, Maria Trainer, Patrick Ward, Michael Lockyer

    Manchester. Karen Colligan, Andrew Hughes, Tony Riley, Ronnie Soeakma

    Birmingham. Jane Stallard, Ros Caplin, Roberta Graley, Jill Henley, Ian Monney, Leigh Valance

    Taunton. Helen Hamilton, Francis Halloran, Phil Savagew, Phil Craqcknell, John Doveton, Mary Nettle

    London. Ros Caplin, Partick Ward, Chris Harrison, Miriam Hastings, David Crepaz-Keay, Colin King, Jan Wallcraft.

    Saturday 10.10.1992 "World Mental Health Day 1992 was a turning point for mental health service users, when representatives of three national groups, Mindlink, Survivors Speak Out and the United Kingdom Advocacy Network (UKAN) met the then Secretary of State for Health, Virginia Bottomley" [NOT CORRECT - SEE BELOW]

    Monday 19.10.1992 Minutes of a meeting on or about the Mental Health Task Force Service User Group

    16.11.1992 "Orville Blackwood's mother, Clara Buckley, supported by the Orvillle Blackwood Community Campaign, was successful at the high court in their demand for a new inquest..." Campaign c/o Brixton Community Sanctuary, Talma Road, SW2. Meetings were held at Brixton Town Hall.

    Friday 18.12.1992 Meeting with Virginia Bottomley

    December 1992 Mary Nettle self-employed as a Mental Health User Consultant, under the Enterprise Allowance scheme.

    Asylum Winter 1992/1993

    31.12.1992 Ben Silcock

    1993

    "Leeds Mental Health Advocacy Group started 1993" - External link to its history and the history of advocacy archive [Actually incorporated as company limited by guarantee on 16.9.1992] Terry Simpson was a Director from 29.6.1992 to 29.4.2005 (resigned). Occupation "patients advocate). "LMHAG'S initial role was to provide trained volunteer advocates for citizens advocacy and Patients' Councils. One to one representational advocacy requests were referred to two full time equivalent workers in the Health Unit of Leeds City Council's Benefits and Rights Department. The Health Unit was wound up early in 1998 and after six months it became clear that this had created a serious gap in services. The City Council then agreed to proposals from LMHAG that workers would provide direct paid advocacy rather facilitate volunteer advocacy." - Became Advocacy for Mental Health and Dementia in December 2007 "to incorporate and promote our Dementia advocacy services" - Link to website archive. Celebrated "21 years of advocacy (1993-2014)". Company dissolved 25.4.2017.

    IT! Poems by Paulette NG copyright 1993. A tape in Thurstine Basset's collection. Paulette NG was a member of Survivors Poetry

    1993 Hearing Voices: A sociological study by Michael George Grierson. University of Manchester, Department of Sociology Ph.D. thesis. 513 pages. See Ron Coleman 1991 - Asylum Winter 1991/1992 - Having a Voice - 2001 - 2002 - 16.9.2002

    Beyond Diagnosis, c/o CAPS, The Engine Shed, 19 St Leonard's Lane, Edinburgh, EH8 9SD 1993? Beyond Diagnosis issue six produced after an "extremely lengthy delay". It included a letter about Libellus Dementum (Oxford, England) (p. ) - a "Self help" article about Express Group (Fife), which focused on a theatrical performance at its Annual General Meeting in May 1992 (pages 10- 11) - A personal account of mental illness by Carolyn Raeburn, one of the actors in Mad at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 1992.

    Begining of 1993 City and Hackney Mind Advocacy Service established at Hackney Hospital. Coodinator: Robert Dellar

    1993 Open Society Institute founded by George Soros in New York. Peter Barham sent him a letter which eventually led to substantial funding for Hamlet Trust work in central and eastern Europe.

    5.1.1993 Joan Hughes' diary: "One hour phone-in on Community Care on Radio Four. Only five minutes devoted to calls from ex-patients living in the community - and 55 minutes devoted to calls from relatives and professionals. Emphasis is always on the worst cases."

    29.1.1993 Letter from Virginia Bottomley to Peter Campbell, responding to a letter of 7.1.1993. "I very much appreciated meeting last month with you and the Chairs of the other two organisations. It is so important that mentally distressed people are actively involved both in their own treatment plans and in the development of mental health services." "I know that both Mrs Conlan and Ms Haywood are in contact with officials and that you are all involved in the Mental Health Task Force Support Group."

    Community Care Support Force

    February 1993 Two day event "when people from five local areas (professionals and service users) came together to discuss their progress so far in developing assessment and care management and how user participation could be promoted."

    26.2.1993 Participants at meeting: Pam Barette: Power House - Nasa Begum - Blodwen Brewster: Community Care Support Force - Brian Brianstocker: People First - Jane Campbell: British Council of Organisations of Disabled People - Alice Ethrington: People First - John Evans: British Council of Organisations of Disabled people - Phil Friend - Roberta Graley : UK Advocacy Network (UKAN) - Millee Hill: Black Disabled People Group (Action) - Michael Jeewa: Asian people with Disabilities Alliance - Cheryl King: Power House: Facilitator - Viv Lindow: Community Care Support Force - Lucille Lusk: British Council of Organisations of Disabled People - Sandra Martin: People First: Facilitator - Narendra Mehta: Apna Ghar Housing Association - Jenny Morris: Consultant and meeting chair - Andy Smith: Survivors Speak out - Albert Thompson: British Deaf Association and Deaf Services Participation Project.

    31.3.1993 User Participation in Community Care Services - A series of documents prepared by Jenny Morris and Vivien Lindow on behalf of the Community Care Support Force

    March 1993 Peter Breggin visited the United Kingdom. He "did a conference in Bristol with Lucy Johnstone" which Peter Campbell was supposed to attend, but did not, and "spoke at an event organised by Hackney Mind", which is where Peter Cambell heard him. (email Peter Campbell 31.7.2009). At some time, a Peter Breggin/David Cohen Conference was organised in London by Pam Jenkinson (Anne Plumb emails)

    Asylum Spring 1993

    April 1993 Short article in Hackney Gazette said someone (City and Hackney Mind?) was looking for volunteers who had used psychiatric services to work in Hackney Hospital. Terry Conway read and responded. This role led to Hackney Patients Council

    April 1993 Mission statement of the (USA) National Association of Consumer/Survivor Mental Health Administrators (NAC/SMHA) which "represents state mental health department senior managers who are current or former recipients of mental health services". archive

    Thursday 1.4.1993 Second inquest returns verdict of accidental daeth in the case of Orville Blackwood. Clara Buckley, Orvilles's mother, said "... this is the third young black man who has died in Broadmoor in the same circumstances and this is accidental death. I can't understand it. I would like the staff of Broadmoor to come to discuss this situation with me and really to see what they can do to prevent these deaths in hospitals like Broadmoor. I am going to take this campaign as broad as I can. It is time for us to get together as a community to prevent these unnecessary deaths in secure units and hospitals. I want care and counselling to be the priority, not drugging."

    29.4.1993 Meeting of Mental Health Task Force Service User Group at which David King explained the objectives, and users listed their concerns. Jan Wallcraft wrote a memorandum. The meeting was attended by Peter Campbell from Survivors Speak Out - Jim Read Independent Trainer - Jan Wallcraft from MINDLINK - and Edna Conlan from UKAN

    29.5.1993 and 30.5.1993 Distress Awareness Training Agency (DATA) "Training the Trainers" two day event. Mary Nettle, who had recently become a full-time user consultant, delivered part of the programme. Sarah Berry, then at North West Mind, helped with pre-publicity. One of the trainees, Munir Lalani, is a current member of DATA.

    First half of 1993 Experiencing Psychiatry: User's Views of Services by Anne Rogers, David Pilgrim and Ron Lacey. Based on evidence from a survey of the views of 500 users of psychiatric services. Macmillan in association with Mind. 205 pages.

    12.6.1993 Queen's Birthday Honours list included "Mrs Edna Conlan, chair, UK Advocacy Network, for services to improving mental health" Order of the British Empire Member (MBE). [The Order has "officers", who are OBEs, and "members, who are MBEs]

    Asylum Summer 1993

    27.8.1993 "Terms of Reference of the Voices Forum National Committee". National Schizophrenic Fellowship. (Anne Plumb collection).

    28.7.1993 Meeting of the Charter Group (of the Mental Health Task Force Service User Group) at Richmond House. Terry Simpson says "There seemed at the time something very symbolic in survivors meeting at the heart of the Department of Health, at Richmond House". He still has the early draft of the Charter that was discussed at the meeting.

    Asylum Autumn 1993: "All Survivor Issue. Diana Her Survivor Story".

    "I had to more or less drop out of DATA by late 1993 through domestic commitments". (Anne Plumb)

    The second Scottish Users Conference was held in November 1993. The theme was community care. Workshops were held to determine gaps in services and to prioritise real needs as identified by users. Tishe Shaw spoke on black and ethnic minority issues and Maria Fyfe MP was the other speaker. A report was published in March 1994.

    November? 1993 Fourth National Hearing Voices Conference.

    December 1993 - March 1994 Survivors' Poetry UK tour: Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol, Wolverhampton (source)

    Late 1993 Hearing Voices Newsletter no 10. Editorial Nigel Rose Groups continuing to grow. Some survive only a short while, some go from strength to strength. Hearing Voices Network National Office (Manchester). Groups - Manchester, Liverpool, North Wales, Kirkcaldy, Edinburgh, Wakefield, Oxford, South London, North London.

    Late 1993 Stopovers on my way home from mars. Reflective journey through the psychiatric survivor movement in the USA, Britain and the Netherlands by Mary O'Hagan published by Survivors Speak Out

    1994

    about 1994 The Mad Persons Union.
    MPU c/o 369 Oxford Street, Sheffield, S6 3FD

    Issue 4 "ECT - The Shocking Facts" has material on the October 1993 Annual General Meeting of Survivors Speak Out.

    Issue 5 identifies "Leading examples of mental illness" in John Major as Prime Minister, Kenneth Clarke at the Treasury, Michael Howard at the Home Office, Viriginia Bottomley at Health, John Paten at Education and Peter Lilley at Social Security. "Peter Lilley regularly displays a startling fear of 'the other'" - "single parent women and people from countries that aren't British" [See Lilley's List]

    Self-Harm: Perspectives from Personal Experience edited by Louise Roxanne Pembroke. London : Survivors Speak Out, 1994. 71 pages. Illustrated. ISBN: 1898002029. Includes bibliographical references (p. 72). COPAC lists copies in several libraries.

    1994 Louise Roxanne Pembroke called for the setting-up of a National Self-Harm Network in order to campaign more effectively for 'rights for self-harmers'. The network was established shortly afterwards with Pembroke the first Chair. (Cresswell, M. 2004, incorrectly ascribed to 1994. On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 says it was "set up for mutual support, information and education of mental health workers and general public on self-harm issues".

    The address of the National Self Harm Network was c/o Survivors Speak Out 34 Osnaburgh Street. (1999 source) - Later PO Box 16190, London NW1 3WW - website 2002

    External link to National Self Harm Network website
    The network is now based in Nottingham

    Advocacy Information Pack published by Good Practices in Mental Health in 1994. A copy in the British Library is the only one listed on COPAC.

    Wolf Howls [poems] by Paulette NG. copyright 1994. A tape in Thurstine Basset's collection.


    On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 says: "1994-present Black service users/survivors begin setting up separate groups and organisations: These include Awaaz in Manchester, Buddies in Bradford, and Share in Maudsley Black Action (SIMBA) and Black Women and Mental Health in London."

    1994 Carol Jenkin started BUDDIES and Pat Butterfield started ECT Anon. "...if it hadn't been for the support we both gave each other, we couldn't have made it through the negativity being aimed towards us at our development stages." (Carol Jenkin, email 6.8.2008)

    Buddies is a Mental Health Support Network and Befriending Scheme (Black/multi-cultural with mental health issues is its focus) which was originally based in Bradford, but has now moved to Manchester where the city seems to support it and want it. (Carol Jenkin 17.9.2008)

    The BBC places the start of ECT Anon about 1995/1996. See The North West Right to Refuse Electroshock Campaign - ECT Anon website 16.1.2001 - Winter 2002/2003

    Dominic Makuvachuma-Walker was born in Zimbabwea, but at sometime came to London. About 1994 he "survived a racially motivated arson attack which became a murder investigation" in "inner city London". "I kind of clammed up and I coiled into myself for a number of years, and I relied primarily on a lot of support from peers". They set up a users (survivors) group in Waltham Forest. See I haven't got a presentation. I am the presentation! (2013?) offline
    1997 Married in Walthamstow, became a "father of three" About 1997 that he began "contributing to the voice of direct, lived experience of using mental health services ... through a range of platforms". a Disc Jockey. Noted for "role play case studies" See
    description on Social Perspectives Network (2005) and Radio 4 2003 - User Survey Steering Group 2003 - 14.1.2005 - 7.6.2005 - 18.7.2005 - Catch-A-Fiya Network 2006 - "the first African Survivor to contribute as a panellist to an Independent Homicide inquiry as well as an internal inquiry into a Serious and Untoward Incident leading to the Death in Custody of an African Caribbean Patient". (about 2008/ 2007) - Lives with chronic physical health conditions [Since about 2012?}. Currently (2018) an Engagement Manager for Mind and Co-chair of the National Survivor User Network (NSUN).


    Ireland index 1994 Paddy McGowan established a mental health service users group in Ireland.

    1994 "When I" [Alison Faulkner] "first arrived at the Foundation in 1994, June McKerrow (the then chief executive) said: "Let's do some research that is user-patient led". I was well connected with service users so got together different people from user organisations such as Speak Out and the UK Advocacy Network as well as Mind Link and the Brent user group, who had done so much work involving members of the whole community. We also had people from the African-Caribbean Mental Health Association - We designed the questionnaire by committee and I did all the work in-between." (Alison Faulkner 2.2009) - This led to Knowing Our Own Minds

    1994 Awaaz users group was set up in 1994 with the support and help of Having a Voice.

    Hanif Bobat sometime Development Director of the "national charity group" AWAAZ. - Attending Mosque Helps Mental Health - A user-led research project into Mosque: exploring the benefits that Muslim men with severe mental health problems find from attending Mosque Hanif Bobat, Mental Health Foundation, 2001, 16 pages.

    1994 Self-help alternatives to mental health services by Vivien Lindow 78 pages ISBN: 1874690219 and Purchasing mental health services: self-help alternatives by Vivien Lindow, 33 pages, ISBN: 1874690227, published by Mind. 76 pages.

    January 1994 The editorial team of Beyond Diagnosis began to meet again. "We spoke about the possibility of a relaunch and in the meantime... got on with producing another issue"

    February 1994 Hearing Voices Newsletter no 11. Editorial Nigel Rose

    February 1994 Distress or disability? by Anne Plumb

    March 1994 Hackney Patients' Council founded. The founders were Robert Dellar (coordinator for the City and Hackney Mind advocacy team, whose office was on the ground floor of F Block) - Terry Conway, social worker - Deb Percy, retired psychiatric nurse - Earil Hunter, ex-patient - and Debbie MacNamara ex-patient. (Robert, Terry and Debbie have articles in Mad Pride 2000.

    At this time, there were only two other patients councils in the country known to the group. The founders made a grant application to the health authority and gained temporary funding for three months. At the end of the three months, Hackney Patients Council was offered an annual grant of £30,000 on condition that certain targets were met and certain pre- requisites honoured.

    for predecessors in Hackney Hospital - see above - See below 2001

    April 1994 A Report Concerning Conditions at the Hackney Hospitals as Seen by the Patients" by Earil Hunter and Phil Murphy, edited by Robert Dellar, published by City and Hackney Mind Mental Health Advocacy Service.

    1.3.1994 Have We Got Views for You - User Evaluation of Case Management by Marion Beeforth - Edna Conlan - and Roberta Graley. Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.

    End of March 1994 Annual General Meeeting of the Scottish User Network. Edna Conlan, chair of the United Kingdom Advocacy Network, was the speaker.

    Issue 7 of Beyond Diagnosis reports on the above conference.

    13.4.1994 Accepting Voices. Understanding the Voice Hearing Experience Brixton - The Hearing Voices Network. (Asylum 1 1994). This was the first Hearing Voices conference to be aimed at psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Speakers included Marius Romme and Sondra Escher - Consultant psychiatrist Philip Thomas (University of Wales) on The British Experience; Clinical psychologist Gillian Haddock (University of Manchester) who developed the 'focusing' approach to coping with hearing voices on Psychological Therapies; Alan Leader, Helen Heap (chair HVN), Anne Walton on the HVN (aims, objectives, work) and Ron Coleman from HVN on coping with the experience.

    27.4.1994 "Forging Our Futures" conference at the Forte Crest Hotel on Manchester Road in Sheffield - part of the Mental Health Task Force process - Organised by Roberta Graley and Terry Simpson of UKAN

    May 1994 Hearing Voices Newsletter no 12. Karina Carlyn, voice hearer takes job as editor from Nigel Rose. "We thought it was time that a voice hearer took over the job as editor. There is a wind of change blowing through the whole of the Hearing Voices network and we voice hearers are taking on more and more responsibilities in the running of our organisation at every level. We believe it is time we were in control of our destiny." Funding of £25000 received from Mental Health Foundation.

    May 1994 Ron Coleman (Manchester HVN) and Alan Leader (South London HVN) attending conference in Maastricht organised by Foundation Resonance

    Friday 6.5.1994 UK Government blocked a Civil Rights (Disabled Persons Bill) aimed to give disabled people protection against discrimination. A government backed Disability Discrimination Act became law in November 1995. This created the National Disability Council.

    27.5.1994 Annual General Meeeting of the Lothian Users Forum. Issue 7 of Beyond Diagnosis reports. Groups mentioned include "E.A.M.H." - MIND - Lothian Mental Health Forum - CAPS - the Patients Council - Sprout - UKAN - Awareness - John Macdonald said that UKAN "seems to have no representatives from Scotland" [John MacDonald was on the UKAN board for several years as a Scottish representative - Two UKAN tresurers were from Scotland and for many years UKANs links with Scotland were strong. (Terry Simpson 2.6.2009)

    June 1994 "Forging Our Futures" conference at Manchester Airport - part of the Mental Health Task Force process. Andrew Hughes outlined history of the Distress Awareness Training Agency (DATA) (as since reused on this web page). "A volunteer scribe from the audience that day, Caroline Hellewell, is now DATA's most senior member". (Andrew Hughes - former coordinator and treasurer DATA)

    2.7.1994 Founding conference of Psychology, Politics, Resistance (Asylum 2 1994)

    "Psychology Politics Resistance was founded in 1994 as a network of people who are prepared to oppose the abusive uses of psychology. Members of PPR in different places have organised meetings and have been involved in a number of different campaigns. The purpose of PPR is not to duplicate or replace but to network the many different groups and individuals who have already been organising. Now our newsletter is incorporated in Asylum magazine" (discourse unit website)
    Beyond Diagnosis c/o CAPS, 5 Cadzoow Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5SN Summer 1994? issue 7 of Beyond Diagnosis - "I'll stick my neck out here and say that issue 8 should be out before the end of the year"
    Picture from Oor Mad History shows Issue 7 (fairground) on top of 6 (money) and an earlier addition. The fairground photograph was taken by Jimmy Osborne, the money photograph by Tony Hankins.
    Anne O'Donnell wrote in Oor Mad History "I kind of came in towards the end of Beyond Diagnosis. It was a magazine that offered creative opportunities for people with mental health problems and used mental health services. There was photography, poetry, fiction and autobiographical pieces... I think it gave people a space to be open about having mental health problems.

    August 1994 Hearing Voices Newsletter no 13.

    26.8.1994 Orville Blackwood Community Campaign "In memory of all those who have not survived psychiatry". A picket of survivors to be held outside the Royal College of Psychiatry... 11am to 1pm.

    November 1994 Appointment of Hackney Patient Council workers: Eileen Philip - Julie Hathaway - Phil Murphy - and Andy Martin (the present coordinator)

    November? 1994 Fifth National Hearing Voices Conference.

    November 1994 Judith Morgan-Freer, another user, elected vice-chair of Mind, in place of Mike Lawson. Mike had been asked to step down by Tim Durkin (retiring chair) who had proposed Judith Morgan-Freer as Mike's replacement. Judith served for one year and was succeded by another user, Lisa Haywood.

    3.11.1994 and 4.11.1994 Conference of the British Medical Association on Core Values for the Medical Profession in the 21st Century.

    "recognising that paternalism is no longer an appropriate model for the doctor-patient relationship... argued that the relationship should be a 'partnership of mutual trust' in which doctors should encourage patients to help decide treatment and care." (Mike Crawford, March 2001)

    29.11.1994 and 30.11.1994 Conference "Forging our Futures" held at Derby by the Mental Health Task Force User Group to mark the culmination of their work. A transcript was published in 1995 Forging Our Futures: Lighting the Fire. London: Mental Health Task Force User Group - Conference proceedings, discussing work of the mental health task force user group. Details examples of user involvement in service planning and delivery.
    On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 says: "1994: National Service User Conference in Derby, attended by over 200 service users representing the movement, endorses national charter and publications."

    Building on Experience: A training pack for mental health service users working as trainers, speakers and workshop facilitators NHS Executive Mental Health Task Force User Group. Roberta Graley, Mary Nettle and Jan Wallcraft. 27 pages and 11 training handouts (Or "with 7 training pack handouts in a pocket at the end".

    Guidelines for a local charter for users of mental health services. Mental Health Task Force,

    Advocacy - a code of practice : developed by UKAN (United Kingdom Advocacy Network). Edna Conlan, Colin Gell, Roberta Graley, Mental Health Task Force User Group. 33 pages

    December 1994 Launch of Schizophrenia Media Agency, c/o Hearing Voices Network, 1st Floor, Fourways House, 16 Tariff St, Manchester M1 2FN. Tel: 061-228 3896. Health Matters Feature (archive). See Manchester index.

    1.12.1994 First World Assembly (and Fourth World Congress) of Disabled Peoples' International held Sydney, Australia. Paper by Peter Beresford, John Bowden and Gloria Gifford on "Psychiatric System Survivors and the Disabled People's Movement".

    Internet: The A.C.O.R.N (Advocacy and Community On-line Resource Network) project was designed in late/early 1994/1995. The concept was to use the media of the Internet to produce a service that would be useful for communications, organisational developments and information and most importantly a service that was open and independent. The World Wide Web is available anywhere so, Bolton is as equal as London (source)

    1995

    Internet: ... we had a dream, the mental health user movement U.K plugged into the Internet with pages crammed full of information for individuals and organisations. Despite making our way up to a United Kingdom Advocacy Networks management meeting early in 95 the management committee decided to defer any active involvement in the project until a decisive vote was had on the matter.. A bid to MHF in early 95 was also pointless..." (article by B.J. Brecknock)

    Kathryn Church: Forbidden narratives : critical autobiography as social science published. Republished 2003. 160 pages - (Google books extracts) - "about her personal involvement with the user movement - and how it resonated with her own experiences of women's oppression and also her own experience of physical/mental breakdown" (Helen Spandler)

    "Madness and Feminism: Bristol Crisis Service for Women" by Tamsin Wilton. Chapter two in Gabriele Griffin Feminist Activism in the 1990s pages 28 - 40

    About 1995 The begining of Clare Allan's "lost decade" See Daily Mail interview 4.3.2008

    February/March 1995 Louise Pembroke "National self-harm network" in OpenMind 73, page 13.

    Is the Writing on the Asylum Wall? by Ron Coleman published under the imprint of his "Action Consultancy and Training (ACT)" in 1995. Other publications followed under the same imprint: Celtic Madness - The Voice Inside and Killing Me Softly. Ron Coleman and Andy Gilbert formed Handsell Publishing in 1997. Handsell organised a conference to mark ten years of the Hearing Voices Network in 1998 and then conferences on "Recovery" in 1999 - 2000 - 2001

    March 1995 Meetings and draft "ongoing statement" of CAPO

    Asylum Spring 1995

    April 1995 Under the Asylum Tree - 15.4.1995 Survivors Poetry 150 Ossulston Street, Special Anthology Launch

    April 1995 BBC Horizon programme for and about people who hear voices. Many more people contacting the Hearing Voices Network.

    10.5.1995 Beautiful Octopus Club, The Albany, Deptford, SE8, launched by Heart 'n Soul - 'the first cabaret club to open in London to give expression to the culture of learning disabled people'. (source)

    Asylum Summer 1995

    July 1995 National Conference in Manchester that was the culmination of Helen Spandler's research at 42nd Street into the needs and experiences of young people who attempt suicide or self-harm.

    August 1995 Survivors Poetry Scotland launched as part of the Out of Sight - Out of Mind Exhibition at Kelvingrove Art Gallery (Glasgow). - See Sweet Sourand Serious (1996)

    November? 1995 Sixth National Hearing Voices Conference.

    November 1995 Lisa Haywood elected vice-chair of Mind. She served until 2006.

    December 1996 On a snowy morning, Sidney Millin, a journalist from Zimbabwe arrived in London "to make a new start in life". See THACMHO - 2000 Sidney joined THACMHO - January 2006 ITU meeting - February 2008 - Lifting Barriers -

    Two Survivors Speak Out information sheets by Adina Halpern, solicitor, were published in 1995: "The Survivors Speak Out Crisis Card" and "Advance Directives". (Anne Plumb collection). - See Mind Advice on Advance Directives

    Five or six years after the launch of crisis cards at the Survivors Speak Out AGM in 1989, Peter Campbell recalls someone from Mind coming to Survivors Speak Out and saying "Mind are not interested in the idea of Advance Directives - Will you take it up?"

    Alan Leader (1995) Direct Power: A Resource Pack for People Who Want to Develop Their Own Care Plans and Support Networks. London: Brixton Community Sanctuary, Pavilion Publishing and Mind

    1995 On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 says: "1995-present Service users/survivors as workers: Employment campaigns and programmes are developed by service users, including EcoWorks in Nottingham, and service user employment programme to support service users to find work within the South West London and St George's NHS Trust." [Not called that then?]

    Rachel Perkins, a clinician and service user, set up the South West London and St George's scheme. Shelley Harper became part of the scheme. She had physical disabilities from 1976 and had campaigned around those issues. In 1990 she developed clinical depression as a result of brain damage from her disability and transferred to mental health issues.

    1996 consumer research NHS

    Internet: "The only way I knew there was any survivors activism was by finding the online Madness list in the US in 1996. There were only 3 of us from the UK on the list and I kept wishing we had a UK movement like them. I didn't know about you guys. So historically speaking the internet has made a big change in the ways we can communicate." Jill Goble

    Significant further development of a recognised and professionalised user movement took place from the mid 1990s. These included Diana Rose's user-led research and the first service user development worker in 1996 and the Capital Project Trust in 1997 for service user training. Aspects of the user movement were becoming institutionalised as part of the system of social administration.

      1996 was the official start of user-led or survivor research Diana Rose has said (Summer 2009) that "Survivor research in mental health can be traced back to two programmes of work in Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) - Strategies for Living at the Mental Health Foundation, and User-Focused Monitoring at the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. These were established in 1996, the same year that INVOLVE was founded as Consumers in NHS Research".

    For examples of user led research before 1996, see the MPU questionnaire in 1973 - Society for the Advancement of Research into Anorexia, (SARA) in 1982 - the Hackney Survey in January 1988 - Distress Awareness Training Agency (DATA) in May 1988 - Camden Consortium in June 1990 - UKAN's survey of attitudes to ECT in 1994 - Research leading to Knowing Our Own Minds 1994 to 1997

    10.1.1996 Living in the Community by Diana Rose, published by Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health described itself as "the first survey of users' experiences of day-to-day living based on interviews conducted by users". Brian Hoser and Brian Rhodes helped Diana with the interviewing. (external - offline - Reviewed by Tom Burns in Psychiatric Bulletin October 1997, Volume 21, Issue 10 ( external - offline)

    1996 Representations of madness on British television : a social psychological analysis. Ph.D.(London) thesis 1996 LSE. Diana Susan Rose. (See below)

    On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 dates user-led research from 1996, saying

    "a number of programmes and projects were set up where research is led and carried out by service users/survivors".

    It lists the

  • User Focused Monitoring programme at the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (external link - internet archive) [carried out in Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster as a pilot project in 1996 by Dr Diana Rose. Published 1998] -

  • Strategies for Living at the Mental Health Foundation - which was managed by Alison Faulkner - See 1994 - February 1997 - newsletter 1.1 - Big Alternative Conference March 1998 and webisite with publications - newsletter 2.2 - Big Alternative 1999 - 2000 - Big Alternative 2000 - January 2001 - newsletter 12 - February 2001 - Big Alternative 2001 - (Alison Faulkner left) - newsletter September 2002 - Big Alternative 2002 - newsletter December 2002 - newsletter March 2003 - newsletter June 2003 - newsletter 20 Autumn 2003 - October 2003 -

  • Service User Research Enterprise (SURE) [Co-director Diana Rose] at the Institute of Psychiatry, which started in 2001

  • 1996 Patricia Chambers began her research creer by conducting her own research into "different ways, pathways or reasons that young black men were coming into the mental health system".

    1996 The Avon Mental Health Measure, The Avon Mental Health Partnership, Bristol, published by Mind. "A measure designed to enable users of mental health services to have a structured voice within the process of their care to help identify needs and priorities. A service user-centred approach to assessing need... a comprehensive, valid measure for drawing up care plans, based on identified needs. It helps engage service users in the management of their care. The assessment tool enables service users to examine various aspects of their lives, resulting in a holistic needs assessment which, when used over time, can be used as a proxy measure of outcome." Vicky Rigley 2007?

    "it was South West Mind (Earle Kessler and Alison Cox are names I remember) who led on it rather than user groups, although the steering group had people from Bristol survivors patients council on it as well as commissioner's and providers council and mental health care trust (before AWP) existed services were provided by 3 acute non mental health trusts across Bristol and this one was in United Bristol Health Care Trust patch mainly" Glen Townsend 2.8.2012

    In 1996 Peter Relton became Service User Development Worker with the new "Bradford Home Treatment Service". He says he was "the first service user in the UK employed to provide a user perspective within a team of mental heath professionals". He also speaks of "post-psychiatry, which has its origins in the work pioneered by the Bradford Home Treatment Service." (external source)

    Southwark Mind (website) - archive

    "We have been a pioneering and radical group since 1996" (Denise Mckenna). Pete Shaughnessy one of Southwark Mind's original user members and was its first chair. Denise Mckenna joined acouple of months later in 1996 and they became co-chairs.

    Southwark Mind had been almost user led for about a year before the 1997 AGM - with the enabling help of Anna Carver of the Independent Advocacy Service - and we had all been working towards it becoming fully user led for some time. There was no opposition to it becoming user led. (Denise Mckenna)

    Besides being involved in Southwark Mind, Pete was involved in many other user activities, some of which involved users from Southwark Mind, but many were distinct from Southwark Mind. (Denise Mckenna) See Reclaim Bedlam

    24.8.1997 Southwark Mind AGM that converted it into a user run group.

    [The following is misleading in at least two respects: Pete Shaughnessy, with the help of Denise Mckenna, "carved up" the 1997 Annual General Meeting of Southwark Mind, turning it into a user-lead charity. This led to Robert Dellar being appointed as a development worker "to take ideas forward including Pete's" (source)]


    See Newsletter December 1998 - 1999 - November 2000 - September 2002 - 2003 - Kindred Minds 2007 - October 2009 - December 2010 - May 2011

    And the World Really Had Changed (ISBN: 1901045005) published by Leeds Survivor Poets. LSP Press, Leeds, 1996. Paperback. 25 Cms x 18 Cms. 135 pages, 99 poems written by members of The Leeds Survivors' Poetry group, who describe themselves as survivors of "mental health system involvement". The poetry varies from humorous to touching to painful, and is the first anthology by this group.

    Sharon Lefevre, Killing me Softly. Self harm, survival not suicide Gloucester: Handsell Publishing, 1996. 95 pages. ISBN: 1903199069

    1996 Perspectives on Manic Depression - A Survey of the Manic Depression Fellowship, by Robert Gareth Hill, Pollyanna Hardy and Geoff Shepherd The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, - external download - offline - The most recent leaflet was one on the self-management of manic-depression. This concept was picked up by the Self Harm Network and Voices. See also Mary Nettle February 2000.

    about 1996 that Tina Coldham walked out of her psychiatrist's room thinking "Is this all there is?" A local charity helped her set up and run a self-help group, which she did for eight years. About 1999 she began working as a Mental Health User Consultant/Trainer. She coordinated user evaluations of a city centre day centre (2000), mental health day services in the rural areas of South Winchester, and a hybrid service (CAB, Advocacy, Housing, and legal advice) in an inpatient setting (2001). She was elected to the Mind Link National Advisory Panel in 2003 and is vice-chair of the National Survivor User Network

    1996 [Daniel] Kofi Sunu became Head of Supported Housing and Care Services, Kush Housing Association, Hackney. About 1997 Kush Housing established the Nile Centre, a mental health crisis centre for people of African and Afro-Caribbean origin, living in Hackney. This aim to reduce the number admitted to hospital as schizophrenic. [BBC link]. About ten years later, Kofi Sunu helped to start Haywood Consultancy"

    Aya or fern is a symbol of endurance and resourcefulness. In 1996, Hammersmith and Fulham Black User Group (Hand f Bugs) chose this symbol "because we thought it was apt for the experience of the members of the group". (website) [website lost]. Patricia Chambers was a member of this group.

    BUGs (Black User Group) was "a self help black user/survivor group that believes in sharing the mechanisms that have helped us recover from mental illness or maintain a reasonable quality of life while suffering mental distress, with other people in the same position. We work in the community with other black user/survivors that have mental health issues. We do regular hospital visits to the local mental health unit, where we will sit and talk to in-patients there and take them in small items that they may need during their stay. We also run a drop-in once a month on the first or last Tuesday of that month. Here people can come and relax and play games and have refreshments and discuss topics and issues that are pertinent to them. We take part in research and also run conferences and events with a user/survivor focus and lead and here we will quite often debate current mental health issues. BUG's is completely run by user/survivors." It was based at The Ellerslie Centre 50 Ellerslie Rd Shepherds Bush W12 7BW. (source)


    Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO) was established in 1996 by Harry Cumberbatch. Its projects include "The Health Through History Initiative".
    One of its symbols is Tabono representing strength, confidence and perseverance. Another is the Sankofa bird that flies forward while looking backward with an egg in its mouth. The egg symbolises the future. We must go back and reclaim our past so we can move forward; so we understand why and how we came to be who we are today.

    Index:   1996 - 2000 - out of the picture leaflet - 2001 history sub- committee - October 2001 walk and exhibition - October 2002 walk - 2004 reminiscence conference on West Indian Seamen - Power Writers book - January 2006 ITU meeting - May 2006 (Decade) - 2007 website - November 2007 Sugar and Slavery - Tower of London - May 2008 THACMHO Newsletter: Summer edition - 14.5.2008 Radio interview - 30.10.2009 F.E.E.L. presentation - 19.3.2010 Pageant - 14.7.2010 Birmingham Seminar - 28.7.2010 Annual General Meeting - 29.9.2010 report from Fabian and Philip - 24.11.2010 heritage bid - 25.1.2012 feared closure - 4.4.2012 working with Mellow - 19.12.2013 Celebrating Our Strengths - 29.10.2014 Promoting Well Being - 2017 Death of Philip Morgan - spirit of Philip Morgan
    10.5.1996: First User Group meeting held in the offices of the Tower Hamlets Community Health Council in Whitechapel.

    26.11.1996:

    Consultation conference held Mind Open House, 13 Whitethorn Street, E3. Drew up recommendations respecting St Clements Hospital, Care in the community, and eventual provision of a mental health resource centre.

    Active members before 2015 included - Sidney Millin - Philip Morgan - Fabian Tompsett - Sam Shakes -


    1996 Black Women's Mental Health Project set up: "Two women - Mary Ampah and Hyacinth Dapaa - set up the group. They registered the name as a company. All they had, when I joined them in 1996, was one community room in Stonebridge, which they were given, plus four chairs which they provided themselves." - [Currently] "We are at Park Royal Business Centre in Harlesden... We have proved over and over again that The Black Womens' Mental Health Project is a beneficial, valuable addition to community welfare in Brent." (Angela Linton-Abulu contact person March 2003) -

    Ireland index 1996 Brian Hartnett returned home to Limerick, where a doctor diagnosed him as schizophrenic. "For the first time ever I realised that everything going on in my head could possibly be attributed to an illness and that this illness might be treatable". "When he said he could prescribe medication that would stop this nightmare, a glimmer of hope appeared on the horizon. I was worried though about what this drug, would do to me. Would it turn me into a vegetable, would I be sedated to a state of numbness. He reassured me by saying it was a relatively new drug and that it was the best thing for me. He mentioned hospital saying I could go there but I agreed to be treated as an out patient under my parents supervision. He also gave me a prescription for side effects." "The effect of the medication was to subdue the voices and delusions to a state where I could function to a relatively normal degree, but I found that I also had to be careful to avoid stressful situations. I had to eat, sleep and exercise on a regular basis. I also had to take the medication twice a day every day. If I didn't look after myself in this way the voices and delusions would rise up and start to interfere in my life again."

    January 1996 "Some Points to Consider when Putting your Crisis Card into Use" Survivors Speak Out Information sheet. (Anne Plumb collection).

    February 1996 The UK Federation of Smaller Mental Health Agencies - "Representing the Unrepresented" formed as a result of a Forum organised by the Matthew Trust in the House of Lords in February 1996. Founder and President Peter Thompson. More than 120 representatives of 86 agencies attended and agreed that the Federation should be formed. As many again wrote in with support after that meeting. The Federation is a Company limited by Guarantee (number 3236769). It is a membership-based Charity (number 1058342) set up to support its locally based and independent Members who develop and provide mental health services in their community. At its peak it had 250 voting and associate members, representing more than 150,000 service users.

    Federation website archive. Not updated since November 2005. The Trust Deed of The O'Hara Trust (On the Side), a family charity which supports the Federation, is dated 21.3.1997. "On The Side is a charity which mainly supports the efforts of small user-led mental health groups."

    March 1996 Pembrokeshire Hearing Voices Group (Grwp Clywed Lleisiau Sir Benfro formed. Between April 1998 and March 2000 the group produced a monthly newsletter (edited by Hywel Davies). These were later bound as Hearing and Belonging. The Newsletter Pack 2000. Hywel also produced Hearing Voices: An Information Pack in 1998 and the Mental Health Factfile (Ffeil Ffeithiau Iechyd Meddwl).

    April 1996 Robert Dellar's Gobbing, Pogoing and Gratuitous Bad Language!: An Anthology of Punk Short Stories published by Spare Change Books.

    4.4.1996 Launch of Brixton Community Sanctuary Anthology, by Survivors Poetry at Diorama. (source).

    June 1996 Highland Users Group (HUG) established. See website

    Summer? 1996 Press launch of Helen Spandler's Who's Hurting Who? Young people, self-harm and suicide. "During that launch, a story was touted around the tabloid press with the headline 'voluntary sector encourages people to self harm', and a psychiatrist, on local television, indicated that we were out of our depth. Following this publicity, we also learnt that some services mistakenly believed that 42nd Street had 'cutting rooms.' Accepting that self harm may be 'functional' for some young people at particular times in their lives did not mean that we actively endorsed or encouraged self harm, nor provided places where young people could 'cut up'. Despite these misunderstandings and attempts to undermine our work, we knew from our experience that young people responded positively to a less controlling approach." (42nd Street Forward to Spandler and Warner 2007)

    October 1996 launch of the Millennium Awards scheme by the Millennium Commission. The Millennium Commission was set up under the National Lottery Act of 1993. It met between February 1994 and November 2006. Millennium Awards were small (typically about £2000) grants to individual people for projects which benefited themselves and their community. They were administered by charities, including Mind. Mind Millennium Awards made 514 awards from a total grant of £1,011,629 - See weblink. Awards made included to Jason Pegler - Andrew Hughes - Peter Munn

    10.10.1996 Sweet, Sour and Serious: illustrated anthology Survivors' Poetry Scotland. Glasgow: Survivors' Press Scotland, 1996. 136 pages. 22 cm. Includes portraits. Includes indexes. ISBN: 095291400X. Launched on World Mental Health Day, which was also National Poetry Day. COPAC lists two copies: One in the National Library of Scotland and the other in Bristol.

    15.11.1996 and 16.11.1996 Seventh? Eighth? National Hearing Voices Conference. Who Owns Voices, Who Owns Psychosis. Language in Crisis. Birmingham. Hearing Voices Network in association with Action Consultancy and Training. Speakers included Phil Barker, Richard Bentall, Lisa Blackman, Thomas Bock, Judi Chamberlin, Ron Coleman, Jenny Day, Sondra Escher, Gill Haddock, Sharon Le Fevre, Loren Mosher, Ian Parker, Eoro Riikonen, Marius Romme, S P Sashideran, Tholene Sodi, Phil Thomas, Sara Vatsala.

    K257 Mental Health and Distress: Perspectives and Practice, Open University second level undergraduate course, started. Peter Campbell was amongst those employed in its preparation.

    Mental Health Matters: A Reader edited by in T. Heller, J. Reynolds, R. Gomm, R. Muston and S. Pattison, Buckingham: Open University Press, contained Peter Campbell (1996) "The History of the User Movement in the United Kingdom"

    20.11.1996 Speaking Our Minds - An Anthology Edited by: Jim Read and Jill Reynolds. Palgrave Macmillan. 240 pages £18.99

    1997 Reclaim Bedlam - Reclaim History
    See Histories - libraries - archives

    Should we be mainstream? Engage Visually depict the way the river was flowing in 1997 - but Reclaim Bedlam (and later Mad Pride) were a counter current.

    Conflict or collaboration? In the 1990s, Peter Campbell suggests, the survivors movement was mainly collaborative. Large numbers of local group worked closely with service providers and nationally the government sponsored Mental Health Task Force brought people together.

      1997 is remembered for iconic collaborations and conflicts in survivor culture which continue to provide foci for debate.

    The year began peacefully with a lottery grant to "document and disseminate people's strategies for living with mental health problems". This helped fund the Big Alternative conferences from March 1998.

    Collaborative events coinciding with the 750th anniversary of Bethlem included The Bethlem Gallery "for artists who have experienced mental health problems" and Beyond Bedlam: Poems written out of Mental Distress.

    But the celebrations also engendered cultural conflict in the Reclaim Bedlam campaign, eventually leading to Mad Pride.

    Reflecting on these events, Peter Beresford argued (Summer 1998) "If mental health service users/survivors are to take charge of our future, then we must also regain control of our past"

    Nick Crossley's research on mental health movements probably began in 1996 or 1997. He was at Sheffield at the time (Contesting Psychiatry p.9). Peter Campbell was interviewed in 1997. Nick contacted Helen Spandler in 1996 or 1997 to ask about her knowledge of the local and national movements, including the survivor/patients movement. She lent him some of the material she had collected over the years, including material that Andrew Roberts and Clive Perrett had copied for her on the MPU and SPK. She also gave him a few local contacts in Manchester and details of other national figures - including Andrew Roberts. (email 2.10.2012). Nick interviewed Andrew on 14.1.1998.

    1997 Mary Nettle appointed a Mental Health Act Commissioner (since 2009 part of Care Quality Commission). "My role is visiting psychiatric units to ensure the rights of patients, detained under the 1983 Mental Health Act (amended 2007), are observed." - "Ms M. Nettle" is one of the eleven "Lay Visit Members" 1997- 1999 listed in the Mental Health Act Commission's eighth biennial report.

    Kathryn Church: Because of where we've been : the business behind the business of psychiatric survivor economic development published Toronto?. 40 pages. "Written for the Ontario Council of Alternative Business in partnership with 761 Community Development Corporation."

    On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4 says: "1997-present Service user/survivor-led innovations for self-managing mental health problems are developed by service users/survivors: Service user/survivor-led crisis projects emerge in Devon, Brighton, Birmingham, London, Wokingham, Corby, Leeds and elsewhere. Advance directives are developed as means of ensuring choice of treatment in crisis. Manic Depression Fellowship develops self management programme. The Strategies for Living project runs annual 'Big Alternative' conferences, [from March 1998] which become the focus for service user/survivor-led alternatives."

    "When I first came to CAPS in 1997 in Edinburgh there was only CAPS and a very, very young Advocard that had been around for a couple of years and only worked in the North East of Edinburgh. Over the next 10 years I watched advocacy becoming more and more rooted in the Lothians. CAPS were instrumental in establishing individual advocacy in East Lothian and also in Midlothian as well, so really it's been gradual haul over 10 years up until about 2005 and the final stage in that was the Mental Health Act." (Keith Maloney in Oor Mad History)

    LUNA: an arts-based mental health project established in Dundee. See the film Recovering Lives: Mental health, gardening and the arts: A film by LUNA and Hester Parr (Dundee University)

    The Afiya Trust was established as a charity in 1997.

    INTERVOICE, the International Network for Training, Education and Research into Hearing Voices, was established 1n 1997. archive of voices.schublade.org website starting 21.1.2007     intervoiceonline.org starting 27.4.2007. However "The 1st World Hearing Voices Congress took place in Maastricht, Netherlands in September 2009. It was this congress that led to the formation of Intervoice". source - Current website "In 1997 a meeting of voice hearers and mental health workers was held in Maastricht to discuss developing the further promotion and research into the issue of voice hearing. The meeting decided to create a formal organizational structure to provide administrative and coordinating support to the wide variety of initiatives in the different involved countries. The new network was called Intervoice (The International Network for Training, Education and Research into Hearing Voices). Intervoice holds annual steering group meetings, encourages and supports exchanges and visits between member countries and the translation and publication of books and other literature on the subject of hearing voices. Intervoice was incorporated in 2007 as a not for profit company under UK law. In 2012, we registered as a UK charity, under the name International Hearing Voices Projects - known as Intervoice." source Charity number 1148779. Company number 06337580

    1997 Skallagrigg House opened in Birmingham, with funding from the Mental Health Foundation's crisis programme. Later, in diferrent premises, it was called Anam Cara (Celtic for 'soul friend'). A crisis house run by "C.H.A.N.G.E." to provide an alternatives to acute hospital inpatient admission. All staff had experienced their own mental health crises. Only staffed during the day (weekdays) and limited support at weekends. Piers Allott is described as the "main developer".


    1997 Mental Health Uganda formed for people with mental illness.
    Mental Health Uganda works through community-based associations of people with mental illness and their caregivers to share experiences, success and breakthrough stories to create awareness and reduce social stigma. and to improve mental health service provision.

    By 2005 the biggest psychiatric user owned and politically managed organisation in Africa. It was the coordinating centre for the Pan African Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry and was recognised by the Ministry of Health, National Union of Disabled Persons of Uganda, the Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development and the World Health Organisation as a distinct and growing User organization on the African continent
    Mental Health Uganda volunteer,
    Daniel Iga Mwesigwa, effectively represented Psychiatry Users in Africa in the Ad hoc Committee Meetings at the UN during the drafting of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities .
    See website archive and SINDMHUbox

    1997 In Uganda, Eddie Nkurunungi experienced his first episode of mental illness and was admitted to Butabika Hospital where, like Joseph Atukunda, he was subjected to isolation. In 1999 he completed his studies, but at about this time his mother died in a motor accident. Travelling to the United Kingdom in search of a better life, he discovered a culture clash. In 2006 he was admitted to a hospital in East London. There he took part in "Working Together" groups in which users met with clinicians. In August 2007 he returned to Uganda - Another culture shock as he had to make new friends. Cerdic Hall visited Uganda in 2007 and made contact about the Heartsouds idea. Eddie Nkurunungi was Adminstrator/ Treasurer Heartsounds Uganda from December 2009 to February 2014 and. Coordinator to February 2015. (Mainly based on Eddie Nkurunungi 9.4.2016 )


    February 1997 Alison Faulkner, Knowing Our Own Minds - Users Views of Alternative and Complementary Treatments in Mental Health, Mental Health Foundation

    Why do you think Knowing Our Own Minds was important?

    "The Foundation was making a transition away from being a committee-led organisation funding doctors, so it was a way of trying to change the emphasis and say: "It's all very well what research says about what's effective but what do we find helpful, what do we think about these different treatments and therapies?" There wasn't much research asking people their opinions about services and treatments. I think it was ground breaking because it really was designed by us." (Alison Faulkner 2.2009)

    Strategies for living came with a logo and a website. The logo appears on its website "last updated" 18.2.1997

    "The Strategies for Living research project followed on from the Knowing our own Minds survey by investigating in greater depth the key issues raised by the survey, through face-to-face interviews with 71 people." [source?]

    How did the Strategies for Living program follow-on...?

    "Our aim was to document and disseminate people's own ways and strategies for managing mental distress, primarily through user-led research. The core piece of work was the Strategies for Living report, but we also then invited applications from service users to do their own research. I think that was the most innovative and exciting part, because we were giving people training in skills and understanding research. I think it had a huge impact." (Alison Faulkner 2.2009)

    In 1997 the National Lottery Charities Board made a grant to the Mental Health Foundation for a three year programme of work led by service users, to "document and disseminate people's strategies for living with mental health problems". (Newsletter 1)

    May 1997 Steering group established with members from UK Advocacy Network - the Manic Depression Fellowship - Depression Alliance - African-Caribbean Users Forum - Mind Link - and the Scottish Users Network. (Newsletter 1)

    September 1997 Jim Green's report on consultations with users groups in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Irelend. Jan Wallcraft's report on published and unpublished work on the role of alternative and complementary therapies in mental health.

    October 1997 First newsletter. Jan Wallcraft appointed researcher for the strategies for living project.

    "Since 1997 the Mental Health Foundation has played a key role in supporting and promoting user/survivor-led research in the mental health field across the UK through its Strategies for Living initiative." Phase one of the initiative ran from 1997 to 2000 and phase two from 2000 to 2003. ( (Mental Health Foundation, November 2003))

    "The Survivor Researcher Network began as part of the work of the Strategies for Living project hosted by the Mental Health Foundation (confirm with Alison Faulkner) in the very late 1990s. S4L no longer exists but the SRN continues to be supported by the MHF who provide a room and travelling/subsistence expenses and administrative support." (David Armes, email 1.8.2008) - See 2001 - website 29.9.2002: "Research Support News Newsletter of the 'Research Support Network', part of the 'Strategies for Living' programme from the Mental Health Foundation. The Research Support Network aims to encourage people with experience of mental health problems to find out more about what helps them."

    Website established July 2009 with this text: Survivor Researcher Network (SRN) The SRN is an informal network of people who have experience of mental health problems or emotional distress. They are interested in sharing thier experiences as researchers in the mental health field. Feel free to join if you are a service user or survivor doing research. They meet up in London every quarter. Reasonable travel expenses will be paid. Also, some of the SRN members have been involved with the production of the book This is Survivor Research ISBN 978 1 906254 14 8.

    Survivor Researcher Network, c/o Mental Health Foundation, 9th Floor, Sea Containers House, 20 Upper Ground, London, SE1 9QB.

    Coverage of Organisation National

    2011 Survivor Research Network moved from the Mental Health Foundation to the National Survivor User Network. The date 2001 given in the SRN Manifesto Summary distributed to the Survivors History Group on 24.10.2018 is wrong.

    March 1997 Veronica Dewan appointed by West Sussex Social Services to set up a Users as Trainers' Project as a training project for people in West Sussex who use mental health services. This became the Capital Project Trust in 1998 ( website - archive - history - contact details). CAPITAL stands for "Clients and Professionals in Training and Learning". In August 2005 it had just under 100 members, many of whom work as volunteers delivering service user focused training or are involved in consultancy and research. Clare Ockwell, one of its founders, is an active member of the Service Users History Group, as is its ex-Director, Anne Beales.

    May 1997 "The North West Right to Refuse Electroshock Campaign was formed following a packed public meeting organised by Psychology Politics Resistance in May 1997 at Manchester Town Hall. The founding meeting heard members of ECT Anonymous describe the effects of this `treatment'" (external source)

    Reclaim Bedlam?

    Summer and Autumn 1997 Reclaim Bedlam campaign (protest against the celebration of Royal Bethlehem Hospital anniversary), eventually leading to formation of Mad Pride, a group that organises demonstrations and celebrations of 'mad culture'. (On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4) - but incorrectly given as 1999

    750th anniversary celebrations of Bethlem Hospital

    These were publicised in March (Probably earlier).

    Pete Shaughnessy (Evening Standard Magazine 17.3.2000) "I was involved in the Maudsley at the time. They came and talked to us, as an afterthought, and said we'll have a "Users' Day" on the third day. I thought that was really token, that we were tacked on at the end of this really naff event. And then they said we're having a Thanksgiving Service at St Paul's, and I think that's probably when I snapped. We called that a Commemoration, for the people who have died and the sadness they've lived in."

    Pete Shaughnessy and colleagues in Southwark Mind countered the idea of "celebration" with that of "commemoration" in what he later described as a "battle with the Maudsley PR machine". "We spoke at Reclaim the Streets and political events. We gatecrashed conferences... I know we pissed users of with our style..". A picket of the staff ball and following "Fun Day" (Family Spectacular) was planned. However, when Pete heard that users were willing to cross the picket line in order to run a stall at the Family Spectacular - "I lost my nut, which meant I threatened to bring Reclaim the Streets down to smash up their stall." The police were called and the pickets had to be called off.

    Friday 21.6.1997 Staff Summer Ball at Bethlem

    Saturday 22.6.1997 Family Spectacular "An open afternoon at Bethlem"

    Sunday 23.6.1997 Proposed third day to be devoted to users? (see above)

    Saturday 5.7.1997 Gay Pride March and Festival on Clapham Common. (See Independent 6.5.2007). "A few survivors of the mental health system said "we could do with a festival like this". And so a motley collection of individuals got together and slowly started organising themselves so as to put on events". - source. See Mad Pride 1999

    "The first events were ... a rally and march from the Imperial War Museum to the Maudsley in Camberwell; and a picket of the service at St Paul's, which involved a minute's silence on the steps outside". (Pete Shaughnessy 17.3.2000)

    "We had our first picnic at the Imperial War Museum... Simon Hughes MP came and spoke. There were features in the Big Issue and Nursing Times, and we were afloat... Our next event was to screw up the thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral" (Pete Shaughnessy Mad Pride (2000) page 22)

    Monday 21.7.1997 "Happy Birthday Bedlam?" The Big Issue

    Wednesday 23.7.1997 "Two sides to every story" Nursing Times

    24.8.1997 Southwark Mind AGM

    Thursday 23.10.1997 Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul's Cathedral 11am

    See index

    Sunday 31.8.1997 Although nothing appears to happened in the world for 24 hours except the death of Diana Princess of Wales, in fact many dependent people suffered neglect as staff watched television.

    Sunday 31.8.1997 Sunday Mirror article by Lynne Kelleher, Screamers are back! - See Jenny James

    September 1997 Issue one of The Camden Bugle - Monthly Newsletter of Camden Mental Health Consortium

    19.9.1997 A Framework for Mental Health Services in Scotland was the first of the national frameworks for what would follow the closure of the mental hospitals in the United Kingdom.
    User involvement was an explicit aim of the frameworks for Mental Health for Scotland (1997) - England (1999) - Wales (2002) - and Northern Ireland (2003). The National Health Service plans for each nation also put patients at the centre. Each nation has also established separate policies and structures to support general user involvement in the NHS, some of which encourage service user involvement in research as one of several 'involvement' strategies.

    September 1997 Doing Disability Research, edited by Colin Barnes and Geoff Mercer, published by The Disability Press, Leeds. Available online. See chapter five Psychiatric System Survivors and Emancipatory research: Issues, overlaps and differences by Peter Beresford and Jan Wallcraft - ( offlinecopy)

    October 1997 Strategies for Living Newsletter Volume 1 Issue 1. [Issue 2 January 1998 - [Issue 3 March 1998 -

    October 1997 Formal constitution? of Advocacy France. "Un mode de participation active des usagers en santé mentale" (a way of active participation by users of mental health services)- The association started in 1996 - weblink
    Advocacy France is a national network of five local associations, which was set up in 1996 by Martine Dutoit and
    Claude Deutsch. The Paris premises are located in Place des Fêtes in the 19th arrondissement. (source) - (See France)

    Beyond Bedlam: Poems written out of Mental Distress, Anvil Press (in conjunction with Bethlem and Maudsley - the Mental Health Foundation - Mind - Survivors Poetry

    Beyond Bedlam consists of a mixture of general survivors' poetry, work by famous poets who had experienced mental distress, such as John Clare and T S Eliot, and work by living poets who might not be known to the public as survivors.

    Edited by Ken Smith and Matthew Sweeney who both said they experienced "emotional turmoil" in their lives.

    Foreword by Felix Post who retired in 1978 as psychogeriatrician at Bethlem

    The cover shows A Mask by Vaslav Nijinsky

    15.11.1997 Survivors Poetry launch of Beyond Bedlam with poets from the new anthology. (Hampden Community Centre) (Chronology of Disability Arts.

    Joe Bidder states that,

    It did away with a taboo in the literary world. All these famous poets saying, "I've been in the bin too."'A first print run of 5,000 copies sold out within five months. 'The book had favourable reviews in every single broadsheet paper. It was a transforming moment.

    There were other launches "the book was launched at a celebratory reading at the Museum of London followed by readings in other parts of the country" (source)

    "The anthology Beyond Bedlam came about because the Maudsley who were holding the celebrations gave Survivors Poetry some money." (Frank Bangay 14.7.2009) [See Bethlem 1997]

    See Annabel Jackson 2003 for direction Survivors Poetry was taking at this time

    Peter Campbell (Survivors History Group 27.5.2015) described Beyond Bedlam as "a good anthology with a range of moods - not all gloom" which combines "unknown and unpublished with known and famous poets". 5,000 poems were submitted - We do not know what happened to the ones that were not published in the anthology.

    Peter questioned "to what extent survivors and Survivors were Poetry involved in making the book?". Survivor Poetry's network was used to bring in the poems, but it is unclear whether Survivors Poetry had anything to do with the selection or publication. Peter noted that there are good illustrations, but that they are not integrated with the poetry.

    Peter Campbell compared Beyond Bedlam to two anthologies compiled independantly by survivors Survivors Poetry from dark to light published in 1992 with work from 54 poets and artists and Under the Asylum Tree published in 1995

    November? 1997 Eighth? National Hearing Voices Conference.

    1998

    The Hurt Yourself Less Workbook by Eleanor Dace, Alison Faulkner, M. Frost, K. Parker, Louise Pembroke and A. Smith. 79 leaves, single-sided: illustrated; 32 cm. (ring binder) ISBN: 0953402703 Published by the National Self-Harm Network London: 1998. Includes bibliographical references. This was the first self-management workbook written by survivors for survivors. COPAC lists copies in four libraries, but not the British Library. It was sold at £12.50. (Community Care review) - Download a copy

    Ireland index In 1998 North and West Belfast Health and Social Services Trust set up user and carer groups to assist in the development of mental health services. The user group evolved into L.A.M.P. (Life After Mental health Problems). L.A.M.P. aims to provide support and advice to users of mental health services.

    L.A.M.P.'s office 3 Rosemary Street, Belfast (028 90 242982) opened in 2001 and is staffed by volunteers from the group.

    L.A.M.P. also organise a weekly ward round in the Mater Psychiatric Hospital in Belfast where Advocates can be accessed on the wards.

    Click the daisy for the website Footsteps was set up by four local artists in Ealing, West London in 1998. It "uses art in all its forms to help people who live with, or who are recovering from, mental health problems". Joe Kelly was a co-founder and the director to 2009. He remained a trustee to 2012. Footsteps arts became Registered Charity Number 1117933 in February 2007. Its website was first archived 10.5.2008. It became Alpha One Activity Clubs - Mental Health Arts Group

    January 1998 Nick Crossley in London (12th to 16th) researching the survivors' movement. Wednesday 14.1.1998 (morning): Interview with Andrew Roberts at Andrew's home. Interview 2. [Note that Peter Campbell (Interview 9) was interviewed in 1997.]

    In Our Experience cover 1998 In our experience : user-focused monitoring of mental health services in Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster Health Authority, by Diana Rose (35 pages) published by Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.

    " User Focused Monitoring was started in 1996 by Diana Rose, a user- researcher and lecturer, who had the idea (in short) of involving service users in a project set up to evaluate care planning in an area of London. It was so successful in terms of process and outcome that it was commissioned again. From that first venture, other groups adopted the model and slowly a network was formed. The model is used in different forms around England mostly. There are other models in Scotland and Wales. In January 2007, we published a Guide on Setting up and Running a User Focused Monitoring project (Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health)."

    (Email from Anne-Laure Donskoy - User Focused Monitoring (national) Network coordinator 15.12.2008)

    February 1998 Getting Ready for User-Focused Monitoring (UFM) - A Guide for mental Health Service Providers, Users and Purchasers Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. A Workbook compiled by Libby Gawaith (Quality Assurance Project) - Diana Rose (Coordinator, User Focused Monitoring Project) - Peter Lindley (Training and Practice Development Section) - Gabriel MacKintosh (User Focused Monitoring Project) - Richard Ford - (Head of Service Evaluation). "The cost of a two year licence, which includes the right to use questionnaire materials and inspection visit workbooks, as well as one training visit from The Sainsbury Centre is £900"

    Tuesday 10.2.1998 [First] National Voices Forum Conference on Self-Management of Schizophrenia, Birmingham. - see box - External link to report. There were five conferences focussing on personal methods of coping with mental illness/distress and its associated problems. See 30.9.1999- 5.10.2000 - 30.7.2002 - 21.7.2005

    Pete Shaughnessy was interviewed by Fergus Walsh for BBC1's News at One. Others taking part in a "media blitz" were Roberta Graley, Gloria Brown (Brent User Group), Pat Butterfield (ECT Anonymous) and David Crepaz-Keay (Survivors Speak Out) #

    12.2.1998 "Former bus driver Pete Shaughnessy, who has signed up for Mental Health Media training, went into hospital five years ago suffering from manic depression after he was attacked on a bus. A new two- year drive by the national charity Mental Health Media is aimed at giving those with mental health problems like Mr Shaughnessy the chance to speak out"

    March 1998 First Big Alternative Conference organised by Strategies for Living. "to celebrate the credibility of service user involvement in services, and demonstrate that that mental health services can be different" (Newsletter October 1997)


    2.3.1998 to 5.6.1998 Phase two training for first recruits to Users to Trainers' Project. Name changed to Capital Project Trust

    May/June 1998 Open Mind:

    Andy Smith: With the internet "the coordination of smaller movements in a larger strategy becomes easier by the day... simultaneous demonstrations or direct actions at targeted hospitals across the country can be arranged at relatively low cost... The user movement is no longer beholden to ... gargantum national charities. We can now represent ourselves locally via the cellular structure and nationally by collective and coordinated campaigning."

    Probably relates more specifically to the development of the world wide web

    Beginning of the Beresford - Hopton dialogue on survivors' history

    Peter Beresford "If mental health service users/survivors are to take charge of our future, then we must also regain control of our past" - Asylums are being converted into luxury flats - "One of these institutions should be preserved as living testimony of the experience of the generations who lived and died within their walls." - "run under the control of psychiatric system survivors and our organisations" - "putting together our accounts in exhibitions, books, news and broadcast media" - "accounts and testimony of psychiatric system survivors over the years" - an "archive of survivor material" - "survivors' mementoes" - "artefacts of psychiatry and its institutions"

    John Hopton (July/August 1998): "for users to develop a competing historical narrative would simply leave us with two opposing historical accounts with similar methodological flaws and biases. What is required is collaborative historical research"

    This was followed by a debate between Peter Beresford and John Hopton in Openmind November/December 1999

    John Hopton (November/December 1999): "I would like to see ... a single archive or museum where oral testimonies from users/survivors would be side by side with oral testimonies from mental health professionals, together with various documentary sources and artifacts."

    Peter Beresford: "A crucial first step for us as survivors is to have safe space to develop our own narratives and history (and survivors will tell of the good as well as the bad), before our history can be placed next to professional accounts".

    June 1998 Seaton Point, a novel by Robert Dellar, Ted Curtis, Martin Cooper, Rob Colson, Lucy Williams, Mally Mallinson and Emma McElwee, published by Spare Change Books.

    Anselm Lionel-Rajah appointed "Service User Involvement Worker" at MACA (the Mental After Care Association). Responsible for delivering MACA's "service user involvement strategy": Visiting service users, finding out how people wanted to be involved in the decision making process. Devised and lead his own training course called the Service User Involvement Workshop. Coordinated a central service user group, producing newsletters and minutes. An advocate for service users at management meetings. Liased with other statutory and voluntary agencies. (Information from Linkedin 3.7.2012). To June 2005 (6 years 10 months). See Service User Involvement Directorate

    September/October 1998 Survivor's Poetry Newsletter Number One: (downloadable pdf) - This became Poetry Express.

    10.9.1998 and 11.9.1998 International Conference to mark ten years of the Hearing Voices Network held in Birmingham. Organised by Handsell publications

    October 1998 Strategies for Living Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 2.

    8.10.1998 Reclaim Bedlam - ECT Anonymous and the All Wales Users and Survivor Network target the "Changing Minds" campaign as a "smokescreen to let them get away with compulsory treatment orders" (Peter Shaughnessy) - (source)

    Saturday 31 October 1998 Rocky Bennett (David Bennett), a 38-year- old Black man, was certified dead in the early hours. He had been a detained patient in the Norvic Clinic, an NHS medium secure unit in Norwich, for three years. His death followed an incident involving the use of restraint.

    November 1998 Two day conference in Birmingham leading to the setting up of the National Advocacy Network

    SIMBA: let the tiger
roar     Autumn 1998 Mysterious notices all around the Maudsley Hospital warn that the tiger is coming.

    17.12.1998 let the tiger roar... First official meeting of SIMBA (Share In Maudsley Black Action), the Black Patient/User/Survivor group in the Maudsley Hospital, held in the Visitor and User Centre at the Maudsley.

    The tiger continues roaring: October 1999 - August 2000 - 23.3.2000 (SIMBA "goes public" at Big Alternative Conference) - Autumn 2001 - October 2002 - March 2004 - March 2005 - blog March 2015

    1998 PACE service user/survivor-led report on gays'/lesbians'/bisexuals' experiences of mental health services. (On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4)

    December 1998 Southwark Mind Newsletter Issue ten.

    In June 1998 Nelsy became a mental patient. This diagram shows in pictures how she confronted her fears and through self-research became healthy. The period of almost fifteen years of being "healthy" is 2000 to 2015. Since 2005, she says, she has "been happier".

    1999

    During 1999, Louis Pembroke organised the first to risk reduction conferences for survivors. One of the outcomes of these was the publication of Cutting the Risk [NSHN 1999], the first and only book on practical harm-minimisation for self-harm. - Download a copy

    Nick Crossley (1999) "Fish, field, habitus and madness: the first wave mental health users' movement." British Journal of Sociology 50, 4, pp 647-670.

    Peter Campbell, (1999) "The Service User/Survivor Movement" In C. Newnes, C, G. Holmes, C. Dunn (editors) This is Madness: A Critical Look at The Future of Mental Health Services. Ross on Wye, Herefordshire: PCCS Books.

    M. Crawford and A. S. Kessel (1999) "Not listening to patients - the use and misuse of patient satisfaction studies". International Journal of Social Psychiatry, volume 45, pages 1-6.

    1999 Clare Allan's social worker, Bernadette, (to whom she dedicated Poppy Shakespeare) provided encouragement. In 1999 Clare applied for and was accepted on to an MA course in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. See Daily Mail interview 4.3.2008

    Mental Health Alliance 1999 Mental Health Alliance (MHA) founded - See 1998? - 1999 - Press Releases 2002-2006 - 2002 - 14.9.2002 - 23.10.2002 - 23.3.2006 - archive of website from 25.4.2006 - Current website

    1999 First date on chronology of the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive "The Story So Far" - archive - A current website (2014) - the relevant SHAPE current website

    The Survivors United Network newsletter and email, run by Andrew Hughes between between 1999 and 2002, was funded by a Mind Millennium Award. The first archive Survivors United Network website was taken on 24.2.2001 (See Content archive on this site)

    List of known issues:

    SUN Newsletter September 1999
    SUN Newsletter October 1999
    SUN Newsletter November 1999
    SUN Newsletter December 1999
    SUN Newsletter January 2000
    SUN Newsletter March 2000: Rachel Perkins speech
    SUN Newsletter April 2000
    SUN Newsletter June 2000
    SUN Newsletter July 2000
    SUN Newsletter August 2000
    SUN Newsletter September 2000
    SUN Newsletter January 2001
    SUN Newsletter January 2002
    SUN Newsletter April 2002
    SUN Newsletter May 2002
    SUN Newsletter June 2002
    SUN Newsletter November 2002
    SUN Newsletter December 2002: Pete Shaughnessy issue.
    SUN Newsletter February 2003

    The Advocacy 2000 project worked from 1999 to 2002 in Scotland. (website preserved). Its report Principles and standards in Independent Advocacy organisations and groups was published in January 2002. It was succeded by the Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance in September 2002.

    January 1999 First meeting of the "Critical Psychiatry Network" (The 'Bradford' group of psychiatrists), many of whose members have taken an interest in the user/survivor movement. Link to its website - See Asylum 1999 - 27.4.2001 - 26.4.2002 - 13.6.2003

    3.2.1999 Internet archive of Kirsti Reeves' Resources and Information for People who self-injure. Internal evidence suggests Kirsti may have begun her site on 23.11.1997.

    February 1999 Patient advocacy Council Report CR74 from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, London. offline. Membership of the Working Party: Philip Graham (Chair) - Edna Conlan, United Kingdom Advocacy Network (UKAN) - Brian McGinnis, MENCAP - Victoria Thomas, Royal College of Psychiatrists' Research Unit - Christina Young, UKAN. Working Party administered by: Ms Deborah Hart, Royal College of Psychiatrists. This was a review of the 1989 policy - See UKAN

    Southwark Mind Newsletter

    February 1999 Issue twelve. Photo of Smiley at Cuckoo Club Christmas Party on the cover.

    March 1999 Issue thirteen "Reclaim Bedlam Presents... Round One of Stop Compulsory Treatment Orders. March on SANE!"

    July 1999 Issue seventeen "Mad pride - The first concert"

    October 1999 Issue twenty "Mad pride celebrates and evening of survivors Punk Rock" ... "PLUS: SIMBA takes off..."

    November 1999 Issue 21 "Southwark Mind 'Coping and Caring' Conference targets suicide issues and launches a memorial monument"

    9.3.1999 to 19.3.1999 Survivors' Poetry "Fresher than Green, Brighter than Orange". An exhibition of poems by Irish women at Diorama Foyer. (source)

    Fresher than Green, Brighter than Orange- an anthology of poetry by Irish women living in London in 1999, edited by Eamer O'Keeffe and Lisa Boardman was published by Survivors Poetry Press. The writers were Eamer O'Keeffe - Ann Rossiter - Carolyn O'Connell - Kathleen O'Sullivan - Siúbhan McNally - Ann Dalton - Julie McNamara - Roismáire McGill - Anne Ireton - Carolyn O'Connell Ireland index

    17.3.1999 Memorandum and articles of association for Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Services aiming at "providing sanctuary and support, as a complement and as an alternative, to statutory services for people in acute mental health crisis and those experiencing emotional or mental distress". Charity number 1075160. This set up "Dial House". website - archive - case study

    1999 Reclaim Bedlam becoming Mad Pride. See 15.3.1999 and 20.6.1999 - Also Mad Pride box

    Monday 15.3.1999 Reclaim Bedlam march on SANE offices: External link "Over one hundred user/survivors of the mental health system gathered.. at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel and marched to the headquarters of the office of SANE nearby. Under the Reclaim Bedlam campaigning banner, this was the first of a number of actions planned to fight the Government's proposals to introduce new legislation set to contain compulsory treatment (drugs) for people living in the community."

    14.3.1999 and 15.3.1999. Second Big Alternative Conference organised by Strategies for Living. "Rabbi Julia Neuberger will introduce the second day, which we hope will attract more professionals this year, as we are keen to start spreading our messages to a wider audience" (Newsletter October 1998)

    May 1999 "Strategies for Living On-line" by "Julia B." (Julia Blazdell) who designed the (low graphics) website. "why not don an anorak, go to your local library (or whereever there's a computer with internet asscess) and type in the following address: http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk:80/s4lhpage.htm You'll be amazed what's out there! (The Advocate May 1999).

    June 1999

    Naked Songs and Rhythms of Hope "An illustrated collection of poems from 1974 to 1999 by Frank Bangay" "Launched at Mad Pride Benefits in June and at the Union Chapel, Compton Ave, London N1 at 8pm on Saturday 11th September."

    Sunday 20.6.1999 Mad Pride "first ever gig" - (archive - archive index) - "Frank Bangay, veteran of Campaign Aganst Psychiatric Oppression and survivor poet read from his latest book"

    The Mad Pride gig (20.6.1999) was held at the Foundry in Old Street, Shoreditch. The Mad Pride website archive corrected - begins 4.11.1999 - Last updated 22.9.1999. A website established earlier by Peter Shaughnessy at
    http://bedlamreclaimed.is-crazy.com/
    appears to be lost

    June 1999 Bill Warwick died at home 13 Broxton Avenue, West Kirby. His ashes were spread at Landican Cemetery, Wirral, in July 1999. 1.7.1999 Janet Cresswell, in Broadmoor, "had a visit from staff" "somebody had phoned to say that Bill Warwick had died. It was kind of whoever it was who called as I had wondered what had happened o him. He was in the last war so he must have been heading for 80. He was still banned from visiting me but seemed to be connected with User groups up north and battled on." Later Janet "had a letter from a friend of his who explained that Bill often indulged in fasting, twenty days was usual, to cleanse his body of impurities. He overdid it on this last occasion lasting out sixty days except for sipping carrot and apple juice and nobody realising he was starving. He was 77 and wouldn't have a doctor over the front door" (letters from Janet to Joan Hughes 2.7.1999 and 12.7.1999.

    September 1999 outsider poems by John Zammit, David Kessel, and David Amery

    1999 Recovery: an alien concept by Ron Coleman. Gloucester: Handsell. 116 pages. See recovery movement

    September 1999 Birmingham Conference "Recovery. An Alien Concept" organised by Handsell Publishing. This was the second Annual Conference of Handsell Publishing. The speakers list included Loren Mosher (USA), Phil Barker, Michaela Amering (Austria), Piers Allott, Ron Coleman, Phil Thomas, Marius Romme, Sondra Escher, Steve Crane, Lucy Johnstone, Ian Parker, Terence McLaughlin, Fran Silverti (USA), Mike Smith, Andy Gilbert, Errol Francis. The speakers' list reflected the interest of a variety of professionals in this "process of recovery from severe and enduring mental health problems".

    30.9.1999: Department of Health, London, A National Service Framework for Mental Health

    "The National Service Framework for Mental Health is an attempt to set national standards for services for people of working age who experience mental illness. Service users were involved in setting these standards and the document identifies service users as key players in the development and evaluation of health care. Specifically, the document states that:

    a) Service users need to be involved in developing services in order to make them more acceptable and culturally sensitive.

    b) Performance of psychiatric services needs to be assessed at a national and local level by the experience of users and carers including those from Black and ethnic minority groups.

    c) Service users and carers should be involved in planning, providing and evaluating training for all health care professionals." (Mike Crawford, March 2001)

    November 1999 Green Paper: Reform of the Mental Health Act 1983. Proposals for consultation (1999). London: The Stationery Office.

    30.9.1999 National Voices Forum Conference on Self-Management of Schizophrenia, London. External link to report.

    SIMBA: let the tiger
roar     October 1999 Issue one of The Voice of SIMBA: let the tiger roar... "The Newsletter of SIMBA (Share In Maudsley Black Action), the Black Patient/User/Survivor group in the Maudsley Hospital"

    12.10.1999 Earliest archive of
     MindFreedom.org
    At this time, Mindfreedom.org was the website project of Support Coalition International. See Dendron for origins.
    The title MindFreedom International was adoted for all parts on 1.8.2005
    Current website of MindFreedom International

    Ireland index

    Martha McCleeland - Paddy McGowan and others "came together and thought about how we were going to develop the process of peer advocacy on an island wide basis." They decided on a conference and. in preparation, Paddy Masterson and Paddy McGowan "travelled the country on a two-week basis calling with health boards all across the Republic of Ireland. Talking with survivors, talking to health board staff and mental health employees."

    The Irish Advocacy Network (IAN) was formed from the first user run user led conference in Derry in November 1999, a three day conference, "VOICES", organized by Mind Yourself in Derry, Northern Ireland. Gave "service users a collective voice for the first time". Approximately 270 people attended, mostly mental health service users (survivors). Survivors met alone for the first two days of the conference, allowing people "time and space to tell their own stories".

    "The Steering Committee was elected democratically for the conference, a management committee of 12 individuals, 6 from the north, 6 from the south, 7 women and 5 men. Out of that beginning the Network was born."

    The Irish Advocacy Network was formed at the conference (source). Paddy McGowan was elected chair of the network.

    For three years it was "about getting out there, meeting the people, talking to survivors..." "we had no understanding of where we were going to draw finances from." See September 2002 - December 2002 - October 2003

    2000

    "Since 2000, Rethink has worked collaboratively with the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London to deliver anti-discrimination training to professional audiences. People with experience of mental illness deliver the training alongside Rethink staff."

    Graham Estop was the National Voices Forum's worker from 2000 to 2004.

    During 2001 and 2002 I received numerous flyers on "Victim to Victor workshops" being run by Action Consultancy and Training. (probably in with Hearing Voices Network. It was BIG business. Conferences were held on Working with Voices, Working to Recovery, Working with People diagnosed as having a personaility Disorder, Working with Self-harm, Working through Sexual Abuse, Suicide Risk & Management, PATH (Planning Alternative Tomorrows with Hope), Person Centred Planning and Tools for Change. Conferences were held in London, Cardiff, Gloucester,Manchester, Leicester, Hull,Leeds, Gloucester, Liverpool, Southhampton, Sheffield, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Exeter...!!. (Anne Plumb email 3.9.2009)

    Taking Over the Asylum - Empowerment and Mental Health by Marian Barnes and Ric Bowl. (external link) -

    Terence McLaughlin's PhD thesis Psychology and mental health politics: A critical history of the Hearing Voices Movement at Manchester Metropolitan University was examined by Marius Romme in 2000

    Pathways, Barriers and Aspirations: The Mental Health System in Birmingham from a Service User Perspective was commissioned from Suresearch in 2000.

    2000 Local Authority Health Overview and Scrutiny Committees (OSCs) were established following the Local Government Act 2000

    January 2000 Liz Sayce From psychiatric patient to citizen - Organised around four models for inclusion: "brain disease" - "individual growth" - "libertarian" - "disability inclusion" - (Google books preview) - [See review by Riley Olstead - offline]

    January 2000 Alison Faulkner and Sarah Layzell Strategies for Living: A Report of User-led Research into People's Strategies for Living with Mental Distress, Mental Health Foundation.

    Jeff Walker: "in January 2000 I was actually admitted to a psychiatric unit suffering from very severe acute and chronic depression. I was in hospital for about three weeks then I was ill at home for about another six months, I had another hospital admission, was ill at home again and then in January 2001..."

    Sam Shakes chapter "Managing Madness": Saturday 1.1.2000 3.30am: still listening to music and dancing alone. I've drank loads. And feel 'happy?' ... 8.45am: woke up feeling very miserable. Wednesday 5.1.2000 10.30am: delivered the Patients' Perspective talk at City University. Friday 7.1.2000 5.30pm I travelled all the way to Ponders End campus - to be away from home, at the time Trevor suggested we meet. 11.30pm: felt something crawling in my head - an insect, but when I tried to brush it away, 'there was nothing there?'

    7.1.2000 Yahoo group UKSurvivors founded by Mark Roberts as "Survivors watching UK Mental Health Act"

    "UKsurvivors came along in a New Labour Mental Health 'Horizon' period .. Hope was all. No-one can divorce UKsurvivors from the disappointing politics of the times in which it has been constructed and formed by its posters. Instead of serious meaningful reform, from 2000 to 2009, which positively touched individuals lives, the system is still failing many." "Harry H. Towers" on UKsurvivors 16.7.2009

    February 2000 Little Wing, Dundee, established

    February 2000 Mary Nettle wrote her story for the SUN website. She was, at this time, "among many other things, chair of Mindlink ... a Mental Health Act Commissioner". She said that she had learnt to manage her illness by listening to colleagues in the user movement. "I feel valued and hope that in a small way I am enabling others to gain the benefits of speaking up and speaking out. It feels good to have turned a negative into a positive".

    23.2.2000 Debate: "Policing the Mind: is compulsory community treatment ever justified?" Topic discussed by Tom Burns, a member of the Royal College of Psychiatry's 1993 Community Treatment Order working party - Cliff Prior, Chief Executive of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship whose "largest ever survey of user and carer views on mental health law" led to the "Better Act Now! campaign" - Frank Holloway, who "has a long- standing interest in the history and social policy of community care" - Peter Campbell, "a Mental Health System Survivor and has been sectioned many times. Since 1980 he has been involved in service users' campaigns to improve the position of people with a mental illness." Debate chaired by George Szmukler, the Medical Director at the Maudsley Hospital - See See May 2000 document

    Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO) decided to formally establish itself as a voluntary sector organisation. Launched at Bow Road Methodist Church in February 2000. "Rose Wilson, Cashain David, Marcia McLeod and Mandisha Cordray Smith the African and Caribbean mental health workers who supported us were honoured". A leaflet was produced in May.
    Sidney Millin joined THACMHO in 2000. He was elected Chairperson in 2002, in place of the first Chair, Gloria Marcano. Sidney served as Chair for five years. In 2007 he stepped down so that he could apply for the Development Worker post. Hazel Roach became Chair.

    2.3.2000 Meeting of Survivor Groups at Friends House - Led to Statement on the Mental Health Green Paper by Meeting of National Mental Health User/Survivor Groups. 23.3.2000 Organisations represented at the meeting: Cymrar (Advocacy in Wales) - Ect-Anon - African Caribbean User/Survivor Forum - National Voices Network - United Kingdom Advocacy Network - All Wales User Network - Manic Depression Fellowship - Mad Pride - Reclaim Bedlam - Association of Survivor Workers. Not present, but supporting the statement: Survivors Speak Out and National Self Harm Network.

    Friday 17.3.2000 Article "Talking Sense" by Matt Seaton in Evening Standard Magazine "Sick of being ghettoised as knife-weilding loners, London's mentally ill are proclaiming their innocence and taking to the streets in the most radical protest since the sixties civil rights movement. On the eve of their mass lobby of Parliament Matt Seaton talks to some of the activists who are proud to be mad" [Archives from 3.10.2000)

    23.3.2000 SIMBA performed at the third Big Alternative Conferance orgamised by Strategies for Living

    Report from Jim Walsh - Irish Advocacy Network

    SIMBA: let the tiger
roar
    The first speaker was introduced: she immediately broke into an African tribal dance in time to an African chant which she taught us to sing! She then contrasted her rich Afro-Caribbean culture with our Western one. In her culture, a mentally ill person remains part of a supportive community (including an extended family). The medicine woman will prepare an individualised prescription for her, prepared according to ancient traditional rituals, and will provide counseling and advice.

    In contrast, in our Western society, she says, "someone who is supposedly not functioning the way they should, we shut them away from their friends and family and all that is familiar".

    Hair dressing is central to African Culture. It is an intimate thing, and only done by your family or close friends. She told us how a black Caribbean woman in a mental hospital became very angry with a nurse who tried to comb her hair. The nurse did not understand until it was explained that she was violating her culture and personal space. Also a Caribbean mental patient refused to eat hospital food. Food in her culture needs to be eaten in a place of comfort, cooked by friends in a special way - not in a hostile environment where she does not fit in as a black person. As a Caribbean, she regarded the hospital cooks as accomplices in her oppression.

    SIMBA: let the tiger
roar     Premila Trivedi (left) - Paulette and her children, Shanice and Aaron - and (back row) Linden Falkener, Gary and Lionel. SIMBA was the "most exciting and useful" thing that had happened to Premila over the past year. She thought of "transparencies, statistics and charts", but the group thought it would be "so much more powerful to do it through prose and poetry"

    This was the first public appearance. They performed on Ward ES3 on 1.5.2000 and later to the Board of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust

    31.3.2000 End of consultation on the Green Paper on a new Mental Health Act.

    East Lothian Involvement Group ("Our voice on mental health services") became an independent group on 1.4.2000. With funding from Disability Scotland it acquired up-to-date computer equipment and internet access and established a website. The website was established after 1.4.2000 and before Thursday 2.11.2000 when ELIG had a Bonfire Night/Fireworks celebration from 6:30pm. The ELIG Annual General Meeting was held on Wednesday 20 December 2000. The website probably remained unaltered from 2000 to 16.4.2004 when it was archived by the international archive. It was still the same on 22.11.2008 this website created a one page copy of its content, without the overlaying advertisements of the original Lycos site.

    A new website was established in (late) 2008

    14.4.2000 Meeting that set up what became Suresearch: a network of Service Users in Research and Education. - "We all left the first meeting thinking about a possible name for the network and Tony [Glynn] was the one who brought Suresearch - to the second meeting and it was agreed." [email from Ann Davis 17.8.2009] - External link to the Suresearch web, which was developed by Dee Partridge in 2006. In the autumn of 2009, Rachel Bentley began work on the important task of arranging Suresearch records in a way that would make them accessible. This was completed by the spring of 2010. go to the Centre of
Excellence in Interdisciplinary
Mental Health at Birmingham University
    See Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Mental Health at Birmingham University
    See Pathways, Barriers and Aspirations 2000 - Also 2002/2003 - From 2006, Suresearch has met at the Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Mental Health at Birmingham University.

    20.4.2000 Constitution of Edinburgh Users Forum. See website - The address for EUF is c/o CAPS

    29.5.2000 Launch of In or Out of the Picture? (Are you feeling, or being made to feel, out of the picture?"), a promotional leaflet by members of Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation. The publication of a Tower Hamlets history in September opened up an historical perspective on being left out of the picture

    In 1999, THACMHO proposed an assessment of the mental health needs of African and Caribbean peoples in Newham, Hackney and Tower Hamlets, in preparation for the formation of the East London and City NHS Mental Health trust in April 2000.

    Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture   June 2000 Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture edited by Ted Curtis, Robert Dellar, Esther Leslie and Ben Watson; designed by Julie Hathaway ; cover art by Keith Mallinson; animations by Cat Monstersmith ; Mad Pride logo by Penny Mount ... Published: London (Box 26, 136-138 Kingsland High Street, Hackney, E8-7SN): Spare Change Books. 224 pages: illustrated, including portraits: index. ISBN: 095257442X

    July 2000 National Health Service Plan: - (External link to download summary) - (External link to download full plan)

    "For many service users and carers, the NHS Plan (2000) offered the first opportunity to play a key role in the design, delivery, planning, monitoring and evaluation of health services. A Patient and Public Involvement Forum has been set up for every NHS trust and primary care Trust in England, to allow local people to play an active role in decision making." (Mental Health and Social Exclusion, June 2004, page 44)

    July 2000 David Armes "Enablement and Exploitation: The Contradictory Potential of Community Care Policy for Mental Health Service Users". Unpublished Paper presented to the Social Policy Association 33rd Annual Conference.

    7.7.2000 "Biggest Mental Health Lobby Ever" (Asylum 2000 volume 2) mentions attempt to give statue of Winston Churchill a giant depot injection

    Friday 7.7.2000 Sch News front page "Mad for it" on Mental Health Green Paper (Reform of the Mental Health Act) and Mad Pride festival in Clissold Park July 15th, 1pm-9pm

    SIMBA: let the tiger
roar     August 2000 Issue two of The Voice of SIMBA: let the tiger roar...

    15.8.2000 First archive of the wellcoolstuff website. [I think this is here to help date the controversy of what David Crepaz-Keay linked to from his psychotic.org.uk website]

    Monday 28.8.2000 23 big issues affecting People with a Mental Illness or Disorder identifed by the Consumer Forum at TheMHS at the Adelaide Convention Centre.

    1.7.2000 The Hamlets and the Tower: 1000 Years of Tower Hamlets' History by David Rich of Tower Hamlets Library and Archives, a 34 page booklet published by the council. David Rich also worked for many years on an online history. These gave Tower Hamlets an identity, but they left members of Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation feeling "Out of the Picture". Where were people of African descent before Windrush docked down river at Tilbury? Inspiration came from an anthology of 18th century black writers published in 1996, five of whom had lived in what is now Tower Hamlets.

    September 2000 Birmingham Conference "Moving Beyond Maintenance - Making Recovery a Reality in Mental Health Services" organised by Handsell Publishing. This was the third Annual Conference of Handsell Publishing

    4.10.2000 NEWS: 1st National Conference of Survivor Workers - by Rose Snow, Conference co-ordinator - The Mechanics Institute, Manchester 28 February 2001

    5.10.2000 National Voices Forum and Hearing Voices Network Conference on Self-Management of Schizophrenia, Manchester. External link to report. Possibly about here that Issue One of Perceptions - The Magazine of the National Voices Forum was issued.

    7.10.2000 An Article by Carol Jenkin, founder of Buddies

    The user movement in England research, proposed autumn 2000, was published as On Our Own Terms (summary The Mental Health Service User Movement in England) in May and June 2003.

    2.11.2000 Diana Rose "The user movement in England. 2000. Position paper. background to proposed research on the user movement", meant to be read as background to a Research Proposal on the user movement in England which had been submitted to Matt Muijen the Chief Executive of the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. He provided the money for the study. The position paper, although containing personal reflections, was said to have "arguments ... based on shared experience, literature written by members of the movement and preliminary discussions with the contemporary chairpersons of two, rather different, local user groups in London."

    "Diana Rose set up the project, including a steering group of some key figures in the user movement, before she left to set up SURE at the Institute of Psychiatry." (Angela Sweeney)

    The "User Survey Steering Group" members listed in 2003 are: Diana Rose - Andrew Hughes - Jim Read - Peter Campbell - Angela Linton-Abulu - Hilary Hawking - Hanif Bobat - Rachel Perkins - Jacqui Sealey - Carol Jenkin - Dominic Makuvachuma Walker - Premila Trevidi

    Diana Rose says "we got agreement from the Chief Executive of SCMH... that the Steering Group, and not he, would have final say over the content of the report. To me it is amazing that we got that concession and it would not happen today. So my position paper was also prescient - things have continued to move away from a user-led focus at least in research". (email from Diana Rose 31.3.2010)

    Anne Plumb was interviewed over the phone by Diana, in connection with this research. This probably explains why Anne had a copy of Diana's Position Paper - The only one we know of that survived. (email from Anne Plumb 18.3.2010)

    There was some overlap between the User Survey Steering Group and the research team for this project. The acknowledgments to On Our Own Terms thanks (in order) the steering group - the Sainsbury Centre (and its Services Research team) - individuals who were interviewed etc - and concludes "The research team were: Jan Wallcraft and Angela Sweeney (SCMH); Hilary Hawkin, Robert Jones, Andrew Hughes, Carol Jenkin and Hanif Bobat (sessional interviewers and consultants on data analysis). Carolyn Farr and Jennifer Findlay provided excellent administrative support. Diana Rose originated the project, did the earlier work to set it up and remained available for guidance throughout."


    November 2000 The Hertfordshire Mind Network established ViewPoint "to enable people who use mental health services to get involved in the planning and delivery of these services". It had its first Annual Meeting on 23.11.2004 - website - an archive - website checked 2017


    November 2000 Southwark Mind Newsletter Issue 33. "The Cuckoo Club presents a firework party"


    18.12.2000 Rosemary Moore (Surrey) launched Mental Magazine UK (a website) in memory of her mother Bettina Moore. (archive). Site updates continued until 2003.

    2001

    In England, the first years of the twenty first century were marked by a major set back to the voluntary (unpaid) users' movement with the abolition of Community Health Councils, which had often provided a base and resources for users. (See 11.5.2001 - 25.6.2002 - 2003). This was accompanied, however, by statutory requirements for user consultation and the establishment of a new structure of consultation. (See 11.5.2001). It also saw the expansion of the structure for purchasing advice from user groups. In New Zealand, Mary O'Hagan was appointed as a Mental Health Commissioner. In England, users carried out the most extensive survey of "The user movement in England". Mad Pride provided new perceptions of the movement, presented in opposition to the growth of involvement in establishment activities.

    The first reprint of Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture was by Handsell Publishing (not Spare Change Books). No address given, but "Visit the Handsell website at http://www.keepwell-uk.com - archives . The reprint is a reduced size: 8.2" x 5.7" instead of 9.1" x 6.1". The reprint also has a red, instead of a black, border. The spine design is different and the print used on the back cover is different. Amendments are made to the copyright page to accommodate the changes in publishing history. Otherwise, the book appears the same.

    Nathalie with Sheila Beskine at Survivors History 30.3.2011   'You can heal your life' was the title of the presentation by Nathalie Fonnesu in 2010.

    She spoke of her journey of recovery since being diagnosed with bi polar disorder in 2001. She turned from medication to complementary therapies, educated herself about her condition, learnt to identify triggers and learnt coping strategies.

    "I learnt about myself, accepted who I am, the way I am and accepted my condition, that it was part of me,"


    2001: Service User Research Enterprise (SURE) launched. - website -

    "Dr Diana Rose is Europe's first Senior Lecturer in User-led Research. She is a social scientist and a mental health service user. Before joining the Institute of Psychiatry, she pioneered user-focused research for seven years at a London based charity ."

    2001 "Some reflections on epistemology in relation to user-led research", a paper Diana Rose, was discussed at a Survivor Researcher Network meeting, held at the Mental Health Foundation. (David Armes 2009)

    2001 Start of Jan Wallcraft's research on the mental health service user/survivor movement. Diana Rose had already began work on the survey of the mental health service users movement and had circulated a "Position paper. Background to proposed research on the user movement" in November 2000.

    "Diana Rose set up the project, including a steering group of some key figures in the user movement, before she left to set up SURE at the IoP. I [Angela Sweeney] was then employed on a three month contract to 'hold' and set up the project whilst Jan was finishing off a contract elsewhere. Jan then joined and really got the project going, and I left during the analysis and write up stages after around 13 months on the project. Jim Read was then brought on board as a consultant (I think) to help with the write up." (email from Angela Sweeney 9.3.2010)

    Adam James (2001), Raising our Voices: History of the Voice Hearing Movement. Handsell, United Kingdom

    Making a Scene, a service user led and managed drama group, established in the Eastleigh/Southampton area. External link to website.

    Hackney Patients Council Report for the First Five Years by Andy Martin, Lai Yuen Lung and Tariq Qathafi

    Jeff Walker: "in January 2001 I had a final hospital admission where I was sent home well again, I started to get a bit better then. My recovery started in about January 2001 to the point where in June 2001 I started volunteering for Bristol MIND." See Bristol index

    16.1.2001 First international archive of the ECT Anon website. It remains essentially the same. Present website. The people and locations cited are Keighley, West Yorkshire (Pat Butterfield?) - Una Parker, Pontefract, West Yorkshire and J. Campbell, Sheffield. South Yorkshire.

    23.1.2001 Users' Voices - The perspectives of mental health service users on community and hospital care by Diana Rose. A review of the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health's work in user-focused monitoring

    January 2001 Vicky Nicholls Doing Research Ourselves A Report of the Strategies for Living Research Support Project

    February 2001 Sharon Matthew Research Project into Users Groups and Empowerment Supported by the Strategies for Living Project - Mental Health Foundation

    February 2001 Dale Ashman (in Cumbria) received a MIND "Real Lives, Real People" Award, funded by the Millennium Commission to establish Borderline UK as a national user-led network of people with a Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) diagnosis. Dale had started Borderline UK in 2000 as a personal web site. - First archive 8.3.2001 - Borderline UK adopted its first formal constitution in 2003 -
    website BorderlineUK website
    Borderline Personaliy Disorder is a type of Personality Disorder called Borderline because it was believed to be on the border of psychosis and neurosis. Download Borderline Personality Disorder leaflet.

    12.2.2001 voicesforum.org.uk registered to "Graham Estop, National Voices Forum". Email from Graham 24.3.2014: I originally set up the Voices Forum website at Access Space in Sheffield. Chris Barchard came to Sheffield a few months ago to modernise the site (now http://www.perceptionsforum.org.uk". This was with the help of Access Space following the sad death of Zyra. He stayed with me on his visit here.

    28.2.2001 First UK Survivor Workers' conference held in Manchester. 200 survivor workers attend. Report written by Rose Snow published in 2002. (On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4) - Report in Asylum. Participants included David Crepaz-Keay, Deputy Director Mental Health Media - Angela Linton-Abulu, Chair Black Women's Mental Health Project - Rachel Perkins, Clinical Director Pathfinder Trust - Peter Campbell - Alan Leader

    March 2001 Issue one of aaina - a mental health advocacy newsletter - published in India. First editor Jayasree Kalathil . Later, Bhargavi Davar.

    March 2001 "The role of users of psychiatric services in service development - influence not power" by Peter Campbell, and "Involving users in the development of psychiatric services - no longer an option" by Mike Crawford published in the Psychiatric Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (available online)

    March 2001 Strategies for Living Newsletter Issue 12. Includes "Simba roars - A personal perspective from Premila Trivedi".

    1.3.2001 Making Waves (Nottingham) website first archived. First useful copy 2.2.2006. "Making Waves consists of people with a range of experiences of mental distress. It was developed from a project called Service Users Monitoring Service (SUMS), set up to deliver User Focussed Monitoring in 2000, and became a not for profit limited company in January 2003. Making Waves aims to use people's experiences to transform mental health services, and develop new and innovative ways of supporting people experiencing mental distress. The organisation has extensive experience of providing service evaluation of mental health services and contributing to the development and evaluation of courses including those offered within the School of Nursing at Nottingham University. Making Waves has moved on from simple UFM to be much more engaged in research, and education and training."

    14.3.2001 Fourth Big Alternative Conference organised by Strategies for Living - London Voluntary Sector Resource Centre, 356 Holloway Road, London N7 6PA.

    26.4.2001 National Voices Forum website first archived. First recoverable copy of home page is isssue five, uploaded 26.7.2001

    27.4.2001 Critical Psychiatry Sheffield conference

    11.5.2001 Health and Social Care Act 2001: The NHS is required to consult and involve service users under Section 11 of the Health and Social Care Act 2001. The bill for this Act had sought to abolished Community Health Councils and established successor organisations, but this part was delayed until after the General Election. One or other Act extended Overview and Scrutiny Committees remit to healthcare

    The Working Like Crazy UK Jaunt 2001

    29.5.2001 - 3.5.2001 Northern Ireland - Ballmena, Londonderry, and Belfast

    2.6.2001-4.6.2001 Edinburgh

    5.6.2001 Hull

    7.6.2011 and 8.6.2011 Brighton/Hove

    Working Like Crazy is an acclaimed Canadian film (Skyworks/National Film Board of Canada) which documents the compelling stories of people in Toronto who have been labelled "unemployable", but who now work for firms run by mental health service users.

    After over a year of planning, five people involved in the businesses and in making the film are coming to the UK. Over two weeks in four sites

    They will

  • show the film in a number of venues, to varied audiences
  • participate in discussions on issues the film raises, and
  • make links with UK folk with kindred interests and commitments.

    The group are:

  • Diana Capponi (Coordinator of Ontario Council of Alternative Businesses),
  • Laurie Hall (formerly Director, A-Way Couriers, currently Business Development Consultant, OCAB),
  • Patricia Fowler (Provincial Project Office Coordinator, OCAB),
  • Laura Sky (independent film maker) and
  • Kathryn Church (independent researcher and writer).

    Diana, Laurie, Patricia and Laura will start the Jaunt in Belfast and then join Kathryn in Edinburgh. The five will go on to Hull and Brighton.

    Working Like Crazy is about alternatives to conventional thinking about mental health and illness, community development, and prospects for people living with mental health problems and forging new ways to regain control of their lives.

    Canadian audiences have responded warmly to Working Like Crazy. It has also been previewed widely in the UK by service users, social firms workers, health and social service providers, and policy makers. Their comments demonstrate the film's value for stimulating thought, feeling and debate about issues as pressing here as they are in Canada: community economic development, social inclusion, and development of frameworks and resources to support people with mental health problems in living communities.

    I will be happy to provide fuller information on the Edinburgh events to anyone interested. I can also provide fuller information on the Hull and Northern Ireland events. Tessa Parkes, co-organiser of the Brighton/Hove events is preparing additional information for list members who may be interested in events there. David Glenister is co-organising Hull events; and Mary Chambers and Carol Kelly the Northern Ireland events.

    Stephen Tilley (BA, PhD, RMN)
    Senior Lecturer
    Department of Nursing Studies
    The University of Edinburgh
    40 George Square
    Edinburgh EH8 9LL

  • In June 2001 the Management Committee of Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO) agreed to set up a sub-committee to develop a programme for Black History Month in October 2001. There had been an educational visit to Liverpool in March and on 23.8.2001 members attended the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition in Liverpool.
    In 2004/2005, when
    Power Writers was published, the members of the Black History Committee were: Harry Cumberbatch, Sidney Millin, Philip Morgan, Beverley Clarke, Sadie Parkes, Jennifer Jones, Ruth Riviere, Jean Hall, and Fabian Tompsett.

    6.6.2001 First internet archive of the Camden Mental Health Consortium website

    Friday 29.6.2001 Unexpected death of Mary Barnes, aged 78, in Scotland.

    30.6.2001 Independent on Sunday launched campaign against proposed Mental Health Bill. (Asylum 2002)

    July 2001: International Mad Pride Month)

    9.7.2001 to 13.7.2001
    Royal College of Psychiatrists Annual Meeting in London

    9.7.2001 "Day of Action" - (Asylum 2002, volume 1)

    Saturday 14.7.2001 "Psychology Politics Resistance: Asylum in the 21st Century" (4th annual meeting of PPR) (external link to report) - See also Asylum 2001

    23.7.2001 Archive of On the Side

    23.7.2001 East Berkshire Mind Limited (04257529) Registered Address: 2nd Floor 33 Blagrave Street, Reading, RG1 1PW incorporated. Principal trading address: Building A, Trinity Court, Wokingham Road, Bracknell, RG42 1PL. Founded by Mrs Margaret Irene Smith and Ms Ruth Fawcett. 5-9 people are employed at some time. Steve Gillard was appointed Research and Development Manager and Slough User Led Consultation was established in 2002, Accounts were filed to 2009. 2.2.2010: To stop running Sunrise Club. Formally dissolved 1.9.2014

    July 2001 HAVOCA (Help for Adult Victims of Child Abuse) founded by Jamie Harms, "a fellow survivor of childhood abuse". The first archive of its web site was on 19.8.2011. In 2003 it included a large section on "psychiatric disorders". One section of this has the following colection of links:

    The James Nayler Foundation

    Survivors Speak Out

    Mad Pride

    Mind

    The Mental Health Foundation

    Advocacy and Community On-line Resource Network, or A.C.O.R.N

    UKAN

    National Schizophrenia Fellowship

    Survivors Poetry [No web page - Same address as Survivors Speak Out]

    The Royal College of Psychiatrists

    14.8.2001 News Release: User-Led Research is the way forward for improved services, says the Mental Health Foundation

    September 2001 Getting Involved in Research - a Guide for Consumers by Consumers in NHS Research said that levels of involvement are on a continuum from consultation, through collaboration to consumer control. Often the actual level of involvement lies somewhere on a line between them. It may be important however to be clear about the level at which you are being involved.
    In consultation consumers are asked for their views, which are taken into account but may or may not be used. In collaboration consumers are active partners in the research process, sharing some of the responsibilities. They are seen as sharing control with professionals and their say is given equal weight. User control is where consumers lead the research, often inviting professionals in as consultants. Consumers may be trained.

    September? 2001 Sheffield Conference "Start on Success. Recovery in Action." organised by Handsell Publishing. This was the fourth Annual Conference of Handsell Publishing

    Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO) was a member of the Development Forum responsible Black History Month events in Tower Hamlets.

    On 6.10.2001 and 20.10.2001 THACMHO organised a history walk and exhibition concentrating on sites associated with five African writers who had contact within the East London area now known as Tower Hamlets during the latter part of the 18th century.

    On 12.10.2001 Dorothy Kuya gave a talk and slide presentation on how the Atlantic Slave Trade made Britain Great, focusing on the Liverpool experience.

    SIMBA: let the tiger
roar     Autumn 2001 SIMBA and The Lorrimore partnership - See 13.6.2007 archive

    SIMBA and The Lorrimore entered into a partnership/mentoring arrangement. The main objective of which was to facilitate SIMBA's continued development as an independent black user group. The Lorrimore supported SIMBA by undertaking key financial, advisory and support roles.

    In March 2004 SIMBA had to vacate the Jane Field Room, at the Maudsley. SIMBA's funding was due to cease in March 2005. The Lorrimore already helped to administer SIMBA's bank account, bookkeeping, payment of salaries, provision of supervision, and provided office space. The SIMBA Co-ordinators consulted with some of the SIMBA members about being incorporated into a larger organisation and, in general, they were agreeable to this so long as they maintained the autonomy and integrity of their existing work. In April 2005, SIMBA officially became part of The Lorrimore.

    6.10.2001 Distress Awareness Training Agency (DATA) website. See Survivors History archive. The website was simplified to a single page about November 2004.

    Ireland index 13.11.2001 First Internet Archive of Schizophrenia Ireland website. The first with significant content is 4.2.2002.

    "Relatives Support Groups. Schizophrenia Ireland branches and support groups have meetings once a month where parents and relatives can talk about the problems they have coping with schizophrenia in the family. Information and support are available for all. The groups also arrange for psychiatrists and others to come and give talks from time to time. 31 groups meet in various locations throughout the country. Many of the support groups also arrange social activities for those relatives and friends who have schizophrenia."

    "Groups for people with schizophrenia: PHRENZ Groups are mutual support groups for people who have schizophrenia or similar illnesses. PHRENZ Groups currently meet in Dublin, Mayo, Kerry, Cork, Ennis, Galway and Longford. In addition to the support meetings, additional social activities are arranged for Sunday afternoons and various times during the week, but does depend on the Group. Focus of the groups are structured discussion, and are facilitated by Schizophrenia Ireland. staff. All groups welcome new members."

    22.7.2001 World Federation for Mental Health congress held Vancouver, Canada, with the theme "Respecting Diversity in Mental Health in a Changing World" - Mad Pride march

    27.11.2001 Jack McConnell, new First Minister of Scotland. He promoted Malcolm Chisholm to Minister for Health and Community Care (previously deputy).
    "Malcolm Chisholm was invited to numerous Edinburgh User Forum meetings mainly around the Crisis Centre agenda. So when he then became the minister for Health and Community Care he was very sympathetic to the case that was being made by the mental health service user movement" Keith Maloney CAPS2010 p.94).

    December 2001 Edition of Mental Notes welcoming Mary O'Hagan as a member of the New Zealand Mental Health Commission.

    December 2001 Jeff Walker first employed by Bristol MIND. "Before that I was a volunteer with the organisation and before that I was actually a Bristol MIND service user." He became Director of Bristol Mind, but was made redundant in the spring of 2008. His period is regarded as constructive for service users, in particular because of the way Mind resources were shared with service user groups. See his own statement - Bristol index

     Ireland index Nutters With Attitude - A Benefit CD for Mad Pride - was released in the autumn of 2001.

    The review by Lizzie Walker, postgraduate student, Centre for Disability Studies, Leeds University, preserves the sociological language of the time: "affirmative model" - "contentious" - "oppositional habitus" - "consumerism" and "flawed consumers", for example. Review of Disability Studies, Volume 4, No. 1 - offline copy)

    2002

    "Rethink's media volunteers: Since 2002, Rethink has trained and supported people directly affected by severe mental illness to speak about experiences in the media. In 2007, 37 people told their story in the media through Rethink's media team."

    Shaping Our Lives National User Network became an independent organisation: External link to website - SOLNET: Shaping Our Lives Networking website http://www.solnetwork.org.uk - a national networking website run by and for service user groups to share good practise, information and to empower service user involvement.

    The Research Governance Framework, brought in by he Department of Health in 2002, placed a responsibility for organisations to involve those people who use services and their carers in the evaluation of services. (See ARISE)

    2002 Jason Pegler set up Chipmunkapublishing "The Mental Health Publisher".

    The Hamlet Trust's "Pathways to Policy" programme ran from 2002 to 2005 in eight countries, funded from the UK Big Lottery Fund. Starting in Estonia and Poland, in the second year it expanded to Bosnia, Romania, Armenia and the Kyrgyz Republic. In 2004 and 2005 new forums were launched in India and Albania. An international conference was held in Slovenia in October 2004

    2002 Jan Wallcraft Turning Towards Recovery? - A study of personal narratives of mental health crisis and breakdown, unpublished PhD thesis, South Bank University. - See recovery movement - Jan's paper "Recovery from mental breakdown or illness" - offline copy) appears to relate from about this time.

    1.1.2002 [Sakofa = We can learn from our mistakes] "The development of a national voice for the Black user movement should be facilitated". Breaking the circles of fear recommendation. Patrick Vernon said this influenced the establishment of the Catch A Fiya Network in 2006.

    Ireland index early 2002? Brian Hartnett "My voices and delusions got worse and I began to exist again on a very basic level. I still kept my illness to myself. I had learnt that people were confused and even scared when I spoke of it so I kept it in the closet. I knew very little about it but I did want to meet other people with similar experiences. Through the internet I became aware of Schizophrenia Ireland and I emailed them to see if they ran self-help groups. As it turned out they set up a group in Limerick and I attended from the start. It was a great thing for me to finally meet people with similar experiences but I was surprised that none of the group heard voices. I thought that hearing voices was part of the experience but I soon learnt that was not necessarily the case."

    2.3.2002 Cherry Allfree fifty-four. "The last time I saw Julian was in 2002 he told that Cherry was in hospital with heart trouble and they were waiting to be rehoused". (Frank Bangay email 7.3.2018)

    April 2002 National Institute for Mental Health in England sets up service user/carer 'Experts by Experience' national consultative group. (On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4)

    "The Expert Patients Programme, set up in April 2002, is an NHS-based training programme to help people living with long-term chronic conditions to develop new skills to manage their condition better. Expert patients will include people with long-standing mental health problems such as bipolar disorder." (Mental Health and Social Exclusion, June 2004, page 44)

    April 2002 Report of first Bristol Mind User Focused Monitoring research project. User Focused Survey of Inpatient Services in Three Hospitals - Barrow - Blackberry Hill - Southmead - Archive of first reprint April 2004 - link to website - Bristol index - [Anne-Laure Donskoy was Research Coordinator for the Bristol project. It was "permanently closed" in July 2009]

    Anne-Laure Donskoy: See January 2007 Her plays: See 31.3.2006 - 29.6.2010 and 5.5.2011

    26.4.2002 Critical Psychiatry Birmingham conference

    26.4.2002 From Marian Barnes's talk to a Birmingham Conference:

    If we look at the contemporary movement we can see a wide range of action encompassed with this. Simply listing that we can identify, at least:

    Individual advocacy - both peer and self advocacy in a range of settings, including special hospitals and in the context of care planning.

    User councils on hospital wards and in community settings.

    User run drop ins and support services.

    Mad Pride - celebrating the mad experience through arts and literature.

    Protest action - such as the lobby of parliament against Community Treatment Orders in 2000.

    Forums in which alternative understandings of experiences can be explored and developed - such as Hearing Voices Forums.

    Projects which make links between the experience of mental distress and other experiences of disempowerment and issues of sustainability, such as Ecoworks

    Direct involvement of service users in policy making at local, regional and national level.

    User led research.

    User trainers and consultants.

    We can also identify groups which provide an opportunity for black service users to give voice to their particular experiences, and other sites in which women are supporting other women, or workers who are also users within the mental health system come together.

    Anne O'Donnell was a Management Committee member of CAPS Independent Advocacy for six years from May 2002 to May 2008. During this time she chaired the committee, line managed the CAPS Co- ordinator, represented CAPS at meetings, conferences and other events, developed policy and was a member of the Financial Sub-group. For over five years from May 2008 to August 2013, she was Convenor of the Management Committee, with the same activities. In 2006 - 2007 she studied for a Master's Degree in Community Education at The University of Edinburgh, doing a dissertation on "Mad People's History: the potential use of oral history by a collective advocacy group". [See Oor Mad History (2007), the book (2010), and June 2012. Anne was Chair of the Oor Mad History Steering Group]. Since April 2016 she has been the LEARN Co-ordinator at CAPS. LEARN is the Lothian Education and Recovery Network, which offers free courses to people who live and work in Lothian. (Linkedin)

    21.5.2002 website of Simon Heyes - South West Mental Health User Development Worker. (Date of first archived update). Link to international archive

    29.5.2002 Bristol Hearing Voices Network Self-Help Group launched on with the help of Ron Coleman, following a number of 'consultation' meetings, organised by Tim Dowling. The group met weekly, initially at Methodist Church Hall in Redcliffe, re-locating to Bristol Mind offices in February 2004 (see October 2004), with the support and help of Jeff Walker (Director of Bristol Mind). (external link to history)

    A Summer of Protests Against the Mental Health Bill - See Asylum

    7.6.2002 Earliest internet archive of the National Self Harm Network - By this time its address was Po Box 16190 London NW1 3WW

    25.6.2002 Act that abolished Community Health Councils

    thepsychotic.org.uk

    27.6.2002 David Crepaz-Keay registered the website domain name: thepsychotic.org.uk

    "Madness is an elevated state of mind. Many seek madness but only a minority achieve it. The Psychotic aims to bridge the gap between the incomprehensible world of the sane and the madness that we understand."

    The Psychotic is produced by mad people (a clinical diagnosis is helpful but not essential), if you wish to contribute, please contact us using the links below. All contributions are accepted on the following basis:

    all items copyright The Psychotic

    all contributions will be anonymous

    the anonymity of other contributors must be respected

    all contributions must be funny

    the editors sense of humour is final.

    Lost & Found

    Missing: the survivor movement, last seen in 1997 under a large pile of consultation documents.

    8.9.2002 First archive for http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.thepsychotic.org.uk/

    the psychotic detained

    The psychotic is currently being detained under Section 2 of the 1983 Mental Health Act.

    Please e-mail editorial@thepsychotic.org.uk if you wish to be notified of the psychotic's release.

    July 2002 Open Up: Mental Health Media's Anti-discrimination Project started. External link to website

    30.7.2002 The Regaining Control Conference 2002 - Friends Meeting House, Oxford. Organised by National Voices Forum in conjunction with UK Advocacy Network. (external link)

    September 2002 Strategies for Living Newsletter issue 16 "incorporating news on survivor/user led research, adult mental health and user empowerment". - The first after Alison Faulkner left. In June, Alison had been replaced as "Head of Strategies for Living" by Toby Williamson - See Press Release 23.9.2002. Toby, it said, would also open the Big Alternative Conference in October.

    September 2002 First issue of Planet Advocate described as "News from Advocacy Across London and Beyond" - Now described as "a magazine about Indepenent Advocacy". External link - See Terry Simpson's article in 2007

    September 2002 Southwark Mind Newsletter Issue 55. "Mental Health Alliance National March and Rally"

    14.9.2002 Unofficial march against the Mental Health Bill - Despite cancellation by the Mental Health Alliance which had cancelled the march because, as Paul Farmer said

    "Fears were expressed that the alliance could not guarantee the health and safety of the march participants in the atmosphere of misunderstanding of people with mental health problems in the wake of events in Soham," (quoted BMJ 14.9.2002)

    Ireland index September 2002 The Irish Advocacy Network received funding from the Department of Health and Children.

    23.9.2002/24.9.2002 Induction for the five regional advocates to clarify the job description and discuss their needs.

    Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance
    Melrose House, 69a George Street, Edinburgh EH2 2JG.

    The Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance was established in September 2002. It was set up as a result of the work undertaken by its predecessor, Advocacy 2000, a three-year project set up to look at the needs of the Advocacy Movement in Scotland, and how these could be supported in the future. - website

    22.10.2002 The Mental Health (Scotland) Bill: Patient Advocacy and Patient Rights by Murray Earle - See Act

    THACHMO Power Writers walk October 2002. Harry Cumberbatch far left - FabianTompsett far right.
    Walk started in Aldgate, where
    Phillis Wheatley 's book was published in 1773, proceeded to Petticoat Lane, where Ukawsaw Gronniosaw lived, and ended at the Whitechapel Mission.

    Thursday 3.10.2002 Fifth Big Alternative Conference organised by Strategies for Living - This time in association with Pavilion. [Appears to have been the last one]

    SIMBA: let the tiger
roar     October 2002 Issue three of The Voice of SIMBA: let the tiger roar...

    23.10.2002 Mental Health Alliance lobby of UK Parliament. At this time, the core members of the Alliance were Afiya Trust, BASW, British Psychological Society, Clinical Psychology Centre, CPNA, Critical Psychiatry Network, Ethnic Health Forum North West, GLAD, King's Fund, MACA, Manic Depression Fellowship, Mental Health Foundation, Mind, POPAN, Rethink, Richmond Fellowship, Royal College of Nursing, Royal College of Psychiatrists, SANE, SIRI, Turning Point, UK Federation of Smaller Mental Health Agencies, UKAN, UNISON, United Response, US Net, Voices Forum and Young Minds.

    Thursday 14.11.2002 Mind "Roots to Recovery" Annual Conference at Cardiff included contributions from Mad Pride

    14.12.2002 Suicide of Peter Shaughnessy

    Ireland index 18.12.2002 First meeting of the Steering Committee to oversee the review of legislation and policy for services for people with a mental health problem or a learning disability in Northern Ireland held at the Dunadry Hotel, Templepatrick. The Chair, Professor David Bamford, appointed in October, died before the committee reported and the committee was named the Bamford Committee in his memory. The 20 plus members included "users of mental health services, a representative of carers and a patient advocate". Martha McClelland, Chief Executive of Mind Yourself, was a member of the steering committee and chaired a reference group of users of mental health services. Mind Yourself is a self-help and advocacy project (15 Magazine Street, Londonderry, BT48 6XL, Tel. 02871 263461) which provides peer support to people who experience mental health problems in the Foyle area.

    Just before Christmas 2002 Stronger than Ever: The Report of the First National Conference of Survivor Workers UK, written and edited by Rose Snow. Published: Stockport: Asylum, 2002. 76 pages. 1.1.2003 Review in Psychminded. A copy in the British Library is the only one listed on COPAC.

    Ireland index December 2002 Newsletter of the Irish Advocacy Network

    December 2002 Strategies for Living newsletter issue 17. Includes a report on the Big Alternative Conference by Torsten Shaw from Making Waves

    2003

    Peter Beresford:
    It's Our Lives: A short theory of knowledge, distance and experience
    It's Our Lives by Peter Beresford For a long time it has been argued that key values for finding things out and producing knowledge are being neutral, objective and distant. But what about people who have first hand experience...?

    This small book explores a different way of thinking about knowledge and doing research which seeks to value people's first hand experience and 'experiential knowledge' in order to support their empowerment. It offers a theory to do this... The greater the distance between direct experience and its interpretation, then the more likely resulting knowledge is to be inaccurate, unreliable and distorted

    2003 The Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (CPPIH) established to oversee a new system of Patient and Public Involvement. Community Health Councils cease and Patient and Public Involvement forums began operating at the end of the year - archive of website from which comes this biography:

    David Crepaz-Keay: Mr Crepaz-Keay is Chief Executive of Mental Health Media, an organisation which challenges discrimination around mental health by promoting the voice of mental health service users in all media. Prior to this Mr Crepaz-Keay was a consultant to local NHS Trusts, Social Service Departments and voluntary and academic organisations, offering training and development, and as a writer and lecturer on mental health user involvement. In the voluntary sector he was Chair of Survivors Speak Out, a national service user group, and Vice Chair of Wokingham MIND. Mr Crepaz-Keay declared membership of the Liberal Democrats, no Ministerial appointments held.

    "From 2003 until its demise I was, as a mental health service user, an active participant in the Patient and Public Involvement structure in England, firmly believing this to be a huge legitimised opportunity for all service users. I was also, along with a few hundred other users, a very active, serious critic of the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (CPPIH) - a collection of civil servants who, with their ignorance and incompetence were wrecking what should have been a positive and constructive idea. One of my supporters and a regular correspondent in those years was Des [Desmond Curley] and he made some very useful contributions to my campaign. In addition, one of the vehicles for campaigning against CPPIH was Mental Magazine." (Mike Cox email 28.2.2011)

    2003 Tees and North East Yorkshire NHS Trust established ARISE: Accessible Research Involvement for Service Evaluation, a service user and carer led research and development course, and DEVELOP, a service user and carer led independent research organisation. They sought to "build research capacity among service users and carers". Research commenced in July 2005. developing partners (dp) was founded in March 2007 by service users who had been part of ARISE. - See google transcript of power point presentation: "It all started with the introduction of the Research Governance Framework by the Department of Health in 2002"

    Ireland index 2003 MindFreedom Ireland formed (website history)

    2003 In a manic episode, Joseph Atukunda was taken by the police to Butabika. "On arrival ... I was injected, stripped naked and put in a very cold isolation room. It's a terrible experience, very traumatic, at one time I hallucinated that I was in hell. These isolation rooms don't even have toilet facilities and sometimes you are expected to eat in the same room before it has been cleaned."

    "When I started seeing Dr Onen in 2005, he gave me an insight into my bipolar and I came to understand the depression side of bipolar which I had suffered silently without seeking treatment".

    Annabel Jackson 2003 Doing it ourselves - Learning to challenge social exclusion through voluntary arts Cardiff: Voluntary Arts Network, 2003. 76 pages. Produced by the Department for Education and Skills. Contains a substantial section on Survivors Poetry - external - archive - Offline: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 -

    2003 The Community Engagement and Service User Support (Comensus) project established by the Faculty of Health at the University of Central Lancashire. Led by service users and carers, it aims systematically to enhance service user, carer and community involvement within all academic activity. See Nursing Times report - Book 2010


    "Since 2003 one of the requirements of social work education in the UK is that people with experience of using services or caring for people who are service users are involved in the design, delivery, assessment and management of social work education". (Ann Davis 2008). [Requirements for Social Work Training. Department of Health June 2002. See also Enid Levin 2004 Involving service users and carers in social work education]

    "At Birmingham [University] established partnerships with service users and carers and their organisations have grown to make this requirement a reality. New students meet service users and carers alongside academic staff and practitioners at admission interviews, fitness for practice panels and in the classroom. These colleagues in social work education are enriching student's learning experience and adding through publications and papers to the knowledge base of social work." (Ann Davis 2008).

    "Since then, requirements for user involvement in professional education has extended to psychiatry, medicine and the wide range of health related professions regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council" (Beresford, P. 2016 p.304)

    Winter 2002/2003 Consumers in NHS Research Support Unit News includes a report by Virginia Minogue and Una Parker on an ECT evaluation project, an article on Peer Reviewing by Tina Coldham and an article on Suresearch - At this time the contact for Suresearch was "Amanda Owen-Meehan, SURESearch Administrator, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Birmingham".

    January? 2003 Start of SURGE: Service-User Research Group England - Part of the Mental Health Research Network - See December 2003 description - Guidelines 15.6.2005 - Jan Wallcraft (2005) - Newsletter 1 (Autumn 2005) - Service User Participation in Clinical Trials (March 2006) - Newsletter 2 (Spring 2006) - Newsletter 3 (Summer 2006) - 28.8.2006 to 22.12.2007 archive of website - Winter Bulletin 2006 - missing newsletter (August 2007) - Staff resign December 2007 - Jan Wallcraft explains February 2008 - Relaunched as Service Users in Research in March 2009 - Newsletter 1 - Newsletter 2 -

    Southwark Mind Newsletter

    January 2003 Issue 59. "A conference to look at what men-only hospital acute wards should be like"

    February 2003 Issue 60. "Pete Shaughnessy"

    March 2003 Issue 61. "Launch Party for Soutwark Mind Manifesto" [Saturday 12.4.2003]

    1.2.2003 Mental Fight Club started by Sarah Wheeler.

    Friday 21.2.2003 13:30 to 15:30 "Consumer welcome" session at World Federation for Mental Health Congress in Melbourne. "An excellent opportunity for consumers / users / survivors to come together to meet each other and renew friendships before the scientific program commences." One of the keynote speakers at the Congress was Mary O'Hagan.

    Ireland index At the begining of 2003, Brian Hartnett began advocacy training in Dublin. He had heard of this when Paddy McGowan, then Director of Advocacy with The Irish Advocacy Network, had spoken at the Limerick Schizophrenia Ireland group (Phrenz).

    25.4.2003 Royal Assent for the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003. By section 259:

    (1) Every person with a mental disorder shall have a right of access to independent advocacy; and accordingly it is the duty of- (a) each local authority, in collaboration with the (or each) relevant Health Board; and (b) each Health Board, in collaboration with the (or each) relevant local authority, to secure the availability, to persons in its area who have a mental disorder, of independent advocacy services and to take appropriate steps to ensure that those persons have the opportunity of making use of those services.

    Hector MacKenzie from the Scottish Executive Health Department played a key role in getting advocacy into the Act. He had asked other departments to commit money to a pool for a general advocacy service, but they declined. (Source)

    Spring 2003: In The Naked Bird Watcher, Suzy Johnston told the story of her fall out of sanity and her flight back. Suzy's work is part of the survivors' movement in Scotland.

    March 2003 Strategies for Living Newsletter Issue 18. Includes plans for a joint conference with Down Lisburn Trust in May 2003 on User-led Research in Mental Health.

    March 2003 Launch of Asylum Associates. (Asylum Vol.13 no 4)

    May 2003 The Mental Health Service User Movement in England, by Jan Wallcraft and Michael Bryant.

    June 2003 Strategies for Living Newsletter Issue 19 - Includes proposal from the Survivor Researcher Network for a book This is Survivor Research (eventually published 2009)

    2.6.2003 On Our Own Terms - Users and survivors of mental health services working together for support and change, by Jan Wallcraft with Jim Read and Angela Sweeney.

    On Our Own Terms Steering Group

    Following On Our Own Terms (See 18.7.2003 and 12.9.2003) a "Steering Group" met three times (London 28.10.2004, Manchester 2.12.2004 and Sheffield 23.2.2005) to try and find a way of taking ideas from the report forward. A meeting planned for Bristol on 6.4.2005 did not take place. The Steering Group also had a newsletter, the last two of which were issuesd in April and June 2005. The work of the Steering Group culminated in a general meeting held in London on 29.6.2005 "for a wider group of stakeholders".

    This was funded by the Sainsbury Centre from 2003 to 2005. The Mental Health Foundation (MHF) was then approached for support in accessing funding to carry out the plan agreed by the group. [See early 2006] The Mental Health Foundation and Together then organised a conference in March 2006 in Birmingham, and subsequently pulled together a group of people that became known as the Network Planning Group [See 18.10.2006]

    June 2003 Launch of the Shaping Our Lives National User Network. More than 250 people took part, most of whom were service users. It was also attended by Stephen Ladyman MP, the new Under Secretary of State for Health and Minister for Community. Stephen Ladyman heard delegates concerns about problems with payments for participating in user involvement whilst on state benefits. He asked for a report on the problems.

    Friday 13.6.2003 Critical Psychiatry conference

    18.7.2003 Letter from Jan Wallcraft to people who took part in the research on the mental health service user movement, enclosing a copy of the summary and speaking about the meeting on 12.9.2003. "This meeting will also build on work Beverley [Mills] began last year, under the title of Empowerment National User Forum

    18.7.2003 Launch of Sun International website

    Barbara Taylor 2013 27.7.2003 Barbara Taylor's highly undramatic final session with her psychoanalyst.

    "By the time I left analysis ... I had thirteen notebooks, plus various unbound scribblings. 'An archive,' Cora said when she saw the stack of notebooks." (Taylor, B. 2014, p.11)

    August 2003 "User and carer involvement in mental health services: from rhetoric to science" by E. L. Simpson and A. O. House. An editorial published in the Psychiatric Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists: (available online)

    12.9.2003 Meeting at the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health of "people active in the service user/provider movement" to discuss "taking forward the recommendations" of On Our Own Terms

    Saturday 20.9.2003 Outcry - A Conference of Direct User and Survivor Voices Speaking Out Against Prejudice and Compulsion organised by "Protest Against the Bill" (that is, the draft Mental Health Bill). - external link

    September 2003 Strategies for Living Newsletter Issue 20 devoted to "findings from the user-led research projects investigating different aspects of coping with mental distress, we have been supporting over the last three years"

    Ireland index 10.10.2003 Phrenz of the Media launched on World Mental Health Day by members of the Limerick and Ennis Phrenz support group. Phrenz of the Media has closed but its website continues. Brian Hartnett "Another event I was involved with at the time was the phrenz of the media project. This brought the Limerick and Ennis Schizophrenia Ireland groups together to develop an idea to use the media to help reduce the stigma associated with people with mental health issues. The idea developed into a website with an animated piece depicting a persons suffering from stigma attached to their mental health difficulty and also an audio piece which is an edited conversation held between the members of the Limerick and Ennis groups. The finished project was a great success and I am proud to have been involved with it."

    Ireland index Monday 13.10.2003 - Tuesday 14.10.2003 - Wednesday 15.10.2003
    Second annual conference of the Irish Advocacy Network held in Jackson's Hotel and Leisure Club in Ballybofey, County Donegal

    Monday and Tuesday: Users/Survivors only - Wednesday: Everyone Welcome

    October 2003 Surviving user- led research: reflections on supporting user-led research projects by Vicky Nicholls, S. Wright, R. Waters, and S. Wells published by the Mental Health Foundation. - Link to publications website. This appears to represent the end of the Strategies for Living project.

    November 2003 Mental Health User/Survivor Research in the UK - A Policy Briefing (Extended Version) from the Mental Health Foundation

    10.11.2003 - 11.11.2003 - 12.11.2003 Meetings at Northern College (Wentworth Castle), Barnsley, Yorkshire, that launched Paranoia Network - internal archive - external link - Now the National Paranoia Network. Its website may have been established in summer 2012. "The Paranoia Network was originally launched in 2004. It is run by Peter Bullimore, Kate Crawford and Tori Reeve." "The organisation aims to raise awareness of how disabling paranoia can be and to breakdown social taboos". "The first Paranoia Network in Australia was launched on the 5th April in Perth Australia following the work of the Paranoia Network in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane and Cairns".

    November/December 2003. Celebrating Disability Arts published by Arts Council England as part of their work linked to the European Year of Disabled People

    This publication looks at 30 years of pioneering work in the development of disability arts by companies and individuals. These include Survivors Poetry.

    Sunday 19.11.2003 The Independent on Sunday "After 25 years in Broadmoor the writer Janet Cresswell has been moved to a medium secure unit following a major [Independent on Sunday] campaign. Janet wrote to Joan Hughes from her new address on 23.7.2003. She was in Thornford Park, Crookham Common, Thatcham, Berkshire. Surviving letters came from there until 24.3.2006. Discharged November 2006. On 31.1.2008 Janet wrote to Joan from 128 Cheriton Road, Folkestone, Kent.

    Tuesday 30.12.2003? Life and Living radio started

    Winter 2003/2004 INVOLVE Newsletter: "Patsy Staddon, once a patient in Bristol's specialist alcohol addiction unit, the Robert Smith Clinic, has recently completed her first year of PhD research, 'Women' s Alcohol Dependency:some sociological factors.' Patsy is Lead Researcher on the project, which has a Research Advisory Group of other women who have had problems with alcohol use, and who have recovered using a variety of methods. All are involved on a voluntary basis. The purpose of the research is to identify the particular needs of women who experience such problems, from a service-user perspective."

    2004 survivors' history meetings

    4.1.2004 HUG (Highland Users Group) press release about award of MBE to Graham Morgan in the New Years Honours. BBC News (31.12.2003) "Graham Morgan. Advocacy Project manager, Highland Community Forum. For services to Mental Health in Highland. (Carr Bridge, Perth and Kinross)".

    Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO) organised a reminiscence conference on the history of West Indian Seamen who sailed regularly during the 1950s and 1960s on the Harrison Shipping Lines to the West India Docks.

    February 2004 Bristol Hearing Voices Network Self-Help Group relocated in the Bristol Mind office.

    SIMBA: let the tiger
roar     March 2004 SIMBA required to vacate their base, the Jane Field Room, at the Maudsley. Asked The Lorrimore for support.

    2.3.2004 A Map of Independent Advocacy Across Scotland

    April 2004 First foundation trusts established with Boards of Governors

    April 2004 Colin Hambrook registered Disability Arts Online as a not-for-profit company. He had set it up initially as a channel on ArtsOnline in 2002. He had previously (1994 - 2000) edited DAIL (Disability Arts In London) Magazine

    June 2004 Mental Health and Social Exclusion Social Exclusion Unit Report. (External link to download a copy) "Nearly one-third of respondents... felt that increased involvement of adults with mental health problems in the design and delivery of mental health services would help promote social inclusion".


    July 2004 The Department of Health announced the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health would be abolished in summer 2006 and "stronger, more efficient arrangements will be put in place to provide administrative support and advice to Patients' Forums". The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Miss Melanie Johnson) told the House of Commons that Patient and Public Involvement forums "are the cornerstone of patient and public involvement. They will not be abolished" (22.3.2007 Report)

    In non-monopoly research, would you like to be consulted, to collaborate, or to be in charge? Angela Martin cartoon from INVOLVE Newsletter Summer 2004

    At this time, Steve Gillard was Research and Development Manager for East Berkshire Mind, and suporting Slough User Led Consultation, established in 2002, which enabled people using mental health services to explore issues that are priorities for them.


    Thursday 1.7.2004 to Saturday 3.7.2004. Second International Conference (Imaging Social Movements) of The Social and Cultural Movements Group, at Edge Hill College, UK. - agenda - international archive - original

    Friday 2.7.2004 Mark Cresswell presented a paper on Psychiatric 'Survivor' Knowledge and Testimonies of Selfharm which was published in 2005. In 2005 he also published a paper "Self-Harm 'Survivors' and Psychiatry in England, 1988-1996" (See bibliography - both papers available from this site)

    16.7.2004 Rutland Healing Group Organisation started. In summer 2005 it started to plan a history of mental health project called Heritage Mental Health.

    17.7.2004 to 21.7.2004 Congress of the European Network of (ex-)Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (A joined congress of ENUSP and the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry - WNUSP): "Networking for our Human Rights and Dignity" in Vejle (Denmark)

    19.7.2004 Launch of the PINE (Participation in Nursing Education) project, which aimed to develop a model of service user involvement in curriculum design and contribute to our knowledge about the impact of user involvement on students' learning about mental health. (external link) - Stimulated by Making Waves - Associated with Sharon Roberts and Theo Stickley - Details of training 18.7.2005

    Survivors
    See below
    Wednesday 21.7.2004 The following email was sent to

    Hi Folks

    1.. The story goes something like this - in 1983 members of Glasgow Link attended the Mind annual conference in London. They were somewhat amazed and angry that none of the presentations, seminars or workshops were presented by service users/survivors. So they returned a year later in 1984 and gave the first presentation by service users at a Mind conference.

    They used a slide show and presented their own experience of mental health services in Scotland - interspersed with 6 key topics: policy/services/community care/employment/housing/self-help - each topic was briefly explored and then they presented thier ideas as to what might make things better (their overall description of mental health services in Scotland was 'abysmal').

    They eventually made this presentation into a tape-slide programme and then I copied it to video when working with them in 1985. I found the video in my loft space recently and replayed it. It is a fascinating snapshot of what service users were saying 20 years ago. It still has a real strength and power and much of what they say, particularly on employment and self-help sounds almost current.

    I don't think they've made it into any of the history books about the user/survivor movement, so I thought I'd record their contribution and send it to a few people. Their names: Charlie Reid, Christine Cowan, Elvira Ridley, Thomas 'Tam' Graham, Vince Edkins and John McManus.

    2.. How far have we come in 20 years since then? - survivors/users and allies. A lot has been achieved but there are still enormous resistances.

    I have been trying to get universities to do more but they are such big institutions and so steeped in British paternalism (the places not the people of course) and they seem addicted to knowledge without passion - all mind and no feeling............ I had this recent idea......maybe there should be a subject 'survivor studies - mental health'...this could link to other branches of survivor studies. What do you reckon?

    Cheers

    Thurstine

    Thurstine Basset Consultancy Ltd
    Flat 2, Rutland House
    111 Marine Parade
    Brighton
    BN2 1AT
    phone:01273 691378

    Wednesday 24.7.2004 Sixth informal meeting of the Patient and Public Involvement Forum for Manchester Mental Health and Social Care. Notes show Alan Hartman and Tony Riley present. See also notes 7.9.2004

    Wednesday 24.7.2004 BBC website "How art can ease a troubled mind" includes interview with Alison Faulkner "who has been a psychiatric patient on seven separate occasions over the past seven years".

    MadforArts launched about August 2004 "MadforArts is a web and tv project which aims to encourage people with mental health issues to talk about art that inspires them. This project is by the Community Channel, and is funded by Culture Online, part of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport." "Partners in the project are Mental Health Media and Rethink". archive. David Crepaz-Keay oversaw the bulletin board on the website.

    September 2004 The National BME Mental Health Network (BMEMHN) offically launched The Afiya Trust's annual two day conference in Manchester. It aims to highlight the concerns of black and minority ethnic mental health service users and organisations. (website)

    September 2004 Stronger in Partnership - Involving Service Users and Carers in the design, planning, delivery and evaluation of mental health services in Wales - Policy Implementation Guidance
    "With special thanks to: Peter Munn - Yvonne Parfitt - Jeff Williams - Roy Jones - Lindy Miller - Dr Zoë Thomas - and the many service users and carers involved in developing this guidance."
    Stronger in Partnership 2 said that Stronger in Partnership 1 (as it will now be referred to) was "an idea conceived by a user of mental health services in Wales. They also suggested a 'Charter' and a 'Checklist' be developed which could help commissioners and providers of mental health services reflect and then improve upon their engagement with people who either currently use or have used mental health services in the past."

    20.9.2004 Publication of Peter Barham's Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War - "To have hidden the ex- servicemen I am writing about behind a cloak of anonymity would have implied that there was something discreditable or shameful about their histories" (Barham, P. 2004 p. 9)

    October 2004 Bristol Mind's "work with small user groups - offering advice, free meeting room space and access to office equipment" had been central to its successful bid to the Big Lottery Fund. Regular meetings of small user groups at its offices included the Hearing Voices Group, Southmead Users Network, Bedlam FM, The GLoBe and the Service User Reference Group. The annual report spoke of "plans to develop a package of training and establish a mutual support network between the groups". Bedlam FM was a community radio project. Penny Hayes was involved in its administrative activities for about 18 months from 2005 to September 2006. See Bristol index

    October 2004 Issue 9 of W ~ W (WOMEN WORKING WITH WOMEN) Newsletter of the North West Regional Forum for Women with Social Care and Mental Health Needs (Archived copy)

    8.10.2004 to 10.10.2004 International Mental Health Conference and Policy Review "Rethinking Mental Health Policy: People, Participation and Power" held at Lake Bled, Slovenia. Organised by Hamlet Trust (UK), Mir Srece (Slovenia) and a coalition of grassroots mental health policy organisations from Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Download brochure.

    28.10.2004 First meeting of the On Our Own Terms Steering Group held in London. (minutes)

    16.11.2004 The ethics of survivor research: Guidelines for the ethical conduct of research carried out by mental health service users and survivors by Alison Faulkner published by Polity Press in association with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation at £9.95, but with a free pdf download. [offline]

    "The guidelines are not intended as rules, but as helpful guidance on some of the difficult and important issues to be considered prior to a research project or research training programme. There are helpful hints and suggestions, as well as quotations and ideas reflecting the experience of people who were consulted for the development of the guidelines." (Press release 15.11.2004)

    Survivors Tuesday 30.11.2004 Thurstine Basset and Peter Lindley organised a general meeting about service user history at The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.

    About twenty people attended, including many leading figures in the survivor movement, The meeting was memorable because it centred on a presentation of films:

    1) Peter Lindley showed a film about the 'genetics' movement around the time of World War Two. He made some links between the film and attitudes to people with mental health problems.

    2) Thurstine Basset showed extracts from 'Speaking from Experience' and 'Glasgow Link Tape" Slide Show'

    3) Mel Gunasena showed her video "Evolving Minds - an exploration of the alternatives to psychiatry and the link between psychosis and spirituality" [See external link to interview]

    Anne Beales, who attended the meeting, suggested Together as a base for a possible group. - This was followed up by an email in January 2005

    Together's Service-user involvement Directorate (website) was set up in 2004 "to strengthen the voice of those who use our services and to support service-user involvement nationally". A press release on 3.12.2004 announced Anne Beales as the first Director of Service-user Involvement. "Before joining Together Anne was the Director of the Capital Project Trust based in West Sussex. A qualified Social Worker, she has worked for a number of London Councils. She is also a member of the NIMHE South East Development Centre's Management Board." Anne is an active member of the Service Users History Group. In November 2007 she was awarded an MBE for services to mental health.

    2.12.2004 Second meeting of the On Our Own Terms Steering Group held in Manchester. (minutes)

    13.12.2004 First web archive of cymar.org.uk. The website was archived until 11.4.2006, but with no recorded changes. Only 11.4.2006 archives appear recoverable (not now). See Cymar: the Welsh Association of Mental Health Patients' Councils and Advocacy Schemes.

    2004 and 2005 Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO) published Power Writers and the Struggle Against Slavery - Celebrating five African writers who came to the East End of London in the 18th century - Phillis Wheatley, Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, John Marrant, Olaudah Equiano , Quobna Ottobah Cugoano .

    The original edition was mentioned in the House of Commons on 14.10.2004. This edition was mainly chapters about the five writers. Phillis Wheatley by Sadie Parkes, Ukawsaw Gronniosaw by Fabian Tompsett, John Marrant by Beverley Clarke, Olaudah Equiano by Jennifer Jones and Quobna Ottobah Cuguoano by Harry Cumberbatch.

    The cover of Power Writers and the Struggle Against Slavery was designed by Ruth Reviere who died in Trinidad on 5.9.2005. Ruth also provided some "coping techniques" for dealing with oppressive effects of reading about slavery.
    Philip Morgan wrote a chapter on " London's Black African History and Today"

    A revised edition, published in October 2005 This revised edition includes new material, placing the History of the Black presence in London in the context of the broader African Diaspora.

    2005 survivors' history meetings

    2005: Mark Cresswell: "Self-Harm 'Survivors' and Psychiatry in England, 1988- 1996" Social Theory and Health, 2005, 3, pp 259-285

    website of the Gorbals Link Club - archive

    2005 Brian 'Smiley' Sims [correct spelling] died of lung failure. Many of his songs had been recorded, without instrumental backing, at the Core Arts Studio in Homerton. After his death instrumental backings by Frank Bangay, Dave Russell, Kathy Connors, Mel Green, Big Steve, and Charlie Charman were added for Core Arts CD called "Smiley's Musical Treasure Chest - by Smiley Simms", which also included some poems.

    January 2005 "Information, consent and perceived coercion: patients' perspectives on electroconvulsive therapy" by Diana S. Rose, Til H. Wykes, Jonathan P. Bindman, and Pete S. Fleischmann, published in The British Journal of Psychiatry volume 186: pages 54 - 59. Included a "Declaration of interest" that Diana Rose and Pete Fleischmann had been recipients of ECT and that Jonathan Bindman had administered it. The research was funded by a grant from the Department of Health and three of the researchers were based at Service User Research Enterprise (SURE).

    Survivors See below Friday 14.1.2005 The following email was sent to Peter Campbell - Anne Beales - Anne Cooke - Peter Ryan - Robert Jones - Dave Tombs - Dave Pilgrim - "CAPITAL" - Catherine Jackson - Frank Bangay - Premila Trivedi - Mel Gunasena - Veronica Dewan - Jim Read - Jill Anderson - Theo Stickley - Colin Gell - Terry Simpson - Dominic Walker - David Crepaz-Keay - Barbara Evans - Peter Allen - Alison Clare and Torsten Shaw

    Dear Colleagues

    About 20 people met on November 30th 2004 at the Sainsbury Centre to view and discuss some films/videos from the 1930s/1980s/2000s . We co-ordinated the session which was titled 'What are we going to do about the history of the mental health service user movement?'

    There was a lot of interest in the topic with many potential ideas for collecting together and somehow preserving the history - and also making it accessible. Various people undertook to look through their papers and search through cupboards and lofts to see what they had got.

    Anne Beales, Director of Service User Involvement at MACA, has kindly agree to host a follow-on half-day meeting in April or May of 2005 for all those who are interested in taking this further. Anne will be in touch with us all in due course.

    Please send this email on to any other person who might have an interest.

    Best Wishes for 2005

    Thurstine Basset and Peter Lindley

    Tuesday 25.1.2005 "Waddington Street". First web-recorded meeting of SURF (Service Users Reaching Forward), which brings the users of mental health services in the Durham and Chester-le-Street Primary Care Trust area and their carers together to discuss issues and exchange experiences. Internet archive starts 2.3.2005 - Minutes of a meeting 27.3.2007 - Mark Henderson, chair of SURF, was one of the early members of the management committee of the National Survivor User Network.

    10.1.2005 Celia Hughes died (relatively young) after a long involvement in Survivors Speak Out. Celia had almost singlehandedly kept Survivors Speak Out going after 2000 when all the funding for an office and staff at Diorama in London had been exhausted. Following this, Diorama continued to allow meetings free of charge and Celia organised these.

    9.2.2005 First archive of the Discourse Unit website.

    23.2.2005 Third meeting of the On Our Own Terms Steering Group held in Sheffield. (no minutes available)

    SIMBA: let the tiger
roar     SIMBA's funding due to run out. In April 2005, SIMBA officially became part of The Lorrimore, and its funding was secured for the immediate future. 20.4.2006 details: Organisation Name: SIMBA - Share In Maudsley Black Action - Description: User-led organisation for black mental health services, providing a forum for mutual support and self-help. - Address: 1 Amelia Street, London, SE17 1PY - Telephone 020 7277 3428

    2.3.2005 Cherry Allfree fifty-seven. She died aged 57 in the Lambeth area of London. Her death was registered in March 2005.

    Spring/Summer 2005 Survivors' Poetry website set up

    April 2005 Making a Real Difference Strengthening Service User and Carer Involvement in NIMHE Final report. (External link to download a copy) - See 2006/2007

    Jan Wallcraft: In April 2005 I was still working at the Sainsbury Centre and issuing regular newsletters from the On Our Own Terms project.

    I have the April and June issues of the Newsletter, which were the penultimate and last issues, and a short document about the On Our Own Terms and Beyond General Meeting. Then a notice dated March 2006 of a conference - presumably the Birmingham event (from Together and the Mental Health Foundation).

    Exhibit A: On Our Own Terms Newsletter April 2005

    Contents:

    News on the Mental Health Bill from Jan Wallcraft.
    An update on Direct Payments
    An item about the Shaping Our Lives National User Network

    Exhibit B: On Our Own Terms June 2005

    Contents:

    A flier for the On Our Own Terms general meeting
    An item on Women from Black and Minority Ethnic Groups and Self Injury (From Bristol Crisis Service for Women)
    An item on Service User Survivor Trainers Network (SUSTN)
    An item on the Mental Health Act Commission inviting people to join their service user reference group
    An item on UK Advocacy Network inviting consultation
    An item by a service user about his life and his benefits appeal.

    April and May 2005 Members of the Scottish Recovery Network interviewed 67 people about their personal experiences of recovery. The "story collection days" were in Edinburgh (Friday 15.4,2005) - Glasgow (Friday 22.4.2005) - Aberdeen (Friday 29.4.2009) - Dundee (Friday 6.5.2009) - Dumfries (Friday 13.5.2009) - and Inverness (Friday 20.5.2009). Briefing paper April 2005 - offline copy -

    Since that time "we have been writing up the interviews and creating anonymous recovery story vignettes based on the interviews". 64 stories from the project are on their website and twelve are in a booklet Journeys of Recovery - offline copy - See 2010

    Survivors Text of the notice circulated for the first official meeting
    HISTORY OF THE SERVICE USER/SURVIVOR MOVEMENT
    MENTAL HEALTH
    Thursday 21 April 2005 at 10.30 am

    Venue: MACA, 1st Floor, Lincoln House, 296-302 High Holborn, London WC1V 7JH.

    Programme

    Chair: Thurstine Basset

    10.30: Welcome to MACA - Why is our history important - Anne Beales - Director of Service User Involvement, MACA

    10.45: Survivors Spoke Out - A reprise on 5 key/significant events/happenings for the user/survivor movement over the last 25 years - Peter Campbell

    11.00: Materials for an archive - taking stock of what we've got? - participants in the day are encouraged to bring along a couple of items

    11.30: Short break and viewing of items

    11.45: Planning ahead: Archive/exhibitions/September training conference/other ideas

    12.30: Lunch

    1.30: Close

    N.B. Please contact..........to let us know if you are coming and book your place.

    9.5.2005: Beyond the Water Towers: The Unfinished Revolution in Mental Health Services 1985-2005 edited by Andy Bell and Peter Lindley and published by Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. - (external link to website) . This includes (chapter six) "From Little Acorns - The mental health service user movement" - (original website - archive) by Peter Campbell

    15.6.2005 Publication of Guidance for good practice : service user involvement in the UK Mental Health Research Network by Service User Research Group England (SURGE) - Followed in November by Brief Guide to Involving Mental Health Service Users in Research, by Louise Morgan.

    Survivors HISTORY OF SERVICE USER INVOLVEMENT
    MONDAY 20TH JUNE 2005

    MACA
    1st Floor Lincoln House
    296-302 High Holborn
    London WC1V 7JH

    The agenda for this meeting was

    1pm Lunch then the meeting commences
    2pm Welcome and introduction by Anne Beales, Chair
    2.10pm History of the black service user survivor movement
    3pm Break
    3.20 Terms of reference and plan of action
    4pm Creating our own histories - perhaps two interviews (taped)
    4.30 Plans for September conference exhibition and workshop
    5pm Close

    Jan Wallcraft:

    Exhibit C: General Meeting of On Our Own Terms steering group and wider membership was held on 29th June 2005 (at the Rose Suite, Avonmouth Street London) (Report)

    This marked my handover of the OOOT process to Lisa Haywood as I was leaving SCMH

    Facilitator - Martin Farrell
    Co-ordinator - Lisa Haywood
    Administrator: Beverley Taylor (SCMH)

    Programme:
    Welcome: Lisa Haywood
    Aims: Martin Farrell
    Where the User Movement has come from: Jan Wallcraft
    How a strong and united network of mental health user organisations could help shape our future: Patroc Wood (OOOT Steering Committee)
    Discussion on last ten years and important things to shape our future - small groups
    Recommendations to the OOOT Steering Group on what the network could do and how it should be organised - small groups
    What next? Groups and feedback
    Next steps and review of the meeting - All

    In attendance:
    Peter Relton
    Louise Relton
    Angela Linton - Black Women's Mental Health Project
    Peter Munn - Humunn Resources
    Philip Dixon-Philips - UK Federation of Smaller Mental Health Agencies
    Miranda Telfer - Bruised UK
    Angela Sweeney - IoP
    Robert Jones
    Millie Reid - Southwark Mind
    Chris Wright - Outcry
    Roberta Wetherell - Advocacy Mental Health Action
    David Glenister
    Reg McKenna - Nimhe Eastern
    Patrick Wood - UK Advocacy Network
    Diane Hackney - PAB
    Jim Thompson - Depression Alliance

    Others invited:
    Donna Smart - Borderline UK
    Carey Bamber - NIMHE North West

    From SCMH
    Beverley Taylor
    Lisa Haywood
    Martin Farrell
    Jan Wallcraft
    Chiara Samele
    Andy Bell

    PPeyes June 2005 Mike Llywelyn Cox (Mike Cox) launched his critical website PPeyes - archive

    7.6.2005 Social Perspectives in Mental Health Study Day 7 on "Work for Health? Exploring the issues around employment and mental health". Includes "A survivor's CV" by Raza Griffiths . Dominic Walker (Joint Co-ordinator with Raza) and Rebecca Cowell (Administrator) "were behind scenes trouble shooting IT, catering, car parking and more". (online - archive)

    end of June 2005 David Crepaz-Keay appointed Head of Patient and Public involvement for the Mental Health Foundation

    July 2005 The Department of Health announced that the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health would not be abolished until summer 2007

    July 2005 User Controlled Research - Its meanings and potential - Final Report by Michael Turner and Peter Beresford, published by Shaping Our Lives and the Centre for Citizen Participation, Brunel University. Commissioned by INVOLVE - offline copy - offline summary

    Survivors 18.7.2005 10am-12.30: sub-group at the Sainsbury Centre attended by Dominic Walker, Peter Beresford and Thurstine Basset. Peter Campbell - and Premila Trivedi - unable to attend. Discussed funding, draft manifesto and a possible location for archives.

    Manifesto - we, as a group, aim to:

  • Be committed to learning from history

  • Value and celebrate the contribution that mental health survivors have made and are making to that history

  • Highlight the diversity of survivors in all its expressions

  • Highlight the diversity and creativity of the survivor contribution through personal accounts, writings, poetry, art, music, drama, photography, campaigning, speaking, influencing...

  • Collect, collate and preserve survivor history

  • Make survivor history accessible to all who are interested in or studying mental health

  • Be survivor-led with a steering group made up of a majority of survivors with some interested and co-opted allies

  • Operate as an independent group

    The short, draft, manifesto was extended, after discussion - See January 2006

  • 21.7.2005 National Perceptions Forum Conference in London called 'Discovering Autonomy'. Speakers included Chris Barchard [ex-service user/Perceptions chair], Jan Wallcraft and Rachel Perkins. external link to report

    August 2005 Jewels in the Poundshop CD by Frank Bangay published. Produced at Core Arts.

    Survivors 3.8.2005 DOES SOMETHING NEED ENTERING HERE?

    4.8.2005 Planned meeting to which Lisa Haywood was to take proposal from the On Our Own Terms Steering Group to a meeting with the Mental Health Foundation. This meeting would be between Andrew McCulloch, David Crepaz-Keay, Lisa Haywood, Patrick Wood, Angela Linton, Louise Relton and Peter Relton. [WHAT HAPPENED NEXT??] See Birmingham Conference.

    Thursday 15.9.20055th Annual Mental Health Training and Education Conference - Organised by Pavilion - ORT House Conference Centre, London - Theme: "Putting service users and carers at the heart of mental health training and education". external archive of programme from which conference details have been copied.
    This was the first public appearance of the Survivors History Group. We put on an exhibition and Thurstine Basset and Peter Campbell ran a workshop on teaching history of service user action. Survivors
    About the conference
    This conference follows on from previous mental health training and education conferences in Brighton (2001), Lincoln (2002) and Nottingham (2003 and 2004).

    The conference will examine the role of education and training as an essential bridge between research, policy and practice, with a particular emphasis on the role of service users and carers.This will be done through:

  • presentations which take a broad view of the service user and carer contribution

  • workshop sessions - these will be presentations with discussion of examples of good practice in training and education

  • a concluding session to evaluate the conference, draw together some key messages and set the scene for the 2006 conference.

    Speakers for this event include

  • Roslyn Hope Director, National Workforce Programme, NIMHE
  • Premila Trivedi Independent survivor trainer and Education training advisor, South London and Maudsley NHS Trust
  • Robert Jones Social Inclusion Co-ordinator, Camden and Islington NHS Mental Health and Social Care Trust
  • Professor Peter Ryan Middlesex University/Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health
  • Steven Walker Anglia Polytechnic University and Young Persons Advisory Board

    Who should attend: Higher or further educations lecturers, service users, carers with training/education role, training officers, practioners and managers, commissioners and purchasers of mental health training, commissioners of mental health training and education from workforce development confederations and human resource personnel in the health and social care sector.

    Prices

  • £195.00 + vat for supported rate (unwaged / student)
  • £255.00 + vat for reduced rate (public sector / educational / charitable / NHS / local government / voluntary organisations)
  • £295.00 + vat for full rate (central government and private sector organisations)
  • 8.9.2005 "CPPIH got Mike Cox's critical PPeyes website closed down" - Desmond Curley launches campaign to get "CPPIH Commissioner David Crepaz- Keay's website called the Psychotic closed down as well" See PPI Forum

    22.9.2005 Launch of Hamlet Trust's Pathways to Policy programme in Tirana gives Albanian service users a say in mental health policy - "I have used mental health services for many years, but I've never before had an opportunity to stand up and give my opinion of how those services should be run." (Orieta Kallushi) Survivors

      Late 2005: Publication of Louise Pembroke's Dedication to the seven: hearing voices in dance DVD with 20 page booklet (spiral binding) of background information and ideas for group discussions. Published: London : Mind, 2005. Filmed at Laban, London by Chris Clow; background music by Arvo Part Celia Hughes.
    "My dance is about my experience of living with what is labelled as 'psychosis', specifically hearing voices and seeing visions"

    October 2005 Michael Turner and Peter Beresford Contributing On Equal Terms: Service user involvement and the benefit system, published in 2005 by the Social Care Institute for Excellence - External link to a copy - There was a previous report (unpublished) in 2003.

    Louise Pembroke proposed that INTERVOICE (The International Network for Training, Education and Research into Hearing Voices) should hold its own World Hearing Voices Day.

    Sunday 9.10.2005 Avon Service User Reference Group (SURG) - (Penny Hayes administrator) - World Mental Health Day celebrations.

    Autumn 2005 " Service User Research Group England - Mental Health Research Network" Newsletter 1

    November 2005 Launch of Sailors of the Carribbean education pack. The title was conceived by Philip Morgan as a play on the Disney film series Pirates of the Carribbean, which began in 2003. Sailors of the Caribbean is based on the memories of merchant seaman sailing between Barbados and London's West India Dock in the 1950s and 1960s. It was developed as a result of a collaboration between the Humanities Education Centre, Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Association, the Museum in Docklands and the Museum of London

    Mental health research with service users at
    St George's University of London

    The roles of the researchers and clinicians tend to straddle St George's (University of London) and the South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust.

    So service user researchers employed at St George's University may be researching in hospitals in the local Mental Health Trust.

    Spring 2005 Steve Gillard appointed a research fellow in the Section of Mental Health at St George's, University of London. Part of his task was to support service user involvement in research. The initiative for this aspect came from Sheila Hollins who wanted to see involvement extended from learning disability to mental health. to carry out this part of his remit, Steve Gillard teamed up with Kingsley Norton. About 1.6.2005 Kati Turner, an established 'expert by experience', began working with Steve Gillard as a service user researcher. She had contract for one and a half hours a fortnight as a research assistant. She had been put in contact by Kingsley Norton.

    Now: Division of Population Health Sciences and Education [See Population Health Research Institute]

    organisational change

    First project involved service users, carers and others involved in organisational change. This was research that contributed to Kingsley Norton's Setting up New Services in the NHS: 'Just Add Water! in 2006.

    guidelines

    To support the employment of (two) service users on the organisation of change project, a document known as the "St George's guide to employing service user researchers" was produced in 2006. In 2014 this contributed towards national guidelines.

    self care

    Sometime in 2006 "email arrives from a guy called Steve @sgul asking if anyone interested in colaborating on a self-care in Mental Health study. Luckily my colleague Helen" [Elsey?] "said 'yes' even though we did not know you. Lucy" [Lucy Simons, Southampton University] -

    "In 2007 we received our first grant for a large, national study - Understanding the barriers and facilitators of supporting self-care in Mental Health NHS Trusts"

    June 2007 First service user researchers employed in the School of Nursing and midwifery for Service Delivery and Organsiation project Self-care study. See Gillard ... Simons and others April 2010

    detained patients
    Started 2007? Fullest report May 2012?

    6.4.2009 Does who we are make a difference to the research that we do? Telling stories about the experiences of patients detained under the Mental Health Act presentation by Steve Gillard and Kati Turner. "The Trust wanted to better understand the experiences of patients detained under the Mental Health Act on psychiatric inpatient wards The Trust Board launched a two year 'patient experience' programme, including funding for this research project".

    peer expertise

    2010 Sarah Gibson joined the team

    In 2010 Kati Turner (assisted by Sarah Gibson) set up a group called PEER (Peer Expertise in Education and Research), made up of service users interested in contributing to research and acting as resource for the whole department. (McPin resources website). Shelley Harper part of the team.

    peer workers

    Peer Worker Research Project - See website "The study ran from July 2011 to May 2013"

    1.6.2015 10 years of service user and survivor research at St George's

    2006 survivors' history meetings

    2006: Contesting Psychiatry: Social Movements in Mental Health by Nick Crossley. London: Routledge "Building on his extensive research, the author explores the key social movements and organisations who have contested psychiatry and mental health in the UK between 1950 and 2000" (Google Books extracts)

    CSIP (2006), Reward and Recognition, The principles and practice of service user payment and reimbursement in health and social care. A guide for service providers, service users and carers, Care Services Improvement Partnership, Department of Health, London

    David Armes, 2006. Enablement and Exploitation - The Contradictory Potential of Community Care Policy for British Mental Health Service User/Survivor-led Groups. Unpublished University of Bedfordshire Ph.D. thesis.

    Raise! Mental Health Ltd
    Raising mental health, hope and recovery through training
    A limited company by guarantee, working to the social enterprise model, entirely managed and staffed by service users; from the Manager to the cleaner to the board of directors. Rented its first premises in January 2006
    (website)
    Raise evolved out of a concept originated by Hampshire County Council in 2001 to offer capacity building, (anxiety management, confidence building and assertiveness skills) and a train the trainers course to service users. A pool of mental health service users were trained which prompted the start of Raise. Raise does not receive any funding, but earns all its monies, which are reinvested back into the company, by the training and consultancy services it provides to anyone from any background. (Information from Tracey Butler - Managing Director 29.10.2008)

    January 2006 (England and Wales) "Our society is based on the belief that everyone has a contribution to make and has the right to control their own lives"

    Ireland index January 2006 "A Vision for Change" Report of the Expert Group on Mental Health Policy

    KEY RECOMMENDATIONS OF A VISION FOR CHANGE

  • Involvement of service users and their carers should be a feature of every aspect of service development and delivery.
  • January 2006 Earliest newsletter for Service Users Midlothian preserved on the CAPS websight. The address for SUM is c/o CAPS.

    January 2006 to May 2006: Lisa Haywood "served as executive support at National Mind, providing strategic and policy overview of the national organisation pending the selection of new chief executive." [Richard Brook left Mind in February 2006 - Paul Farmer became Chief Executive of Mind in March 2006] "Five months of executive support at National Mind during the period between the departure of one CEO in 2006 and the arrival of the next in 2007" probably refers to this period.

    January 2006 Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation held its management meeting in St Clement's ITU [Intensive Therapy Unit] ward where the Chair had been admitted.

    Ireland index Friday 13.1.2006 An urgent need for reform of mental health legislation in Ireland is the focus of a lunchtime seminar at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway on Friday, 13th January 2006.

    John McCarthy, the subject of a recent RTE Would You Believe documentary, Diary of a Madman, which chronicled his personal experience of severe mental illness, will deliver a talk on Mental Health, Human Rights and the Law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, Earl's Island at 12.30pm. The Corkman has drawn on his own experience of mental illness which led to suicidal tendencies, extreme loneliness and isolation over a three-year period that saw him admitted to several mental health institutions.

    Although his illness almost cost him his home, his livelihood and even his own life, McCarthy has recovered to become an ardent campaigner for the rights of the mentally ill.

    As part of PRO Cork Advocacy Network, McCarthy has been campaigning for a change in the law regarding the treatment of those with mental health problems, and a change in society which would give people the dignity they deserve. He believes that until the law is changed to end forced incarceration, forced medication and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in the treatment of mentally ill patients, society will not change its attitude towards the issue of mental health.

    McCarthy has been invited as a delegate to a forthcoming United Nations Ad hoc committee hearing on the rights of the disabled. He is a member of MindFreedom, an international organisation that campaigns for the human rights of the mentally ill and has written a book of poetry based on his experiences, Hope on a Rope.

    Died 10.1.2012 aged 61. (source)

    Friday 27.1.2006 First International Holocaust Remembrance Day. - On Saturday 28.1.2006 "Mad Pride World Holocaust Day" Unit, North Wing, Andrew Street, Hackney, E8. 8 till late.

    February 2006 The Department of Health to conclude Patient and Public Involvement review by setting up a Patient and Public Involvement panel

    "the first harm-minimisation conferences for healthcare workers I organised in 2006 and 2007 [funded by Pavilion Publishing]." (Louis Pembroke)

    Early in 2006, Sainsbury Centre funding for On Our Own Terms ran out. On Our Own Terms was engaged in a bid to set up a national network, which was only half-completed. Survivor manager, David Crepaz-Keay of the Mental Health Foundation picked the project up and worked with Anne Beales (a survivor manager at Together) to combine independent plans they had for a network. Their organistions funded the user conference at Birmingham to put the joint plan to a wider group and seek support to go ahead with it. (See Frequently Asked Questions (annonymous, no date)

    8.3.2006 "Our Future Conference" in Birmingham.

    Network Planning Group

    After the our Future Conference, a Network Planning Group met on 20.4.2006 - 3.5.2006 - 31.5.2006 - 18.10.2006 (and other dates)

    "IT'S THE ART OF TIMING AND LEADERSHIP" (Unapproved notes 3.5.2006)

    Wednesday 16.3.2006 and Thursday 17.3.2006 Mind's 60th Anniversary Conference at Harrogate. "Feeling Used? - Making User Involvment Real". "What is service user involvement? - Where does it happen? - Where should it happen?" (Mind website) - Conference flyer - A Report on the SURF website - Report on the National Voices Forum webste - Jan Wallcraft's Power Point on Service User Participation in Clinical Trials -

    30.3.2006 to 1.4.2006 British Psychological Association Annual Conference, Cardiff. Dr Lorraine Bell was awarded a Fellowship for, amongst other things, her work in "the empowerment of mental health service users for two decades". (external link to the Psychologist - pdf of cutting)

    31.3.2006 Anne-Laure Donskoy's first play, Le Blues du Serpsy, performed in Paris. "Set in a virtual space and explored the fear of the other. For this, I got a nurse to play the part of a service user and vice versa."

    3.4.2006 Clare Allan's novel Poppy Shakespeare

    20.4.2006 Meeting of the Network Planning Group (minutes taken by Janine Wood - not available)

    April 2006 "Limiting the Damage" by Louise Pembroke in Mental Health Today

    Spring 2006 " Service User Research Group England - Mental Health Research Network" Newsletter 2 -

    Helen Spandler's Asylum to Action Spring 2006 Asylum to Action Paddington Day Hospital, Therapeutic Communities and Beyond by Helen Spandler. -

    An authorative history of Paddington Day Hospital that recaptures its radical aspirations and relates the therapeutic community movement to the formation of the Mental Patients' Union

    Bibliography

    May 2006: A Good-Practice Guide to Valuing, Respecting and Supporting Service-User Activity published by Together's Directorate of Service-user Involvement

    And, at about the same time: Service-users Together. A guide for involvement , written by Anne Beales - Peter Beresford - Gil Hitchon - Anneke Weston - and Thurstine Basset

    1.5.2006 Catch-A-Fiya Network established on 1st May 2006 by Afiya Trust. Its launch was on 19.1.2007. The following is a copy of its website description.
    website logo (website - archive) -

    "Catch-A-Fiya is a survivor controlled forum for mental health system survivors, funded by the Big Lottery Fund to facilitate positive change for survivors over three years from 2006. Our primary purpose with the project is to establish and maintain contact with survivors from BME communities and support them to learn, teach and grow (personally develop). Marriet [Phiri] and Dominic [Makuvachuma Walker] make up the small project team working in partnerhsip with and with advice from other partners like the African and Caribbean Mental Health Commission (ACMHC), CSIP, Diverse Minds, I & I Project from the Breaking the Circles of Fear project, MELLOW Campaign, The Mental Health Alliance, National Black and Minority Ethnic Mental Health Network (NBMEMHN) and other community/voluntary sector groups. For details of our successes and challenges sofar, please refer to our annual report. The first primary purpose of the project is to establish and maintain contact with survivors from BME communities, motivate and support them to learn, teach and grow (personal development). Our amibition is to find the best ways to talk directly to the inner soul of BME Mental Health service users/survivors. This could be through facilitating peer support, training and self-employment opportunities in partnership with other groups supportive of our cause. Our flexible work plan enables us to engage at many different levels with different degrees of participation of BME service users/survivors. Through this, we aim to address the unacceptable inequalities experienced by, and over representation of, Black and Minority Ethnic people within the mental health system, through setting up a forum for service users/survivors and their carers. Last Updated Thursday, 26 July 2007."


    Patricia Chambers was appointed the Catch-a-Fiya Manager in 2009. Patricia led work on the Dancing To Our Own Tunes recommendations to develop the TOOTS charter.

    2011: Members of the TOOTS steering group - Allison Otana - Dorothy Gould - Ejaeta Egoh - Eleanor Hope - Frank Palma - JanWallcraft - Leroy Simpson - Mary Jagmohan - Melanie Andrew - Millie Reid - Neil Jani - Nick Kennedy - Odi Okaka Oquosa (current chair of Catch-a-Fiya) - Patricia Moore - Sindy Chana - Valerie Bowland   The group was facilitated by Patricia Chambers,Catch-a-Fiya manager (2009-2010),with support from Sarah Yiannoullou,manager of NSUN.


    Catch-a-Fiya, The Afiya Trust, 27-29 Vauxhall Grove, London, SW8 1SY

    Catch-a-Fiya is a black and minority ethnic survivor and carers network enabling national networks and individual survivors and carers to learn, teach and grow under the heading of personal development.

    The network aims to:

  • establish and maintain contact with survivors from black and minority ethnic communities
  • motivate and support survivors to learn, teach and grow as part of their personal development
  • find the best ways to talk directly to the inner soul of black and minority ethnic mental health service users/survivors
  • utilise skills such as facilitating peer support, training and self- employment opportunities in partnership with other groups
  • engage at different practice and policy levels with different degrees of participation from black and minority ethnic service users/survivors

    Contact Odi Oquosa [telephone number and email given]


    2011 [Recovery and Resilience] The Catch-A-Fiya working group members - Dominic Makuvachuma-Walker, Yvonne Christie, Marcia Rice and Liz Abrahams - for the initial thinking behind this project and help with developing the project proposal


  • Decade of Change May 2006 Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO) Decade of Delivery. Celebrating ten years of service led achievement.

    The THACMHO website was developed early in 2007 "in our decade of delivery".


    3.5.2006 Meeting of the Network Planning Group (minutes)

    Wednesday 17.5.2006 Press release that Peter Campbell was Mind's "Diamond Champion"

    31.5.2006 Meeting of the Network Planning Group (minutes)

    May-June 2006 Speak Out Mental Health History Project - Birmingham - Project co-ordinator appointed

    Summer 2006 " Service User Research Group England - Mental Health Research Network" Newsletter 3

    Possibly mid-2006 that Working to Recovery Ltd, was established at 4 The Beehives, Kimany Road, Wormit, Fife, Scotland, DD6 8PD by Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor. The first international archive of its website is 19.1.2007

    " there was a lull - not sure for how long - But Working to Recovery Ltd, now located in Fife,was again holding workshops on these themes in 2006, but with some new topics and facilitators. Spring and Summer workshops 2007 were: Planning for Recovery (Karen Taylor), Risk Assessment and Management Planning (Mike Smith), Making Recovery Happen (Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor) and Talking to Voices, Voice Dialoguing (Dirk Corstens and Rufus May)." (Anne Plumb email 3.9.2009)

    July 2006 The Department of Health announced the replacement of Patient and Public Involvement Forums with Local Involvement Networks (LINks) - See The National Association of LINks Members (NALM)

    July 2006 Launch of new CAPS (Consultation and Advocacy Promotion Service) website - archive. This was associated with a growth of financial resources during 2005 and 2006 - possibly as a consequence of the advocacy provisions of the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act

    26.8.2006 "A Bad Sign For Patient Democracy". First entry on the anonymous Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust UserWatch blog

    4.9.2006 Social enterprise in primary and community care a pamphlet by Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Health, published by the Social Enterprise Coalition. (External link to download)

    "Perhaps the most important benefit the third sector, and social enterprise organisations in particular, can bring is a stronger voice both for the users of services and the staff that deliver them."

    6.9.2006 Mind Coming of Age Conference in Leicester - Joan Hughes history of the 1970s was given at this conference. Peter Campbell explains why Mind consider 2006 an anniversary and the ways in which he agrees.

    6.9.2006 - 7.9.2006 - 8.9.2006 Manchester conference at which CASL: The campaign for the abolition of the schizophrenia label was launched. - See Asylum 2006 - BBC 9.10.2006 - Guardian 9.10.2007 - BBC Manchester 15.10.2007 - Manchester index

    Monday 11,9.2006 First entry on anonymopus blog Who Are They Really Working For? A blog that openly questions who the UK's main Mental Health Charities are really working for.

    14.9.2006 First "World Hearing Voices Day" - External link to Press Release - Internal archive

    about September 2006 Richard Shrubb and Penny Hayes ceased working with SURG on a Bedlam FM plan and decided to work Richard's media consultancies into a business: DIO Media (DIO for Do It Ourselves) DIO Media got signed its first contract in January 2007 and started its website on 24.6.2007 - See Bristol index

    Clare Allan Wednesday 27.9.2006 Clare Allan, a novelist with a history of mental illness, wrote an article "Misplaced Pride" arguing that mental ill health is not something to celebrate. The week after, she began a monthly column "It's my life" for Society Guardian

    September 2006 to August 2007

    National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE) publications - See April 2005

    "NIMHE's excellent involvement tools, Making a Real Difference - http://www.nimhe.csip.org.uk/~mard - were launched... just as the organisation itself was rendered impotent. Instead of real involvement, we get empty rhetoric. (Jan Wallcraft, February 2008)

    September 2006 Good Practice Guidelines for involving mental health service users and carers - 15 pages - external - offline

    October 2006:

    NIMHE Policy Valuing Involvement - Strengthening Service User and Carer Involvement in NIMHE - Policy for involving service users and carers - External - offline

    Minimum Standards for Working with Diverse Groups and Communities - offline

    7.12.2006:

    NIMHE Vison Signing off Valuing Involvement - Strengthening Service User and Carer Involvement in NIMHE - Policy and vision statement on the purpose of involvement. - External. - offline

    January 2007

    Commissioning guidelines: Supporting involvement at a local level by investing in service user and carer led groups - offline

    Leadership Recommendations: Strengthening the support available to people who become involved by making appropriate training available. - offline

    August 2007

    Benefit Conditions & Systems Relating to paid and voluntary service user and carer involvement activity - offline

    Payment and Reimbursement Policy Guidance - offline -

    9.10.2006 Social enterprise seeking pathfinders (external link)

    9.10.2006 World Mental Health Day. The Mad Hatters of Bath shared "experiences, creativity, alternative views, spirituality, political awareness and the sheer exuberance of fluffy insanity in the Abbey Church-yard, Bath".(The Great Escape. The journal of contemporary insanity - issue 1, page 2

    18.10.2006 Meeting in London of group planning a National Network of service users - Report on bruised.uk - The bruised.uk website copies a "Frequently Asked Questions" document which appears authorative, but is not signed.

    November 2006 Janet Cresswell discharged from Thornford Park. She spent Christmas 2006 with her daughter and her family. See Independant on Sunday "Woman whose case inspired 'IoS' campaign tells of her joy at release - and her enduring anger"

    2.11.2006 Two Decades of Change Conference See Report by Marion Clark and Tony Glynn. - "Colin Gell, a mental health service-user activist of many years, approached the Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Mental Health (CEIMH) with the idea of hosting an event that would celebrate 20 years of service-user involvement. He knew that national Mind would be holding such an event but recognised that for a lot of service-users it was not always possible to travel across country. On November 2nd 2006 Suresearch (a network of service-users, carers and academic allies) and CEIMH staff who have themselves been on the receiving end of mental health services, organised an event where service-users and their supporters could come from across the West Midlands area and exchange their experiences, history and hopes for the future." Peter Campbell's history of the 1970s was given at this conference.

    Ireland index 10.11.2006 Launch event of Hearing Voices, Ireland. The initiative was started in October 2006 by Brian Hartnett. website

    14.11.2006 Making User Involvement Work: Supporting Service User Networking and Knowledge by Fran Branfield and Peter Beresford, with contributions from Eamon Andrews, Patricia Chambers, Patsy Staddon, Grace Wise and Bob Williams-Findlay, a study co-ordinated by Shaping Our Lives, published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. (online - this site). Patricia reported from a group of black mental health service users in London on the importance of Service User Networking.

    21.11.2006 First of four ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) funded conferences (programme) - This one in London - next in Manchester - next in Nottingham - Final one in Essex. Andrew Roberts was invited as a reward for running the mental health history timeline (thank you). See also BSA Med Soc Sociology of Mental Health Study Group 2006/2007

    Conference paper 5: Research in Mental Health: Where do we go next? by Diana Rose

    6.12.2006: Lisa Haywood ceased being vice-chair of Mind and left its council of management.

    Haywood Consultancy set up, at some time. (website)
    Lisa Haywood is the "Senior Consultant" of Haywood Consultancy. The others are Kofi Sunu - Jan Wallcraft - Ed Van Hoorn

    11.12.2006 First Annual General Meeting of VOX Voices of Experience formally adopted its Constitution - Link to website - see September 2006 - 31.3.2007

    12.12.2006 Harrington Delisle Cumberbatch invested MBE at Buckingham Palace for services to African Caribbean People with Mental Health Problems in Tower Hamlets, London.

    Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities - Gábor Gombos was the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry delegate in the preparation. Celia Brown, the President of MindFreedom International was also substantially involved. - See World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry Conference 2009 and Daniel Iga Mwesigwa

    Winter 2006 " Service User Research Group England - Mental Health Research Network" Winter Bulletin 2006 -

    2007 survivors' history meetings

    Teaching Mental Health, edited by Theo Stickley and Thurstine Basset, argues that "Service user involvement is seen as a key component of contemporary mental health training and education". Two chapters are about the PINE Project and CAPITAL.

    Birmingham Mental Health History

    National directory of service-user groups put online by Together.

    Valuing Involvement - Strengthening Service User and Carer Involvement in NIMHE - Induction for New CSIP Employees (External link to download a copy)

    CSIP (2007), Local Involvement Networks Explained, Care Services Improvement Partnership, Department of Health, London

    Southwark Mind 2007

    Southwark Mind having won funding for three years to set up a local black and minority ethnic communities project, the members of the project voted to call it Kindred Minds. Initially it had three staff members, one of whom was Renuka Bhakta. Other names associated with Kindred Minds include Humphrey Greaves, Raza Griffiths , and Premila Trivedi (Kindred Minds Theatre Company)

    Renuka Bhakta (2016) positions Kindred Minds between the death of Rocky Bennett (1998) and the Government response (2005) - and Olaseni Lewis (2010) and austerity.

    Early 2007 Personality Plus (P+) formed to promote a more positive view of people with personality disorder (PD) by encouraging and publicising their artistic creativity.

    January 2007 A Guide to User-Focused Monitoring - Setting up and running a project by Nutan Kotecha - Chandra Fowler - Anne-Laure Donskoy - Peter Johnson - Torsten Shaw - and Karen Doherty. Other contributors: Julia von Hausenchild - Krys Farrell - Graham Saxton - Shelley Welton - and Derek Williams. Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.

    19.1.2007 Catch-A-Fiya Network launched "whose primary purpose is to establish and maintain contact with survivors from BME communities and support them to learn, teach and grow (personal development)".

    Ireland index 31.1.2007 The Health Service Executive (HSE), which is responsible for providing Health and Personal Social Services for everyone living in the Republic of Ireland, launched the National Service User Executive (NSUE) for mental health services. Groups involved in the executive include - Schizophrenia Ireland - Aware - BodyWhys - Mental Health Ireland - Grow and the Irish Advocacy Network - (source)

    February 2007 SCIE Research resource 02: Collection of examples of service user and carer participation in systematic reviews. By Sarah Carr and Esther Coren. - weblink

    March 2007 developing partners (dp) set up

    March 2007 SANE's Service User Group established. See website

    22.3.2007 House of Commons Health Committee Third Report: Patient and Public Involvement. (external link to copy)

    Ealing Gazette 30 March 2007: " Joe Kelly, of Beechwood Avenue, Greenford set up Footsteps, which meets at the Lytton nature reserve in Greenford, nine years ago".
    [The "classroom" at the reseve still (2016) hosts a "regular art group" - On 17.4.2007 Footsteps also aquired office space with Ealing Community Voluntary Service at the new Lido Centre. The Footsteps diary included art, music and writing workshops at Litton and office hours at the Lido.

    Mental Health Foundation's Trustees report for the year ending 31.3.2007 said that The Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities Directorate "could", "for the first time" formally draw on the advice of groups consisting both of carers and of people with learning disabilities in developing its priorities. The Patient and Public Involvement Directorate would continue to support the development of the national service user network in partnership with Together. The Scottish Mental Health Foundation would help prepare VoX - the Scottish user network - for independence. (external source). The Foundation spent almost £4 million pounds on "charitable ends" during the year.

    27.4.2007 The Hamlet Trust announced it would close operations in early May. "Hamlet Trust has been instrumental in developing opportunities to promote user involvement in mental health and wellbeing in 20 countries over the last two decades". The website would also close but the ENUSP (European Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry) website "continues to contain the contact details of many of Hamlet's partner organisations".

    May 2007 The National Association of Patients' Forums established to lobby for changes to the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill. It had an elected Steering Committee of 18 people. On 1.4.2008 it became The National Association of LINks Members (NALM).

    June 2007 National Survivor User Network website online - promising an official launch for the organisation in the autumn

    6.6.2007 - 8.6.2007 World Psychiatric Association congress "Coercive Treatment in Psychiatry: A Comprehensive Review" in Dresden, Germany. Judy Chamberlin spoke for 35 minutes on 7.6.2007 - external link to video of her talk

    24.6.2007 Richard Shrubb and Penny Hayes launch the website of DIO Media

    10.7.2007 Mike Cox started his blogspot - archive of July 2007 - "website Just a confirmation of the search for a website host and my website ppeyes will be back on line. The functions are the same - as an independent monitor of how patient and public involvement in health is working with the addition of looking at how LINks will be set up (if they indeed are set up at all).

    This blog will be used for comments on current activities and developments closely allied to the website. As soon as the site is up and running I'll provide a link.

    Activities have extended further since ppeyes was taken off line (because it was criticising a government department - more later) in September 2005. I'm now active in service user campaigning and, being a disabled National Health Service User myself, in disability rights."

    Friday 13.7.2007 Start 2007 Great British Bed Push, organised by Mad Pride, from a mental hospital in Bristol to Queen Square, Bath. "The bed push ... had been organised by Rufus May, the eminent psychologist and service user, to protest against oppressive psychiatry". (Chris Barchard, Perceptions Spring 2008 p.8) - See Bristol index

    Saturday 14.7.2007 Mad Hatters Party - Queen Square Bath. Organised by Clare Crestani, previously vice-chair of Perceptions Forum, with the Mad Hatters of Bath, who are linked to Mad Pride. The Great Escape. The journal of contemporary insanity - issue 1 had an invitation to the party on the back cover. Clare distributed copies "of the magazine... which the Mad Hatters had created which gives an often light- hearted take on what it is to become subject to the mental health system. She told me she had drawn inspiration for the form of this magazine from ... Perceptions (Chris Barchard, Perceptions Spring 2008 p.8)

    "I formed a small charitable group with other friends here in Brighton who have mental health and other disabilities around August 2007 but we did not open the Creative Cafe site until November 2007 (Jill Goble)
    Creative Cafe is set up and run by volunteers with mental health and other disabilities... At our website members have their own webpage to express their creativity, join groups and discussions and make new friends.

    August 2007 Frank Bangay began his series "The Punk Gardener" or "Rambling Garden Blues" in the Big Untidy Magazine, in which he explored seasons and nature in London's parks and botanic gardens.

    August 2007 Stronger in Partnership 2 - Consultation Draft - Involving Service Users and Carers in the design, planning, delivery and evaluation of mental health services in Wales - Policy Implementation Guidance

    August 2007 " Service User Research Group England - Mental Health Research Network" - A newsletter that has not been archived. Also not archived: "The raise! Review - Training Courses 2007"

    Summer? 2007 Gateshead Mental Health Users Forum produced Gateshead Mental Health Directory. The User Run and Self help Services listed are: Agoraphobia Support - Blissful - Gateshead Mental Health User Forum - Gateshead Obsessive Compulsive Support Group - Launchpad - Manic Depressive Awareness North East - Manic Depressive Fellowship - Silver Linings - Wallsend Self Help Group

    Oor
    Mad
    History

    Early August 2007 "A very enthusiastic group of EUF members met ... to share thoughts and ideas and it is clear there is a lot of history "out there" - in our own memories and those of people we know, who have used mental health services over the years. We hope to find ways of discovering this history and sharing it with each other. Maybe one day, there will be "Mad People's History" courses in Edinburgh? Let's make it happen! - Anne O'Donnell"

    September 2007 Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs published by The Icarus Project, New York, USA

    1.9.2007 The National Perceptions Forum celebrated its twenty-first year with a special event when twenty-eight people gathered for an afternoon of socialising, music, food, a DVD, an exhibition of cartoons and poetry, a raffle and a rolling slideshow of art. All the creative work, including the DVD, was the work of members.

    4.9.2007 Death of Terence McLaughlin, editor of Asylum

    14.9.2007 Second "World Hearing Voices Day"

    Oor Mad History ... a community history project, supported by NHS Lothian, celebrating the history of the mental health service user movement in Lothian, Scotland. Address: Oor Mad History, CAPS Independent Advocacy, 5 Cadzow Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5SN. Phone: 0131 538 7177 - Fax: 0131 538 7215 - website

    Oor
    Mad
    History

    1.10.2007 The Drill Hall. CAPS (Consultaton and Advocacy Promotion Service) invited Lothian user groups to meet David Reville, a Canadian mental health service user who has also been a politician and a lawyer and now teaches a univeristy course in Mad People's History at Ryerson University in Toronto. They were inspired by this visit to think about what could be done here about Service User History. A Steering Group successfully put a funding proposal to NHS Lothian and a Community History Worker (Kirsten Maclean) was recruited. Oor Mad History is based with the advocacy project CAPS (Consultaton and Advocacy Promotion Service). It will be a paper based archive, supported by oral history interviews with key activists, documenting the movement in Lothian (Edinburgh, East Lothian, West Lothian and Mid Lothian).

    19.10.2007 Psychological Therapies Network Meeting "Working together with service users, carers and clinical researchers: Opportunities and challenges". The speakers were Peter Bullimore - Martina Kilbride - Liz Pitt - Nicky Lidbetter - Karina Lovell - Diana Rose - Jane Royle. (Download draft programme - external)

    November 2007 Publication of Developing social care: service users driving culture change by the Social Care Institute for Excellence. The steering group included Patricia Chambers from Shaping Our Lives, who was coordinator of Hammersmith and Fulham Black User Group (Bugs)

    6.11.2007 and 7.11.2007 Mind Conference in Poole, Experience and innovation: working in partnership, gives the National Survivor User Network a celebratory launch.

    November 2007 Opening of the London, Sugar and Slavery gallery at the Museum in Docklands. Harry Cumberbatch and Fabian Tomsett from THACMHO's Health through History committee were members of the advisory board.

    6.11.2007 North Tyne World Mental Health Day Press Release

    See background to F.E.E.L. at St Clements Hospital, Bow
    Friends of East End Loonies
banner November 2007 F.E.E.L. - Friends of East End Loonies established by David Kessel and Myra Garrett. Facebook site established autumn 2009 by Nathalie Fonnesu, who also created the FEEL Blog in May 2010. See articles
    Thursday 15.11.2007 Friends of East End Loonies met for the first time, at the cafe of the Whitechapel
    Idea Store. One month later FEEL found a permanent meeting space at LARC (London Action Resource Centre)
    "FEEL is an independent group created by service users, carers and professionals that have been meeting up since November 2007. We meet regularly every third monday of each month at the LARC Centre, 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES with the aim of rising more awareness on the "Psychiatry Cosh" and empower people in finding their best solutions in managing their mental health/distress. Working together GREATER results can be achieved". - Large meetings at Kingsley Hall: See 1.6.2009 - 30.10.2009 - 19.3.2010 - 30.7.2010 - 2011 - 9.11.2012 - June 2015. See Statements on F.E.E.L. Notices .

    Origin of F.E.E.L. explained by Nathalie Fonnesu

    Since 1987 the Friends of St Clements gave the opportunity to St Clements Hospital's patients, their friends and families, as well as hospital staff, to come together and discuss the wards practises in the asylum, debating what was considered beneficial or not. Chaired by the awesome Myra Garrett, some excellent work was done to benefit patients wellbeing. Among the most remarkable it was setting the Social Club in 1992, which employed Hycinth Taylor as coordinator. The creative writing group started publishing its journal in 1995.

    When St. Clements Hospital closed down in 2007, Friends of St Clements eventually carried on its activity at the new mental health unit in Mile End Hospital until 2014 when, due to lack of any interest or cooperation from staff, caused the group to end.

    It is during the time lapse between the resettling of the hospital from St Clements to Mile End, that David originated the idea of a new independent anarchist group to be called Friends of East End Loonies. We met for the first time in November 2007 in the Whitechapel Idea Store cafe. A month later we got our permanent meeting place at LARC, the London Action Resource Centre, where we still meet now every 3rd Monday of each month, bank holidays included. Myra did most of the work in setting up and and keep the group going. I organically grew the online media presence of the group that started by leafleting and word of mouth.

    F.E.E.L. has campaigned against the harsh and compulsive treatments that inpatients receive still today. Extra pressure have been raised on the damages of the meds we are often coerced to take

    about November 2007 SURG The Service User Reference Group, made up of representatives of service user/survivor groups from Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire and Bath and North East Somerset, issued its first newsletter ( Winter 2007/2008) - See March 2008 leaflet and Spring 2008 newsletter - Bristol index

    All the staff that make up the Service User Research Group for England (SURGE), the service user arm of the UK Mental Health Research Network (MHRN),' resigned at the beginning of December. When they left they made a public statement of their reasons. See Jan Wallcraft's statement

    December 2007 Involvement Matters - An Investigation into Mental Health Service User Representation and Involvement in East Anglia by Jane Dunleavy, University Campus Suffolk

    About December 2007: "Who's Caring" added to You Tube (Sussex Rockers "Say NO to Mental Health Discrimination") (No longer available)

    2.12.2007 Death of Tony O'Donnell [probably at 10 Norcott Road, London, N16]. 31.1.2008 Letter from Janet Cresswell (at 128 Cheriton Road, Folkestone) to Joan Hughes "Thank you for your card - sad news about Tony but he did well to survive so long considerimg the life he led when young! I had wondered what his views were on the £18M grant to combat stigma! He'll be missed. I hadn't realised how much older he was. I had a feeling that you were hospitalised as you so often are at this time of year..."

    2008 survivors' history meetings

    March 2008 Flaming Spirit by Sam Shakes was one of a series of 2008 paintings exploring emotions. On 1.1.2008 a death triggered The Cycle Of Life portraying depression, anger, jealousy, love, friendship and joy as concentric circles of colour. In May 2008 she painted A 'Rosy Apple' with a 'Rotten Core' and in June 2008 My 'Colon' or 'Me?' and No Limit.

    February 2008 Four THACMHO members: Harry Cumberbatch - Sidney Millin - Philip Morgan - - and Fabian Tompsett, wrote and compiled African History at the Tower of London

    February 2008 Jan Wallcraft explained in Mental Health Today why she had resigned from the Service User Research Network for England (SURGE) in December 2007 - Read it here.

    Spring 2008 Perceptions - The Magazine of the National Voices Forum issue 29 includes a report on the Mad Hatters Party by Chris Barchard.

    Spring 2008 Autherine Atkinson, Corrine Douglas, David Francis, Mark Laville, Sidney Millin, Juliana Pamfield, Peter Smith and Raymond Smith, publish Lifting Barriers - African and Caribbean people tell stories of struggle, strength and achieving mental health.

    March 2008 With a small grant from the Hamlet Trust, The Survivors History Group employs Philip Ruthen to help develop Survivors' history. Photographed signing the contract are (from left to right), Frank Bangay, survivor poet and gig organiser - Mandy Chainey, Together's Service User Directorate Admin Manager - Peter Campbell, for many years Secretary of Survivor's Speak Out, and also a noted poet - and Phil Ruthen, the newly appointed group researcher who is also a survivor poet.

    Tuesday 1.4.2008 Conference at Essex University on Locating Mental Health Social Movement Organisations - Final ESRC Seminar on Social Science Approaches to the Study of Mental Health - Download programme


    Our conference photograph shows (from left to right) Helen Spandler holding Peter Barham's book on Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War, Philip Ruthen holding Stained Glass, poems from Survivors Poetry by Sally Richards, Peter Barham holding Helen Spandler's book Asylum to Action, and Ron Coleman holding his book Recovery - An Alien Concept.

    The Fragments from our Archives folder was first put together for the Essex Conference.

    1.4.2008 The National Association of LINks Members (NALM) (see above) was launched on April 1st 2008 to coincide with the establishment by the Government of Local Involvement Networks. These bodies will monitor health and social care across England and replace Patients' Forums.

    "For the second time in five years, the DH has abolished PPI organisations across the country and dislocated the monitoring of health care by local people. NALM is concerned that the new, poorly-funded LINks organisations could take years to recruit effective membership and establish themselves.

    NALM is national, member-led organisation which will campaign for effective patient and public involvement (PPI) and greater democracy in health and social care services" (email received 3.4.2008)

    14.5.2008 Philip Morgan interviewed on Madness Radio. "Blacks in the UK are much more likely than white people to be locked up, put on drugs, and mistreated in the mental health system. Social scientist Philip Morgan of London's Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organization (THACMHO) discusses the legacy of slavery, survivor-run advocacy for system change, and an innovative project reclaiming Black identity through historical research". Link to archive of the interview. At the time, Philip had been in THACMHO for about seven years.

    29.5.2008 Survivors History Group conference with historians - London. The picture shows Joan Hughes and Helen Spandler discussing their articles in Asylum, with Mark Cresswell in the foreground and Roger Lansdown in the background. Download report.

    2.6.2008 Registration of Manchester Social Media Community Interest Company 06607534: The Venture Centre 491 Mill Street... by Paul Ripley and others. "specialises in facilitating hard to reach individuals and groups to present promote and positively articulate their views, often through the medium of Digital Video". "Paul Ripley, the founder of MSM, has been working for eight years training and producing videos with people recovering from mental health problems, to create work which advocates their views and issues." "The people MSM employ all have an extensive background in media production, including Channel 4 and the BBC" (archive) - website - "Manchester Social Media, (formerly the "Having a Voice" media project)" (source) - Delivering Race Equality

    Monday 14.7.2008 To celebrate Mad Pride Day 2008, The Mad Hatters of Bath and friends offered free normality testing and biscuits in Bath City Centre. "We found that despite a few outbreaks of normality we were able to assure everybody they were declared globally free of normality, and given a voucher to prove it. Our resident video and editing technician has created a short video which is posted on Youtube as Mad Pride Day Bath 2008."

    15.7.2008 Margaret Noddings and Terry Simpson closed the account of the group she set up in 1987 - then called Leeds Psychiatric Users Action Group

    Thursday 7.8.2008 Meeting of Oor Mad History Steering Group at Stepping Stones. Present were three members of the Living Memory Association (LMA) and two members of CAPS. Apologies were received from members of CAPS, the School of Scottish Studies and East Lothian Involvement Group (ELIG) . Other user groups consulted by Kirsten Maclean included Edinburgh Users Forum (EUF) - Service Users Midlothian SUM - The Mental Health Advocacy Project in West Lothian (MHAP) - The Patients Council, NW Edinburgh Users Group and Seasons.

    30.8.2008 First archive of the Manchester Users Network - current website
    Listed at a Manchester City Council Meeting 21.10.2010:
    Alan Hartman, Chair of the Manchester Users Network
    Alan Valentine, Manchester Users Network
    Paul Reed, Manchester Users Network
    Lois Turner, Manchester Users Network
    [Paul Reed is a survivor journalist who runs the Manchester Users Network website]


    September 2008 Enkuba Yomutima (Heartbeat) tour of Uganda. The three service users, from Newham, Tower Hamlets and Hackney, were Paul Binfield, Taiseer Shelhi, and Kevin Wallace. The coordinator, Cerdic Hall, selected the "Uganda Team" from 60 candidates. Three professionals, Jane, Laura and Jim, also went.

    Through his interaction with this group Joseph Atukunda "developed an idea to start an organisation to support survivors and people living with various mental health disorders in Uganda." A year later, he started an organisation called Jerendipily center, with the help of friends from the UK. The organisation was later renamed Heart Sounds Centre. Daily Monitor 22.4.2016

    The earliest archive of "Heartsounds - The voice of experience-generating mental health , set up "so experience and learning could be shared" was saved on 11.8.2009. It appears to have been organised by Cerdic. New look January 2013. archive 15.3.2016 after which it disappears - but reappears as Butabika Recovery College
    The
    Heartsounds facebook page started on 16.5.2011. It appears to be organised by Joseph. - Current site


    3.9.2008 Society Guardian Mad pride and prejudices

    3.9.2008 Society Guardian online A Crusade for Dignity


    Wednesday 10.9.2008 - Thursday 11.9.2008 - Friday 12.9.2008
    Asylum! Conference and Festival
    Elizabeth Gaskell Campus Manchester Metropolitan University
    Conference co-organised by Asylum Associates, the Discourse Unit - Hearing Voices Network and Paranoia Network, with the participating sponsorship of Campaign Against the Schizophrenia Label, UCLAN Institute for Philosophy, Diversity and Mental Health, PCCS Books, Intervoice and Working to Recovery.

    Wednesday 10.9.2008 - Manchester Survivors History Greater Manchester hosted an open meeting of the Survivors History Group on Recording Our Histories.

    Manchester Workshop Anne Plumb (right) suggested that history is better regarded as a kaleidoscope than a microscope. Every time you look at it, you see a different picture.

    Wednesday 10.9.2008 to Friday 12.9.2008
    Survivors History Exhibition and Information Stall at the
    Asylum conference.

    Manchester Exhibition
    Helen Spencer from Doncaster enjoys Frank Bangay's poems from the Survivor Poetry part of our exhibition. Another part featured a Greater Manchester leaflet and timeline and Anne Plumb's library and archive. In the picture you can see part of our Survivor Voices 1908-2008 timeline display and you can download a copy of the timeline pamphlet. The yellow binder with the spider's web logo contains fragments from our archives.

    Maria Fafalios-Dragonas Maria Fafalios, with Eugenie Georgaca, presented a session on "Community care and user initiatives in Greece". One of the aims of the session was to facilitate contact and networking between Greek and British user groups.

    Maria suggested that we could make use of the Kaleidoscopio - Social Enterprise website. [No longer working]

    The Living with Psychiatric Medication Group has now been running in Leicester since 2006. Grant Paton helps organise and plan the meetings.

    The group was refused speakers from the Drug Companies. In collaboration with the Arts Group, Brightsparks, it collected free drug company mugs and pens and redecorated them to draw attention to what the drug companies are doing.

    Their conference workshop said DON'T MAKE A MUG OUT OF ME!!

    Grant Paton
    Phil Virden was particularly interested in a book by Patrck Holford that Karen Thorpe was reading. Karen, who came to our workhop from Wales, was happy to share it with him. In converstion we found out that Phil is the custodian of Kenneth Wood's papers - Another important archive! Phil Virden and Karen Thorpe
    Brendan Stone Brendan Stone, from Sheffield, was pleased to receive a Survivors History badge.

    During the conference, Brendan showed his short film SCH!ZO as part of a talk about the effects of reconceptualising 'mental illness' as common, if sometimes extreme, human distress.

    The Mad Hatters of Bath At the conclusion of the conference, we were exceedingly pleased to receive a calling card from the mad hatters of Bath. See 9.10.2006 - 13.7.2007 - 14.7.2008
    The Mad Hatters of Bath presented a workshop on Mad Pride Grass Roots Actions at the Asylum conference. "We also showed our new video which continues the theme of madness as a social issue, posted on Youtube on 18.9.2008 as
    Violent and Crazy (a response to a Violent Femmes track)

    2.10.2008: Friends, family and colleagues of Tony Glynn, gathered together at the CEIMH for the official naming of the Glynn Rooms in his memory - external link

    Ireland index 22.10.2008 Launch of National Service User Executive website

    23.10.2008 Jayasree Kalathil spoke at the Survivors History Group. She has established the website survivor-research.com to highlight the perspectives of black and minority ethnic service users and survivors. She told us about the Afiya Trust (1997) and its Catch-A-Fiya Network (19.1.2007). In India, Jayasree came to the service users movement from the women's movement. The link was some work she did on women's narratives of madness (Hyderabad?). She mentioned that, in India, the concept of "service users" always includes carers. Jayasree told us about the Bapu Trust (Centre for Advancing Mental Health) and Aaina - a mental health advocacy newsletter, that she founded in March 2001. Jayasree Kalathil

    Jayasree Kalathil has written a report for NSUN called "dancing to our own tunes (March 2009).

    #   Saturday 25.10.2008 25th Anniversary Celebration of the London Irish Women's Centre included the launch of Irish Lifelines: an anthology of poetry by Irish women survivors in London, edited by Eamer O'Keeffe and published by the London Irish Women's Centre.
    The cover uses abstract photography by Eamer O'Keeffe.

    November 2008 OpenMind feature "Your history in your hands" included the following picture history:
    Prompt poetry gigs
    Conference with historians May 2008
    Peter Street reads to Yvonne Slater
    Helen Spandler with Anne Plumb's display board
    Autumn? 2008 East Lothian Involvement Group ("Our voice on mental health services") established a new website
    Friday 7.11.2008
    Leith, near Edinburgh
    Annual General Meeting of CAPS Consultation and Advocacy Promotion Service
     

    Oor Mad History showed a short clip from Life after Mental Illness, the audio visual presentation first made by members of Glasgow Link Clubs in 1984, using a video of the presentation made by Thurstine Basset. Copies of this video are available from the Survivors History Group. Kirsten Maclean, of Oor Mad History, wrote:

    "The film is a really important part of the history of the User Movement at a UK, Scottish and Lothian level. Two of the people in the film went on to be founding members of Survivors Speak Out. It was Survivors Speak Out members who came up to early meetings in Edinburgh when the movement was getting started here. Through these early meetings Lothians' first user group was formed, Awareness, in 1989."

    Known Scottish archives are amongst the oldest in the movement - dating back to the early 1970s - but the 1970s archives were deposited in England.

    Wednesday 10.12.2008 Publication of Time Together 2 with "The Story of Valerie Argent"

    Saturday 13.12.2008 Death of Joan Hughes.

    2009 survivors' history meetings

    January 2009 New website for the Brighton band Heavy Load launched, featuring, amongst other things, it Stay Up Late Campaign. The band appears to have been active for ten years. The Stay Up Late Campaign toured the country in 2007.

    2009 SUGAR (Service User and Carer Group Advising on Research) (facilitated by Alan Simpson from the School of Health Sciences) established at City University, blog - Twitter - 2014 public engagement award

    January 2009? "The anti recovery movement for failed....well just failed....." group started on Facebook by Sara Stanton. [Page expired]

    7.1.2009 First State of Mind broadcast.

    Survivor Researcher Seminars 2009 - called Researching in Mental Health: Sociological and Service User/Survivor Perspectives - held at the conference centre at the British Library, 96 Euston Road, London 5.30 pm. They were a joint venture of the Survivor Researcher Network and the Sociology of Mental Health Study Group of the British Sociological Association
    This first series of survivor researcher seminars were planned for 12.1.2009 - 2.2.2009 (cancelled) - 2.3.2009 - 6.4.2009 - 11.5.2009 - 1.6.2009

    Monday 12.1.2009 Opening panel session chaired by Peter Beresford: "Barriers and opportunities for involving users in mental health research" British Library. Speakers: George Szmuckler - Diana Rose - Patricia Chambers - Julie Ridley. The presentations of Peter Beresford and Patricia Chambers are available here.

    Monday 2.2.2009 Heavy snow in London cancelled Survivor History and Survivor Researcher Network events

    Thursday 19.2.2009 and Friday 20.2.2009 Asylum Conference - Canterbury "Recovery and Beyond" This two day conference will examine positive ways and constructive methods of coping with various aspects of mental health problems. Themes will include working with self harm, recovery, working with voices, working through paranoia, campaign to abolish the schizophrenia label, working with clients who have experienced childhood sexual abuse, coming off psychiatric medication, understanding dissociation, thriving, personal experience of recovery The conference will explore how people can maintain recovery and move forward and thrive. It will also be the launch of the International Paranoia Network with the long term aim to set up and develop a respite centre in Canterbury

    February 2009 On World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry headedpaper: From Joe Kelly, Beechwood Avenue, Greenford, Middlesex, UK. "Dear Friend and Associate. I have been invited to attend the WNUSP conference in Kampala Uganda Africa 16th to 20th March 2009. The last conference was in Denmark in [2004]. In order to go I need to raise ... about £1,000. The conference will have a strong emphasis on human right. It will be a wonderful opportunity to meet service users and survivors from all over the world. I would be very grateful if you would help by donating a small sum. - Joe downloaded the Program for the conference on 18.2.2009 (Website archive 22.12.2008 no longer has the Program)

    Monday 2.3.2009 afternoon: Survivor History Group at Together: To include a discussion, led by Joanna Moncrieff about her proposed research describing the use of Woodside Villa in the grounds of Warley Hospital, Brentwood for long-term rehabilitation of the last Warley patients

    Monday 2.3.2009 evening: Researching in Mental Health: Sociological and Service User/Survivor Perspectives:

  • "What's in a name? Race, user involvement and 'hard to reach' communities", Jayasree Kalathil, Survivor Research; See abstract and presentation

  • "Effective involvement in mental health services: the role of assertive outreach and the voluntary sector", Rosie Davies, Bristol Mind. See abstract and presentation - page on Bristol Mind website. Assertive outreach services aim to engage people who are "hard to engage". The study tried to find out how services could be easy to access and use.

  • Discussion on Lydia Lewis' paper. 'Politics of Recognition: what can a human rights perspective contribute to understanding users' experiences of involvement in mental health services? (Circulated in advance). See abstract

    March 2009 "Dancing to our own tunes: reassessing black and minority ethnic mental health service user involvement"

  • March 2009 Issue one - of Service Users in Research Newsletter [daughter of SURGE newsletter]

    5.3.2009 Joe Kelly started his blog archive. Joe and Peter Munn were the two people who attended the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry Conference in Kampala in 2009.

    16.3.2009 to 20.3.2009 General Assembly, Kampala, Uganda of WNUSP the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry. Delegates from over 35 countries in Latin America, Asia, Europe and, Africa were greeted by the KiKa Dance troop. The main business of the conference was the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. An aim of the conference was to highlight and energise the emergent Pan African Users and Survivors of Psychiatry by developing networks and relationships between and among psychiatric users in Africa and other parts of the world.
    "Delegates from South Africa, Nepal, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Lebanon, Costa Rica, Peru, Germany, Ireland, Wales, UK, Japan, USA, Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, Uganda, Zambia, Lebanon, and Hungary". (Joe Kelly)

    Joe Kelly's blog: check - Nepal and Gombe archive

    24.3.2009 Launch of "Service Users in Research" (formerly SURGE) - launch agenda - website

    Monday 6.4.2009 Researching in Mental Health: Sociological and Service User/Survivor Perspectives

  • "In-Sight-Bi-polar Self-Management" - Heather Straughan, Centre for Mental Health Recovery, University of Hertfordshire. See abstract

  • "Not ending with the research report: Extending the outcomes into the researched reality" - Jasna Russo, Sandra Hamilton, Berlin, Germany. See abstract

  • Discussion on Steve Gillard and Kati Turner's paper "Does who we are make a difference to the research that we do? Evaluating the impact of service user involvement in mental health research" See abstract and presentation.
  • 29.3.2009 A date given for Camden Mental Health Consortium's contract with Camden Council and Primary Care Trust for the provision of a user involvement service coming to an end. (It appears to have continued until the autumn). I was not renewed.

    Friday 3.4.2009 Whose Voice? Narratives in the history of health and social care. Health History West annual conference at Glenside Campus, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of the West of England, Bristol.

    The 2008 review of the National Health Service by Lord Darzi has been described as a 'once in a generation opportunity' to effect change. The aim of this conference is to consider historical narratives of health and social care from providers, practitioners and consumers across several generations. The conference seeks to encourage papers from all periods and places. To this purpose narratives will encompass a variety of data including written, oral and audiovisual material. This will enable participants to consider the experiences of health and social care before and after the inception of the post 1945 Welfare State.

    Abstracts of no more than 300 words were (deadline 30.11.2008) invited under the following broad themes:

    narratives of service providers
    narratives of practitioners
    narratives of consumers
    narratives from locations of health and social care
    sources and methodology in researching the narratives of health and social care

    18.4.2009 Bobby Baker Peas, Placards and Protests Wellcome Collection, London - weblink

    Friday 24.4.2009

    CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON USER INVOLVEMENT CONFERENCE

    University of Brighton

    This one day conference is an opportunity to take a critical look at the current state of 'user involvement'.

    Morning speakers:

    The right to be heard and co-production (Rachel Hurst) Including a history of disabled people's struggle to be heard and then looking at how governments and statutory authorities implement - or do not implement - this involvement. Will argue the need for users to make alliances with services providers - alliances that are based on co- production, not professionals on top.

    Out in the field, inside in the classroom: older women's involvement in research for policy and practice (Lorna Warren and Judy Robinson) Giving reasons for and approaches to older people's involvement in research before looking at two examples of researching together with older women. Considering practical and ethical issues relating to older women's involvement in research. Raising questions about knowledge which comes from older people's experience as service users and its relationship to knowledge generated by more traditional approaches to academic research


    After lunch speaker

    The British mental health users' movement 1970-2000 (Nick Crossley Tracing the history of the British mental health users'/survivors' movement between 1970 and 2000. It will reflect upon the various problems encountered by the movement and the dynamics which have shaped its evolution.

    Survivors History Group will be sharing a workshop with Rethink on the theme:

    Agents of knowledge - The expression 'agents of knowledge' is one used to suggest the possession of a knowledge that originates through living an experience or experiences. It is a knowledge that has originated from direct experience. Has such a knowledge influenced or challenged conventional 'expert' knowledges?

    Survivors History Group: 'Reclaiming our history; The importance of histories that are studied, archived and written by the participants'

    Rethink 'Growing knowledge rooted in lived experience'

    Survivors History group will organise discussion around five points

    1) Is it important (or how important is it) for service users to be involved in the recording, writing and discussion of the history of service user involvement?

    2) How is the history of service user involvement relevant to a critical assessment of user involvement? Can we learn from history?

    3) What comparisons can be made between the history of mental health service users and other groups of service users?

    4) How much does the involvement of mental health service users owe to ideals of solidarity and how much to "anti-psychiatry"? Is it a crusade for dignity motivated by ideals of citizenship and participation or another way of "contesting psychiatry"?

    5) What are the pros and cons of academics writing the history of action by service users?


    Other themes at the conference are:

    Margins to mainstream - With its beginnings in radical activism, service user involvement has become a mainstream activity in many different settings. What are the consequences of this 'acceptance' and what may this mean for all involved?

    Motivations and expectations - Should people always have to get involved? For those choosing to be involved, what are their reasons? What is involvement intended to achieve? And are expectations met?

    Nothing about us without us - In the 21st Century is service user involvement able to challenge the status quo, resist oppression, and stand- up for social justice?

    Impact and outcomes - Has service user involvement made a difference to services, research, how professionals practice, and to service users' lives?


    Final speakers:

    Our lives, our research (Val Williams and Mouse England) About disabled people doing their own research, and working with others to carry out 'inclusive research'. We will look at examples of the way people with learning disabilities have had a voice and a role to play at different stages of the research process. Mouse England will talk about her own role in research projects; about making priorities for research; about advising research projects; and about being paid to carry out research as part of a team. We will particularly highlight the benefits and tensions of inclusive research.

    This is Survivor Research 5.5.2009 Launch of This is Survivor Research - a six year project.

    external link to publisher's website

    The launch took place in the Council Chamber of Kings College London, Strand, WC2R 2LS.

    early May 2009 website of the Recovery In-Sight Centre - archive. A social enterprise based in Hertfordshire led by Heather Straughan. Team: Jan Wallcraft, Angela Sweeney, Mary Nettle, Rosie Davies, David Armes, Phil Ruthen, Ila Bell, Gwyneth Marmaras, Laurie Davidson, David Serota, Linda Stoneman, Laura Francis, Ruth Redd, Natalya Shieff, Paul Maher, Benit Maru, Karen Thomas (All of whom are "academically trained mental health service users and people who care for service users". Glenn Roberts, Mike Slade and Ruth Badger are professional advisors.

    Summer 2009 Issue two of Service Users in Research Newsletter

    Emergence: Summer 2009 The board of directors of Borderline UK and Personality Plus decided to merge to improve the valuable services, information, training and events. By becoming one constituted organisation we also felt it would be easier for users, carers and professionals to join. The new website, http://www.emergenceplus.org.uk, now hosts all the information previously available on the Borderline UK and Personality Plus sites. But we have also added new, exciting sections as well a member only area.

    Monday 11.5.2009 Researching in Mental Health: Sociological and Service User/Survivor Perspectives:

  • "How Personality Became Treatable", Martyn Pickersgill, Institute for Science and Society, University of Nottingham. See abstract

  • "Women, alcohol and mental health: achieving authenticity in a hostile environment", Patsy Staddon, University of Plymouth. See abstract and presentation

  • Monday 1.6.2009 F.E.E.L. event "Humane Therapy Not Drug Tyranny - A meeting to discuss the abuses within the psychiatric system, what a humane asylum [would] be like and how do we get from one to the other. Rufus May, who has appeared on TV in the documentary called "The Doctor Who Hears Voices", will help to start the discussion. Bring your strategies". Kingsley Hall. Over 80 people attended, and Frank Bangay provided poetry.

    Monday 1.6.2009 Researching in Mental Health: Sociological and Service User/Survivor Perspectives

  • A symbolic interactionist approach to mental health outreach', Jim Roe and Hugh Middleton, University of Nottingham. See abstract and presentation

  • "Using personal experiences to understand other people's mental health recovery", S. Ajayi, J. Billsborough, T. Bowyer, P. Brown, A. Faulkner, A. Hicks, J. Larsen, P. Mailey, R. Sayers, R. Smith; Rethink. See abstract and presentation

  • Discussion of the seminar series and ways forward.
  • 10.6.2009 Newsletter issued by Stand to Reason

    Sara Stanton August and September 2009 Summer Schools of Activism and Advocacy organised by Sara Stanton, Training and Advocacy Manager with the Service User Involvement Directorate at Together. - FREE TRAINING FOR PEOPLE WITH PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF MENTAL DISTRESS / USING MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES - Download pdf

    "There here is democratic consensus between users/survivors on very few topics, but most certainly two immediately spring to mind - the MHA when we campaigned against the introduction of Community Treatment Orders and now with proposed changes to disability benefits. Both these topics have overwhelming support." Louise Pembroke email 19.8.2009

    Friday 4.9.2009 Frank Bangay and Sophie Mirrel performed at Core Arts

    The CD Songs, Poems and Payers, published August 2009, features the Crazy Clock in Battersea Park - removed 1966 - that Frank knew as a child.

    Sophie began performing with Frank in 2005. She sings on tracks one: Morning Prayer - seven: Dear Lord - 12: Travelling Prayer - 13: He was a Poet - and 16: Evening Prayer.

    Frank and Sophie

    September 2009 After leaving his post (2004 - 2009) as Logistics Coordinator for the International Medical Corps, Joseph Atukunda set up a pay-to-use internet cafe with a couple of computers in his home in Ave Maria Road, Nsambya, Kampala. People with a personal experience of mental distress were not charged. Eventually the group was called Heartsounds Uganda, and registered as a Community Based Organisation. The centre was built up to having eight computers and a library over 300 books. From this base, a peer support programme was created. Heart Sounds Guest House is a private guest house run by Joseph's wife.

    Wednesday 9.9.2009 Mental Health Training and Education conference. Hendon Campus, Middlesex University. See leaflet Themes: Reflecting on the education and training outcomes of the mental health modernisation agenda - successes and setbacks - Taking stock of where we find ourselves today - Looking to the future for mental health education and training in 2009 and beyond. Thursday 10.9.2009 Second day of Mental Health Training and Education conference.

    Wednesday's events included a Survivors History Group led workshop - from 2 pm to 3.15 pm - on "Teaching and learning about our history" - download handout - The teaching and learning tools distiibuted can be found above

    Campaign to Abolish Borderline Personality Disorder Label (CABL)
    "A new survivor led campaign is born" (Email from Louise Pembroke Wednesday 16.9.2009) - See personality disorder

    17.9.2009 and 18.9.2009. First World Hearing Voices Congress took place in Maastricht, Netherlands. See Intervoice

    October 2009 Southwark Mind Newsletter Issue 112. "Save Lives Save Amar Deep wins the Sheila McKechnie Campaigning Award for Social Justice". Back cover: "Soutwark Mind's Kindred Minds project presents our 2nd Annual Conference" on Tuesday 29.9.2009.

    Friday 30.10.2009 F.E.E.L. event. Humane Therapy - Not Drug Tyranny - A meeting to discuss the abuses within the psychiatric system, what would a humane asylum be like and how do we get from one to the other? Dr Bob Johnson, author of Unsafe at any Dose on psychiatric drugs. (See website). Speakers from Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO) who believe the best way to achieve mental health is through a strong, vibrant and caring community. - Kingsley Hall. 6.30 - Doors open for 7pm start.

    4.11.2009 and 5.11.2009 "Recovery a Human Right" Conference in Cork.

    Thursday 26.11.2009
    International Service User Research Seminar

    Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Mental Health at Birmingham University.
    2.00 to 3.30 pm

    go to the Centre of
Excellence in Interdisciplinary
Mental Health at Birmingham University

    Jan Wallcraft to speak on "Mental health research - Is involvement possible or should we do it ourselves?"

    Service users have argued repeatedly that involvement must lead to genuine change. Yet much mental health research is based on traditional assumptions and methodologies which we were not involved in creating, and cannot effectively challenge. We are now invited to get involved, but are we wasting our time? What has been the response of service users to this dilemma?

    This presentation will give some examples of different responses- from working one's way to the top of the professional tree at one extreme, to going off and doing radically alternative research at the other, and summarise the value of different approaches, setting out for debate some thoughts about the likelihood of making a real difference to the underlying biomedical agenda.

    2010 survivors' history meetings

    Advocacy Update - Issue one - January 2010
    European Network of
(ex)Users and Survivors of Psychiatry The latest in activism and community news from ENUSP, the European Network of (ex)Users and Survivors of Psychiatry

  • How can we join forces across Europe?
  • The battle to ban forced electroshock in Ireland
  • Survivor of psychiatry confronts EU suicide conference
  • Why the UN disability rights convention matters
  • Reviews, profiles, art and a call for YOUR input
  • March 2010 Relaunch of Asylum magazine
    First issue is a special issue on paranoia.
    Paranoia Defined by Professor Alec Jenner
    Herstory of Madness by Eleanor Longden
    Notes on Paranoia by Peter H. Donnelly
    The Panic Diaries by Jacqui Orr reviewed by Paul Henderson
    My Experience of Paranoia by Peter Bullimore
    Explaining Paranoia: Psychoanalysis vs Psychiatry by Phil Virden
    Rethinking 'Paranoia' by Dave Harper
    Paranoia and Recovery by Angelina Cosgrove
    Human Approaches to Paranoia by Peter Bullimore
    The Paranoia Group by Peter Bullimore
    Psychology and the War on Terror (2): Psychological Warfare and Paranoia by Dave Harper
    Not as scary as it looks! - Click the cover for friendly information
    Asylum's Manchester launch event:
    Wednesday 3.3.2010 6.00-7.30
    Lecture Theatre T0.03, MMU John Dalton Building, Oxford Road (opposite the BBC).
    Will include discussion about the history and revival of Asylum, about the paranoia special issue, and about the formation of the Asylum supporter network. There will be guest speakers active in the struggle for democratic psychiatry.

    Asylum's London launch event:
    Monday 15.3.2010 6.00-8.00pm
    University of East London, Stratford campus
    Room AE 1.01 (in the Arthur Edwards building)
    Speakers:
    Jacqui Dillon (Chair of the Hearing Voices Network, and member of editorial collective)
    Dave Harper (member of editorial collective)
    Dr Joanna Moncrieff (author of The Myth of the Chemical Cure)
    Gail Hornstein (author of Agnes' Jacket: A psychologist's search for the meanings of madness)
    Admission: email Dave Harper



    Survivor Researcher Seminars Birmingham to be held at the Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Mental Health at the University of Birmingham.

    Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom

    Organised with Suresearch.

    The first Birmingham survivor researcher seminar, planned for 17.3.2010, was postponed to 14.9.2010 - In April, a seminar on Suresearch was held. In May the seminar focused on Northern Ireland - In June on Scotland - An additional seminar in on suicide was also held - In July the focus was on health through history.

    Friday 19.3.2010 F.E.E.L. event

    A Pageant of Survivor History - Mental patients in poetry, story and song from the 18th to 21st century

    Tower Hamlets' Africans in the 18th century - Voices from the asylums - Mary Barnes and Kingsley Hall - Eric Irwin and Mental Patients Union - Frank Bangay of Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression - Peter Campbell of Survivors Speak Out - David Kessel of Hackney Union of Mental Patients - Sophie Mirrell from Core Arts - Irish women survivors in London.

    Followed by an open mike session for people to talk about their own experiences. Organised jointly with Survivors History Group. Kingsley Hall, Powis Rd, London, E3 3HJ (map) - 6.30 - Doors open for 7pm start.

    "The Pageant organised in partnership with the Survivors History Group last March, which included valuable contributions of members from THACMHO (Tower Hamlets African Caribbean Mental Health Organisation) and Core Arts among others," (F.E.E.L. Newsletter)

    Wednesday 21.4.2010 evening: Survivor Researcher Seminar Birmingham:

    Tenth anniversary of SureSearch - Download flyer -

    Thursday 6.5.2010 Your say. Your Day at Toynbee Hall. This was reported in The Tower Hamlets Mental Health Support User Network Newsletter in August 2010. offline copy

    11.5.2010 Online version of Service User and Carer Involvement in Health and Social Care Education, by Michael McKeown, Lisa Malihi-Shoja and Soo Downe, of Comensus, published. Print version published July 2010. Book "launched" at Preston in April 2011

    The Comensus project co-ordinate user and carer involvement in the School of Health.at the University of Central Lancashire. It is user and carer run.

    Wednesday 12.5.2010 evening: Survivor Researcher Seminar Birmingham:

    Collaborative research in Northern Ireland

    Damien Kavanagh, Martin Daly, Moira Harper, Gavin Davidson and Jim Campbell spoke on "Using peer researchers to explore service user and carer views on compulsory admission to hospital".

    Three patient and carer advocates and two academics were involved in a qualitative study designed to elicit the views of six service users and six carers covering three phases associated with compulsory admission: initial assessment leading to hospitalization; care and treatment in hospital and, finally, discharge processes.

    The findings indicate that service providers are not attentive enough to key process (information giving, communication, therapeutic relationships) that would improve the experiences and human rights of service users and carers.

    An additional outcome of the study was a reflexive account of how the research process affected researchers' views about compulsory care and treatment.

    Download flyer -

    Wednesday 16.6.2010 evening: Survivor Researcher Seminar Birmingham:

    Building collaborative research in Scotland

    Jim McGill visited from Oor Mad History, a Community History Project celebrating the history of the mental health service user movement in Lothian.

    Tracy Laird and Rob McKay talked about a study by service users based at the Mental Health Foundation in Scotland on the new Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act, undertaken in partnership with academics.

    The journey towards establishing a mental health service user research network in Scotland and some of the challenges and constraints of this were explored.

    Download flyer -

    22.6.2010 from 4.00-6.00pm: A Conversation with David Webb - Thinking about Suicide. David's PhD on suicide, at Victoria University in Melbourne (Australia), completed in 2006, is believed to be the first by someone who has attempted suicide. He argues that suicide is best understood as a crisis of the self rather than the consequence of some notional mental illness and that suicidology neglects the critical first-person knowledge of those who know suicidal feelings from the inside. He further argues that spiritual ways of knowing the self have much to contribute to our understanding of suicide.

    More recently, David has been active in mental health human rights because he believes coercive mental health laws actually contribute to the suicide toll. In addition to this seminar, David will be a keynote speaker at the International Network for Philosophy and Psychiatry (INPP) conference in Manchester

    See books

    Download flyer -

    28.6.2010 to 30.6.2010 Real People: The Self in Mental Health and Social Care 13th International Conference, International Network for Philosophy and Psychiatry (INPP) - Manchester, UK - The International School for Communities, Rights and Inclusion (ISCRI), University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) in association with European Network of (ex-) Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (ENUSP) - flyer

    "I heard that Szasz didn't go down very well with the audience and was stroppy and rude when questioned. Apparently, he said he didn't believe in "welfarism" and that people can make up psychiatric conditions to avoid working and shouldn't drain the taxpayers. He said that the disability movement is a "parody of itself" and that work is the answer. He didn't wish to discuss iatrogenic damage "
    "That about sums it up, Lou. As to rudeness - and arrogance - Peter Lehmann began a question by acknowledging that Szasz had been influential in Germany - a visit had led to the introduction of Advance Directives but, for some reason, Szasz was having none of it. He constantly and loudly interupted Peter with objections I couldn't make sense of. Anne."

    29.6.2010 Anne-Laure Donskoy's second play, Socrates' Café performed at the conference. "About the silence surrounding what has been done to psychiatric patients for centuries, other approaches, the user movement etc. and in which I take psychiatry and philosophers to task...". "Here Socrates is loosely based on Montesquieu's Persian Letters, which is a satirical and funny exchange of letters between travelling Persians in the 18th century".

    Wednesday 14.7.2010: Survivor Researcher Seminar Birmingham
    Sankofa bird Health through History

    A seminar discussing the value of history for those of us who have suffered severe mental distress featured Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation - Survivors Speak Out and Self Harm: Perspectives From Personal Experience

    Material relevant to this seminar can be downloaded from the leaflets and downloads section and from the bibliographies of Louise Pembroke - Peter Campbell - Mark Cresswell

    Barbara Norden introduced the theme of self-identity and wellbeing and Philip Morgan outlined the "The Health Through History Initiative" in Tower Hamlets, and its range of publications (which were on sale). Andrew Roberts outlined the work of Peter Campbell, and others, tracking the rise and decline of "Survivors Speak Out" since 1986, and suggested five discussion points relating to survivor well-being. Mark Cresswell outlined the achievements of activists like Louise Pembroke who pioneered a different approach to self-harm. These presentations were made to stimulate discussion, which was the main focus of the meeting. An illustrated report is being made and will be available here later.

    download flyer - the minibus

    Wednesday 28.7.2010 Survivors History Group London meeting. "The highlight ... Nelsy's presentation of her insights into wellbeing from a lifetime of struggle in both Colombia and Britain. In this we learnt about her life's ups and severe downs, and how she has successfully/healthily dealt with her "mental health". She mentioned how she dealt with hearing voices issues and has learnt to release anger and fear... Nelsy is considering transferring her portable presentation, which at the moment is written on posters, into a PowerPoint presentation in order to make it easily to share with other service users and groups." Nelsy distributed a five page paper "General Conclusions to My Self Research Therapy Process" (London, December 2008) and a feedback form relating to her talk (London, April 2007). We planned to discuss how to integrate individual history with collective history in our web archive.

    Friday 30.7.2010 F.E.E.L. event. Joanna Moncrieff (psychiatrist) speaks on The Myth of the Chemical Cure. Kingsley Hall. 6.30 - Doors open for 7pm start. - flyer - Read the report

    Saturday 24.7.2010 the Mad Pride "public meeting to discuss and plan direct action to oppose and condemn government's attack on welfare benefits for those labelled mentally ill or otherwise disabled" at Pogo Cafe, 76 Clarence Road, Hackney, London, E5 8HB at 4pm

    Nottingham University 25.8.2010 to 27.8.2010

    The (third) "Qualitative Methods in Mental Health Research" conference, includes a

    a paper on History as research method: The Survivors History Group

    dog wagging tail
    Duncan Purslow has written a report of the Nottingham Conference which is available on the Suresearch web.

    Participants included Elizabeth Ettore on autoethnography."

    19.8.2010 Edna Conlan MBE died. Funeral 10.9.2010, Crown Hill Crematorium. Milton Keynes 11am.

    Tuesday 31.8.2010 Olaseni Lewis, known as Seni to his family and friends, admitted as voluntary patient to the Bethlem Royal Hospital, Croydon. A few hours after admission, he was restrained by up to 11 policemen. He died on 4.9.2010 He had been admitted early in the evening of Tuesday 31 August 2010 and had been at the hospital for only a few hours before this incident occurred.

    14.9.2010 afternoon Survivor Researcher Seminar Birmingham: Affective community space and Everyday Risk - Gerry Bennison, Dawn Talbot and Jo Warner This research evolved from discussions between Dawn Talbot and Gerry Bennison, who are service user consultants, and Jo Warner, an academic at Kent University. Gerry and Dawn had identified a cafe that they use as an important focus for many local people, including those who are regular users of health and social care services. Using qualitative interviews the findings identifies a number of important themes relating to social relationships, social space, crisis and risk. In addition to presenting the study and its findings the co-researchers will reflect on how their relationships and identities evolved over time. - Download flyer

    This is the seminar postponed from Wednesday 17.3.2010 evening: - original flyer

    28.9.2010 to 1.10.2010 a draft statement was formulated by the European Network of Users and Survivors in Psychiatry at the general assembly in Thessaloniki in September 2010 calling for Truth and Reconciliation in Psychiatry, demanding an apology and reparations for the damage done by psychiatry since 1850

    Friday 1.10.2010 Oor Mad History launch of book and exhibition "Oor Mad History - A Community History of the Lothian Mental Health Service User Movement". - download flyer - more details

    4.10.2010 Self-harm and borderline personality disorder Exploring practice, controversy and common ground. download flyer

    13.10.2010 flyer

    16.10.2010 Irren-Offensive 30 Jahre [Irren-Offensive 30 years]

    In the Georg von Rauch-Haus in Berlin- Kreuzberg

    Premiere of the documentary: "30 years mad offensive 1980-2010" and

    launch of the book: Irren-Offensive 30 Jahre Kampf für die Unteilbarkeit der Menschenrechte [Irren-Offensive 30 years fighting for the indivisibility of human rights"

    November 2010 Towards a Social Model of Madness and Distress? Exploring What Service Users Say by Peter Beresford - Mary Nettle - and Rebecca Perring.

    From Mark at Mad Pride on 9.10.2010

    Hi Folks,

    This is to announce a survivor Anti-cuts Demo to be held at Speakers corner, Hyde Park (Marble Arch) from 1.00pm on Oct 26th 2010. Meet at the cafe at the corner of the park just there. A little further away is Hyde Park Corner tube - and it is a nice walk up the park - following Park Lane to Marble Arch.

    This will be our first demo for several years, but as I think you will agree the issue of Cuts is so terrifying that we could not stand by and do nothing.

    So let's show 'em we ain't gonna take this lying down.

    All survivors (and allies) are welcome to join up and post on the new Forum at http://madpride.org.uk/forum/

    And do come on the day if you can!

    More details will be at http://madpride.org.uk/forum/

    Do join up and post.

    Enquiries: 07542 459321 07766 124472

    yours madpridemark

    Survivor Resistance Network

    First meeting called as the "Self Defence Coalition" on 2.12.2010

    Statement of Demands circulated 7.1.2011

    First meeting as Survivor Resistance Network Wednesday 12.1.2011. flyer

    Mental Health Resistance Network

    The Mental Health Resistance Network

    Post by Mark Roberts Friday 22.4.2011:

    The Mental Health Resistance Network is a new group which came out of the action group working on the Mad Pride October 2010 demo. It does not have any borders but is for the moment mainly centred around South and East London.

    It is very closely linked with Mad Pride UK and the South East London cell and other organizations like Creative Routes, Cooltan Arts and Southwark MIND. And it works alongside anti-cuts groups from the Disabled People's movement as a whole.

    Members are organizing and attending demos which in Spring 2011 are coming up thick and fast. The Network is also looking at challenging the Work Capability Assessments via meetings with politicians and perhaps through the Courts.

    There will be a website soon at http://mentalhealthresistance.org

    January 2011: From Vicki Ensor, Policy and Campaigns Assistant, Mind.
    "We have been doing a lot of work on the Work Capability Assessment (as well as other benefits issues) at Mind and we have included some tips for people when taking the test on the website. [Follow this link]. Best of luck with the Survivor Resistance Network"

    December 2010 A difficult Annual General Meeting of the National Perceptions Forum was followed (a year later) by Rethink withdrawing its funding. Perceptions continued as an autonomous organisation. Chris Andrew's account of the meeting [appears to be lost] - questionnaire (archive) - The New Charter for Perceptions Forum 2012

    December 2010 Southwark Mind Newsletter Issue 115. New phone number. Inside "The return of the newsletter, which will be every two months". Front cover (contents) "Users resisting welfare benefits cuts! - How to survive back to work interviews! - Kindred Minds Back with a Vengeance! - News, opinions, poetry and more!"

    2011 survivors' history meetings

    Jessica Emily was almost two months old and her parents, Angela Sweeney and James, were kept very busy.

    Jessie received a much more positive reception than the Survivor History Group's Annual Reports, with comments like "bless her" from Jan Wallcraft and "Ahwww she's beautiful - Thanks for sharing" from Anne Beales. The men were a little more restrained "Thank you" from Duncan Purslow in Birmingham and Andrew Roberts wondered if she would be eating vegan when she comes to meetings.

    Friends of East End Loonies (FEEL) wish everyone a great 2011. (photo by Nathalie Fonnesu)

    Back: Sarah Barratt, David Kessel, Brian Harvey, Charleen Elliott

    Front: Myra Garrett, Joe Kelly, Nathalie Fonnesu

    Abstract - possible 20 minute session at "Health Rights in Global Historical Perspective" Conference

    Human rights and mental health: A Survivors history perspective.

    Users and Survivors of psychiatry, both historically and today, routinely have taken-for-granted human rights removed from them through the deprivation of their liberty and enforced psychiatric treatment.

    At the end of the twentieth century, the Richardson Report (1999) concluded that it was unfair to discriminate against people with a diagnosis of mental illness and suggested an Act for all those who refused treatment. Instead of this, the Government chose to amend the previous Act and introduce a Mental Capacity Act which includes an amendment on the deprivation of liberty. The Code of Practice for the Act contains a statement of guiding principles which are a starting point for understanding the current picture of human rights in mental health.

    Mary Nettle is a User/Survivor of mental health services. She has been active in the Survivors' movement since 1987 and is also a Mental Health Commissioner, inspecting institutions which deprive people of their liberty under the Mental Health Act 1983. From this dual perspective, she believes that our human rights can only be protected if services and Users/Survivors themselves are aware that they have rights and know how to use them. Yet to do this requires a knowledge of complex and diverse documents and agencies such as the Fundamental Rights Agency in Vienna, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities and the [United Kingdom] Equality Act (2010). In her proposed talk, she will describe and discuss how these agencies and documents can be used by us to protect our fragile human rights.

    21.3.2011 Dragon Cafe started by Sarah Wheeler.
    website - earliest internet archive 4.10.2012
    Mental Fight Club's latest creative project: a relaxing café and imaginative space, open to all, located in the Crypt of St George the Martyr Church, opposite Borough tube station.
    We will be open every Monday from Monday 1 October 2012, 10 am - 8 pm, sometimes later, for a year.
    See SURE - video March 2013

    Wednesday 30.3.2011 A London meeting of the Survivors History Group.

    Tuesday, 19 April 2011 Kirsten Maclean's report on two busy weeks with "our Toronto visitors": David Reville and Kathryn Church, lecturers in the School of Disability Studies at Ryerson University. CAPS and and the Edinburgh Users Forum had kept in touch with Toronto since the Working Like Crazy visit in 2001.

    David Reville visited Edinburgh in 2007 to talk about Mad People's History "because we had been thinking about how we remembered our own history". He also talked about the Psychiatric Survivors' Archive in Toronto.

    This visit, David gave a talk called Working with Mental Illness. How people with mental health problems are denied opportunities for meaningful work, using his own story to illustrate his points.

    On Saturday, David, Kathryn, OMH and some Edinburgh people met with two academics from the University of Central Lancaster in Preston.

    Helen Spandler teaches on social work courses and Mick McKeown teaches on nursing courses. Mick also works with Comensus involving service users, carers and the wider community in the training and development of health and social care students. Helen is on the editorial group of Asylum magazine and also works with Survivor History Group.

    And now we are busy thinking up ideas of what to do for the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival and for UK Disability History Month. Busy, busy, busy!

    Tuesday 12.4.2011 - 9am to beyond 4pm Unsettling Relations: Mad Activism and Academia An all day seminar at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston. Speakers and participants include survivors. Main speakers David Reville and Kathryn Church from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. Discussants include Anne Plumb from the Survivors History Group and William Park from the Preston Mental Health Service User Forum.

    Demand for places has forced the organisers to move the Preston meeting to a larger hall. It will now take place in the Salvation Army Building, Harrington Street, which is next to the University of Central Lancashire Harrington Car Park - But there is very little parking available.

    4pm Comensus book "launch"

    new flyer with larger venue - old flyer. David Reville: "From an entry point in the School of Disability Studies, I am eight years into a project aimed at creating a space for mad studies at Ryerson University".


    Thursday 14.4.2011 - 5 to 6.30pm Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at Manchester University. Mental Health Group meeting on "Survivors Histories". An evening of discussion about the construction of survivor histories in Canada, Scotland, Lancashire, London and elsewhere. Andrew Roberts will provide an
    online presentation placing the contributions of Anne Plumb (Lancashire) and David Reville (Canada) in context and leads up to an analysis of what the Survivor History Group does, finishing with a very brief introduction to the recent pathbreaking work of the Oor Mad History project in Scotland. Val Harrington (organiser) says

    "The Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine which is on second floor of the Simon Building, University of Manchester, Brunswick Street. At the moment I am not 100% sure which room its going to be in (it will depend whether the building works going on on the corridor above will be finished for the day) so I am suggesting people come to room 2.58 where they can pick up refreshments (available from about 4.45) and I will put up a notice and directions to the room. The corridor is more or less opposite you when you come out of the lift."

    Monday 25.4.2011 "Patch has a Bath" video. Patch is the patron saint (or something like that) of the Survivors History Group.

    30.4.2011 Spring 2011 Newsletter issued by Stand to Reason

    May 2011 Southwark Mind Newsletter Issue 117. "Poly Styrene 1957-2011"

    May 2011 Kindred Minds news (Other half of above)

    5.5.2011 Anne-Laure Donskoy's Le Café de Socrate performed in Brussels

    16.5.2011 Heartsounds Uganda Facebook started.

    26.5.2011 "Interview with Joseph Atukunda - service user and Coordinator of Heartsounds Uganda" written by Lorette Wilson on behalf of the Butabika Link. copied from Facebook

    2.6.2011 Heartsounds Uganda had 50 users. It visited them at home and at work to give our support. In this picture, Deo from Ruaga shaves Joseph Atukunda. Deo wanted to buy this saloon in which he is working and "as soon as we get our grant from the micro finance support centre for our savings and credit society, we shall give him a loan to buy it."

    The Office of Heartsounds Uganda in Nsambya. Facebook 4.6.2011.

    Community Archives and
Heritage Group

    Wednesday 22.6.2011 The Community Archives and Heritage Group (CAHG) Fifth national conference at University College London, Department of Information Studies

    The members of the Survivors History Group who attended were: Anne Plumb - Sheila Beskine - Fabian Tompsett - Philip Morgan - Andrew Roberts.

    Conference report on CAHG website

    July 2011
    to
    May 2013
    Peer
    Worker
    Research
    Project

    Friday 19.8.2011 Mental Health Resistance Network meeting. details

    2.9.2011 and 3.9.2011 Auf der Suche nach dem Rosengarten: Echte Alternativen zur Psychiatrie umsetzen. Searching for a Rose Garden. Fostering Real Alternatives to Psychiatry. International conference at: Tagungshaus Alte Feuerwache, Axel-Springer-Straße 40-41 10969 Berlin.
    searching roses
    Photo by Tünya Özdemir
    The highlight of a series of events this year called "Survivor Control: The Rights and Self- help Opportunities of People with Psychiatric Experience" organized by the Berlin Association for Protection against Psychiatric Violence. "Searching for a Rose Garden will introduce and explore alternatives to psychiatry that build upon survivors? knowledge". flyer - programme - registration - German book about - 2012 - English book about - 2016
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "We do not accept the answer delivered famously by the psychiatrist character in Joanne Greenberg's semi-autobiographical novel that we were not 'promised a rose garden'. The determination of the global user/survivor movement to grow and safeguard this garden ourselves is evident in its extraordinary negotiation efforts leading to the adoption of the United Nations Convention of the Righs of People with Disabilities in 2006" Welcome not to conference written by Debra Shulkes on behalf of the European Network of (ex)Users and Survivors of Psychiatry, quoted in 2016 book, p.5.

    7.10.2011 Edgar Broughton live in Peckham - A Benefit for the Mental Health Resistance Network Fighting the benefit cuts. Report in The Big Untidy Magazine by Frank Bangay.

    Saturday 19.11.2011 Critical perspectives on user involvement, edited by Marian Barnes and Phil Cotterell, to be published. flyer

    2012 survivors' history meetings

    1.1.2012 Disability Rights UK was formed through a unification of Disability Alliance, Radar and National Centre for Independent Living. To be a disabled people's organisation), led by a disabled person, and run and controlled by disabled people, with disabled people making up at least three-quarters of its board members. Liz Sayce, previously chief executive of RADAR, appointed Chief Executive, with Sue Bott, previously Director of the National Centre for Independent Living as director of development,

    February 2012 Independent advocacy for people with mental disorder College Report of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, London. Replacing the February 1999 report on Patient Advocacy. The Working Group was chaired by Debbie Mountain, Consultant Psychiatrist in Rehabilitation at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. The first meeting was co-chaired by Shaun McNeil, a former member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Service Users' Recovery Forum. Other members were [Ms] Shaben Begum, Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance - Tom Brown, Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist, Western Infirmary, Glasgow - [Ms] Collette Byrne, Action for Advocacy - Juliet Dunmur, Royal College of Psychiatrists' Carers' Forum - Stephen Gharbaou, Royal College of Psychiatrists' Service Users' Recovery Forum - [Dr] May McCann, Royal College of Psychiatrists' Carers' Forum - [Mr] Alan Meudell, Service User Member of the Executive Committee of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Wales - and Graham Morgan, Royal College of Psychiatrists Service Users' Recovery Forum. Administrative support to the group was provided by Karen Addie, Policy Manager, Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland.

    Spring/Summer 2012: Daryl Brown publicises his case outside the Wellcome Collection, with the exhibition "Brains: The mind as matter (29 March to 17 June 2012)" in the background.

    Daryl's posters show "Bedlam then" and "Bedlam now".

    In August 2016 Daryl made his first entry on his blog "Sterilising the mentally ill - Is not a side effect".

    See Daryl's lifestory

    March 2012 A personal tribute to Jackie Leven in the The Big Untidy Magazine by Frank Bangay.

    April 2012 Auf der Suche nach dem Rosengarten: Echte Alternativen zur Psychiatrie umsetzen - Projectdocumentation -

    Available - online, but with some contributions restricted to the printed documentation. - offline copy.

    searching roses
    Content preparation, organisation and editing of contributions by Viola Balzer, Stefan Tanning, Sabine Dick, Iris Hölling, Jens Supermark, Jasna Russo, Kerstin Tiedtke and Kathrin Vogel. Project Coordination by Jasna Russo - . English contributions translated into German by Theresa Milow. Photo Gallery by Nana Runte

    27.5.2012 Mike Cox's first posting for the Survivors History Group

    May 2012: Anne Beales in Australia for The Victorian Mental Health Consumer Workforce Conference 2012 in Melbourne on Monday 28.5.2012 and Tuesday 29.5.2012 - Keynote speech

    In June 2012, the Australian Minister for Mental Health and Ageing appointed a Consumer Reference Group (CRG) to work with the Mental Health Council of Australia (MHCA) to establish a new national peak consumer organisation. The role of the CRG is to ensure that the diverse voices and views of people with a lived experience of mental illness are central in informing the establishment and future of the new organisation. (website)

    June 2012 Survvors History Group visit to Oor Mad History in Edinburgh by Anne Plumb (Greater Manchester), Graham Estop (Sheffield), Carole Murray (Sussex) and Andrew Roberts (London).

    We had two days of intensive meetings (Friday 22.6.2012 and Saturday 23.6.2012) on "Oor Mad History". We met Anne O'Donnell, Be Morris, Colin Murray, Jimmy Osborne, Kirsten Maclean, Lin Clarke, Mark Gallagher, Renata Edge, Rhian Thompson, Steve Tilley and others and have since been put in contact with Adrienne Sinclair Chalmers.

    Kirsten Maclean is the Community History Worker for Oor Mad History, a project based at CAPs (The Consultation and Advocacy Promotion Service). The Oor Mad History archive was developed from the papers accumulated in the CAPs basement since 1991. Papers from other groups have been added to it. We visited this archive and Carole took photographs of us opening the filing cabinets and reading what was in the folders. Anne O'Donnell is the Chair of Oor Mad History Steering group.

    Be Morris, Colin Murray, Adrienne Sinclair Chalmers, Anne O'Donnell and Jimmy Osborne feature strongly in the book Oor Mad History: A Community History of the Lothian Mental Health Service User Movement.

    Oor Mad History covers the Lothians, the area of Scotland around Edinburgh. Rhian Thompson works for the Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance, established in May 2002 to represent all of Scotland. Through her we have been put in contact with Barbara Brown who is recording a history of independent advocacy in Scotland over the last 30 years - That is, from the 1980s onwards. The Alliance calls this project "Inspiring Our Future". In some respects, survivor movement history in Scotland is more advanced than in Canada or England. It is, however, patchy in that it is strong in the Lothians compared to other parts of Scotland. The Inspiring Our Future Project should redress this balance.

    [Inspiring Our Future appears to have become Towards the Future. A brief history of advocacy in Scotland]

    Mark Gallagher is starting a Ph.D at Glasgow University in relation to the recording, documenting and theorising of the history of Scottish service user activism since the Scottish Union of Mental Patients (SUMP) in the early 1970s. The SUMP archives were deposited by its founder, Thomas Ritchie (born about 1928) with Andrew Roberts. We were able to make three fairly good photocopies of these: one for Mark, another to be kept in the Oor Mad History archive in Edinburgh, and the third to make further photocopying easier.

    Steve Tilley is a nurse academic connected to the University of Edinburgh. His links with David Reville and Kathryn Church from the School of Disability Studies at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, have been important in establishing Oor Mad History and he is now helping the Survivors History Group as well.

    Lin Clarke and Renata Edge did a lot to make us welcome. Renata took some of us on an tour of the sights of Edinburgh.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------- Chrys Muirhead, Convener of Peer Support Fife, was unable to attend the Edinburgh meetings, but keeps in contact. You will find a great deal of informative information on the Peer Support Fife website

    Kyoko Hamasima returned to Japan earlier this year and was, therefore, unable to come to Edinburgh with us. She will, however, be reading about the visit with interest. We hope we can keep in contact.

    Saturday 16.6.2012 Launch of Howard Mingham - Waters of the Night - Complete Poems 1974-84, with Forewords by Ken Worpole and David Kessel and Afterword by Alan Morrison at the News from Nowhere Club at the Epicentre, Leytonstone. "An autumn re-launch [was] currently being arranged by patron Ken Worpole".

    Community Archives and
Heritage Group

    Wednesday 27.6.2012 The Community Archives and Heritage Group (CAHG) Sixth national conference

    23.7.2012 A posting by Mike Cox for the Survivors History Group

    27.9.2012 The launch of the first issue of The Newhaven Journeyman, edited by Alastair Kemp

    September to December 2012 Joseph Atukunda spent three months in Britain hosted by East London NHS, after being awarded a Commonwealth Professional fellowship.

    1.9.2012 "Writing as a form of survival" - First entry on Colin Hambrook's art and poetry blog.

    10.10.2012 Protesting the Mental Health Care Bill, New Delhi

    naajmi archive


    Friday 9.11.2012 F.E.E.L. event. with three speakers:
    Joe Kelly, West London activist, on "a new vision of disability"

    Joe started the Facebook page a new vision of disability on 18.8.2014: "renew rethink reform revolution. not an uprising but a quantum leap from apathy to excellence. all the disabilities mental, physical and learning."

    Peter Barham, author of Schizophrenia and Human Values on "some schizophrenic survivors"
    David Skull, an organiser of the Mental Health Resistance Network
    Kingsley Hall. 6.30 - Doors open for 7pm start


    December 2012 A Village Called Pumpkin is a story for children aged between four and twelve.

    It is the first children's story book to be published by Peter Bullimore.

    More information to follow

    "written with the help of my voices"

    Buy online

    About the Author

    I have heard voices for many years, leading me to receive a diagnosis of chronic schizophrenia. I spent a decade in psychiatric services where no- one paid any attention to the content of my voices. The voices were always critical and abusive and never gave me any peace. Through the support of a very good occupational therapist Sally Bramley and the Hearing Voices Network I started to gain more insight into the voices and the meaning behind them. Though they still talked to me in a very critical and angry way, I understood what they were trying to tell me. I learned to look beyond the metaphor. Although it was still difficult to function with up to 40 voices at a time, my life started to have more meaning, this enabled me to start teaching professionals and other people the true meaning behind hearing voices.

    A Village Called Pumpkin

    This book was written in association with my voices, without their influence I would never have had the ideas and creativity to create the characters and storylines. Whilst writing the book the characters would speak to me and ask what role they would be playing. Whilst writing one chapter I put in too many characters and it was like a film set all talking to me demanding a speaking part, even up to the point the vet in one of the chapters refused to carry out his duties until I gave him a line. I would often say out loud "no you cannot have another line". My partner Linda would look across the room and smile as she knew I was talking to the characters

    1.12.2012 First issue of More Hackney, the newsletter written by people with experience of mental health difficuties in Hackney. It ran for seven issues to August 2013. See archives of back issues - archive of archives - Nikki Llewellyn.

    30.12.2012 Fighting Madness by Rodney Wiley published as an e-book by Chipmunka. "Its about my mental health journey". At this time, Rod was at at a "day centre on Jamaica Road most days and Dragon Cafe, Borough on Mondays" (Tweets)

    2013 survivors' history meetings

    January 2013 A new look Heartsounds web page featured the grey crowned crane from the flag of Uganda.

    14.5.2013 Arthur Katabalwa, a relativley new recruit to blogging, wrote about his school friend, Joseph Atukunda, in "Joseph Atukunda; The battle with mental health" . On 16.7.2014 he wrote about Uganda and gay rights in My Twin Is Lesbian. On 14.8.2014 he again wrote about Joseph in "Ignorant Attitudes to Mental Disabilities"

    Mad Matters Early summer 2013 Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies

    Peter Beresford says "Mad Matters, bringing together academic and experiential knowledge on mental distress in Canada, is the guiding text of mad studies". It begins with a chapter "Introducing Mad Studies". Part One is about "Mad People's History". Part Two "Mad Engagements". Part Three "Critiques of Psychiatry". Part Four "Law, Public Policy, and Media". Part five "Social Justice and Identity".

    Mental Health Service Users in Research: Critical Sociological Perspectives,

    edited by Patsy Staddon. Policy Press. Publication date: 15.7.2013

    This book emerged from a seminar series at the British Library in 2009 at which the Survivors History Group and Heritage Mental Health provided exhibitions.

    Chapter one: Sociology and survivor research by Angela Sweeney:
    "In its short history - little more than twenty years - survivor research has had a number of watershed moments. These include the publication of the directly challenging Have We Got Views For You in 1994 (Beeforth et al) to the development of the first national survivor-controlled research programmes, User Focussed Monitoring (Rose, 2001) and Strategies for Living (Faulkner and Layzell, 2000) in the late 1990s. More recently, the publication of the survivor edited This is Survivor Research in 2009 demonstrated just how far survivor research has travelled. A seminar series at the British Library also in 2009 - from which this book has emerged - represents another key milestone. "

    Chapter twelve: Brief reflections by Patsy Staddon

    "For me, the most important aspect of this book is that it contextualises service user research, experiential knowledge and autoethnography. It also moves the narrative of service user experience and involvement forward, interrogating how identity shapes knowledge production"

    Going, Going, Gone: Grassroots Archives

    Sunday 16.6.2013 Presentation by Anne Plumb

    In this presentation, I will explore two archives.

    The first is that of Ken Lumb (1941-2009), a disabled activist. This contains items relating to activism in Rochdale, a Greater Manchester Borough, to the Rochdale Housing and Disability Group and the Rochdale Mobility and Access Group in particular. Also material relating to the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation UPIAS whose Social Interpretation of Disability lies behind the 'Social Model of Disability' and developments in the 80s - Coalitions such as the Derbyshire Coalition of Disabled People and Lambeth Accord, including the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, as well as Centres for Independent/Integrated Living (CILs) Material related to the GMCDP was not kept at home but Ken retained copies of ' Coalition' to add to an earlier 4 year run of 'Scope' produced at a Rochdale day centre in the mid 70s (not your usual daycentre production).

    The second archive is my own Ear to the Ground: (Mental Health) Survivor and Ally Voices, organisation and action, covering a slightly longer period.. This contains leaflets, pamphlets, flyers, press cuttings, newsletters, publications. I was a member of a survivor network, Survivors Speak Out and DATA, a distress awareness training collective. Currently, I am a member of a Survivor History Group SHG, closely connected to the website of Andrew Roberts www.studymore.org.uk . Other members also have archives. These archives raise issues for historians writing about either disability or mental health activism and history - do these 'second-hand histories' tally with our own experience and recollections? Are activist archives sought out? Are they accessible, physically and in this digital age? What about the confidential internal circulars of the UPIAS? What happens when the activists' lives come to a close? Where might they be conserved? should they be bought together in a single repository or kept in the localities out of which they grew? What happens when organisations are forced to restructure and indeed to close? Who cares about the minutae of executive meetings?

    Thursday 25.7.2013 Jazzman John Clarke hosted the main stage in the Wentworth-Stanley Hall at St Clements for Survivors Open Mic and John Stiles compered the "Quiet Area" behind the chapel. Launch of Ravaged Wonderful Earth - A Collection for David Kessel, published by Outsider Poets in collaboration with F.E.E.L. Other credits to: Myra Garrett - Kate McTiernan - Lizzie Daish - John Stiles - Frank Bangay - Dave Skull - Shakti Zapata - Emily Purshouse - The Mudlarks -Wendy Hughes - Alfie Tilbeam - May Sayres - Richard Shepherd - Tony Graham Jones - Sheila Stocking - Helen McDonald - Aloyse Raptopoulos - Stephen Wish - Jennifer Wong - Lizanne Davies - Unique Technique - David Amery - The Tables - Nick Waller - Steve Morgan - Gill Bell - Nina McNeil - Chris Bell - Stu Crane - Mike Pearson - Nathalie Fonnesu - and many more..

    Sunday 11.8.2013 Re-appearance of Charlotte Mew (in the body of Kate O'Connor) at the Shuffle Festival on the old St Clement's Hospital site.

    15.8.2013 Publication of Towards the Future. A brief history of advocacy in Scotland by the Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance

    Appears to be the output of the Inspiring Our Future project.

    16.9.2013 Global Mental Health Inside Story with Joseph Atukunda, Kampala, Uganda, on in2mentalhealth.com . "Heartsounds Uganda got through the Butabika Link a two year funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) in order to train our members to become formal peer support workers. So far 26 service users have been trained and are providing mental health peer support to mental health service users within the Kampala Metropolitan Area who are discharged from Butabika Hospital (home visits).

    Heartsounds Uganda, the Ugandan National Cultural Centre and the Uganda Film Club have started the Kampala Mental Health Film Club. We show one film on mental health every month viewed by our members, mental health professionals, policy makers, legislators and the public. After the film we carry out a discussion on the insights the films has risen among the viewers.

    We also have a Hearing Voices Group; members who hear voices converge every Tuesday of the week in Kampala to discuss and share experiences with the support of a volunteer consultant psychiatrist from National Health Services East London.

    Currently, HSU is implementing a one year project on building the capacity of their members on the UN CRPD, advocacy and awareness, through training. We have secured funding from the Storm Fund in the Netherlands to run a program of Creative Arts for recovery. We have named the Program BEAUTIFUL MINDS.

    Heartsounds Uganda as a growing CBO has developed a 'unified voice' for service users that is influencing and changing the interests of the service provision, law, policy, rights and community acceptance and inclusion in development programs, among other things.

    20.9.2013 A short film about Heartsounds, Joseph Atukunda, and mental health peer support in Uganda by Mike Ilamyo, commissioned by Butabika-East London Link and Heartsounds Uganda, uploaded on to You Tube by Cerdic Hall.


    Wednesday 16.10.2013
    9.30 - 16.30

    Our voices, Our choices, Our futures

    A national conference celebrating Service User Innovation to enhance Secure Services. Organised by Together, Priory Group and Rethink.

    Art supplied by a service user from The Priory Farmfield Secure Services

    An opportunity to learn, share best practice and network.

    20 minute presentations about the service user led initiative at your site (including time to answer questions).

    Posters describing the service user led change which has had a positive impact on your service.

    See also art exhibition and second conference below

    Where have We come From? - Appreciating our roots, a presentation to the conference by Clare Ockwell.

    10.10.2013 World Mental Health Day. Book Knitting Time by Colin Hambrook published by Waterloo Press. "Knitting Time: A Journey through Loss" exhibition of work that reflects on loss and its impact on psychosis from 8.10.2013 to 3.11.2013.


    2014 survivors' history meetings

    A lot of work was expected on the book about survivor history based on this website. None of this happened, because of unspeakable events, and we are hoping to recover the will to live and write for 2015.

    Wednesday 29.1.2014 Survivors History recalls Eric Irwin

    Friday 21.2.2014 An incident on the Hendon Campus of Middlesex University ended the modest academic career of this website's editor. But I enjoyed it (the academic career - not the incident). Better get on with that book.

    6.3.2014 Email from Diana Rose:
    "Hi Andrew

    Are you still keeping the timeline up to date? If so, here's some news. I have just been appointed Professor in User-Led Research at IoP, King's College London. No doubt some would see this as co-option of movement intellectuals but I am quite pleased and think I can make a difference 'inside' the system whilst respecting those who choose to do this from the outside.

    Best wishes Diana"

    11.3.2014 to 6.7.2014 Exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris: Van Gogh / Artaud. Le suicidé de la société. Members of the Survivors History Group visited and made a report.

    18.3.2014 Launch event for The Last Asylum. A memoir of madness in our time

    March 2014 Publication of Splitting in Two: Mad Pride and Punk Rock Oblivion by Robert Dellar

    Robert traces his life from a working class area of Watford, through Sussex University and London squatting community to what he calls the "murky waters of mental health" including pioneering work in Hackney Hospital setting up a patients' council and advocacy department. In the mid 1990s, when Hackney hospital was closing, Robert organised some lively gigs, which he describes n colourful detail. He worked at Southwark MIND (possibly the first user-run MIND group) before joining Mad Pride, an organisation which linked mental health to rock and roll through the gigs it produced. Robert and his friend Peter Shaughnessy also turned mental health demonstrations into theatre. (Frank Bangay)

    Mad People's History and Identity

    [Advertised from 16.1.2014 on Edinburgh Compact]

    A new short course at Queen Margaret University, A six week module that "puts the history and narratives of people with experience of mental health issues at the centre of the curriculum and is inspired by a similar course running at Ryerson University, Toronto. It will be interactive and engaging, taught by a partnership of people with experience of mental health issues and QMU staff. The course is FREE and is open to anyone who has personal experience of mental health issues."

    This project is a partnership between CAPS Independent Advocacy (Oor Mad History project), Queen Margaret University, and NHS Lothian Mental Health and Wellbeing Team.

    May 2014 Bridging the Gap exhibition at Together in Old Street displayed work of patients in Priory Secure Hospitals. Liz Felton of Together commented that "People in secure mental health units are some of the most stigmatised, disenfranchised and unheard individuals in our society. Art can be a powerful recovery tool, as well as a way to showcase people's talents and personalities so that they can be seen in terms of their creativity rather than their diagnosis."


    2.5.2014 to 13.7.2014 "From There to Here - The hidden history of People with Learning Difficulties in Merseyside", an exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool by Wicked Fish.

    Portrait photo of three performers, Jane Fradley, Nicola Brooks and Neil Bramwell, from Wicked Fish
    Photo copyright Mark McNulty/Wicked Fish
  • The Royal Albert Institution for the Care, Education and Training of Idiots, Imbeciles and the Feeble Minded was in Lancaster, and served seven English Northern counties.
  • A chart was used in the notes of People with Learning Difficulties that was supposed to show what kind of people might be in a person's family background.
  • The Wicked Fish team have found their own ancestors. Jane found out that some of her ancestors were Jewish and came from the borders of Poland and Russia.
  • Wicked Fish made a presentation at the Disability Conference in 20014 - Website "archive" page

    "The experiences of People with Learning Difficulties are often excluded from history, so we wanted to explore and celebrate our history and culture with everybody. We combined on-gallery performances, guided tours and talks with static displays including text and images drawn from public records, portraits of all the participants and artworks commissioned by them from three local artists. Visitors were also able to watch film clips of memory and drama workshops and listen to extracts from oral history sessions."


    9.6.2014 International Service User Leadership and Peer Support Festival hosted by National Survivor User Network (NSUN) and Together, to showcase international best practice from people with experience of mental health conditions. The Survivor History Group mounted an exhibition on "solidarity and diversity in our mad world". A central part of this was a timeline, the sheets for which are on this website

    International Survivor History

    Solidarity in multicultural diversity

    Sankofa bird - Ghana

    1772? Ukawsaw Gronniosaw

    1764 - 1847 Mad Mary Lamb, story teller for the English speaking world.

    1845 Alleged Lunatics Friend Society

    1864: Elizabeth Packard versus Theophilus Packard, Illinois, USA

    1853-1890 Vincent van Gogh

    1876-1943 Clifford Beers

    1907: August Natterer

    1924: James Ollier and friends inside

    1939: Remembrance of those who did not survive - T4

    1955: Peter Whitehead - inside Rampton

    1957 and 1969 Recovery (now Grow) - Australia and Ireland

    1968: We Shall Overcome - Norway

    1970: Coudewater - Holland - Clientenbond

    1971: Scottish Union of Mental Patients

    1972: Madness Network News USA

    1973: Fresnes - France

    1978: Judi Chamberlin's On Our Own. Patient- Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System

    1980: Cabbages of the world unite

    1982: Frank Bangay's solidarity poster

    1985: Brighton: International user revolution

    1987: Aotearoa - New Zealand - Psychiatric Survivors

    1990: European network

    1991: World Network - Mexico

    1996: Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation

    1998: SIMBA (Share In Maudsley Black Action)

    2001: Toronto archive Canada

    2001: aaina - a mental health advocacy newsletter

    2003: Crona - Japan

    2005: Pan Africa

    2010: Oor Mad History

    2013: Canadian Mad Studies

    August 2014 Bristol Independent Mental Health Network, a new user led network of about 25 user led groups and individuals, had its first Annual General Meeting. This followed two years of development Alison Faulkner as independent trainer help with some of the early development of the group with two workshops in 2013. The Network has individual membership as well as group membership. There are two representatives per group. Group members include Bristol Hearing Voices Group and Bristol Survivors. The aim is to provide a stronger user voice access Bristol. Contact Glen Townshend. (Bristol index)

    Wednesday 24.9.2014 Survivors History Group discussed its future. (What could we do? What shall we do?) with respect to the next few meetings and other events related to them. It is not clear whether the Survivors History Group is passing away quietly or transforming, equally quietly, into a new way of preserving and developing our history that will survive our individual lives. It seems clear that the most constructive way to approach the future is to consider different aspects of the groups activities separately and carefully. We might consider, for example, the future of London Meetings, of networking with people throughout the UK and the world, of the group as a formal entity with a constitution and a bank account, of the website and online archive and of the physical archives that members have maintained and developed. Some issues, notably the issue related to the constitution, finances and bank account could usefully be considered by a small sub-group that could read the papers, discuss the possibilities and report back.

    Thursday 2.10.2014 Peter Barham met Andrew Roberts to discuss the issues impeding agreement on a book about Survivor History. Since than, Peter Campbell and Andrew have signed a contract with Palgrave Macmillan for a book on survivor history from 1800 to the present in the Foundations of Mental Health Practice Series, which is edited by Thurstine Basset and Theodore Stickley. The book to be completed by the end of 2016.

    Tuesday, 28.10.2014 David Kessel launched a celebration of the life and poetry of survivor poet Howard Mingham at Brick Lane Bookshop. Other people who spoke included Emmy van Deurzen, Ken Worpole and Alan Morrison. Dina Ibrahim, Hagir Ahmed and Andrew Roberts attended from the Survivor History Group. It has been suggested that David should provide an introduction to Howard's work at a history group meeting.

    Monday 3.11.2014 Myra Garrett one of Canary Wharf Group's ten Community Champions named in the first ever awards. Her organisations given as Social Action for Health (SAfH), Friends of St Clements, Bow Haven, Kingsley Hall, and the Maternity Services Liaison Services (MSLS), which became Women's Health and Family Services in 1994. Said she has been at the forefront of public health campaigns in the borough since she arrived in [1974], including leading on the Tower Hamlets Health Enquiry (1986), and more recently the Save our Surgeries (SOS) campaign. She has spent over 30 years of working and campaigning addressing inequalities in healthcare issues in Tower Hamlets. Also involved in direct action against nuclear weapons campaigns. Award presented by Commander John Ludgate.


    Painting by a patient from The Priory Farmfield Secure Services
    12.11.2014

    Priory Secure Services 2nd National Service User Conference Theme: "Bridging the Gap-Our Path to Independence" Celebrating service user led initiatives that support and prepare individuals in moving out of secure care towards independent living in the community.

    Peer Support in Secure Services. Final Report (4.11.2014) by Clare Shaw was launched at the conference. (online - offline copy). During 2014, Elina Stamou from Together published "Reclaiming user leadership in peer support practice". (online - offline copy).

    From the Saturday 22.11.2014 Survivor History Group news
    From Andrew Roberts - On behalf of the Survivors History Group

    When I am in a bad mood about survivor history, I go to http://studymore.org.uk/mpu.htm and look at Jessie looking into the future and Joan with her cosy cup of tea. That is better!

    October December 2014 Europe for us! The Newsletter of the European Platform of Self - Advocates

    Monday 15.12.2014 Joseph Atukunda interview with Daily Monitor posted online. By Lilian Namagembe. Photo by Rachel Mabala. "Surviving stigma caused by mental illness".

    The Happy Man who Refused Love and Help by Sam Shakes is a fairy tale for all ages that tells how the benevolent Leon cannot accept Teresa's love and murders her. Are you capable of murder? it asks. Time to listen to what is going on in your head? Sam's next fairy story was The Woman with a Fish in Her Head (2016)

    2015 survivors' history meetings


    We called this fire and water. A form like a woman floats on the river (left)
    15.1.2015 to 29.3.2015 Mary Barnes exhibition at the Nunnery, 183 Bow Road, London, E3 2SJ. Dina and Andrew visited on Thursday 12.2.2015. At the entrance you are only told that this is an exhibition of Mary Barnes' work and that she was born in 1923 and died in 2001. The paintings have no labels. Knowing more about Mary and her paintings would have helped, so we wrote an unnoficial catalogue and a report on our visit.

    Recovery In The Bin Facebook Group was created on 14.3.2014. This is a user led group critical of the recovery model. 18 Key Principles were agreed and adopted by group members on 6.2.2015. The group plans:

    "to spread awareness of how neoliberalism and market forces shape the way mental health 'recovery' is planned and delivered... "
    "We believe that there are core principles of 'recovery' that are worth saving, and that the colonisation of 'recovery' undermines those principles, which have hitherto championed autonomy and self-determination."

    blind mania 18.2.2015 Bethlem Museum of the Mind opened. One of the display boards (below) explained that the different faces of Bethlem and mental health care (see themes) are the concern of many and that "service user, advocacy and survivor movements have brought challenging perspectives to this history"

    blind mania

    21.2.2015 "Breaking the stigma around mental illness in Uganda" . A BBC World News interview with Joseph Atukunda - listen on line - Our World: Uganda, "My Mad World" You Tube

    26.2.2015 Nelsy published Standing up to madness - An autobiography online. She also has a PowerPoint called "Standing up to madness - A self-research" - (offline copy) which she presented at the Survivors History Group on 29.7.2015.

    In the web version she says:
    "in the midst of my madness I took advantage of my circumstances living among "mad" people, to make sense of my madness and of psychiatric treatment. I have explored my madness over ten years and it has gradually enabled me to unmask, understand and defeat my "illness". I have proved to myself that madness and many other concepts that we know as negative, have a very different, and above all, a Healthy Meaning. Welcome to my new and Healthy World."

    Elsewhere she says: Self-research has shaped my Self-identity, generating My Health "I agree with Patsy Staddon on the importance of mental health user's research, experiential knowledge and auto-ethnography... As an adventurous and lonely researcher, self-research has continuously enlightened me on self-knowledge. I now know that I have my own Natural Healthy Resources and the more I use them the better I feel. My self-knowledge process has revealed my Real Self-identity, and my awareness of my Real Identity has generated my health Naturally."

    25.3.2015 London meeting Survivors History Group

    Monday 20.4.2015 UK National Hearing Voices Network conference: time for (real) change/ [See Time to Change]    pdf.
    A conference critical of the "current paradigm of pathologising and labelling human experiences and understandable reactions to trauma and adversity" [See medical model]. The "(real)" in the title of the conference suggestes that campaigning against stigma is not enough. A revolution in mental health and society is suggested and crucial issues identified as including human rights, the pharmaceutical industry, the rights of a person to their beliefs, power and societal change.

    "Joanna @maddoggiejo tweeted "no mention of ideological austerity, welfare processes and cuts, and capitalism. I wonder if the Hearing Voices movement revolution has any interest in social justice as well as diagnosis/Mental Health Act/alternatives? One does not make sense without the other, we have no movement without social justice at the heart of it"

    April and May 2015 Roz (Rosalind) Austin (previously Oates) shared interim findings of her postgraduate research with groups of people she had worked with. The meetings were reported in June on the Hearing the Voice website.
    Her thesis is about how narrative can be used to assist voice-hearers with distressing voices. She says:

      "At the start of my research, I was mindful that my own position of being a voice-hearer meant that I wished to make voice-hearers' perspectives central to my research. I have interviewed thirty voice- hearers as part of my doctoral research,"

    Roz wrote about her own experiences in Voicewalks in October 2013, when she was in the first year of her thesis. For the research she used focus groups. This card was used to recruit members of the groups. It was displayed as part of the history of survivor research in June 2015. Roz is now in the third year of her research and is writing up her findings.

    Friday 24.4.2015

    F.E.E.L. (Friends of East End Loonies) are welcoming members of the Open Dialogue Uk team during the first week of the first Open Dialogue training in Britain

    Invitations said "An initial Open Dialogue pilot in Britain has just completed the first year of training and this week the first national conference on the subject took place in London reported on first impressions. Feedback of the event can be read here

    27.5.2015 London meeting Survivors History Group

    Letter from Alan Hartman of the Manchester Users Network on an unexpected consequence of the investigations into Jimmy Savile. A letter from the Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust (8.5.2015) to Manchester Users Network requires them to return their identification badges, allowing them access, and, in future, seek approval of activities from Patrick Cahoon, Head of Patient Experience. The letter is headed "Themes and lessons learnt from NHS Investigations into matters relating to Jimmy Savile".


    1.6.2015

    Collaboration, coproduction and leadership

    Ten years of service user and survivor research at St George's

    Engage Visually gave shape to the day with a six metre cartoon of a river winding through words and pictures of our diverse discussions, entering the mainstream of University research and flowing on into a future that relates to people in the street and the community.

    Hosted by Kati and Steve Gillard who chatted in the first session about moving "from collaboration and coproduction to leadership in service user and survivor research at St George's. How did it all begin (and what has happened since)?

    2.6.2015 Graham Morgan of HUG was a keynote speaker at the Rights for Life event in Glasgow and on the web. His speech is available online - offline copy


    Friday 10.7.2015 to Sunday 12.7.2015
    New Forest Spectrum
    .

    A music festival for adults with learning difficulties at Lyndhurst in the New Forest, Hampshire, England.


    Chapter 13: "UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: out of the frying pan into the fire? Mental health service users and survivors aligning with the disability movement" by Anne Plumb

    The London meeting of the Survivors History Group is discussing a chapter in Helen Spandler, Jill Anderson and Bob Sapey's new collection of articles on Madness, distress and the politics of disablement launched at the Friends Meeting House Lancaster on Tuesday 16.6.2015

    The book "explores the challenges of applying disability theory and policy, including the social model of disability, to madness and distress".

    Anne is in favour of people with mental health issues working with people with physical disability, but thinks submerging mental distress in
    disability can take us "out of the frying pan into the fire". Anne says that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) is about our right to self-determination, but Anne argues that physical and mental disability need to be comprehended differently. She uses her own experiences and those of Peter Campbell to illustrate the case that sometimes mental distress makes self-determination or autonomous choice undesirable, because it leads to irrational and possibly unhealthy choices. Rather than preserve autonomy in all circumstances, she argues, we need to consider the way we are treated when in such states. Because this has not been done in relation to the United Nations Convention, we have left ourselves open to things that are against our interest - We should develop a critique of human rights conventions based on our own experience rather than a conventional interpretation of what people with physically disability are capable of. (Our condition is not open to the same measurement).

    Barbara Taylor 2013 Mind archive Friday 26.6.2015

    Questions to Barbara Taylor on the personal archive that helped her write The Last Asylum and on the future of survivor archives

    1981 "My friend Cora gave me a hardback notebook. I had been in analysis for a couple of months, talking about it incessantly. 'I thought you might like to write some of this down.' That evening I made my first entry" (Taylor, B. 2014, p.11)

    1. We have talked about your notebooks as your archives, but obviously they did not start as an archive. Can you remember why you started writing in a notebook?

    2. Everyone now knows about your archive because you wrote a book. What part in writing the book did your archive play?

    3. Do you think your archive has any lasting value? Would it be any use to preserve it and make it available to other people?

    4. What materials do you think other survivors may have produced that is worth preserving? What should we collect for a survivors archive?

    July 2015 On a grassy bank Jessie contemplates the present with Hannah May in her arms. Both are blissfully unconcerned about the future of the Survivors History Group.

    29.7.2015 London meeting Survivors History Group

    August 2015 Planned alterations to structure of the Survivors History Group proposed:

    1) Small group to be responsible for finance and related issues.

    2) Networking through mailings and other electronic means to be done by those who can.

    3) London meetings to continue, as possible, as place for discussing issues about survivor history

    Mad Studies North East What is Mad Studies?
    Mad Studies North East described itself as "a group of mental health service users who have been involved with a wide range of grass roots activities for a long time". There first activity was the conference (below) and "after that, we will be working on the creation and delivery of our first Mad Studies course, in July 2016".

    Wednesday 30.9.2015 and Thursday 1.10.2015 Conference: Making Sense of Mad Studies Durham, funded by the Welcome Trust and hosted by the Centre for Medical Humanities at Durham University in collaboration with the North East Mad Studies Forum.

    "The aim of the conference is to provide a platform for the development and critical exploration of the emerging discipline, Mad Studies, with specific emphasis on nurturing new researchers and collaborations in this area- both inside and outside of the University. There will be a particular critical focus on exploring the following themes:

  • What are the challenges Mad Studies face and what can we do about them?
  • What does 'doing' Mad Studies mean?
  • Connections between Mad Studies and disciplines such as sociology, disability studies, geography, psychiatry, social policy, healthcare and medicine;
  • Mad Studies, 'recovery', and the co-option of activist terms;
  • Narratives of madness and distress- drawing on literature and cultural representations as a source for understanding mental distress. Keynote speakers: Peter Beresford, Representatives from 'Recovery in the Bin', Brenda LeFrancois, Helen Spandler, Brendan Stone.

    1.10.2015 Recovery In The Bin's first public presentation was at the 'Making Sense of Mad Studies' conference in Durham. AE O'Donnell presented and other Recovery In The Bin members were also present - Sue Phillips, Grietje Keller, Jayasree Kalathil, Ute Maria Kraemer and Alison Faulkner

    Friday 9.10.2015 Dignity and Independence: Re-imagining Ugandan Mental Health Care in the Post-Colonial Era, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, began with a screening of Our World, Uganda: My Mad World

    24.11.2015 Death of Janet Cresswell in Folkestone.

    2016 survivors' history meetings

    2016 Outside Mental Health. Voices and Visions of Madness edited by Will Hall. (archive)

    Peter Beresford's blog 21.2.2016

    Keeping Mad Studies Safe and Democratic

    I just want to alert people to a new article where we have tried to discuss this point - keeping Mad Studies safe and democratic. Some of us mental health service users/survivors see a lot of hope in Mad Studies - in the UK and internationally. Already some good things are happening and loads of progress being made. But we are also very aware that each time people as service users or disabled people come up with a good idea, some organisations and some individuals try and undermine it. So Jasna Russo and I have written this and we hope it may be helpful to lots of other people - disabled people, mental health service users/survivors and our friends, supporters and allies.

    You can read what we have written, free to download from Disability and Society. Please let us know what you think. All views and comments much valued. thank you.

    Here is the abstract - that is what the article is about

    Mad Studies is emerging as a new force in 'mental health' discourse and developments. Given the way in which other would-be progressive developments associated with attempts to include experimental knowledge in this field, such as 'recovery' and 'peer support', have been subverted, this article considers whether it is possible for Mad Studies to avoid this. Drawing on developments in Disability Studies and in relation to the social model of disability, we explore what can be done in order to safeguard the distinctiveness of Mad Studies and foster its unique contribution.

    From Fabian Tompsett aka User:Leutha "I volunteered to support a recent Disability Arts Online event based around Wikipedia editing. Part of the work involved the psychiatric survivors movement, and perhaps Survivors Poetry. I mentioned the work you had been doing a showed them your website. There's going to be another session on Thursday 3rd March, and it would be great if you could come along. It will take place between 11 am and 4 pm at Goldsmiths College. I have copied Colin Hambrook from DAO who is organising the event in conjunction with Goldsmith University.

    Reply: This sounds really interesting. I have just bought (and am reading) Theatres of Learning Disability - Good, Bad, or Plain Ugly by Matt Hargrave. Overpriced financially, but valuable on other scales.

    Wikipedia's damaged globe
    Mini Wikipedia globe at the Wikimedia offices: - damaged? - impaired? - or just more to do?
    3.3.2016 Third Disability Arts Online Editathon held at Goldsmiths University. This was a group of people with portable computers creating possiple Wikipedia web pages. Andrew Roberts was invited by Fabian Tompsett, to represent the Survivors History Group, and was introduced to Colin Hambrook.

    An edit-a-thon is a special type of meetup to improve the encyclopedia. It is usually focused on a specific encyclopedic topic

    Saturday 5.3.2016 Conference on "Welfare Reforms and Mental Health - Resisting Sanctions, Assessments and Psychological Coercion" organised by Mental Health Resistance Network, Disabled People Against Cuts and Alliance for Psychotherapy. Speech by Denise McKenna on "Welfare Reforms and Mental Health".

    Wednesday 16.3.2016 Anne Beales farewell party at Together. The farewell blog: "Do we, as people that use services, now have a voice?"

    Eddie Nkurunungi 9.4.2016 "Eddie Nkurunungi talking mental health in Uganda" uploaded onto You Tube.

    Butabika Recovery College and Peer Working programme is funded and supported by UK Aid, The Butabika East London Link, LSHTM, THET, Butabika Hospital, Heartsounds Uganda.

    In January 2015 he was appointed Project Finance Officer to the Brain Gain Two Project at Butabika Hospital. "Managing all project financial transactions by keeping a record of this in one location and reporting back to the funders in the UK".

    Bonnie Wednesday 27.4.2016 Bonnie the Poodle made a star appearance at the Survivors History Group .

    Wednesday 11.5.2016 All Our Welfare: Towards a participatory social policy by Peter Beresford. Are we walking towards a kinder world?


    27.6.2016 Wiltshire Times anouncement of the death of 'Patsy' Patricia Prisillia Chambers "known as Patsy or Mwasi to her close family and friends". "Our amazing sister, daughter, auntie, niece and friend". Her funeral was at Fulham Seventh Day Adventist Church in South West London and a coach bringing mourners travelled to London from Bristol Central Seventh Day Adventist Church. "God bless and rest her soul".


    18.7.2016 Searching for a Rose Garden: challenging psychiatry, fostering Mad Studies - a collection of articles edited by Jasna Russo and Angela Sweeney. In 2011 Jasna was the main organiser of the international conference "Searching for a Rose Garden. Fostering Real Alternatives to Psychiatry" which inspired this book.

    searching roses

    Review by Nicky Hayward - Further reflections of Nicky Hayward


    2.8.2016 Liz Davies' I am not social work/ discusses the importance of Eric Irwin in her early professional career.

    26.8.2016 (Postmark). CD Archive deposit by Frank Bangay: "a couple of Survivor CDs. One is from Creative Routes, a Survivor Arts project that was based the Peckham ad Camberwell area. Creative Routes started around 2004. It folded about five years, but in its existence was very active. The other CD is poetry from the Effra day centre in Brixton. It was a long standing day centre that stood on Effra Road and the course of the underground River Effra. The Effra Day Centre closed about four or five years ago."

    Charlotte Mew Saturday 22.10.2016 Charlotte Mew blue plaque unveiled on the house where Henry, Charlotte, Anne and Freda spent their urban childhood.
    Standing in front of Charlotte's door, in his trade mark cap, is Peter Barham, representing the Survivors History Group. Also present to represent us were Nathalie Fonnesu, Andy Brooker and Andrew Roberts.

    17.12.2016 Robert Dellar died.


    2017 survivors' history meetings

    Jessica is now five years old and Hannah will be two years old in June. "Gorgeous, feisty, fun, characterful girls" keep Angie and and James busy.

    Life is precious.

    January 2017 Official start of EURIKHA (Explorations of User Research: Impact, Knowledge and Historical Approaches). See King's College and Researchgate. The project is firmly set in a theoretical framework derived from Michel Foucault.

    Mapping the history of research, advocacy and activism by people with psychosocial disabilities, mental health service users and survivors.

    This project aims to map the history, current work and impact of user-led research and knowledge produced by people with psychosocial disabilities, mental health service users and survivors.

    What we understand as 'madness' or 'mental ill-health' is usually defined by authority figures such as doctors, psychiatrists/psychologists, priests, lawyers and governments. Since the 1970s, however, people who have been deemed 'mad' or 'mentally ill' by society and psychiatry - variedly known around the world as users, survivors, consumers, clients, patients, people with psychosocial disabilities, etc. - have been involved in challenging these understandings and creating new knowledge from their perspectives. Some countries have a long history of user/survivor movements while these are still developing in other countries. Similarly, the existence and development of both user involvement in research and user/survivor-led research is varied across the world. Our project, in mapping this work, will ask the following questions:

    What is the nature, history and current status of user-led research and survivor knowledge creation globally?

    How are collectivities and organisations of people with psychosocial disabilities creating new knowledges about madness/mental ill-health?

    What has been the impact of these new knowledges?

    We hope to collect this information using an online survey and by conducting one-to-one interviews with key people in user-led research and activism in different regions/countries around the world.

    The project is led by Professor Diana Rose and is based at the Service User Research Enterprise (SURE) at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College, London.

    13.2.2017 "With a great sense of personal failure, I should also say that Patricia" [Chammbers] "passed away in May 2016, and none of us (at least all the people I have spoken with over Friday and the weekend) knew! And if it wasn't for a chance sighting of a random post from a family member, I'd never have known. Because, in our world where we speak eloquently about collectivism and solidarity, if you step off the road, you are easily forgotten. It also speaks to the state of "homelessness" that black user/survivors face currently, with our networks decimated, our connections fragile. Many of us are familiar with the depth of darkness that led Patricia to check out of life". Jayasree Kalathil on NSUN.

    25.2.2017 Friends and colleagues gathered at the Rose Pub in Vauxhall to remember and celebrate the life of Patricia Chambers.

    The body of Dina Ibrahim was buried at 8am on Wednesday 1.3.2017 in a cemetery in the Sudan. Salma Tatta Gasim (Dina's sister) says Dina was "blissfully laid to rest" "surrounded by those who loved her who prayed for her". Dina loved the Sudanese sun burning brightly above the river Nile as much as I love the grey English mists.

    Dina told me that angels are messengers from God. Having known her, can we doubt that Dina was, in this sense, an angel? Azza Ahmed Azrag has written on Facebook (if the translation from Arabic is correct) that, for her, Dina's face is full of love and life forever. In Paradise, but still with us.

    The picture shows Dina with a plant of Herb Robert whose foliage has turned red. We found purple, orange and red Herb Roberts in different habitats in west and east London.

    24.4.2017 Performance of Kate Whitley's settings to music of three Charlotte Mew poems.

    Sunday 7.5.2017 Laura Mitchison leads Helen Spandler and others on a history walks through Homerton, listening through headphones to voices representing people associated with Centerprise, the Mental Patients Union and Core Arts talking about birth, madness and creativity, inside and out of the old Hackney Workhouse and later hospitals.

    14.11.2017 Sarah Yiannoullou (Managing Director ) and Raza Griffiths (London Network Coordinator) of National Survivor User Network discuss the importance of the Black and Minority Ethnic service user narrative to the transformation of mental health services. online video:
    "... since the demise of organisations like
    Afiya Trust and Catch-a-Fiya people who are part of that network have seen themselves as homeless..."

    9.9.2017 Loonies Fest at Kingsley Hall.

    16.9.2017 and 17.9.2017 Open House London event at Kingsley Hall.

    A candle of Hope - A candle of Spirit - A candle and Flame - That knows, No Limit _ _ _

    A candle for Love - A candle for Life - A candle to keep us - Merry and Bright!

    Sam Shakes December 2017


    2018 survivors' history meetings

    Kindred Minds Manifesto. See archive - by Raza Griffiths

    2019 survivors' history meetings
    If I am still here. But if not, why not write your own?


    MOVEMENTS IN THE 1970S - BY JOAN HUGHES - 6.9.2006

    I have based this talk on a short history of the Mental Patients Union that I wrote in 1986. I have also used material from the Survivors History Group website and material from a private autobiography I wrote.

    In England, around about 1972, a few groups of psychiatric patients and sympathetic mental health staff began to make political comments on their situation in society. Effectively, many mental patients were without civil rights - For example, even the right to vote used to be removed for a mental patient without any address outside an institution

    PADDINGTON DAY HOSPITAL

    The first group I heard about was a group of patients attending the Paddington Day Hospital in West London. This was reputed to use enlightened methods of treatment including psychotherapy. National Health Service authorities wanted to close it.

    There were meetings and discussions among patients and the protest against closure was successful. The Paddington Day Hospital stayed open.

    THE FISH PAMPHLET

    One of the patients at Paddington Day Hospital was Eric Irwin. He and three professionals, Liz Durkin, Lesley Mitchell and Brian Douieb, thought there was a need for an organisation of patients. They met together write a booklet called "The Case for a Mental Patients Union". Later they were joined by two other patients, Andrew and Valerie Roberts.

    This group is called the pilot committee for a mental patients union. The booklet is often called "The Fish Pamphlet" because it has a picture of a fish on a hook on the cover. This is to illustrate that the behaviour of someone who is suffering from mental illness may appear mad, but may really be a way of getting over his or her problems.

    THE MENTAL PATIENTS UNION

    A big meeting to discuss forming a Mental Patients Union was held in the evening of Wednesday 21st March 1973. About 100 people attended this meeting at Paddington Day Hospital. The majority were patients or ex- patients. Most lived in London.

    It turned out that this was not the first Mental Patients Union. People came who had previously formed the Scottish Union of Mental Patients. People were present who had tried to form a Union in Oxford and a message was received from another group in Leeds.

    The national Mental Patients Union was formed with full membership reserved for patients and ex-patients.

    MENTAL PATIENTS UNION DECLARATION OF INTENT

    There was a lot of discussion about the content of the Fish Pamphlet. Many patients objected to its use of marxist ideas. It was decided that the Fish Pamphlet could be circulated by The Mental Patients Union, but would not be a MPU publication. The policy of the union would be written independently and voted on at meetings where only patients and ex-patients had a vote. This was called Declaration of Intent of the Mental Patients Union. It begins

    "We proclaim the dignity of society's so-called mental patients. We challenge repressive psychiatric practice and its ill-defined concepts of 'mental illness'"

    DEMANDS

    The declaration contained demands.

    Some demands were moderate. For example, the right to receive private letters unopened by staff.

    Some were long term aims. For example, the eventual abolition of mental hospitals.

    Some were impractical. For example, the right to be represented by a member of the Mental Patients Union at mental health tribunals. This was impractical because not enough MPU members were available to be representatives.

    The most controversial demands seemed to be the right to refuse certain forms of treatment, such as Electro Convulsive Shock Treatment (ECT) and drugs.

    SCOTTISH UNION OF MENTAL PATIENTS

    As I have said, when the MPU was formed nationally, it was found out that patients unions had been formed already in different parts of the country.

    SUMP, the Scottish Union of Mental Patients, was formed in 1972 by Tommy Ritchie and Robin Farqhuarson. This was the first union of psychiatric patients in the United Kingdom that we have the written records of. Tommy and Robin both helped to form the national MPU in 1973.

    FORGOTTEN GROUPS

    We know that a lot of history is forgotten or goes unrecorded. One of the aims of a history group should be to trace the activities of patients in different parts of the country before and after the public start of the mental patients movement in 1973.

    NATION WIDE

    Following 1973, mental patients unions were established in many parts of the country. Hackney MPU acted as a coordinating centre for some years.

    Some, like the West London MPU, were very small, others had a substantial membership. Some operated in mental hospitals, other were outside the hospital. Two (Hackney and Manchester) ran houses for members.

    Sometimes there was a union in a hospital linked to a union outside. This was the case in Hackney where Hackney Hospital patients established their own union with the support of the Mayola Road MPU. Hackney Hospital MPU may have been the first hospital union to win recognition from the hospital authorities.

    A Federation of Mental Patients Unions was formed, at the Manchester Conference, in 1974.

    Mental Patients Unions did not all have the same Declaration of Intent. Groups were free to select their own demands from the original declaration, and add others that they wanted.

    It needs to be remembered that the main surviving record of the Mental Patients Union are those kept by Hackney for the movement generally.

    This means that a lot of local history is still to be recovered - Including the history of MPU groups outside Hackney that carried on after Hackney MPU closed. One group. Dundee MPU, is believed to have carried on into the 1990s. Although it changed its name.

    HACKNEY MENTAL PATIENTS UNION

    In Hackney there were two autonomous MPU's who worked together. Although I was, at one time, a patient in Hackney Hospital, the group I belonged to was the Mayola Road Mental Patients Union. I lived in Robin Farquharson House and was, at one time, the union treasurer and, at other times, its secretary.

    As far as I know, no Mental Patients Union ever received any public funds. Hackney MPU was supported by donations from patients and ex-patients, and some associate members and from the rents that those of us living in the houses paid.

    Associate members were people like sympathetic social workers and health service workers. There were very few of these and, whilst I was involved, all the active members were patients or ex-patients. Any patient or ex- patient could attend and vote at our meetings. Before anyone else attended, the full members present had to agree that they could.

    Without funding and relying completely on our own resources, we provided services. We ran the Robin Farquharson House in Mayola Road for three years. This was divided into individual rooms that were entirely under resident's control, but it also had an office which served as a crash pad in emergencies. We often had people staying who were going through a crisis and who were supported by other residents. We also helped and advised people by telephone and letter, and there were any visitors from all over the country as well as from abroad.

    We set up two other houses in Woodford to accommodate people and, after a while, these became self managing.

    COPE AND WEST LONDON MPU

    COPE (Community Organisation for Psychiatric Emergencies) was running in West London at the same time as MPU. Some of its members were patients. others were not. It ran a crisis centre with and published a magazine, and also tried to provide short-term housing. COPE provided a base for Eric Irwin's "West London MPU". Many people met him there. One of those people was Julian Barnett, the founder of PROMPT (Protection of the Rights of Mental Patients in Therapy)

    PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS

    I joined the Mental Patients Union shortly after it started. I took part in many activities but, because of my experience, I was particularly interested in the side effects of psychiatric drugs. In October 1975 I was one of the three people who brought out A Directory of the Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs.

    As an analytical chemist, I was able to help a lot on the scientific side and in reading and understanding reports.

    My name at this time was Joan Martin. The other two people were Andrew Roberts and Chris Hill, who typed the directory.

    MY EXPERIENCE

    Let me tell you something, first about my experience of psychiatric drugs and why it is so important that people who take them are well informed about their effects.

    One day in 1969 I visited my G.P. and told her about my depression. She said that she could give me an injection for this and I would soon feel better. She said that the title of the drug was "Modecate", which I knew nothing about.

    I had this injection, walked home and into a cinema to see a film. Midway through the film I felt not sleepy but incredibly depressed. The world was slipping away from me. Everything which was happening around me appeared to be taking place in another world, with which I had no connection.

    For the next two years I did not initiate any activities for myself. It was a shadowy world in which I lived and I am not able to describe it. In fact I could observe what people were doing, but not act for myself, except in a desperate way, which soon ended with my entering Rubery Hill Mental Hospital.

    I am not against Doctors. It was a doctor who took me off the drugs and restored my health. I entered Goodmayes Hospital on November 1st 1971, having taken an overdose. My drugs were stopped and the first day on which I began to feel better was November 29th, 1971.

    Some years later I told a doctor in Hackney Hospital

    "I know that drugs do me no good. And the MPU is not against doctors. In Goodmayes Hospital there was someone called Dr Abrahamson. He must have been a good doctor for he stopped giving me drugs, and after two years chronic illness, I suddenly got better."

    SIDE EFFECTS

    When MPU was formed, many doctors denied that psychiatric drugs had serious side effects. There are also drugs now considered dangerously addictive that doctors then said were entirely free of problems.

    We had been issuing a one-sheet listing the main psychiatric drugs with their side-effects, almost since MPU was first formed. Some people thought this was based on patients reports. But it was based on the official reports of the drugs. We were careful not to be sensational and explained that the side effects only sometimes occurred. The list was so that people would not blame their illness if they suffered the side effect.

    We thought this was very reasonable - But many people were very angry about it. Mind re-published it in the first Consumers issue of their magazine, but forgot to include the warning that it was only a list of effects that might happen. This caused a great debate in its correspondence columns.

    The side effects directory was eight pages. We researched it carefully, and divided it into different types of drugs, so that people were not confessed by changing names. By this time Mind were frightened to mention side effects, but the Directory was well reviewed by some medical papers. Many drug companies bought copies. We charged them extra.

    Orders for the drugs directory soon outpaced the supply and I kept on reprinting it for several years, and even revised it. It is now, of course, hopelessly out of date.

    CLOSURE

    Hackney MPU closed in 1976. Members who lived in the house moved into two new house. One of these was run by Matthew O'Hara until his death in June 1980. The Matthew O'Hara Committee: for Civil Liberties and Community Care was formed in his memory.

    I [Joan Hughes] lived, with other members, in the other house (which still exists). We kept the same telephone line and continued to answer calls to the union and correspond with people who wrote. Visitors from the movement in the United Kingdom, Europe and America frequently stayed with us. One of those who stayed was Judi Chamberlin from America, a patient activist from the United States. When she was invited to the World Congress of Mental Health in Brighton in June 1985, she was shocked to find no United Kingdom activists were invited - But worked with those who came uninvited.

    PROMPT

    PROMPT (Protection of the Rights of Mental Patients in Therapy) was formed in 1976. It was not a patients group, although several patients and ex- patients joined. Eric Irwin from West London MPU was one of its most active members. The group used the MPU logo and reprinted many MPU publications, with additions of its own.

    PROMPT did not try to provide housing or set up groups in hospitals. What id did do was to provide a telephone advice service for patients and ex=patients in difficulties, unsatisfied with their treatment or living conditions. It also gave considerable attention to campaigning on specific issues such as the abolition of Electro-Convulsive Therapy.


    MOVEMENT IN THE 1980S - BY PETER CAMPBELL - 2.11.2006

    Service user action used to be called self advocacy in the 1980s. Now it is called service user action or involvement. Whatever we call it, it is good to talk about what we have done, because there are things worth celebrating. And it is useful to be aware of our history, as it could inform us how we can do things better in the future.

    Did service user action really start in 1985? The reason we celebrated 21 years in 2006 was a perception that 1985 was when things really started. I think in 1985-1986 significant things did happen. But it is also clear there were things going on before 1985, and some of those things fed into what happened after 1985.

    The Alleged Lunatics Friend Society in 1845 was an advocacy organisation. It was service user controlled and it did have quite a lot of influence on the development of legislation in the mid-nineteenth century

    The Mental Patients Union (MPU), in the early 1970s, could probably be seen as the first service user involvement movement. Some people who were involved in the Mental Patients Union, were also involved in the 1980s so there are direct links between the MPU and what happened in the early 1980s. Obviously there were also groups like Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression and , British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry, which were going in the early 1980s. They were quite small groups and there were not a large number of them.

    A lot of the ideas of these groups fed into Survivors Speak Out, which I helped to start, and Nottingham Advocacy Group (in 1986), and through them to the survivor movement as a whole.

    What service user/survivor action has meant to me personally.

    I dislike people talking about service action as therapeutic, that to me is not what service user action is about. But it certainly has changed my life for the better, and we should not overlook the transformation that being involved in action can have on individuals, regardless of what else we actually change.

    The 1960s an 1970s

    I had gone into mental health services for the first time in 1967 and for the next fiften years I was in and out of hospital, adrift, beneath the surface as much as on top of the surface, isolated, alienated from myself, from other people, carrying a whole lot of negative baggage around with me about who I was, what my problems were, that I was suffering from a mental illness all these kind of things. Silenced. I had no voice at all.

    I think something that has changed now is that there is an opportunity for people to take action in a way there would not have been before. Somebody starting their career as a mental health service user nowadays, they do have the opportunity to take action, to try to change things, to work with other service users, to speak out in public, to discuss their experiences with other people, to write, to teach, to do these things. Certainly, when I started off in the system in the 1960s, that was inconceivable.

    In the 1980s I met other survivors who felt the same about their life, and who wanted to change things. Realising that other people felt the same way as I did about how mental health services had treated them transformed my life. It changed the way I thought about my experiences and the experiences of other people.

    Other people had the same kind of interior experiences as I did, paranoia, psychotic episodes and whatever, and that made a great deal of difference to me.

    I also learned a lot about difficulties that I do not have. For example, hearing voices and self harm - Areas that I was frightened about or had been repelled by. Through meeting survivors with those experiences I learned a tremendous amount about whole areas of mental distress I never knew about before.

    Meeting other survivors has helped me cope better with my own distress. I have had tremendous good fortune in having a number of close survivor friends who have helped me through a series of distressing episodes. One of the most memorable things that has happened to me was having a survivor friend as my advocate. I will never forget when I first had an advocate accompanying me into a ward round. Being accepted with the difficulties I have by other survivors has made a tremendous difference to my life. People who would say:

    "OK, here you are, occasionally you do lose it, you lose control, you become very strange, you do things you wouldn't normally do, but that's OK, we all have phases like that"

    My self esteem was transformed. In a way I have been liberated. I was able to take all those negative experiences in my life that I had to hide, I could not talk to anybody about, that I was ashamed of, and share them with other people. I was able to think about them, analyse them and use them in a constructive way.

    People listened to me and us collectively, and actually learnt from us and respected and valued our views. That has changed the way I think about myself. Given me the feeling that I have a worthwhile life.

    I have done interesting things. I have been able to travel around the country, meeting other service users, talk at conferences, teach here and there and develop teaching skills. I have written creatively in poetry and prose and had articles published

    This has not stopped me going into mental hospitals. I continue to do that regularly.

    Camden Mind In the early 1980s I had moved to a new part of London, I had been unemployed or under-employed for a number of years, and I decided to give up trying to have a conventional career and decided that I would try to change things in the mental health field, and I thought the only way of doing that was to get involved in Mind. So I got joined MIND in Camden, a local Mind association, as a volunteer. Through Mind in Camden I helped to set up a local service user group called Camden Mental Health Consortium in 1986. This was one of the first local action groups in London and still exists. At the same time, I made contact with two other groups which were more radical, more campaigning groups. One was the Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression (CAPO) and the other the British Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry.

    CAPO was a service user/survivor only group, quite a small radical, separatist network group. British Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry was a network too. It was largely London based and it was made up of mental health workers and service users.

    The period 1985 to 1995 was when I was most involved at a national level. It was through my involvement with Mind in Camden that I got invited to get a bit involved with National Mind and I went to the 1985 Mind Annual Conference, in Kensington. There was a meeting of service users immediately afterwards and from that meeting Survivors Speak Out was founded and I was involved as an officer in Survivors Speak Out from 1986 to 1996, so that was my main national involvement during that period. Then in 1991 I was involved in setting up Survivors Poetry, with three other survivor poets and for two or three years I was very involved with that, and I am still involved with Survivors Poetry, but not to such a great degree. From the early 1990s I became a freelance trainer, earning my living by doing teaching work mainly, and so that's been being involved in the education field, which has been my main area of activity for the past 15 years or so.

    I think of 1985-1995 as a pioneering phase. It is quite an interesting phase in the development of service user action

    Groups like Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression and British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry were more political than we are now. They were also more separatist, they tended to stand back from services and criticise from the outside. One of the things that changed, from 1985 onwards, was that the groups who started taking action then were much more involved within the system and prepared to work within the system, to reform the system rather than criticise it from the outside.

    Mind has focused on the World Federation Conference held in Brighton in 1985, as a starting point. It is ironic that they chose that, because the significant thing about that particular conference is there were hardly any service users from this country in it at all. In fact, I am not sure that any service users from this country were officially invited. There were a number of service users from other countries invited and the real significance I think of that conference was that people suddenly asked

    "Why aren't there any service users from the UK at this conference? We've got to do something about it because we know there are service users around who are taking action"
    And that is what led to Survivors Speak Out being formed the following year.

    So I think the Mind conference in 1985 in Kensington was more significant, because it was the first national mental health conference where much of the programme was run by service users, many of the workshops were being run by service users and service user organisations. Then in 1986 Survivors Speak Out was formed, the first national networking organisation. Nottingham Advocacy Group was also formed, which was extremely important because it promoted advocacy and patients' councils

    Mind Link and National Voices National Voices, a service user network within the National Schizophrenia Fellowship was formed in 1986 and Mind Link, the service user network within national Mind was formed in 1988. So I think it is true to say that in the mid 1980s service user action moved up a gear from what had happened before.

    One of the things that I think is interesting, having been involved in Survivors Speak Out, is that if Mind Link had got established before Survivors Speak Out got established, it is quite possible that service user action would have been channelled through mental health voluntary organisations like Mind and the National Schizophrenia Fellowship. But the fact that Survivors Speak Out was there promoting the idea of setting up independent groups was, I think quite important in retrospect to the development of mental health service user involvement.

    1985 to the early 1990s was about spreading the word. Going out to people and saying 'Look it is possible for service users to take action, this is why it's a good idea and this is how we can do it', and I think a lot of what was going on was people doing that, Survivors Speak Out, Nottingham Advocacy Group and other groups, going to local meetings around the country. One of the things that I remember that was exciting about this period, was that as Secretary of Survivors Speak Out I would get a letter from somebody, say in Wrexham, saying "I'm a service user, I've heard about Survivors Speak Out, I want to set up a group', and then a couple of months later you'd be invited to go to a meeting in Wrexham to talk about developing service user action locally, and then maybe a few months later there would be a group in Wrexham. You could see little dots on the map and groups being set up where previously there had been nothing at all. So it was that kind of pioneering era.

    MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S - BY PETER CAMPBELL - 2.11.2006

    Growth from 1990 What was going on was quite small scale compared to what happens nowadays. In 1990 there were about maybe 50 independent service user groups. Nowadays we're talking about more than 600 groups in England and Wales! We're also talking about quite a small degree of activity in 1990. Many of the groups were small, most of them were unfunded, many of them did not have offices, the majority of them did not have paid workers. This was the period before the user development worker. It was later in the 1990s that people were actually employed by various agencies to help set up user groups.

    One of the striking things about the 1980s, was that you knew people in a way you cannot now. It was quite possible if you were involved in a national organisation to feel that you knew a lot of the significant people who were involved in action around the country and nowadays things have got so enormous it is not possible to know people in this way. Things have got so much more complicated, it's very difficult to know what to do to move things forward nationally. It's very difficult to know how to do things, because everything is so much more developed, more complex, whereas in those days it was much easier to say "well this is what we need to do, and this is what we can do, and there are a lot of the things we can't do because we simply don't have the resources and won't be able to get them'. So I think in many ways things were a lot easier than they are nowadays. One of the things that has changed as well is expectations. In the early days we didn't have enormously high expectations of what could be done, we just thought, well we'll give it a go and see what happens, because it has never had been done before. Nowadays there are higher expectations of what you can achieve, what you should achieve. There are particularly high expectations from outside service user/ survivor organisations and ideas about what service user/survivor organisations should be doing. So I think things have changed quite a lot since the pioneering phase.

    Over the past ten years, service user involvement has become enshrined. It is not possible not to involve service users and those running the mental health system will not try to avoid involving service users. Whether or not they actually listen to service users is another matter, but involving service users is an absolute necessity.

    I think you can see how in recent years voluntary mental health organisations like Mind or Together, have pinned their flag to the flag pole of service user involvement. Service user involvement has become a big industry, many people are involved in it.

    We are involved in new areas of activity compared to the early 1990s. For example, research. Service user involvement in research is a huge area now. In the early 1990s it was not happening.

    So service users are involved across a huge area and people can now make a career in service user involvement. As a service user you can go out there and get paid work, sometimes quite well paid work. You can now pursue a career as a service user activist in a way that you could not 10 years ago.

    Another thing that has happened is specialisation. Because things have become so complex, there's a tendency for people to specialise in particular areas. In order to make any impact you have to spend all your time on self-harm, or on research, or on training and education. In some ways it fragments things and it's much more difficult to bring people together, because a lot of people are focused just on one particular area and may not be very aware of what's going on elsewhere. And I think that's one of the reasons there is a difficulty in getting a national voice for mental health service users, and difficulty in getting an overall sense of direction and cohesion. Because there is so much going on it is difficult to bring things together.

    The important thing to remember when trying to work out what changes have happened is that, at one time, service users were not involved.

    We were not involved in our own care and treatment. There were no patients councils, no advocacy and very little information. Now we talk about advocacy as being essential. We argue about the need to have a right to advocacy for people who are detained under the Mental Health Act. Indeed, a right to advocacy for service users as a whole. But advocacy was not talked about until the 1980s, and it did not exist on a significant scale.

    For some of us, representation was one of the key points about Mental Patients Union in the early 1970s, and the reason we chose the model of a union. Some of those who later adopted the term "advocacy" had previously studied the way that Mayola Road MPU and Hackney Hospital MPU operated. The MPU also produced leaflets about how tribunals worked and, occasionally, represented people on them. The patients' movement in the 1970s (in the United Kingdom as well as in Holland) was, therefore, one of the pioneers of what became advocacy. [Andrew Roberts]

    So we weren't properly involved in our own care and treatment because there was no advocacy. We were not involved in the development of services in any meaningful way either. We were not involved in consultation. We were not involved in training. We were not involved in research. We were not involved in providing our own services. We simply were not involved.

    If you look at the 1983 Mental Health Act, that was developed without any significant input from service users. And if you look at what is happening at the moment, when we have been arguing for years about amending the Mental Health Act, service users have certainly had the opportunity to be involved in this process and make a contribution. Whatever our influence has been is a different matter but certainly we've been there, we have had the opportunity to speak out about the Mental Health Act, and that certainly didn't happen when the 1983 Mental Health Act was being developed.

    [Note by Andrew Roberts: I think the point should be that the involvement is now of a different scale and quality. The Mental Patients Union, Cope, and other organisations with a significant user membership, did play a significant part in the 1970s discussion that led to the 1983 Mental Health Act. Some might argue that the initiative started at the grass roots and was picked up by Mind and other organisations later. On this issue, MPU and Mind appear to have worked together quite amicably. MPU members took part in debates and conferences, including Mind conferences, during the campaign and The Mental Patients Union was invited to the Government consultation meetings prior to the 1983 Mental Health Bill. By this time, however, the "union" was a network of friends and acquaintances. The individuals, however, followed the passage of the Bill through Parliament closely, and wrote leaflets and articles on it. The MPU files still contain ten years of documentation on this issue.]

    We were not involved in debates about understandings about what madness, distress, mental illness is. Nobody listened to us. Nobody thought we had anything worthwhile to say about our own experiences because we were mentally ill, we couldn't possibly have any "insight' into what our lives were about. That has changed. We were not meaningfully involved in major voluntary organisations. National Mind in the early 1980s saw themselves as being the "voice of the mentally ill'. But they didn't consult us, they had no mechanisms to make themselves sensitive to what service users really thought. Rethink, or the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, as it was then, was an organisation which basically represented the views of relatives. At that time all the major voluntary mental health organisations were not in tune with service users, service users were not meaningfully involved, they had no power or influence over these organisations. At the same time there were no service user organisations and service user controlled or service user only organisations. No independent organisations except very few.

    Basically we were nowhere. Silent, excluded, outside the room rather than inside the room, that was it. And I think it's important now that service user involvement is established and accepted and seen as being a good thing, just to remember that 20 years ago - there wasn't any. I think the other thing worth being aware of is we had to fight for it. This wasn't something that the service providers or the government suddenly woke up to and said, "oh yeah this is a good idea, let's do it'. This was something that we had to fight for and struggle for. It was not of course just service users and service user activists who brought about this change. There were also people running the mental health system who thought it was a good idea. But service user involvement was not something that everybody thought was a good idea, far from it. It was not something that was granted to us, we had to fight for it. During the early years, certainly most of the 1980s and the early 1990s, we were having to make the case for "Why involve service users?' So almost every time I remember going to any event, the first five minutes at least of anything I ever said, was basically establishing the case for "Why listen to service users?' "What are the reasons for doing that?' and we had to go through that time and time again, and a lot of what we were doing, a lot of what I was doing as part of Survivors Speak Out, a lot of what Colin Gell and other people were doing in the Nottingham Advocacy Group was going around the country trying to persuade people, mental health workers and other services users, why it was a good idea to involve service users. And there was a great deal of opposition to this.


    MOVEMENT IN THE MILLENIUM

    Not here yet


    Histories - Libraries - Archives
    and literature review notes

    Helen Spandler and Andrew Roberts

    listed archive means an archive and/or library that we have listed as of unique [and therefore irreplaceable if lost] or special value that requires preservation.

    Early 1970s' theory about the movement includes the Socialist Patient Collective's Make Your Illness a Weapon, in April 1972, which was endorsed by Sartre, and Foucault's reflections on psychiatry and antipsychiatry in 1973 and 1974. The French connection indicates that this is post-May 1968 theory in the tradition that builds on marxism whilst moving beyond the established marxist traditions.

    listed archive The SUMP (Scottish Union of Mental Patients) archives are housed with the Mental Patients Union archive (below). (Archive catalogue entry). For other Scottish archives see Oor Mad History

    listed archive Liz Davies collection. A large pile of papers kept in a box since she was active in the Paddington Day Hospital protest (1972) and Mental Patients Union (1973). Photocopies of many documents (mostly respecting Paddington Day Hospital) have been deposited in the MPU archive (below). The originals preserve the printing format, paper etc.

    listed archive Archives of the Mental Patients Union and some other groups were preserved by Andrew Roberts, Joan Hughes and Valerie Argent (working together). They are now in the care of Andrew Roberts (in Hackney) and will be referred to as "Andrew Roberts collection" or "MPU Archives". Some descriptions of how they were preserved are recorded in the MPU Archive folder "MPU History".

    Extent: It might be possible to consolidate the history and mental health collection built up by Valerie and Andrew Roberts into one room. The general collection includes much material on mental health history in the 19th and 20th centuries. The archives (not books) relating specifically to mental patients unions (including the MPU's own files) would probably occupy one four drawer filing cabinet. Many of these are in the original MPU filing cabinet. See Archives of Valerie Argent and Andrew Roberts

    listed archive The core of Joan Hughes' own collection is her (extensive and unpublished) writings documenting her life in the 1970s and 1980s. An edited version prior to the 1970s has been published on this website. Joan's articles, in Lawletter and Asylum for example, are being catalogued here. She also has a small archive of other documents not in the main archive (above).

    Joan Hughes died 13.12.2008. Her collection was left to Andrew Roberts and is being assimilated into his collection.

    Work was begun on the history of the (United Kingdom) users movement in 1977 by Rob James of Bristol and Dave Hinchcliffe of Wakefield. Their correspondence with Andrew Roberts is in the "MPU History" folder.

    Dave Hinchcliffe's (unpublished?) paper, or part paper ["MPU History" folder, covering letter 20.6.1977] contains about 20 pages, including MPU and People not Psychiatry. - See 29.4.1977 and amended extracts

    David Hinchcliffe was studying for a higher degree between 1974 and 1978. He was then elected to Wakefield Metropolitan District Council and became a Member of Parliament in 1987.

    There is also 1977 correspondence between Pam Edwards (in California) and Andrew Roberts about the writing of history and the preservation of records

    listed archive Frank Bangay's collection includes archives of PROMPT and CAPO as well as subsequent evnts in survivors' cultural history (music and poetry) - Frank Bangay's memories have been recorded, by himself and others, in articles, emails, in noted or taped interviews and in working with Andrew Roberts directly on this web history.

    If we exclude the engaged writing of activists such as Liz Durkin (1975), published academic reflection on the mental health users movements in the United Kingdom was established by Peter Sedgwick in 1982. The academics who have written as historians in the field of social movements and mental health user/survivors include (in rough order of their contribution) - Peter Sedgwick (psychologist 1982) - Peter Barham (psychologist 1984) - Stephen Ticktin (psychiatrist and philosopher 1991) - Anne Rogers (sociologist 1991) - David Pilgrim (psychologist 1991) - Helen Spandler (sociologist 1991/1992) - Nick Crossley (sociologist 1999) - Mark Cresswell (sociologist 2004) -

    Peter Sedgwick's PsychoPolitics (1982) contains detailed history of the mental patients' movement in Europe and the United States in the 1970s and is the point from which most historians will begin their researches.

    Begining in 1984 with Schizophrenia and human value, Peter Barham's collected works have created a history of the tension between "patient" and "person" from the "forgotten lunatics" of the first world war to the present.

    Joan Hughes' "Mental Distress - Short talk on history of mental patients' movements" was given on 4.2.1986. A developed version is published on this web page.

    From spring 1986, back editions of Asylum magazine, and from August 1988 MINDWAVES, are particularly good resources to draw on.

    Eric Irwin, in November 1986, defined a version of history in which an "anti- psychiatry" movement began with the Mental Patients Union and COPE in 1973. This has been influential on subsequent histories. It contrasts with the approach of Peter Sedgwick, who treated anti-psychiatry and the mental patients movements as distinct realities in their own right.

    Eric Irwin's death, in December 1987, prompted Frank Bangay's first substantial independent contribution to the movement's history. His obituary of Eric is one of the classical texts, as is Mike Lawson's narrative poem on the same occasion.

    listed archive Many archives of Survivors Speak Out, and related groups are preserved by Peter Campbell. Peter was described by Mark Cresswell (May 2008) as the movement's "most exemplary chronicler for twenty years or more". His work telling the story of the users movement in the United Kingdom includes
    1987: "Self-advocacy movement in the UK, User Representation, Citizen Advocacy, Staff as Advocates" -
    1996: "The History of the User Movement in the United Kingdom" (Open University Text)
    1999: "The Service User/Survivor Movement" -
    March 2001: "The role of users of psychiatric services in service development - influence not power" -
    2005 - "From Little Acorns - The mental health service user movement"
    2006 History on this site -

    Ingrid Barker and Edward Peck's collection Power in Strange Places, in 1987, was followed by "Users as partners in mental health - ten years of experience" by Edward Peck and Ingrid Barker in the Journal of Interprofessional Care Volume 11, Issue 3, pages 269 to 277 in 1997.

    Helen Spandler's researches in the movement history began about 1989. (See also bibliography). About October 1989 she was researching in the MPU Archives and in July 1990 she wrote an (unpublished) paper "An attempt to analyse the anti-psychiatry and mental patients movements with regard to the social and political period of the sixties". Her research on the Socialist Patient Collective was published in Asylum in Autumn 1992. From August 1994 to August 1995, Helen was a research worker at 42nd Street in Manchester. Helen Spandler's thesis (2002) and book (2006), both called Asylum to Action include a fairly detailed account of the origin of the Mental Patients Union. The book's bibliography is archived here. Helen and Mark Cresswell are currently working on the legacy of Peter Sedgwick, one of the first, and most significant, historians of the mental patients' movement. Helen is also working with Anne Plumb on the history of the survivors' movement in Greater Manchester.

    Stephen Ticktin's articles include ones important to the history of the movement in the 1980s. See especially "The Users' Voice in Mental Health Services - towards a democratic psychiatry" Asylum Summer 1991

    Anne Rogers and David Pilgrim's "Pulling down churches" (June 1991) was one of the first published academic articles in the United Kingdom to recognise the movement as a "new social movement". Whilst showing awareness of "organisations" in the 1970s, the authors argue that "the beginnings of the British users' movement can be traced to the mid-1980s". The names of the ten people interviewed for this research are not recorded (see Autumn 1988). The interview tapes and transcripts on which the paper was based were destroyed after the paper was written. This was to preserve confidentiality.

    listed archive Archives of the United Kingdom Advocacy Network are preserved by Terry Simpson - See details Spring 2007 - Terry is preparing an outline catalogue for use on this web site.

    Peter Beresford and Jan Wallcraft's article Psychiatric System Survivors and Emancipatory research (1997) reviews and criticises some of the history that had been written. In 1998 Peter Beresford made a call for "users/survivors... to regain control of our past. Jan Wallcraft's (2003) work on the history of the current movement was an important developemnt in this. Peter Beresford was active as a founder of the Survivors History Group. [Helen Spandler: "Peter Beresford has written extensively about the user movement and user involvement, especially regarding the policy context of its emergence - although he has not written much about the history as such"]. Jan Wallcraft has recently contributed to the history of the Recovery movement

    listed archive Archives of Suresearch are preserved by Suresearch.

    Nick Crossley has written an article (1999) on the Mental Patients Union and his book Contesting Psychiatry (2005)

    Marian Barnes and Ric Bowl wrote the book Taking Over the Asylum (2000). She also gave a talk on the history of the movement in April 2002. She published A History of the Nottingham Advocacy Group in 2007.

    Mike Crawford's article Involving users in the development of psychiatric services - no longer an option (March 2001) is a useful introduction to the history of government policy on involving users.

    Also interesting is the rise of the 'survivor worker' (Rose Snow's report (2002) of the conference)

    The rise of the 'user entrepreneur' [may not have a written history]

    Adam James has written a history (2001) of the Hearing Voices Network. Anne Plumb has made A selection of items on development of the Hearing Voices Network and events, from its newsletters 1993-2008

    Mark Cresswell, a Durham university sociologist, has written on the history of the self harm movement since 2004. His work on this subject is being archived on this site. Mark is currently working (with Helen Spandler) on the legacy of Peter Sedgwick.

    In May 2005 The Sainsbury Centre published Beyond the Water Towers, with useful chapters by David Pilgrim and Peter Campbell

    David Armes's 2006 thesis and his July 2000 paper, discuss the contradictory potential for service users of community care policy. See also Manchester 2008

    listed archive The catalogues of Anne Plumb's collection of 1) articles, pamphlets, leaflets and a video (to 3.9.2007) and 2) books, can be downloaded here. See Archives of Anne Plumb - Chronological and Grassroots archives

    listed archive Oor Mad History in Edinburgh are collecting an archive of the movement in Lothian. This is linked to archives being held by individual groups in Lothian area.

    Portable exhibition

    The elements of our portable exhibition are:

    Survivor Voices 1908-2008 Laminated sheets for display and a pamphlet to take away


    Fragments from the archives A4 Ring Binder with documents in plastic wallets including:

    "Development of the movement" chart from On Our Own Terms (2003) - An initiative that helped to establish survivors history.

    People Not Psychiatry Leaflet

    Fish Pamphlet written by Eric Irwin - Lesley Mitchell - Liz Durkin - Brian Douieb - late 1972/early 1973

    MPU News 3 February 1974 - A rare complete edition: People usually took the poster out!

    Declaration of Intent of the Mental Patients Union (agreed Saturday 7.4.1973) and Constitution of the Federation of Mental Patients Unions (agreed 20.4.1974)

    Copeman 4 - Winter 1974

    Mind Out - October 1974

    Mind Out December 1975

    a directory of the SIDE EFFECTS of psychiatric drugs (October 1975)

    Your Rights in Mental Hospital (Manchester MPU) about 1979

    PROMPT Anti-Psychiatry Conference notice - Saturday 23.8.1980

    The Abolitionist on Prison Medicine - Winter 1981

    Matthew O'Hara Committee News 2 Summer 1981

    "To Be a Mental Patient"

    Lawletter - 1981 - 1982 - 1983 samples

    PROMPT Manifesto Demands Discussion [1979?]

    Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression - Introduction, Manifesto, Demands. 1985

    CAPO Notice

    Phoenix Cooperative Mental Patients' Publication. First edition launched Saturday 23.6.1984

    Platform for the British Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry [BNAP formed in 1983 - This document 1985/1986]

    BNAP paper July 1985 - For Brighton Conference

    Mind Ballot 1 Autumn 1986

    November 1986: We're Not Mad... We're Angry - Statements by Survivors

    Mind Ballot 2 Autumn 1986

    Saturday 7.3.1987 BNAP Study day on the Use, Abuse and Alternatives to E.C.T and Major Tranquillisers.

    Survivors Speak Out Conference 1987 - Charter

    11.12.1987 "Hugs not Drugs" Greenford, Northolt and Southall Recorder

    May 1988 Survivors Speak Out "Address List of Groups Involved in Mental Health Self-Advocacy"

    16.9.1989 Press Release: Crisis Card Launched.

    1987: London Alliance for Mental Health Action. Statement of Goals

    Autumn 1988 "Mental health users speak out on services" [Common Concerns Conference]

    December 1988 "Sane launches battle to 'stop the madness'"

    A collection of newscuttings about the anti-SANE poster campaign including: 16.3.1989 "Mental health split" City Limits
    24.9.1989 "Groups lock horns over schizophrenia posters" Hampstead and Highgate Gazette?

    4.9.1989 "Mike bids to free 'mental detainees'" Western Mail - News of Wales

    Should You Have Electroshock? An Information leaflet produced by the London Alliance for Mental Health Action. [1989 or later]

    26.8.1994 "Orville Blackwood Community Campaign - In memory of all those who have not survived psychiatry."

    The Mad Persons Union number 3 [1994/1995]]

    Openmind September/October 2004 "Speaking out for 60 years"

    Survivors history and The Survivors History Group

    The Greater Manchester Survivors History Group


    Portable Research

    March 1973 Mental Patients Union questionnaire Lefalet

    1988 Hackney Survey A4 Book

    1993 Experiencing Psychiatry: User's Views of Services Book

    1994 UKAN survey of users' views of shock [A4 pages]

    1.3.1994 Have We Got Views for You - User Evaluation of Case Management by Marion Beeforth - Edna Conlan - and Roberta Graley - [Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health Book]

    October 1997 Strategies for Living Newsletter 1

    1998 In our experience : user-focused monitoring of mental health services in Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster Health Authority by Diana Rose - [Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health Book]

    February 1998 Getting Ready for User-Focused Monitoring (UFM) - A Guide for mental Health Service Providers, Users and Purchasers. - [Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health WorkBook]

    October 1998 Strategies for Living Newsletter 2

    January 2000 Strategies for Living: A Report of User-led Research into People's Strategies for Living with Mental Distress Alison Faulkner and Sarah Layzell - Mental Health Foundation Book]

    23.1.2001 Users' Voices - The perspectives of mental health service users on community and hospital care by Diana Rose. - [Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health Book]

    February 2001 Research Project into Users Groups and Empowerment Sharon Matthew - Supported by the Strategies for Living Project - A Mental Health Foundation booklet

    May 2003 The Mental Health Service User Movement in England Booklet

    Autumn 2003 Strategies for Living Newsletter 20

    November 2004 The ethics of survivor research

    2005 Extraordinary Everyday - Explorations in Collaborative Art in Healthcare [Book]

    January 2007 A Guide to User-Focused Monitoring - Setting up and running a project by Nutan Kotecha - Chandra Fowler - Anne-Laure Donskoy - Peter Johnson - Torsten Shaw - and Karen Doherty. Other contributors: Julia von Hausenchild - Krys Farrell - Graham Saxton - Shelley Welton - and Derek Williams [Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health Book]

    2008 Heritage of Mental Health [booklets]

    2009 Researching in Mental Health: Sociological and Service User/Survivor Perspectives [leaflets]

    5.5.2009 This is Survivor Research [Book]

    April 2009 Handbook of Service User Involvement in Mental Health Research [Book]


    Survivor Poetry Books, pamphlets, leaflets and sheets and posters including:

    1916 The Farmer's Bride - Charlotte Mew

    1989 the ivy - Collected Poems 1970-1989 David Kessel

    Autumn 1991 Memorial card for Valerie Argent - with her Diamonds poem

    July 1992 Survivor's Poetry - From Dark to Light

    April 1995 Under The Asylum Tree

    1996: And the World Really Had Changed - Leeds Survivor Poets.

    April 1996 Brixton Community Santuary Anthology

    10.10.1996 Sweet, Sour and Serious - Survivors' Poetry Scotland.

    1997 Beyond Bedlam: Poems written out of Mental Distress

    1999 Fresher Than Green Brighter Than Orange "an anthology of poetry by Irish women living in London in 1999"

    1999 Naked Songs and Rhythms of Hope "An illustrated collection of poems from 1974 to 1999 by Frank Bangay"

    2000 From Lead to Gold - An Anthology of Survivors' Poetry from the Camden Workshops

    2001 A True Voice Singing CD by Frank Bangay

    2001 Trees Will be Trees by Peter Street

    2001/2002 Kazi Nazrul Islam posters from Survivors Poetry

    Spring 2003 solo survivors issues 5 - edited by Becki Mee

    2006 Brown Linoleum - Green Lawns by Peter Campbell

    2007 Auáenseitergedichte David Kessel


    Most of the items in our Portable Exhibition have been given to us. Thanks are due to Alison Faulkner - Frank Bangay - The Mental Health Foundation - Peter Campbell - Phil Ruthen - Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health - Survivors Poetry - Together for Wellbeing - and others


    Information boxes

    Publications index: National Association for Mental Health (Mind)

    It is planned to create an index of the journal archives people have - Similar to the one we are working on for Asylum

    Mind Out 1973-1982 1973 - 1974 - 1975 - 1976 - 1977 - 1978 - 1979 - 1980 - 1981 - 1982 -

    Open Mind 1983-2012 1983 - 1984 - 1985 - 1986 - 1987 - 1988 - 1989 - 1990 - 1991 - 1992 - 1993 - 1994 - 1995 - 1996 - 1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 -

    Mind Out index -


    1973


    1974


    1975


    1976


    1977


    1978


    1979


    1980


    1981


    1982

    OpenMind index - Initial index by Mark Cresswell - Being developed.

    1983

    Some of the letters written by Peter Campbell in the years prior to the formation of Survivors Speak Out challenge MIND's paternalism...

    February/March 1983 First issue of "OpenMind: The Mental Health Magazine" First editorial:

    " 'That Open Mind should appear in the wake of one of MIND's major achievements - the Mental Health (Amendment) Act...a reflection of the organisation's widening focus..... a greater emphasis in future on welfare rights, advice, and community housing, more education and training for professional staff, as well as a need to venture into less explored territory. Research into how to prevent anxiety and stress-related diseases is therefore to be developed alongside campaigns for better facilities, care and benefits for mentally ill/handicapped people...MIND is the watchdog, Open Mind its publicity agent. The magazine will carry features exposing bad practice...deal with discrimination and stereotyping....Open Mind also needs to be a magazine to which patients, professionals, relatives and volunteers can turn for support. OpenMind...The helpline, listings and Julia Pascal's article on how dance can be used to bring out confidence."

    April/May 1983 OpenMind Two:

    advertises "Mad, Bad or Ill...A video made by women who attended the women and mental health workshops initiated by the Scottish Association for Mental Health" (SAMH, 67 York Place, Edinburgh).

    advertises "Nottingham self-help group report' - a write up of their first year's work. From Judy Wilson, 54 Rope Walk, Nottingham, N61 5D."

    Review of Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orbach's Outside In, Inside Out: a feminist psychoanalytic approach from the London Women's Therapy Centre (1982, Harmondsworth: Penguin).

    Helplines listed: 'Self-help group for minor tranquilliser users in Islington... contact Chris Law - and Tranquilliser Withdrawal support (North East England) (18)."

    June/July 1983 OpenMind Three:

    David Cooper is interviewed by Ron Lacey (pages 8-9). Lacey comments,

    "Whereas in France, Italy and Holland there are organised lobbies of mental patients, the Mental Patients Union in England does not even have a national base or platform" (page 8).

    advertises Surviving Pregnancy Loss (1982) by Rochelle Friedman and Bonnie Gradstein (Boston: Little Brown).

    A letter from P.N. Campbell London NW 8: 'Jabs and pills' (page 18)

    August/September 1983 OpenMind Four:

    Editorial:

    "Speaking up at a MIND conference on the treatment of women in psychiatry, psychotherapist Elizabeth Henderson commented that the psychological problems experienced by women cannot be considered without analysing women's place in society...The conference...concluded that it was the limitations of this role that made women more susceptible to breakdown than men. This conference took place almost a decade ago' (3)...Since then the feminist perspective on women's mental health has gained increasing credibility, mainly because of the work of the Women's Therapy Centre set up in 1976 by Susie Orbach and Luise Eichenbaum...Various self-help groups emerged and a growing consciousness of women's special needs motivated social workers, nurses and other professionals to meet as women's groups...men do not experience the same difficulties in having their needs met" (page 3).

    an advert for "Women and Eating Problems at The Women's Therapy Centre a training course for women in the Health and Social Services whose work brings them into contact with women with eating problems' contact Jose Nicolson" (page 2).

    a letter from Peter Campbell: "I am a manic-depressive of 15 years standing and went through the same mental hospital, Richmond Fellowship and therapy process as Naomi (OM2)...If mental patients never use their voices, is it any wonder that doctors only use our throats for pill swallowing' (page 15).

    Helen Snell reviwed (page 17) Kim Chernin's Womansize: the tyranny of slenderness (1983, London: The Women's Press)

    "Kim Chernin was anorexic herself...There is little doubt that 'through her concern for her body a woman is expressing a serious concern about the state of her soul'...serious thought ought to be given to Kim Chernin's main contention that there has been no real understanding of the female psyche...It is...a very personal statement...which is in this case is a disadvantage".

    advert for 'A framework for action - the second international congress on psychiatric nursing' London. 18.9.1983-23.9.1983

    advert for 'Critical Psychiatry and the understanding of mental illness' - conference organised by the British Sociological Association's Medical Group. 23.9.1983-25.9.1983

    advert for 'Counselling and Survival' Seventh Annual General Meeting and conference for the British Association of Counselling at Reading. 23.9.1983-24.9.1983 Speakers: Dorothy Rowe and James Thompson "on survival issues as they relate to counsellors and counselled...relationship between personal and political survival issues".

    advert in the 'Listings' (page 18) for Sarah Lerner (a solicitor): 'Section 136: Could any women who like myself' - this is from an unnamed service user - 'have been sectioned under Section 136 (1959 Mental Health Act) contact me urgently to discuss how we can best protect ourselves against possible further police harassment'.

    Peter Campbell advertises in the 'Listings' (page 18): "Living with mental illness...I am interested in other patients and ex-patients concerning the experience of being mentally ill outside hospital with a view to compiling an article".

    Publications Advertised: Marital Violence: the community response by Maragaret Borkowski, Mervyn Murch and Val Walker (1983, London:Tavistock); also How to Survive Anorexia by Peter Lambley (1983, London: Frederick Mueller). (page 18)

    October/November 1983 OpenMind Five:

    Article by Sue Shaw (page 5) 'If you have experience of Section 136, write to Fiona McLean, GLC Women's committee support unit...County Hall'. A service user is referred to as 'Mary X'.

    Simon Hebditch, Assistant Director of MIND (page 5):

    "In 1980 MIND's annual conference was devoted to the future role of the mental hospitals. It is now appropriate that we should be considering the principles and practicalities of providing a comprehensive, local, psychiatric service. MIND's new manifesto gives an outline of the nature of such services and ways in which to meet the needs of various groups in the population."

    December/January 1983/1984 OpenMind Six:

    Article by Richard Jameson 'Schizophrenia from the inside':

    "suffered from schizophrenia on and off for fifteen years...Looks as if the doctor's have got it right in my case and I am very thankful indeed. I have been able to talk about my past illness in public, twice on 'Woman's Hour', once on the BBC, once on Thames TV, once on Yorkshire TV and once in a programme of my own on BBC 2" (page 14).

    Richard Jameson Links: Voices Forum - Voices Forum - schizophrenia -

    A review of Dorothy Rowe's Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison (1983: London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Reviewed by David Brandon: 'This is an excellent book'. It won the MIND book of the year prize.

    Campbell, P. Letter. OpenMind, 6: 17

    "Recently on television Tessa Jowell, an Assistant Director of Mind, spoke of the need to share the decision making process with the mentally ill themselves...It is to be hoped that on this occasion the ideal will be enthusiastically pursued...the balance of Open Mind seems to be heavily weighted in favour of the expert. Much of the advertising would seem to support this view. Thus Open Mind reflects rather than confronts the division between the professional and consumer. It is my view that it is inadequate to confine the voice of the ordinary person to a letters column. The arrogant assumption that the mentally ill never analyse the significance of their experience or are incapable of conveying it to other sections of society should be directly challenged by MIND. Sooner or later someone is going to take the plunge."

    advertises Common Concern: Mind's manifesto for a new mental health service

    1984

    February/March 1984 OpenMind Seven:

    Reports on "Inside Out" a project set up by The Glasgow Association of Mental Health and funded by Manpower Services Commission to launch a new mental health magazine called Inside Out. The workers have also applied to the Scottish Arts Council to fund a play via LINK: 'independent self-help groups for consumers and relatives'. Jim Mcnee is manager of the scheme.

    Reports on Camden Association for Mental Health launching a campaign to find realistic alternatives to the closure of Friern Barnet hospital. (page 7?)

    From Hospital to the Community: The Italian Experience

    29.2.1984 to 4.3.1984 - film festival 'Fit To Be Untied'. Mental Health film and TV season at The Institute of Contemporary Art. Contact Robert Dando. Films on Szasz, Laing, Italy etc...

    April/May 1984 OpenMind Eight:

    Campbell, P. Letter. OpenMind, "Loss of control is a central element in the experience of the mentally ill" (page 13).

    Review by Catherine Grimshaw of "Sexual Violence - the reality for women" (1984, London: Women's Press) by the London Rape Crisis Centre.

    "Interestingly, you will not find the word victim used in this book. It has been deliberately excluded because such a word belittles the strength that women have and is expressed in the anger that is often released after an assault" (pages 16-17)

    Advertises 'Co-counselling' - contact Jim Read.

    The telephone help-line "Taboo - Crisis line by women for girls who are being sexually abused at home and women who have suffered sexual abuse. A refuge for girls over 16 is to open later in the year. Taboo, P.O. Box 38, Manchester M60 1HG." (pages 16-17)

    "Victims of Violence - Merseyside Victims of Violence has just opened the country's first refuge for people recovering from the effects of attack. It can offer temporary accommodation for up to 15 residents. Contact Joan Jonker Southport."

    "The International Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry has a newly formed a Women and Psychiatry working party. Details Karen Davison, London".

    Advert for Women's Health Information Centre (WHIC): "A collective which grew out of the Politics of Health Group" (London).

    Community Groups Information Pack, by Hackney Community Action.

    Listing for The Phoenix (page 18)

    June/July 1984 OpenMind Nine:

    Campbell, P. Letter. OpenMind, 9: 18.
    Advert for training weekend on "compulsive eating" held at Women's Therapy Centre. OpenMind, 9: 18.
    Notice of the formation of the "Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa Association" OpenMind, 9: 18.
    Report of activism of the London Alliance for Mental Health Action OpenMind, 9: 18. [??? wrong date?]

    August/September 1984 OpenMind Ten:

    Listing for Incest Survivors Campaign: "A recent survey has suggested that 20% of British girls suffer sexual abuse from men in a position of trust/authority. The ISC is a national self-help network which supports the adult survivors of incest and through campaigning and educational work aims to prevent incest". London. page 18.

    Advertisement (p.18) for The Anorexic Experience by Marilyn Lawrence, and Dealing with Depression by Kathy Nairne and Gerrilyn Smith, both 1984 from the Women's Press.

    October/November 1984 OpenMind Eleven:

    1985

    December/January 1984/1985 OpenMind Twelve:

    Advertisement for Alexandra's 'I speak for the silent'. OpenMind, 12: 18.

    February/March 1985 OpenMind Thirteen:

    Report on eating disorders centre in Leicester. OpenMind 13: 4.
    Advertisement for 'Ask any woman' by Ruth Hall. OpenMind 13: 17.

    April/May 1985 OpenMind Fourteen:

    Anny Brackx Review of Wisdom, Madness and Folly by R.D. Laing. Page 17.

    Advertisement for 'Preventing child sexual assault' by Michele Elliott. OpenMind, 14: 18.

    June/July 1985 OpenMind Fifteen:

    August/September 1985 OpenMind Sixteen:

    October/November 1985 OpenMind Seventeen:

    "Getting Back to the Starting Line" by Jim Read

    "Advocacy" by Bob Sang

    Bob Sang has been described as "the first full time advocacy worker in the UK". He established the Advocacy Alliance project in several long-stay hospitals.

    Letter: Jan Wallcraft. OpenMind, 17: 13.

    Advertisement for 'Anorexia Nervosa; the broken circle' by Ann Erichsen'. OpenMind, 17: 18.

    Advert for MIND annual conference, 'From Patients to People: Power Sharing in Mental Health Services'. OpenMind, 17: 18.

    December/January 1985/1986 OpenMind Eighteen:

    Campbell, P. Letter: "Advocacy" in response to Bob Sang's article

    "It is perhaps worthwhile to consider MIND's role as advocate on behalf of the mentally ill. There are many people who do not wish MIND to speak on their behalf. They are capable and willing to speak for themselves without the intervention of a professional body as an interpreter...some of their continuing dissatisfaction is because many agencies, including MIND, are so lukewarm in allowing them direct access or a voice. To such a group the trumpeted position of advocate is more an obstacle than an avenue. It seems MIND wants to run things on their terms. It is MIND for the mentally ill not MIND with the mentally ill.. My second major concern is that advocacy will only act as a cement for the system in which it operates. Whatever the commitment to the players, the game is still the same and the reserve team is highly unlikely to be allowed on the pitch. MIND bestrides the field of mental health and says it is our advocate. I think it is time MIND sharpened up its ideas of what it can and cannot, will and will not do. Then perhaps the rest of us would have a better chance of a go" (page 17)

    1986

    February/March 1986 OpenMind Nineteen:

    Brackx, A. Editorial OpenMind 19: 4.
    Brackx, A. Review of 'Hunger Strike' by Susie Orbach OpenMind 19: 9.
    Milroy, A. & Hennelly, R. Is MIND losing its sting? OpenMind, 19: 14.
    Pilgrim, D. (1986). Letter. OpenMind, 19: 15.

    April/May 1986 OpenMind Twenty:

    June/July 1986 OpenMind TwentyOne:

    August/September 1986 OpenMind TwentyTwo:

    Report on the making of the video, 'We're not mad, we're angry'. OpenMind, 22: 18.

    Listing for Survivors Speak Out (SSO). OpenMind, 22: 18.


    October/November 1986 OpenMind TwenyThree:

    December/January 1986/1987 OpenMind TwentyFour:

    1987

    February/March 1987 OpenMind Twentyfive:

    April/May 1987 OpenMind Twentysix:

    June/July 1987 OpenMind Twentyseven:

    August/September 1987 OpenMind Twentyeight:

    October/November 1987 OpenMind Twentynine:

    December/January 1987/1988 OpenMind Thirty:

    1988

    February/March 1988 OpenMind Thirtyone:

    April/May 1988 OpenMind Thirtytwo:

    June/July 1988 OpenMind Thirtythree:

    August/September 1988 OpenMind Thirtyfour:

    October/November 1988 OpenMind Thirtyfive:

    December/January 1988/1989 OpenMind Thirtysix:

    1989

    February/March 1989 OpenMind Thirtyseven:

    April/May 1989 OpenMind Thirtyeight:

    June/July 1989 OpenMind Thirtynine:

    August/September 1989 OpenMind Forty:

    October/November 1989 OpenMind Fortyone:

    December/January 1989/1990 OpenMind FortyTwo:

    Campbell, P. (1989/90). "Self-Harm". OpenMind, 42: 18. 1. Peter Campbell's report of the 'Looking at Self-Harm' conference in 1989' organised by Louise Pembroke of Survivors Speak Out.

    February/March 1990 OpenMind Fortythree:

    April/May 1990 OpenMind Fortyfour:

    June/July 1990 OpenMind Fortyfive:

    August/September 1990 OpenMind Fortysix:

    October/November 1990 OpenMind Fortyseven:

    1991 December/January 1990/1991 OpenMind Fortyeight:

    February/March 1991 OpenMind Fortynine:

    April/May 1991 OpenMind Fifty:

    June/July 1991 OpenMind Fiftyone:

    August/September 1991 OpenMind Fiftytwo:

    October/November 1991 OpenMind Fiftythree:

    1992

    December/January 1991/1992 OpenMind Fiftyfour:

    Pembroke, L. "Eating Distress" OpenMind, 54: 12-13.

    February/March 1992 OpenMind Fiftyfive:

    Campbell, P. "Poetry in motion" OpenMind, 55: 4.

    MINDlink - Mind's 'consumer network'. OpenMind, 55: 5.

    April/May 1992 OpenMind Fiftysix:

    June/July 1992 OpenMind Fiftyseven:

    August/September 1992 OpenMind Fiftyeight:

    October/November 1992 OpenMind Fiftynine:

    1993

    December/January 1992/1993 OpenMind Sixty:

    February/March 1993 OpenMind Sixtyone:

    Campbell, P. Letter. OpenMind, 61: 10-11.

    April/May 1993 OpenMind Sixtytwo:

    Nettle, M. Users can be consultants. OpenMind, 62: 18.

    June/July 1993 OpenMind Sixtythree:

    August/September 1993 OpenMind Sixtyfour:

    October/November 1993 OpenMind Sixtyfive:

    December/January 1993/1994 OpenMind Sixtysix:

    1994

    OpenMind 68: 20-21. "Self-Harm". Lucy Johnstone's interview with Diane Harrison, a founder member of the Bristol Crisis Service for Women (BCSW) and a platform speaker at the 1989 conference.

    1995

    Openmind, 73: 13: "National Self-harm Network" by Louise Pembroke. Launching the National Self-Harm Network (NSHN) - "I'd like to see this become a survivor-run network, where survivors made the decisions and allies/supporters could feed in their ideas for our consideration. I'd like this network to become a campaigning organization"

    1996

    McCrory, A. (1996). Letter. OpenMind, 21; 17.

    1997

    Openmind redsesign and relaunch under the editorship of Sara Dunn

    1998

    March/April 1998 OpenMind Ninety:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    May/June 1998 OpenMind Ninetyone:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    "In this issues... The mental health service user movement has grown into an effective force for promoting change in both the theories and practices of psychiatry; we feature here a personal look at where and how the user movement might now progress, as well as a call for a user controlled 'museum of madness'. Elsewhere, in the second of two articles Pat Bracken looks at particular experiences of Irish users of British mental health services, and André Holmes describes his first stay in a psychiatric unit."

    "Use it or lose it Andy Smith on the challenges facing the contemporary mental health service user movement" (pages 10-11)

    "Past Tense - Peter Beresford on the need for a survivor-controlled museum of madness" (pages 12-13)

    July/August 1998 OpenMind Ninetytwo:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    September/October 1998 OpenMind Ninetythree:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    November/December 1998 OpenMind Ninetyfour:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    1999

    January/February 1999 OpenMind Ninetyfive:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    March/April 1999 OpenMind Ninetysix:

    May/June 1999 OpenMind Ninetyseven:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    2000

    November/December 2000 James, A. (2000). Self-harm/self-defence. OpenMind, 106

    2001

    July/August 2001 OpenMind 110:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    September/October 2001 OpenMind 111:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    November/December 2001 OpenMind 112:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts 2002

    Kathryn Perry joined Openmind in 2002. Another Openmind redesign and relaunch in 2003

    January/February 2002 OpenMind 113:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    March/April 2002 OpenMind 114:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    May/June 2002 OpenMind 115:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    July/August 2002 OpenMind 116:

    September/October 2002 OpenMind 117:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    November/December 2002 OpenMind 118:

    2003

    January/February 2003 OpenMind 119:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    Taylor, B. (2003). Men Self-Harm too. OpenMind, 119: 14-15.

    March/April 2003 OpenMind 120:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    2004

    July/August 2004 OpenMind 128:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    September/October 2004 OpenMind 129:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    November/December 2004 OpenMind 130:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts
    Pembroke, L. (2004). Medical pornography. OpenMind, 130: 11-12.

    2005

    January/February 2005 OpenMind 131:

    March/April 2005 OpenMind 132:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    May/June 2005 OpenMind 133:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    July/August 2005 OpenMind 134:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    September/October 2005 OpenMind 135:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    November/December 2005 OpenMind 136:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    2006

    January/February 2006 OpenMind 137:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    May/June 2006 OpenMind 139:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    July/August 2006 OpenMind 140:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    September/June 2006 OpenMind 141:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    2007

    January/February 2007 OpenMind 143:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    November/December 2007 OpenMind 148:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    2008

    November/December 2008 OpenMind 154:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts


    2009

    Articles by Louise Pembroke on Relations with Psychiatrists and "Mind Your Language"

    May/June 2009 OpenMind 157:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    May/June 2009 OpenMind 157:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    2010

    November/December 2010 OpenMind 163:
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts

    2011

    January/February 2011 OpenMind 164?:
    Published end of January 2011
    Included:
    articles on the impact and context of the welfare reforms
    benefit reform in the popular media
    men and mental health
    legal and research updates

    March/April 2011 OpenMind 165?:
    Published early April 2011
    Focusses on mental health advocacy.

    May/June 2011 OpenMind 166?:

    July/August 2011 OpenMind 167?:

    September/October 2011 OpenMind 168?:

    November/December 2011 OpenMind 169?:

    2012

    January/February 2012 OpenMind 170?:

    March/April 2012 OpenMind 171?:

    3.4.2012 Louise Pembroke to Helen Spandler: "I am very sad about Openmind ending and believe it is a mistake. It is one of the few publications survivors could easily access as a contributor because too many magazines issue pages of writing guidelines, publishing articles with a page of references, must have a specific reference style, must be evidence based. It is off putting to non- academic survivors. One of the psychology journals takes months with petty grammatical changes going back and forth because there is no editing [I thought editors did editing]. Openmind had some great editors over the years who really helped survivors to get into print in a way few of the psychology and nursing journals make much effort to do these days. It was a place where many of us cut our writing teeth on the topics of the day, without an evidence base and sometimes without a single reference - because the writing was putting out original thinking. It also reported milestone survivor events and publications and had a lively letters page. It was a mistake to end it, for survivors with ever decreasing spaces to freely speak, and for Mind because it was one of its best products which members valued. When I wrote about 'medical pornography' [self-injury photo's] I very much doubt the professional journals would have taken it."

    May/June 2012? OpenMind 172:
    Painted from memory : Open Mind's legacy, Crepaz-Keay, D., 4-5
    The fight for rights goes on, Beresford, P.; Hopton, J., 6-7
    Mental health publishing : where now?, Murphy, B., 8-9
    Baby & bath water : which way for day centres?, Basset, T.; Faulkner, A., 10-11
    Questioning `schizophrenia', Fernando, S.; Kalathil, J.; Thomas, P.; Wallcraft, J.; Trenchard, S.; Read, J.; Pilgrim, D., 12-15
    Professionals and self-disclosure, Hatton, A., 16-17
    Spirituality and mental health in the consumer age, Chadwick, P., 18-19
    In practice : Steve Morgan writes about the importance of reflective practice in training, 20-21
    Mental health on trial, Miller, J., 22-24


    Local and Regional links to the National Association for Mental Health (Mind)

    Cambridge Mental Welfare Association (now Cam-mind) traces its history back to 1908 (or 1883). Mind describes it as its oldest local association. A weblink

    1949 Exeter and District Association for Mental Health

    Mind history website says "the development of the local associations movement really dates from the early 1960s. By that time it had become clear that the statutory services could not meet all the needs of people who were experiencing mental distress or had learning disabilities. As a result, the NAMH strengthened its campaign for improvements at a local level. The resulting publicity attracted many people to the mental health movement, and local associations affiliated to the NAMH sprang up throughout England and Wales."

    1965 Bristol Association for Mental Health - 1976? Mental Health in Bristol - Relaunch (Bristol Mind) April 1990

    1966 Norfolk and Norwich Association for Mental Health set up by a group of people who were very concerned at the lack of support and accommodation for people with psychiatric disability who had been discharged from hospital. The founders of the organisation included Cicely McCall who was the first female psychiatric social worker in Britain. Along with her colleagues, they established the first psychiatric half way houses in Britain and campaigned relentlessly for proper recognition of the rights of people with mental health problems. (website history)

    1967 Wirral Association for Mental Health founded. It affiliated to National Mind in the 1980s.

    1968 Camden Association for Mental Health was the first local association in inner London. external sources. The London (inner and outer) associations in 1977 were Barnet - Beckenham - Bexley - Brent - Camden - Croydon - Dagenham - Ealing - Enfield - Greenwich - Hammersmith - Haringay - Harrow - Havering - Hillingdon - Kensington and Chelsea - Kingston on Thames - Lambeth - Orpington - Redbridge - Richmond and Barnes - Southwark - Spelthorne - Sutton - Twickenham - Waltham Forest - Wandsworth - Westminster -

    1972 John Richards (1927-30.6.2003), a psychologist, was a foundation member of Leeds Association for Mental Health, becoming Chairman in 1979. He was involved in setting up residential homes for former patients.

    1973 John Crowley, Mind's fieldworker in the north, was working in Lancashire to establish local associations at Chorley and Leyland, Lancaster and Furness and in Northumberland (see below). Lancashire associations (1973 boundary), outside Greater Manchester, in 1977 were Blackburn - Blackpool - Liverpool - Mid Lancashire - North East Lancashire - Warrington (in 1977 Cheshire)

    March 1973 Public meeting arranged in Morpeth by the Rotary club (District 103 - North Yorkshire to Northumberland) due to concern about treatment facilities for disturbed adolescents. Tyneside and District Association for Mental Health was the only one in Northumberland. Mind would put resources into "Opening up the North East" (Open Mind Spring 1973, page 14). In 1977 there was also Northumberland Association for Mental Health

    18.6.1973 Mid Lancashire Association for Memtal Health founded - post Whittingham. "To promote the preservation and the safeguarding of mental health and the relief of persons suffering from mental disorder in the county borough of Preston and the Lancashire County Council Health Authority Division 4, in association with the National Association for Mental Health." Registered Charity No. 505643

    1972 The MIND office in Wales opened. It was renamed Mind Cymru in 1997. (Mind's website history - But elsewhere "since 1973")
    June 1973 Open Mind mentions the "Mind Office in Wales - 7 St Mary Street, Cardiff, DF1 2AT" (page 15). The Welsh associations in 1977 were - Brecknock - Cardiff - Carmarthen - Swansea - Wrexham

    1974 Halton Association for Mental Health (Cheshire) formed. It affiliated to National Mind in the 1980s.

    26.4.1974 Original Trust Deed of the Furness Association for Mental Health (Barrow in Furness was then North Lancashire)

    1976 The Northern regional office opened (Mind's website history). This was 155 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, in Yorkshire:
    March 1976 Open Mind lists three addreses: Mind (national Association for Mental Health), 22 Harley Street, London W1N 2ED - Northern office: 155 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 3EF - Office in Wales: 7 St Mary Street, Cardiff, CF1 2AT

    March 1977 Open Mind lists four addreses: London - Yorkshire - Wales and Northern Office: 4 Park Lane, High Street, Gateshead (pages 14 and 23). On page 18 "Mind in the North West" spoke of a recent conference in Manchester "A fair deal for the North West" which had resolved that Mind should "establish a regional resource centre in the North West. "MIND already has three regional offices, in Wales, Gateshead and Leeds and, after establishing a new one in the North West, hopes to spread its span to the Midlands and the South. Liverpool, Manchester and Blackpool wanted to have the office. There was a speaker from Stockport Association for Mental Health.

    Greater Manchester: The March 1977 list contains "Manchester Salford and District" which is presumably distinct from the Manchester Mind formed later - Oldham and District Association for Mental Health (later Oldham Mind?) - Bolton Association for Mental Health, which started in the spring of 1973 - Tameside Association for Mental Health - Stockport and District Association for Mental Health. It does not include Rochdale Mind, which started in the late 1970s.

    There is now a Thameside, Oldham and Glossup Mind, with its office in Ashton under Lyne and and office in Oldham

    Liverpool Association for Mental Health was formed before March 1977. The Liverpool Association for Mental Health Newsletter for 1989 contained an article by Peter Beresford, "Forced into Poverty - Kept in Distress". Became, at some time Liverpool and Sefton Mind. Clsed by 2010.

    Mind Regional Offices March 1977
    Yorkshire Office
    Office in Wales
    Northern Office

    Mind Local Associations March 1977 Almost all of these groups were "Association for Mental Health" rather than "Mind". The list (Open Mind page 14) says it is of "MIND local associations", but some of thise listed have histories that say they were not affiliated to Mind at this time.

    Mind in Barnet London - Basildon AMH Essex - Basingstoke AMH Hampshire - Bassetlaw AMH Nottinghamshire - Bath and District AMH Avon - Beckenham and District AMH London - Borough of Bexley AMH London (Before 1973) - Birmingham AMH - Blackburn and District AMH Lancashire - Blackpool and Fylde AMH Lancashire - Bolton AMH Greater Manchester (Spring 1973) - Bournemouth Poole and Distric AMH Dorset - Bracknell AMH Berkshire - Bradford and District AMH Yorkshire - Brecknock Mind Group Wales - Brent AMH London (Steering Committee Spring 1973) - Brentwood and District AMH Essex - Brighton, Hove and District AMH West Sussex - Bristol AMH (1965) - Buckinghamshire AMH - Calderdale and District AMH Yorkshire - Cambridge Mental Welfare Association (1908) - Camden AMH London - Canterbury and District AMH Kent (Before 1973) - Cardiff and District AMH - Carmarthen AMH Wales - Chichester and District AMH West Sussex - Clacton and District AMH Essex - Coventry AMH West Midlands - Crawley AMH West Sussex - Croydon AMH London - Dagenham AMH London - Dartford and Gravesham AMH Kent - Derby Area AMH Derbyshire - Dover and District AMH Kent - Dudley AMH West Midlands - Ealing AMH London - East Grinstead and District AMH West Sussex - East Hertfordshire AMH - East Lindsey AMH Lincolnshire - Elmsbridge AMH Surrey - Enfield AMH London - Exeter and District Association for Mental Health (1949) - Furness AMH Cumbria - Gateshead, Tyne and Wear AMH - Gloucestershire AMH (Before 1964) - Greenwich Mind London (Spring 1973) - Halton AMH Cheshire - Hammersmith AMH London - Mind in Haringay London - Harpendon and St Albans AMH Hertfordshire (Before 1973) - Harrogate AMH North Yorkshire - Harrow AMH London - Hastings and Rother AMH East Sussex - Havering AMH London - Hemel Hempstead and District AMH Hertfordshire - Hillingdon AMH London - Horsham and District AMH West Sussex - Ipswich and District AMH Suffolk (Before 1973) - Isle of Wight AMH - Jersey AMH - Kensington and Chelsea Mind London - Kingston on Thames AMH London - Kirklees AMH West Yorkshire - Knowsley AMH Merseyside - Lambeth AMH London (Spring 1973) - Leeds AMH (1972) - Leicester AMH - Lewisham AMH - Lincolnshire AMH - Liverpool AMH - Maidstone AMH Kent - Manchester Salford and District - Maldon and District AMH Essex - Medway AMH Kent - Mid Lancashire AMH (Founded 18.6.1973, post Whittingham) - Norfolk and Norwich AMH (1966) - Northamptonshire AMH (Before 1973) - North East Lancashire AMH (Before 1973) - North Hertfordshire AMH - North Humberside AMH - North and Mid Bedfordshire AMH - North Staffordshire AMH - Northumberland AMH (after 1973) - North Worcestershire AMH (Spring 1973) - Nottingham and Nottinghamshire AMH (became Nottingham Mind?) - Nuneaton and District AMH Warwickshire - Oldham and District AMH Greater Manchester - Orpington AMH London - Peterborough and District AMH Cambridgeshire - Peterlee and District AMH Durham - Portsmouth and District AMH - Redbridge AMH London - Restormel AMH Cornwall - Richmond and Barnes AMH London (Before 1973) - Rugby AMH Warwickshire - Sandwell AMH West Midlands - Scarborough AMH North Yorkshire - Sefton AMH Merseyside - Sevenoaks and District AMH Kent - Sheffield AMH South Yorkshire - Shropshire AMH - Southampton and District AMH Hampshire - Southend and District AMH Essex (Before 1973) - South Bedfordshire AMH - South Shields AMH Tyne and Wear - South West Surrey AMH - Southwark AMH London - Spelthorne AMH London - Staffordshire AMH - Stockport and District AMH - London Borough of Sutton AMH - Swansea and District AMH Wales - Swindon and District AMH Wiltshire - Tameside AMH Greater Manchester - Thames Valley AMH Berkshire - Twickenham and District AMH London (Before 1973) - Tyneside AMH (before 1973) - Wakefield and District AMH West Yorkshire - Walsall AMH West Midlands - Waltham Forest AMH London - Wandsworth AMH London - Warrington and District AMH Cheshire - Watford and District AMH Hertfordshire - West Cheshire AMH - Westminster AMH London - West Suffolk AMH - Weymouth-Portland-Dorchester (Mind Alive) Dorset - Wirral AMH Merseyside - Wisbech Voluntary Committee for Mental Welfare Cambridgeshire - Wolverhampton AMH West Midlands - Worthing and West Sussex AMH - Wrexham and District AMH Wales - York and District AMH

    October 1978 North West Mind

    1979 Mind in Manchester

    By 1979 there were MIND offices in Trent, Yorkshire, and the North West. (website history)

    1979 Central Nottingham Association for Mental Health formed

    In 1982, West Midlands MIND opened and the Trent and Yorkshire offices combined. (website history)

    South East MIND opened in 1984, starting off in Harley Street and then moving to City Road. (website history)

    Nottingham Mind Summer 1985 See Ingrid Barker 1986 Dr Mike Smith was a consultant psychiatrist and Chair of Nottingham MIND when Nottingham Advocacy Group was first set up. Mike felt that MIND in Nottingham had collapsed when professionals were 'pushed out' and service users took over. Ian Mooney was connected to Nottingham Mind and Nottingham Patients Council.

    In 2000, the regional offices were closed down, leaving the two national offices in England and Wales (website history)


    Mind and the Users Voice

    The National Association for Mental Health (now Mind), was founded in 1946. It was a combination of existing organisations, partly merged in 1939 as the Mental Health Emergency Committee for war-time coordination. Its components were the Central Association for Mental Welfare (formed in 1896 as the National Association for the Care of the Feeble Minded), the National Council for Mental Hygiene (founded 1918) and the Child Guidance Clinic (founded 1927).

    The Association worked closely with the Ministry of Health and the Board of Control.

    In the 1960s, NAMH was associated with media work to overcome the taboo of silence about mental health in the press and on television. In 1958 Christopher Mayhew MP, a supporter of the National Association , persuaded the BBC to record The Hurt Mind, the first television programme to do with a mental hospital. But the cameras were not allowed to film patients' faces, only their hands and feet. Mary Applebey, (Director 1951- 1974), speaking of the problems of getting The Hurt Mind broadcast, commented that "last week a patient was filmed who was frankly demented".

    In the autumn of 1969 the Scientologists tried, unsuccessfully, to take over the The National Association for Mental Health. This conflict, originating in efforts to prevent overseas Scientologists entering the United Kingdom, led to the formation of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (1969) by Thomas Szasz (author of The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) and the Scientologists. The National Association was seen as the representative of psychiatry which had demonised scientology, in turn scientology sought to demonise psychiatry.

    In the meantime, the Association was becoming much more of a campaign body, and adopted the name "Mind" from one of its campaigns. From March 1973, when The Mental Patients Union was formed, Mind was generally supportive. Its new magazine, Mind Out, published helpful reports and news, and encouraged articles by union activists. The new director, Tony Smythe, attempted, unsuccessfully, to secure funding for the unions. Relations with Tony Smythe became strained in October 1974 when the MPU side- effects list was blamed for the negative professional response to Mind Out's "consumer's issue".

    Within the unions there were those, like Andrew Roberts, who were willing to work with Mind, and those who saw it as part of the problem. Eric Irwin saw it as part of the problem. In May 1975, Mind included COPE (Community Organisation for Psychiatric Emergencies) as a workshop in its conference on "Psychiatry and Alternative Support Systems". Mary Hutchinson and Eric Irwin from West London Mental Patients Union also took part. COPE and West London MPU used the occasion to launch an attack on Mind and to formulate the idea of RAM (Radical Alternatives to Mind).

    "We were able through the conference to meet fellow RAMers - to confer and conspire... and to develop a critique not just of Mind but of the state of mental health - or rather lack of it - in Britain today and to recognise the political and other implications of psychiatry. From now on we need to take the offensive and build a solid grass roots mental health movement". (Heavy Daze, number six, page 6 "Mind Games and More")."

    In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Mind Out's coverage of the patients' or consumers movement became virtually non-existent. On the other hand, Mind's legal department vigorously pursued issues, such as the absence of controls on treatment, which had been raised by the union movement. This culminated in the 1983 Mental Health Act, the passing of which may have freed Mind for other activities.

    In 1983, members of Glasgow Link Clubs attended Mind's annual conference and "were somewhat amazed and angry" that none of the presentations, seminars or workshops were by patients. They made their own presentation at the conference in 1984, which they later turned into a tape and slide show which was used at many users' gatherings.

    In July 1985, Mind was host to the World Federation of Mental Health Congress in Brighton. Judi Chamberlin, author of On Our Own. Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System (USA, 1978) was a speaker, and Hans Wiegant, from the Netherlands, spoke on Clients participation in Psychiatric Hospitals. Thurstine Basset presented a video about user involvement in Scotland, England and the Netherlands in which Glasgow Link members expressed their enthusiasm for attending the conference, if they could raise the money for the fares. No users' group from England or Wales was invited to speak, but Eric Irwin, Frank Bangay and Barry Blazeby, from CAPO, attended uninvited..

    "We put up our stall in the entrance and it was there that the Dutch patients' group (invited over by Mind) met us, and negotiated our stall into the conference. They helped us a lot, and we brought to Mind's notice that no English recipients had been invited to MIND's conferences, yet there were many professionals talking about the 'mentally ill'."

    Survivors united. Judi Chamberlin wrote "I got quite involved in Brighton, working out a declaration on 'self and citizen advocacy'... Most of it is liberal but I think our section (Part 2) is pretty radical"

    That autumn (1985), Mind's annual conference was for service users and about service users. Peter Campbell, David Brandon and Service Users from Glasgow Link and others ran workshops. There were workshops from CAPO (Campaign against Psychiatric Oppression), The British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry, North Derbyshire Mental Health Services Project (Tontine Road Centre), 42nd Street in Manchester and Camden Mental Health Consortium. Frank Bangay organised a poetry and music session for the conference, in a pub near Oxford Circus. Peter Campbell recalls that there was a meeting of service users immediately after the conference and from that meeting Survivors Speak Out was founded.

    Late in 1987, Jan Wallcraft was employed in Mind's national office to set up ways in which people with direct experience of psychiatric services could have a bigger say in Mind. The main way she tried to make this happen was by setting up a network of recipients or users of psychiatric services. (Progress report after the first three years - January 1991).

    "Mindwaves: The Newsletter of the MIND Consumer Network" first appeared in August 1988 and the network was being called Mindlink by 1989. The new network had a potential to think of itself as an autonomous user movement and Mind struggled to keep it under control.

    By 1990 there were three major survivor networks, Survivors Speak Out, Mindlink, and the National Advocacy Network (which became the United Kingdom Advocacy Network). Each had its virtues and vices, from different user perspectives, so users were able to join the network or networks they felt most comfortable with. Anne Plumb comments "had there been just one organisation we would probably have fallen out ". As it was, the three networks had overlapping membership, and they often cooperated to provide a united user voice.

    Ingrebourne Community

    In the early 1960s, within the Ingrebourne Centre at Hornchurch, an autonomous patients movement formed with its own magazine, and a society to maintain contact between members of the community when they left the centre. I am not aware of any significant staff input into this. In 1963, two of the foremost organisers were Rosemary Glendenning and Robbie Roberts. Inspiration was provided by the ideas of Yvonne Boydell about what an ideal community might look like.

    The following appears to relate to an event before 1960: "... one morning "I found one of the patients with a motor bike dismantled on the corridor - in the corridor outside his bedroom, oily rags around, nuts and bolts lying loose." The Matron was a traditionalist, used to running the ward as a general hospital ward, where "cleanliness was an absolute" and the "floor shone with polish." "I had to decide what to do about it. So I walked past it, said, `Good morning,' and said nothing..." (Richard Crocket, consultant) (external source)

    28.5.1963 4pm Inauguration Committee of The Ingrebourne Society. The list of officers and committee all appear to be patients. The first aim of the society was to "help maintain contact after discharge, and to allow useful relationships to continue". A future aim was to "organise and run a Hostel for the rehabilitation of persons after mental illness".

    In May 1963, the patients "purchased" a Roneo 750 electric duplicator. which they paid for at £2 a week, using raffles and donations. The June 1963 issues of Incentive included a competition for more fund-raising ideas.

    Patient group, Ingrebourne Centre A group of patients, including Valerie Argent outside the Ingrebourne Centre

    SUMP Stamp Thomas Ritchie and SUMP

    Index: 1963 - 1964 - 1965 - 1966 - 1967 - 1968 - 1969 - 1970 - 1971 - 1972 - 1974 -

    September 1963 Thomas Ritchie admitted to Hartwood. May have been onto Ward 22. "Some ten months after admission" he was allowed home to Lanark for weekends and "started swallowing the contents of Benzedrex inhalers"

    Summer 1966 "Introduction Part 1" (life story to September 1963) dated Ward 22.

    about September 1966 Mrs Dowling (Occupational Therapist) suggested study by correspondence.

    March 1967 Thomas Ritchie moved from Ward 22 to Ward 7 when it was discovered that he was using Benzedrex, and had given an inhaler to another patient.

    September 1967 Thomas Ritchie's first complaints (made as an individual). "Introduction Part 2" (life story in Hartwood dated The Sickroom, Ward Seven)

    In conclusion my grievances for redress

    1) No parole:- I should like "full parole" restored as soon as possible, i.e. freedom to go out and come in within reason.

    2) No facilities for study, whatsoever - These I should like as soon as possible.

    3) No treatment for my addiction - I should like to be transferred to another hospital where the drug problem is better understood and more sympathetically dealt with.

    4) Brutality to helpless patients - I want his stopped forthwith

    5) I should like it placed on record that I do not consider I should have been sectioned under Part 5 of the Act in the first place.

    [1971: "The ward 7 brutality of 1967 is now ancient history"]

    November 1968 to February 1969 Thomas Ritchie attended the Rehabilitation Unit at Bellshill, completing the three-months course with "an excellent report".

    "the first of my current personal grievances did not arise until February of 1969".

    Probably refers to "Yet no employment was found for me by the Home and Health Department"

    Summer 1969 Took and passed two London University A level exams, one in Economics and the other the Constitution. Whilst in Hartwood he also learnt Italian. "Still no job was found for me".

    "I could perceive no justifiable reason for Authority's delaying my progress. Perhaps, I thought at the time, the bureaucrats concerned based their working-day on some tested dictum that much work would be avoided if they simply shelved their ward's cases until the wards spoiled their own records of good behaviour and landed back at square one. It happened that way with me as it has done with others. Back to the bottom rung and almost two years of diligent co-operation with Hartwood Hospital in an attempt to regain lost ground. This took the form of shaving 45 old men at least 3 times a week in geriatric ward 15."

    Ward 15 "is locked to prevent patients wandering off. Incontinent and hopelessly incurable old men are looked after in Ward 15 until their worsening condition mercifully brings death. I have no complaints about Ward 15's geriatric section except that I should never have been in it. At 43" [1971] "I am not yet ready for geriatrics. Yet there are younger men than me on it!"

    For almost two years (1969 to 1971) Thomas Ritchie, detained patient in Hartwood Hospital shaved "45 old men at least three times a week in geriatric ward 15".

    Whose idea was the Union in the first place?

    It was first mooted to me by old Archie Meek (aged 91) of Ward 15 when I was shaving him.

    "Christ yam", he demanded, "Whit are us auld men tae dae if ye ever leave us - We're a divided frae yin anither. Kin ye no start up a Union afore ye go? Fur divided we fall"

    Archie was probably one of the original pre- Great War Trade Unionists.

    Later I put the suggestion, jokingly, to Flick Harris, but she took it seriously

    "Why don't you start a Union of mental patients, Tommy? There's no reason why you shouldn't."

    about October 1970 The Secretary of State's restriction on Thomas Ritchie's discharge was removed. It was now up to his consultant (Dr Graham?) to decide when he was discharged.

    About 19.11.1970 Tommy: "my dad had his prostate operation and I went to see him during the period November to February once weekly. This made the job-seeking more difficult"

    About 28.11.1970 Tommy had his "last and final consultation with Dr Craigie" [H. B. Craigie, CBE, Principal Medical Officer (Mental Health), Scottish Home and Health Department]

    "Mrs Smith of Wishaw, her daughter Mrs Walsh, and all the family - Samaritans who befriended me and took me into their home during the desolate winter of '70 - '71 when I was searching for work."

    Tuesday 23.2.1971 Tommy's parole withdrawn after knocking on doors in Allanton village seeking an old school friend (maiden name Rita Kelly) to borrow £1 from. He had no parole in March and "only limited parole throughout the whole summer".

    "To Paul Ramsay... and to all the young people of GAP, who were my friends whilst I was on the run during the 1971 summer"

    Tommy told about Glasgow Advisory People (GAP) by William Williamson (ex- patient who had been on Ward 7). He went absent without leave to visit them and during May and June 1971 they (mainly Paul Ramsay) "brought pressure to bear on Hartwood" over his IRU course. "Miss Felicity Harris" "a detached social worker connected with GAP" visited Tommy in Hartwood "during this period".

    6.7.1971 John Ritchie, Tommy's brother, who lived in Crawley, was worried because their father (in Glasgow) had not been acknowledging letters and parcels. He secure permission for Tommy to go to Glasgow. Tommy found his father "in a bad state" and spent longer with him than his permitted leave.

    Monday 12.7.1971 Early in the morning, Tommy "broke out" and "made off across the moor and got the bus to Edinburgh".

    Wednesday 14.7.1971 Returned to Hartwood. In the "top security section of Ward 7 (euphemistically called the Sickroom)

    [end of stay on Ward 15?]

    26.7.1971 "Petition for the Redress of Grievances put forward by the patients in Hartwood Hospital, Shotts Lanarkshire"

    Fullest information on typed document "SUMP MEMBERSHIP" (no date)

    "The Signatories to the Petition for the Redress of Grievances put forward by the patients in Hartwood Hospital, Shotts, Lanarkshire, on July 26, 1971, are the Foundation and Permanent Members of SUMP. The orginal document is in the safe of Messrs G.A.P. of 190 New City Road, Glasgow"

    [The Petition was posted to GAP (by Thomas Ritchie) from Shotts on 30.7.1971, using Recorded Delivery. I infer that GAP contacted the Mental Welfare Commissioners in Edinburgh who then came to Hartwood to investigate. That is, the papers that now survive in our archives do not include the original petition]

    Information of handwritten document (undated) The Nature of the Association S.U.M.P, its policy and aims

    "... even to a small united band of 27 the Authorities were prepared to give heedful ear, whereas the solitary plaintiff gets nowhere. Commissioner came from Melville Street, Edinburgh, and several personal grievances have been redressed. They are waiting for a formal document of grievance in writing. At least, I think they are. They will get this document, or rather a carbon copy of it, when the typed original goes to the newspaper 'INK' for publication. I have signed permission to act for the other patients".

    The General Grievances of Patients in Hartwood

    Three page handwritten document (Tommy Ritchie's writing) signed Ward Seven, Hartwood, 18.8.1971

    Part One What is wrong with Hartwood from the patients' point of view? The most concise, succinct and time-saving approach to the answering of this question would be to list exclusively and exhaustively what is right with the place, telling the reader of this approach so that he would know that all matters and what-have-you relevant or connected to Hartwood which did not appear on the list had something or other wrong with them.

    Well, reader, that's the approach, so read on !

    You will find that the list is a pitifully short one for a hospital in the last third of the 20th Century. Also, it has had to be qualified in parts. Some items are not so much things that are right as things that are not wrong. Negative, but better than nothing.

    Good Points then :-

    1 The pinnacle of Hartwood achievement is Ward Sixteen, with the rooms

    "lovely like in a hotel"

    The lounge, consulting room, hallway and other parts also evoke admiration, much of it from the nursing staff.

    For myself, I see Sixteen as something of a paper jungle, so cluttered is the place with artificial flowers. I'd give it a G+ though. The sitting rooms and bedrooms are well furnished and well carpeted. The shame of it all is that the rest of the hospital is N.F.G. by the same standards and not to be compared to the showpiece ward.

    2 Ward 15 is a good geriatric ward and the old men could never hope for any one kinder than their 15(a) charge-nurse, Peter Hughes, and deputy charge nurse, Jim McLaughlin - two of the best nurses I've ever met. That the ward is used for younger men is not their fault.

    3 Another good charge-nurse is Willie McMillan, of Seven, my present domicile, although he shows signs of frustration with the system from time to time.

    Although bloody awful, Ward Seven is not nearly so bad as it was five years ago, improvements being partly due to McMillan's innovations and partly due to Graham's reforms since his elevation to superhood.

    McMillan takes an interest in the welfare of his patients and he has improved the attitudes of the staff.

    As for staff-to-patient violence and brutality, unlike 1967 (q.v) when it was an everyday occurrence not to be remarked upon. I saw only one instance in my present sojourn in Seven. I am omitting details of this business from this eulogy, but it shall be told later.

    Although I maintain that brutality is on the way out, Daisley holds the view that things are pretty much as bad as they always were. If brutality is on the way out, it hasn't gone very far, he says. Mind you, Andrew is totally uncompromising and hates Hartwood even more intensely than I do. But can you blame him? He has suffered 14½ years of it.

    4 The holiday lodge in Morecambe which the hospital books for the summer months is a good thing. A group of a dozen or so patients are taken for a week's holiday weekly. The pity is that whereas some patients get two such vacations in the one summer, others get none.

    If any reader thinks I have failed to mention some complimentary facet, check first with a long-term patient, preferably a member of SUMP. There's likely to be an imperfection lurking in some dusky corner.

    Those then are the brighter aspects of Hartwood Institution. If I remember any other favourable features I shall in fairness append them to this list in the form of footnotes.

    From his manuscripts, Thomas Ritchie appears to have been discharged from Harthill after 18.8.1971 (when he was on Ward 7) and 21.10.1971 (when he posted his manuscript to Ink, who describe him as an ex-patient). The Glasgow Herald article says he was "released" in October 1971. The Secretary of State's restriction on his release was removed "a year before my release". When his consultant made him a voluntary patient, Tommy "took the option of leaving".
    Advantages of patients in mental hospitals having their own fully democratic and autonomous national association or union

    (We mental-patients cannot see any disadvantages in such a body, as far as our own interests are concerned)

    1. The same advantages, more or less, would accrue to such a body in the field of collective bargaining as those enjoyed by trades unions proper. As combinations of workers formed for the purpose of taking united action against employers for the improvement of wages and other workinng conditions find that success is overvrhelmingly more probable, so too wouId combinations of patients find that a united front against Hospital Authority would be much more rewarding than the frustrating neglect they meet with should they act individually.

    2. Most unions, be they croft-guild or industrial, also develop "friendly society" activities offerring their members additional insurance against sickness or accidents, This is en excellent service in so far as it goes. But it cannot go right into a mental hospital with a sick union member to ensure that he gets proper care and attention. No. The sick member is strictly on his own as things are now - never more so than when he is admitted to a mental hospital run by the N.H.S. And this at a time when he is already distressed mentally and depressed, and never more in need of communal help.

    3. Most of all, perhaps, will he find the need of a brotherhood when the diminishing payments from Social Security reach their minimum of £l.20p weekly - not much of a cushion this, and scant protection against outrageous fortune and general exploitation of the weak by the strong.

    4. The newly-admmitted patient to a NHS mental hospital is about to discover that his sorrows have only just begun. The abject and straitened circumstances of the mental patient do not bear thinking about by any normally sensitive fellow human-being. They certainly do not stand up to any prolonged examination, as the numerous official investigations have shown. Yet the solutions offerred by these officiul bodies cgainst brutality and other abuses in mental hospitals have never been more than makeshift. We do not see the Ombudsman proposal as going any further than one third of the way towards the ultimate solution to these recurring scandals. We do see the recent proposal that England and Wales adopt the Scottish system of Mental Welfare Commissioners as being nothing more than derisory. Put forward as a solution to the problems of England and Wales in this connection, the implication is obvious, namely, that we in Scotland do not have mental-hospital problems! - To which we patients can but answer: "OH YEAH!"

    21.10.1971 Thomas Ritchie posted (recorded delivery) a manuscript to John Lloyd, Editor, INK, London, WC2 that seems to have included: "Foreword" - "Introduction Part 1" - "Introduction Part 2" (9 pages separately numbered. The introductions are his life story to September 1967 - "The nature of SUMP, it policy and aims" (three pages) - "Advantages of patients in mental hospitals having their own fully democratic and autonomous national association or union" (page 4) - "SUMP membership" (page 5) - "My Own Grievances (Current)" (new numbering 1-16) - "The amphetamine-addiction story" (dated ward seven, Hartwood. Sunday 22.8.1971, pages 18-19) - The Particular Grievances of Other Patients (pages 20-21) - "The General Grievances of Patients in Hartwood Part 1" pages 22-24 - Part Two (pages 25-34)

    November 1971 At the Simon Community, Glasgow

    15.11.1971 Thomas Ritchie wrote to John Lloyd from 51 Easterhouse Road, Bailleston, [Baillieston?] Glasgow, asking if manuscript received.

    16.11.1971 "Mental Prisons - Suicide and Despair", Ink page 4. The title refers to the first column of the article, which was about Broadmoor. See above.

    1.12.1971 Letter from "Tommy (Ritchie)" (Easterhouse Road) to "John": "I'm pleased with treatment of ms. Please send me a few copies of relevant INK issues as well as ditto of "Extraordinary Document..."

    27.12.1971 Thomas Ritchie wrote to John Lloyd from 12 Bute Terrace, Tannochside, Uddingston, Lanarkshire. "Please send me some copies of my Document... INK issue dated 16 Nov. 71". Also wanted copy of each to Mrs Murray, "She has sent the money".

    Friday 18.2.1972 Letter from Mike Radford at Ink: "Dear John Ritchie, I am enclosing your brother's original script together with his subsequent letters to us. He asked that we should publish the piece and there has never, as far as I know, been any request from him for payment. I also am including 12 copies of a summary which was made of the work. Sorry that you have had the bother of pursuing this matter".

    27.3.1972 "Special Union to be formed for mental patients" The Herald page 2.
    Friday 7.4.1972 Start of the Journal of SUMP's days. Tommy evidently living in a flat in Glasgow. "Totally exhausted the previous evening by phone, caller and neighbour. I did not make much headway with the drafting of the Manifesto."
    Three blank pages in the Journal, apparently for filling in later. From examining the journal and the membership register, it seems to me that Tommy would have visited Robin Farquharson in Gartloch during this period, probably with Paul Ramsay from GAP. When they returned for a later visit, Robin had been transferred to Epsom.

    Friday 28.4.1972 After travelling around on SUMP business: "Then went to see dad. Room occupied by another man. Ambulance had taken him to hospital a week past on Wednesday. Which one they didn't know." The room may have been in Holm Street, Glasgow. "John", "Betty" and "Paul" were contacted when he was missing. John and Betty were telephoned. Paul was called on. On Sunday 30.4.1972, at "0600 hours" "John phoned. Dad in Lightburn Hospital, Carntyne Road, E2".

    Mr J. Ritchie, Ifield, Crawley, Sussex and Mrs Ritchie [same] are in the SUMP Register numbers 0064 and 0065.

    Friday 5.5.1972 "I'll get rubber stamp and some membership cards as a solution?"

    Sunday 7.5.1972 "Went with Bill Ferguson to Gartnavel Mental Hospital - my first visit there".

    Saturday 4.6.1972 - Sunday 5.6.1972 Rose. Met Bill Ferguson. We drove out to Gartnavel. His Girl Friend - Joyce Jameson - Enrolled [00040 marked F (circled) patient Gartnavel]. Returned to flat and Manifesto. Worked. bathed. went to Paul. Visited Garlock with him (q.v.)

    Sunday 16.7.1972? "decided to fold up Sump and stay in London and get a job. But had to see Robert Thompson to suggest competent successor"

    20.6.1972 last date in the Journal of SUMP's Days before Thomas Ritchie left for London. He visited "Bill Ferguson at 17A Gartnavel. He is in a bad way (Any wonder?)". Tommy's handwriting becomes larger and larger, suggesting to me that he is increasingly spaced out. On the journey down he decides to contact the press, and secures phone numbers for the Guardian, Mirror and Times. As he arrives at Euston he is hoping the Mirror will pay him something that night for his story "for I am almost broke".

    Continuity between SUMP and MPU was strong. Thomas Ritchie and Robin Farquarson took part in the founding meetings of the union in March and April 1973, when Tommy signed himself "RICHIE - LONDON - SEX - SUPERSTAR". Robin told Pam Edwards about the MPU, and so indirectly provided its first office. He died, tragically, between the two meetings, but Tommy was a very active member of an MPU house for two years and he lodged the records of SUMP with the MPU. Extracts were published in MPU News in February 1974. The Scottish experience fed directly into MPU practice
    February 1974 MPU News 3 page 3: "Question of levels. Thomas Ritchie who started SUMP in 1971 with 27 other patients in Hartwood hospital, has lent MPU all the documents of this organisation - although now it is unfortunately no longer functioning. We reprint here, as it was originally written, some of the notes made by sump members - their thoughts were very much the same as those MPU has been thrashing around over the past 9 months.

    PNP

    PNP first stood for People for a New Psychiatry, but by November 1969 it was People Not Psychiatrists or People Not Psychiatry and later People Need People (as an alternative).

    PNP was launched in July 1969 by the following manifesto by Michael Barnett published in the "Insanity Times" issue of International Times. This "messianic" writing was precipitated by the break up of Barnett's relationship with the 'Campaign Against Psychiatric Atrocities' when he realised its connection with Scientology. He was, he later wrote, "charged then like storm air with the dazzling reversals of Marcuse, Laing and Cooper ... the mad... were the truly sane ones, the forces of change... I was a member of this vanguard. I was neurotic, nearly mad..."

    THE SICK SCENE

    Psychiatry is politics. The whole scene is under the thumbs of the greys. Pretty well everywhere today the dead men, the square men and the greys are running things, calling the tune.

    But inside some people colour and love and soul won't just lie down and die. Inside they are at war - true selves fighting grey goblins implanted from outside. Some of these people, these heroes of the resistance, are commonly referred to as mad.

    Many are put away. Where they suffer humiliation, degradation, manipulation, contempt, derision. Where they undergo electro-shock, massive tranquillization, straitjacketing and insulin comas. And all in the bright names of succour and science.

    What does this surgery of souls achieve?

    For the State, success means a new obedience and conformity, more socio- economic units; failure means it has someone labelled chronically insane to take care of for life.

    But for the so-called patient, the State's failure is his failure, and the State's success is his failure too. In other words he can't win. He doesn't stand a chance. He is doomed.

    And they say 1 in 8 of us has that fate in store.

    Grim. Grim but real, and there's precious little light on the horizon. In fact, judging from current enthusiasm for empiricism and expediency things will probably get worse. And worse.

    Unless. And that's what PNP (People for a New Psychiatry) is all about: Unless.

    We see the mental hospital as largely an anachronism. And current modes of treatment in all but a very few as medieval and barbaric. The same goes for psychiatric wings. We think the lot should be scrapped. We would like to see State finance provided for the right people to set up sanctuaries in which those in great conflict and distress as a result of what has happened to them, what has been done to them, can take their inner trips, find themselves, work through their living experience in an open environment offering care, understanding and concern. We don't sec this as the one answer, or even as necessarily the best answer, but compared with the present ugly scene it's utopian and would do for a start.

    That's the hope for the State scene. What about us, the individuals? PNP are forming a network of people who are willing to help transform psychiatry in its thought and deed, help each other, help others who need help, not by DOING things to them, but by opening themselves to them, offering care, perhaps a little understanding, and concern. A programme not of interference but of extended liberty, not of manipulation but of nurture and growth.

    Psychiatry is politics. And the blatant aim of current politics is to keep things more or less as they are. That means stifling all the forces of change. People who break down because they cannot find a way to live sanely in an insane society are shattered forces of change. Kept whole and mended, restored to themselves, they might threaten. So whilst they are broken and defenceless the lackeys of the power system step in and make new men and women of them. New docile noddy people, new but no longer themselves. But State slaves. If people still believed in the soul this would be described as murder. As it is it is called treatment. It is even called humane.

    Intelligent and well-meaning people defend this human-less tinkering, this human masonry, this working in stone. They point to the "cures", to the alleviation of suffering, to the thousands of grateful patients who can no longer remember what was wrong. They have become normal, they can function, they have lost their anxiety. But what was wrong was what they are and what they have also lost is themselves.

    The Good label the rest Bad. The Sane label the rest Mad. The sane make war, slaughter each other by the million, lock people up for years, for life. The mad take trips, talk strangely, act oddly, but they rarely kill each other and they don't imprison and oppress. So are they really mad? Are the others really sane?

    In other words, Who's Got The Sanity?

    Anyone wanting to join in changing the scene, a revolution no less, contact:

    Mike Barnett, Operations Room for PNP, 18a Allingham Court, Haverstock Hill NW3. Telephone SW1 4899".

    PNP. People Not Psychiatry. People Need People

    People for a New Psychiatry, founded by Michael Barnett July 1969 rapidly became People Not Psychiatry. This is the description in International Times at the end of November 1969:

    "People Not Psychiatrists is a network of individuals - who feel that there are people who are misfits, and find it difficult to come to grips with group relationships. We have collected to- gether the individual opinions of members of the network and hope that these thoughts may be of some positive use to readers of IT who have a 'group' problem."

    The first network formed in London after the publication of the manifesto and contact address. It spread to other parts of England, fading and re-emerging with different centres during the next few years.

    The original International Times article about the project concluded "Anyone wanting to join in changing the scene, a revolution no less, contact Mike Barnett, Operations Room for PNP, 18a Allingham Court, Haverstock Hill NW3. Telephone SW1 4899". This was the flat where he lived with Pam and baby Shem until November 1969, when he moved to Birmingham. Jenny James and Becky moved into the flat with Pam and Shem until Michael moved back. Pam wrote from the "ops room" at this address for International Times in November 1969. Jenny James (initially with Robin Farquharson) set up the PNP House at 18 Russell Gardens Mews, W14 not long after this. [Telephone number at 18 Russell Gardens Mews appears to have been 603 4042.

    Oz 35. Special Pig edition. May 1971. After an article "See me Feel me Touch me Heal me" on Encounter Groups: "PNP (People not Psychiatry): Contacts: Pete 485 9370, Peter 935 4016, David 328 5859, Jenny (for encounter) 603 4042. PNP is a network of people helping each other. All society offers people in trouble are pills, straight psychiatrists, and mental hospitals. PNP offer contact with people who have/have had similar problems, so removing the we-they structure. The network isn't limited to any specific kind of people - they welcome anyone at all who has a problem that they can't cope with themselves. Anybody in the network (only room for 4 numbers above) is available on an individual basis, and they also have general Friday night meetings at which anyone Is welcome. They are just starting minitrust groups too - small frameworks of 7/8 people who regularly come together with the aim of building up a sense of trust/reliability. PNP is the group who will help you start your own encounter sessions/or free - ring Jenny (see above)."

    HUNG-UP?/ISOLATED?/SUICIDAL?/
    PSYCHIATRICALLY LABELLED?/(OR
    WANT TO HELP THOSE WHO ARE?)
    THEN DO PLEASE PHOME
    Jack, Jerry and Jenny W14 603 4042
    Peter NW3 794 6369
    Geoffrey Tucker Harrow 868 8749
    Maggie-Tony W13 567 3941
    Val, Tony and Irene SE19 653 7778
    Pete and Val NW3 485 9370
    PLUS 150 MORE LONDON AND REGIONAL
    CONTACTS. PHONE FOR DETAILS

    Christmas Day in the Nuthouse edition of Time Out (24.12.1971) said "the central co-ordinating addresses for PNP (People Not Psychiatry) are 62B Savernake Road, NW3... Flat 1, 28 Well Walk, NW3... 18 Russell Gardens Mews, W14 ... 4 Harold Road, SE19".

    PNP Manchester

    A booklet, produced in Manchester in the early 1970s said that People Need People (People Not Psychiatry) "is a loose network of friends with a number of focal points".

      "We believe that every human being is a unique individual whose experience and life-style is valid. we reject the assumption that because a person's behaviour varies from what is expected or demanded of him/her they are robbed of their full status as human beings by a process of psychiatric labelling. Further, we recognise that no human being can develop fully in isolation from others. the full potential of a human being can only be attained through the relationship of self to other, the meeting of I and Thou.

      The Aims of PNP

      1) To provide a supportive network of friendship based on the acceptance of each person as a unique individual, each one with a life-style that is valid for him/her.

      2) To provide a physical environment (houses or houses) where a variety of activities can be pursued by various sub-groups within the wider network.

      3) To bear witness to the fact that there are valid values and life-styles other than those proposed by the establishment."

    PNP Manchester People

    Alistair Cox: 226 3258

    Gay Cox: 226 3258

    Teresa Housden, 35 Louisa Street, Manchester 11.

    Jack Housden, 35 Louisa Street, Manchester 11.

    Terry

    Christine

    Bernard Jobson, 21 Bowker Street, Salford,

    Gloggle [Bernard's then wife], 21 Bowker Street, Salford,

    Kathy, 21 Bowker Street, Salford

    [Bernard, Gloggle and Kathy helped to run the informal housing scheme for young people at Bowker Street in Salford, and then at Egerton Road in Manchester]

    Chris: 793 3402

    Duncan: 370 2033

    Les: 338 6397

    Margaret: 998 4859

    Marlis Pantals: 485 5274
    Later Manager of the Richmond Fellowship House in Manchester.

    Mick and Jenny: 740 0568

    Peter: Rochdale 0706 4039


    "People not Psychiatry (PNP) is a self-help network which makes no distinction between consumers and non-consumers. It acts as an effective pressure group, but also meets social and leisure needs. PNP has been in existence for a long time and its formal meetings - which encourage discussions on mental health issues (amongst other concerns) - only represent a small part of its work. PNP gives people status, encourages people to ask questions and raise anxieties about their treatment and to gain support from others. It operates on a very small budget, has no professional support and is non-hierarchical" Mind Manchester 1988, p.231


    January 1974 Laszlo (18 Russell Gardens Mews, London, W14) and Jenny James "On Saturday, 12th Jan at 1.30 a.m. Jenny James and I are scheduled to be on CAPITAL RADIO'S ' NIGHTLINE' on behalf of PNP. As yet, we have little to say about the present state of affairs. Your completed forms are needed NOW! Needed badly!" January 1974 Laslow circulated a "Newsletter and National Network List" composed of responses and a paper by Jenny James called "Therapy means opening to feeling". This included discussing her anger with her daughter when "she tried to stop me doing things". "My baby didn't know what was happening; she was just yelling for her life needs". The worst crime any of us do to our kids is not when we hit them, yell at them, screw up their minds; but when we forbid them to scream their guts out about it".

    about May 1974 Birmingham PNP took a democratic decision that they would have no dealings with London PNP because it was felt London's charges for meetings and adherence to Janov's 'Primal Scream theory' was incompatible with the People not Psychiatry (People need People) philosophy of Birmingham.

    September 1974 Jenny James (aged 33) bought Atlantis House, a three-storey building in Burtonport, Donegal, Ireland £10,000 as a base for her group. " Atlantis House's exterior was speedily re-painted with astrological signs, ruining the village's uniform whitewash and enraging the local council."

    "After working for years in the urban "PNP-People Not Psychiatry" movement in London, I tired of the dirt and traffic noise, and of the "drop-in" attitude from people needing help and decided to remove our therapy centre to the countryside. We spent a year in a rented farmhouse in the British Lake District before the alarm of the (Communist!) landlord reached "I'm sorry but you'll have to go" proportions. I then persuaded our group that we needed to go much farther afield, somewhere where no-one else would dream of going, and where properties would be cheap. I suggested Ireland and was met with shock-horror, but eventually took some of the group there and Atlantis was formed" (Peace News interview 2012)



    April 1970 (France) First issue of Cahiers pour la Folie,

    Editor Jean Claude Polack psychiatrist [Sometimes given as Jean-Yves Pouilloux]. Each number 12 or 14 pages

    15 numbers from 1970 to 1974.

    No. 5 was April-May 1971.

    Cahiers pour la folie, no. 14 (April/May 1974).

    The Notebooks for Madness headline their fourth anniversar y issue with a quote from Marx on the relation between alienated labor and the language of the insane- aliéné

    "The sole comprehensible language we are capab le of speaking to each other is that of our objects and their mutual relations. We are in capable of comprehending a human language: it would not be effective. It would be underst ood and resented on the one side as prayer and imploration, and thus as humiliation: honestly ex pressed, with a sentiment of disdain, it would be received on the other side as impudence or madne ss and brushed aside as such. We are alienated from human nature to the point that such a language appears to us a violation of human dignity; on the contrary, language alienated from material va lues appears to us the sole dignity of man, a justified dignity, confident in it self and conscious of itself."

    The Phobics Society was established in May 1970. The organisation initially started off very small scale by a lady called Katharine Fisher who was a sufferer of agoraphobia. She had been to her GP to get support for her anxiety problems and came away with a prescription for Valium. - the wonder drug of the time at that time!.

    Katharine decided that there must be something else that she could do to help herself other than taking tranquillisers and therefore started a small scale self help group in Manchester. The national press caught onto the fact that this group was meeting and published an article.

    Before long there were calls for similar groups to be set up all over the country and this was really the birth of the Phobics Society, or National Phobics Society as we are now known.

    The charity was formally constituted in May 1970 and ran under the directorship of Harold Fisher (Katharine's husband). Katharine died in the 1990s, after developing Parkinson's disease. Harold then took over the running of all aspects of the charity.

    Harold ran the Phobics Society from home. It was not unusual to see Harold up a ladder attending to some DIY job in his home whilst also taking a call on the helpline from a person suffering with anxiety. This was in the days before cordless phones! Harold was a truly dedicated man who lived and breathed the Phobics Society.

    In 1997, Harold retired from his position as Director of the Phobics Society. Nicky Lidbetter and her partner, Glenmore Nunes, took over. Glenmore became chief executive.

    Nicky and Glenmore established the charity in the Zion Community Resource Centre in Hulme, following on from previously having links with the centre and Fay Selvan, now CEO of the Big Life Company, as they had previously been encouraged by Fay to run a weekly anxiety support group from the centre.

    The charity today has over 6000 members and is truly national in nature. It is still user-led - Nicky Lidbetter is now Chief Executive.

    Based on an email from Nicky Lidbetter 24.3.2008

    External link to website

    Paddington Day Hospital Action Group

    10.12.1971 Guardian page 5: Clinic fights merger plan "Staff and patients at the Paddington Clinic and Day Hospital have formed a protest group to fight a proposal to transfer the unit to the St Mary's teaching hospital.

    The day hospital - with a staff of about 50 and places for 80 patients - claims to have developed successful treatments for psychiatric patients. The proposed changes are in line with long-range plans to give teaching hospitals more responsibility for "district work"

    Mr Alan Powditch, secretary to the St Mary's hospital board, said yesterday that St Mary's has plans to provide 60 psychiatric beds and 80 day places as part of a reconstruction programme. These would be within 300 yards of the present day clinic, which would therefore be redundant.

    According to the protesters the group therapy system evolved at the day hospital justifies keeping the clinic open. "Individual therapy is out of reach to the majority because of the cost" says the group. "Under the NHS there are long waiting lists for it"


    The Need for a Mental Patients Union

    Amended excerpts from Hinchcliffe, Dave 1977.

    In December 1972, a group of [people] in the London area produced a pamphlet [The "Fish Pamphlet"] on The Need for a Mental Patients' Union arguing that "psychiatry is one of the most subtle methods of repression in advanced Capitalist society".

    [There were (small) meetings drafting the pamphlet and discussing the case for a union before Christmas 1972 held at Liz Durkin's - Flat 1, 13 Christchurch Road, London, N8. The participants were Liz Durkin [Liz Davies], Brian Douieb, Lesley Mitchell, Eric Irwin, Valerie and Andrew Roberts. Liz, Brian and Lesley did not count themselves as patients or ex-patients. Valerie and Andrew were interested in the union rather than the pamphlet]

    [The text below can also be found on the Mad Pride website]

    The Need for a Mental Patients' Union

    Some Proposals

    "An individual having unusual difficulties in coping with his environment struggles and kicks up the dust, as it were. I have used the figure of a fish caught on a hook: his gyrations must look peculiar to other fish that don't understand the circumstances; but his splashes are not his affliction, they are his effort to get rid of his affliction and as every fisherman knows these efforts may succeed." - Karl Mennenger.


    [Karl Mennenger should be Karl Menninger - There was a printing error and someone wrote in e by hand. I have not traced where the quotation comes from, but, according to one biography (archive 2009), Menninger used the fish analogy often. See 1930. Brian Douieb drew the fish for the pamphlet. Eric Irwin told Liz and Brian about the quote from Menninger and Brian drew the fish. (Liz 22.12.2011)]


    In the past few years a number of groups have sprung up in opposition to the reactionary institutions of the mental hospital and psychiatry. Ignoring patient involvement, the impetus of these groups' radical alternatives, however, have become little more than intellectual discussion points and shop-talk for students and professionals. PATIENTS, it would seem, are seen as incapable of playing any part in fighting for such alternatives.

    Almost colluding with the myth that mental patients are `inadequate', these groups have dismissed completely the fact that patients, of whom most are working class, together with hospital workers and nurses, are the only agents of revolutionary change inside the mental hospital.


    The Paddington Day Hospital Protest has so far been the only example of realised patient power in this country. But this power was only directed at the single issue of keeping the hospital open and, as a result of its limited success, it collapsed without using its political potential.

    WE strongly feel that PATIENT POWER could be mobilised effectively against the psychiatrist and the mental hospital, agent and agency of the ruling class, through a politically organised MENTAL PATIENTS' UNION.

    Why is a union necessary?????

    Psychiatry is one of the most subtle methods of repression in advanced capitalist society. Because of this subtlety, few recognise the dangers shrouded by the mystification of `modern medicine'. The psychiatrist has become the High Priest of technological society, exorcising the `devils' of social distress, by leucotomy (butchery of the brain), electric shock treatment - ECT (plugging brains into mains), and heavy use of mind- controlling drugs. The mental patient is a sacrifice we make whilst we continue to serve the Gods of the Capitalist Religion.

    The heavy weapon of psychiatry, like many others, is held at the heads of the working class in order to control them. Facts show that proportionately more admissions to mental hospitals originate from areas of poverty, bad housing, high unemployment and heavy industry - IN SHORT, WORKING CLASS AREAS. The suffering inflicted on the working class through extreme material poverty, social repression, home and work frustration etc. obviously have a tendency to result in anxiety, depression and sometimes delusions as a form of escapism.

    PICTURE: CAPITALIST AT PRODUCTION LINE ADMINSITERING ECT


    The working class and mental illness

    In our class society, workers are treated as mere units of production rather than as human beings with feelings. Manual workers are forced at times to react as individuals against the boredom, sterility and virtual slavery of their work function within capitalism, remaining unaware and apathetic of their role as agents of social change. Alienated from their labour, appendages of mass production machinery, or aimless producers of socially useless products, trapped in the breadwinner role between family and job, it is hardly surprising that the man who has worked on a production line for 20 years could become increasingly depressed and eventually regard himself as a `machine' or could become so divorced from the reality of his repressed existence that he starts to live, talk and think apparent `fantasy'. At this point he is shunted to the surgery where he can be conveniently labelled by the G.P. as `mentally sick' and referred to the psychiatrist. But the psychiatrist ignores the social and economic cause of the `apparent symptoms', since to recognise their importance would expose the pretensions of psychiatry which claims to locate the `distortion' or `irrationality', or `sickness' within the individual. The medical profession, through psychiatry, therefore, colludes with the profits system.

    In the same way, working class WOMEN are subject to this imposed insanity. Not only do some women suffer the same work conditions as male manual workers, often for lower pay, but they are expected to act as slaves to their children and husbands. The traditional women's role is that of `homemaker', but compelled by her husband's low income, or unsupported or hounded by the S.S., she may have to go out to work. She may also be forced to work as an escape from her insulated, isolated fifteen storey council flat or the chronic conditions of rented rooms. Many women caught in this dual role feel guilty at their apparent inadequacy in the home, become depressed and unable to cope. Stigmatised by the family, school, health visitors and social workers, they soon find themselves presented to modern medicine as suitable cases for treatment!

    Another road to `mental illness' could be UNEMPLOYMENT. When workers are no longer useful to the capitalist economy (i.e. their labour value is lost), they are thrown onto the human scrap heap like useless pieces of machinery. Unemployment directly benefits capitalism, since it discourages industrial action for better working conditions and wages, KEEPING PROFITS HIGH AND BIG BUSINESS HAPPY. Meanwhile the state conveniently covers for the system by blaming unemployment on pay inflation but is left with the responsibility of keeping down the anger of Trade Unions at the increasing numbers of unemployed. So the system quickly attaches the labels of `lazy' and `inadequate' to some mystical proportion of the unemployed through its propaganda media - however, this method no longer suffices to dupe the more organised sections of the working class. But at the same time in increasing use, is an equally effective method which subtly stigmatises the worker (now a `deviant' because he does not work): he is labelled `mentally ill'. This is not difficult to do, because by this stage the unemployed worker is beginning to feel the bite, since he is not fulfilling his breadwinner role and the pressures within the family are increasing. He also feels frustration at not finding a job and humiliation and victimisation in claiming social security. However the immediacy of the family's needs makes it difficult for it to sustain the drop in living standards and they blame him for their hardship rather than the system. In this way he becomes the scapegoat for the economics of capitalism which have deliberately created the pool of unemployment in which he is trapped. Crushed beneath the mounting pressures, he becomes depressed, disillusioned and aimless. The psychiatrist does the rest!


    The threat of middle class deviance to the status quo

    The middle class is not exempt from falling foul of the system. As the managers, administrators and apologists for capitalism, the middle class is obliged to defer to the ideology of its masters, the ruling class of money- barons. In order to preserve its status and security of economic privilege and the tenuous distinction between itself and the working class, the middle class must maintain reactionary values. Those members of the middle class who offend against, reject, or who are unable to cope with the values of alienated individualism (squalid private mentality), competitiveness, and `striving for success' are seen as a threat to the class values and therefore the class position. `Deviants' expressing their escape from or attack of the class values through `depression', `psychosis' or `character disorder', having been thus labelled, add to the numbers conveniently dealt with by psychiatry.

    Confronted by psychiatry the patient, from whichever class he comes, is thrown into the relationship of the worker versus the ruling class. The psychiatrists, agents of the capitalists, enemies of change, proceed to con the patient into the belief that it is he who needs changing.

    Just as the poor are blamed for their poverty, the unemployed for their idleness, slum tenants for their housing conditions, and `backward' schoolchildren for their `backwardness', the patient is blamed for his `illness'. IT IS TIME THE PATIENT FOUGHT BACK!

    Together with other oppressed groups, patients through an organised MENTAL PATIENTS' UNION must take COLLECTIVE ACTION and realise their POWER in the CLASS STRUGGLE, alongside Trade Unions, Claimants Unions, Women's Liberation, Black Panther Groups, Prisoners' Rights etc...


    FULL PAGE STRIP CARTOON OF THE UNEMPLOYED WORKER'S PATH TO AN AMBULANCE


    What can a union do?

    1. Propagandise. By leafleting mental hospitals, day centres, hostels, industrial therapy units etc.

    (A) to expose:
    - the myth of voluntary treatment and admission to hospital.
    - the myth of treatment, and the ways in which it is used as punishment for `deviancy'.
    - the myth of community care. How social workers act as control agents, and how industrial therapy is a source of cheap labour.
    - the myth of rehabilitation. How it is a process which ensures adjustment and conformity to the system.
    - the myth of psychotherapy, which can act as a subtle form of control.

    (B) to inform patients about their rights, minimal though they are, e.g. the right to appeal against compulsory detention.

    2. Establish a charter of rights.

    - the right to representation by the Mental Patients Union in court, tribunals, and wherever the Mental Health Act 1959 is implemented (e.g. statutory admissions to hospital) and wherever required by the patient (e.g. at a ward conference).
    - the right to a free second opinion by a psychiatrist of the patient's or patients union representative's choice.
    - the right to refuse treatment.
    - the right to retain clothing in hospital.
    - the right to effective appeal machinery.
    - the right to secure personal possessions in hospital without interference by hospital staff.
    - the right to effective inspection of hospital conditions, food, hygiene etc. independent of hospital administration.
    - the right of the patient to visitors.

    3. Fight and campaign for:

    - the abolition of compulsory admissions to hospital e.g. sections 25, 26, 29, 30, 60, 136 of the 1959 Mental Health Act.
    - the abolition of isolation treatment - seclusion in locked side rooms, padded cells etc.
    - the abolition of compulsory treatment by drugs, group therapy etc.; total abolition of irreversible treatments, electric shock, brain surgery, specific drugs etc.
    - the abolition of compulsory work in hospital and outside.
    - the abolition of letter and phone call censorship.
    - the abolition of the right of hospital authorities to withhold and control patients' `pocket' money.
    - the eventual abolition of mental hospitals and the repressive and manipulative institution of psychiatry.


    4. Set up alternatives.
    E.G. drop-in/ live-in centres, controlled by patients, as retreats - free from `treatment' and `hierarchies'.

    How will the Mental Patients Union be organised?

    The Union will be organised and controlled only by mental patients and ex- patients. The union membership and voting rights will be limited to patients alone. The union must be run democratically with an effective working group elected and subject to the right of recall. Outside help will be more than welcome, but will only carry associate membership with no voting rights.

    Unfortunately, there are many aspects of the problem of psychiatric repression that we have not covered. Because our pamphlet is by no means totally adequate, we can only hope that one of the functions of the union will be to look closer at the situation, producing its own pamphlets etc.

    Meanwhile perhaps our brief analysis will be of use in the setting up of the union.

    But in any event, the time to act is NOW - there are too many fish on the hook.

    Eric Irwin
    Lesley Mitchell
    Liz Durkin
    Brian Douieb

    The Case for a Mental Patients' Union

    Amended excerpts from Hinchcliffe, Dave 1977, continued

    "The founding committee circulated this initial statement to psychiatric hospitals and various places where ex-patients were likely to congregate, together with notices of a meeting to be held [on Wednesday 21.3.1973 at Paddington Day Hospital] to discuss the formation of a union.

    The poster circulated says "is psychiatry social repression? the case for a mental patients union. a meeting of patients and ex-patients at: paddington day-hospital: 217 harrow rd. W.2. wed. 21st march 7.30. p.m." Small adverts appeared in Time Out on 9.3.1973, Freedom (Anarchist Weekly) on 10.3.1973 and Quest 16.3.1973

    Bearing in mind the difficulties involved in making contact with patients in various parts of the country, it is interesting to note that of some 150 reported to have attended the meeting, held at Paddington Day Hospital, over 100 were patients or ex-patients, some coming from as far afield as Scotland. [Figures almost certainly incorrect. Figures and details on the main timeline are based on the surviving records.]

    [The steering group had anticipated incremental growth. The explosive growth of numbers was entirely due to a brief, pre-recorded interview on Radio 4's Today programme on the morning of the day. Interviewer Michael Sheils. Producer Marshall Stewart. The steering group insisted a patient/ex-patient be interviewed. A telephone number (the Roberts's) was given out and started ringing as soon as the programme finished. It kept on ringing every time it was put down for much of the morning. The attendance list and handwritten minutes of the first meeting survive.]


    Pam and MPU

    Notes directly on stencil cause there ain't no time left...

    March this year, I was working on a 'Neighbourhood Sculpture' in and with a house in Kentish Town West. A house first liberated in the beginning of the squatting movement here in the Prince of Wales Road and Crescent. After a brief attempt with Community Architects which turned out to be more building than abstract design; I created an office; to wit: Telephone and Desk; light and chair... the function of which would be dictated by the needs presented during its first week - however peculiar it seems - on Wednesday a colleague, Robin Farquharson, came in the door on which I had posted, 'do not rush in, this is not a psychiatric unit, this is an office', and hurriedly described a meeting called for that night at Paddington Day Hospital to form a Union for mental patients... make the connection... office offer... motives interrogated through Sunday tea... OK... lets go...

    The MPU working party did not initially trust Pam's offer - Hence the interrogation. Pam came to a meeting at Liz's to make the offer and then I visited Pam to see the premises and liaise between Pam and the group. So perhaps I was the interrogator! Andrew

    Initially the coordinating caucus debated for unendurable lengths of time over our now 'declaration' and 'demand'... "Notes from second meeting of the MPU Working Party" (as we were called): Points of reference for preparation of document to be presented to general meeting of Mental Patients Union: Chairing for us should be taken in turns - Staff and patients spend more time together including taking meals in the same place - We call for the effective right to refuse treatment - We demand the effective right to refuse treatment - We call for the right to a choice of treatments - We press Trade Unions not to ignore the rights of patients - We demand the right to inquire into the conditions of patients - We propose to call for a public examination of the conditions at Broadmoor Hospital" signed Michael Cardew. Several weeks later we had actually agreed on one version of the demands and prerequisite for a union of mental patients, a framework for future members and meetings to plug into. A method of communication. A statement.

    The test of time for our documents began, could they stand the critical eye of the people? Could we as the coordinating committee keep together long enough to see... a few we lost back to the institutions; the rest reformed. First encounters with staff and doctors from Maudsley Hospital; even match of six a side draw declared... the connection made through an audience of fifty or so social work students [....] A NEWS SHEET with the help of Eve from the Canadian Patients power group in Vancouver. The Paris Conference - After which I stayed on a time to work on sketching and seeing... The French are mad.. and their mad are somewhere else, but they are in orbit around one Laingian Psychiatrist - Jean Claud Pollack... their framework professionally established. Returning to England and asking myself - can we as patients and ex-patients keep our Union together? Does MIND U serve the needs as say au Vousray does in Les Halles? If we continue the struggle, we'll need funds we'll need to formulate the coordinating committee - disperse functions and be ready for a commitment to a task; the task of regularising ourselves into a Union with coherent power, and people committed to carrying through.

    Mental Patients Union (MPU)

    MPU
    Pam Edwards, Lewis Mantus and Liz Durkin, photographed at the window of 97 Prince of Wales Road (Sunday Time 23.9.1973)

    Amended excerpts from Hinchcliffe, Dave 1977.

    The initial meeting resolved that full membership of the union would be restricted to patients and ex patients only, despite evidently strong pleas [??] for it to be open to others, including relatives and professionals. The role of these two groups in compulsory admissions to hospital was highlighted by those objecting to open membership. At the meeting a working party of some two dozen full members was formed and not long after set up office in a London squat. This nucleus was given the task of producing a statement of the union's intent and drafting a proposed organisational framework for MPU.

    [I think the case for relatives was made. I do not recall anyone suggesting professionals (as such) should be full members. There is little in the lists of attenders to suggest people came from any further afield than Oxford (three). One person is Bath and another Yorkshire. The Scotland representation was already living in London and almost everyone gave a London address.]

    Meeting that formed the "Mental Patients Union" held 7.30pm. Wednesday 21st March at Paddington Day Hospital

    Minutes "based on notes taken by Michael Cardew and Andrew Roberts"

    Present over one hundred people. [About 86 signed list, giving address etc] 54 people signed list as "patient or ex-patient" and others were present who did not sign list. About eight people filled in "occupation" as "social worker". Four psychologists and one "doctor" also on list. 19 people wrote "no" in patient/ex-patient column.

    Meeting opened with outline by member of pilot committee (Lesley Mitchell) of who they were and what they had done.

    Eric Irwin granted permission to tape meeting. Loretta Land, chairwoman of Patients Committee at Marlborough Day Hospital offered to chair meeting. offer accepted.

    Meeting forced to adjourn to larger room

    Initial discussion on whether it was possible to revolutionise society and form a patients union. Some thought patients unions goals could not be achieved without revolutionising society, others that they were two separate issues and we couldn't do both. Latter said they agreed with forming a patients union.Nobody wanted to revolutionise society and not form a patients union!

    Initial discussion of place of non mental patients/ex-patients in union. Patient asked if there were any psychiatrists present. Lady from Claybury said she was but that she did not want to interfere. Psychologist who was a member of the Philadelphia Association said she was not practising and had a sister who was a patient.

    Criticism of Pilot Committee voiced. Edward Spalek suggested pilot committee member should chair the meeting. Brian Douieb refused on part of non patient/ex-patient members of the Pilot Committee. Offer from Andrew Roberts (ex-patient and pilot committee member) accepted.

    Andrew Roberts Chairman: suggested "revolutionise question" could be dropped as it arose from Pilot Committee leaflet and the policy and politics of the mental patients union would be formed by the union not the pilot committee. Suggested meeting take up question of case for mental patients union.

    Considerable discussion on question of who should be able to vote at meeting. two problems a) should non patients/ex-patients be excluded from voting, b) what was the line that distinguished a patient from a non- patient (eg did private treatment count, or treatment from a GP). First problem only dealt with as became clear that complex problems involved in second.

    Edward Ward, London organiser of P.R.O.P spoke. Said he was also an ex- patient of Napsbury and that he thought prisons and mental hospitals were the same kind of thing. Argued that we had to make up our minds either to be a union or not to be a union (Cry of 'Rubbish'). We should exclude all except patients and ex-patients. Other groups could work in their own organisations. Also we should draw up a statement of demands to fight for.

    Status of relatives raised. Many felt that relatives were often responsible for putting patients inside. Also felt associate membership dealt with case.

    Decisions (Voted on)

    1. Only patients and ex-patients to vote at meeting

    2. We should form a mental patients union

    3. Nobody who is not a patient or ex-patient should be a member of that Union. Associate membership to be open to others at the discretion of the Union. Terms 'member' and 'associate member' to be interpreted as by P.R.O.P.

    Rough agenda drawn up:

    1. Question of whether union should be local or national

    2. Charter of Rights... intent of union

    3. Working Committee for Union and Structure

    4. Finance (not eventually dealt with)

    5. Live in drop in centre (Robin Farquharson)

    6. Legal Aid (not eventually dealt with)

    Discussion: Nathan Morris, Secretary of the Public Action for Broadmoor, spoke of the need for positive power and of democracy in special institutions like Shenley and Napsbury. Patients going into a hospital should have Union Representation raised as important point

    Speaker said we had to work out whether we were going to try to make and inadequate system work or fight against oppression. heated discussion of whether some parts of system worked. Patients from Marlborough Day Hospital and Paddington Day Hospital spoke for and against their hospitals.

    Local or National? Notice had been received from groups in Oxford and Leeds who were trying to set up mental patients groups. D. O'Brien, a Oxford students (not a patient or ex-patient) outlined efforts at Oxford.

    In discussion there was strong opposition to centralisation and direction of local groups by a London based organisation. The claimants Union was suggested as a model.

    Decision (Vote) Members voted on forming

    Majority voted for last proposal

    Charter of Rights? patient said we should draw up a declaration of intent. After considerable discussion the following provisional declaration was agreed:

    The Mental Patients Union will represent mental patients and ex-patients wherever they require to be represented. We will fight to make what rights of representation formally exist effective and secure rights of representation wherever they do not exist.

    We will work towards the abolition of compulsory treatment.

    We demand the total abolition of irreversible psychiatric treatments (electric shock, brain surgery, specific drugs, etc). We demand higher standards in the testing of treatments before use on patients. We demand that patients should be informed if a treatment is experimental and should have the effective right to refuse to be experimented on. We demand that patients be told hat treatments they are receiving and what the long term effects are.

    We will also fight for the abolition of censorship by hospital authorities of patients communications with society outside the hospital and in particular the abolition of phone call and letter censorship, and the abolition of any power of hospital authorities to restrict patients visitors.

    Robin Farquharson offered accommodation in Charrington St. N.W.1 for the MPU in a house that has been procured by squatting and needs a certain amount of repair. Offer accepted.

    A list of volunteers to form a working committee was prepared and it was agreed that the pilot committee should be responsible for calling that group together and passing over its functions to the group.

    The temporary telephone number of the Mental Patients Union was fixed as "Andrew Roberts 804 2357" and the temporary address as "c/o Flat 1, 13 Christchurch Road, Crouch End, London, N8"

    Decision (Vote) That the next meeting of the Mental Patients Union should be called by the working group for a fortnight hence and that it should be held at a time most convenient for patients in hospital. (Preferably a weekend).

    Suggested that two meetings might be called - the weekend meeting and another for those who could only be present in the evenings.

    Under Any Other Business, Andrew Roberts was left with responsibility for dealing with the press.

    [After the first meeting, Robin Farquharson took a small group of people round a squat (no floorboards) which he suggested we could prepare as MPU headquarters. It was agreed at the first meeting that the pamphlet was not an MPU statement, although the union could circulate it as a statement by the pilot committee for the MPU]

    Download A Mental Patients Union leaflet - This is the pilot committee's leaflet

    Download The Mental Patients Union leaflet - This is the first Mental Patients Union publication

    After the first General Meeting a leaflet was used that said:

    The Mental Patients Union

    The Mental Patients Union is a union of mental patients and ex-patients formed and run by mental patients and ex-patients. It was founded on March 21st 1973, Membership is restricted to mental patients and ex-patients. There will be, however, a non-decision making associate membership with no voting rights.
    The Union has issued the following Provisional Declaration of Intent:

    [and then as above in the minutes of the first meeting]

    The declaration is provisional and the working committee are preparing a more detailed statement on the basis of it to be presented to the next general meeting of the Union. All publications of the "Pilot Committee for a Mental Patients Union" are superseded by the publications of the Union itself and do not have the authority of the Union. They should not be quoted therefore as the policy of the Mental Patients Union.

    [And then contact address and telephone as in minutes]

    Rough minutes of Working Committee 25.3.1973 (Andrew's handwriting) "Pam Edwards made offer of "accommodation" at 97 Prince of Wales Road. Meeting very uncertain what her offer consisted of". - Andrew went to see Pam at 97 Prince of Wales to find out.

    [see 23.9.1973 photograph]. Pam Edwards: Pamela Jane Edwards: Pamela J. Edwards. From Studio City, California. An Associate Member of the American Institute of Architects. On her return to the USA she worked for Frank Lloyd Wright, Junior (1890 - 1978) and his son Eric Lloyd Wright (1929-)

    Minutes of Working Committee 29.3.1973 at 97 Prince of Wales Road, NW5. Mike Cardew chaired and wrote the minutes. They are mainly about the Declaration.

    Provisional Agenda Wednesday 28.3.1973 (Andrew's handwriting). Notes on: 1) Constitution of MPU to be recommended to a general meeting. 2) Classes of Membership.

    Friday 6.4.1973 The Sun, p.7 "Riddle of the dropout doctor". "Dr Robin Farquharson ... was burned in a fire in a derelict house in Platt St. Camden Town three days ago. He died in University College Hospital"

    Saturday 7.4.1973 MPU General Meeting at Polytantric, 60 Malden Road, NW5. The wake for Robin Farquharson had been held in the room the night before and nobody had tidied up. The declaration that the working group had drafted was gone through point by point, amended and agreed. The programme for the meeting survives, but I have not got minutes. My memory says that we carried on as long as we could at the Polytantric and then adjourned to 97 Prince of Wales Road. The meeting went on late, so it was quite a small group that agreed the last details.

    11.4.1973 Minutes of meeting taken by Janet. Fish logo.

    Why the love fish did not become the MPU Logo

    2.5.1973 Typed minutes of a meeting at 97 Prince of Wales Road. Printing of "Statement of Intent" was having problems at Hornsey College of Art. Bedford project confident of getting house for MPU. Awaiting news. Brian, Jezz and Eric to be signatories of account at Co-op Bank. Pam to arrange hall for General Meeting in 3rd Week of June.

    Declaration of Intent of the Mental Patients Union

    We proclaim the dignity of society's so-called mental patients. We challenge repressive psychiatric practice and its ill-defined concepts of 'mental illness'.

    We state that the present appalling situation in 'mental health' primarily arises from the acute problems in housing, unemployment and social inequality.

    Mental patients in our society are treated as people with no human rights. We are stigmatised, and our accounts of what happens to us in mental hospitals and outside are taken as symptoms of an 'illness'. Most of us are never even given the opportunity to speak about what happens in mental hospitals, as we are incarcerated there and subjected to 'treatments' which destroy our memories, confuse our speech and co-ordination, destroy our incentive and intimidate us.

    Our first intent in forming ourselves into a union is to fight against the 'conspiracy of deafness' that confronts us.

    The Mental Patients Union will represent mental patients wherever they require to be represented. We will fight to make what rights of representation formally exist effective and secure rights of representation wherever they do not exist. We will seek to inform patients and ex-patients about their rights, minimal though they are e.g. the right to appeal against compulsory detention in some circumstances). We will, however, as representatives of our fellow mental patients, refuse to bargain behind the backs of our members with the 'authorities'. We will attempt to provide legal, social and advisory support for all mental patients and ex-patients who ask the Union for help.

    We will expose the myth that most treatment and admission to mental hospitals is really voluntary. We will do this by:

    1. Publicising the deceit that authorities use to get people into mental hospitals with the least resistance, the deception and force that is frequently used to inflict 'treatment'; and the cases of forcibly detained patients classified as voluntary.

    2. Exposing the desperate situations where people have no alternative but to accept mental hospital admission, because of lack of accommodation, necessary welfare services or homes for the elderly.

    3. Exposing the power of psychiatrists to prevent technically 'voluntary' patients from leaving by imposing compulsory detention orders, removing patients' clothes, by locking 'open' wards and by heavy drug use and other deceptive tactics.

    We will expose the use of 'treatments' as forms of punishment.

    We will expose the way in which Social Workers are used as control agents to cover up the social outrages of our society; and how industrial and occupational therapy is used as a source of cheap labour, and expose the dull, soul-destroying work which is called occupational therapy.

    We intend to show how rehabilitation is used as a process which seeks only to achieve adjustment and conformity of the patient to the present social system.

    We will show how psychotherapy can act as a subtle form of social control.

    WE DEMAND

    1. The abolition of compulsory treatment; i.e. we demand the effective right of patients to refuse any specific treatment.

    2. The abolition of any right of 'authorities' to treat patients in the face of opposition of relatives or closest friends unless it is clearly shown that the patient of his own volition desires the treatment.

    3. The abolition of irreversible psychiatric 'treatments' (electro-convulsive therapy, brain surgery, specific drugs).

    4. Higher standards in the testing of 'treatments' before use on us.

    5. That patients be told what 'treatments' they are receiving experimental and should have the effective right to refuse to be experimented on.

    6. That patients to be told what 'treatments' they are receiving and what the long-term effects are.

    7. Also the abolition of isolation 'treatment' (seclusion in locked side rooms, padded cells, etc.)

    8. The right of any patient to inspect his casenotes and the right to take legal action relating to the contents and consequences of them.

    9. That the 'authorities' should not discharge a patient against his or her will because they refuse 'treatment' or for any other reason.

    10. That all patients should have the right to have any 'treatment' which they believe will help them.

    11. That local authorities should provide housing for patients wishing to leave hospital and that adequate security benefits should be provided. We will support any mental patients or ex-patients in their struggle to get these facilities and any person who is at risk of becoming a mental patient because of inadequate accommodation, financial support, social pressures, etc.

    12. We call for the abolition of compulsory hospitalisation.

    13. An end to the indiscriminate use of the term 'mental subnormality'. We intend to fight the condemnation of people as 'mentally subnormal' in the absence of any real practical work to tackle the problem with active social understanding and help.

    14. The abolition of the concept of 'psychopath' as a legal or medical category.

    15. The right of patients to retain their personal clothing in hospitals and to secure personal possessions without interference by hospital staff.

    16. The abolition of compulsory work in hospitals and outside and the abolition of the right of hospital 'authorities' to withhold and control patients' money.

    17. The right of patients to join and participate fully in the Trade Union of their choice.

    18. That Trade Union rates are paid to patients for any work done where such rates do not yet exist.

    19. That patients should have recourse to a room in which they can enjoy their own privacy, or have privacy with others, of either sex, of their own choosing.

    20. The abolition of censorship by hospital authorities of patients' communications with society outside the hospital I and in particular the abolition of telephone and letter censorship.

    21. We demand the abolition of any power to restrict patients' visiting rights by the hospital authorities.

    22. The right of Mental Patients Union representatives to inspect all areas of hospitals, or equivalent institutions.

    23. We deny that there is any such thing as 'incurable' mental 'illness' and demand the right to investigate the circumstances of any mental hospital patient who believes he or she is being treated as 'incurable'.

    24. We demand that every mental patient or ex-patient should have the right to a free second opinion by a psychiatrist of the patient's or Mental Patients' Union representatives' choice, if he or she disagrees with the diagnosis and that every mental patient or ex-patient should have the right to effective appeal machinery.

    We believe that the eventual abolition of mental hospitals and the institution of repressive and manipulative psychiatry is possible, but only if society is radically changed, for what is known as 'mental illness' is a symptom of a defective and sick society.

    The Declaration After the Federation formed, the declaration was printed and published by Mayola Road (Hackney) Mental Patients Union. As far as I know, nothing was ever taken away from the above statement. Pam, always creative, felt free to rearrange the paragraphs in one printed edition, but it did not alter the meaning. New material was added by Mayola Road (Hackney) Mental Patients Union. Other unions (including the autonomous Hackney Hospital Union) were free to create their own declarations, and often did so by first cutting out large portions of the above declaration and developing their own from the parts their members agreed to.


    The MPU Logo

    MPU Nick Crossley 19.6.1998: "Where and when did the 'human head on a spider's web' logo come from? I'm guessing that it signifies human beings caught up in the web of psychiatry and social control - is that right?"

    Andrew Roberts Tuesday 10.8.1999:

    MIND OUT Summer 1973: Denise Winn's report on the Mental Patients Union.

    Patients' Rights

    As a result of an idea tossed between two ex-psychiatric patients and two non-patients, a pilot committee for a mental patients' union was set up in March and produced a pamphlet, The Need for A Mental Patients' Union, Some Proposals. The first meeting of the MPU held at the Paddington Day Hospital, London, was overwhelmingly attended and it was patients and ex-patients, not psychiatrists and social workers, who were in the majority.

    Now the Mental Patients' Union has got off the ground. Its members are people who have come under almost all the labelings of 'mental disorder,' from 'subnormals' and 'catatonic schizophrenics' to 'psychopaths' and 'manic-depressives,' and range in age from 17 to 50.

    The Mental Patients' Union feels that the only people who can understand the patients' position in a mental hospital or psychiatric prison are those who are or have been patients themselves. For that reason, only patients and ex-patients have voting rights in the Union, while others interested can take out associate membership but are not allowed to vote.

    The Union has published its declaration of intent, dealing with the ignominies they consider need righting in the treatment of mental patients. They demand first and foremost that the dignity of 'so-called mental patients' should not be degraded and feel that much mental breakdown arises from social reasons such as acute problems in housing and unemployment The Union wishes to inform patients of what rights they do have and to secure rights of representation wherever they don't exist

    The MPU feels strongly that it is a myth that most treatment and admission to mental hospitals is really voluntary and deplore what they see as the power of psychiatrists to prevent technically voluntary patients from leaving by imposing compulsory detention orders.

    Also included in the bill of intent are fourteen demands, including the abolition of compulsory and irreversible treatment, such as electro-convulsive therapy and brain surgery. The Union demands the right of a patient to inspect his own' case notes and that local authorities should provide housing for patients wishing to leave hospital and adequate social security benefits.

    The Union also demands abolition of hospital control over personal possessions and feels that patients should be paid Trade Union rates for the industrial work they do. It demands an end to censorship of letters and wants the right to effective appeal machinery.

    The MPU intends to set up an anti-hospital, run by the patients, to be an asylum in the original sense, where treatments will not be given. The MPU's office is at 97 Prince of Wales Road, NWS. 01-267-2770.

    [I think the place of the conference must have been Fresnes, Val-de-Marne, on the outskirts of Paris. (See Wikipedia)

    Paris Conference Friday 29.6.1973 - Saturday 30.6.1973 Fresnes France

    It is possible that the conference was just on Saturday 30.6.1973. The march to the German embassy clearly appears to have been on Sunday 1.7.1973

    The French group of present and ex-mental patients (mental malades) working with Jean Claude Polack psychiatrist on Cahiers pour la Folie (Papers on Madness) organised a conference in which similar groups from different countries could meet to discuss their experiences in combating psychiatric repression. It was held outside Paris at Fresnes since the police had prevented it from being held in Paris.

    Groups from France, Germany, England and Spain attended and it was hoped we could draw up an International Charter of Demands. This proved impossible in a two-day conference since we first had to discover how each group was organised and what form of action it took. Smaller discussion groups were set up on Saturday afternoon to discuss different aspects of madness and psychiatry; these included comparison of legal rights for mental patients, forms of treatment and anti-psychiatry. The MPU was the only group with a Declaration of Intent and as this had been translated it was discussed in most groups. It was hoped that the French and German groups will produce their own before the next conference.

    The IZRU (Informationezentrum Rote Volksuniversitat) [Information Centre of the Red People's University] from Germany described the treatment of the S.P.K. (Socialist Patients Collective) who are in prison awaiting trial. Political prisoners are isolated from all contact with other prisoners, have restricted visits from close relatives and all mail is censored. 60 prisoners had been on a hunger strike for seven weeks which had been ignored by the authorities and the press. A statement was drawn up by the conference in support of the SPK's strike, demanding that political prisoners should not be segregated from other prisoners, that all prisoners should have a free and complete to political information that concerned them. This was signed by:

    A.R.M. (Association contre la repression medico-policiere)
    Cahiers pour la Folie
    G.I.A. (groupe d'information sur le Asiles)
    Rommittee gegen die Isolationsfolten (RFA)
    Des prisonniere de droit commun, 12
    Mental Patients Union

    [Compare with the list in Les Temps Modernes

    This was presented to the German Embassy in Paris on Sunday. While members of the delegation gave out the statement; the police declared the demonstration to be unauthorised and proceeded to break it up although the German Consul had agreed to accept the delegation from the SPK.

    The next conference is to be held in November, possibly in Amsterdam where it is to be hoped we can form an international agreement so that the different groups can act in solidarity and learn from each others experiences. Apart from the GIA, MPU was the only group organised solely by patients and ex-patients. The delegates from Spain were radical psychiatrists since it is impossible for patients to organise within the Spanish dictatorship. LM [Lesley Mitchell]

    The six Mental Patients Union members who attended the Fresnes conference were Liz Durkin - Brian Douieb - Lesley Mitchell - Pam Edwards - Jim Conway - Andy Dewar. Pam made her own way there and back. The others travelled from London in Liz and Brian's mini: "It was very hot and cramped" (Liz)


    See "Pam and MPU" MPU News 2 - August 1973


    [The following is an undated press release]

    Mental Patients' Union attend Paris conference:

    Six members of the Mental Patients's Union have just returned from a conference in Paris. This was planned by three French groups, Cahiers pour la Folie - ARM (Association against repressive medicine) and GIA (Group for Information about Asylums). The conference was attended by over 300 mental patients including members of the former Spanish patients' Collective in Germany and members of a Spanish group.

    Discussion focused around five topics; psychiatric treatment, the law relating to mental patients, the concept of madness in a sick society, alternative forms of care, and the function and organisation of patient groups. All groups unanimously agreed on their analysis of mental 'illness' as being a reaction of the oppressed class to their situation of appalling social and economic conditions. They all agreed that mental patients must unite to fight the causes of their repression such as social inequality, poverty, bad housing, unemployment etc.

    That such organisations are seen as a threat to the state was confirmed by the German group who reported that many of their members are among 80 prisoners now being treated as political prisoners in Germany in total isolation from other prisoners. They are on hunger strike and are being force fed and denied water. On the second day of the conference patients demonstrated outside he German Embassy whilst a statement was handed in signed by all groups deploring the situation and its concealment by the german press. The French groups also spoke of the repression of their activities. Their efforts to visit patients in hospital are prevented by the French police.

    The groups recognised the need for International Solidarity and will be meeting again in November in Amsterdam to write and International Declaration of Intent and to discuss future action.


    Email recollections from Lesley 10.8.2013:

    First of all I remember it was very hot and being thirsty all the time as it was before we carried bottles of water around. Then of course it was very cold when we drove back from Dover with a broken windscreen!

    On a more serious front, we considered ourselves more political in our view on mental health than the predominantly psychoanalytically inclined participants. However it was rather a shock when a group in one of the workshops introduced themselves as the Red Army Faction or RAF from Germany, who said they were associated with the Bader Meinhof Group. This was before they were all arrested or killed but we certainly knew enough about them, to realise they were in a different political league and not one I wished to be associated with! This was further complicated when we arrived in Dover and the Customs were literally taking cars apart and we realised we had a stash of literature that might be seen as inflammatory. However, they weren't interested in us and just waved us through.


    Email recollections from Liz and Brian 11.8.2013:

    We travelled from London in our mini with Lesley, Andy Dewar and Jim Conway. It was very hot and cramped. We think Pam Edwards joined us there.

    We stayed overnight with some members of the French group. The conference was quite crowded but of course we didn't speak French. It started with a plenary and one person made a passionate speech in French and Andy Dewar stood up and spoke powerfully saying he didn't need to understand the language to know exactly what the person was saying. There followed a big round of applause.

    Later we divided into small groups, where many people did speak English, there were police with guns wandering amongst us and closely listening in.

    Like Lesley we had not reckoned on the involvement of the Socialist Patients Kollective (SPK) and their links with the Red Army Faction. We remember that some members of the RAF were in prison at that time and on hunger strike as there were leaflets about this. There was much discussion about the political use of ECT and brain surgery with information about the use of these techniques in Russia.

    Brian and I have a different view from Lesley as we definitely remember our mini being thoroughly searched at Dover by Customs (even under the lining of the boot) when we came back to the UK. She is right that we had a car full of leaflets and we were very nervous but finally got through OK.

    Wednesday 4.7.1973 Minutes say Andrew camping out at 37 Mayola Road. Brendan Maher (self-styled "Brendan the broom") helped clean the house and introduced Andrew to Centerprise in Dalston Lane. Andrew attended a meeting of the Federation of Claimants Unions at Ben Johnson House during the early days, where he met Jim Conway who came back to Mayola Road and became a tenant. At the Federation meeting they were discussing the draft of the Claimants Handbook for Prisoners. A member of the (small) Oxford Mental Patients' Union (not Clive Perret) was also there.

    Robin Farquharson House - Andrew Roberts at front door - Photo taken by Joan Martin

    Wednesday 25.7.1973 Pam Edwards to move in to 37 Mayola.

    August 1973: Joan Martin read a small advertisement in the Socialist Worker: "The Mental Patients Union are meeting once per week in Prince of Wales Terrace."

    October 1973 Download NEWS FROM THE MENTAL PATIENTS' UNION. OCTOBER 73 - This is the MPU file copy number 1 - and only copy. The original, which is on white paper, is losing its print. It has been scanned as if on grey paper in order to make it more legible. Use the enlarger, if necessary, to read.

    31.10.1973 Joan Martin moved into Robin Farquharson House

    Tuesday 1.1.1974 Decision to have meetings at Mayola Road [Saturday afternoons]. Since being evicted from 97 Prince of Wales Road, the MPU had been meeting in very cold room in central London lent by the employer of a tenant at 37 Mayola Road. It was during this time that David Cooper was attending meetings.

    February 1974 MPU News 3. A copy in the British Library is the only one listed on COPAC. This was the only edition of MPU New sent to the British Library. Contents: 2. MPU Decentralises - 3. Question of levels [SUMP] - 4. Basic Issues - 5. Private lives [4. and 5. about "rights" issues] - 6. and 11. Repression east and west - 7. Local Groups - 8-9 Free Poster - 10. Contacts - 12 Case of the rattled shrink - 13. Women are committed - 14. Patient Letters - 15. Housing - 16. Editorial

    MANCHESTER MARCH 1974. In March 1974 a national General Meeting resolved that groups should be autonomous, but linked in a Federation of Mental Patients' Unions.


    MPU Membership

    On 19th March 1974 the Full Members cards in the card index file for mailing were: 72 in hospital; 234 out of hospital in the UK and 8 abroad.

    On 30th July 1974 there were between 375 and 400 Full Members in the card index.

    On 24th January 1975 we mailed 269 Full Members.

    Robin Farquharson House, 37 Mayola Road

    MPU
    "It's not a happy ship" Austin Johnson - on guitar in posed picture. Jenny Shakeshaft (on right) "preferred it to rented rooms where she was always depressed". "Members told me that they liked their own accomodation, which they obtained through the Peter Bedford Project, because there is no one in charge telling them what to do". Tony O'Donnell is on Austin's right, then Lilian, then Andrew Roberts. The picture and quotes are from the Jackie Rose column in the Hackney Gazette 21.6.1974.

    The picture is taken in Valerie and Andrew's room, which tended to be used as a meeting place. On the wall behind Lillian is a picture of Joseph Stalin that upset a lot of people - who did not usually mention it until later.

    MPU
    The large, first floor room of Robin Farquharson House served as the office (table and notice-board above - filing cabinet not in picture) - emergency crash pad (mattress not shown) - meeting room for the Mental Patients Union - and occasional party room. Above: feet in socks belong to Jenny Shakeshaft - skirt to Mary/Michael Wade - Valerie seated in centre.

    Interview with Humpty Dumpty

    The interview was based on three visits Saturday 16.11.1974 - 25.1.1975 - 15.2.1975. More members were present than are recorded in the interview. Humpty Dumpty were scrupulous about checking that we agreed we said what they said we said - So like it or not, we said it! Issue "6 + 7", in which the interview was published (pages 6-10) does not have a date.

    Humpty, as usual, gets it right
    This interview took place at a regular general meeting of the Hackney Mental Patients Union. These meetings are open to anyone who is or has been a mental patient, and are held at Robin Farquharson House in Hackney. They are the controlling body of Hackney M.P.U. which runs two households, campaigns for the civil liberties and welfare rights of its members and generally represent their interests in whatever ways seem practical. The views expressed in the interview are of those involved, however they are generally representative of the ideas of M.P.U. activists. Taking part in the discussion were Joan Martin, Val and Andrew Roberts, Austin Johnson and others. The article that follows is a condensed version of discussions that we had on several occasions.

    When was the M.P.U. founded?

    Andrew: In March '73 a meeting was called at the Paddington Day Hospital by a pilot committee and was attended by 150 or so people, about a 100 of whom were or had been mental patients. This group drew up our policy document - "The Declaration of Intent" - and established regular weekly meetings in a squat in Camden. In June '73 we acquired Robin Farquharson House through a housing association. Later the squat was repossessed and so the office and meetings were transferred here. Our last national meeting was in March last year when there were groups as far north as Dundee and south as Poole, Dorset. It was decided then that local groups should be autonomous but linked in an informal federation.

    Are you attempting something like Cope or the Philadelphia Association, setting up anti-hospitals or asylums, as alternatives to bins ?

    Andrew: No. What we are trying to do is to make patients in hospitals more aware of their rights and to press for changes in the running of hospitals - such as the right to choose and refuse treatments and the end to compulsory hospitalization. These aims are set out in the Declaration of Intent.

    We don't think hospitals are the right place for people to go to, let alone live in, so we have three houses where people, who might otherwise have to go into hospital for the lack of anywhere else to go can live. But that's what they are - places to live not places for therapy. There's a general feeling that any sort of structured therapy within the households would make them like mental hospitals. Segregating those who allegedly need a "therapeutic community" (as opposed to a community) from those who can live freely maintains the degrading distinction between allegedly mentally "ill" and "healthy" people. And along with it the allocation of different levels of responsibility, rationality and power. Personally I would restrict this criticism of therapy to living situations. Outside of the home, in situations from which one can easily withdraw, therapy may have a role.

    Val Anything a mental patient does or has done to her tends to be termed "therapy" - for non-patients it might simply be called "having a chat".

    What we're trying to do is provide places for people to live as human beings. We're a third choice instead of the usual two when the situation in one's home gets impossible, of living on the streets or going into hospital.

    We don't think this alternative will solve the problem - political action is necessary for that. But the way I see it, it's idealistic to think either in terms of changing society without bothering about the problems that exist now or in terms of creating utopian anti-hospitals as an end in themselves without having a broader political awareness of the problem.

    Do you have links with other trade unions or revolutionary organisations?

    Andrew: Left organizations in general seem largely unconcerned with the issues raised by claimants, prisoners, mental patients, gay people, women and so on. We have no formal links with trade unions, though we did support the nurses' strike. In principle however I think we should have and at the next A.G.M. we've a motion calling for discussions with the Hackney Trades Council about the exploitation of mental patients and ex-patients as cheap labour.

    How do doctors and nurses react to the M.P.U.?

    Andrew: As an idea they often say they find it "interesting" or "has possibilities", but if patients in their hospital form a group they are terrified. Any collective action by patients threatens the whole notion of hospitals and treatment - unless it's supervised by the staff.

    There are a small number who are associate members and support our activities - but their hands are rather tied, if they do anything publicly they can place their jobs in jeopardy.

    Why are you opposed to hospitals?

    Andrew: There are a whole number of reasons - the main is I think, that treatment cannot solve the problems that people go into hospital with. These problems are the result of living in an alienating society, where jobs are uninteresting, where workers have little control over their work situation, where housing is short and often of poor quality. Where people live in isolated unite often without much contact with each other. The idea of treatment locates the problem in the individual and tries to change the individual. But that can only ever be confusing since the problem is wider than a single person. Going into hospital removes the person from the situation that caused the problem, but that only means that the problem isn't solved.

    Val: There are situations from which it helps to withdraw, but not into a mental hospital. Drugs and regimentation just create new problems for you.

    Andrew: We need to create practical ways of collective defence against the social forces that break us down and on that basis fight back against them. Mental hospitals are part of the process of braking us down. They are societies effort to make our anguish and anger impotent and to force us to acknowledge defeat. We are fighting back.

    Can you tell us something about what it's like to be in a mental hospital?

    Andrew: Unless you've been in hospital it's difficult to realise how much your life is interfered with in hospital. One is always being supervised and watched.

    Joan: There's no privacy - you're always being watched. The rooms are usually huge so its very difficult to talk - staff always break these situations by joining in. The idea is that patients can't help themselves or each other, they need professional helpers to interfere in the interests of treatment.

    Val: In one hospital I was in - Belmont - patients were discouraged from talking to other patients because the nurses thought it would make us worse, more upset. As soon as three or four patients got together the nurses would break us up and join in.

    Andrew: Hospital is the only place where watching T.V. is made into a chore. If patients are sitting around not doing much they are told to watch T.V.

    Joan: And if you don't want to watch T.V. they think you must be isolating yourself so they give you extra drugs which only makes things more confusing.

    Andrew The same things happen at socials - if you don't want to join in they think you must be sick and so they try and make you join in.

    Austin: It's just impossible to be normal in hospital - if you talk too much you're manic if you talk too little you're depressed.

    Everything you do is watched, observed and labelled with some psychiatric word - yon just can't have an argument with someone, its turned into part of your problem. You're paranoid, or too aggressive, or too passive and so on and so on. It's impossible to be "right" - because the basic assumption in the place is that something is "wrong" with you, you're sick, abnormal and so everything you do is seen as sick and abnormal.

    And then they write it all down in the nurse's report which you aren't allowed to see and they call you "paranoid".

    Andrew: Hospitals alter the significance of every aspect of daily life. Food for instance is used for social control. Nurses use food to reward or punish patients.

    Joan: I remember they used to refuse second helpings to patients who weren't behaving themselves. If you were good you were allowed to help lay the table.

    Brendan: When I was in Hackney Hospital the nurses were overworked and no time for getting themselves meals so they would steal patients' food. Instead of putting it all out on the trolley in the evening, they'd keep some back for themselves.

    This went on a long time and I complained about it a lot but nothing was done. Then one day I found a soup tureen full of soup that they had left out by mistake and I threw it down the stairs.

    What else could I do to show them how I felt? They ignored what I'd said. And of course that was treated as some kind of abnormal, crazy thing to do.

    Andrew: Censorship goes on all the time. About what can go on noticeboards - as we have found out - about what can even be said about what can be sent in or out in letters. Very basic civil rights that we all take for granted are refused to mental patients - supposedly in their interests. M.P.U. activities counteract this interference and so threaten the hospital.

    For instance doctors don't like their patients to know what the side-effects of the drugs they are given are. When I was last in hospital I developed the shakes so badly that I thought I was breaking up completely. I didnt know that it was the side effect of Stelazine. M.P.U has produced a list of the side effects which we post into hospitals. That really upsets the doctors.

    Robert Ashwell, a member in Rampton Hospital, had his locker searched in an attempt to find these lists. The literature we were sending him was systematically being removed from his mail. We wrote to the hospital secretary asking him why they were not being returned to us - as they should have been under the 1959 Mental Health Act. He denied that this had been going on, but a few days later we heard from Robert that his doctor had returned his letter to him.

    Val: At two hospitals I was in, if you were in a locked ward, you weren't allowed to send a letter out without first asking staff. That's general practise in locked wards I think.

    Andrew: We oppose the use of the mental profession to deny the constitutional, legal rights of the individual. For instance there is at present no effective right of appeal against compulsory hospitalization and so in effect it is a prison sentence. If not worse because you are never sure when it will end which is a very frightening feeling.

    What do you think should happen to people who are dangerous and violent and sent to places like Broadmoor and Rampton?

    Val: The abstraction violent/non-violent is not particularly useful, in my opinion. Violence occurs in a particular situation and must be dealt with in its context not in abstraction,

    Have you problems with violence in your houses?

    Andrew: At times our houses in Mayola Road and Derby Road have coped with threatening behaviour, more than most households would. However sometimes houses have had to ask people to leave.

    Val: There are of course situations where all channels of communication are completely blocked and a violent reaction makes more sense than a non-violent one.'

    What about institutions that have been built specifically to contain violent behaviour?

    Joan: Violence should be a criminal offence and violent people should be charged. But they should not be put on a compulsory hospital order without a proper trial and right of appeal. If someone commits a crime they are punished, mental patients are punished not only for things they have done but also for things it is alleged they may do in the future.

    Andrew: There is no solution to this problem within a class society. But in any case it is clear that there must be ways of dealing with violent behaviour. But I do think the significance of this problem is mis-represented. The violence in our society is predominantly the violence of the sane, rich and powerful. It is the person who evicts squatters who is violent not the squatter. The lawyers, politicians who plan to make squatting illegal who are vicious not the squatter who seeks shelter. Drug companies make fortunes from poisoning our nervous systems with psychiatric drugs with the full support of the law, but you smoke a pleasant and harmless drug like cannabis the police break up your home and haul you before the courts. Who are the psychopaths?

    Do you think that people with physical disorders should be treated in hospitals?

    Andrew Only if there is a treatment that is effective and hospital is the appropriate place. The problem as to whether a particular condition is the result of an organic impairment is irrelevant unless there is something that can be done about it in hospital. Very few physical disorders, such as physical handicap, are treatable in the sense that a physical illness is treatable - at least for the present. If there is no treatment the person should not be in hospital and what is really important is how that person is treated by others-whether he is receiving treatment or not. Everybody is the same - we all want to be and need to be treated as human beings.

    Val: We had an old lady here who was classified as suffering from senile dementia. She needed watching so she didn't burn her clothes by going to close to the fire, or fall down the stairs. But we tried to talk to her and after a while she became far more lucid and started to do things for herself, which the doctor who had been looking after her claimed was impossible. Like having a bath or helping with the washing-up. What happens at the moment is that these people become institutionalised rather than being supported in their own attempts to deal with their own difficulties.

    Andrew: Social workers who have visited us freak out at the idea that someone should be living in a normal household if they suspect "organic basis".

    Val: Hospitals are just full of people who don't really need to be there, they've just nowhere else to go-like old people with no family.

    But it isn't it true that families are quite eager to get rid of their slightly dotty grandparents? Don't people want people who behave strangely locked away?

    Andrew: There's very little help for people who want to keep an elderly relative as part of the family. Society's structure is such that old people aren't seen as being useful in any way so they're not wanted. There's no work for them to do, no social centres for them to go to. They are treated as a pain in the neck by society outside the family. So along comes the doctor when the family is at breaking point and tells them that hospital's the best place for granddad. Society creates the problems, it expects the family to solve them and when the family cracks it provides a rubbish bin to drop one of the members into to make it better for the others.

    Do you think drugs can ever be useful?

    Andrew: Yes, but only if the patient is free to choose whether to take them or not. He or she must be told about the drugs first-especially the side effects.

    Austin: Half the patients in hospital try to avoid taking their pills, that's why there's so much supervision and policing, so that patients get what they "need", even if they don't want it.

    Joan: You see the only person who knows how you feel, is you, so you've got every right to refuse treatment, if it doesn't make you feel better. Which is after all the aim of treatment, isn't it?

    Andrew: Treatment strikes are one of the forms of action that patients have taken.

    Joan: Of course some patients want the treatment - and they shouldn't be prevented from having it . It's rather different to strike in a factory, where is collective action, everybody taking the same action.

    Andrew The problem is that in these situations they find what they call the "ringleaders" and either give them Largactil injections or discharge them. Trevor Hodgkin at Longrove was threatened with never being let out of hospital, ever, then we were told he'd been discharged. But recently we heard from him - he'd been sent to Broadmoor.

    Val: What's happening to many people who end up in hospital is that they're behaviour is logical enough, they're just operating on not enough facts, or the wrong ones. So why give them drugs which only make them more confused and less aware of what's going on?

    What changes are you fighting for at the moment-could you tell us something about what happened at Hackney Hospital?

    Andrew: Our main activities as a local group have been to do with the local bin in Hackney, where Joan, Brendan and others have been patients.

    Patients there and some of us, tried to hold a meeting there, but it was broken up by a nurse and the M.P.U. was banned in the hospital. We carried on in a clandestine way with backroom meetings, continual rows, putting posters up which were torn down and so on.

    Eventually patients forced the hospital to permit M.P.U. meetings. There was a meeting with staff at which a doctor said "the trouble with you is that you're better organised than we are". They weren't prepared to admit publicly that patients were not permitted to meet together inside the hospital, so they gave in. But the first chairman of the hospital branch was given an extra dose of Largactil immediately after the victory and his successor was offered a place at the Henderson which she took.

    That's how they deal with dissenters - discharge you or knock you out with injections. If you are working class they say any kind of dissention means you're getting worse, so they increase medication, put you in another ward or even transfer you. If you're middle class they say you must be getting better and discharge you!

    Then they painted all the furniture in the room we used to meet in without warning, so we had to use another room. Then they made the day of the M.P.U. meeting a day when the patients had to attend a compulsory hospital meeting. We should have kept on fighting, in fact the group has started meeting again.

    What sort of changes would you like to see in the way of treatment centres?

    Andrew: It isn't a matter of "treatment". The problem isn't a medical one - It's a problem of frustrated human needs. These needs should be met generally, not just for people labelled "mentally ill".

    Apart from housing and income what needs are you thinking of?

    Andrew: Well, the need for a social life. Loneliness is a major problem and there should be far more community facilities for single people, old people...everyone. We need more day nurseries. We need full employment, a breakdown of the division between manual and mental labour so that work can be interesting, workers' control of industry.

    Again and again we find ourselves coming up against the problem of accommodation -people can never choose where they live because space is at such a premium.

    Joan: When patients are discharged, they very often have nowhere to go. Horton Hospital gives them their fare to the station and a £1 note. Even if you do have a bedsit-who wants that, with no prospect for a decent job, possibly not knowing anyone else in the neighbourhood. Anyone would crack up in that situation.

    Many people would agree that the atrocities you have been talking about go on, but only in rare cases, in a few hospitals and most hospitals are humane and less restrictive.

    Andrew: Okay, so some hospitals are better than others, but I still disagree with what goes on there. By "good" hospitals people often mean those with group therapy,instead of physical treatment. It isn't so much better though-what often happens is that doctors are directing the other patients to attack certain behaviour. Anyway what's the point of having all that insight if you've nowhere to live, no money, and no prospects?

    The places that offer therapy are very selective, they only take young people with high I.Q.'s.

    Can people who are working in the hospitals do anything useful?

    Andrew: Well, what they need to do is to stop worrying about the patients and look at themselves. People who work in hospitals are so locked into the idea of being do-gooders, that they never look at what they're actually doing to their patients. They could become associate members and distribute literature we print but its almost impossible to take more independent action without being fired.

    I believe you're having problems with finding accommodation at the moment?

    Andrew: Yes, that's true. The Mayola Road house is being repossessed by the G.L.C. to be knocked down to build a school in the area. We're involved in a campaign at the moment to persuade the G.L.C. to extend our notice by at least six months.

    Lately, social workers in the borough have been sending ex-mental patients to us to find accommodation. We think that if they do this they should also provide financial support so we can run the Union more efficiently, as well as permanent accommodation for our households.

    If people want to help, letters in support can be sent to us at 37 Mayola Road, London E.5 and we'll forward them on to the council. Hackney M.P.U. Meetings - every Saturday at 2.00 p.m. at 37 Mayola Road, London E.5 MPU

    Publications - available from Mayola Road.

    Declaration of Intent - MPU stickers for putting up in hospitals - MPU Directory of Psychiatric Drugs - new edition ; Side effects leaflet ; "Don't be kept in hospital for the rest of your life", a sheet for pinning on hospital notice boards on how to apply to Mental Health Tribunals; "Mental Patients Union" - a list of groups. M.S. Please send some loose stamps to cover postage - not S.A.E. MPU exists on donations so give if you can afford it. Details of membership and associate membership also available. Membership is open to patients and ex-patients, associate membership to sympathetic non-patients.

    May/June/July 1975 Major crisis at Robin Farquharson House.

    Friday 23.5.1975 Decided to suspend regular weekly meetings and hold regular monthly meetings instead.


    October 1975 A Directory of the Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs by Chris Hill (who typed it), Joan Martin, and A. Roberts, (Re- printed by Joan October 1977) - See Martindale

    "Do doctors create more illnesses than they cure? They call disease created by treatment 'iatrogenic' but they make no effort to warn us that their treatments are dangerous. Psychiatric drugs (like thalidomide which grossly maimed 10,000 children) are the major cause of treatment induced diseases."

    "This directory enables you to find out if what you are suffering from is the side effect of the drugs your doctor is prescribing."

    Arrangement of the directory

    "We have made an overall division into four groups according to what the drugs are used for."


    January 1976 MPU members began moving out of Robin Farquharson House and setting up two other houses - Rented to named individuals, not the MPU. The telephone number went to one of these. The other was 31 Ickburgh Road, which was to provide accommodation for those people who wanted it from Derby Road. Robin Farquharson House was fully vacated in April 1976

    MPU Hackney closed down in 1976 - There were no open meetings after 1975. For a while there was an effort to maintain collective responsibility for 31 Ickburgh Road under the name "MPU HOUSING", but this did not last. There are some minutes of MPU HOUSING in the minutes file for May 1976. Matthew O'Hara carried on with Ickburgh Road as a personal venture. The Directory of Psychiatric Drugs continued to be distributed from the other house, and the telephone was still answered. MPU members in both houses remained active in mental health politics. [This web page is written on a computer at the last Hackney MPU address, using the Hackney MPU records. The telephone number is the same, as is the person who answers it]

    This questionnaire was issued from Liz Durkin's address in March 1973.
    Nineteen replies were received (that have survived).
    See 1956-1958 - November 1964 - 1973

    THE MENTAL PATIENTS UNION QUESTIONNAIRE

    To all mental patients and ex-patients.

    We want the public to know what it is really like to be a mental patient or ex-patient. Will you give us the answers to the following questions and any other information you would like to give, and then we can use YOUR statements not those of the authorities to tell people what is happening.

    Your name will not be printed or revealed to any other body but the Mental patients Union, without your specific permission.

    1) What hospitals have you been in?

    2) Did you go in against your will - if so what happened?

    3) When you were in hospital, how was it different from what everyone had said it would be like?

    4) What do you think are the main things wrong with the hospitals you have been in, and what things most need to be done?

    5) Do you know how to appeal against compulsory detention? Have you ever wanted to - and if so were you given the information your required?

    6) What kinds of treatments have you had - and what have they done to you?

    7) Has Electro Convulsive Therapy (E.C.T.), solitary confinement or any other kind of 'treatment' ever been used to punish you or anyone you know - if so what happened?

    8) Have you been allowed to take your own possessions into hospital? Do you wear what clothes you want to? Are your possessions ever interfered with by hospital staff?

    9) Have you ever been stopped from writing letters or making phone-calls?

    10) Have you any complaints about visiting?

    11) What help have you received inside or outside hospital with money problems? Has it been good enoguh?

    12) Outside hospital what help have you received over housing problems, work problems? Has that been goo enough?

    13) OTHER QUESTIONS??? PLEASE ADD ANYTHING YOU WISH.....!!

    You can answer the questions below and on the reverse, or on a separate sheet, and send it to us The Mental Patients' Union. c/o Flat 1, 13 Christchurch Road, Crouch End, London, N8


    COPE:
    Community Organisation for Psychiatric Emergencies

    founded 1973 - See Christmas Day in the Nuthouse for early intimations.

    This grew out of the bosom of BIT - the alternative information service. Although there were, no doubt, many "survivors" in both, neither were organisations of mental patients.

    29.6.1973 Notices about the formation of a "Crisis Centre" were sent out to several papers and the following week the first meeting was held. (Copeman 3 page 7)

    4.8.1973 Steve (Bit and Cope) dropped a typed sheet into MPU which he noted (on the back) "might be getting out of date already, though its only just been typed".

    CRISIS CENTRE - AN EXPERIMENT IN PREVENTIVE CARE
    Above crossed out: Steve has written "CRISIS CENTRE IS GOING TO BE CALLED COPE" above it

    1. What is the need for Crisis Centre?

    In psychiatric hospitals today there are many patients who may not be suffering from mental illness as such, but who nonetheless have found it impossible to cope with their lives as they are. There may be a variety of reasons for this, but although the side effects of this inability to cope, such as depression, anxiety etc. can be alleviated by drugs and other treatments, the basic problems still remain. These are concerned mainly with identity and communication.

    2. What will it do?

    The centre aims to create a warm and accepting atmosphere within a community setting with other people, some of who will have or have had similar problems. This will provide the opportunity for such people to learn more about themselves and their environment and how to come to terms with it.

    3. Who will come to the crisis centre?

    The people we hope to help will include those whose feelings of alienation from the recognised psychiatric channels have forced them to seek help from such organisations as Bit, Release, P.N.P., Samaritans. We aim to establish contact with these groups in order that they may refer people to Crisis. At this stage we don't intend to provide a service for those with an overriding medical problems, e.g. anorexia nervosa, alcoholism or drug dependence, or those for whom other voluntary organisations can make better immediate provision.

    4. What will we do to help?

    As outlined above, the major aim is to provide a short term community environment; an alternative to the situation which may have caused the problem, and an alternative to in-patient treatment at a psychiatric unit. We do not aim to employ qualified staff, but will be able to put people in touch with G.P.s, psychiatrists and/or Psychotherapists if they want it. Any treatment will be personal choice.

    5. Who will run it and how?

    Crisis will be run on a community basis with all members involved in decisions. We hope to break down any categorisation into 'staff' and 'patients'. There will be three or four full-time workers with others working part-time.

    6. What happens to people after they leave?

    We will offer assistance to the individuals to find the place in society which they desire. We will also keep in contact with those who feel they may need our help in the future. We will have connections with other organisations who will be able to help with after-care.

    7. Who will finance it?

    We intend to become a charitable organisation obtaining grants from trusts and sympathetic bodies. Eventually we hoe to set up a workshop to enable us to become more self-supporting. If this experiment proves successful we hope to set up more crisis centres in the future. In the meantime, please give generously.

    Introducing Copeman, the first COPE magazine, was sent out in February 1974. It was followed by Copeman 2 (Summer 1974), 3 (1,000 copies - Autumn 1974) and 4 (1,500 copies - Winter 1974). These, like BIT publications, were all foolscap duplicated. Then came printing and new names. Heavy Daze (formerly Copeman) was a printed magazine, as was the new BIT publication Bitter Sweet. Heavy Daze number six followed the first Heavy Daze sometime in 1976.

    PRESS RELEASE - COPE CRISIS!!! DATELINE 23.9.1975
    is signed by Andy Margolis, Bill West, Brian M., Brian W., Annie Neil, Chuck, Edward, Eugen, John Saunders, Lynn Arnold, Mole, Niel, Pam, Phil Sassoon, Sean Doyle, Steve Hobbs, Steve Linehan, Zena (Cope Trust and EPOC collective workers and supporters). They were in conflict with an ex- volunteer Tommy Walsh. Cope was registered as a charity. EPOC (Cope the other way round) did the things that charities cannot do.)

    COPE NEWSLETTER Volume 2, no.2. 5.1.1976
    Contained Bill [West?]'s vision:
    COPE was formed by visionaries in June '73. Since then, through our immersion in details of what we do and how we do it, we've sometimes lost sight of our vision.    The Cope ideal - our vision - united us and inspired us. The details of things split us up into Reichians, Laingians, encounterers, co-counsellors, shiftworkers, office workers, 111ers, 298ers - the divisions and classifications are endless.    Our vision was a society where bins and men in white coats no longer exist, where care occurs in the community naturally, and where schools are free; where people decide where they live and work and play. Some kind of alternative society is necessary. Cope can be part of our contribution to this new society. We can try and live it now despite the limitations and use various methods to make us ready for the new society and more able to struggle for it and also to care for each other.    How we get such a society is a matter of politics - which can lead to splits and divisions - and so can the way we run Cope. Nearly all bins are bad because they are bins, ie institutions with all the implications regarding relationships and so on and because of the main forms of treatment used in the (drugs, ECT, psychosurgery).    Let's remember we are visionaries and in our vision we are WHOLE...

    COPE NEWSLETTER Volume 2, no.3. 23.1.1976
    contained the following paragraph
    Eric's Info: Eric Irwin came to one of the recent office meetings and it turns out that he's got a huge store of information which will be really useful to Cope and which Cope doesn't have already. We decided to allot Eric space in the office and the information will form a sort of information source which can be used for reference purposes.

    Manchester Mental Patients Union

    27.8.1973 Manchester Mental Patients Union founded. Estelle Beninson, 2 York Avenue, Prestwich, Manchetster, M258F2 [Telephone 0617735035] was the contact for Manchester MPU. The address was "c/o Grass Roots Books, 109 Oxford Road, Manchester. Telephone 0612363112. [Card Index]. The December 1974 list of Mental Patients Unions records it as meeting weekly at 3pm at 178 Oxford Road, Manchester.

    MPU General Meeting held in Manchester on Saturday 20.4.1974, from 2.0-5.30 pm at The Music College, Manchester University, Oxford Road, Manchester 13.

    The minutes of the meeting do not record everyone present. They do record the names of the following: "In the chair, Andrew Roberts (Mayola Road MPU). Minutes secretaries: Estelle Beninson (Manchester MPU) - Tony Collaman (Protection Prevention) - Pam Edwards (Camden MPU) - Paul Harrison (New Society) - [Andrew Roberts memory is that he and Eric Irwin and others travelled between London and Manchester in Paul Harrison or Brigid Gifford's car. We stayed overnight - possibly at Estelle's house]. Brigid Gifford seconded the motion for a Federation.

    Manchester General Meeting of the Mental Patients Union formed the Federation of Mental Patients Unions with Mayola Road MPU (Hackney) as the coordination centre. South West London MPU was appointed by the minutes to host the next Federation meeting. [Not Portsmouth, as previously entered]. Andrew Roberts remembers that Manchester was going to produce the next newsletter - But this may have been decided previously. I also recall meeting Norman Clinton and others when we stayed overnight.

    Peoples News Service 27.4.1974 "The Manchester branch of the Mental Patients Union is trying to get information on anyone who is taking, or has attempted to take, legal action against a psychotherapist or psychiatrist, or against Mental Hospital administrators. If anyone contacts MPU on this subject, information will be treated in the strictest confidence. MPU, 2 York Avenue, Prestwich, Manchester, M25 8FZ

    Manchester Evening News - Wednesday 10.7.1974 - page 11

    Is there another way?

    ROD CAIRD concludes his look at psychiatric care for the mentally ill by meeting two people who are searching for alternative methods of treatment

    RECENT YEARS have seen the growth of a number of organisations outside the National Health Service whose concern is to represent the interests of mental patients or to find ways of helping people to cope with mental and emotional problems without turning to traditional hospitals or traditional methods of psychiatric treatment.

    Norman Clinton is the Manchester representative of the Mental Patients' Union - a nationwide group of about 1,000 members. Norman is himself an ex-patient who was discharged from the RAF in 1968 on psychiatric grounds. After that he found himself drifting round the country, drinking very heavily, finishing up in a Salvation Army hostel in Edinburgh. He decided he wanted to try to help people in situations similar to his own, and was eventually taken on as a psychiatric nurse in Bangour Hospital in Midlothian.

    There he came into contact with patients who had been in and out of hospitals for years, and Norman formed the opinion that one of the major problems of many patients is institutionalisation - they become dependent on the hospitals and unable to cope with life outside them.

    Norman came to Manchester in 1970, and worked for a while as a student nurse in Springfield Hospital.

    Since the end of 1973 he has been working for the Mental Patients' Union -

    "because of what I saw in hospitals, which are very much like the prison service: you don't talk about what you see or you're in trouble."

    Norman alleges that he saw charge nurses kick patients in Springfield Hospital: and it is the case that the MPU is able to produce numerous instances of what it claims are wrong diagnosis and ill-treatment.

    The Mental Patients' Union exists to "proclaim the dignity of society's so-called mental patients" - and it works to represent mental patients when they want to appeal against compulsory committal or to take legal action against consultants. The union claims that the Mental Health Act's powers of compulsory committal to hospital are too sweeping. As Norman Clinton says:

    "If one in 20 committals is justified, what about the other 19?"


    Another group in Manchester working independently from the existing hospitals is PNP - which means either People not Psychiatry, or People Need People, or both. PNP is closely associated with TEKLA Housing Association Ltd, a charitable trust which plans to set up its own small residential community

    " making the radical assumption that people, given warmth, love and individual attention, will respond positively and gain some strength to cope more effectively with their life situations."

    One of the people behind both TEKLA and PNP is Jack Housden, who, like Norman Clinton, was brought into his very sincere concern for the mentally disturbed by crises in his own [life?]. He gave up working several years ago to care full-time for his wife, who was suffering very profound mental problems. Jack Housden says that

    "most orthodox psychiatry gets hold of people and then exerts pressure on them to conform, whereas people have needs which aren't necessarily in accord with what society expects."

    He doesn't criticise individual psychiatrists - a habit to which the Mental Patients' Union is prone - but says that most psychiatrists are constrained by the system they work in and often don't have the time to investigate problems on a deep enough level.

    Here, for anyone interested in finding out more than can be explained in a short article, are their addresses : Norman Clinton, Mental Patients' Union, 77 Albert Avenue. Prestwich, Manchester 25 (Telephone 061-773 6616), and TEKLA/PNP, 38 Salisbury Street, Moss Side, Manchester 15 (Telephone 061-226 3258).

    Letter from Greg Dropkin, early in 1975

    ... The Manchester Group exists - it includes nurses, a social worker, a lawyer, and students, as well as patients and ex-patients, and is called Mental Health Study Group, partly because of [the above], partly because some members are apolitical... and partly because we are still learning.

    We have sub-groups on drugs, legal problems, ECT-lobotomy, and one planned on schizophrenia. All aim at writing pamphlets/leaflets in the future.

    We are planning a hostel for patients who could leave hospital if they had accommodation. (Granada carried a report from a Rainhill psychiatrist that Rainhill has 300 patients who are just homeless)... On the hostel - we are thinking of asking the Corporation for a house - empty short life property - this would fit in with

      1. Housing as a general demand to local authority
      2. Social Security payments to patients
      3. More general demand that local authorities give short-life property to community groups - action is in progress on this in Manchester.

      But 1) They would then supervise us to some extent
      2) Might threaten to take the house away

    How did you set up Mayola Road?...

    We tried, unsuccessfully, to get Videotape into Prestwich.

    We are in contact with a COHSE militant who thinks the union might support a wage demand for industrial therapy, and that many nurses oppose ECT.

    The legal group is translating the act, but plans to do case studies and take up cases. Please give us contacts, etc. (I saw Tim Gauntlet last week and have written to Mind).

    The drugs group will try to read current papers on side effects - again we could use personal experiences. Some (one or two) psychology professors are involved in the ECT-lobotomy group - but I do not know what is happening... The drugs group may join with a local Family Advice Centre to study tranquillisers in deck [??] access slums....

    I would still like to work for direct action on wards, but cannot see how, as there are not many outspoken patients here and I am still pretty confused.

    7.5.1975 Planned Manchester Mental Patients Union Conference.

    Lawyers (from Card Index)

    "Solicitor member: Robert Lizar, 47 Claude Road, Chorlton, Manchester. Telephone (061) 881-5872. - Work number (061) 226-5911 (Information from Greg Dropkin 22.10.1977)

    "Also Steve Cohen - Manchester Law Centre (061) 225-5111"

    Back of Card Index: "Steve Cohen, Manchester Law Centre, 595 Stockport Road, Manchester 12. (on list of contacts sent by Bill Warwick 1981)" [Bill Warwick was contact for Birmingham Mental Patients Union.]

    1977 From minutes of meeting at Prestwich Hospital. MPU were trying to arrange meetings at Prestwich Hospital. MPU had approached hospital - minutes 20.11.1977 express some concern about this ("legal situation and access") but meeting arranged for 6.12.1977 where MPU would show Panorama programme about mental illness. Minutes 5.4.1978 (still concerns expressed - e.g. they wanted to know more about the MPU from other Consultants in other hospitals who had had MPU meetings). Letter from Dr Rockley about his views on the MPU was minuted but it is not clear what his views were. (now deceased). [Helen Spandler's notes]

    Your Rights

      About 1979 - Manchester Mental Patients' Union published Your Rights in Mental Hospital - A Mental Patients' Union (MPU) Pamphlet.

    Who We Are: We are the Manchester Mental Patients' Union -- our members are mental patients, ex-patients, and others interested in the rights of the mentally ill. We, especially those of us who have been patients, think that it helps patients to know their rights and to know that there are people outside hospital who will try to help. (page 8)

    19.9.1979 Letter from Bill Warwick to "Doc" (Matthew O'Hara). Estelle Beninson of Manchester MPU had told him "Michael Young - MOSS SIDE" "has been released as a result of a successful tribunal. Although few in number, they - the MPU - are starting a group of people to arrange tribunals for other patients".

    In 1999 Helen Spandler was beginning her Ph.D research. Bill Williams helped her convene an informal meeting to discuss the history of Manchester Mental Patients Union, by contacting various people who had been involved in the MPU with him. The meeting was at the Midland Hotel on 28.6.1999

    The meeting including Bill Williams - Greg Dropkin - Robert Lizar - Estelle Beninson - and Steve Cohen. Some of Helen's notes from this meeting:

    Manchester MPU mainly seemed to focus on Mental Health Tribunal work - Which basically involved getting people out of hospital. This is probably not surprising given the legal expertise in the group - e.g. Robert Lizar and Steve Cohen were both lawyers and continued to do human rights work for many years in Manchester. Manchester MPU particularly helped patients who they saw as 'political prisoners' for example people who had been hospitalised for petty theft. Another woman they worked with saw in her notes that her involvement in the woman's liberation movement was a sign of schizophrenia.

    They also concentrated on housing issues and tried to set up/run a halfway house.

    Estelle was involved with a group for people who had been abused by psychotherapy/psychotherapists.

    Jack Hausden [Housden?] was viewed as a very important person in MPU and PNP (he had died sometime before we met). There was some talk that his wife, Hilary, might be in the process of writing his biography.

    During the early 1980s Steve Cohen got to know Moira OShea, a radical Irish psychiatrist, through his work at Manchester Law Centre on mental health. When Moira was accused of terrorism (under the Prevention of Terrorism Act) in 1983, Steve was heavily involved in her campaign.

    Based on an email from Anne Plumb

    Manchester was a radical place, with a bookshop, Grassroots, a cafe, On the Eighth Day, a number of radical groups and community workers. I went to a meeting organised by Manchester MIND along with CHAR (Campaign for the Homeless and Rootless - now Homeless Link) and picked up a copy of their newsletter 'Akimbo' which featured "Unwanted Effects of Psychiatric Drugs". [See Anne Plumb archive start]

    Through the bookshop, I learned of the Manchester Mental Patients Union and its office at Prestwich Hospital, its involvement with people detained at a top security hospital, its attempts to set up a housing scheme through a Housing Association. But by the time I contacted them (I could not pluck up the courage to make the phone call) the group was having difficulties (burn out). In the bookshop, I picked up copies of Prompt, and the US journal State and Mind [copies from 1976 - 1977 - 1978] (reading of Judi Chamberlin's book, On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to Mental Health Services.

    Manchester was [later] the birthplace of the Hearing Voices Network [1988] (Nigel Rose, editor of its early newsletters was also active in Manchester MIND). And PPR Psychology Politics and Resistance (formerly ? Psychologists for Social Responsibility) were engaging with 'service-users'.

    Manchester Mind

    "Starting in 1979, originally as the Manchester and Salford Association for Mental Health, Mind in Manchester is now an Industrial and Provident Society with charitable status". (source)

    " Mind in Manchester was set up in 1979 by a group of people who had experienced mental ill-health and the damaging consequences of medical diagnosis and treatment at the time" (history on its website archive - See below)

    "Commonplace was established by the Manchester MIND group in 1982" [Like People not Psychiatry] "it too is a 'network' but it has a meeting place in the city centre. Commonplace opens during the evenings and at weekends, at times when other services tend to be unavailable. Commonplace deliberately makes no distinction between consumers and non- consumesr. decision making, conflict resolution and other isssues are dealt with by the group. Commonplace seeks to combat isolation and loneliness and meet social needs." (Mind Manchester 1988, p. 231

    December 1982: Getting to Know You group at Springfield includes Nigel Rose

    about 1983 What chance have we got?: Occupation and employment after mental illness - patients' views by Anne Birch, published by Manchester MIND. 120 pages.

    Manchester Mind Newsheet (four times a year) probably started in the autumn of 1984

    We all need to interact socially. The problem is the venue, Commonplace could be analogised to visiting a friend at home. The setting is down to earth, not clinical. The room is about the same size as your friend's front room and the fact is that to some people it is their friend's front room... For those who visit on the night's it is open, they are safe in the knowledge that someone is there, that the door is open... The situation now is that the spirit of Commonplace continues seven nights a week. People meet at Commonplace and then go to each other's houses and continue the process there. (Manchester MIND Annual Report 1984-1985 c/o 178 Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9QQ quoted (Mind Manchester 1988, p. 231

    January 1985 Nigel Rose began working for Manchester Mind as a development officer.

    There was a change of regime at the Manchester MIND AGM in 1985 - from an older generation of people who were mainly social workers and psychiatrists to a younger more radical group including Nigel Rose and Paul Baker. As a result of this Dr Malcolm Green [Consultant Psychiatrist at NMGH] resigned as the "clinical advisor" [to Mind in Manchester] and [Mark Greenwood] was asked to replace him on the basis that [he] was the only qualified psychiatric professional who could be expected to support the new [people]

    Members of Manchester Mind made a presentation to the 1985 (national) Mind conference.

    1986. 176 Oxford Road, Manchester (same building as Commonplace).

    29.9.1986 Letter from "Mr A. Hartman, 99 Queens Road, The Temple, Cheetham, Manchester, 88UT

    Dear Andrew,

    I enclose Manchester MIND Newsheet. Its not like national Mind of London, more like MPU.

    The latest cuts down here is they are closing North Manchester Hospital (psychiatric department). 300 patients being kicked out after 20, 30 years of hospitalisation. £150 for cooker, £65 bed, £75 for everything also!

    Day Centres are very good down here! Keep well Andrew! Alan"

    Enclosed Manchester MIND Newsheet Number 8. September-October 1986. Produced by Manchester mind Info.Bank, 178 Oxford Road, M13 9QQ.
    It has articles about women - Mary Kelly setting up a Women and Mental Health Group - Linda Baker a long term contact for "Women and Mental Health" in the Women's Liberation Newsletter. - There is a long article by Alan about his child being removed - The Channel 4 series with We're Not Mad - We're Angry is listed - Cost of Public Image - Private Pain Conference (MIND) in Hammersmith £40, but unwaged free - Tony Baldwinson in connection with Manchester Mind's policy document "Principles of Change" - Kooj Chuhan on Mind. Mental Health and Racism - A public meeting with speaker Ivy Buckland from 'Survivors Speak Out' mentioned in the editorial.

    Policy Group: Meets irregularly to discuss issues of policy and strategy. Open to new members. Contact Nigel Rose.

    Mind Development Group: Develops new projects inside and outside of Mind. Meets approximately every month. Contact Tony Riley if you wish to come.

    "Racism in 'Radical' Mental Health Mags" Manchester Mind Information Bank have sent back 70 copies of issue 2 of Asylum, mainly on the grounds that the cartoons in it were racist, containing much stereotyping of black people as ignorant and characterless primitives (although under the guise of 'anti-racism' since they are the nightmares of the silly but civilised whiteman, from whose point of view the stories are told). Asylum's Prof. Jenner felt they were "not produced by people who I consider in the least bit racist..." Hopefully, our objections will be taken into account for issue 3"

    October 1988: Nigel Rose manager of soocial services support in Harpurhey Resettlement Team

    Developing an Alternative Community Mental Health Service by "Mind Manchester Group" was published in December 1988. It says "In North Manchester imaginative schemes have been developed to orientate services away from the ageing psychiatric hospital, including the development of a community based mental health centre organised on multidisciplinary lines with a strong non-hierarchical team approach. This project is providing a local service and is encouraging participation in the management and design of the service by the community in which it is based". It then mentions three "innovative" Manchester voluntary sector projects with a non-medical approach: 42nd Street - People not Psychiatry - Commonplace

    1990 Tony Riley ceased being the development worker for Mind in Manchester and moved to Having a Voice.

    Autumn 1991 Nigel Rose, " Manchester MIND", wrote a letter in Health Matters about Hearing Voices, c/o MCVS, Fourways House, 57 Hilton St, Manchester.

    Summer 1993 Nigel Rose, "co-ordinator of Manchester MIND Schizophrenia Campaign" wrote in Health Matters

    Autumn 1994 Nigel Rose, "co-ordinator of Manchester MIND" wrote in Health Matters about the Schizophrenia Media Agency, based at Hearing Voices Network

    Rehab Network, No.41, Spring 1996, pp.7-9.
    Abstract: "MIND in Manchester has sought to develop employment opportunities for people with mental health problems. An innovative pilot project, INROADS into Employment, indicated which gaps in provision between mainstream employment services and health and social services provision." by Hazel Burke
    (source)

    Mind to Mind Project

    At the end of 1997 Mind in Manchester Ltd. secured a three year funding grant from the National Lottery Charities Board and the Mind to Mind project was launched in January 1998. At that time Mind in Manchester offered a variety of services and projects including a Helpline, an Information Service, an Advocacy Pilot Project and a Mental Health IT Project.

    The project enabled Mind in Manchester to recruit almost forty volunteers and run two basic Mental Health Awareness courses. Volunteers who have used mental health services worked side by side with volunteers who had no experience of mental health services on the above services/projects.

    In addition to the above, Mind to Mind participants became involved in publishing two editions of its newsletter. Attending external training courses and providing workshops and training for others. Project volunteers organised two stalls for World Mental Health Day and were interviewed for local television news.

    The emphasis of the project at this stage of its development was to have both people who had experience of mental health difficulties working side by side with people who did not have this experience, so as to allow both groups of people to learn from each other.

    23.6.1999 Official re-launch of The Mind To Mind Project.

    Website says

    At the start of 1999 Mind in Manchester made the decision to reduce the number of services that it was offering. Also at this time the decision was taken to change the emphasis of the Mind to Mind project so as to allow the participants on the project more intensive one to one support.

    The project was relaunched in June 1999 with eight participants on the project. There were two main themes to the project. Part of the project was the development of a regular group meeting called the Mind to Mind space. The Mind to Mind space was a venue where people on the project could meet and get involved in a variety of group activities of their choice.

    The activities included drama work, creative drawing, making a mosaic and short walks around the Manchester area. The drama work enabled participants to develop enough self confidence so that they could ask their pyschiatrist to reduce the amount of medication that they were taking. All of the activities allowed people from the project to meet other people in a similar situation, share experiences and learn from each other. The Mind to Mind space was also used as a venue where the participants of the project could get involved in making decisions that affected the project.

    The other aspect of the project was to enable people with mental health difficulties to provide or receive support from others with mental health difficulties. This was achieved by creating and maintaining a framework within which people could benefit from mutual support.

    Four people on the project took part in intensive training which enabled them to feel confident enough to support another person with mental health difficulties. Once the training was completed, people were linked to provide mutual support. One pair initially got involved in social activities, these included visiting the cinema, cafes and going for short walks. As the confidence of the person primarily receiving support grew, he then felt able to go on a computer course.

    Another person was supported on a one to one basis to work for the information service that Mind in Manchester provides. This enabled her to develop telephone skills.

    At the end of 1999 the Executive Committee decided to change the emphasis of the project so that it no longer had a group aspect to it. This allowed the resources of the project to be focused more effectively on individual participants of the project.

    Recruitment on to the project is ongoing with a number of people participating on courses run by external organisations. These courses include self assertion courses, drama courses, internet and information technology courses. Other participants of the project have been involved with projects within Mind in Manchester. These have included producing a high quality leaflet for the information service, responding to information requests over the telephone and carrying out research work for the information library.

    The project is now entering into its final stage where existing participants on the project will be supported to move on to another organisation if required. It is hoped that all the lessons that have been learned so far in developing the project can be used to carry the project forward if future funding can be obtained.

    First web archive 25.12.2001 (The website seems to have remained the same for the four years of its existence). The above history is taken from the website.

    Progress Report 1998- 2001

    Database available on the Internet since 1999 was, in 2004, made available, together with selfhelp information, as the On-line Mental Health Directory.

    12.1.2000 First archive of Mind in Manchester's website. Archive goes to 24.8.2008.

    Mind In Manchester Ltd, 23 New Mount Streeet, Manchester, M4 4DE


    Survivors Poetry Manchester

    Justin Larner was Development Manager for Mind in Manchester from March 2000 to April 2010 (10 years 2 months)

    6.4.2002 First internet archive of the forum

    June 2002 Mind in Manchester and Having a Voice started a new mental health drop-in at Blackley Community Centre. "a friendly, welcoming drop-in, with free tea and coffee, people to talk to, and social activities. Mind in Manchester will be there with its Information Service to answer questions about mental health issues and services. Ring us for details." (archive link)

    Our new address from 2.6.2003: Unit 25, The Progress Centre, Charlton Place, Ardwick Green, Manchester M12 6HS

    Services and Activities present and past

    Information Drop-ins

    Our drop-ins are run in partnership with Having a Voice. We aim to make the drop-ins friendly and welcoming, with free tea and coffee, people to talk to and activities. Our Information Service is available to answer questions about mental health issues and services. The drop-ins are at:-

    Gorton Community Centre Highmead Street, Gorton on Wednesdays 11:00am - 1:00pm.

    St. Paul's Memorial Hall Victoria Avenue, Blackley on Tuesdays 2:00 - 4:00pm.

    25.10.2007 First archive of "Aims and Objectives" pdf, which includes "History and structure" - See our Mind in Manchester Archive

    "The new pocket size Help! your guide to mental health in Manchester will appear in autumn 2007, aiming to help people navigate the maze of mental health provision to find the help they need."

    Help! Your handy guide to mental health for people in Manchester 2010
    Produced by Mind in Manchester 2009
    Mind in Manchester, The Progress Centre, Charlton Place, Ardwick Green, Manchester, M12 6HS, Telephone 0161 272 8205
    This guide was originally produced with the help and support of a group of members of
    Having A Voice, who drew on their experience as mental health service users and of recovery to decide on the size, presentation and content and who also took many of the photographs.

    March 2010: Following noticed on website: "Following a difficult process, the members of Mind in Manchester have taken the decision to close the organisation with immediate effect. The reasons for this include not being able to secure enough funding to sustain the organisation. - We would like to take the opportunity to thank all our partners and associates who have worked with us over the last 30 years to enable us to deliver innovative mental health services for the people of Manchester."

    Tuesday 29.11.2011 having affiliated to National Mind, "HARP" officially changed its "name and branding" to Manchester Mind at its Annual General Meeting. website After this date we will be

    Oldham Mind

    1985 Andrew Hughes active in. Suggestion that it was an "early user led association" (set up mid 1980s). And so distinct from the earlier Oldham and District Association for Mental Health. Mentioned in article on the setting up of MIND's Consumer Network 1988.

    Rochdale Mind

    Started in the late 1970s.

    Sometime after 1983, Tony Riley was employed as part-time development worker at Rochdale MIND.

    Rochdale MIND became user-led in the mid-1980s and, soon after, Andrew Hughes became active in it. He went there with a Rochdale Mind member when David Hill was speaking on the "politics of schizophrenia". Helen Gibb was also a member of Rochdale Mind.

    1987 Andrew Hughes published Anne Plumb's letter "That word consumer" in the Rochdale Mind newsletter.

    18.9.1987-20.9.1987 Edale Conference

    Tony Riley moved on to become full time development officer with Manchester MIND.

    "Tony took the step of writing to Anne" Plumb and Andrew Hughes "to suggest the setting up of a group" [Became DATA Distress Awareness Training Agency. May 1988 (Hughes, A. Spring 1995, p.11)

    Brian Taylor was the co-ordinator at Rochdale MIND from the mid to late 1980s

    1991 "Charlie Heslop reports that Rochdale Mind have received three years funding from the Health and Social Services Joint Funding budget for two advocacy workers, on to specialise in ethnic minority advocacy. The crisis card produced by International Self-Advocacy Alliance has been accepted by social services for regular use, and there are now two users places on the Joint Care Planning Consultation Group. (MindWaves Spring/Summer 1991 p.11)

    See 6.12.1973

      Depressives Anonymous
      c/o Mrs A. J. Stevenson, 19 Merley Way, Wimborne Minster, Dorset, BH21 1QN

      Based on the conviction that one depressive is best equipped to befriend another, the organisation acts as a "hot line" between people who have been through, or are going through, a similar depressive experience. In particular, it can help a woman suffering from 'baby blues', a depression which, for some, lingers for a long time after the birth of a baby and seems to be entirely inexplicab;e. Some local groups have been formed and others are in process of formation" (The Sunday Times Self-Help Directory 1975)

    South West London Mental Patients Union

    1.3.1974 South West London Mental Patients Union founded. The December 1974 list of Mental Patients Unions records that its meetings were usually held fortnightly at People Aid and Action Centre, 8 Falcon Road, SW11.

    Card Index: [February 1977] "South West London M.P.U. contact was Kenneth A. Wood, 137 Lavender Hill, Battersea, SW11. Telephone 223 2580"

    Robert Dando wrote in OpenMind No 17, 1985:

    Ken Wood died in July, and a bright star disappeared from psychiatry's night sky. He did not belong to MIND, but for over ten years he was a campaigner for psychiatric inmates' rights. He was not a mental patient himself, but he knew people who were.

    Around 1974, he launched a Mental Patients' Union and ran it with the help of ex-patients. When their problems recurred, he often had to organise the Union's activities single handed.

    He received help from the controversial Scientologists; they had their own campaign for mental patients' rights, the Citizens' Commission for Human Rights. Ken joined forces with them, as running the Union by himself had proved too difficult. Never a Scientologist himself, he eventually parted company with them, feeling uneasy about Scientology. He attempted to re-launch his Union. The problem was money. He tried to get funding from various bodies but nothing worked out.

    However, he achieved a lot; not perhaps, in revising the country's psychiatric policies generally, but certainly in helping individuals. He had built up a number of contacts in the political and psychiatric fields. He had learnt which hospitals were bad and which were not-so-bad, which psychiatrists you could trust with your life and which ones you could not trust with an old boot.

    His contacts helped him get things done. One example: he once had four hours to prevent someone being sent to Broadmoor. He succeeded. Can MIND match that? MIND, apparently, was not particularly receptive to Ken. Same on MIND!

    Reprinted Asylum volume one, issue one, Spring 1986, page 8.

    MIND OUT - The consumers isse - October 1974

    From the editorial

    When we announced in June that we would be devoting the October issue of MIND OUT to the views of people who had been on the receiving end of the mental health services, we received hundreds of letters in response. We are grateful to the newspapers which agreed to co-operate in publicising the venture, namely The Sunday Times, The Observer and The Guardian, to the magazine Time Out and to BBC Woman's Hour. The response was limited, obviously, to those who received our message.

    The letters came from patients, ex-patients and relatives. Some were short and pithy, some were tens of pages long. Many were graphic accounts of mental hospital experiences, whether as in or out-patients, naming names and supplying details. No one expected miracles and every one was certainly aware of the problems caused by limited resources, staff shortages and low pay. But, as no doubt these pages will show, there is often great bitterness over not only the mental health service but our collective failure to share the problems of people around us.

    We received so many letters that it would have been unrealistic to have hoped to print them all and meaningless to have printed what would have amounted, in the space, to a small selection. So we have carefully read all the letters, divided them into topics that the majority covered and have used this material to-write each article, quoting frequently from specific letters. All cases quoted or described represent the letter writers' views and we hope for reactions from patients and professionals alike. We were hoping to encourage letters about the problems of mental handicap but, in the event, we only received two.

    We asked for both good and bad experiences of the mental health services. Although we received many that were enthusiastic about treatment and help received, the bad experiences were by far in the majority. This may well have been expected, as the urge to voice a complaint is stronger than the urge to pay compliments. We feel that every experience should be heard and hope, in so doing, to highlight the areas that cause people on the receiving end of treatment most concern and to use these as guidelines to point the way to change.

    At this point in time it is most important that Mind as an organisation reasserts its primary function which is to represent the interests of those for and with whom we work. Our readers will no doubt draw their own conclusions from the experiences described in this issue. We do not expect to resolve the debate, say, on the necessity or dangers of compulsory treatment. It is more important to ensure that the debate takes place. We do not think psychiatrists will like being criticised by their patients but would suggest that criticism is a necessary function of this particular relationship. We do not imagine that one person's experience of a particular drug invalidates it for someone else. Nevertheless, the experience is important.

    We have printed no names and have used only initials to identify writers of letters. We should like to thank all who responded by writing to us at such length and in such detail on so emotive a subject.

    The Campaign for the Abolition of Forced Psychiatric Treatment was the name used by Janet Cresswell to promote her ideas on occasions. It was first used in October 1975

    In March 1980 Janet (from Broadmoor) issued a "Press Release" headed Campaign for the Abolition of Forced Psychiatric Treatment. "Case History No.1" in this is Janet's summary of her own case. She wrote:

    "A woman was committed to a mental hospital to cover the misconduct of a consultant. She was given ECT causing brain disorder and stelazine which caused hormonal disorder.The psychological damage was inestimable. After general hospital treatment, necessary to recover from the psychiatric treatment, she applied to the authorities for an enquiry into her committal. These were panned. Lawyers advised on the cost and inadvisability of legal action. She campaigned against psychiatry and shortly after a petition was presented to No. 10 the police visited her home and committed her, without explanation, to Friern Barnet Mental Hospital. She escaped, there for 3 months to obtain satisfactory answers to her questions and then stabbed the psychiatrist with a view to airing her grievance in court. She inflicted less damage on him than he had inflicted on her under the guise of medical treatment. She was drugged with intent to kill, statements submitted to court were falsified, she was sent to Broadmoor where she is receiving treatment designed to make her suicidal. IS THIS THE RIGHT WAY TO COPE WITH ERRORS OF CLINICAL JUDGEMENT?"


    A handwritten series of questions, dated 8.10.1981, starts:

    1) Why was I originally committed to Horton in 1965 without being given a reason? Why was I given the treatment I was?

    [4] ... when all attempts to receive an explanation for the committal were met with a brick wall ... I hit Dr Henry Stoll in 1972 as a last gesture to find a reason. [May have been 1970]

    [6] [1974? visit by police and others] [It was November 1975]

    [9] ... I stabbed Dr McNeil in 1975 [it was 1976] to make a last ditch attempt to discover why I had been committed in 1965 and 1974.


    "The Facade of Psychiatric Treatments Conceal The Industry Has Nothing To Offer" 16.11.1981

    ... I detail as follows treatment I have received for "paranoid schizophrenia" which I believe to be a normal characteristic of human beings, the difficulty being that others do not always see us as we believe we are being seen

    Stelazine administered in 1965 resulted in my having a fibroids operation in 1967 at Hampstead General Hospital. A further course of this drug in 1972 resulted in my needing a d and c [ dilation and curettage operation on her womb] a few months later, which was performed at the Royal Free, Liverpool Road.

    [When in Broadmoor] Modecate resulted in a [dilation and curettage operation] being necessary three months after the start of the treatment but the operation was delayed until absolutely necessary in 1980. It was performed at Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot.

    My complaint that I was forcibly administered harmful drugs which caused hormone disorders on three occasions have been denied by psychiatrists yet surely the evidence is unmistakeable.

    [Janet said she received no benefit from the drugs and had formed the opinion they were prescribed because psychiatrists were not sufficiently interested to listen to patients. She thought tests were needed to check a person needed a drug before it was used].

    ECT - Electro Convulsive Therapy. I became so inward after four doses given in 1965 that the treatment was stopped but it caused me to have voices in the head which I had never before experienced. After this treatment I became Psychic, which psychiatrist do not like and I find it very strange indeed that this treatment continues to be given. As the after-effects in my case were so appalling (I had no sleep without chloral hydrate for two years which may have been caused by the psychological upset of being committed without explanation or just cause, or the ECT, or the hormone upset caused by the stelazine) I can only believe that repeat treatments of ECT are given to conceal results.


    Ox-Bow (2005):

    I had some trouble with my eyes and the GP, Dr Henry Stoll, referred me to the local hospital, The Royal Free. There the Indian locum ophthalmic specialist made passes at me. My problem was that I was polite and totally unused to this sort of behaviour from professionals and I thought I'd dealt with him when I removed his straying hand for the umpteenth time saying, "Do you make passes at all your women patients?". "Only the pretty ones" he said and we go into a clinch. I should have reported him then and there but I felt pity for an immigrant doctor, didn't wish to cause trouble and was merely polite. I was issued with a prescription for glasses and some eye drops. Three weeks later there's a ring at the front door and there he is. He smilingly tells me he got my address from the hospital file he could not get me out of his mind. He raped me.


    29.4.1977 Extract from a letter from Andrew Roberts to Dave Hinchcliffe (later a Labour MP, but at this time a student writing a history of the MPU)

    The first part of the letter is about the origins of M.P.U. and its roots in patients organisations within hospitals (Civil Liberties Support Group, Broadmoor and Stanley Royd Unofficial Patients Committee mentioned). The letter is an answer to questions from Dave, indicated by the occasional heading.

    "I think you should not just speak of "M.P.U."... From April 1974 there were several M.P.U.s, and some still exist. "Hackney M.P.U.", which is now closed down was simply the most vocal....

    "Achievements of M.P.U. - Hackney M.P.U. - One was I believe that the existence of a group that was militant and not just a "self help group", and that inverted the normal role of 'patient' and 'sane' by excluding the 'sane' from Full membership, challenged inbuilt attitudes and prejudices that saw "mental patients" as full persons. It angered people, frightened people, amused people... but they had to come to terms with its existence. In this district I'm afraid that we won that battle too well - if we started "Hackney M.P.U. again it would be welcomed by the local council, social services, and even to some extent the local mental hospital.

    "It helped to develop certain causes - the campaign against E.C.T. and Brain surgery which is now a parliamentary issue thanks to "PROMPT", the campaign for the control of psychiatric drugs, and generally the various campaigns for Civil Liberties. I think small groups like COPE and Hackney M.P.U. did more to establish the present basis of campaigning on civil liberties than the now much publisised and heavily funded "MIND" - We said things when they mattered and how they mattered. (Incidentally, I do not think MIND's proposals are in the cause of Civil Liberties - but Larry Larry means them to be.)

    "We established a stable housing project in Hackney. (Still going on with a different name). One cannot say nowadays that mental patients cannot organise without being immediately contradicted by anyone who knows about M.P.U. Why? Because everything we did was done by self- proclaimed lunatics! That was our name.

    "M.P.Us have not really declined - the need for the name is not as important as it used to be, and neither is the need to keep the 'sane' out. New groups have formed that are taking over and doing, much better, things that M.P.U. tried to do - eg PROMPT. The fact is that PROMPT is patient dominated - but that is not and does not need to be an issue now and PROMPT does not need to discriminate between those who have and those who have not been patients.

    "The place where this battle is still crucial is inside the hospitals - There, there must be patients groups with autonomy and the power to keep anyone who is not a patient out, if we are to do anything progressive about conditions. The very essence of repression and control in bins is ... constant 'observation', 'regulation' and 'assistance' - the self-autonomy of the patient is removed by 'looking at him' in a perverted way all the time... If a patient group establishes itself, establishes its right to be without outsiders present, and then of its free will invites others to attend - that is freedom. If it cannot meet without a member of staff present, that is (at the very best) group therapy....

    "Two of us" [Joan Hughes and Andrew Roberts] " are still replying to letters sent to Hackney M.P.U."

    PROMPT:
    Protection of the Rights of Mental Patients in Therapy

    June/July 1976: First newsletter distributed by Julian Barnett. He described how his own ideas in early 1976 had been stimulated and developed by Alan Saint of the Patients Protection Law Committee, with the result that a workable plan for PROMPT emerged.

      1st Newsletter of: PROTECTION OF THE RIGHTS OF MENTAL PATIENTS IN THERAPY. 'PROMPT' c/o 2 Boxley House, Pembury Road, London, E5 June/July 1976

      PROMPT began sometime back in January 1976 as a collection of zany ideas floating around in my mind. Then, as if by magic, I was introduced to a really nice person, ALAN SAINT, of PATIENTS PROTECTION LAW COMMITTEE, PPLC was involved in demanding an end to unethical medical experiments on 200 mental patients. Suddenly (Miraculously?) my ideas were transformed into a very workable plan.

      Then it happened, PROMPT joined with PPLC in their campaign to get psychosurgery (as with all medical experiments not beneficial to the 'patient') made illegal in this country. We petitioned the House of Commons, via Joyce Butler MP.

      THEN

      A petition was assembled to send to the MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL. (More about this in the next newsletter)

      "PROMPT would now like to bring together individuals and groups of people whose main aim are, or will be, to protect the rights of mental patients, and to form ourselves into one massive pressure group to lobby MPs, inform "mental patients" about what really is going on, vis-a-vis the true nature of their "treatments", to bring together all our experiences and to say with one voice 'Psychiatry belongs not in the realm of medicine - but more in the realm of politics'."

    Note Swan, August 1980, "PROMPT has been in operation, off and on, for four years."

    PROMPT MANIFESTO (Draws on Fish Pamphlet and MPU Declaration of Intent)

    Campaign of the promotion of the rights of 'mental patients' in therapy (?) PROMPT Introduction: 'Manifesto'. Reprinted in PROMPT booklet 12 (1980), pages 43-49 "Manifesto first brought together in the year 1976 and accepted every year since then".

    A Support PROMPT Official Statement
    PROMPT Manifesto Demands Discussion
    By Donation
    [Five pages]

    29.4.1977 Letter to Dave Hinchcliffe about mental patients unions and PROMPT.

    21.6.1979 Article in New Scientist on Psychosurgery, reproduced in PROMPT Booklet 5

    17.7.1979 Christopher Price MP (Labour, Lewisham) presented a petition to the House of Commons, calling for a ban on ECT and psychosurgery. "Members of PROMPT and other concerned individuals collected 15,960 signatures... Eric Irwin and Julian Barnett mentioned. (Booklet 5/6, pages 53-54) [Julian told Andrew Roberts that the petition was Eric's idea and that Eric provided much of the energy for it.]

    PROMPT Booklet 5: sometime in 1979? Not in MPU archives, but content reproduced in booklet 5/6. See Frank Bangay 1979. In August 1980, Frank attended the PROMPT conference at Conway Hall.

    PROMPT Booklet 6: Also sometime in 1979? See below.

    Bookshps PROMPT Booklet 6 starts (pages 3 and 5) with a long list of "Where you can get any of the PROMPT pamphlets in this series" which includes Brighton Resource Centre, North Road, Brighton - Page One, 53 West Ham Lane, Stratford, E15 - Uhuru Bookshop, Cowley Road, Oxford - Centerprise - Grapevine Books, 41 Fitzroy Street, Cambridge - Peace Centre, 18 Moor Street, Ringway, Birmingham - Grass Roots, 1 Newton Street, Manchester - Corner Bookshop, 162 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds 2 - York Community Bookshop, 73 Walmgate, York.

    PROMPT Booklet 5/6 (pages 57-58) lists bookshops in Bristol - Leeds - London - Newscastle - Norwich - Edinburgh - Ipswich - Edinburgh - Colchester - Ilford - Oxford - Bath - Cambridge - Reading - Leamington Spa - Southampton - Hull - Sutton - Uxbridge - Lancaster - Loughborough - Birmingham - Coventry - Exeter - Bradford - Manchester - Leeds - York - Peterborough - Leicester - Liverpool -

    Cherry Allfree managed distribution to bookshops, travelling around the country with them. They were also sold on the streets. Frank Bangay remembers asking Cherry "if I could help her distribute the Prompt booklets around London but Cherry felt offended, she saw it as being her job." (Email 7.3.2018)

    10.6.1980 A (previous) PROMPT Meeting mentioned on back of booklet 5/6.

    7.8.1980 Cherry Allfree wrote to R.D. Laing inviting him to talk at Prompt's Anti-Psychiatry Conference.

    "Dear Ronnie Laing,

    I am writing...on behalf of a group called PROMPT (Promotion of the Rights of 'Mental Patients'...we are having an anti-psychiatry conference [23/08/80], and would ...like you to come and give a talk...We are showing a film on Rampton and hopefully will be able to get a copy of the film, by Yorkshire TV, about psychosurgery. We are going to bring up the issue about not being able to sue psychiatrists about any damage they do...we would really like to see the whole of psychiatry in its conventional form done away with...We have read several of your books and agree with your views...We have quoted some of your writings in our "Support Prompt" booklets a copy of which is enclosed together with a poster advertising our conference....Yours sincerely, Cherry Alfree for PROMPT collective."

    Marguerita Romayne Kendon replied 16.12.1980 that Laing unable to do so!

    Saturday 23.8.1980 "Do You Get It? It Could Happen to You! - PROMPT is Organising a Conference on Anti-Psychiatry at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London, W.C.1. Saturday 23rd August (10 am- 10pm) 50p Claimants etc/ £1 Others"

    Report by "Swan" in Madness Network News:

    PROMPT (Promotion of the Rights of Mental Patients)

    "The morning session consisted of an introduction by Julian, one of the co- founders of PROMPT, ad some general open discussion. Since the conference was open to the general public, there was a very diverse group present and a great deal of time was spent in discussing such basic issues as whether 'mental illness' exists or not, and ho people labelled as 'mentally ill' should or shouldn't be 'treated'. PROMPT members were very clear that their position is that the 'mental health' system must be abolished. Of interest was the term 'bin', which PROMPT uses to refer to mental institutions, since people are dumped in them and them forgotten about

    The highlight of the afternoon session was a TV film called SECRET HOSPITAL about Rampton...

    PROMPT has been in operation, off and on, for four years. They originally called themselves Protection for the Rights of Mental Patients until they realised that 'mental patients' didn't have any rights. They are a collective and are not composed solely of former psychiatric inmates...

    PROMPT Booklet Number Six: Includes "A Day in the Life" account by a patient in Essex Hall (pages 13-20) which is reproduced (with Cherry's name added) in Booklet 5/6. Also "For Discussion: Right to Refuse Medical Treatment. Medical Treatment (Refusal) Act...1979? (pages 27-28). Back Cover "PROMPT HUMAN RIGHTS INTO THE 1980s CAMPAIGN "DOWN WITH DEGRADING AND INHUMAN TREATMENTS" [Archive copy sent by Frank Bangay]

    Booklet 5/6 (Double issue) INTRODUCTION "this issues is a mixture of Articles that appeared in LONDON PROMPT MAGAZINE No.5 and 6 ... KENT PROMPT hopes... Address given is PROMPT c/o 11 Ottershaw House, Horsell Road, St Paul's Cray, Kent. - Page 5 "Where he continues to perform it today! (1979)" has a line through 1979, and 1981 written in. (Joan Hughes' collection)

    Kent Prompt was centred around Julian Barnett and (sometimes) Cherry Allfree. Julian had the bank account (for PROMPT generally). Frank Bangay believes that distnguishing between Kent and London was a way of expanding PROMPT. 11 Ottershaw House, Horsell Road, St Paul's Cray, Kent was Julian's address. 323 Lordship Lane, East Dulwich, London, SE22 was Cherry's address. Seymour Buildings, Seymour Place, London, WC1 was where Eric Irwin lived.

    PROMPT, Promotion of the Rights of Mental Patients, Magazine number 7 is quoted in Lawletter, Fourth Quarter 1980. Address of PROMPT is given as c/o Seymour Buildings, Seymour Place, London, WC1 - or - c/o 11 Ottershaw House, Horsell Road, St Mary Cray, Kent.

    Booklet 8/9 (1981) What They Won't Tell You: the Side-Effects of Psychiatric Drugs. ( Anne Plumb's collection and Archive copy sent by Frank Bangay) This booklet also has material on ECT which later became part of a separate booklet. 58 pages

    The only PROMPT booklet listed in Anne Plumb's catalogue. Probably bought at Grassroots Bookshop in Manchester and probably taken there be Cherry Allfree.

    Anti-Psychiatry Drugs Directory - Formerly PROMPT Booklet 8/9 30p. (copy from Joan Hughes' collection?) (A copy was offered by a New York Bookseller in 2010 at £39.49 (£47.91 with shipping to UK) - A UK bookseller offered it at £10 plus £3.35 carriage)

    Booklet 11 Lithium

    Booklet 12 "A "Support Prompt" No. 12 25p (60 pages!). How to PROMPT with us against the 1959 Mental Health? Act using PROMPT's 1980's Manifesto. - EPOC No.1 Pamphlet Reprint (First published as "How to Cope with the 1959 M.H. Act" [Archive copy sent by Frank Bangay]

    October 1981 The Second National Ant-Psychiatry Conference, planned for London with themes including "How to Prevent Being Binned" and "What About the Mental Health Act?". (Matthew O'Hara Committee News 2, Summer 1981). PROMPT address: 323 Lordship Lane, East Dulwich, London, SE22. Telephone 693 0011 Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 3pm to 10pm.

    PROMPT "The main PROMPT address was Cherry's flat in Lordship Lane, Dulwich. This is where the phone line was, this is where all the PROMPT stuff was kept, Julian used to spend most of his time there, and this is where our meetings took place before we moved to the Metropolitan Tavern in Farringdon. [The Dulwich address is the first regular PROMPT meeting place in Frank Bangay's notes].

    November 1981 Tony Smythe left Mind (noted p.45 of "Anti-Psychiatry Drugs Directory" - formerly Booklet 8/9)

    The following was a one sheet report distributed with a Lawletter stamp - not an article in Lawletter. It announced a forthcoming similar special leaflet on the new Mental Health Bill.

    PROMPT ANTI-PSYCHIATRY ACTION GROUP

    A Lawletter report on the meeting of PROMPT which took place at the Prince Albert Public House, Wharfdale Road, N1 at 7.15 pm on Saturday 16th January 1982. By Joan Hughes.

    Julian Barnett introduced the meeting, stating that PROMPT (Promotion of the Rights of 'Mental Patients' in Therapy) is a strictly ant-psychiatry group. He said that psychiatry does not aim to change society. PROMPT believes that society is at fault for many people's messed up lives (that is to say, those people labelled in various ways as 'mentally ill'). Some of us do not agree with the role we are supposed to play in society - and then are told, "You are ill and ought to see a doctor". If we don't go quietly, we are then taken by force to a mental hospital - where one is not free but is in a very controlled situation (subject to drugs, E.C.T., and other treatments even if not in a locked ward). Julian gave a brief account of the side- effects of drugs and E.C.T.

    The meeting was called together to form an action group against psychiatry. Various groups throughout the country are working against psychiatry, but they are not acting together. This is one reason why the movement is weak. Houses where people who are 'freaked-out' can go were advocated. Previous houses like this have fallen apart - PROMPT thinks this is because they have not had a political base.

    After the introduction, various people gave their opinions, and it was evident that there was some divergence of opinion about where the group should proceed; the common denominator among people at the meeting being that they were opposed to psychiatry.

    There was some discussion about housing. People gave accounts of their experiences. Often Councils offered 'medical housing' to 'vulnerable people'. These council flats were often substandard, at the top of tower blocks, had broken windows, or were on 'slum estates', and were often the sort of accommodation that 'ordinary people' on the housing list would not accept. Most people who had this sort of experience of council housing thought that 'squatting' was preferable.

    Someone else questioned the use of 'society', and said we should not blame other people, including doctors, who are also in 'strait-jackets', but said that we should blame the bourgeoisie of this country. A discussion on class followed, including some discussion of the theories of Laing and Janov.

    Most people at the meeting then decided to discuss some sort of practical action. There followed a discussion about the new Mental Health (Amendment) Bill. Most people have not yet studied these proposals thoroughly, but, in general, were opposed to the giving of treatment without consent to patients on a 28-day section, and to the increased powers proposed by the Bill for transferring the status of an informal (so called voluntary) patient to that of a formally detained patient.

    Saturday 23.1.1982 PROMPT meeting at the Prince Albert for further discussion.

    PROMPT

    Mixed Emotions: A Collection of Angry and Peaceful Poetry Produced in the summer of 1982, and subsequently revised and re-printed a number of times. Foreword signed by Frank Bangay and Julian Barnett. The other people who worked on the publication were Cherry Allfree and Eric Irwin. Contained Frank Bangay's poem "They Say, They Say", written September 1981.

    Put together because people sent Julian poems. These were, initially unsolicited. A similar thing happened when The Mental Patients Union was established.

    See: What They Teach in Song (1986) - Rhythm of Struggle (1990) - From Dark to Light (1992)

    1983 Kent PROMPT 'Declaration of Principles' (As set out in Toronto, Canada in May 1982) - two pages (Frank Bangay's collection)

    The British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry, in which PROMPT (and then CAPO) participated, ran from 1983 to 1988.

    1984 PROMPT meeting regularly at the Metropolitan Tavern, 95 Farringdon Road, Farringdon, London, EC1 (instead of Dulwich). This stood on the corner of Clerkenwell Road and Farringdon Road. It had a gay landlord and was used by political groups as a meeting place - including communist party ones. The Metropolitan Tavern closed at the end of 1984.

    The idea of holding fund raising evening of poetry and music (gigs) was stimulated by producing the Mixed Emotions anthology. It was through this that Frank first came into contact with Peter Campbell. A friend of Peter's sent Frank a copy of Peter's poem "Waiting for ECT" and Frank and Peter corresponded.

    PROMPT asked The Metropolitan's landlord if they could use the upstairs room for events and three gigs were held in the course of 1984. They were small, but adequate. Performances went well and the vibes were good. It was at these gigs that Frank first met Peter Campbell and Mike Lawson.

    (Frank Bangay's memories). Frank Bangay, Peter Campbell, Hilary Porter and Joe Bidder, the founders of Survivors Poetry in 1991 are said to have met "through CAPO", but this appears to mean PROMPT, before it became CAPO.

    Multiple Image Productions formed in 1984. They approached PROMPT about the idea of making a film for Channel4. Psychiatric Oppression was prepared as a demonstration. By the time it was put together, PROMPT had become CAPO.

    CAPO March 1985 -
    There is a change in the core membership between PROMPT and CAPO in that Julian Barnett, the founder of PROMPT, was much less active in CAPO. Frank Bangay said (email 8.3.2018) "When CAPO started there were no women involved after Cherry went back to Julian. This caused us a lot of problems with the people runing the video collective who made Were Not Mad We're Angry. They kept on over and over saying how CAPO is all white and male dominated.

    Fund Raising Benfits for PROMPT and CAPO Frank Bangay booked poets and musicians to perform. Flyers were mostly done by Mike Lawson. The last few were done by Laura Margolis (now Laura Wilson). Julian Barnett, Eric Irwin and Barry Blazeby were active organisers.

    The events started in the summer of 1984 at the Metropolitan Tavern in Farringdon.

    In 1985 they moved to the Troubadour coffee house in Earl's Court, where they were held on a regular basis (about one a month) until 1987, when Eric Irwin died.

    They resumed in 1989 at the Rose and Hacker Centre in Kentish Town, where they continued until the end of 1990. They were an inspiration on the founding of Survivor's Poetry in 1991

    Frank Bangay on CAPO (Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression) which was formed out of PROMPT in March 1985 [source]

    "In 1985 we" [Eric Irwin and Frank"] "achieved a lot together. In March of that year we changed our name to CAPO - Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression - so we could free ourselves from the "mental patient" tag, and with the help of a few others we started to win CAPO some credibility.

    During the summer three of us, Eric Irwin, Barry Blazeby and Frank Bangay, attended, uninvited, the Mental Health 2000 conference in Brighton. We put up our stall in the entrance and it was there that the Dutch patients' group (invited over by Mind) met us, and negotiated our stall into the conference. They helped us a lot, and we brought to Mind's notice that no English recipients had been invited to Mind's conferences, yet there were many professionals talking about the "mentally ill"

    Throughout the year we worked together, organising many successful fund- raising benefits of poetry and music, most at the Troubadour coffee house in Earl's Court, London. This was the main way of raising funds and it helped us to establish CAPO.

    The year ended with a successful workshop at the Mind conference. We titled the workshop "Who are the Consumers?, putting forward that the consumers are those who benefit from having someone psychiatrised, whatever the reason might be - workplaces, schools, families, the army, and so on. We said that we did not chose to consume psychiatry. Eric said he felt as much a consumer of psychiatry as a woodlouse would consider itself to be a consumer of Rentokil services. We suggested "recipient" as a more neutral word, but sadly the point wasn't really understood, as we are still often described as the "consumer movement". However, we did at least create an impact with our workshop.

    CAPO MANIFESTO - A development of the PROMPT manifesto, was available by the time of the World Mental Health Conference. The following examples show how the manifestos were adapted:

    1973: Fish Pamphlet: "Together with other oppressed groups, patients through an organised MENTAL PATIENTS' UNION must take COLLECTIVE ACTION and realise their POWER in the CLASS STRUGGLE, alongside Trade Unions, Claimants Unions, Women's Liberation, Black Panther Groups, Prisoners' Rights etc..."

    1979?: PROMPT manifesto: "Together with other oppressed groups, patients through an organised PROMPT - Protection of the Rights of 'Mental Patients' in 'Therapy' - must take COLLECTIVE ACTION and realise their power in the class struggle, alongside Trade Unions, Claimants Unions, Women's Liberation, Black Panther, Prisoner and Prisoner;s Wives Rights, etc..."

    1985: CAPO manifesto: "Together with other oppressed groups, victims of psychiatry, through an organised Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression must take COLLECTIVE ACTION and realise their power in the class struggle - alongside Trade Unions, Claimants Unions, Prisoner's Rights, Feminists. Ethnic Minorities Rights, Gay Liberation, etc."

    Two CAPO booklets produced in 1986

    Brain Burns by David L. Richman M.D. (Dr Caligari) - A C.A.P.O Publication Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression. A four page reprint from The History of Shock Treatment by Leonard Roy Frank. (USA). The CAPO cover was designed by Mike Lawson.

    What They Teach In Song - Poetry About Psychiatric Experience £1 Poems by Frank Bangay, Cheryl Moskowitz, Richard McKane, Eric Irwin, Hilary Porter, Joe Bidder, Richard Byrt, Francis Marnell, Mike Lawson, Terence Walpole, Rosette Rosenberg. Steve Brewer, Nick Simons, Peter Campbell. Revisions were anticipated and contributions were solicited to "Frank, 28a Edgar House". The cover was by Mike Lawson. Drawings by Mike Goldman. Typesetting by Barry Blazeby.

    The title was suggested by Eric Irwin, recalling these lines from Percy Shelley's poem Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation".

    "Most wretched men
    Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
    They learn in suffering what they teach in song."

    The efflorescence of survivor poetry that Frank had witnessed over these years convinced him that "our poetry and other forms of creativity are our only voice, and the only way we really have of communicating our experiences."

    Spring 1986
    Asylum magazine provided a voice for CAPO, but one they were reluctant to use. They also declined to affileate with Survivors Speak Out. Frank thought it could be a good idea, "but Eric did not want to and it got dificult. There were political issues involved. I did affilate CAPO with Survivours Speak Out after Eric died because I realised how isolated we had become. I was able to do more through being involved with LAHMA"

    Mike Lawson's narrative poem of the movement's history, as he experienced it, was penned in memory of Eric Irwin.

    Eric

    It was there that last time in this life that we met; a strong yet gentle grip.
    I have known you since the old days and the Paddington Day Hospital trip.
    Light shone always brightly through your eyes.
    We went on strange journeys some purple skies.
    It is not that once you were, you still are.
    And the work goes on, a shining star.
    I can feel you here and now and I remember then
    The first meeting of MPU, the beginning
    Of an understanding that must never end.
    In those days everything was possible
    You were my teacher and my friend.
    The handbills were given out, the fire was lit.
    Prince of Wales and Brian and Liz,
    Education an understanding what it was about
    The beginnings of turning screams into shouts.
    Too soon the man with the sparkling eyes was taken away.
    Yet the seeds were sown. We were here to stay.
    Kentish Town sguat and soft Canada Dry. There are those who remember and know why
    We were left after the tragedy of the fire.
    Some of us will always carry on that fight
    The head was put into a spider web
    I again got in and de-binned with red leb.
    Brian and Liz and political passion
    To talk of psychiatric oppression was not fashion
    But the flame was lit and its grown
    Through the struggle and passion of those who know.
    MPU did some burning and COPE was born
    Acklan Road and people, it felt like home.
    Time spins through its highway we drove on.
    Some books and lives later COPE to PROMPT
    Singing songs at the Metropolitan. It's good, there's so much to do and you know you should.
    ECT memories make shadows from time
    We turned the ridiculous into sublime
    Video radio and tv message strong.
    Thank you a great teacher and a friend,
    You helped me with your inspiration
    And PROMPT became CAPO with deliberation.
    As we all moved along
    I feel you here right now
    And it's good to be next to you.
    A great teacher never really dies
    And never fades away.
    It's good to still be next to you today.

    1989 CAPO took part in the "Anarchist's Book Fair" at Conway Hall

    Spring/summer 1990 Rhythm of Struggle - Song of Hope CAPO Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression. £1.50. "a collection of articles, poems and drawings composed and put together by members of CAPO". Foreword dated October 1989

    "In l990, CAPO produced its third poetry publication, The Rhythm of Struggle, The Song of Hope. It featured poetry, artwork, stories and articles on some of the many different issues in psychiatry and was an attempt to communicate both CAPO's ideology and the personal experiences of its members. Unfortunately, despite many attempts to keep it functioning, CAPO ceased to exist in 1991, and Frank became unwell.

    As luck would have it though, he had already made contact with Joe Bidder, Hilary Porter and Peter Campbell to discuss what could be achieved by setting up a group called Survivors' Poetry, whose name was inspired by the organisation Survivors Speak Out. Bushy Kelly at the Arts Council (who was later to run Survivors' Brixton workshops) keenly supported the idea and granted the initial funding, and by the end of l991, the first writing workshops were up and running at MIND in Camden and the first gigs were held at the Torriano Meeting House in Kentish Town, a well known poetry venue started in the 1980s by anarchist poet, John Rety.

    The organisation really started to take off in 1992 when Anna Neeta started an outreach project helping groups of survivors around Britain to set up local survivor poetry groups, and Frank organised performances and workshops in day centres, sheltered housing, psychiatric hospitals and other community settings around London.

    (Interview with Xochitl Tuck).

    The Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression

    Draft of an "ongoing statement" - Frank Bangay March 1995

    What is CAPO?

    CAPO is a group of people who have had experience in the psychiatric system with roots in the early 1970s. It is the latest in a long line of groups connected to the British Anti Psychiatry Movement (A movement with international connections).

    [ Eric Irwin and Frank trace the roots of CAPO to the Mental Patients Union.

    Though there have been many changes and many troubles over the years, we are still the ideology expressed in our manifesto, a document that called for the abolition of psychiatry as we know it, and to replace it with human ways of helping people at times of distress.

    We reject the medical model, but we understand the need one might have of seeking refuge in a psychiatric institution (there is often no other sanctuary available). We can also understand one's need to take medication, as it is very difficult to come of these overpowering drugs. no support system is provided. Psychiatrists and the drug companies have a vested interest in keeping you on these things as a lot of money is made out of it, and it is a way of keeping you quiet, as opposed to listening to your emotional and practical needs.

    However we see that these needs should be listened to and addressed. One so often returns to the situation that hurt them in the first place, and it is easy to get caught up in the revolving door system until one becomes dependent on handouts. [This?] is a growing reality in this time of ruthless Tory policies, that to stay on benefits one will have to act their worst. This may cause someone to get caught up in a very degrading, submissive situation. By the same token, if someone is arrested under the criminal justice bill, and they have a psychiatric record, their sentence will be far more severe than someone without a psychiatric record.

    However, we dismiss terminology like mental illness and the stigma it produces. Instead, we use terms like distress. Distress can be very severe, but it can be overcome with the right sort of support. we, however, acknowledge that someone who has spent a lot of their lifetime in psychiatric institutions may well become dependent on the place. We would advocate supportive housing in the community where people can learn to do the things that instititutionalised life will have discouraged: i.e. rediscover their confidence. And the staff can learn to treat people as equal human beings again.

    We dismiss the genetic/bio chemical theories, and feel that someone suffers from distress as a result of extremely daunting situations in their life. The person is not a problem, but someone with problems in living.

    CAPO's function is to campaign and demonstrate, both individually and with others, over the many issues of psychiatric oppression, publish literature on relevant topis, including survivors creativity, give talks and workshops. We cannot, however, be a support group, except to ourselves, as we are to small and it would.... on to us. If someone comes to us for support, we can re-direct them to a stronger supportive body.

    We do not know all the answers, but experience has taught us, where a situation where we could have been helped had we been treated differently from the way psychiatry chose.

    Frank Bangay March 1995

    This is an ongoing statement, please add suggestions.


    Dear David [Kessel?],

    This is a draft to add to and develop, we will not however moderate our view.

    CAPO also is a democratic group, so everyone makes suggestions, and everyone contributes, that is why I asked you to book the room at the Morley College.

    The next meeting is this Wednesday at the Stag Pub, opposite the Imperial War Museum.

    Best wishes,

    Frank

    National Schizophrenia Fellowship

    In 2009 the Rethink website says: "We were founded over 30 years ago to give a voice to people affected by severe mental illness".

    The original National Schizophrenia Fellowship claimed to primarily represent relatives, and, through them, the people suffering from schizophrenia.

    The fellowship gave a voice to schizophrenics by publishing Schizophrenia From Within in 1975

    1979 John Robinson (born about 1936), an Oxford student, killed himself.

    1979 Martha Robinson (born 1905 - mother of John Robinson) joined the Westminster Group of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship.

    1981 Is there anyone out there? : an anthology of poems by sufferers from schizophrenia / edited by Martha Robinson. Published: Eastbourne: Downlander, 1981. 32 pages. Promoted by the Westminster Group of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship.

    In 1982 Peter Sedgwick wrote that

    "Far more psychotic patients... must have participated in the work of the British NSF (with its 90 local groups) alongside relatives and other sympathisers, than have ever been seen in the 'patients' union' networks of more politicised repute".

    1983 Another world : a second anthology of poems by sufferers from schizophrenia edited by Martha Robinson on behalf of the Westminster Group of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship. Published: Eastbourne: Downlander, 23 pages

    National Voices Forum was established at a meeting on 24.11.1986.

    "In 1986, at an inaugural meeting in London attended by eight service users, the first chair, Richard Jameson, was elected and the name 'Voices' chosen for the group. Four senior people from NSF were also present. Although NSF people regularly attended meetings in the early years they were not in charge. The term 'Voices' embodied the idea of giving voice as much as the phenomenon of 'hearing voices' which is characteristic of some people who have schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis. NSF used to be concerned exclusively with schizophrenia and Voices mirrored this in the early years by having only those with this diagnosis as members. Latterly the spectrum of diagnoses has broadened both in Rethink and National Perceptions Forum, the changes of names reflecting this.

    In the early days the group was a forum for discussion about schizophrenia, the position in society of those with this diagnosis and the mental health system. Meetings took place monthly and were also an opportunity for people to meet each other. Isolation can be a big problem for the mentally ill." (Chris Barchard 2008/2009)

    1987? Death of Martha Robinson who bequethed money for a users group.

    Richard Jameson looks back "In the mid to late 1980s, National Voices Forum was in its infancy under the watchful eye of Fred Carney of NSF and Richard Jameson was chairman. (External link to Richard Jameson's memories)

    "Initially Voices was just a group which had meetings in London with speakers. The meetings were well attended (25 or so?) but there were no workers. Voices may not have had a campaigning profile, but I don't think it was that much in the pocket of NSF. People always had their own views, even if they tended to be more accepting of the medical model than people in Survivors Speak Out" [for example] . "When people from Voices went to Survivors Speak Out meetings I think they were always impressed by Survivors Speak Out as an orgamisation and by its high profile. I always used to think that there was great potential to establish a broad-based movement if the 3 groupings could work together more but it never really happened." [Graham Estop email 23.7.2009]

    a church near King's Cross

    "we used to meet at a church near to Kings Cross. During my time I remember being accused by Judy Weleminsky, the director of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, of not being a proper schizophrenic - although my medical certificates were at that time written as schizophrenia. The groups consensus was critical of most of our psychiatric treatment with around 15 to 20 attenders." (Mike Lawson email 23.7.2004)

    high profile criticism

    The composition of Voices in 1988/1989 was described by Rogers and Pilgrim in 1991.

    Voices was regarded with suspicion by some who allied with (or possibly belonged to) other parts of the survivor movement. At this distance, it is difficult to say how much that suspicion came from other mental patients and how much came from allies (in particular Anne Rogers and David Pilgrim)/ The written records of suspicion that we have identified are (so far) all from allies (Rogers and Pilgrim), but Rogers and Pilgrim claim to be reporting survivors. It seems clear, however, that the autonomy of Voices from the National Schizophrenia Fellowship and the diversity of views within the National Schizophrenia Fellowship and Voices were not recognised by Rogers and Pilgrim at a time when they were recognised by some members of MindLink and Survivors Speak Out.

    8.7.1988 Ron Lacey (a Mind worker who worked closely with Rogers and Pilgrim) said that "if there were open elections" to Mind's Consumer Advisory Panel "we could end up with a majority of NSF members".

    Roger and Pilgrim argue that because "Voices exists within the organisational framework" of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship "relatives and users tend to share a common medical discourse...". Voices, they say, "adopted uncritically" the terms "schizophrenia" and "sufferer" which "emphasise passivity". Voices, they said, "tends to accept uncritically the pursuit of traditional psychiatric genetic research" and (alone amongst the user groups surveyed) was "content to rely solely on improving existing professionally delivered services". However "Even the Voices respondent expressed concern about the side-effects of major tranquillisers".

    Although "Even the Voices respondent emphasised the importance of professionals and relatives listening to 'sufferers' in order to restore their dignity and give them back a voice", Rogers and Pilgrim found Voices "demands for resources and relationships with non-patients which imply greater autonomy" "contradicted by an emphasis on the maintenance of existing dependencies, control and treatments".

    Rogers and Pilgrim, say that "others" in the Mental Health Users Movement viewed Voices "as a token group inextricably linked to its parent organisation".

    Peter Campbell (below) accepts that there is some truth in this assertion. However, the written evidence from Survivors Speak Out newsletter and MindWaves (below) suggests a much more positve attitude to Voices. At this stage, Rogers and Pilgrim are unable to identify who the hostile survivor voices were.

    It is clear from the work of Rogers, Pilgrim and Lacey in 1993 that they themselves had a binary theory of social forces in which the National Schizophrenia Fellowship were part of the opposition to the forces Rogers, Pilgrim and Lacey supported.

    Commenting on Rogers and Piligrim in 2009, Peter Campbell wrote:

    "It is ... interesting to see how the NSF was seen so negatively by some of us at the time. I think that was quite conflictual and have been trying to remember when that all died down - I certainly think it lasted as long as Judy Weleminsky was chief executive at NSF. I think the man who took over from her (Bharat Mehta?) was more emollient." (Email 6.7.2009)

    Graham Estop commented on David Pilgrim

    "I was involved with Voices Forum (now Perceptions Forum) for many years. (Mike Lawson was a member for a time by the way in the late 80s). Along with several other local and national groups such as SSO, it was important to me at a particular period in my life.

    However, I once read a sentence or two about it in one of David Pilgrim's books where he sought to characterise its views in a rather dismissive way.

    I'm not sure what the point of that was. It would have been better if he could have arranged to come to a meeting to meet some people from the group/network to get their views as to what it was about and then write something.

    It is the mutual support and exchange of views which has often been central to service-user/survivor groups, not a particular "party line". A "party line" is very hard to arrive at anyway with such a range of people, views and experiences." (Email 27.1.2009)

    August 1988 to Summer 1989 (when listing stopped): Mindwaves did not list Voices as a consumer organisation.

    "Meetings continued monthly and speakers were invited. Voices reputation grew and in 1988 had its first representative on NSF Council of Managment, our Voices trustee, Robin Gardner. He was elected by Voices" (2008 DVD)

    1989 (or earlier) Pam Jenkinson was Conferences Organiser for the National Schizophrenia Fellowship.

    23.2.1989 National Schizophrenia Fellowship Conference on Consumer Participation in Mental Health held in London. Jan Wallcraft spoke on "the History and Philosophy of the Consumer Movement".

    "It was a very enjoyable day - the NSF's own user group, VOICES were much in evidence and VOICES member Deidre Baynton spoke eloquently about her experiences and her views on the role of holistic medicine. There was much concern expressed about the recent SANE poster campaign, and Pam Jenkinson stated that the NSF had been concerned about the negative images portrayed, which were unhelpful to 'sufferers' and relatives. She pointed out that SANE and the NSF are not the same organisation.

    Though there were widely differing views expressed at the conference, the main impression I came away with was of most participants' openmindedness, willingness to listen to user and support for the user's movement.

    Thanks to Pam Jenkinson for organising the event and for inviting me"

    Jan Wallcraft - Mindwaves Spring 1989

    Christine Andrew was chair of National Voices Forum in the early 1990s. It was during the early 1990s that the Forum expanded to become national.

    "Within a few years, at the turn of the 1990s, under the leadership of a new 'administrator', Neil Jamieson, the group began to expand and became an organization. Neil developed a network of local groups around the country and people from these began to attend the central meetings in London. After Neil left the organization went through a fallow period for several months. The National Meetings moved to Birmingham and more local groups were formed. Four 'Development Officers' were appointed covering different areas of the country." (Chris Barchard 2008/2009)

    9.4.1992 to 11.4.1992 A London conference of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, organised by Pam Jenkinson, included Judi Chamberlin, Rae and Jim Ouziker from the USA and Peter Campbell from London.

    In 1992 four volunteers already working as regional liaison/development officers were paid an honorarium, using a grant (from Sane?). One of the four was Sophie. (2008 DVD)

    June 1992 Survivors Speak Out and Voices "National Voices is the user organisation connected to the National Schizophrenia Fellowship. They are in the process of appointing a Development Officer. Survivors Speak Out recently wrote to National Voices Committee suggesting that closer contact should be developed between Voices and the other user networks - Survivors Speak Out - National Advocacy Network - Mindlink - Scottish Users Network. Although we have not yet received a formal reply the informal response was favourable. It is possible that a meeting between representatives of all the networks may take place in the autumn... (A Wales Network seems to be starting too). London Voices and Survivors Speak Out have been in correspondence over [the] last few months and there are plans for closer contact and cooperation with them in the future" (Survivors Speak Out newsletter June 1992)

    Autumn 1992 National Perceptions Forum reformed in Birmingham. Chris Barchard began attending the meetings. "I did have some involvement before that and was involved in running a local Voices group. I also went to a couple of meetings when they were held in a church or church hall in London, but not as a core national member. I do not remember a lot about those meetings except there was a bit more of a social than we had in Birmingham." See on Rogers and Pilgrim - chair - bio-ethics - on self- management - A Life Beyond Psychiatry - history

    first half of 1993 Anne Rogers, David Pilgrim and Ron Lacey classed the National Schizophrenia Association as one of the lobbies for "Transporting the existing model lock stock and barrel into the community" as opposed to creating a "A post-medical user-led service". The National Schizophrenia Association was grouped with "traditionalists within the psychiatric profession" - SANE - "the drug industry" and "biological psychiatry". The forces working against them included the all-party political commitment to community care - the consumerist orientation of health service management - and "the mental health users' movement" with "organisation like Survivors Speak Out". No mention is made in their book of Voices.

    Christine Andrew, who had been very active in Voices, came onto the Survivors Speak Out co-ordinating group in mid/late 1990s (Peter Campbell - email 20.7.2009)

    Chris Barchard on Voices (in the light of Rogers and Pilgrim

    I was not involved at the time the Rogers and Pilgrim article was researched and written and cannot answer for those who were involved at that time. My comments really apply to a period about which Rogers and Pilgrim were not commenting. To the extent that the reputation we had, described by them, has persisted; I think it would be useful to publish my remarks

    It needs to be reiterated that the Forum has always been just that, a platform for people to express their point of view. So I feel that to characterise us in a collective way represents a misreading of what we are about. In 2008 I wrote "There are other things which can help serious mental distress, even cure it in some cases. But these things require time, space and much human input. Given the huge numbers of people with mental distress and the conservatism of the system, we are looking a long way into the future to provide these things for all." Much has been made of our being part of Rethink simply because Rethink has a reputation for conservatism. We have remained within Rethink's organisational framework but have always been treated as a special case, not having to follow their party line and indeed not having one of our own. The Forum has fought long and hard to keep the independence of their voices from the rest of Rethink. It is simply not true that we have collectively supported the position and frames of reference of the establishment. Our website has many examples of people railing against the system. It is an important repository of first hand accounts of those on the receiving end of some of the harshest aspects of psychiatry. Too much emphasis is given nowadays on the use of language. Using terms like "mental distress" does not make one enlightened any more than the use of the more conventional language necessarily implies the reverse. R.D. Laing used the term "schizophrenia" repeatedly and few would doubt his credentials as a radical. There are very few of our members who have given an uncritical account of antipsychotic drugs. People may knock us because we have not proposed collectively a solution to the evils of psychiatry. A great many of our members, myself included, would want to see one emerging. What we have done is produce a considerable amount of material about the experience of being subjected to the system and little of it is complimentary.

    Probably most of us in the Forum, if we have tried to do without drugs, have ended up in asylums again. One has to draw some conclusion from this. Whatever may be possible as an alternative to drugs is simply not available to most people.

    There was one group of people who claimed to be service users who tried to push us into being part of genetic research. In the end I wrote them a swinging letter which put an end to their communications with us. Some years ago I wrote and article called "Is it really all in the genes?" This article argued that any genetic influences in the causation of mental distress were not limiting factors and I proposed that the limiting factors were social. In other words some people may be more susceptible to being driven mad than others but if they are not driven mad they will probably be perfectly OK. This is not the position the geneticists are looking for.

    Some of Rogers and Pilgrim's statements seem unfair in themselves, whatever the position of Voices members at the time. They say:

    "Even the Voices respondent emphasised the importance of professionals and relatives listening to 'sufferers' in order to restore their dignity and give them back a voice". They found Voices' "demands for resources and relationships with non-patients which imply greater autonomy" "contradicted by an emphasis on the maintenance of existing dependencies, control and treatments".
    I do not think there is a contradiction. You do not have to throw away the wheelchair in order to be allowed out of the door.

    I have written about antipsychotic drugs employing a conventional frame of reference. This was aimed entirely at promoting the use of newer drugs which many people have found less terrible to live on than most of the older drugs. The aim was to equip people with the sorts of arguments which doctors might respond to from those seeking to be changed to the newer drugs and I think some people have been helped by this. This is set against a background where I could not see the use of antipsychotics being suspended in the short term. Such an exercise in damage limitation is controversial but it may have done some good in the shorter term since the infrastructure for an alternative solution, which would have to be considerable, did not exist.

    If I was asked what I think about psychiatry as a overview I would say it is appalling. I think the culture amongst professionals is dehumanising, the asylums counterproductive in many ways and the direction treatment and research has taken very regrettable. What is offered is at best palliative but debilitating and at worst an Orwellian nightmare. I do not think psychiatry should be reformed. I think it should go back to the drawing board, leave behind the cruel culture that has its roots in the Victorian system and take a fresh look at what is really happening to people who enter serious levels of mental distress. The altogether unproven hypothesis of physical causation should give way to a holistic view of the mind and its inextricable links to the world of others.

    In the mid 1990s it was more difficult to establish groups, but the individual membership was increasing. Under these circumstances a new means of communicating needed to be established. - During his first stint as chair, Chris Barchard began the magazine. (2008 DVD)

    Autumn? 1996 Voices' Voices, the magazine of Voices, started. It ran for 14 quarterly editions. It contained articles by members on mental health issues, cartoons with a mental health theme, poems, letters and information about Voices. In the earliest days it was formatted on a member's computer and printed by going to a local garage and using the photocopier. Later the formatted material was taken to a local printer. (Chris Barchard 2008/2009

    October 1996 to June 1998 Working group on bioethics - Chris Barchard a member as Chair of Voices - Report September 1998 - external link

    January? 1998 "Winter 1998" edition of Voices' Voices (Issue 5). Front page "FREE! Self-Management of Schizophrenia Conference. Tuesday 10th February 1998, Carrs Lane Church Centre, Birmingham, 1.30pm - 4.30pm. How do you cope... With the diagnosis? With the symptoms? With the treatment? Share and Exchange your ideas and experiences with others, in small groups and develop new ways of coping. Guest speaker Professor Alec Jenner. (2008 DVD)

    "Self-management as a concept originates, in any really organised form, from the Manic-Depression Fellowship which is a user-led organisation. Voices Forum took up the idea and has held three self-management conferences of its own" - Chris Barchard

    10.2.1998 National Voices Forum in Birmingham about Self- Management of Schizophrenia. Alec Jenner spoke about what is schizophrenia and Amy Ford (National Secretary) spoke about what is self-management.

    1998 Chris Barchard's first stint as chair of National Voices Forum gave way to "my major manic episode". Chris was succeded (1999) by Amy Ford. Work by Chris led to the Forum receiving a large grant.

    1998 Amy Ford first Voices representative on the Mental Health Alliance

    1999 to 2004 Graham Estop was worker and then coordinator. "We had a high degree of independence, and I was not highly supervised. Our quarterly magazine, Perceptions, (now used as the name of the group as a whole), did not have to be submitted for pre-approval, for example. Note that Nina R[ideout] and I represented Voices on the Mental Health Alliance independently of Rethink - something Mindlink were unable to do separately from Mind." (Graham Estop email 23.7.2009)

    30.9.1999 National Voices Forum in London about Self- Management of Schizophrenia. Dorothy Rowe and ZYRA spoke. Amy Ford was the chair of Voices.


    2000 Perceptions the Quarterly Magazine of the National Voices Forum started. King's College London preserves some copies.

    An early edition of Perceptions. The picture is Zyra addressing the London conference.
    Perceptions "PERCEPTIONS magazine first started as "VOICES' VOICES". People who have schizophrenia have the chance to have a say, and to be published and read by other people who have schizophrenia. The magazine contains many diverse viewpoints, and has articles, poems, pictures, and all sorts of interesting stuff by various people. The circulation of hard-copies of the glossy magazine PERCEPTIONS is about 300-400 in the UK, and expanding all the time. Some of the articles now enjoy a worldwide publication as they have been published on THIS website and can be seen on the ARTICLES page. PERCEPTIONS magazine is free to members of Voices, and membership of Voices is free. Take a look at the LEAFLET to see if you are interested." (before August 2001)
    Perceptions archive began 24.8.2001 - The picture of the magazine appeared between October and December 2001


    5.10.2000 National Voices Forum and Hearing Voices Network Conference in Manchester about Self- Management of Schizophrenia. Ron Coleman was the guest speaker and there was no mention of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship.

    2001 Leaflet THE NEW DRUGS - ARE THEY NO BETTER? - ARE THEY FOR YOU? - ARE YOU BEING ALLOWED TO FIND OUT? - A View on Atypical Antipsychotic Drugs - by Chris Barchard, published

    Early Spring 2001 Zyra started The Actual Zyra website - archive

    Spring 2001 Zyra started The Unofficial Voices website - archive

    July 2001 Zyra opened www.voicesforum.org.uk "Official website of the NATIONAL VOICES FORUM - UK user-led organisation run by mad people for mad people" - archive

    "The website, started in 2001, now contains much of what has been printed in the magazine as well as some longer written pieces and other work, art, cartoons, information about the organisation and other people it supports, conference reports and even some downloadable music composed and played by members. The website was constructed and is managed to this day by a member who has a degree in computer science. Almost everything on it is the work of members and there are well over 300 web pages which are well organised and easy to navigate. This has enabled Perceptions to reach many more people, including those who have no connection with the mental health system." (Chris Barchard 2008/2009

    3.8.2001 First archive of the National Voices Forum leaflet - Revised to become the National Perceptions Forum leaflet in September 2007.

    The Martha Robinson Poetry Prize was relaunched in 2001 after about a decade in abeyance (DVD).

    Terry Simpson won first prize in the Martha Robinson Poetry Competition in 2001 for his poem Rubbish

    The National Schizophrenia Association's Self-Management Project was set up in 2001

    12.6.2001 Recovery in NSF - 'Wild Geese' - A Report on a six months Consultancy on the Recovery Approach - For National Schizophrenia Fellowship by Derek Turner - external download - offline

    3.8.2001 First archive of David Martyn's "The New Self- Management Project at NSF" page. "One strand of the Recovery approach, perhaps the major strand, is self-management."

    5.6.2002 First archive of the Self-Management web page (Never developed - But see David Martyn link

    30.7.2002 The Regaining Control Conference 2002 - Oxford. Organised by National Voices Forum and UK Advocacy Network.

    Peter Campbell won first prize in the Martha Robinson Poetry Competition in 2002 for his poem To Willie Emslie

    19.2.2003 First archive of the Rethink self-managment page

    21.4.2003 First page of archive of Chris Barchard's reply to David Martyn

    6.12.2003 Nina Rideout became a trustee of Rethink

    Louise Glasscoe won first prize in the Martha Robinson Poetry Competition in 2003 for her poem To An Accident of Fate

    18.6.2004 Web archive of leaflet shows addition "and similar conditions" to "NATIONAL VOICES FORUM for those who have experienced schizophrenia and similar conditions"

    Summer 2005 Perceptions - The Magazine of National Voices Forum - Issue 18 - Andrew Roberts collection [Based at Rethink in Kingston - National Worker: Rachel Brett - National Chair: Chris Barchard - Vice-Chair: Clare Crestini - Treasurer: Nina Rideout. - Local groups and contacts in the Midlands - Sheffield - Long Eaton (weekly meetings) - Lincolnshire (Jim - Zyra) - Scarborough - Birmingham (weekly meetings) - South East - Croydon (monthly meetings) - Victoria, London (monthly meetings) - Milton Keynes (monthly meetings) - Brighton and Hove (fortnightly meetings) - Burgess Hill, Sussex (fortnightly meetings) - Wales - Cardiff - Scotland - Edinburgh (Stafford Centre) - Northern Ireland

    Austin Pullen won first prize in the Martha Robinson Poetry Competition in 2005 for his poem Pilgrimage.

    Janey Antoniou won first prize in the Martha Robinson Poetry Competition in 2006 for her poem To Ophelia in London

    Winter 2006 Perceptions - The Magazine of National Voices Forum - Issue 24 - Andrew Roberts collection

    Spring 2007 Perceptions - The Magazine of National Perceptions Forum - Issue 25 - Andrew Roberts collection

    Saturday 14.7.2007 Mad Hatters Party - Queen Square Bath. Organised by Clare Crestani, previously vice-chair of Perceptions Forum

    1.9.2007 National Perceptions Forum 21st birthday party

    September 2007 Printed version of revised National Perceptions Forum leaflet. [A revision of the National Voices Forum leaflet

    December 2007 Web version of revised National Perceptions Forum leaflet.

    Winter 2007 Perceptions - The Magazine of National Perceptions Forum - Issue 28 - Andrew Roberts collection

    Spring 2008 Perceptions - The Magazine of National Perceptions Forum - Issue 29 - Andrew Roberts collection

    September 2008 A Life Beyond Psychiatry address by Chris Barchard at the Manchester Asylum Conference

    September 2008 to February 2009 Three part article by Chris Barchard in the National Unitarian Newsletter charts the history of National Voices/Perceptions Forum.

    copyright 2008 About National Perceptions Forum A 28 minute DVD edited by Chris Barchard. A notice about this was posted on SOLNET on Tuesday 30.6.2009. "DVD of National Perceptions Forum. National Perceptions Forum is a service user/survivor organisation within Rethink and their members have produced a DVD about the history and development of the organisation, with all the filming and editing done by the previous Chair Chris Barchard. The DVD is only £3 including postage and packaging. To order a copy, please contact: Rachel Brett, National Perceptions Forum, Rethink, 89, Albert Embankment, London, SE1 7TP. Tel 0207 840 3085 Cheques payable to: National Perceptions Forum".

    The participants named include: Chris Andrew - Robin Hanau - Keith Hall - Pat Kapeller - Kaz Parker - Sophie - Rachel Brett - Chris Barchard - Zyra.

    December 2010 A "terrible Annual General Meeting of the National Perceptions Forum" which was followed (a year later) by Rethink withdrawing its funding.

    Zyra's website played an important role in keeping Perceptions going as an autonomous organisation. It urged members to complete a questionnaire that was circulated in April 2011 about Perceptions and Rethink, and published detailed results that showed, amongst many other things, that

    "The vast majority of people were involved with Perceptions to receive the magazine. This far outweighed any other reason to be involved. Other reasons were to contribute to the magazine, help others and help peopleïs own recovery."

    When Rethink withdrew the funding for Perceptions, the website published "The New Charter of Perceptions Forum 2012 - The Declaration of Independence of Perceptions Forum now that Rethink have pulled out - We are Perceptions Forum, and we are an independent mad organisation. - We used to be funded by Rethink, but we have never been controlled by Rethink. -

    Perceptions re-grouped outside of Rethink:

    "The outgoing chair's chairmanship expired towards the end of 2011, and we now have staff as follows:

    Chair ... Chris Barchard
    Vice-Chair ... Chris Andrew
    Webmaster ... Zyra ... who also runs Zyra.org.uk

    We have a membership of about six hundred people. We also have an email newsletter list of about four hundred people. However, we are having a bit of trouble with the postal membership list." [Rethink would not let them have it]

    October 2012 Zyra died in Panama

    November/December 2013 Chris Barchard and Graham Estop met in Sheffield and revived the "National Perceptions Forum (formerly known as National Voices Forum)" website http://www.voicesforum.org.uk/wp/. "Dizzy" wrote 3.12.2013 "I really like Chris Barchard's article on why NPF is needed. Well written and very comprehensive!" This is the article:


    Some thoughts on the context of the Forum

    WHY NATIONAL PERCEPTIONS FORUM IS NEEDED

    Chris Barchard

    There are two common misconceptions about the psychiatric system which are implicit in much media coverage of mental illness. The first is that people with severe mental illness are particularly violent. The second is that psychiatry is a gentle caring system of which nobody need be afraid. In fact, apart from a small well-defined minority, mental patients do not represent any more danger to the public than society generally. Many of them are over-passive in fact. They are significantly more likely to be the victims of violence than the rest of society. This contingency is hardly ever mentioned publically. Exceptional cases of extreme violence by people with severe mental illness receive a great deal of media attention.

    The idea that there is anything soft about a mental hospital could only be credible to somebody who has never been inside one with their eyes open. The treatments are mostly drug-based and many of these drugs are extremely unpleasant and also likely to shorten life. Another still commonly used treatment is electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) which can have lasting adverse effects on memory. These treatments are often not given with the free informed consent of patients but with coercion and sometimes force if this fails. Each year a small number of lobotomies are still carried out in the UK although these cannot be forced on patients today. Although the surgery has become more precise the general principle is still the same. There is occupational therapy which involves patients doing very basic tasks, some forms of relaxation therapy and the so-called milieu therapy of the ward. This last is nothing more than removing people's right to privacy and putting them together in an uncongenial environment. The result is invariably a very bad and highly charged atmosphere which is anything but therapeutic. Talking treatments are given a low priority and are severely rationed.

    Far from spending a lot of time talking people through their problems, nurses in mental hospitals fulfil a largely custodial role. They spend a great deal of their time in the ward office and their interactions with patients are basically to observe them, get them up and to bed, call them for meals and attend to basic needs. Treatment involves the administering of tablets and injections in the main as well as herding often heavily drugged patients to where they are given ECT under a full anaesthetic. Psychiatric staff frequently exhibit an officious coldness and relations with patients are usually far from cordial.

    Although patients are referred to as "service users" this is something of an Orwellian misnomer since few have freely chosen to be under psychiatry.

    Psychiatrists offer very little wisdom to their patients, confining themselves mainly to finding out what they need to know to prescribe the physical treatments which are their province. Psychologists and counsellors talk to patients in greater depth but talking treatments can be harrowing.

    The system fosters a culture of creating dependency while at the same time being inimical.

    Mental patients also have to put up with a huge amount of stigma from society which is often unwarranted and rooted in ancient fears of lunacy. The behaviour of those paid to care for them is also often stigmatising. They face the prospect of never obtaining suitable work and living in a subculture within society on very limited incomes, usually dependent on housing associations and council housing if they are to live independently. The problems of mental illness that receive the most attention result in a skewed view of what it is really all about. Patients are often characterised entirely in terms of their problems and as unproductive members of society and not genuinely as people.

    In spite of what one may hear about huge strides being made in psychiatry this basic scenario has remained largely unchanged during the thirty-odd years I have been a patient. However there have been some important developments. There are some markedly better antipsychotic drugs in use now although they are on the whole still life-shortening - in all likelihood to not much less a degree than the older ones. There are a few new anti- epileptic drugs used as mood stabilisers which avoid some of the highly toxic effects of lithium carbonate. This was for a long time the only substance in use to control instability of mood. There are many new drugs in other classes which are not specific to severe mental illness. Community Care, which was really the culmination of a programme to empty the long- stay mental hospitals, which had been going on for many years previously, gave rise to day centres and many mental health community workers who aimed to help people cope in the community. Relations between patients and psychiatric workers outside the institutions tend to be better. However many of the day centres have now closed or changed their function to work rehabilitation, the usefulness of which is highly questionable for many people. Provision of housing has definitely improved. Many who now live in flats would previously have had to put up with bed and breakfast accommodation.

    Unsurprisingly those subjected to this system have much to say about it. Finding a voice has always been hard for them, not least of all because their minds are discredited which amongst other things makes seeking redress for abuse extremely hard. National Perceptions Forum continues to provide an opportunity for them to make their voices heard.

    The culture of the mental health system is very entrenched. We cannot expect change quickly. Probably our best hope is in reaching a new generation who will start the process. The internet is particularly helpful in reaching as wide an audience as possible. Having the opportunity to express views and finding that other people share the same concerns is therapeutic in itself.

    Matthew O'Hara Committee: For Civil Liberties and Community Care

    Established in August 1980 after the death of Matthew O'Hara, an ex-mental hospital inmate who, with others, had worked for human rights to be extended to all human beings: including mental patients.

    Matthew O'Hara Committee News 2. Summer 1981

    Hand produced by patients. Contents included a Committee Report by Jean Milloy - The formation of Inquest: United Campaigns for Justice - Hackney's Psychiatric Units, - old asylums - PROMPT's Second National Antipsychiatry Conference - Hackney Mental Patient's Association - Janet Cresswell [then in Broadmoor] by Bill Warwick 16.6.1981 - Alternatives to prison - Two Hackney Hostels: Vanguard and Carmel's Commune by Joan Hughes (12-13) - Women and prison - A WEA class on alternatives to everything - Mental Handicap - a local probation hostel - the City and Hackney Association for Mental Health and the Community Psychiatric Research Unit (14-15) - and the poem Hungering by David Kessel, the founder of Hackney Mental Patient's Association (22)

    Lawletter masthead

    Lawletter Quarterly magazine published by John Bagge, then at 90 Fawcett Estate, Clapton Common, London E5 9AX, from 1979 to 1983 (17 issues).

    "Lawletter was born in 1979 from the need I, a so-called ordinary person, felt I had to have a fair say in what was going on in the world...

    Everything herein should be treated with healthy sceptism because I am wrong for half of the time like everyone else" (Editorial Autumn 1981) "

    Surviving issues

    1 - November 1979 - "Price 2p/Complimentary copy"
    Single sheet
    Collection of
    Joan Hughes

    (not 2)

    (not 3)

    4 - Third quarter 1980
    Included "Call for inquiry into death of
    Matthew O'Hara"
    Addendum [folded insert] "The Inquest on Matthew Paschal O'Hara"
    Collection of Andrew Roberts

    19.10.1980 Letter from John Bagge to Andrew Roberts attaching a notice of meeting on "Medical Ill-Treatment and Secrecy in our Prisons" at Centerprise Thursday 27.11.1980.

    5 - Fourth quarter 1980
    Collection of
    Andrew Roberts

    6 - First quarter 1981
    Included "
    Matthew O'Hara - Hackney MP asks questions"
    Collection of Andrew Roberts

    7 - Second quarter 1981
    Cover: "Prison Medicos get things half wrong like we all do"
    An insert advertised "Mental Hospitals - Prisons - and Community Alternatives - A Hackney WEA and Matthew O'Hara Committee Class" at
    Centerprise - starting 29.4.1981
    Collection of Andrew Roberts
    Main contents: "Anti-Psychiatry in England" by Swan - (Acknowledgements to Madness Network News)

    8 - Third quarter 1981 - 5p
    Cover: Exclusive: Hackney Social Workers expose pressures on them to have people detained under the 1959 Mental Health Act.
    Collections of
    Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes

    9 - Autumn 1981 - 10p
    Contains "International Psychiatry and the MPL [Mental Patients Liberation] Movement" by
    Anne Swan
    Collections of Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes

    14.1.1982 The New English Mental Health Bill A Lawletter Special Leaflet

    Prompt meeting leaflet 16.1.1982

    10 - January-March 1982 - 10 pence
    Contains book reviews by
    Joan Hughes of Ruth Janca Wajsblum's Women in Prison 1981 and Virginia Beardshaw's Conscientious Objectors at Work 1981
    Collections of Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes

    11 - April-June 1982 - 10 pence
    Cover: "The Silly Side of Psychiatry"
    Collections of
    Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes

    12 - July-September 1982 - 10 pence
    Contains book reviews by
    Joan Hughes of David Stafford-Clark's What Freud Really Said and two books by Thomas Szasz: The Myth of Mental Illness and Ceremonial Chemistry
    Collections of Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes

    13 - October-December 1982 - 10p
    Joan Hughes "Introduction to Book Reviews" criticised Broadmoor for its ban on visits by Peter Thompson and representatives of the Matthew Trust
    Collections of Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes

    14 - January-March 1983 - 10p
    Cover: "Tuberculosis and Homelessness"
    Collections of
    Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes

    15 - April-June 1983 - 10p
    Contains material from Janet Stevenson of
    Depressives Associated on Michael Keith Thynne and on Psychiatric Conditions.
    Collections of Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes

    16 - July-September 1983 - 10p
    Book Reviews by
    Janet Cresswell and Joan Hughes
    Collections of Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes

    17 - October-December 1983 - 10p
    "This is a practically all mental health number" (Editorial)
    Collections of
    Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes

    Joan Hughes' copy of number 17 enclosed the typescript of a review of "Mental Distress in Old Age - Time for Action"

    LINK social club members played a pioneering role in the development of the users movement - See 1984 - The Glasgow Association for Mental Health was founded in 1978 [external link to its website]

    LINK A report from the MIND Information Bulletin December 1981/January 1982

    A COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH SERVICE

    LINK - the Glasgow Association for Mental Health, serves as a community mental health resource centre for the people of Glasgow. To coincide with Scottish Mental Health Week, October 25th-31st, LINK have announced the opening and successful development of three major mental health schemes in Glasgow - the Mental Health Resource Centre, LINK social clubs and the new LINK Social and Activity Centre to be opened in December.

    The Resource Centre offers a range of services to the people using the Centre -people who are seeing their doctor or attending an out-patient clinic and have some kind of mental health problem and who want to find support in collaboration with existing community and welfare services; and for those who have experienced mental illness and hospitalisation, who are now at a point where they want to reestablish an active social life in their community. The Centre offered their service to 82 ex-psychiatric patients during the first 9 months of this year. They provide access to housing and employment schemes as well as advice and information on all aspects of the mental health services within Glasgow. In conjunction with this service, LINK have produced a series of advice leaflets detailing facilities and services available. The fact sheet on housing looks at how to use the services, sources of possible financial help, how to apply for a council house or a rent rebate, and addresses to contact for further advice. The leaflet on employment looks at what employment rehabilitation centres are, and the kind of work which is done in them and the whole range of Government-funded schemes - Training Opportunities, Youth Opportunities and Community Enterprise Schemes. The leaflet also looks at opportunities for sheltered employment - whether an enclave scheme within a firm or as part of a hospital industrial therapy unit. LINK also produce a very helpful listing of the psychiatric hospitals around Glasgow - where they are, how to get to them and visiting hours.

    LINK social clubs are an essential part of the rehabilitation and recovery programme. Common problems shared by LINK members are shyness, isolation, loneliness, difficulty in making friends, lack of personal and social confidence, coming to terms with having been mentally ill, and the feelings of guilt, shame, fear and sense of stigma which still surround being or having been a psychiatric patient. LINK clubs try to meet these problems by offering support, care, understanding and a helping hand when members are feeling down, a place to go to and friends to be with as part of an active social life.

    LINK also offer a range of information and advice services, and courses for professionals, trained or interested in the field of mental health.

    LINK: 3rd Floor, 25 Wellington Street, Glasgow, G2 6JJ. Telephone 014-221 9011/2/3

    Also a sub-office: LINK: 3rd Floor, 57 Muller Street, Glasgow. Telephone 014-221 2834

    1980 Irren-Offensive (Lunatics' or Insane Offensive) established in West Berlin, by survivors.

    1982 Congress in Amsterdam, Nederland. German group visit a Runaway House there.

    1986 Weglaufhausgruppe established within Irren- Offensive. [Weg (away) lauf (run) haus (house/home) gruppe (group)]

    1989 Verein zum Schutz vor Psychiatrischer Gewalt e.V. (Association for Protection against Psychiatric Violence e.V. = eingetragener Verein - registered Association) founded as a mixed group of survivors and other antipsychiatric activists. An Irren- Offensive project.

    1.1.1996 Weglaufhaus (Runaway-house) opened in Berlin.

    The start of operation of the Runaway House as part of Berlin's homeless provisions. 13 places. A women' floor. Anti-psychiatric orientation, alternative to psychiatry, support at weaning from Psychotropic drugs, not diagnoses, transparency, participation of at least 50% Psychiatry in team practice inherited from the Soteria concept of "casual-being" in crisis, support in everyday life and in administrative, legal, financial and housing matters, around the clock.

    July/August 1999 A tour of sites connected with the Nazi extermination of psychiatric patients.

    6.12.2000 First Internet Archive of Die Irren-Offensive website http://www.antipsychiatrie.de/

    October 2010 Irren-Offensive after thirty years

    2.9.2011 and 3.9.2011 "Searching for a Rose Garden. Fostering Real Alternatives to Psychiatry International Conference".

    The Phoenix Patients' Collective

    Phoenix Cooperative Mental Patients' Publication. [no date]

    Openmind April/May 1984 The Phoenix "A twice yearly publication put out by a group of ex-mental patients and sympathisers...The aim is to facilitate communication and understanding of our lives when subject to mental distress, disturbance and breakdown" Phoenix Co-Op, London. (page 18)

    Editor: David Kessel (Introduction). Contributors include: Andrew Gleadal "Sanity and Insanity - A Personal View" - Andrew Roberts 25.10.1983 "The New Mental Health Act" - Dennis R. Dartnell "Green Eyes" - Joan Hughes, a review of On Our Own by Judi Chanberlin - Anthony O'Donnell - Rena Hadjidaki 12.10.1983 "Movement for the Rights of Mental Patients in Greece". There are also pictures by Valerie Roberts and Joan Hughes, a poem "The Tree" by David Kessel, and an anonymous feature relating to women, drawing on Phyllis Chesler's Women and Madness 1972. The feature is, in part or whole, by Janet Cresswell.

    The "launch" on Saturday 23.6.1984 was advertised in leaflets and slips distributed with the first issue.

    Issue two: Phoenix Cooperative People and Psychiatry. [no date] 1984?

    Issue three: Phoenix Cooperative Mental Patients' Publication. [no date - After July 1993] Introduction by David Kessel. Includes a reprint of an article about Control Units from Radical Alternatives to Prison - "A Working Draft to Abolish Psychiatry" from Madness Network News 1986 - "Notes on Schizophrenia" by David Kessel - Poem "Just a Man" (May 1993) by Frank Bangay. Contributions were to be sent to David Kessel (no address given) or Jenny Littlewood or Jan Wallcraft (both at South Bank University)

    HACKNEY MENTAL HEALTH ACTION GROUP

    PROVISIONAL RULES

    Hackney Mental Health Action Group was formed in the summer of 1984 by local patients, ex-patients and other people sympathetic to the aims of increasing the self-determination of mentally distressed people in Hackney. These provisional rules were drafted at meetings in the spring of 1985 and are now (August 1985) being circulated to members for further consideration.

    NAME The name of the association is Hackney Mental Health Action Group.

    AIMS 1. To enhance the individual and collective capacity to cope with and alleviate mental distress

    2. To reduce and eliminate the inequalities created through the experience of mental distress and the fear felt by those unfamiliar with it

    3. To campaign for resources for those suffering from mental distress and for their involvement in the transformation of existing services

    4. To minimize dependence on professional services and to promote alternatives to the medical model of "mental illness"

    5. To promote the greatest self-determination of those suffering mental distress on the basis of informed and realistic choice.

    MEMBERSHIP Membership is open to any past or present user of the psychiatric services or other interested person sympathetic to the aims of the group.

    MEETING ATTENDANCE Any past or present user of the psychiatric services or other interested person is welcomed to meetings; but professionals must first be invited by the group.

    MEETINGS General meetings of the association shall be held as often as the association shall decide, but at least once in every twelve months. The General Meetings may form such committees as are considered necessary to the aims and business of the association, and such committees shall be accountable to the General Meeting.

    OFFICERS The officers of the association shall be its Secretary and Treasurer and such other officers as the General meeting shall from time to time decide.

    VOTING Decisions at any meeting or committee of the association shall be by the majority vote of those members present.

    ALTERATIONS TO THE RULES These rules may be added to, amended or altered by a majority decision of the members present at a General Meeting of the Association.

    Psychiatric Oppression - Demonstration video begun 1984 and completed 1985. The tape was made to try to interest Channel 4 in doing a programme. The VHS video cassette begins with quote in text by Dr David Hill [Black and White], the rest is in colour.

    Report from Mark Cresswell 11.4.2010

    This video has now been converted to a DVD by the Special Collections at Glasgow University and is in excellent condition.

    It consists of excerpts from a series of interviews organised according to the following themes:
    1) psychiatric knowledge/the psychiatric system;
    2) the major tranquillisers;
    3) ECT;
    4) Opposing/changing the 'system'

    It is topped and tailed by statements from David Hill, the introductory statement in written form, the closing statement an impassioned plea to camera. The end credits say this:

    "This tape has been made with Mike Lawson, Frank Bangay, CAPO, and members of Network. Completion was made possible by funding from MIND, resources and facilities from Swindon Cable and Media Arts."
    Contacts are given as Steve Ticktin for the Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry and Frank Bangay at CAPO. It was a 'Multiple Image' production.

    The interviewees, in order of appearance, are: Eric Irwin - Frank Bangay - Peter Ross - Stephen Ticktin - Peter Campbell - Larry Gostin - Dee Kraiij - Mary Barnes - Michael Meacher - Joe Bidder - R.D. Laing Mike Lawson - David Hill

    The written opening sequence from David Hill is:

    "In the USSR the use of psychiatry for political purposes is well-known. In Britain the use of psychiatry for political purposes is well disguised. Its political function is to discredit and silence us when we buckle under the strain of living in an alienating and competitive society. In Britain ethnic minorities are more likely than the rest of the population to be incarcerated...the working class are several times more likely...We call what occurs in the...USSR: psychiatric oppression. What, then, should we call the targeting of electric shocks and brain-damaging or addictive chemicals at specific oppressed groups in Britain?"

    Title: PSYCHIATRIC OPPRESSION

    Here's some excerpts;

    1. Psychiatric knowledge/the psychiatric system

    Eric Irwin: " an apparatus of social control...in the final analysis its purpose is to maintain the ascendance of a dominant class...who own the means of production....mental distress...none succumb but the predestined. But who are these predestined persons? Well, of course, those who succumb. A circular argument. Logic was never a strong point of psychiatry."

    Frank Bangay: "We don't torture people - it's more subtle."

    Steve Ticktin: "The very attempt at objectifying human behaviour becomes a way of determining it."

    2. The Major Tranquillisers

    Dee Kraiij: "If you don't take the tablets...'we'll put you on a section'....There's a certain amount of sheer dishonesty...you're told that what you're taking will make you sleep better"

    Peter Campbell: "The mental patient...isn't able to have the information he needs to put his treatment in perspective...This is hypocritical... I was on Depixol and I was not given an anti-parkinsonian drug to combat the side-effects."

    Larry Gostin: "tardive dyskenesia"

    Steve Ticktin: "extra-pyramidal side-effects...prn medication...needed more by the staff than the patients"

    Frank Bangay: "Largactil has taken the place of the straight-jacket."

    3. ECT

    Joe Bidder: "reminds me of Auschwitz or Treblinka...they know they're going to be brutalised..."

    Dee Kraiij: "the possibility of permanent brain damage."

    Peter Campbell: "ECT is used as a threat..."

    R.D. Laing: "If you feel that the treatment you're getting is persecuting then that's absolutely spot on for a diagnosis of being paranoid...then you need more electric shocks."

    Michael Meacher MP: "There is over-prescription of drugs."

    4. Opposing/changing the 'system'

    Mike Lawson: "I feel lucky to have escaped with my life ...We need to represent ourselves because no-one else can possibly understand...we feel betrayed...we have to get together and support each other so that we can find a voice that will have some effect..."

    David Hill: "Change will not come from the top...Anything is better than a psychiatrist...There's a political function to psychiatry and that's to convince everyone of us that if we get upset about living in this alienating...society, then there's something wrong with you...To convince us of that is an integral part of right-wing thinking...They need that myth...."

    Mind Annual Conference October 1984 (London)

    A group of service users from several of the Link clubs of Glasgow Association for Mental Health gave a presentation "Life after Mental Illness". This was the first time that service users had done this at a Mind Annual Conference and their motivation had come from attending the 1983 conference at which no service users gave any presentations or ran any workshops.

    The presentation, which had an enormous impact, was in the form of a tape-slide programme in which six service users spoke of their experiences and this was interspersed with their comments on key issues such as policy, discrimination and employment. After the presentation all six service users answered questions from conference delegates.

    The six service users were - Christine Cowan, Vince Edkins, Thomas 'Tam' Graham, John McManus, Elvira Roffey and Charlie Reid.

    They called themselves Education and Action in Mental Health Group - Link/Glasgow Association for Mental Health.

    The group feature on the 1985 video Speaking from Experience, talking about their work and the tape-slide presentation. They also agreed for a video copy of the tape-slide presentation to be made, and this is preserved by Thurstine Basset. [Glasgow Link Tape Slide (on video) - 49 minutes]

    Two of the service users, Tam Graham and Charlie Reid, became founding members of Survivors Speak Out in 1986. They used the tape-slide programme in group training and education workshops at a number of the early conferences where "users" started "getting a voice" (Peter Campbell).

    Charlie Reid died in the early 1990s. He was so well known and respected in Glasgow that he subsequently had a day centre in Glasgow named after him. "Charlie Reid Centre" "Choose Life Project" [document Updated 13.10.2006] "The Charlie Reid Centre is open to anyone over the age of 16 who live within Glasgow City and its surrounding areas and whose life is affected by serious mental health problems and/or at risk of suicide." (external link)

    Tam Graham was influential in setting up the UK Advocacy Network. He was a Trustee for many years - probably from the beginning. Tam was UKAN Treasurer when Terry Simpson went to work there in 1993. Terry remembers him unfurling a banner with a radical message from the balcony directly behind the podium at a MIND conference on which the Minister of Health was speaking. He cannot remember where this was or who the speaker was - maybe someone else will remember? It was in the 1990s sometime. (email from Terry 20.11.2008).

    Peter Campbell (2005) wrote "In the summer of 1985, service user activists from the United Kingdom met activists from other countries at the Mind/World Federation of Mental Health Congress in Brighton, a coming together that underlined the potential for collective campaigning in this country. That autumn's Annual Mind Conference in Kensington Town Hall was the first national mental health event at which service users made a significant contribution to the programme [But see 1984]. The following year, in January 1986, Survivors Speak Out, the first national network for service users involved in action, was established. At this time, Nottingham Patients' Council Support Group was beginning its work, pioneering collective and individual advocacy. By the end of 1987, National Voices, a service user network within the National Schizophrenia Fellowship (now Rethink) and Mindlink, a similar network within Mind, were up and running and Survivors Speak Out had organised the first national conference of service user activists over a weekend at Edale Youth Hostel. It could well be said that something exciting was beginning to get underway".

    World Mental Health Conference, Mental Health 2000, held in Brighton from 14.7.1985 to 19.7.1985.

    This was the conference to which English user groups were not invited, but patient representatives from the USA, Holland and Denmark were (as speakers) and Glasgow Link were as audience. Patients were present as individual members of Mind, and Ingrid Barker, Development Officer for Nottingham Mind, brought service users with her. Some English patient activists set up a protest stall outside the conference and the outraged overseas visitors negotiated their English comrades entry into the conference. Glasgow Link clubs had make a presentation at Mind's own Annual Meeting in 1984.

    Judi Chamberlin attended as a speaker.
    David Brandon attended as a speaker.
    Dunya Breur (Amsterdam) attended as a speaker.
    Egon Gad Johansen attended as a speaker.
    Jorgen Klitten (Denmark) attended as a speaker.

    16.7.1985 Clients participation in Psychiatric Hospitals. Introduction by Hans Wiegant, chairman of the National Organisation for Inhabitants Councils in the Mental Health Care in the Netherlands, gives a history of the Dutch organisation going back to 1970.

    Later in the year, Wouter van de Graaf from the Dutch Clients Union was invited to Nottingham - This led to the establishment of Nottingham Advocacy Group



    Charter Mental Health 2000. Brighton Declarations on the Rights of Mentally Ill People and the promotion of Mental Health.

    One of the themes was taken over by mental health service users, excluding others. They did not accept the workshop format and produced a declaration as their contribution.

    "I got quite involved in Brighton, working out a declaration on 'self and citizen advocacy'... Most of it is liberal but I think our section (Part 2) is pretty radical" (Judi Chamberlin to Andrew Roberts and Valerie Argent 30.7.1985)
    PART 2: SELF-DETERMINATION, AS A HUMAN RIGHT ITS IMPLICATION FOR "MENTAL HEALTH" SERVICES

    We, the Declaration Group on Self and Citizen Advocacy, declare the following:-

    1. Distress is a common human experience. All human beings at times feel sadness or despair, fear or anxiety, loneliness or isolation, frustration and anger. Further, we may all at times need help to express or understand these experiences.

    We reject the belief that those suffering from all forms of emotional distress have a medical condition called "mental illness" and that others are necessarily mentally "healthier". We believe that the conversion of acute or severe distress and problems in living into "mental illness" is a gross distortion of reality. It is unhelpful to those who are then "treated", and to the rest of society where individuals themselves fear becoming one of the stigmatised.

    2. The "mental health" system endorses and promotes the values and ideology of an unequal society. It is often the discomfort and intolerance of others, rather than the person's own experience of distress and desire for help, which leads to incarceration and "treatment". It is known that people who are oppressed because of sex, age, race, and class experience more life problems and are at greater risk of being psychiatrically labelled. We note the contribution of unemployment and of cultural and financial poverty to people's distress. We denounce the administration of psychotropic drugs and other "treatments" which dull or suppress human responses. The labelling, stigmatising, incarceration, and "treatment" of those who deviate from predominant social norms serve the interests of a powerful minority who gain profit and status. The conflicts which exist within society are thereby obscured, and estangement and marginalisation increased.

    3. Most psychiatric "treatments" are harmful. They can cause physical damage such as permanent memory loss from ECT, tardive dyskinesia from phenothiazines, and kidney damage from lithium. All physical "treatments" can cause strange and distressing sensations, as well as numbing and invalidating the person's experience and responses. In addition, institutionalisation itself causes physical debilitation. The overall effect of most "treatments" is to control people's sensations or "symptoms" and pacify them, rather than to help them to work through their experiences and act effectively to change the circumstances contributing to their distress.

    People who already feel helpless, insecure and victimised suffer further loss of dignity, respect, self-worth and personal power in the "mental health" system.

    4. Advocacy is a process through which individuals and groups articulate and pursue their needs and interests. This process necessarily involves conflict with a "mental health" system which creates passivity and dependency.

    Aims and objectives

    We propose:-

    1. The abolition of:-

    i) involuntary detention in psychiatric institutions;

    ii) compulsory "treatment" in psychiatric settings of all sorts, prisons, and all other institutions;

    iii) solitary confinement and restraints;

    iv) all destructive "treatments", in particular ECT and psychosurgery, and financial compensation for all those who have been damaged by "• these procedures.

    2. So long as psychiatric services in their present form remain, we call for:

    i) the giving of full and complete information about psychiatric drugs, legal rights, and the availablity of non-medical alternatives to every patient as a matter of right;

    ii) the guaranteed right of all patients to refuse any unwanted services;

    iii) all patients to have access to all notes and records, and to have the right to amend them;

    iv) complete confidentiality unless the patient consents to release of information;

    v) all patients to have an independent person of their choice to help represent them and assist them to voice their own wishes. These advocates must have guaranteed access to patients whenever patients request their assistance, and have legal status to represent them;

    vi) the setting up and development of autonomous patient groups and councils which will give patients collectively the power to determine how their needs and interests will be realised.

    3. With regard to the pharmaceutical industry:-

    i) patients must never be used in pharmaceutical or experimental trials;

    ii) financial compensation should be given to victims of tardive dyskinesia and other drug effects; !

    iii) independent research should be carried out concerning all effects of drugs and other procedures.

    4. The reallocation of public finances to create and develop a wide range of non-medical resources for all people in distress, including:-

    i) free and readily available supportive attention from either peers or professionals, as the person chooses, based on equality and mutual respect;

    ii) refuge for any person if and when she/he wants it, in small-scale, caring environments;

    iii) independent alternative services run and controlled by patients and ex-patients.

    5. Housing needs are primary. People's housing needs must be met in accordance with their choice. Independent of psychiatric interventions.

    6. Provision be made for re-entry of ex-patients into the labour market, at prevailing wages and at a level commensurate with their education, skills and interests. A guaranteed minimum income must be provided for all those without work.

    7. Autonomous patient and ex-patient groups should have the ultimate say in planning and evaluating all services, and those found unsatisfactory must be closed.

    8. Profit be eliminated from all forms of medical care and social services.

    What we demand are plain and simple human rights in accordance with the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which have not yet been achieved for most of the world's population, and which is our goal to achieve "mental health" in the year 2000.

    The meeting after Peter Campbell was told that Ingrid Barker; her partner Edward Peck; Lorraine Bell and Helen Smith decided, the day after the Brighton Conference, to secure funds and organise the meeting that became Minstead Lodge. See also Barker and Peck 1987

    Speaking from Experience - 1985

    A video about user involvement, in two parts:

    1. User involvement in the United Kingdom - Reporting on Coventry Crisis Intervention Centre - Libra Self-help Groups - Link/Glasgow Association for Mental Health - North Derbyshire Mental Health Services Project - Overview of Advocacy.

    2. User involvement in Holland - Reporting on Patients' Councils - Patient Advocates - Clients' Union - NUTS housing scheme.

    Speaking from Experience is 70 minutes long (38 minutes introduction and UK plus 32 minutes Holland and Conclusion) - there is a small booklet to accompany the video.

    Thurstine Basset was working for ESCATA (East Sussex Consultancy and Training Agency), a local government public company that made videos and produced training packs in the health and social care field. (Made video-based training materials.)

    Collaboration for Change (January 1988) says (page 6) that Glasgow Link "has produced with ESCARTA" (misspelt) "a video-based training package for mental health workers". Relevant address given as "LINK: Glasgow Association for mental Health, 2 Queens Crescent, Glasgow".

    Mainly funded by the King's Fund. Thurstine wrote to the King's Fund and they agreed a grant. It was shot during early 1985 and hence was ready to be shown (by Thurstine) for the first time at the 1985 World Congress of Mental Health in Brighton in early July. It then featured in the Mind Annual Conference in November 1985.

    The video was subsequently used as an aid in the setting up of patient's councils in Nottingham and Newcastle in 1986.

    Link Clubs are self support groups of people who have or have had a mental health illness and their carers. The Glasgow Link Clubs are the indirect origin of Survivors History. See 25.10.1981 - LINK 1981 - MIND 1983 - MIND 1984 - World Congress 1985 - Speaking from Experience - History of the history group - 30.11.2004

    HACKNEY WEA

    YOUR MIND IN THEIR HANDS

    Tutor: Jim Read (Ex-mental patient)

    Have you ever been a patient in a mental hospital? attended a day centre? had electric shock treatment? taken tranquillisers or anti-depressants? felt you were going mad?

    THEN THIS IS THE COURSE FOR YOU.

    During the nine weeks of the course we will think about such issue as:

    * who decides what 'mental illness' is and how.

    * why some people, black people, gays and lesbians, elderly people, women; are more likely to end up in mental hospitals than others.

    * whether there can be a society where mental illness doesn't exist

    We will learn from each other by sharing our own experiences through paired listening, 'going round the group' and discussion.

    The course will be held in the basement at Centerprise, 136 Kingsland High Street, Hackney, London, E8 2NS

    It will take place on Tuesday afternoons between 2 and 4pm.

    The first meeting will be on Tuesday September 17th 1985

    It will cost £9 if you are waged, £1.80 if your are not

    Hackney Workers' Educational Association with Centerprise Trust

    MIND, 1985. Paperback with 25 pages. Lindsey Dyer talked to four people who have important things to say about the treatment, care and support they received while they were mentally ill

    Lindsey Dyer was Regional Director of MIND - See origin of DATA

    - became Director of the Patients Advice Bureau, North West Regional Health Authority - commissioned mental health services in Liverpool -

    Lindsey Dyer became Director Service Users and Carers at Mersey Care NHS Trust. On
    16.3.2006, she said the Trust was the best example of service user involvement in the country: service users have the right to have a say in what affects their lives and there is a rights based approach to treatment. There is leadership from the top to get service user involvement into the culture of the organisation and service users are just as important a resource as the paid staff. There is also encouragement to help the transition from being a service user to becoming a paid member of staff and service users are encouraged into employment with the Trust.

    Between 1985 conferences [Email from Frank Bangay 3.4.2010]

    How CAPO got involved with the [Autumn 1985] MIND conference was that after the Mental Health 2000 conference in Brighton MIND wanted to involve us. This included someone coming to CAPO meetings to discus it with us.

    At the mental health 2000 conference we saw a debate between Doctor Anthony Clare and his medical colleagues, and some American survivors. Anthony and his mates were speaking from the platform with microphones while the American survivors were speaking from the floor without microphones. As such you could not hear them that well. Anthony and his mates of course won the debate.

    As such we were reluctant to speak at the 1985 MIND conference. But MIND reassured us that it would not be like that.

    At the time Consumer seemed to be the new buzz word. We felt that we did not have choice in the treatments we received, so we were not really consumers. So we titled our talk Who Are The Consumers?. Eric Irwin gave a powerful speech. I think he was pleased to have a platform to express his views. His famous quote was , that he considered himself to be as much a consumer of psychiatry as a woodlouse would consider itself to be a consumer of Rentokil services.

    I organised the entertainments for the 1985 and 1986 MIND conferences. I can not remember that one very well. Our relationship with MIND was not always a smooth one. But for a couple of years it ran quite smoothly.

    Mind Annual Conference 1985
    'From Patients to People'
    28.11.1985 and 29.11.1985
    Kensington Town Hall, Hornton Street, London, W8

    For the first time Mind targeted their annual conference on service users, who were the key target group to attend. Key service user activists gave presentations (Peter Campbell, David Brandon and Service Users from Link/Glasgow) and others ran workshops. There were workshops from CAPO (Campaign against Psychiatric Oppression), The British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry, Bristol Women and Mental Health Group, North Derbyshire Mental Health Services Project (Tontine Road Centre), 42nd Street in Manchester and Camden Mental Health Consortium. (Tessa Jowell, then Assistant Director at Mind, also ran a workshop).

    Items in Thurstine Basset's collection include copies of the programmes

    Was this the beginning of something new or a new beginning for something that had been growing for a long time?

    Peter Campbell recalls that there was a meeting of service users immediately after the conference and from that meeting Survivors Speak Out was founded.

    1985/1986 Entertainments: Frank Bangay organised poetry and music gigs for the Mind Conferences in 1985 and 1986. The 1985 one (about four hours) was held in a pub near Oxford Circus. (The conference was at Kensington Town Hall). The 1986 entertainments (at about the same time of the year) took place in a pub in Parsons Green, Fulham. (The conference was at Hammersmith)

    Seminar A1. Getting to Know You "A North Manchester Health Authority project setting out an individual approach to the planning of services"
    Seminar A2. Bristol Women and Mental Health Group - See Summer 1986
    Seminar A3. "The Wrong End of the Telescope" - See Andrew Hughes' memories
    Seminar A4. Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression "Members speak about their experiences of mental health services and discuss their manifesto" - See also seminar B2 - See Summer 1986
    Seminar A5. "Closed MIND? Are MIND's basic aims and assumptions wrong? Does MIND really combat prejudice and negative stereotypes, or does it reinforce them?" Robert Dando
    Seminar A6. "Handing over control - it helps" ... "Members of the North Derbyshire Mental Health Service Project, who took control over their services, will look at what is involved in giving people the power to run their own services, its benefits and its problems". - See Andrew Hughes' memories - See Summer 1986
    Seminar B1. "Increasing Personal Value - An experimental workshop run by David Brandon"
    Seminar B2, chaired by Mike Lawson, was "Psychiatry in descent - a critical medley on contemporary psychiatry" by The British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry. Dr Stephen Ticktin gave a "brief history" of the network - Shula Ramon made "a critical appraisal of the future plans for British psychiatric services" - Eric Irwin and Frank Bangay spoke on "Who are the consumers?" (See also seminar A4) - Rosette Rozenberg, Nick Simans, John O'Hoolihan and Kevin O'Sullivan spoke on "Community alternatives to the big bins" - and Thomas Sulzer spoke on "Sulzer's 'brain' syndrome; a holographic look at psychiatry and the community". - See Summer 1986
    Seminar B3. Speaking from Exerience
    Seminar B4. "Human Alternatives to Psychiatry - Why that are needed, what they will be, how cane we create them. - Workshop led by Lorraine Bell Clinical Psychologist" [It was at this conference that Lorraine Bell first met Peter Campbell] - See Summer 1986
    Seminar B5. "The politics of mental health - the role that MIND groups could play"... "...informed by the work of Manchester MIND on the development of policies and strategies to promote change".
    Seminar B6. "Changing our ways - steps towards redundancy" ... ""Workers of the North Derbyshire Mental Health Service Project - See Summer 1986
    Seminar B7. "People, patients, powerlessness. Is the psychiatric system a servant or a master?" Peter Campbell and Alban Wiseman "A user and a professional lead a discussion on the potential and limits of the current system" [In 1986 MIND published a 19 page booklet by Harry Reid and Alban Wiseman called "When the talking has to stop: community care in crisis; the case of Banstead Hospital". - See Summer 1986
    Seminar C1. "The politics of schizophrenia" by " Dave Hill, Clinical Psychologist". "A summary of the research demonstrating the inadequacy of the 'medical model': a) the lack of scientific basis for the construct of schizophrenia; b) the political bias in the diagnostic process; c) the psychological and physical damage inflicted by 'medical' treatments; d) the political function and implications of a medical approach. Discussion of an alternative approach: a) outline of a socialist-feminist approach to caring; b) the barriers to progress; c) ways forward.
    Seminar C2. "On top or on tap? Providing a framework for consumerism". Stuart Etherington, Director, Good Practices in Mental Health
    Seminar C3. "Changing staff attitudes" Tessa Jowell, Assistant Director, MIND and Andy Mack, COHSE representative from Exeter DHS
    Seminar C4. 42nd Street: Gilli Painter, Kathy Singh, Kevin Ryan, Mike Nolan and Dennis Murnaghan. "A group of consumers and workers discuss consultation procedures..."
    Seminar C5. Users and workers changing the scheme Camden Mental Health Consortium - See Summer 1986
    Seminar C6. Speaking from Exerience
    Seminar C7. Multi-racial problems. Buddy Larrier.
    Seminar C8. Professional implications.

    Andrew Hughes. Email 1.4.2010

    The 1985 Mind National conference was the first I had ever attended. A group of us had resurrected Oldham Mind. Some of that group went to the Conference and to Mind's Annual Meeting, held directly afterwards, I think. We proposed that all Mind Management Committees should have a minimum 50% representation of service users. We had quite a lot of support, though plenty of local associations were very, "our members are not ready for this", if you know what I mean. Eventually, there was a resolution to make one of the requirements of affiliation to Mind as a local association, "that at least two members of the Management Committee should be service users". We kept the 50% clause in the rules for Oldham Mind, until it imploded again several years later.

    I remember the 'Tontine Road Centre' workshop very well. I thought what they were doing was marvellous. They described a 'role reversal' day they had held. I mischievously asked "whether they had actually given any of the psychiatrists taking part an injection". With what looked like a very straight face, one of the presenters said, "Oh no; they would never let us do that." I'm still laughing about that today.

    I was pleased to have played a part in "Wrong End of the Telescope" produced by Lindsey Dyer, a stalwart of North West Mind, David Brandon's 'right hand person', and for a long time, and still, a great ally of survivors. In the pamphlet, my pseudonym was Stephen. I am still laughing at that 1980s version of me, though pleased that I did eventually achieve some of my life ambitions expressed then.

    Asylum A Magazine for Democratic Psychiatry

    Asylum 1986- 2002

    "Lin Bigwood and Phil Virden had similar ideas about a magazine as we did in Sheffield. For several years Phil did much of the work almost in the way in which Terry McLaughlin does now." (Alec Jenner. Founding Editor of Asylum - Writing in 2002 - See internet archive 2.1.2003)

    Asylum 2010 - present

    Terry McLaughlin died 4.9.2007. Phil Virden has again been editor since the re-launch in March 2010 - Helen Spandler is now Managing Editor. The magazine is run by an editorial collective.

    Link to present publisher - order Asylum

      Link to current website

    In 2006, Asylum had been in continuous production for twenty years. Its 2007 website remained online until early 2011 - See Internet Archive of website from 2.1.2003 from 2017. Our archive preserves website as it was between the death of Terry McLaughlin and its re-constructed in the Spring (early March?) of 2011

    Asylum flyer 2018

    The Asylum history of Asylum is a develpment Alec Jenner's 2002 history (above)


    Anne Plumb has an almost complete set up to volume 15, no 2 (2006). She is missing Volume 2, no. 4. This index (under construction) is based on Anne's work. 1986 - 1987 - 1988 - 1989 - 1990 - 1991 - 1992 - 1993 - 1994 - 1995 - 1996 - 1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2010 -

    Issues and contents

    Asylum Vol.1 no.1 Spring 1986.
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes -
    Italian mental health reform:
    F Basaglia - democratic psychiatrist. Dr Jenner
    ITALY and the legitimation of psychaitry. Dr Alec Jenner
    In Italy nurses grow and mental hospitals fade away. Giovanna Battaglia- Psychiatric nurse. Trieste.
    Resisting Doctor's Power:
    1: ECT - the conscience clause. Lin Bigwood
    Resistance :2. the British Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry.
    Resistance: 3 Campaign Against Psychriatic Oppression.
    Resistance: 4 Patient Power
    Resistance 5. Some Everyday Horror Stories, and a recommendation. Philp George
    The Politics of Madness or Britain's Secret Police Force. Dr David Hill (from Labour Briefing, October 1985)
    Sanity, Madness and the Psychiatric profession. Lin Bigwood, RMN, talks to R.D. Laing.
    Improving the Quality of Mental Health Care - Now. Rick Hennelly.
    The MIND Conference 28-29 November 1985. Lin Bigwood.
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices
    Post-psychotic sanity Jim Sheen

    Asylum Vol.1 no.2 Summer 1986
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes -
    Tony Benn at the Tontine Road Community Care Mental Health Centre. Interviewd by Rick Hennelly.
    Power to the Patients: 1. The Dutch Clients' Councils. Hans Weigant.
    Power to the Patients: 2. Empowering the patients: 2.Empowering the Patient from Nottingham - MIND, Social services and Health Authority. Ingrid Peck: Mind development worker. Andrew Lowe. Nottingham Social Services Development Officer for Mental Health. Edward Peck: Nottingham Health Authority, Sector Team Adminsitrator, Mental Illness Unit
    Power to the Patients: from the Gatehouse. Peter Campbell
    Power to the Patients: 4. Democracy and Community mental health care. Dr. Malcolm Peet.(Chesterfield) Interviewed by Lin Bigwood and Philip George.(Peet produced guidelines to help people come off major tranquillisers Copy in archive. AP)
    The Case for ECT. Professor F.A. Jenner and Dr D.N Vlissides.
    Against Shock - A reply to Professor Jenner and DN.Vlissides. Lin Bigwood and Philip George.
    Surviors Speak Conference 1986, To be organised after discussion with the groups.

    Manchester Mind returned as "racist"

    Asylum Vol.1 no.3 Autumn 1986
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes -
    Lin Bigwood Interviews People at Minnow. (printers. Huddersfield)
    Report from Iceland. Gedhjalp mental patients rights organisation.
    Making Millions from 'Madness'. Gail Armstrong. On concentration camps in Germany and mental health camps in South Africa. Links to IG Farben (Germany) and Rockerfeller (US)
    National Schizophrenia fellowship Sheffield group. Community Care for the Mentally Ill. Olive Hind.
    Anne Plumb's letter on Racism and Sexism in Asylum (Robert Crumb's cartoons). Philip George replies..
    Personal accounts. Survivors voices
    Psychiatric Admission. 16 year old girl
    Learning to say No. letter. Lesley Murphy.
    ECT. Letter from "D. White" of Hackney [Donnard?]

    Asylum Vol.1 no 4. Winter 1987
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    What is Mental Health? Phoenix Cooperative.
    Human Alternatives to Psychiatry. Lorraine Bell
    For A Real Change. British Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry.
    Mind Conference and plans for 1987. Wouter van de Graaf.

    Asylum Vol.2 no 1. Spring 1987
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    Network news. Stephen Ticktin. BNAP
    Survivors Speak Out Conference September 1987 (notice)
    Don't Ban ECT - Limit Its Use and Study It Properly. Professor F.A. Jenner and Dr. DN Vlisside
    "The Violence of Psychiatry". Stephen Ticktin. British Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry. BNAP
    Manchester Labour party proposals for mental health. Mary Kelly and Bill Gatley.
    Leeds MIND's Group Homes. Lin Bigwood interview Mary Greenwood. (Leeds Mind Project)
    Democracy in Mental Health Services. Contribution from Lorraine Bell to proposed Socialist Health Alliance document
    The Role of the Court in Suppressing Efforts to End Torture. Electroshock Ban Struck Down.
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices
    To Schizophrenai and back. V.L
    Treat me as an individual not as a disease. By a Male
    Anorexic. Philip Hutchinson.

    Asylum Vol.2 no 2. Summer 1987
    Collection of: Anne Plumb - Joan Hughes
    The Psychiatric Holocaust. Peter. R. Breggin. From Libertarian reprints.
    Anti-psychiatry in the 1980s. Andy Porter. Brighton based mental health worker.
    Electro-shock is torture. Jenny Miller. Reprinted from the Daily Californian 30.4.1987
    Testimonies from survivors of electroconvulsive therapy
    The Stigma. WA Martin
    Network study day on the uses, abuses, and alternatives to ECT and major tranquillisers.
    Survivors Network newsline
    Forthcoming Survivors Speak Out Conference Edale 1987
    British Network for Alternative to Psychiatry redefining aims and objectives
    CAPO. Mentions meetings, manifesto, gigs (Troubador, Earls Court).
    Ealing Mental Health Action Group (been in existence just over one year. Concentrating on issues of compulsory treatment in the community (Government proposal) and ECT locally
    Camden Consortium - Working on code of good practice (in AP Archive)
    Islington Mental Health Forum. Premises secured.. Concerned about closure of Frien-Barnet Hospital. Set up Frien Barnet Interest group
    Hackney Mental Health Action Group. Produced Charter of Rights for People in Mental Distress (AP Archive)
    Westminster Mental Health Action group
    Brighton 'Insight'. 2 months old.
    Winchester Mental Health Action Group
    Bristol: Womankind and Bristol Survivors and crisis line
    Nottingham Patient's Council Support Group (NPCSG)
    New Patient's Council Support Group being established at Southampton
    Chesterfield 'Contact'. Expanding. Looking for full time worker for North West Derbyshire. Hope this may become ECT free area.
    MIND Consumer Advisory Network. Steering group set up. Decided co-ordinator would necessarily be a consumer.
    Irish Mental Health Forum. Aims and objectives include promotion of mental health care of the Irish in Britain., to develop awareness, at the Irish dimension in Mental health Care in the community, to provide a forum for Irish users. to develop a funding and training strategy.
    Asclepian. Homes for new beginnings. (Wandsworth. London)

    Asylum Vol.2 no 3. Winter 1988
    Collection of Helen Spandler moved to Andrew Roberts May 2017.
    Listed in the following issue as covering "Community Treatment Orders; The experience and lay-treatment of madness; Survivors's 1st conference"

    Asylum Vol.2 no 4. Spring 1988
    Collection of: Andrew Roberts (from Frank Bangay)
    Cover: "Will he jump...Or can you give him a reason to live?"
    Contents: How to come off psychiatric drugs. 4. Patients' Advocacy in Holland. Users' Councils in Holland. Users' Councils in Nottingham. Survivors and Network News. Directory. Experience of Schizophrenia. Could Psychiatry ever care? Summer at Tooting Bec. Epilepsy. Mental Health Services in Nicaragua. A letter from Errol Francis. Coordinator, Afro- Caribbean Mental Health Association. Review of a collection of Franco Basaglia's writings and another of Consumers as Colleagues by the Brandons. Explaining it Away: A typology of Cheering Therapeutic remarks

    Asylum Vol.3 no 1 Summer 1988
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. -
    Contains Frank Bangay's obituary of Eric Irwin as part of a CAPO tribute.

    Asylum Vol.3 no 2 Winter 1988/1989
    Collection of: Helen Spandler

    Quarterly? 1989 rate £3.20p for 4 issues. Cheques payable to ASYLUM, c/o Professor F. A. Jenner, O Floor, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield, S10 2JF.

    Asylum Vol.3 no 3 April 1989
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. -

    the CAPO interview: (pages 4-8) November 1986 interview with Eric Irwin and Frank Bangay

    To be ourselves - challenging the abuses of psychiatry by Jim Read, from Peace News 3.7.1987 (Asylum page 9) References include:
    Video Speaking from Experience. Concord Films Council
    We're not mad, We're angry Multiple Image
    Psychiatric Oppression. Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression [??]
    Finding Our Own Solutions: Women's experience of Mental health care.?1989 MIND (leafltet AP Archive)

    Italy -10 years of reform. Maria Grazia Giannichedda. Pages 10-14

    "Bogus breakthrough" by David Hill from Observer 20.11.1988 (Asylum page 14)

    Survivor news (Pages 15-16)
    LAMHA, MIND in Camden and National MIND organised a demonstration (3.3.1987) against images used in Stop The Madness campaign. SANE (Schizophrenia. A National Emergency). Letters of complaint to Advertising Standards Agency led to an investigation of the campaign.
    Survivors Speak Out Self Advocacy Pack (AP Archive)
    MIND Consumer Network. National MIND makes 'user-involvement' one of its main priorities for the near future
    Treated Well? A Code of practice for Psychiatric Hopitals produced by Camden Consortium and ~ Good Practices in Mental Health. (AP Archive)
    Making sense of nonsense. Get-together in Sheffield. Brian Davey.
    About refuges. Meryl Fowkes, Denton, opens discussion on refuges (Point 2 on Edale Charter of needs and wants.)
    Launch of Wales Advocacy Group
    Sharing Power. Video made by members of MIND in Camden. On user involvement in a local MIND mental health association
    Breakdown. A cassette by Mike Lawson. Available from MIND
    Myth of Schizophrenia and Genetics. Peter Breggin. Conference address.
    Tape Psychiatry and the Holocaust. Peter Breggin and Jeffrey Masson.
    Conference address. Tape.

    "Advocacy by a user" by Alan Hartman, (user) Vice-chair, Group Advocate, Manchester Users' Support Group. Pages 16-18

    Down with SANISM by M. Fears
    Directory (April 1989) includes:
    Glasgow: LINK, 2 Queens Crescent, Glasgow, G4 1QU
    South Wales Mental Health Consumers Network, c/o Eddie Somers, Ty Gwyn, 49 Loychurch Rises, Gibbensdown, Barry, S. Wales.
    Irish Mental Health Forum, c/o Camden IBRG, 112 Camden High Street, London, London, NW1 OLU

    Asylum Vol.3 no 4 July 1989
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Joan Hughes
    New editorial contacts: Mark Greenwood, Harpurhey Health Centre, Rochdale Road, Manchester 8 - Paul Baker. MACC, 4th Floor, 274 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 4FT - Katy Malcolm, 19 Pinner Road, Sheffield, S11 8UG
    [Email from Mark Greenwood: "I was involved in producing Asylum with Paul Baker and Nigel Rose between 1989 and 1994"]
    " Hearing Voices. Paul Barker" [Baker] "of Manchester Mind writes about the ideas and researches of Professor Marius Romme" pages 5-9
    Exposing the myth of mental illness. Ex-inmate activists and progressive psychiatrist Peter Breggin tell the truth about electroshock and psychiatric drugs on Us national television . An analysis by Don Weitz.
    User's View by L'Agent Provacateur
    Who is Psychiatry For? Philip Hutchinson
    Who is Psychiatry For? (2). Problems of Technology and democracy. Dr. Tim Kendall
    Is the rights-based project the right base for any project. A reply. Fiona McLaren
    Democracy and ECT. Professor F.A. Jenner
    Survivors News pp 20-21
    "SANE ... poster... have been judged "offensive" but "not misleading" in a recent Advertising Standards Authority case."
    "... written accounts ... of experiences within psychiatric institutions" include: The Patients' Case - Views from experience, living inside and out of psychiatric hospital produced by Harpurhey Resettlement Team and 'users' of Springfield Hospital Manchester. Published by Community Psychiatric Nurses Association. (copy in later Asylums AP)
    Fit For Consumption. Islington mental health Association. Quotations from Forum meetings related to issues of treatment in the psychiatric institutions and services in the borough (AP archive)
    MIND's Consumer Network renamed MINDLINK. Magazine MINDWAVES produced.
    Nottingham Advocacy Group Annual report details combination of advocacy and self advocacy structures. Have a Citizens' Advocacy Worker. Plans for a Patients' Advocate.
    Nottingham Patients Council Support Group appoint a worker.
    Mention similar developments in Brighton, Leeds, Newcastle.
    Scottish Users' Network established.
    Personal accounts. Voices
    Drugs, Life and Anti Life. Vic Ellenger.
    Diary of a dilettante. Harry Lupino
    Other.
    National Alliance of Mental Patients organisation. USA.
    Dendron, magazine USA
    The co-ordination of care for people disabled by long-term mental illness.
    The National Unit for Research and Development. A critical review by Phillip Hutchinson.
    Some references
    Phoenix Rising

    Asylum Vol. 4 no 1 October 1989
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. -
    The CAPO interview Part 2
    London Alliance for Mental Health Action. Statement of Goals
    Living withouth psychiatry Guiseppe Bucalo . Comitato d'Iniziativa Antipsichiatrica .Italy)
    The Philadephia Association of Households. (founded 1964).
    2 London Houses. Maida Vale. Finsbury Park
    ECT - Mike Lawson. Statement in debate in Nottingham.
    Streetwise Minds Shopping Around For Psychic Care. Vic Ellenger. (some references to survivor movement)
    Survivors news
    Crisis card Launch
    First National Conference on Self-Harm
    Hearing voices conference organised for 18.4.1990
    Beginnings of a World Federation of Mental Health Consumers. Also possibility of a European-wide network discussed
    Personal accounts
    Honesty is the best policy V.L.

    Asylum Vol. 4 no 2 February 1990
    Collection of: Anne Plumb - Joan Hughes
    R.D. Laing Memorial Issue

    Asylum Vol. 4 no 3 Summer 1990
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    Volume 4.no 3. Summer 1990
    Crisis card launched. International Self Advocacy Alliance
    The social realities of schizophrenia. Louise Pembroke. Education officer Survivors Speak Out.
    A user's view of the MIND conference. James Conway.
    Hearing Voices - feedback. Steps towards setting up a self-help Organisation similar to the Dutch Resonance.
    Me and my Shrink Vic Ellenger
    A user's view of day centres James Conway
    Personal accounts. Voices.
    Households and Regrssion. Mary Barnes
    Restrictions by V.L
    The Waiting Room. Kate Callico
    Worse than prison. An experience of psychiatric detention. Tim Wilson..
    Miscellaneous references
    Book review. Against Therapy by Jeffrey Masson.

    Asylum Vol.4 no 4 Autumn 1990
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. -
    Directory: Manchester Users' Support Group, c/o Tony Riley, North Manchester General Hospital, Crumpsall, Manchester M8

    Asylum Vol.5 no 1 Winter 1990/1991
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    Real Community Care. Alex Neybuch. Integrated Service for the Support of Young People and Families. Liege, Belgium.
    De-intitutionisation.
    Taking the Social Agenda to the market Place.. The Trieste experience. Paul Barker
    Lambeth Link. Self Advocacy Project. Hearing Voices Conference.notice.22'
    Some thoughts on PSYCHOSIS. Extracts from a letter to a psychiatrist by an erstwhile user. Brian Davey, Nottingham MIND, and Professor F.A. Jenner comments.
    Personal accounts. Voices.
    On Hearing Voices. WA Martin
    Miscellaneous
    Alix Kirsta reports on former psychoanalyst Alice Miller's belief that child abuse goes beyond battering, neglect and incest, and that violence in society has its roots in adult denial of childhood pain. Banished Knowledge. Virago.1991

    Asylum Vol.5 no 2 Spring 1991
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    Heard but not seen. Christine Assiz. Independent on Sunday. Report on Hearing Voice conference arranged by five mental health activist, connected to Manchester MIND and report from this group.
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices.
    Benefits - Who Benefits. Philip Hutchinson
    My label's manic-depressive - what's yours? Susan Cookson.
    Abused. Anon
    Mental Health Tribunal Success. Sylvia's story
    Reflections on a bad time. V.L
    Madness. The Forgotten Way. Alan Baker. Psychic or Psychotic. The Power of thought. Tom Webster and comments by Brian Davey.

    Asylum Vol.5 no 3 Summer 1991
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    The Client Movement:
    1. Sweden. The National Association for Social and Mental Health (set up by two patients at one of the big mental institutions January 1967)
    2. Holland - the Clientbond. Durch national organisation of current and former mental patients:clients. Set up 1971.
    Housing - Penumbra. Supported accomodation. Edinburgh
    Give and take. Angela Neustatter reports on CITA (Council for Involuntary Tranquilliser Addiction in Liverpool.(formed 1987) reprinted from The Guardian 2.4.1991
    "The Users' Voice in Mental Health Services - towards a democratic psychiatry". Stephen Ticktin.
    The tragic myth of schizophrenia. Report on Dr Bonnie Burstow and Don Weiss. Toronto Globe and Mail 1/1990. editors of Shrink Resistent: The Struggle Against Psychiatry in Canada. (New Star books.1988)
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices.
    Reminisences of a victim. WA Martin
    Miscellaneous
    A Guide to Monsters of the MIND. Cartoons. Victor Grenko. Gatehouse Books Manchester (AP archive)
    The Chemical Gag: Why psychaitrists give neuroleptic drugs. Peter Lehman (user activist in Berlin) Antipsychaitriatrieverlag. 1986. review by Jeffrey Masson + reponse from Professor F.A. Jenner.

    Asylum Vol.5 no 4 Autumn 1991
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    Mental health, users and projects in Germany. Brian Davey.
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices
    From another plane. AD
    Miscellaneous
    "Inspiring lives of 'Schizophrenics'" A review by Vivien Lindow of From the Mental Patient to the Person by Peter Barham and Robert Hayward.
    Jeffrey Masson: The Final Analysis - the making and unmaking of a psychoanalyst. Reviewed by Stephen Ticktin.

    Asylum Vol.6 no 1 Winter 1991/1992
    Collection of: Anne Plumb - Joan Hughes
    Psychotherapy and Oppression. Quentin Stimpson. (interested, among other things in informal peer support networks, based on theory and insights of co-counselling
    Human Rights for Child Abuse Victims and Survivors (HRCAVS)
    The Myth of Benevolent Therapy. Louisa Street. Mentions that she met one of several national groups formed to combat psychotherapy abuse.
    Ex-patient Power. Joan Hughes (MPU member 1973-1976)
    The Killing of Mental Patients. Peter Roger Breggin. (reprint) (orignally appeared in Freedom, the independent journal of the Church of Scientology. (June/July 1973)
    The User Movement and Mental Health Workers. Paul Baker.
    Survivor news. Hearing Voices and others
    Oxford Survivors. Magazine Libellus Dementum
    News and items from Hearing Voices newsletter. (5th issue)
    Mentions Second National Hearing Voices Conference (1991, Manchester)
    First National Conference held November 1990 Manchester
    Self help groups - Manchester, Doncaster, London, Oxford, Liverpool Pamphlets: A Report of the Manchester Hearing Voices Conference. Michael Grierson
    The Dutch Experience. Nigel Rose.
    MIND launches campaign to ensure users of mental health services are able to exercise a 'right to know' about their condition and treatment (newspaper reprint)
    Dendron News.(late successor to Madness Network News) Reports Electroshock survivors and allies revolt against the jolt in US and Canada.July 14 th (Bastille Day) events at more than 15 sites (11th year of Bastille day being used to promote the liberty of people in the mental health system.
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices. the Interpretability of Madness. Brian Davey.
    Directory: Manchester: Against Psychotherapy Abuse.

    Asylum Vol.6 no 2 Spring 1992
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. -
    Editorial Contacts: Professor FA Jenner, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield, S10 2JF - Dr T. Kendell and Katy Malcolm, 7 The Oaks, Oaks Park, Norton, Sheffield, S8 8AB - Mark Greenwood, Harpurhey Health Centre, Rochdale Road, Manchester 8 - Man Cheung Chung, Academic Department of Psychiatry, Middlesex Hospital, Mortimer Street, London, W1 - Phil Virden, 19 Edgware Road, York, YO1 4DG - Steven Ticktin , 29 Church Garth, Pemberton Gardens, London, N19 5RN - Steve Brewen, 30a Acre Lane, Brixton, London, SW2 5SG - Mark Hinchliffe, 63 Cowersley Lane, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD4 5UB - Paul Baker, MACC, 4th Floor, 274 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 4FT.

    Pyschosis and Reorgansiation. Interview with John Perry (psychiaitrist who pioneered non-medical response to psychosis, focussing on experience itself. Co founded a residence.
    A critic of psychiatry (,) protest co-ercive treatment of young. Don Weitz co author of Shrink Resistant. The Struggle Against Psychiatry, 1988.. Reprinted from The Whig Standard, Kingston, Ontario.
    Tearing Down The Citadel. Jeffrey Masson interviwed by Andrew Pilger, Stephen Ticktin, Dave Lowson. Books include Against Therapy, The Final Analysis (published Collins)
    Book reviews
    Users and Abusers of Psychiatry - A Critical Look at Traditional Psychiatric Practice by Lucy Johnstone. Review by Donnard White.
    Electroshock; the Case Against. Edited by Robert F. Morgan. Toronto 1991. Review by Don Weitz.(psychiatric survivor, anti-psychiatric activist, co-editor Shrink Resistant: the Struggle Against Psychiatry in Canada (1988). Co-founder of magazine Phoenix Rising.
    Toxic psychiatry. Peter R Breggin. St. Martin's Press. 1991
    Survivor and other news.
    Paranoia prompts lawsuit. Mine is a hooror story. Gustave Kroll. The Vancouver Sun.4.12.91. Report on Kroll filing suit against Eli Lilly Canada Including on account of the effect of Prozac on him.
    Personal accounts, survivor voices
    Letter responding to 'Psychic or Psychotic (Asylum5.2) Val Harding.
    Superpersonalities. John Rowan. Routledge. Reviewed by James Palmer (drawing on own personal experience of psychosis)
    Directory: Mancheter Hearing Voices Group, c/o MCVS, Fourways house, 57 Hilton Street, Picadily, Mancheter, M1 2EJ

    Asylum Vol.6 no.3 (labeled 2) Summer 1992
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. -
    Psychiatry in Czechoslavakia - the emergence of the New Mental Health Movement
    The Social Enterprise. Franco Rotelli, Trieste, Italy. Translated and edited.
    Perspectives on Madness. A Chronology gathered and edited by Leonard Roy Frank. (founder member of early US survivor movement). Key opponent to electroshock.
    The Facts about Clozapine (Clozaril) Peter R. Beggin.M.D.
    Survivor and other news
    Drugs claimants fight court action deadlines. Cutting. Guardian 23/03/1992. Other articles Guardian 10/03/1992. The Independent 18/06/1992
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices
    A Theory of Nervous breakdown. John Ravilious. Whitby MIND
    One page advertisement, with subsciption form, for Beyond Diagnosis. Magazine based on contributions of people who have been seen as mentally ill or who have associated experiences. c/o CAPS, The Engine Shed, 19 St Leonard's lane, Edinburgh. EH8 9SD
    Directory: Manchester: Having a Voice, Black Peoples Resource Centre, Cheetham Hill

    Asylum Vol.6 no.4 Autumn 1992
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. -
    Contains Helen Spandler's article on the Socialist Patient Collective

    Asylum Vol.7 no.1 Winter 1992/1993
    Actually published in 1992
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. -
    Editorial contacts: Contributions and distribution: Paul Baker and Mark Greenwood, c/o MACC, Swan Buildings, 20 Swan Street, Ancoates, Manchester, M4 5JW - Phil Virden, 19 Edgware Road, York, YO 4DG - Tim Kendall, Department of Psychiatry, O floor, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield.
    Psychiatry's Presumptions. Report on Conference on European Philosophy and Psychiatry. Sheffield. 18.9.1992-20.9.1992. Report by Terence McLaughlin. [Should have been "Psychiatries' Presumptions"]
    Visit to Trieste (for May 1993)
    Changing Italy's Psychiatry. Franca Ongaro Basaglia.
    Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)
    The Social Homeostatis Mechanism. Marius Romme
    Inside or Outside of the System? Tackling the Oppression of the Insane. R.D. Laing and Franco Basaglia: A critical comparison of their contrasting philosophical and theoretical approach to mental illness and the insame. Giovanni Grassi.
    The USA and the Politicisation of Community Care - an Agenda for the Clinton Administration. Hubie Jones. (examines history of community care services in the USA and calls for the politicisation of community care)
    "The Meaning of Life Effaced" The impact of neuroleptic drugs on the mind. Lards Martennson. First appeared in the National Association for Rights and protection and Advocacy Newsletter entitled "The Rights Tenet" USA 1991.

    Asylum Vol.7 no.2 Spring 1993
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. -
    SPK- maintaining independence, the lesson for the 90s. Joan Hughes.(MPU mid seventies).letter
    Psychiatry's Presumptions. Part 2 (psychologist/philosophers)
    A User's report on Psychiatric Services. Janet Cresswell (Broadmoor patient Co authored "The One-sided Room" performed at the Green Room in Manchester. - AP).
    Alec Jenner - the Retirement of a Self-confessed Egoist. Roy Twort.
    The Lament and Reflections of a Retired Psychiatrist. F.A. Jenner
    Support in 1992 and the Antipsychiatry Protest in Washington. A Brief report. Don Weitz (survivor activist)
    User Involvement in Mental Health Services. An Annotated Bibliography. Jack Black.1985-1992. Department of Social Policy and Social work. University of Birmingham.
    Psychology Politics Resistance. A call to membership.
    Survivor news
    Guidelines for Empowering Users of Mental Health Services. Pub COHSE
    Schizophrenia. Whose Delusion. Manchester MIND's Campaign to Improve the Public Image
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices.
    Cry of the Invisible. Writings from the Homeless and Survivors of Psychiatric Hospitals, Michael A Susko ed. Baltimore Conservatory Press 1991. Reviewed by Don Weitz.

    Asylum Vol.7 no.3 Summer 1993
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. -
    Psychiatry in the Third Reich
    Asylum letters - on new logo.
    Toxic Drugs, Or Don't Keep Taking the Tablets! Mark Hinchliffe. Drwan for C4 Dispatches - fatal dose. January 1993
    Inappropriate Prescribing of tranquillisers. Ruby Tovet. (MIND in Camden Tranquilliser Services)
    From Insane Premises to Monstrous conclusion. Russell Elleswei. History of eugenics in terms of sterilisation and eugenics.
    Electroshock. Donnard White.
    Medical Records - your rights to see them and what you might find. Taking the Initiative. Susanne Stevens.
    Are psychiatric case-notes offensive? Paul Crichton et all.
    The Failure of "Normalisation" in Community Care. Phil Virden interviews John Goode, a social services manager. pp 23-25
    Italian Psychiatry in Crisis. Italy retreats from Community Care for the Mentally Ill p.7
    In defense of law 180 - the story that isn't being told by Mark Greenwood.
    Psychiatric Labels as Swear Words. Don Weitz.
    Directory
    (Summer 1993) includes:
    Glasgow: LINK, 2 Queens Crescent, Glasgow, G4 1QU
    Edinburgh: "BEYOND DIAGNOSIS" - The voice in Scotland of people who have been diagnosed as mentally ill - and those with related experiences c/o CAPS, The Engine Shed, 19 St Leonards Lane, Edinburgh, EH8 9SD
    Irish Mental Health Forum, c/o Camden IBRG, 112 Camden High Street, London, London, NW1 OLU
    EIRE: PIPAN: Prevention and Intervention of Psychiatric Abuse Network; Sue Stokes, Kilmore, Clonmel, Co Tipperary, Eire.

    Asylum Vol.7 no.4 Autumn 1993
    All Survivor Issue. Diana Her Survivor Story.
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. -
    Diana - Her Survivor Story. Daniel Kane. York Survivors
    Survivor, Activist or Witch. Viv. Lindow
    Lawful Killing of a Mental Patient. Reported by Phil Virden. York Survivors Held a brief ceremony at the Clifton Hospital on the day of the inquest.
    Power. Invalidation and Mental Health. Brian Davey. (Survivors Nottingham Advocacy Group)
    Empowering the Disempowered. Peter Daw.
    Who Owns Citizen Advocacy? Andrew Dunning
    Mental Health and Social Control. London Alliance of Mental Health Action.
    Housing that Protects the Mind. Bill Reynolds.
    Brixton Community Sanctuary. Peter Rothwell.
    Drugs and the Soul are Indivisible. Donald Frazer (York Survivor)
    Personal experiences. Survivor voices
    Hotel Galactica. The first days. Niall.
    Neuroleptics by Xara Glitz.

    Asylum Vol.8 no.1 1994
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    Medication, Good and Bad (letter).
    Whittingham Patient's Council and Avondale Patients Council (Preston)
    Fat Cats. Protest at Asylum's Psychiatries Presumptions (1993 Asylum). Letter from Donnard White.
    The Patients Council (letter). Broadmoor Hospital Patients' Council
    Mental Health Services in Chile. B. Vicente and M. Vielma
    The development of mental health care in the Czech Republic. Christine Barwood and Hazel Burke.
    Balancing the needs of mental illness. FOKUS Vysocina.
    Can We learn Something from the Nigerians.
    Frantz Fanon Revisited. John Hopton
    Congres voor Kinderen die Stemmen Horen. Conference for Children who hear Voices.
    Unconventional Approaches to Psychiatry. (Berlin) Peter Lehmann. Antipsychiatrrieverlag.
    Opposing and resisting. A view from the Third World. SP Sashi Daran
    Patients, Patients. Lend Us Your Heads. Veronica Gospodaruk. Review of Shrink Resistant: the struggle against Psychiatry in Canada.
    Der Chemische Knebel (The Chemical gag, why psychiatrists give neuroleptics) Peter Lehman. Comments published by Phoenix Rising, a Canadian Voice of the Psychaitrized).
    Toxic Psychiatry. Peter Breggin. Reviewed by Veronica Gospodaruk
    Survivor and other news
    Accepting Voices. Understanding the Voice Hearing Experience Brixton 13.4.1994 The Hearing Voices Network.
    DIRECTORY OF POSITIVE ACTION
    National Groups and Local Groups.
    Eating Distress: Perspectives from Personal Experience. Louise Roxanne Pembroke ed. SSO).
    Personal accounts. Survivors Voices.
    In loving memory (Sara Terry). Letters.


    Asylum Vol.8
    no 2 1994
    Academic Fat Cats. Alec Jenner replies to Donnard White.
    What are we waiting for. Donald G. Fraser.
    A Case for Psychotherapy. Karen Lee.
    I'm Back! In support of resisting treatment. Ron Coleman and Terence McGaughlin. (interview)
    Understanding Professional Thought Disorder. A Guide for Service Users and a Challenge for Professionals. Dave Lowson Wales MIND Cymru based on ideas from Louise R Pembroke. SSO
    Action Research in a Psychiatric Hospital. Jacques Zeelen, Dolinda van der Meer, Wouter van de Graaf.
    Psychiatry: are we allowed to disagree. Lucy Johnstone.
    Survivor and other news.
    Psychology politics resistance. Founding Conference 2.7.1994
    A Fit Person to be Removed. Personal accounts of life in a mental deficiency institution Maggie Potts and Rebecca Fido. Reviewed J Richard Marshall.


    Asylum Vol.8
    no 3 1994
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. - Helen Spandler.
    The Obscentity of ECT. Letter. Susanne Stevens. Mentions MIND campaign on ECT.
    Psychiatric Abuse. Janet Cresswell.
    Therapeutic Abuse. Susanne Stevens.
    Emotional Abuse in Therapy. Rosalind Brewer.
    A Story of Emotional Rape. Polly Gardner.
    Delusions, lies and fantasies.
    Doctor Abuse. My Story by Gillian Deane.
    Psycho-Therapy Hurts. Melanie.
    Don't Forget the Politics. Report on founding conference. July 1994 Will Barton
    Survivor and other action
    "A Cigarette". Sarah Terry. A play about madness. Performed at the Cellar Project in Bradford and Women's Mental Health Conference in Leeds
    North Staffordshire User group. Esablished 1992 (letter)
    Broadmoor Patients Own Voice. The Chronicle -The Broadmoor Community Magazine (AP Archive. A copy)
    Hearing Voices network. New offices. Expanded newsletter
    VOICES.International Conference on Hearing Voices planned (1995). BBC TV Everyman series to make programme on Hearing Voices Network
    Freed to Kill -the misrepresentation of schizophrenia in the UK Media. Report from the Schizophrenia Media Agency to be published.
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices.
    Hotel 167. Jaen Solomon. reviwed by Susanne Stevens.


    Asylum Vol.8 no 4 and Vol.9 no.1
    Spring 1995
    "Because of delay this copy has been given two nos instead of one but will only be charged as one issue" [Inside front cover]
    Collection of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. - Helen Spandler.
    Editorial collective: Caroline Helliwell, Brian Davey, Paul Baker, Mark Greenwood, Jane Paffey, Andrew Pfluger, Helen Spandler, Mark Stein, Neil James, Colin Bradey, Steve Ticktin, Phil Virdan, Anne Walton, Ron Coleman, Mark Hinchcliffe, Alec Jenner.
    "Designed by Paul Baker and Nigel Rose. Proof reading and editing by Mark Greenwood"
    A Taboo Subject. Glasgow Abuse in Therapy Support Network Collective.
    Tougher Controls are these necssary. Janet Cresswell
    Distress Awareness Training Agency by Andrew Hughes.
    ECT. ECT Anonymous member.
    No Censorship. The politics of language and discrimination. Deborah Marks.
    PSYCON. Confronting psychotherapy abuse. Helpline
    Survivor and other news/action
    Scottish Users Network gets grant from Mental Health Foundation to set up user led organisation
    Afro-Caribbean Mental Health Association. Frictions between paid workers and management l. Judicial review sort to ensue organisation's continuation.
    Self Harm. Perspectives from personal experience. Louise Roxanne Pembroke ed. Survivors Speak Out.
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices
    The Home Visit Sexual Abuse. Jenny Laing.
    Therapy as abuse. Melanie Ward.


    Asylum Vol.9 no 2 "1996" (actually
    summer 1995)
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    Slovenia
    The mental health Socio-Political Panorama and Perspective.
    A Brazilian analysis and proposals.
    Death in the Community (Germany) Michael Burleigh.
    Psychosocial aspects of impunity in Latin America.
    Irish Service Users. Who Cares? Richard Butler. Brent Users Group.
    The Irish in Britain and the Psychiatric System. Phil MacGiollabh-Din
    Policing mental health services and the experience of the Black community in the UK. Asylum.
    The Psychotic State is an Involuntrary and Unexpected Immersion into the World of the Subconscious. Alan Baker.
    Survivor and other news and action
    DOCHAS Mission (Dochas? Hope?) London. (Irish?) community organisation. London. - inaugural Ard-Fheis (party conference) 15.10.1995.


    Asylum Vol.8 [9?] no 3 Spring
    1996 (one year later. AP)
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    Art in Psychiatric Therapy. Gillian Wicks.
    The Healing Power of Story Telling. Mark Hinchliffe
    Poetry in the Process of Healing Quibilah Montsho
    Survivor and other news and action
    Bristol Crisis service for Women (set up 1986. helpline’ publications:Booklet 1. Understanding self injury. 2.Self help for self injury.3.For friends and family. Bi monthly newsletter SHOUT


    Asylum Vol.9 no 4
    1996
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    Letter on "informed consent" Sue Stevens.
    Incarceration. Irit Shimrat (Canada)
    A concise political history of the User Movement. Pete Seeger.
    Users Viewpoint. Sharon Lefeire
    After Fifty years of caring - Does MIND have a Role. (ref. MIND Policy on User Involvement.
    Survivor and other news and action
    Resistance. Networks Festival 14.12.1996
    Personal accounts. Survivor experience.
    Inside the Belly of Disintegration. Sally Meadows.
    Red Riding Hood: for mental health readers. Melanie Cunningham
    Schizophrenia and My Faith. Gerard MacCarthy


    Asylum Vol.10 no 1
    1996/1997
    Power and Authority in Psychiatry
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    Editorial. Phil Barker. On Construction of Power and Authority Conference Northumberland.
    Forced medication (letter) Sue Stevens.
    Thomas Szasz The Case Against Psychiatric Power. Report Alec Jenner.
    The Construction of Psychiatric Authority. The Politics of Illness. Ron Coleman
    Diagnosis, Science and Power. Mary Boyle
    Imperialism, Racism and Psychiatry. Implications for Black people. Suman Fernando
    Deconstruction over half a century of increasing involvement with psychiatry. Alec Jenner.
    Guilty without Trial. Anne Walton
    Forbidden Narratives. Critical Autobiography as Social Science. Kathryn Church. A review. (Canadian activist)
    Self-Harmer, "Who's Hurting Who". Helen Spandler. Review Sharon J. LeFevre.(ref. to 42nd Street. Community mental health resource for young people. Manchester)


    Asylum Vol.10 no 2
    1997
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. - Helen Spandler.
    Anne's is an incomplete copy with pages 15 and 24 blank Weglaufhaus. Villa Stockle. One Year Run-Away-House. Press release 17.3.1997 supporting foundation the Association for the Protection against Psychiatric Violence. (Peter Lehmann on the board)
    Survivor and other news and action.
    Against ECT. Our collective strength. ECT Anonymous.
    Self-Harm - whose taboo. Report by Adam James on the self-Harm, Abuse and The Voice hearing Experience. Snowdonia organised by Action Consultancy and Training Group (run by users)
    Role of MIND. Response, Madeleine Chapman. MINDLINK co-ordinator. (10th anniversary)
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices.
    My experiences of Therapy. Marie Nedd.
    Killing me Softly. Sharon Lefevre. Handsell Publishing. (self-harm)
    Reviews
    Through the Night - a collection of short stories by ABBAS AFTAB.
    Speaking Our Minds; An Anthology. Jim Read and Jill Reynolds editors.
    Folie A Deux - an experience of One-to-One Therapy. Rosie Alexander. Review by Phil Virden.

    Asylum Vol.10 no.3 Winter 1997/1998
    Strange ways (prisons)
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. -
    Prison Damages Your health. Editorial
    Broadmoor is a Hospital Janet Cresswell
    and articles on aspects of the prison service and mental health.
    The authority of psychiatry and the kraepaelian concept. An Alternative. Marius Romme.
    Survivor and other news and action.
    1994 Young Minds ran a campaign Violence and Young Minds.
    And the World Really Changed. Leeds Survivor Poets. 1996. Review by Alison James.
    The North West Right to refuse Electro-shock Campaign. (Under auspices of Psychology Politics Resistance


    Asylum Vol.10 no 4
    1998
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    To Feel Small and Insignificant D.G Fraser.
    Art For My Sake. Phil Hutchinson
    Are Recovered memories of Childhood sexual Abuse true? The British False Memory Society.
    Only Smarties Have the Answer. Aidan Shingler (survivor artist AP)
    The Dialectics of Schizophrenia. Philip Thomas. Free Association Press 1997. Review by Glenis McCormack.


    Asylum Vol.11 no 1
    1998
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. - Helen Spandler.
    Age and ageing.
    The sentimental cynic Arthur Moyse
    A Rotten Way to Die. Peter Good
    Living History and Accumulated Wisdom. Dave Cunliffe
    Elder Abuse: Does the Law Protect. Jean Pollard


    Asylum Vol.11 no 2
    1998 [Cover says 1999]
    Drug edition
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. - Helen Spandler.
    Letters. Janet Cresswell. Alex Benjamin
    A Straw Poll on the Effects of Psychiatric Drugs In Dorset. Dr. Pat Major
    The Sleepwalker. Phil Ward
    and articles on Cannabis, Legalising Drugs, Opiate Use, prisons, some Pharmacological History, Caffeine


    Asylum Vol.11 no 3
    1998 [Cover says 1999]
    Collection of: Helen Spandler [Duplicate copies to - Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts.]


    Asylum Vol.11 no 4
    1999
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. - Helen Spandler.
    Evidence from the Bradford group. (Group of psychiatrists who launched campaign opposing any extension of the legal powers of psychiatry,)
    Psychological Trauma after ECT - Lucy Johnstone
    Cuckoo's Nest Syndrome. (CNS) A.Non.

    [Note by Anne Plumb: Transitional time for Asylum]

    Online archive starts with volume 12


    Asylum Vol.12 no 1 2000
    Collection of: Anne Plumb


    Schizophrenia and the Emperors (not so) New Clothes. Part 1.
    Paul Baker
    Critical Psychiatry feature. "The Fall of the House of Kraepelin". Phil Thomas;
    and articles on classical psychiatry
    Obituary. Sharon J.LeFevre. Author of Killing me Softly (experiences of self-harm) and a one act play "On the Edge". Acted by Sharon and Phil Thomas, taken all over UK and Europe, even to Russia.


    Asylum Vol.12 no 2 2000
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. - Helen Spandler.
    Editorial. Challenging vested interest through the media
    Recent Advances in Understanding Mental Illness and Psychotic Experiences. Report published by Clinical Psychology of British Psychological Society. Edited Ann Cooke and Peter Kinderman.
    ECT: Suicide and Morality, the myths and the research. Hannah Mills.
    Moving Along the Continuum. The Myth of Mental Health. Peter Linnet.
    Schizophrenia and the Emperors (not so) New Clothes. Part 2. Paul Baker.
    Psychiatric Imperialism - the Medicalisation of Modern Living. Joanna Moncrieff
    Users and abusers of psychiatry: a critical look at psychiatric practice. Lucy Johnstone (2nd edition). A review. Duncan Double..
    Survivor and other news and action
    Biggest Mental Health Lobby Ever. Mark Roberts. 7.7.2000 Mentions Abina Parshad-Griffin from MINDLINK; Ken Woodmansee UK Advocacy Network; Nina Ryedale Voices Network and attempt to give statue of Winston Churchill a giant depot injection
    Mad Pride event Stoke Newington. Book published.
    Pete Shaughnessy talking on Radio 5 Live with Raj Persaud
    Mad Pride.A Celebration of Mad Culture. Ted Curtis, Robert Dellar, Esther Leslie, Ben Watson. Editors. Soare Change Books. London 2000
    Related radical action
    Event for clinical trainers on "involving service-users". Discussed (direct) experiences of Rufus May and Jan Holloway
    Press launch (end of June) on new Division of Clinical Psychology/British Psychological Society on "mental illness" and psychotic experiences.
    El Rayo Que No Cesa. Spanish equivalent of Asylum
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices.
    Behavioural Therapy from Hell. Account by Adam James on treatment of Debbie Holden at North Manchester General Hospital
    Liverpool Dockers Dispute - Better than Prosac. Proof that the Personal IS Political. Pauline Bradley.
    Motherless Brooklyn. Jonathan Lethem. Inside view of Tourettes Syndrome. Review Rob Evans.


    Asylum Vol.12 no 3 2000
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    Taking the Plunge. Rufus May
    Post Spychiatry .The Story on the Story on the Story. Adam James (Guardian Correspondent)
    How Psychiatry is Used to Bust Unions. Ford has a better idea: shrinks instead of Bennet's boys. Gregg Shotwell.
    Redistributed by Dendrite the free news news alert of Support Coalition International. Led by psychiatric survivors. Federation of nearly 100 groups to win rights and alternatives in the "mental health system".
    And What About the Kids Again? Street cred?
    Values and Dilemas in Mental health Work with Young people. Bernard Davies. On 42nd Street, Manchester. Review John Hopton
    Watching the Watchmen. Is Research Really Addressing Human Despair? Phil Harris.
    Aversion Therapy is Like a Visit to the dentist.
    Peter Tatchell recalls 1972 protest.
    Psychosis. Micky Devalda.
    Carol Batton. Finding Flowers in the Dust.
    Review of
    PAGEFRIGHT. Bad Press.
    Angi Yeremenko. A Passionate Wordsmith. Introduced by Ian Murray
    The Cat's Tale. Philip Thomas.
    Keeping an open mind. Profile of Alec Jenner, the man who helped to create Valium, reprint from Guardian newspaper.
    Survivor and other news and action
    Free Crow Holbeche + Exeter Action for Respect
    The First UK Conference for Survivor Workers. Planned for 28.2.2001 - Rose Snow
    Related Radical Action
    Breaking the Biomedical Dominance of Psychiatry. Conference
    27.4.2001. Critical Psychiatry Network"
    Psychology Politics Resistance relaunch.
    Conference. Asylum in the 21st century. Bastille day. 14.7.2001
    Critical Psychiatry Symposium - Philip Thomas - 21.9.2000
    Movement Beyond Maintenance. Handsell Annual Conference. 20.9.2000-21.9.2000. (Handsell is the publishing and media arm of Keepwell Ltd and trades alongside Action Consulatancy and Training ACT and Strangefish.)
    4th Annual conference planned. Start on Success. Recovery in Action.
    Making Sense of Voices. A guide for mental health professionals working with voice- hearers. Marius Romme and Sondra Escher published. Follow up to Accepting Voices.
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices.
    Black Mind. Sharon Devalda


    Asylum Vol.12 no 4 2001
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. - Helen Spandler.
    People Themselves Care. Letter from Janet Cresswell. Broadmoor.
    A history of Benzodiazepines. Alec Jenner.
    Have a nice flight, have a nice life. Sara Stanton. (on hetereosexist immigration laws and discriminatrory practices against people with psychiatric histories.
    Once Upon a Time A Paranoid Delusion. Janice Hartley
    Depression, Psychiatry and the use of ECT. Pat Bracken. Bradford.
    Survivor and other news and action
    UK Survivor Workers Conference 28.2.2001 and Call for a Survivors Workers' Union
    Foundation of Scottish Hearing Voices Network, Dundee (birthplace of HVN agitator Ron Coleman)
    Death of Anne Sykes - facilitator of Olham Hearing Voices and co-ordinator for some years of the Hearing Voices Network.
    Terence McLaughlin visits Kosova.
    Crow Holbeche campaign continues. Exhibition of his recent paintings at Crediton Parish church.
    "Nutters with Attitude. Rocking Against Psychiatry." Letter from Pete Shaughnessy. Mad Pride "Nutters with Attitude" CD produced.
    Listen to the Voices. Campaigning body.
    Project Psychophobia,
    Related radical action
    Emergence of Critical Psychiatry Network. Conference in April [2001] called for lobby of Royal College of Psychiatrists' meeting in July
    Psychology Politics Resistance to host "Asylum in the 21st centuory" on Bastille day 14.7.2000
    Russell tribunal on Human Rights in Psychiatry 29/06/01-1/07’01 Berlin.
    Debate about forming a Survivor and Allies section of the British Psychological Society.
    Mention of the International Mental Health Network.
    Reference to free Janet Cresswell campaign
    Personal accounts. Survivor voices.
    Searching our Sensibilities for Sense. Claire Barraclough


    Asylum Vol.13 no 1 2002
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. - Helen Spandler.

    Dr. Bollocks and the DSM10. Emma Jacobs. Psychaitry 2025.

    Psychiatric Delusional Disorder Discovered. Tamsin Knight (letter)

    Psychosis The Ultimate Reality. Janice Hartley

    A Social Psychosis Paul Hewitt

    The Tranquilliser Timebomb and poem Benzo Memory Margaret Bell

    Outsider Art. On Crow Holbeche.

    Mary Barnes 1923-2001. Alec Jenner.

    Survivor and related news and action

    A MAD Summers Day. Rufus May. No to CTOs. No to drug companies
    July 9th Day of Action. Mad pride View. Pete Shaughnessy.. Media coverage - Nursing Standard, BBC Newsroom South East,. Revolutionary Anthem "Hugs not drugs"
    Dave's Demo. Dave Harper. Direct action - giant syringe and straight-jackets.

    Louise Pembroke - Andy Smith and - Peter Beresford present a session Human Rights and the Users' Voice at Royal College of Psychiatry Annual Meeting

    Psyche Survivor Pride Toronto (part of International Mad Pride Month). Events include march on 22.7.2001, day of meeting of the World Assembly for Mental Health.

    Related radical action and critical psychiatry.

    On the outside looking in. The critical psychiatry view. Phil Thomas. Describes Picket of Annual Meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry organised by Critical Psychiatry Network and Critical Mental Health Forum... Joanna Moncrieff, Pat Bracken, Jonathan Bindman, Phil Thomas (members of RCP) and members of Critical Psychiatry Network handed out letters to delegates in support of demo by Mad Pride and Critical Mental Health Network against Community Treatment Orders.

    Session on David Healy's polemic on pharmaceutical company at RCP meeting..

    30/07- 2/07 2001 Berlin.Russell Tribunal on Human Rights in Psychiatry & Geist Gegen Genes. Ian Parker. Tribunal on Human Rights in Psychiatry (previous tribunals on conduct of US in Vietnam War, repression in Latin America, freedom of opinion in West Germany….)International Tribunal. Verdict - serious abuse of human rights in psychiatry + psychiatry guilty of force and unaccountability.

    Parallel conference Geist Gegen genes (the Mind cahllengesd Genes). Sponsors included Psychology Politics Resistance. Included symposium Critical Psychology: Psychiatric Pathologising as a Political Question. Speakers Erica Burman, Terence McLaughlin, Ian Parker, Eugenie georgaca, angel Gordolopez.

    Support Coalition International hold human rights rally during World Assembly for Mental Health Meeting. Toronto. 22/07/01 Psyche Survivor pride hold march.

    Psychology Politics Resistance: Asylum in the 21st Century - Ian Parker of the Discourse Unit reports on the 4th national meeting. of Psychology Politics Resistance. Held Manchester 14.7.2001 Bastille day. Speakers included Terence McLaughlin (executive director of Asylum) - Alec Jenner (founder of Asylum) - Phil Thomas (Critical Psychiatry network) - Vera Martin (Saheli Asian Women's Refuge) - Clare Barrraclough. - Carol Batton performed poems (nationa poet for Hearing Voices network) - Video from Isobel Irvine of Liverpool's Mad Women on ECT shown. - Hearing Voices Network had a stall (displayed finger painting "Life Daughter" by Mary Barnes and much more.


    Asylum Vol.13 no 2
    2002
    Collection of: Anne Plumb
    Against "Outsider Art" Toby Dyter. + response by David MacLagan.
    Can the Mental Health System Cause Paranoia. Tamasin Knight (survivor)
    The mythology of "The High Profile case" Guy Legge. Sees challenge for the psychiatric survivor movement to "challenge colossal powers of psychiatry and its monopoly of comment on legal matters."
    Tradegy at Exeter (UK) Janice Hartley. On suicides of 3 people from an Exeter hospital.
    Letter to a Mental Health Professional. Peter Linnett. Survivor of mental distress and ex-mental health worker. Had job as User Involvement Development Worker with UK mental health charity. Spoke at What Psychiatry Could Be, conference on Post Psychiatry Ipswich 2000, with staff from Bradford Home treatment Service.
    An Account of the Similarities between Manic Episodes and taking Ecstasy. Jeremy Spandler. (based on personal experience)
    Do Not Adjust your Mind There is a Fault in Reality TV. Steve McKenna. Survivor of psychiatry, member of Community Psychology group, Independent Community psychology Consultant.
    The Illustrated Mum. Jaqueline Wilson. Review by Janice Hartley.
    So You Think You're Mad. 7 Practical steps to mental health. Paul Hewitt.
    HANDSELL books. Reviewed by Adrian Lake.
    Survivor news and related action
    Mad Pride. Nutters with Action. Mad pride records. Review by Alice Constant.
    Hearing Voices network. Publications. Coping with Voices and visions.
    Starting and Supporting Hearing Voices Groups.
    HVN Poetry and Music.Experience. Pundit
    Who are Pundit.
    Distress Awareness Training Agency. Advert.
    Critical psychiatry and related news/action
    The Trieste Experiment revisted. Terence McLaughlin
    Mentions that Independent on Sunday 30.6.2001 launched campaign against proposed Mental Health Bill. Headlines included The treatment of the mentally ill that shames us all - Ex Broadmoor boss condemns harmful Bill - The Madness of the Cell and the Liquid Straight Jacket -
    Dangerous Debates and Mental health. To dispel the fear over ex-patients we must dispel fear itself. Kenneth McLaughlin. Mentions No Fear campaign launched by "social care 'trade magazine' Community Care"
    Risky Strategies. Response to Ken McLaughlin. Helen Spandler.
    British Psychological Society Division of Clinical Psychology. Survy of opinions about proposed reforms to 1983 Mental Health Act..
    Personal accounts. Survivor Voice.


    Asylum Vol.13 no 3
    2002
    Collection of: Anne Plumb

    Death by Assimiliation. Phil Barker and Poppy Buchanan-Barker. Refer to Rae Unzicker. US psychiatric survivor.
    Up Close and personal. Polly Mortimer. Looks back and forward at the state of things . From personal experience of psychiatry.
    Taking Refuge. Domestic violence, "Race" and Asylum. Erica Burman.
    Drug Company Funding. Profit or Loss? Eliza Johnston. Relationship of Pharma companies in distributing and providing material for National Service Framework and NIMHE (National Institute for Mental Health).
    "The Headless Man with no Body" Sara Stanton. (chair. Listen to the Voices. LTTV) on media,

    Survivor news and action
    Stronger Than Ever; the report of the first conference of survivor workers. UK. Rose Snow. Published.
    NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) guidelines! User representatives resign in protest at medical dominance of NICE self harm guidelines.
    Dodgy Drug dealers in Leeds. Terry Beulah. On some direct action at a Pfizer funded art exhibition.

    Critical psychiatry, psychology and related news/action
    A Summer of Protests Against the Mental Health Bill. Dave Harper. Mentions demos - Critical Mental Health Forum.(12/08/01.) demo outside department of health HQ in Whitehall. No Force (September), Mental Health Alliance Lobby (23.10.2002). Reports in Community Care, the Nursing Times, the Health Service Journal, Disability News and the Morning Star. Film being made by Listen to the Voices (Sara Stanton)
    Critical Mental Health Forum. Formed 2000. critical of current theory and practice in mental health services. Lobbied Royal College of Psychiatrists and Association of British Pharmaceutical Companies July 001 about the dangers of drug company sponsorship and dangers of psychiatric drugs Critical Mental Health's response to the draft Mental Health Bill. "Choice Not Compulsion"..
    NO FORCE Europe .Founded to campaign for reactionary proposals and resolution on human rights in psychiatry from the Council of Europe: Steering Committee on Bioethics to be published before being presented to Council of Ministers. NO FORCE UK organised demo 14.9.2002. outside Houses of Parliament

    Leeds Mental health directory goes on-line
    ASYLUM. OPENMIND is a magazine for lambs, whereas Asylum is the magazine for tigers. (letter)
    Psychiatric Reforms in Brazil. Christian Ingo Lenz Dunker, Fuad Kryllos Nets, Sao Marcos University, Brazil.

    Personal accounts. Survivor Voices.
    I sued a psychiatrist in defamation/malicious falsehood. I WON. Denise Grimsdell.
    Foot in the Past. Anon.

    14.12.2002 Suicide of Pete Shaughnessy

    18.2.2003 First available Internet Archive of Asylum Online
    First archive of "Features" page is about "STRONGER THAN EVER The report of the 1st National Conference of Survivor Workers UK by Rose Snow." (archive link). This was changed to "THE SEXUAL ABUSE OF PSYCHIATRIC PATIENTS: THE COVER-UP & THE GOVERNMENT WHITEWASH. A REVIEW OF 'THE KERR-HASLAM INQUIRY' HM Government, 2005, 2 Volumes, 995 pages, £97.50 By Phil Virden" in the archive of 24.2.2006. (link)


    Asylum Vol.13 no 4
    2003
    Collections of: Anne Plumb - Andrew Roberts. - Helen Spandler.
    Tribute issue to Pete Shaughnessy
    Pete Shaughnessy. Tribute issue. Introduction Rufus May
    STIGMA from Personal Erxperience. Pete Shaughnessy. Mentions Reclaim Bedlam direct action - Mad Pride
    The Beautiful Game. Pete Shaughnessy.
    Mad Wisdom. Pete Shaughnessy.
    Pete Shaughnessy. An interview. Mark Oldham. Mentions being a patients' advocate at Broadmoor. Also involved at looking at Rampton and Ashworth.

    Believing in Bedlam. Memories of Pete Shaughnessy by friends and colleagues.
    Rob Dellar (Mad Pride) mentions turning around of Sothward Mind into a user-led charity 1997 - involvement in Mental Health Media as spokesperson - started Reclaim Bedlam (organised sit-in outside original Bedlam site at Imperial War Museum to protest against ill-conceived "anniversary celebrations") - started Bermondsey and Rotherhithe Mental Health Support Group - SANE march/mad demo (Southwark Mind members targetted SANE headquarters in 1999 opposing their support for Compulsory Treatment Orders) - set up Mad Pride (with Rob Dellar, Simon Barnett and Mark Roberts) - vigil on Suicide Bridge in Archway -..wrote chapter Into the Deep End in Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad culture.
    Simon Barnett (Mad pride) Mentions Justice for the Liverpool Dockers march
    1966. Manic Depression Fellowship group run by Pete in South London (1966).
    Mark Roberts (Mad Pride.) Pete and one-liners
    Tessa Parkes. Mentions Bedlam Consultancy (Tessa Parkes, Pete Shaughnessy, Jolie Goodman) and work at the Tizard Centre (uni of kent), University of brighton, Boston University London
    Jennie Williams. Tizard centre. Jointly supervised piece of PhD research Ian Watling Tizard centre.
    Sherry Kate Summerside. (Mental Health Media). Mentions predecessor to Media Bureau - Headlines. Particiapted in video Hit the headlines - a survivors Guide to using the media. Mentions Reclaim Bedlam, ECT Anonymous and AL Wales user and Survivor group protest against the anti-stigma campaign launched by the Royal College of Psychiatry
    Sara Meddings.
    Number One (poem) Ena Daemon.
    Penny Shaughnessy.
    Steve Huisen. Shoestring Theatre Company. (action theatre).

    Yes Minister But - What is really going on in the corridors of power with the mental health bill. Debate between Rufus May and Peter Kinderman, lead representative of the British Psychological Society in the government working party
    Homage to Barthes (Roland not Fabien) Pat Bracken and Phil Thomas. (drug company advertising)

    Destroying Hearts and Minds? Psychiatry and delusion in the Gulf War. Helen Spandler.

    Survivor news and related action
    Critical Psychiatry, pyschology and related action
    Launch of Asylum Associates. March 2003.
    Shoestring theatre. Perfomed at launch of Asylum Associates. Reading the Signs - Work explores the reality of "psychotic" experiences and the response of the system in the context of drama.
    Personal accounts Survivor voices

    Asylum and Asylum supporters. This links to the current (updated) copy. Earliest preserved see below.

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 14 No 3) 2004.
    Special edition by Women at the Margins
    Archive flyer

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 15 No 1) December 2005.
    external link

    Asylum and Asylum supporters Archive copy from 5.2.2007 (earliest) which covers above. "Issue 14 (3) was edited by 'Women at the Margins' on Women and Borderline Personality Disorder, and Issue 14 (4) was edited by Angela Linton-Abulu on Sisters of the Yam. Future issues are scheduled on Paranoia."

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 15 No 2) 2006.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. -
    Cover: Horse "taking the leap into civilistion"

    4.9.2007 Death of Terence McLaughlin, editor of Asylum

    Conference 10.9.2008 to 12.9.2008

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 17 No 1) March 2010.
    Paranoia! The Paranoia Network.
    Relaunch issue. Now Quarterly
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 17 No 2) June 2010.
    What everyone should know about Psychiatric medication
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 17 No 3) September 2010.
    Szasz: The therapeutic state - Romme: Hearing voices - The politics of psychiatric medication - and more...
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts - offline archive
    Contents: The role of psychiatry in the therapeutic state by Thomas Szasz, p.3 - Voices are emotions by Marius Romme, p.4 - Psychiatric diagnosis and value-based practice in mental health nursing by a nurse, p.6 - Soldiers in double jeopardy by Fred A Baughman, p.11 - Side effects and psychopharmacogenetics: Policymakers keep dodging the issue, by Catherine Clarke, p.12 - A psychiatric salad: Salmagundi [Humour] by Nigelloh, p.17 - Obituaries: The story of Joan Hughes (1928-2008) a reprint, pp 18-19 and Judy Chamberlin (1944-2010) Psychiatric Survivor Activist, pp 20-21 - The avenging angel of the north by George Fowler, p.22 - The use of electroshock today by Cheryl Prax, p.26 - Modernising the Farm by Jessica Hogsbristle, p.27 - The value of making art by Douglas Gill, p.29

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 17 No 4) December 2010.
    Users' action - Peter Lehmann - Survivor History -and more.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive
    Contents: A small act of revolution by Bill Bailey, p.4 - Panic attack: a window for wisdom (anonymous), pp 5-6 - The dead sheep in the water tank: Some thoughts on ending stigma by Terry Simpson, p.7 - User-led mental health services? We've done it for a decade, by Adam James pp 8-9 "Leeds Survivor-Led Crisis Service has for 10 years run a multi-award-winning non-medical sanctuary for people with mental health problems. It prides itself on being user led. Adam James explains why it has made its mark in mental health history." - Letters, pp 9-10 - Soteria: as viewed by (ex-)users and survivors of psychiatry by Peter Lehmann pp 11-14 - One step beyond: Review of 'Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry' edited by Peter Stastny and Peter Lehmann, review by Helen Spandler, p.14 - Mental illness or self-interpretation by Jeremy Spandler, pp 15-16 - Welcome to niceworld by Midlands Psychology Group, pp 17-20 - State regulation: A disaster for service users as well as psychotherapists, by Ian Parker, p. 21 - The need for a new category of schizoprenia in DSM-5 [Humour] by Phil Thomas, pp 22-25 - Poems by Carol Batton, p. 25 - Mad Pride demo: 26.10.2010, p.26 - Special feature on survivors history pp 27-31 1: A poet's view of the Survivors History Group by Julia Sorribes and Phil Ruthen Survivors of the UK's mental health system rewrite their history. 2. Asylum to Action by Helen Spandler: A review by Mark Cresswell. Survivors' history and the symbols of a movement

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 18 No 1) March 2011.
    Mad Hatters and friends take over Asylum
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 18 No 2) June 2011.
    Schizophrenia 1911-2011 R.I.P.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 18 No 3) September 2011.
    Spiritual Crisis Network
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 18 No 4) December 2011.
    The myth of mental illness - Users' views - Users' action
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 19 No 1) March 2011.
    Asylum and normalcy conference
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 19 No 2) June 2012.
    Survivor Stories: 'A Declaration of Mad Independence'
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive
    Survivor History: Survivors Speak Out by Peter Campbell pp 4-5 - William Neville Bingley: 24 February 1950 - 31 July 2011. Lawyer, academic and charity organizer. An appreciation by Mick McKeown p. 6 - US Mental Health Service Users' Alternatives Conference by Will Hall p.7 - The Day I Met Ken Kesey by Scott Michael p.8 - Rachel Perkins and hairdressing by Sandra Smith p.8 - ReVision by Jackie Patiniotis pp 9-10 "ReVision is an alliance of service users, academics, students and community activists who are committed to promoting the social model of mental health. We have developed out of the Joint Forum (JF), a Liverpool based mental health user group. We chose the name ReVision to reflect the revisionist ideas of critical thinkers in the 1960s and 1970s" - Declaration of Mad Independence by Stephen R Killeen pp 10-11 - Signifier Surfing by Alastair Kemp pp 12 - Creative writing section of material by Phil Thomas - Czech Replublic must stop caging human beings, by The European Network of (Ex-) Users and Survivors of Psychiatry p. 16 - Why do doctors still prescribe neuroleptics? by Bruce G Charlton MD p. 18 - Cognitive behavioural therapy on trial by Fred Ruddick p.19 - News - Comments - Findings p. 22 - Book review: The Dark Threads: A Psychiatric Survivor's Story by Jean Davison. Accent Press, 2009. Reviewed by Pauline Whelan p.27 Drawn from distress to recovery: a call for 'graphic memoirs' p.28 - UK judgement on patient suicides - a victory for human rights? by Helen Spandler and Dina Poursanidou p.29 - Dina's story: Why I absconded from an acute mental ward p.30

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 19 No 3) September 2012.
    Anti-capitalism and Mental Health
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive
    Politicising the anti-psychiatry movement by Emma Chorlton p.4 - Towards psychological revolt against the machines of subjection by Bertie Russell p.5 - Broken system, not broken people by Michael Richmond p.7 - Rise up/fight back: selected writings of an antipsychiatry activist by Don Weitz p.8 - Is 'mental illness' a barrier to getting involved? by Rose Stambe, David Fryer, Sahra Dauncey and Stephanie Hicks p.9 - News: Three-quarters of those in need get no mental health treatment p.11 - The doctor ignorantia by Bruce Scott p.14 - News: Association of self-harm with being bullied as a child p.16 - 'Illness like any other': what does that really mean? by Hugh Middleton pp 17-18 - The politics of psychotherapy by Jean-Francois Jacques p.20 - A therapist in secure services by Julia K Horn p.21 - It's your problem but you need us to help you to fix it: The paradox at the heart of the improving access to psychological therapies agenda by Ewen Speed and Danny Taggart p. 23 - Blur the boundaries, but get organised (anonymous Community Mental Health Nurse and a UNISON activist) p.24 - Against superheroes and martyrdom: reflections on burnout by Andi Sidwell p.26 - Mental health: the struggle for decent food by Shaun Whittaker p.27 - The psychological impact of the British asylum and immigration system on female victims of torture by Niki Taylor p.28 - Climate change: its impact on physical and psychological dislocation and on the incidence of alcohol and drug use disorders: by Argeo Maviglia and Marcello Maviglia p.30

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 19 No 4) December 2012.
    Child abuse and mental health - Work capability assessments - Hearing voices - Readers' views
    Thomas Szasz (1920-2012): Life, liberty and politics by Ron Roberts, p.3 - Child abuse and adult mental health, p.4 - Chris Holley 1958-2011, p.4 - Safety model for adult survivors, p.5, Emerge, p.6 - What to do if you are sectioned: six ideas from a survivor, by Jeremy Spandler, p.8 - Work capability assessment: squeezing the vulnerable, p.9 - A service user comments, p.11 - Challenging the benefits regime by Phil Hutchinson, p.12 - Beyond recovery by Jeremy Gluck, p.14 - Hearing voices, p.15 - Hearing voices is normal by Dr John Rowan, p.15 - Listening to the inner voice: consciousness and mental distress by John Myhill, p.16 - What does hearing voices have to do with me? (Connecting professional and private selves) by Caroline von Taysen, p.18 - News and findings, pp 19-22 (Depression and medication on the increase - 26% of UK workers take time off for depression - Middle-aged men now highest suicide risk - Mental health discrimination to be axed - Creativity and mental illness - Stigma and discrimination still important - Increase in admissions for self-harm) - Creative writing pp 23-25 (Interview with Peter Campbell - Poems by Peter Campbell and Don Weitz and Jenny Johnson) - How well do anti-capitalist campaigners respond to mental deviance? by Ronny Worsey - Book reviews pp 27-28 (Mindful Occupation: Rising Up Without Burning Out - Narrative Psychiatry: How stories can shape clinical practice - Agnes's Jacket: A Psychologist's Search for the Meaning of Madness) -
    Alternative sources of support (back pages and online)
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 20 No 1) March 2013.
    Thomas Szasz: 1920 - 2012 - 'The myth of mental illness' - A psychiatrist against psychiatry
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive
    Editorial - Dave Harper and Ron Roberts p.3 -
    Thomas Szasz: Against coercion, for freedom and responsibility
    Letter to church of scientology p.4 - Thomas Szasz: An obituary by Dr Morton Schatzmanp p.5 - Thomas Steven Szasz: Psychiatrist and writer by Anthony Stadlen p.7 - Thomas Szasz by Professor Alec Jenner p.9 - Remembering Thomas Szasz by Joanna Moncrieff p.10 - Szasz, reason and responsibility by Ron Roberts p.11 - R.I.P. Thomas Szasz by Richard E. Vatz and Jeffrey A. Schaler p.12 - Three Strategies of Psychiatric coercion: In honour of Thomas Szasz by Jeffrey A. Schaler p.14 - No Excuses: The reality cure of Thomas Szasz by Phil Barker and Poppy Buchanan-Parker p.16 - Dr Thomas Szasz: A life of controversy by author unknown p.20 - Thomas Szasz: Author of 'The Myth of Mental Illness' by Dave Harper p.21 mary maddock writes . Mary Maddock p.22
    But unsympathetic to the realities of personal crisis?
    We'll miss him, I guess Anthony Morgan - Me and Thomas Szasz: Contrary approaches to anti-psychiatry by Peter Lehmann p.24 - Dualisms and Thomas Szasz by Philip Thomas and Pat Bracken p.25 - Szasz's unsettling legacy by Anne Plumb p.26 - Szasz and the case of the curate's egg by David Pilgrim p.27
    Regular sections

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 20 No 2) June 2013.
    Self-harm: Minimising harm, maximising hope
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive
    Guest Editorial - Helen Spandler, Clare Shaw and Sam Warner p.3
    Self-harm special feature
    Living with scars by Clare Shaw p.4
    Performing our experience by Clare Summerskill p.6
    Beacon of hope by Fiona Venner p.8
    Bristol crisis service for women p.10
    The naughty child b Fiona Jones p.11
    From state control to state support Sam Warner p.13
    Making friends with self-harm by Vicky Hudson p.15
    Some thoughts from a support worker by Tracey Greaves p.17
    Being human? My struggle with self-harm by Nicki Evans p.19
    The impact of caring by Terri Shaw and Karen Wright p.20
    Comic strip - asylum squad side story: The Psychosis by Diaries Sarafin p.22
    Regular sections

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 20 No 3) September 2013.
    Psychiatric drugs trigger violence? - Seeking Asylum, Mad Love and more...
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 20 No 4) December 2013.
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive
    In April 2011 David Reville and Kathryn Church, visited Edinburgh and Preston from Toronto. They spoke about Mad Activism in the Academy to a packed-out hall in Preston. In May 2012 a group from Scotland and England went to Toronto. This edition is based on these visits.

    BRINGING MAD POSITIVE HOME: SOME LESSONS FROM TORONTO by Helen Spandler, Mick McKeown, Lou Rawcliffe, Keith Holt and Kirsten Maclean
    INTERGALACTIC SPIRITUALITY, HIP HOP AND PSYCHIATRY: DIRECTING A DOCUMENTARY ON KHARI 'CONSPIRACY' STEWART by Jonathan Balazs
    PERFORMING MAD PRIDE IN TORONTO by Ruth Ruth Stackhouse
    MAD ARCHIVES IN CANADA, EH? by Members and volunteers of PSAT
    MAD PEOPLE'S HISTORY COMES TO SCOTLAND by Nyla Mehdi
    "Nyla Mehdi is a recent graduate in psychology, and a mental health service user. She works as an assistant psychologist and support worker and is also a volunteer with the
    Oor Mad History project based at CAPS Independent Advocacy, where she is part of the module team developing a Mad People's History course at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, Scotland."
    MADNESS: A BEGINNER'S GUIDE by annu saini
    NOT A REAL ACTIVIST: FINDING THE MAD ACTIVISM THAT WORKS FOR YOU by PhebeAnn Wolframe
    THE CONSUMER/SURVIVOR TIMEBANK: MADNESS MEETS MARXISM by Andrea White
    WHAT I'VE LEARNED ABOUT ORGANISING FROM ACTIVISTS IN TORONTO'S MAD MOVEMENT by Danielle Landry
    REMEMBERING MAD ACTIVISM IN TORONTO by David Reville
    CAMPUSES ARE TREATMENT CENTRES - OR ARE THEY? by Jenna Reid
    MAD PEOPLE OF COLOUR - A MANIFESTO by Rachel Gorman, annu saini, Louise Tam, Onyinyechukwu Udegbe and Onar Usar
    IN WHOSE INTERESTS? COMPLICATING NARRATIVE RESEARCH by Kathryn Church
    DEAR MAD PRIDE, WITH GRATITUDE by Catherine Fitzpatrick
    ON GETTING PAID TO 'PARTICIPATE' by Becky McFarlane

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 21 No 1) March 2014.
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 21 No 2) June 2014.
    Readers views, news, and reviews
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 21 No 3) September 2014.
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 21 No 4) December 2014.
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    2015: Asylum year of the comics
    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 22 No 1) March 2015.
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 22 No 2) June 2015.
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive
    Introduction by the editors - Leonard Roy Frank: Obituary extracted from
    Mad in America - Drawing Comics and Social Aspects of Mental Health by Meg John Barker - Ronnie Laing, Jack Kirky and Me: The day the world turned dayglo by Alex Read - Cheese or Ham? Wendy Couchman, Trish Hafford-Letchfield and Kate Leonard - Comics, Cross- Media and Mental Health: Matthew Green interviews Ravi Thornton - Dreams of the Endless: Despair, delirium and representations of mental health by Sasha Garwood - After Depresso or How I Learned to Do Something with Being Bonkers by Brick - A Dog is for Life by Brick - '... Rorschach. He's sick in his mind.' by Katharine Hubbard - The Autistic Rights Movement (ARM UK) [See website] - Validation or Invalidation: To be or not to be? by Mark Bertram - Supertanker on a Sixpence by Adrian Kenton - LETTER: Alec Jenner Remembered by James Stalker - Depression and Gladness (an anonymous poem) - Book Review by Jordan Reyes of Better Days: A mental health and recovery workbook by Craig Lewis. - News and Reports

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 22 No 3) September 2015.
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 22 No 4) December 2015.
    Collections of: Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 23 No 1) March 2016.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 23 No 2) June 2016.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive
    Editorial: Thirty Years - Progress or Stagnation? - Dr Tim Kendall, National Clinical Director for Mental Health (NHS England), says ... - Thirty Years of Democratic Psychiatry Down the Drain or the Struggle Continues? by Phil Hutchinson - Thirty Years Speaking Out by Andrew Roberts for the Survivors History Group - From Psychiatric Abuse to Psychiatric Neglect by Helen Spandler - Educate, Agitate, Organise! by Mick Mckeown - Ramblings and Reservations by Tina Coldham - ECT and the Fish Pond William Park - Small Acts of Rebellion by Linda Gask - Olive's Story and The Phoenix of Hope by Margaret Turner and Olive Bucknall - Soteria Brighton: Origins and activities by Dominic Pearson and Katy Baboulene - Trieste Before and After by Daniel Magalhães Goulart - Is Psychiatry Really Better Now? A view from Australia by Deidre Oliver - Mental Health Care in Greece by Eugenie Georgaca - Challenging an Increasingly Maddening World: The timely emergence of Mad Studies Peter Beresford - The Mad Society of Canada (MADSoC) - Speaking Out Against Psychiatry by Cheryl Prax - News and Findings

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 23 No 3) September 2016.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive - Diana Rose accused Asylum paying "little attention to the work of users and survivors of psychiatry" "for its first decade at least" (1986 to 1996 and beyond). "Instead, it contented itself with critiquing the establishment from a professional perspective. Are things any different now? Ostensibly. The new orthodoxy is Mad Studies, but still very few survivor voices are present." Her argument is that Asylum provides selective reporting of survivor voices. "The role seems to be to narrate first- hand experience in such a way that it confirms or illuminates dominant positions in the magazine." Survivors History Group documents what Asylum says about our history and will discuss this at our meetings from January 2017 .

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 23 No 4) December 2016.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive
    Editorial: Mad Studies comes of age (Part 1) by Helen Spandler - Mad Studies 2016: A situation report by Peter Beresford - Inclusion Interrupted by Jijian Voronka - Mad Studies needs to examine its silence on violence by Lucy Costa - Can we put hurt behind us? by Mick McKeown - Disabling Madness by Sarah Golightly - Book Review of Searching for a Rose Garden by Helen Spandler - Two years of Mad Studies organising in the UK by Brigit McWade - Conferences in 2017 - Images by Amani Omejer - Garth Daniels' struggle against vindictive psychiatry by Phil Virden - Letter: A reply to Diana Rose from Don Weitz - News and Findings - Photographs by Garth Daniels

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 24 No 1) - 2017.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive
    Editorial: A dedication [to Robert Deller] - Mad Studies by Alex Dunedin - Mad and Queer Studies: Shared visions? by Helen Spandler - Just Borderline Mad by Flick Grey - Don't be mean. Be Kind. by Kirsten Maclean, Elspeth Morrison and Anne O'Donnell - Mad Studies North East Collective Community Course Durham, Summer 2016 [See http://madstudiesne.weebly.com/] - Homosexuality, psychiatry and diagnostic politics by Sarah Carr - Like a hole in the head by Kay Inckle - It's not about past hurt. It's about the way you call for alliances by Jasna Russo - Mad Studies? A response by Tim Wilson - Poems by Bruce E Saunders - Book review by William Park of Pulling the Trigger: OCD, anxiety, panic attacks and related depression - the definitive survival and recovery approach - News and findings - Anatomised by Danny Taggart

    "Don't be mean. Be kind" by Kirsten Maclean, Elspeth Morrison and Anne O'Donnell looks from outside the university at how ordinary survivors can relate to Mad Studies. It shows how survivors in Canada and Scotland took survivor issues (studies) into Universities and discusses what is necessary for survivors from outside universities to relate and benefit from this. It covers ways of discussing issues that let everyone take part.

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 24 No 2) - 2017.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive
    Editorial - Dead People Don't Claim by Paula Peters and China Mills - Mad Pride and Depression by Jonathan Beazer - Sonic by Erin Mueller with illustration by Roísín Curé - Soul Relics Museum by Vanessa - Madness in New Zealand by Mary O'Hagan - They Call This "Help" by Otto Douglas - What The Watcher Did by Maria Ann Snow - Conquering the Stigma of Mental Illness by Eric Levy - An Open Letter from a PTSD Sufferer by Sharon Lowry - Personality Disorder John Myhill - URGENT PRODUCT RECALL by Dolly Sen - Meditation on a Bus Seat by Eileen Pollard - POEM: Your Truth by April Bergin - Letters from Andrew Roberts and Dina Poursanidou Minologue about CVs by Jane Scargill - News and Findings - Memories of Patricia Chambers by Jayasree Kalathil and of Dina Ibrahim by Andrew Roberts.

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 24 No 3) - 2017.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 24 No 4) - 2017.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive
    Editorial - Asylum: Action to reaction by Milan Buddha Ghosh - What is to be done? by Roy Bard - When the mad research the mad by Sue Phillips, Penny Stafford and Shirley Anne Collie - Creative responses to mental distress by Rufus May, Anne-Marie McKenzie and Apostolia Fotoglou - Keeping the fun in dysfunctional by Yasmin Dewan - Rethinking psychiatry by Suman Fernando - HELP! by Rachel Rowan Olive - Neoliberal Hard Times by Mick McKeown - Madsplaining by Ria Dylan and Rachel Rowan Olive - Can clinical psychology ever be radical? by Craig Newnes - Neoliberalism and mental health policy in Brazil by Wilson Franco and Paulo Beer - Poetry and Prose - Tolerate this! by Ria Dylan - News and reports - Breaking free - Mad Pride Hull

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 25 No 1) - 2018.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive
    Front Cover pictures by Rachel Rowan Olive (books) and Mark Bertram (homes and homeless) - Editorial by Helen Spandler - Big Farmer is Watching You by Connie Sachs - "Bigger Pills to Swallow" by Jeffrey Brooks (who is detained in a mental institution in the USA. About eight years ago he was not taking his prescribed medication and killed his grandmother. He argues for taking prescribed medication because "believe me I know ... there are BIGGER pills to swallow".] - If it's #MeToo, it can't be #JustThem by Deborah A. Lee - Letter to the Editor from a disillusioned subscriber [about the class bias of Asylum] - Spreading the Word: 8 Years for the Hearing Voices Network in Greece by members of the network - Poem by Andrew Jackson about his black bear - Verity Dawn Hall on different kisses, and different rejections - William Park's review of Ravaged Wonderful Earth, A Collection for David Kessel (2013) followed by Andrew Roberts on the need to preserve outsider culture and survivor poetry - The Other Side of Insanity by Ash E. Rah "for one brief shining moment that you were not aware of, I decided that your existence was precious, and I gave my life to preserve it. Thank insanity for that one: the healthy me didn't give a shit". - A film review by Terry Burke of "Unrest", which "clearly demonstrates the impact that chronic illnesses such as ME have on our identity, relationships and life possibilities." - Creative Identities in the Spirit of Philip Morgan by Andrew Roberts - Working to Recovery by Ben Gray - Fun Things to Do With Used Tampons (illustrated) by Rachel Rowan Olive - News and reports - Directory: Mental Health Campaigning and Discussion Groups. Back cover pictures "Flaming Spirit" by Sam Shakes.

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 25 No 2) - 2018.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 25 No 3) - 2018.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    ASYLUM magazine (Volume 25 No 4) - 2018.
    Collections of:
    Andrew Roberts. - offline archive

    16.7.1985 Ingrid Barker, from Nottingham Mind, Edward Peck, administrator Nottingham mental health services sector teams, and Andrew Lowe from Nottinghamshire Social Services heard Hans Wiegant, from the Netherlands (and others) speak at the World Congress.

    Later that year they invited Wouter van de Graaf from the Dutch Clients Union to visit Nottingham. Colin Gell met with him at the Gateway Day Hospital.

    By 1989, Colin Gell was employed as a support worker by Nottingham Patients Council Support Group. The post was full time (at least by 1990).

    Nottinghamshire Social Services paid for Wouter van de Graaf spending three months in Nottingham, in 1986, exploring setting up a Patients' Council in Nottingham. A steering group called the Patients' Council Support Group began planning this. Its members included professionals, representatives of organisations, and som users. It included Gary Robson from the Law Centre, John Williams from regional Mind, Audrey Mullender and Geoff Eley from Nottingham Mind, Philip Bean from the University of Loughborough, Colin Gell, Glenys Brocklebank and others (users?)

    January 1986: Start of Nottingham Patients Council Support Group. This group led to the establishment of the Nottingham Advocacy Group in 1987. The project was "supported by" (Nottingham?) Mind for its first year of operation.

    23.1.1986 Members of the Nottingham Patients' Council Support Group visited wards at Saxondale Hospital to speak to patients about the idea of setting up a Patients Council. Patients held a ward meeting as a result of which the Support Group made representations to hospital managers about an evening club that only ran for 20 minutes because the person running it turned up late. The problem was remedied.

    Philip Hogarth, the Mental Health Unit Manager at Saxondale Hospital, provided £100 to the Support Group for the expenses of its work with in-patients over their planned move to smaller, community based units.

    March 1986 Patients Taking Power a two day conference of patients and mental health workers

    April 1986 Support Group banned from Saxondale Hospital when a consultant psychiatrist objected to it meeting his patients. - About the same time, Wouter van de Graaf reached the end of his contract.

    September 1986 the first Patients Council meeting at Mapperley

    1987 The Nottingham Advocacy Group (NAG) was launched as an independent limited company, with Audrey Mullender as the first Chair.

    1987 Jenny Haywood, the first citizen advocacy co-ordinator appointed

    About this time: first independent premises in Mansfield Road.

    1987 Mapperley Patients Council folded

    1988 Mapperley Patients Council re-established

    10.9.1988 Brian Davey spoke at the first Survivors Speak Out AGM. He "wanted to highlight some of the problems the [Patients' Council Support Group] were having in Nottingham. Sustaining a small group of volunteers to do intensive and extensive work necessarily is not easy and leads to a constant rebuilding of the group. Hospital administrators apathetic frequently and do not always attend meeting as promised. Nevertheless on acute wards users have been active and things were also developing in local sector teams."

    1989 Funding for a user involvement support worker Colin Gell

    1989 Move to larger premises in Forest Road

    1989 Gary Robson became chair.

    Peter Campbell 1990: "In the Nottingham area, there has been a pioneering attempt to introduce advocacy and self-advocacy facilities modelled on those developed in Holland. The Nottingham Patients Council Support Group (NPCSG) and Nottingham Advocacy Group (NAG) have acted as models for various other areas of the United Kingdom, such as Brighton, Newcastle, and Leeds. The facilities being developed in Nottingham include patients' councils in three psychiatric hospitals, facilitated by NPCSG; a citizen advocacy project run by NAG; the Dale Centre, which is a day facility in the community largely organized by recipients; and recipient advocacy groups in local areas of the city of Nottingham linked to statutory sector teams".

    Thursday 15.3.1990 - Friday 16.3.1990 User Involvement - The Way Forward conference.

    24.1.1991 First National Advocacy Network conference

    20.1.1992 Registration of Ecoworks (Nottingham) Limited. Founded by Brian Davey - Ecoworks website

    1992 first City Wide Council. A forum in which issues raised by users in different services could be discussed with mental health service managers.

    1993 first Mental Health Awareness Week in Nottingham.

    About here that

    1994 Michael Worth joined Nottingham Advocacy Group as a volunteer

    By 1994/1995 Nottingham Advcacy Group was in receipt of funding from the district health authority; Nottinghamshire Social Services; the Mental Health Trust; joint finance; the Mental Health Foundation; a local brewery and other private firms. Much was short term and fragile.

    "It was enabling NAG to support patients' councils and user groups in both hospital and community settings, to provide individual advocacy, take part in joint planning, a Purchasing for Users Group (PUG) and other planning groups, provide training for mental health workers and initiate projects such as a self assessment by users of their own needs."

    1995-1996 Annual Report celebrated the 10th anniversary. Also ten years full time unwaged work by Glenys Brocklebank. The group had seven waged staff and 24 full time or nearly full time unwaged volunteers.

    May 1997 Advocateur contained an item about a self-help group for women who self harm

    20.5.2003 NAG Website established. It remained, unedited, until 2007. (archive list)

    July 2003 Leaflet gives details as
    Nottingham Advocacy Group (NAG)
    Provides a service to adults with mental health problems mainly in Nottingham City and the districts of Broxtowe, Rushcliffe and Gedling.
    write: Nottingham Advocacy Group (NAG)
    848A Woodborough Road
    Mapperley
    Nottingham NG3 5QQ
    tel: (0115) 910 7300

    2005/2006 Nottingham Advocacy Group lost the contract for advocacy services to the local NHS Trust to the professional advocacy providers Speaking Up. "By mid 2006 the only advocacy contract that remained with NAG was for the personality disorder service."

    July 2007 A History of the Nottingham Advocacy Group compiled by Marian Barnes

    Survivors Speak Out Index

    IMPORTANT EVENTS IN SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT HISTORY

    30.11.1985-1.12.1985 Get together after Mind Conference
    24.1.1986-26.1.1986 First Minstead Lodge meeting
    1.8.1986-3.8.1986 Second Minstead Lodge meeting
    Survivors Speak Out newsletter
    23.1.1987-25.1.1987 Third Minstead Lodge meeting
    £ money 1987
    31.7.1987 - 2.8.1987 Fourth Minstead Lodge meeting
    18.9.1987-20.9.1987 Edale Conference
    6.2.1988 Working group on organisation
    10.9.1988 First Annual General Meeting
    18.4.1989 Launch of Self Advocacy Action Pack
    14.9.1989 Second Annual General Meeting
    14.9.1989 Launch of International Self Advocacy Alliance (ISAA) Crisis Card at AGM
    15.9.1990 Third Annual General Meeting
    15.9.1990 Constitution voted through at AGM
    28.9.1991 Eating Distress Conference
    5.10.1991 Fourth Annual General Meeting
    26.11.1991 Mental Health Service Users as Trainers event in Nottingham
    £ money 1992
    October 1992 Government consultations
    10.10.1992 Meeting with the Minister
    31.10.1992 Fifth Annual General Meeting
    November 1992 Publication of Eating Distress
    1993-1994 Mental Health Task Force 1993-1994
    April 1993 Move into Office (34 Osnaburgh Street)
    30.10.1993 Sixth Annual General Meeting
    December 1993 Information Project starts
    End of 1993? Publication of Stopovers
    22.10.1994 Seventh Annual General Meeting
    October 1994 Publication of Self Harm
    November 1994 Forging Our Futures
    28.10.1995 Eighth Annual General Meeting
    Autumn 1995 SSO Crisis Card launched
    November 1995 Administrative worker appointed
    1.2.1996 End of Information Project
    9.11.1996 Ninth Annual General Meeting
    Post 1996 - Regional Forums. ?? How many ?? Where ?? When ??
    March 1997 Nottingham workshop on (Internet) communication
    January 1998 Tenth Annual General Meeting held in Birmingham
    Autumn 1998 Consultation on millenium Mad Pride

    1985

    July 1985 After the World Congress

    30.11.1985-1.12.1985 Get together after Mind Conference

    Rick Hennelly was not at this meeting, but he has a copy of the letter from Lorraine Bell to Chris Heginbotham at MIND dated 12.12.85 'on behalf of consumers and allies that met on 30.11.85-1.12.85...after the Conference' [SSO Bell/Heginbotham 12.12.1985] with an appendix with a list of Groups and also a list of the individuals who were at the meeting. [SSO Mailing List 12.1985]

    Attended by: Kathy Thomson, Elvira "M. Lay" [Ridley] and Charles Reid from Glasgow - Nora McDonnell from Eire - Carl Walster, Val Triggs, and Ingrid Barker from Nottingham - Cathy Pelikan, Mike Lawson, Robert Dando, Eric Unwin (Irwin), John Slade and Nick Simons from London and Lorraine Bell from Dorset. [Six others not listed]

    List of Groups:
    Contact, Chesterfield (Rick Hennelly, Andrew Milroy and others)
    Ormiston Road Centre, Greenwich
    Link, Glasgow (Tam, Charlie, Elvira, Kathy, Vince and others)
    British Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry (members include Steve Tictin, Mike Lawson, Dave Hill and Nick S... [Simons?])
    Campaign Against Psychiatric Opppression, c/o Frank Bangay
    Bristol Women and Mental Health Group, c/o Angela Hall
    Camden Consortium c/o Peter Campbell
    Hackney Mental Health Action Group c/o Cathy Pelikan
    People not Psychiatry, c/o Health Education Centre, Hardman Street, Manchester 1
    Phoenix Co-operative, 128 Mildmay Road, London, N1 4NE
    Brixton
    Nottingham Mind
    Manchester Mind, c/o 178 Waterloo Place, Oxford Road, Machester 13
    "also Brent, Lambeth and Islington Mind"

    January 1986

    "Survivors Speak Out was founded in 1986 by a group of mental health service users and workers. The term survivor was chosen to portray a positive image of people in distress and people whose experience differs from, or who dissent from, society's norms. The main aim is to promote self advocacy." (Survivors Speak Out website)

    Peter Campbell was an officer of Survivors Speak Out from 1986 to 1996

    CAPO was not affiliated to Survivors Speak Out for the first two years (see December 1987) because CAPO thought Survivors Speak Out was too close to professionals. In 1988 Frank Bangay wrote "1986 saw the birth of some new survivor groups who took a reformist approach". CAPO was described as "elitist".

    Speaking about Survivors Poetry, Joe Bidder said (BBC 25.4.2006) that the four founders were active in CAPO and meant by the term a "survivor of the mental health system". Later they re-defined it as a "survivor of mental distress", as they wanted to broaden their appeal

    Minstead Lodge 1986 and 1987

    Rick Hennelly went to all the Minstead Lodge meetings. He borrowed a Derbyshire County Council minibus and drove down with four people from user-led groups in North Derbyshire and picked up three people from Nottingham en route.


    Friday 24.1.1986-Sunday 26.1.1986 First Minstead Lodge meeting

    London weather at the end of January 1986 changeable with rain and mild weather, alternating with quite sunny days and near normal temperatures.

    Report after the January 24-26 1986 meeting [SSO 24- 26.1.1986] Collections of Rick Hennelly and Andrew Roberts
    "SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT, CONFERENCE '86'
    MINSTEAD LODGE 24th-26th JANUARY"
    A two page report on the organisation of a conference.
    ADDRESS LIST. MINSTEAD LODGE 24TH-26TH JANUARY [SSO 24-26.1.1986 ADDRESS LIST

    Attended by: Thomas Graham from Glasgow - Carl Walster, Val Triggs and Walter Benini from Nottingham - Mick Crossley, Mike Mainard, Robert Claytor, Rick Hennelly, and Ivy Buckland from Chesterfield - Jane Aldous, Jane Hartley, Claire Barnard, Ellen Cronin and Pam Trevithick from Bristol - Peter Campbell, Mike Lawson (C.A.P.O.) and John Hollahan (Network) from London - Lorraine Bell from Dorset - and Julie Driver from Southampton

    Survivors Speak Out Newsletters and news

    Anne Plumb has newsletters (news) from 1986-2004, but not all AGM reports.

    Indexed below: January 1986 minutes - August 1986 minutes - Newsletter One - January 1987 minutes - February 1987 information - April/May 1987 - August 1987 - May 1988 - August 1988 - December 1988 - March 1989 - June 1989 - October 1989 - 1990 - July 1990 - December 1990 - April 1991 - September 1991 - January 1992 -

    The first Survivors Speak Out newsletter, apparently produced in Chesterfield (below), is not dated. On internal evidence, I suggest that it was produced after the second Minstead Lodge meeting. Ernie Morris, the person who put the first newsletter together, was a regular user of the Tontine Road Centre in Chesterfield from 1985 (for three or four years). He is remembered for his "strong London accent" and for spending a lot of time maintaining and printing documents on a old printing machine at the centre. He was also active in a church group. (email Rick Hennelly 21.3.2012)

    Survivors Speak Out No.1 - 50p [SSO News1]
    (Andrew Roberts' collection - From Peter Campbell)

    "This is the first Newsletter produced by Survivors Speak Out. In this issue various groups around the country have give details on what they an doing for the so-called "Consumer" Movement. Everyone involved is a Survivor but we do have allies... For future information (articles etc), please contact Ernie Morris, 53 Hope Street, Brampton, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, S40 1DG

    In July 1985 a group of Survivors and allies from England, Scotland, Ireland, USA, Holland, Denmark and Sweden met to prepare a statement on the rights of people with Mental Health Problems. The discussion and writing of our statement by the group was very challenging and inspired some of us in the UK and ireland to start a network for members of "User" groups across the country and allies (those supporting our campaign). We have now met 3 times and have spent the past 9 months fund-raising to hold a National Conference in Spring 1987..."

    This newsletter contains several poems by Carol Batton on of which (The Forgiveness Poem, p.12) is dated 8.8.1986.

    April 1986 "whilst running an Information Stall at a conference at City University... I first met Peter Campbell. I joined Survivors Speak out there and then and was invited to the planning group meetings for that wonderful event - the Survivors Conference in Edale" (Richard Sutton, July 1990 Newssheet page 3)

    Spring 1986: The first membership of Survivors Speak Out enrolled at a meeting in Ivy Buckland's hotel bedroom at a conference in Newcastle. (Survivors Speak Out Newsheet December 1988 , p.6)

    Summer 1986

    Friday 1.8.1986-Sunday 3.8.1986 Second Minstead Lodge meeting
    Amongst those mentioned in the minutes is Ernie Morris

    London had bright days with average temperatures on 1.8.1986 and 2.8.1986. It turned very cool and wet with thundery rain on 3.8.1986. Southampton was dry on 1.8.1986, but had 9mm of rain on 2.8.1986 and 17mm on 3.8.1986. The maximum temperatures were 19, 20 an 14.7

    Report after the August 1-3 1986 meeting [SSO 1- 3.8.1986]
    Collections of Anne Plumb and Rick Hennelly

    My copy of the August 1-3 1986 'update' on the Minstead meeting has a hand written addition - "Thank you for joining. Will send more info as it becomes available. A. Walker" (?) so I guess this served a dual purpose - meeting report and newssheet? Anne Plumb 26.3.2012

    Rick Hennelly has a document: Minutes from Minstead meeting 1.8.1986- 3.8.1986 which reference to thirteen people who were present. Along with this, a photocopy of an undated document which is a list of attendees, signed and with addresses for all attendees (25 in all). Although the document has no reference to Minstead, all 13 people mentioned in the minutes are on the attendee list.

    Attended by: Tam [Thomas] Graham from Glasgow - Nora McDonnell from Eire - Carl Walster, John Boyd, Geoff Eley, Ingrid Barker and Corton(?) Thomas from Nottingham - Rick Hennelly, Earnie Morris, and Ivy Buckland from Chesterfield - Jane Aldous, Jane Hartley, Claire Barnard, Ellen Cronin and Pam Trevithick from Bristol - Peter Campbell, Cathy Simpson, David Kessel, Janet Billins, [and someone else, illegible] from London - Lorraine Bell from Dorset - Tessa Kennedy from Southampton - David Rawlinson and Lynda Langford from Minstead Lodge - and Vera Wilson from ???

    Rick Hennelly has a copy of a letter from Chris Heginbotham following the second Minstead meeting regarding setting up "a panel of users that MIND can consult". It is undated, but probably August September 1986. [SSO Heginbotham/SSO August/September 1986]


    Friday 23.1.1987-Sunday 25.1.1987
    Third Minstead Lodge meeting

    London weather at the end of January 1987 was rather cold but mainly dry. Snow had thawed on 20.1.1987

    Report after the January 23-25 1987 meeting [SSO 23-25.1.1987]
    Collections of Anne Plumb and Rick Hennelly
    This "gives thanks to Ernie and Carl for the newsletter" [Ernie Morris of Chesterfield and Carl Walster of Nottingham]
    Contains news from Mind

    "From the Secretary" February 1987" [SSO February 1987]
    Collection of Anne Plumb. this mentions that Lorraine Bell had successfuly applied for £500 from the King's Fund centre

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet April/May 1987
    [SSONews 4/5.1987]
    Produced in London by Peter Campbell "in my rather wobbly typewriting". Collections of Peter Cambell and Anne Plumb.
    Contains news from Mind

    May? 1987 Bristol Survivors set up

    Friday 31.7.1987 - Sunday 2.8.1987 Fourth Minstead Lodge meeting

    London weather at the end of July and begining of August 1987 was mostly dull, cool and cloudy. There was no rain in Southampton on the Friday and Saturday, but some on Sunday. Temperature maximum 25 Friday - 21.5 Saturday and Sunday

    Photographs:
    A1: Lorraine Bell, Ivy Buckland and Peter Campbell sitting on steps
    A2: Lorraine Bell
    A3: Lorraine Bell and Peter Campbell crouching
    A4: Minstead Lodge (the building)


    B1: Large Group photograph

    Lady (blue stripped dress) and man (tie) standing right at the back have not been identified
    Vera Wilson from Southampton standing at left at back
    Lady from Bristol (blue cardigan) sitting by Vera Wilson's arm
    Ian Mooney (blond hair, black top) from Nottingham Patients Council sitting next in the middle row behind Peter Campbell
    Peter Campbell, white top, brown trousers, sitting centre below lady in blue stripped dress

    David Hepher (glasses and white shirt) from Southampton sitting middle row right of centre
    Dave Lowson (Brighton Mind) (blue pullover with white badge) back row right centre
    Glen Cawse from Winchester (yellow and blue stripes) back row next right
    Richard Sutton (pink) back row next right
    Rick Heneley standing at the end on the right

    B1

    Lorraine Bell crouched left at front
    Man from Weston Super Mare sitting next to Lorraine
    Joyce Davies from Chesterfield sitting at front, third from the left, at Peter Campbell's feet
    Peter Campbell sitting centre below lady in blue stripped dress
    Second man from Weston Super Mare sitting next to Peter Campbell at front
    Carl Walter from Nottingham crouched centre right at the front, next to the second man from Weston Super Mare
    Lynda Langford from Southampton front row between Carl and Felicity
    Felicity Couch sitting front row right at end
    Rick Heneley standing at the end on the right


    B2: Small group sitting on the corner of a wall.
    From left to right: Peter Campbell, Jackie Biggs, Mike Lawson, Ivy Bucklend, Lorraine Bell.
    B3: People sprawled on grass in sun. Peter Campbell appears to be conducting a seminar with a large outdoor blackboard, but he cannot recall what was happening.
    B4: Dave Lowson, Ivy Buckland and Richard Sutton

    C1: Ivy Buckland
    C2: Dave Lowson sitting on step latter with broom. Rick Henelley with broom

    GC1: Picture at Greenham Common on return journey includes Rick Henelley
    GC2: Picture at Greenham Common on return journey includes Ivy Buckland.

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet August 1987
    [SSONews 8.1987]
    Produced in London by Peter Campbell
    Collections of Peter Cambell and Anne Plumb.
    Contains news from Mind


    Friday 18.9.1987-Sunday 20.9.1987 Edale Conference

    Attended: From Eire: Nora McDonnell - From Northern Ireland: John Ritchie - From Scotland: Charlie Reid - From Newcastle: George Taylor, Edward Peck (ally), Ingrid Barker (ally), Sheila Charlton, Pater Wallbank, John Saunders, Tricia Tyermann - From Ormskirk (Lancashire): Sheila Christy - From Manchester: Marie Wilson, Steven Willett, Tony Riley, Andrew Hughes, Mery Fowkes, Steven Charles Brown, Anne Plumb - From Crewe: Andrew Robinson - From Leeds: Charles Ashcroft, Ellen Weaver - From Sheffield: Graham Eastop (although not listed), Philip Hutchinson, Tracey Jacobs, Pete Wright, Barry Wilson, Bob Clayton, Martin McDermott, Tony Griffiths, Alison Taylor - From Chesterfield:   Rick Hennelly (ally), Ivy Buckland, Tony Bennett, Joyce Davis - From Matlock: Tim Lugg (not staying) - From Nottingham: Colin Gell, Geoff Eley, Ian Mooney, Carl Walster, Brian Davey, Linda Bliss, Clem McQueeen, Lon Proudlock, Audrey Mullander, Geoff Smith - From Leicester: Teresa Bradley - From Walsall: Mary Lee, John Jarvis - From Birmingham: Ann Davis, David Trippas CONTINUE

    Survivors Speak Out Conference 1987 Charter of Needs and Demands [SSO Charter 1987]

    Statement from Survivors Speak Out following Edale Conference 1987 [SSO Statement 1987]

    From the Survivors Speak Out Conference to The Viscount Colville, Chairman. Mental Health Act Commission. Room 22. Hepburn House, Marsham Street, London, SW1F 4HW. [SSO Biggs/Colville 1987]

    Press Release from 1st Survivors Speak Out Conference. September 21, 1987 [SSO Press 1987]

    Report of the first national conference for users of psychiatric services. September 1987. Lorraine Bell - Two pages [SSO Report 12.10.1987]

    National conference of users of psychiatric services. Organised by Survivors Speak Out. September 1987. One page [SSO Report 11.1987] Mainly a reduced version of Lorraine Bell's 12.10.1987 Report, but signed by Survivors Speak Out.


    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet November 1987
    [SSONews 11.1987]
    Contains news from Mind

    1988

    6.2.1988 Survivors Speak Out working group at Kings Fund Centre which prepared a discussion paper on organisation in the run-up to the inaugural AGM. The members of the working group were -

    From London: Peter Campbell, Richard Sutton, Mike Lawson, Jackie Biggs (ally)
    From Brighton: Dave Lowson (ally)
    From Southampton: Lorraine Bell (ally)
    From Exeter: Linda Maine
    From Bristol: Felicity Couch
    From Chesterfield: Rick Hennelly (ally)
    From Leeds: Migs Noddings
    From Glasgow: Tam Graham

    The group met for a day. The discussion paper was circulated to all Survivors Speak Out members, with a request for comments by 30.4.1988.

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet February 1988
    [SSONews 2.1988]
    mentions Working Party set up to organise the inaugural AGM; work starting on the self-advocacy pack, appointment of Jan Wallcraft to the Mind Consumer Advisory Network.

    30.4.1988 Deadline for comment on organisation discussion paper

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet May 1988
    [SSONews 5.1988]
    (Andrew Roberts' collection - From Peter Campbell)

    An 'Inaugural' AGM was set for September 1988. 'Inaugural' as this was a meeting to discuss a formal constitution. The Working group discussed the issue of allies in May 1988.

    "'The status of 'allies' - A number of people responded on this issue. Most did not want 'allies' as officers. This group does see this as a key issue and the pros and cons were discussed at length. It was agreed not to change the current SURVIVORS policy (allowing 'allies' to stand). It was felt we do not have a mandate. We feel SURVIVORS should aim towards a goal of 'survivor'-only officers in future and that the issue must be discussed at the AGM. Those who so wish will have the choice of not voting for 'allies' who stand for office."

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet August 1988
    [SSONews 8.1988]
    (Andrew Roberts' collection - From Peter Campbell)

    Saturday 10.9.1988 First Annual General Meeting at Hampden Community Centre [150 Ossulston Street, London, NW1 1EE]. Contact was Lorraine Bell, Southampton. Mike Lawson introduced. Peter Campbell said that Survivors Speak Out was in a consolidating period after its first conference at Edale, and was now opening up to a democratic process. There was a need for a larger steering group to cope with the many requests for information, and the media interest.

    The new steering group were:
    Peter Campbell - Secretary (till 1990)
    Cathy Pelikan - Treasurer (till 1990)
    Pam Munsell - Fund-raiser (till 1990)
    Lewis Mantus - Publicity (till 1989)
    Louise Pembroke - Education (till 1990)
    Richard Sutton - Information (till 1990)

    Richard Sutton "used to make lovely food for lunches at Survivors Speak Out annual general meetings, at a price people could afford" (Peter Beresford Community Care 18.10.2001)

    At the 1988 AGM a Constitution Working Party was set up to draw up a draft constituion for the 1989 AGM

    Feedbacks from groups given by Bristol Survivors Bristol Survivors (started 16 months ago) - Crisis Line - Bristol (set up two years ago) - Womankind (Bristol) receives three years funds from DHSS - Insight (Brighton) (formed 18 months ago) - Southampton Patients Council Support Group - Nottingham Patients Council Support Group - Barnet Action for Mental Health (BAMH) (established two and a half years ago) - Camden Mental Health Consortium (going since 1984) - Islington Mental Health Forum - London Alliance for Mental Health Action (set up 12 months ago)

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet December 1988
    [SSONews 12.1988]
    (Andrew Roberts' collection - From Peter Campbell)

    1989

    "... Survivors Speak Out members who came up to early meetings in Edinburgh when the movement was getting started here. Through these early meetings Lothians' first user group was formed, Awareness, in 1989."

    Although the organisation was "Survivors Speak Out", the movement was not, then known as the survivors movement. People called it the "Self-advocacy movement". Survivors Speak Out played an important part in spreading the word about the possibilities of "self-advocacy" by sending speakers to local events where service users were discussing action and by producing and selling A Self Advocacy Action Pack [early 1989] with practical advice about how to set up and run a local action group.

    18.4.1989 Self Advocacy Action Pack: Empowering Mental Health Service Users first produced by Survivors Speak Out.

    Launched in April 1989 part funded by Kings Fund. Reported on in the Survivors Speak Out annual report 1989/1990

    500 of the packs were published in 1989, sold out by January 1990. 150 copies were reprinted in May 1990, 100 were sold to mail order requests. 650 copies sold in total.

    Were scheduled to be reprinted in 1991 but this did not happen as: SSO were diverted into other activity e.g. other articles and eating distress and self-harm conferences. Peter Cambell recalls intending to reprint the SA pack before stepping down.


    [Extracts]

    The working party responsible for the production of the pack was made up of Felicity Couch (Bristol); Lorraine Bell (Southampton); Peter Campbell and Richard Sutton (London); Rick Hennelly (Chesterfield); Mike Lawson (West Wales); and Dave Lowson (Brighton)

    (Information, although accurate at the time of production, changes quite fast. Survivors Speak Out hope to update these sheets in the future.

    NOVEMBER 1988
    1. Where We Are Now: An Overview on Mental Health Self-Advocacy
    2. Setting Up a Group: How to Get Started
    3. Organising a Group
    4. Funding
    5. Resources
    6. Worker Involvement in Self-Advocacy
    7. Mental Health Workers: What We Can Do
    8. Book List
    9. Address List
    10. Survivors Speak Out Information Sheet
    11. Outline of 1987 National Conference

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet March 1989
    [SSONews 3.1989]
    (Andrew Roberts' collection - From Peter Campbell)

    Another issue is ... the role of allies within SURVIVORS....At present Survivors has about 300 members of whom 100 are "allies". The co-ordinating group is made up entirely of "survivors." During the last year it did become clear that many members felt that "allies" should not be able to stand for the co-ordinating group, but beyond that there is no clear feeling as to what "allies" role should be... Should SURVIVORS be a 'survivor'-only group?... Should 'allies' have associate membership? ...should ally involvement be restricted or not?...There are clearly a range of strongly held views on this issue. But that does not mean it should be fudged nor that the CG ... or the Constitution Working Group should be left to work it all out...What do you want SURVIVORS to be like in the future?

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet June 1989
    [SSONews 6.1989]
    (Andrew Roberts' collection - From Peter Campbell)

    One of the issues which has been commented on a lot (the most, I think...sec) is around the role of 'allies' in SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT. Most people seem to be agreed that 'ally' and 'survivor' membership should not be the same. There seems to be a consensus that SURVIVORS is first of all an organisation for recipients and that some means of securing that needs to be found. This feeling seems to be shared by all - whether 'ally' or 'survivor'. Just how to do so remains the question. Two people who replied have asked for some of their thoughts to be put in the newsheet. Hopefully they will help focus others' opinions and ideas. here they are:

    From Anne Plumb, Manchester
    "I would like to express a view which I hope you will put in the newsletter. You asked for comments on whether S.S.O. should be a representative organisation or not, and whether allies should be Full members. To me, the two are related.

    I hold the view that rather than trying to be representative, Survivors speak out should make their claim as the AUTHENTIC voice of system survivors. To be seen as, and to feel ourselves to be, such a voice seems to me that survivors only should be Full members of S.S.O.

    I would not feel we were an authentic voice of survivors if allies had even a proportional vote, as power is much more than the number of votes. There are allies for example who are professional workers and who, by the very nature of their professions, are able to assert views and are accustomed to influencing decisions. They also have the added advantage of not having to handle the side effects of medication or to be too troubled by meetings that some of us may find quite difficult to attend. I don't want to say to say more than this to go into the newsletter at this point ...

    There is one other point I would like to make but nearly forgot. it is that some survivors may be unwilling or find it difficult to challenge allies who have helped us or provide us with personal support.

    From Lorraine Bell (Southampton)
    Following a passionate discussion over this issue (role of allies), the following emerged...it seemed that concern arose from 3 or more issues.

    1. The message SSO conveys 'to the world': clearly there is a case some members have put, that the strongest antidote to the stereotype of MHS survivors "not being able to think for themselves", is for them to have a voice independently of allies.

    However an alternative consideration is the need to explore the myth that the world is divided between people who have "MH problems" and people who don't. Central to the vision behind S.S.O. is our assertion that what we have in common is greater than our differences... (If we excluded allies further than we do already, we would then shift the debate to what is a 'survivor'? Many of us feel that the only meaningful definition is ultimately self-definition)

    2. Survivors feeling unsafe or disempowered by the presence of allies - who for the most part have been MH workers: there are very real reasons for such feelings and at gatherings and conferences I think separate meetings for survivors are a good idea, as are support groups for MH workers (to look at how the NHS oppresses us and how we collude in the oppression). I feel this need not exclude allies further in the organisation than now (ie not officers in the CG)

    3. The risk of allies 'taking over' the organisation: No grounds for such fear has occured so far in S.S.O and it is probably more likely that a survivor will take a dominant role. (Allies who support the cause are usually very careful not to dominate). Since it was agreed at last year's AGM. last year that allies should not stand for 'office', I do not think this will happen. In summary I would recommend we continue 1) exclude allies from office... 2) we do monitor the proportion of allies within the membership so that out number should not exceed 50%. 3) have allies, if salaried, pay a higher membership fee... I do not think allies should lose voting rights at AGM. As Mike Lawson has often said, could we not then be accused of the very labelling and setting people apart which we are campaigning against?
    Lorraine Bell (mental health worker, daughter of MHS survivor, survivor of acute distress...)

    September 1989 "'Survivors Speak Out', by name alone leaves little doubt that its members do not support present mental health practices." (Royal College of Psychiatry)

    5.9.1989 Looking at self-harm: the first national conference on self-harm to be held in the UK, "entirely organised by the recipient movement" at the International Students House in Great Portland Street in North London. Louise Pembroke organised the conference as Education Officer of Survivors Speak Out

    16.9.1989 Saturday 16.9.1989 - Survivors Speak Out second AGM at Hampden Community Centre
    "Sixty-five members, including individuals from the UK, Holland, Italy and West Germany attended". Reference made to "more than a dozen local groups".

    Eleanor Keady replaced Lewis Mantus as Publicity Officer

    Crisis Cards 1989 - [I also have 1992 and 1994 linked - But I do not know why. See 26.5.1993 and 1995

    1989 Resolutions Passed

    A proposal to re-affirm Survivors Speak Out opposition to Community Treatment Orders as first expressed at 1987 Edale National Conference. Proposed by Peter Campbell and Louise Pembroke. PASSED UNANIMOUSLY

    A proposal to campaign over appalling conditions on Leros. Proposed by Brian Davey. PASSED

    A proposal that Survivors Speak Out should oppose contraventions of European Court of Human Rights by use of certain sections of 1983 Mental Health Act. Proposed by Andy Kent and Alan Leader. PASSED

    A proposal that Survivors Speak Out should publicise cases of violence against women. Proposed by Lexie Reed. PASSED

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet October 1989
    [SSONews 10.1989]
    (Andrew Roberts' collection - From Peter Campbell)

    "Discussion was based on the First Draft of the Constitution and was centered on the issue of 'allies' in SURVIVORS. There was long and heated debate on what membership status 'allies' should have and at the end two additional alternatives were added to the 4 possibilities included in the First Draft. These were then voted on... From the ...results (which are only advisory) it seems there is agreement - more or less - that allies should not be allowed to stand for office on CG. Whether or not 'allies' should have a vote at AGMs under certain conditions remains an open issue for further discussion ...The Second Draft of the Constituion will reflect above discussion....

    1990

    Survivors Speak Out - It's 1990 (extra mailout) (Andrew Roberts' collection - From Peter Campbell)

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet July 1990
    [SSONews 7.1990]
    (Andrew Roberts' collection - From Peter Campbell)

    15.9.1990 Survivors Speak Out third AGM at Hampden Community Centre

    SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT CONSTITUTION. SEPTEMBER 1990.
    MEMBERSHIP. SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT shall have a full membership, an associate membership, an affiliated group membership and an honorary membership. The categories of 'survivor' and 'ally' shall be self-defined. (a 'survivor' is someone who receives or has received mental health services. An 'ally' is someone who has not) Full Membership. 'survivors' shall have full membership which allows them to vote at Annual General meetings and to stand for election to the Co-ordinating Group. Associate Membership. 'allies 'will have associate membership which does not not allow them to vote at the Annual General meetings and does not allow them to stand for election to the Co-ordinating Group

    Chairperson - Brian Baker
    Secretary - Louise Pembroke
    Treasurer - Peter Campbell in place of
    Cathy Pelikan
    Ordinary Co-ordinating Group members:
    Annie Newnham
    Ruth Barr
    Ray Wilfan
    Peter Beresford
    David Keay

    1990 Resolutions Passed

    Resolution that Survivors Speak Out should begin a positive recruitment drive among black and ethnic minority groups. Also seeking members among lesbians and people with physical and sensory disability. Proposed by Annie Newnham and Louise Pembroke PASSED

    Resolution opposing the use of maximum dosages of medication being used in the first three months of compulsory detentions (Section 3 of Mental Health Act) Proposed by Jeff Thomas PASSED

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet December 1990
    [SSONews 12.1990]
    "Apologies for the late mailing of this edition of the Survivors Newssheet... This was largely do to the absence of the Editor in
    Napsbury Asylum for a month" (Andrew Roberts' collection - From Peter Campbell)

    1991

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet April 1991
    [SSONews 4.1991]
    (Andrew Roberts' collection - From Peter Campbell)

    May 1991
    Coopted on to the Coordinating Group:
    Anne Plumb [Anne thought it was at the AGM]
    Chris Harrison
    Andy Smith

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet September 1991
    [SSONews 9.1991]
    (Andrew Roberts' collection - From Peter Campbell)

    September 1991: Louise Pembroke (for Survivors Speak Out organised an Eating Distress conference. The Eating Distress booklet published by Survivors Speak Out came out of that.

    5.10.1991 Survivors Speak Out fourth AGM at Hampden Community Centre
    September? 1991
    Chairperson - Louise Pembroke
    Treasurer - Anne Plumb [1991/1992 and 1992/1993]
    Secretary - Peter Campbell
    Ordinary Coordinating Group members
    Peter Beresford continued
    Chris Harrison continued
    David Keay continued
    Viv Lindow joined
    Andy Smith continued

    1991 Resolutions Passed

    This AGM deplores the Government decision not to fully implement Sections 1, 2 and 3 of the Disabled Persons Act and calls on SSO to actively seek ways of promoting the right of mental health service users to independent advocacy. Proposed by Peter Campbell and Louise Pembroke PASSED

    Survivors Speak Out believes that there are currently totally unacceptable delays in hearing appeals against six month sections under the Mental Health Act. This appears to be due to delays in the work of the Mental Health Act Commission. SSO agrees to look into this situation and, if appropriate, to protest to the Mental Health Act Commission and the Secretary of State for Health. Emergency Resolution PASSED

    Survivors Speak Out should write letters to Amnesty International Secretariat and Amnesty UK encouraging them to investigate Human Rights Abuses in the mental health arena in mainland Britain. Emergency Resolution PASSED

    October 1991 "Survivors Speak Out. 33 Lichfield Road, London, NW2 2RG. Contact: Peter Campbell 081-450 4631. National network of users and ex-users committed to promoting self-advocacy" (Madness - A Study Guide 1991 p.32)

    26.11.1991 Mental Health Service Users as Trainers - Nottingham

    "I first met Chris Harrison at the Mental Health Service Users as Trainers conference... Peter Beresford and I did a session - Chris Harrison was there along with Cath Gellepsie Sells - both from the London Boroughs Disability Resource Team. Chris did mental health training, along with his wife who was a social worker, through the LBDRT. Chris was on the Survivors Speak Out co-ordinating group at some point when I was as well." (Anne Plumb email 9.3.2012)

    1992

    My last year as treasurer [1992/1993] was also the last year of the Kings Fund Centre funding. It was very difficult to see where money would now come from to provide expenses for members to come to AGMs, where the business was important (tricky issues to deal with around the constitution, charitable status...), but so too was the getting together of people often isolated and marginalised. During this last year, Survivors Speak Out acquired an office and, later a paid worker...

    Survivors Speak Out was working to an agenda in which every effort was made, not just through AGMs but also through newsletters produced by Peter Campbell, as secretary , to involve all SSO members.. These were hugely informative newsletters creating, I believe, a sense of solidarity and strength. How many hours did Peter put in unpaid? A great many. (Anne Plumb email 27.8.2009)


    [SSONews 1.1992] January 1992 "The newsletter confirmed that £30000 had been received from the
    KIng's Fund to provide an equipped office for three years. An application at the same time to the Mental Health Foundation to fund two part time workers was turned down." (Anne Plumb email 30.8.2009)

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet June 1992
    [SSONews 6.1992]
    (Andrew Roberts' collection - From Peter Campbell) "reports that the bid to the Mental Health Foundation had not been granted in full, but were matching the King's Fund with £30000. Gloria Gifford was appointed Information Worker - but when the three years were up, no further funding was forthcoming..." (Anne Plumb email 30.8.2009)

    See MINDWAVES Summer 1992

    Jim Read said (1.12.1994) that he had been questioning what Survivors Speak Out was doing (and what he was doing) since it "got substantial funding" and he joined the Information Project Steering Group.

    10.10.1992 First World Mental Health Day

    Monday 19.10.1992 Minutes of a meeting on or about the Mental Health Task Force Service User Group attended by survivor representatives.

    Saturday 31.10.1992 Survivors Speak Out fifth AGM at Hampden Community Centre
    Chairperson -
    David Keay
    Treasurer - Anne Plumb (second year)
    Secretary - Peter Campbell
    Ordinary Coordinating Group members
    Viv Lindow continued
    Susan Rooke-Matthews joined
    Chris Harrison continued
    Peter Beresford continued
    Andy Smith continued
    At some point during the year:
    David Turner coopted
    Ruth Barr coopted

    1992 Resolutions Passed

    The constitution be amended to extend the possibility of proxy voting to Extraordinary General Meetings as well as Annual General Meetings. Proposed by Coordinating Group. PASSED

    Survivors Speak Out should take a decision on acquiring Charity Status. This is an important decision with long-term consequences. Therefore the following procedures should be followed:
    A postal ballot of all voting members should be carried out. Before the ballot, a briefing paper should be prepared stating the pros and cons of acquiring charity status. This should be approved by the coordinating group. The briefing should be sent out with the balloting papers. The decision on charity status would have to receive the assent of two- thirds of those voting to be considered an agreed decision. The ballot would be a yes/no choice. The balloting process to be completed by January 31st 1993.
    (It was agreed that the coordinating group would consider the possibility of including a third option in the ballot)
    PROPOSED by Peter CAMPBELL. PASSED

    This AGM urges Survivors Speak Out to undertake further work to highlight and oppose human rights abuses within the mental health system. In particular by offering support to the Orville Blackwood Community Campaign, by renewed attempts to activate Amnesty UK, Amnesty International and other human rights organisations, and by encouraging the collection of evidence concerning such abuses. PROPOSED by Barbara Brown, Mark Roberts and Peter Campbell PASSED

    1992 Proposed resolutions NOT Passed

    SSO should add to its name - (National Association of Psychiatric Survivors) to become Survivors Speak Out (National Association of Psychiatric Survivors)

    We abhor the legal violations by the mental health services which took place in the 1980s and since, and demand the setting up of a user legal advocacy service and user legal advisers in all mental health institutions.

    November 1992 Eating Distress - Perspectives from Personal Experience. Conference Papers. Survivors Speak Out 1992 (1st edition) - 1993 (2nd edition. 23 main pages) - 1994 (Revised and reprinted edition).

    Friday 18.12.1992 Meeting with Virginia Bottomley

    1993

    29.1.1993 Letter from Virginia Bottomley to Peter Campbell, responding to a letter of 7.1.1993.

    "In 1993 Diorama lost its original home on Regent's Park and was relocated nearby by its Landlords, The Crown Estate, to its current premises in Osnaburgh Street"

    "I was Survivors Speak Out treasurer at the time and Ken (Lumb) mentioned to me that there might be space at the Diorama Arts Centre" (Anne Plumb 4.3.2012)

    Community Care Support Force March 1993. Address: "Survivors Speak Out - 081 45 4631 - Secretary, 33 Lichfield Road, London, NW2 2RG (Network of mental health system survivors)". Andy Smith was representative at meeting on 26.2.1993

    "I have been beavering away in my records. It looks like Survivors Speak Out moved into their office in early April 1993. The information project (and I suppose Gloria Gifford's employment) began in December 1993. Gloria definitely was not employed before we had the office. Yes - the office was always at 34 Osnaburgh Street." (Email Peter Campbell 6.3.2012)

    "The intention when SSO first acquired the office was to get information onto the computer - David Crepaz-Keay and Andy Smith were involved in setting up the computer. I am not sure whether this was something Gloria, once appointed as worker, had the time to take forward." (Anne Plumb email 9.3.2012)

    Mad Persons Union issue 3: "The Mad Person Under the Stairs Takes Note" of the new office for Survivors Speak Out, which "is committed to having someone in the office" on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays from midday to 4.30pm. "The office is currently staffed by unpaid workers; there is a 24 hour answerphone available". Travel expenses would be paid for members willing to work in the office who lived within easy travelling distance of London. "SSO is a self advocacy organisation for people who have experienced the psychiatric services. Offers contact, information and a quarterly newsletter".

    Mad Persons Union issue 3 also wrote about criticism [not traced] by Tim Kendall and Colin Brady in Asylum magazine of the the Eating Distress book of transcripts of the talks given by professionals. Also commented on responses to the murder of Jonathan Zito by Christopher Clunis.

    29.4.1993 Meeting of Mental Health Task Force Service User Group at which David King explained the objectives, and users listed their concerns. Jan Wallcraft wrote a memorandum. The meeting was attended by Peter Campbell from Survivors Speak Out - Jim Read Independent Trainer - Jan Wallcraft from MINDLINK - and Edna Conlan from UKAN

    26.5.1993 David Crepaz Keay, as Chair of Survivors Speak Out and Jan Wallcraft as a member, gave evidence to an inquiry into the possible extension of compulsory powers into the community. In their evidence, they explained the idea of Crisis Cards, which was very favourably received.

    30.10.1993 Survivors Speak Out sixth AGM at Hampden Community Centre. Anne Plumb ceased being treasurer at the 1993 AGM. She resigned as treasurer before Survivors Speak Out employed a worker at their offices "because this would have required closer presence of the treasurer." But it was not just the need to be "closer to our worker", it was also needs related to setting up the office - having petty cash available etc.

    Mad Persons Union issue 4: ".. co-founder ... Peter Campbell stood down from the ... secretary post. Peter has seen the group through to its payment of a paid Information Worker, Gloria Gifford, and the decision to acquire the status of a charity. Recently, Survivors was given a £15,000 grant by the Baring foundation to further develop the Information Project... Resolutions passed include demands for the setting up of a user legal advice service, with user legal advisers in all mental health institutions, protection of users' rights in psychotherapy, access to health record, and further action to ban ECT. SSO has taken over the distribution of Crisis Cards produced by the International Self_advocacy Alliance (ISAA)"

    Chairperson - Viv Lindow
    Secretary - David Keay
    Treasurer - Neil Huggins (resigned during course of the year)
    Ordinary Coordinating Group members
    Chris Harrison continued
    Jan Wallcraft joined
    Bill Reynolds
    Ros Caplin joined

    1993 Resolutions Passed

    We abhor the continuing legal violations by mental health services, and demand the continuing or setting up of free and independent user legal advice services and user legal advisers in all mental health institutions. Proposed by Richard Comaish. PASSED

    We at the AGM of Survivors Speak Out would like to express our concerns at the continual use, and in some places apparently growing use, of ECT. Especially we would like to restate our opposition to this form of treatment for pregnant mothers and its compulsory use on unwilling patients. We feel there is ample evidence that this treatment is damaging and its enforced use is an infringement of basic human rights. We call upon the new coordinating group to take this issue up as a matter of high priority with the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Department of Health and through any other channel they see fit. Proposed by Terry Simpson. PASSED

    Users should make real demands to read their health notes (both GP and hospital) in order to validate what is written, to encourage better co- operation from practitioners in seeing users as partners not passive objects in treatment, to promote openness and to deal with offensive attitudes and descriptions in health files. Proposed by Susanne Stevens. PASSED

    Users should be made aware of the potential for exploitation and abuse in relationships with practitioners offering psychological treatments. Survivors Speak Out should demand that users be given as a right copies of the Code of Practice under which therapists practice and should be made aware that materiel from their therapy sessions can only be used by therapists for publication, discussions and teaching purposes after freely- given written consent from the recipient of therapy. Proposed by Susanne Stevens. PASSED

    1993 Propsed Resolutions NOT Passed

    Survivors Speak Out should add to its name - (National Association of Psychiatric Survivors) to become - Survivors Speak Out.

    Late 1993 Stopovers on My Way Home from Mars. Reflective journey through the psychiatric survivor movement in the USA, Britain and the Netherlands by Mary O' Hagan published by Survivors Speak Out.

    December 1993 Information Project started. (Called an Infomation Network)

    1994

    Part of a leaflet designed by Phil Stringer and David Keay fairly soon after the new office opened.




    Survivors Speak Out was founded in 1984 by a group of mental health service users and workers. The term survivor was chosen to portray a positive image of people in distress and people whose experience differs from, or who dissent from, society's norms. Our main aim is to promote self-advocacy: the fundamental right of every individual to promote their own view - speak out - and to have that view heard.

    For more details about SSO or more copies of this leaflet, please write to us at the address given, or telephone the office number, or the information service. The information line is staffed between 1.30pm and 5pm on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (an answerphone operates outside these hours).

    Wednesday 4.5.1994 Survivors Speak Out incorporated as a private company (02925398), limited by guarantee, with no share capital, exempted from the use of 'Limited'. (Companies House). Address 34 Osnaburgh Street, London, NW1 3ND. The company was dissolved on 26.4.2005

    Saturday 22.10.1994 Survivors Speak Out seventh AGM. At 336 Brixton Road instead of Hampden Community Centre
    Chairperson -
    David Crepaz-Keay
    Secretary - Louise Pembroke
    Treasurer - John Bowden
    Ordinary Coordinating Group members
    Jan Wallcraft
    Karen Campbell
    Viv Lindow
    Phil Hutchinson
    Peter Beresford
    Neil Ward
    Mohan Gupta
    Chris Harrison

    1994 Resolutions Passed

    Survivors Speak Out should continue to seek to influence the Royal College of Psychiatrists. The work should include but not be restricted to involvement in the RCP Patients and Carers Liaison Group. Proposed by Peter Campbell

    Survivors Speak Out demands that future anti-discrimination legislation should include and take full account of the rights and needs of psychiatric system survivors. Emergency resolution proposed by Gloria Gifford and Peter Beresford. PASSED

    Survivors Speak Out card: Glora Gifford was information worker. David Crepaz Keay chair - Louise Pembroke secretary - John Bowden treasurer - [note "cg PB"] Other committee members: Karen Campbell - Mohan Gupta - Chris Harrison - Karen Hibbard - Philip Hutchinson - Viv Lindow - Jan Wallcraft - Neil Ward.

    October 1994 Self-Harm: Perspectives from Personal Experience edited by Louise Roxanne Pembroke. London : Survivors Speak Out, 1994.

    Thursday 1.12.1994 First World Assembly (and Fourth World Congress) of Disabled Peoples' International held Sydney, Australia. Paper by Peter Beresford, John Bowden and Gloria Gifford on "Psychiatric System Survivors and the Disabled People's Movement".

    Saturday 3.12.1994 Survivors Speak Out Away Day. Jim Read supplied a paper "Future of SSO" dated 1.12.1994.

    [photocopy of 5 page "notes from the discussion session" (S. Otto 4.12.1994) and photocopy of Jim's 3 page paper in AandV archives]

    "Future of SSO"

    "Following the Derby conference", Jim thought he was at last coming up with some answers to questions he had about "what the organsation is doing and what I am doing as my contribution". He thought working unpaid for Survivors Speak Out was "dull and boring compared with the often exciting and innovative work that I actually get paid to do."

    Jim suggested the group was restricted by policy and procedure, which also made the individual's participation frustrating. He queried whether responding to requests for data, sitting on committees and complying with external establishment demands were necessary for the group's purposes.

    Jim suggesed that Survivors Speak Out could "leave the whole field of advocacy services, user involvement and collaboration with the mental health establishment to UKAN. His experience showed him that there was

    "lots of user involvement but not much speaking out. 'Users' are getting involved in planning but not talking to each other about their personal experiences, let alone finding ways of thinking and being, independently of psychiatry."

    Awayday 3.12.1994

    The Philosophy of Survivors Speak Out

    Areas of common agreement:

    Independence

    Survivors Speak Out's role is to 'deconstruct':
    Psychiatry and the whole mental health system
    notions of 'normality'
    Media myths
    [The] philosophy of spirit-breaking.
    [The] medical model and the poor science used to sustain it.

    The focus of Survivors Speak Out is 'POST' not 'ANTI' Psychiatry.

    It is also the role of Survivors Speak Out to 'reconstruct'...:
    alternative approaches and social models
    equitable and sharing/caring attitudes

    It is central to the role of Survivors Speak Out to support survivors to speak out, to own their distress and to have self-esteem and be self- determining

    Survivors are people who:-

    i. have been in or are in the psychiatric or mental health systems,

    ii. have had or are experiencing distress or 'spirit-breaking' through exposure to negative and destructive attitudes and approaches but not necessarily in the mental health system.

    Survivors Speak Out Newsletter December 1994
    [SSONews 12.1994]
    Jan Wallcraft - "Editor of this Newsletter" wrote a glowing report of the Mental Health Task Force User Group - Final Conference

    1995

    January 1995? John Bowden treasurer.


    [SSONews 5/6.1995]
    The May/June 1995 newsletter lists Survivors Speak Out representatives on the National MIND User Network Group - OPENMIND Editorial Advisory group - Royal College of Psychiatrists Patients Liaison Group - Mental Health Media Headlines Project Advisory group - UKAN Management group (co-opted) - National Users and Carers group - National Institute of Social Work Social Policy Forum - and Hearing Voices Network management group.

    [By 1995, SSO had been represented as an organisation in MIND network meetings for quite some time but evidence is not held on meeting content. 1995 Annual Report shows SSO representatives active in outside organisations: Peter Campbell as a patients representative in Royal College of Psychiatry. Peter Beresford on "Open Mind" Advisory Group. Andy Smith on Mental Health Media Headlines Group. Viv Lindow and Peter Beresford on Social Policy Forum. (Peter Campbell's report May 2013)]

    Saturday 28.10.1995 Survivors Speak Out eighth AGM. At 336 Brixton Road
    Chairperson -
    Louise Pembroke
    Secretary - Peter Campbell
    Treasurer - John Bowden (until May 1996)
    Ordinary Coordinating Group members
    Karen Campbell
    Maurice Temlett
    Richard Sutton
    Peter Beresford
    Don McAngus
    Ron Coleman
    Hannah Schwartzmann
    Christine Andrews
    Sue Miles

    Louis agreed to be chair and Peter to resume being Secretary to "try to effect the transition" to a new core group.

    1995 Proposed Resolution NOT Passed

    Survivors Speak Out shall continue to send a representative to the Royal College of Psychiatrist's Patients and Carers Liaison Group. Proposed by Peter Campbell. Votes FOR - 12, Votes AGAINST- 30 - RESOLUTION NOT PASSED

    1995 Resolutions Passed

    It is important that Survivors Speak Out establish clear procedures for the selection of representatives to outside bodies. In the Spring 1996 newssheet mail-out, the coordinating group shall circulate recommendations on this matter for consideration by the membership. SSO should also set down the expectations for representatives. A draft of these should be included in the Spring 1996 mail-out.
    The expectation that each representative should, in the course of a year, provide two written or verbal reports to the CG and one written report that can be used in the newssheet shall take immediate effect from 1995 AGM
    Proposed by Coordinating Group
    PASSED UNANIMOUSLY

    Coordinating Group proposed membership rates to be increased:
    Survivors ORDINARY £10 LOW INCOME £3
    Allies ORDINARY £15 LOW INCOME £5
    Groups ORDINARY £25 LOW INCOME £5
    THESE RATES WERE PASSED
    An additional "disabled ally" category at £10 and £3 was proposed
    THIS WAS PASSED

    The Survivors Speak Out constitution be amended so that no-one may serve as an ordinary member of the coordinating group for more than three consecutive years nor be on the coordinating group as either an officer or an ordinary member for more than five consecutive years without then standing down for a period of two years.
    Proposed by Coordinating Group
    PASSED OVERWHELMINGLY

    Survivors Speak Out should undertake research as equal partners with other organisations in accordance with our aims. Research will be approved and monitored by, and be answerable to, the coordinating group.
    Proposed by Viv Lindow
    PASSED UNANIMOUSLY

    November 1995 Cheryl Lygo appointed as Administrative worker.

    1995 - Advance Directives -

    Survivors Speak Out Crisis Card "copyright Survivors Speak Out 1995". Two copies in Andrew Roberts' collection, plus a copy of the sheet by Adina Halpern.

    1996

    January 1996 "Some Points to Consider when Putting your Crisis Card into Use" Survivors Speak Out Information sheet

    Saturday 27.1.1996 Survivors Speak Out Ten Year Celebration Party hosted by Richard Sutton and Peter Campbell. "A leaving present was presented to Gloria Gifford at the end of her time as SSO Information Network Co-ordinator (Gloria is now working for Brent User Group in North West London)"


    undated: Draft letter to interested persons Dear ...... We are writing to you as someone who has actively supported Survivors Speak Out in the recent past, to find out whether you are interested in being involved at some level with SSO in the next twelve months.

    Survivors Speak Out is now over ten years old. We have Department of Health funding to meet the core costs of the organisation, including the employment of Cheryl - our part time office coordinator, for another 18 months. In the autumn, we will be looking for further funds to employ a Publications, Education and Training Coordinator as well as considering sources for the on-going core funding of the organisation....

    We enclose a short questionnaire and an SAE for return...

    Questionnaire asked about:

    Continuing to be involved in some way during the next twelve months?
    Standing for election to the Coordinating Group
    Being a member of a working group
    Current groups: Newssheet editorial / Finances / Fundraising / Employment
    Survivor representatives on an outside group or agency
    Helping comment on Government and other documents/papers etc?
    Sending in news and information for use in the Newssheet
    Being a regular distributor of information about Survivors Speak Out
    Helping out in the Office


    Thursday 1.2.1996 End of Information Service. The Survivors Speak Out website was set up before (?) the information service closed down. It continued, unedited, into the new millenium.

    Saturday 2.3.1996 Awayday at The Mental Health Foundation. To identify Survivors Speak Out's policy for the future: Divided into groups to consider Definites; Possibles; Probables - and reported back on likely outcomes (such as funding for coming year and possibility of new paid worker) to the whole group at the end.

    Saturday 9.3.1996 Open Day at the Diorama Centre where the SSO Office is located

    June 1996 Survivors Speak Out Newssheet
    [SSONews 6.1996]
    (Just a front sheet and page 4 in
    Andrew Roberts' collection) - Louise Pembroke had resigned as SSO representative on the Hearing Voices Network Management Group - John Bowden had resigned as Treasurer - over the "past eighteen months" he had enabled the "organisation to gain a reasonable grasp of its much-expanded finances" - The Co-ordinating Group had set up a Finance Group, meeting monthly, currently: Louise Pembroke, Karen Campbell, John Bowden and Don McAngus.

    Saturday 20.7.1996 Policy Day where members gathered to organise Survivors Speak Out's written policy on key issues. 8 attended, and discussed policy on: Involuntary Treatment; physical treatment; medication and others..
    Notes directly from flip-charts used
    "Policy Priorities:
    Mental Health Act/compulsion/involuntary treatment
    Prevention/poverty/social conditions
    Community care
    Policy on training of mental health workers

    Monday 16.9.1996 "Information from SSO Involvement Questionnaire" (6 typed pages. 2 handwritten pages of newsletter contacts). Coordinating Group possibles: Alan Leader - Jeff Thomas - Richard Butler - Marion Beeforth (possibly) - Colin Creagh

    Saturday 9.11.1996 Survivors Speak Out ninth AGM. At 336 Brixton Road
    Peter Campbell ceased being an officer. He stood down as Secretary at this AGM. In 1994/1995, Peter had not been on the coordinating group. 1995/1996 Louis agreed to be chair and Peter to resume being Secretary to "try to effect the transition" to a new core group. A lot of good members of the coordinating group, including Peter Beresford and Karen Campbell, stood down at Peter's last AGM.

    Peter Beresford, a member of he Cordinating Committee for many years, ceased being a member. He says "a decision was made that if people had served for a particular length of time, they should stand down. This meant that the stability of Survivors Speak Out was challenged as a lot of people had to leave, where what we should have done, as other organisations do is change over a period. I felt this was a major problem leading to Survivors Speak Out's demise. It was hardly a matter of there not being a need for us. (email 9.7.2010)

    Graham Estop commented in July 2013 that "it had been a deliberate decision at the AGM that everyone on the existing group would stand down to handover the Survivors Speak Out reins to a new group. This was a 'disaster' for Survivors Speak Out as the handover should have been a phased one."

    1996 Resolutions Passed

    To alter our Articles of Association regarding the quorum for General Meetings from "provided 1/3 or 30 (whichever is the greater number) of the members shall be a quorum TO "provided 5% or 30 (whichever is the greater number) shall be a quorum. Proposed by Coordinating Group. AGREED UNANIMOUSLY

    The membership category of "Disabled Ally" should be ended Proposed by Coordinating Group. AGREED OVERWHELMINGLY (low income ally to be considered)

    Survivors Speak Out should not undertake work for Drugs Companies.
    Survivors Speak Out members should not undertake work for Drugs Companies in the name of Survivors Speak Out.
    Proposed by Coordinating Group
    AGREED OVERWHELMINGLY (definition of "drugs companies")

    This AGM re-affirms Survivors Speak Out's opposition to the compulsory use of ECT and urges Survivors Speak Out to work with other user/survivor organisations on issues around the current use of ECT. Proposed by Peter Campbell. AGREED UNANIMOUSLY

    Survivors Speak Out should organise a yearly public event or demonstration through which to raise awareness of mental health issues from users' perspectives, to publicise abuses of Human Rights and abusive practices in psychiatry and to make the user movement in general more visible to the wider public. Proposed by Sue Stevens. AGREED OVERWHELMINGLY

    1996 Proposed Resolutions NOT Passed

    We propose that the AGM approves the following statement and urges Survivors Speak Out to take action to make it effective:
    It should be a disciplinary offence for any NHS psychologist, therapist, counsellor, psychologist or any other practitioners to use NHS "users"" information for inclusion in private books, publications for sale without written permission. If users give consent for use of their information, they should be offered a preview, a chance to withdraw consent, a share of the financial gain to the author and an acknowledgement of their contribution if they wish. Proposed by Sue Stevens and Milan Ghosh. DEFEATED (though principle supported)

    Survivors Speak Out should affiliate to the London Support Group for the Liverpool Dockers and actively participate in its weekly meetings, street stalls, public meetings, actions and demonstrations - preferably with our banners and placards. Proposed by Pauline Bradley. DEFEATED UNANIMOUSLY

    When funds are available, Subsistence Allowances be paid to Directors, Representatives and Volunteers when working outside home on Company business, and also to Employees working outside their contracted hours, and that the rates be those agreed by the National Joint Council for Local Authorities' Administrative Professional, Technical and Clerical Services. Proposed by Maurice Temlett and Don McAngus. DEFEATED OVERWHELMINGLY

    That representatives attend each second Board Meeting and give verbal reports in addition to any written reports that they may submit. Proposed by Sue Scott-Hunter and Don McAngus

    That Survivors Speak Out make a financial contribution towards the cost of the Third European Conference for Users and Ex-users in Mental Health, being organised by the European Network and hosted by England. Proposed by Ethna Kilduff. DEFEATED UNANIMOUSLY (it was not clear how the conference would be organised, who and how people would be elected to attend)

    1997

    March 1997 Survivors Speak Out regional conference (communications workshop) in Nottingham hosted by Creative Solutions Services, Nottingham. Put on by Roberta Graley and B.J. Brecknock. It was the largest Regional Conference (at that stage), The ACORN project had been set up in 1994/1995 "with our scant resources, this SSO workshop provided an incentive to know we had been on the right track albeit a little early." (article by B.J. Brecknock and the third AGM Report


    [SSONews 5.1997] May 1997 The May 1997 Newssheet has a piece on the new co-ordinating group. A section on SSO Business begins:

    "Who is this new-co-ordinating group? Yes it is a bit new, and represents a change from many of the founder and long term members who have worked so hard over the last 10 years and are now standing down and taking a rest. Thankfully many are still around to give advice to the new CG, which is still finding its feet."
    Three new members are mentioned in this newsletter - Sue Stevens, Colin Creagh and Louise Whittle. The September newssheet mentions Simon Barnett and Mark Roberts as members of the Coordinating Group. (Anne Plumb 2.4.2012)

    Survivors Speak Out Publications Price List - June 1997 34 Osnaburgh Street, London, NW1 3ND. Phone 0171 916 5472

    "With the office, a paid worker, the need for continuing funding, the requirements of funding organisations Survivors Speak Out changed .... The newsletter for September 1997 explains why, in that year, the focus had been largely bureaucratic (eg defining precise roles and requirements for co-ordinating committee members) - this was perhaps largely to meet funding requirements." (Anne Plumb 4.3.2012)

    1998 January 1998 AGM in Birmingham. Several familiar faces were missing. "It seems that SSO had obtained some 'Core Funding' from the Department of Health and a grant from the Baring Foundation to employ admin and information worker/s." (Anne Plumb email 30.8.2009)

    "I have an interest in the 1998 AGM at Birmingham. The previous newsletter states that this was to be around the theme of the Edale Charter - 'where we are now, how far have we got with these new demands and are there new one to be added'.

    But this AGM was about much more. First, the move out of London for the first time, to Birmingham. Why this move and why to Birmingham? Did this meeting meet with expectation and hopes?

    For me, there was a notable absence of faces familiar from earlier conferences. Why? All I have is hearsay. Phil Hutchinson was there - Hazel (my daughter) and I sat with Phil outside talking about other things (a move by Phil to have some sort of network for survivor/mad parents). I have the 1999 audited accounts but no report on this Birmingham meeting. How well did it go?- quite well attended but, to me, palpable tensions, in part related to the Birmingham service users who were present (different expectations). It is surely around hearsay and tensions that people summing up historical accounts have to be clear about their own position (perspectives, biases etc).?" (Anne Plumb 4.3.2012)

    12.2.1998 Launch of the National Headlines project. Pete Shaughnessy was interviewed by Fergus Walsh for BBC1's News at One. Others taking part in a "media blitz" were Roberta Graley (UKAN), Gloria Brown (Brent User Group), Pat Butterfield (ECT Anonymous) and David Crepaz-Keay (Survivors Speak Out)

    By October 1998 all but 4 of the 13 Directors elected at the January 1998 AGM had resigned

    A Report of the Consultation into Survivor Event 2000 "Mad Pride". By Mark Roberts - for Survivors Speak Out Newsletter - Autumn 1998

    1999

    The accounts for 1999 list the directors as
    S MIles
    R Colman (Robert Colman)
    C Creach
    D McAngus
    S Barnett - resigned May 1998
    C Harrison - Chris Harrison? resigned April 1998
    M Roberts - resigned October 1998
    D Trippas - resigned April 1998
    J Robson - resigned August 1998
    H Mulhall resigned August 1998
    P Shaunessy resigned August 1998
    T Anderson resigned April 1998
    G Legge resigned October 1998

    Re/elected as volunteer directors November 1999:
    Christine Andrew (withdrew), Robert Colman, Colin Creagh, Rob Ford, Paula Hansen, Celia Hughes, Guy Legge (Withdrew), Sue Miles. 2 new co- options - Denise Grimsdell and Hugh Landsdowne.

    "I note from the November 1999 AGM report that of 13 directors appointed at the 1998 AGM, all but 4 had resigned by October 1998. There is an account in a fairly recent Asylum on a questionnaire being distributed asking whether the name should be changed from Survivors Speak Out (a new direction taken?). The favourite was Mad Pride to which, I guess, these members became involved. The 1999 AGM was apparently fairly well attended but November 2000 saw 13 people present - I was one!. The meeting was inquorate but as a company , set up in 1995, all that was required was for another meeting to be held the following week where, I understand, decisions would stand whether or not the meeting was quorate. So ended my involvement with Survivors Speak Oout.

    I have found it quite difficult that, in recent years. when talking about Survivors Speak Out people think I am talking about this small core of 4 or so people who continued as SSO (I have 2002 and 2004 newsletters.) I have heard good accounts - and bad!

    I bumped into a member last year with a Survivors Speak Out T shirt at an demonstration organised by SOAP (Speak Out Against Psychiatry.) SOAP is currently a handful of people meeting in a London pub .(One of the founders used to be active in Greenpeace)." (Anne Plumb 4.3.2012)


    1999: (source) - note reference to Kirsti Reeves' list
    " National Self-Harm Network
    c/o Survivors Speak Out
    34 Osnaburgh Street
    London
    NW1 3ND
    0171 916 5472

    (comments by Steve Blake, a UK psychiatric worker) Led by Louise Pembroke - active S'Her. Political campaigning survivor led organization for rights of s'hers. Takes up complaints against A&E depts. Compiling list of poor treatment received by s'hers. Also explores day-to-day issues - how to cover up scars. Publishes a SH sheet & 'Crisis Card' to take to A&E if you need medical intervention but are too distressed to fight for treatment. Particularly good if you've been sh*t on by psychiatric or medical services.


    2000 All the funding for an office and staff at Diorama in London exhausted. Diorama continued to allow meetings free of charge and Celia Hughes organised these.

    At some time four Diorama's came into existence: Diorama 1 at 34 Osnaburgh Street London NW1 3ND - Diorama 2 3-7 Euston Centre Regents Place London NW1 3JG - Diorama 3 (same address) - Diorama 4 (same address) - Diorama 1 at 35 Osnaburgh Street closed (for a few years?) in June 2006. See below

    By 31.7.2000 "SSO had to vacate its office at Diaroma and had not had a paid worker for a year." (Anne Plumb email 30.8.2009) Notice on the use of the office "to be effective from July 31st 2000" (Anne Plumb email 4.3.2011)

    2.8.2000 Message on UKSurvivors from Mary Nettle: "Am I the only one to have received a notice of an AGM for Survivors Speak Out? It is to be held THIS SATURDAY- 5th August, 1.00 - 5.00 at the Skylight Studio Diorama 34 Osnaburgh St, London among the agenda items is a vote on the continuance of SSO. A note with the agenda says as a result of no money there will no longer be an office from July 31st. Also included were annual accounts for y/e March '99 don't know where y/e March 2000 are. I can't go, if someone does will they let this list know what happens? SSO was a profound influence on me, going to their Edale conference changed my life. It will be a shame for it to go but maybe its time to move on. Perhaps it could be incorporated into Mad Pride if they have the energy."

    5.8.2000 The AGM meeting was attended by just 13 people. "Again the subject of whether to wind up SSO cropped up but a few people present decided to continue... I was at that 2000 AGM. A sad day for me." (Anne Plumb email 30.8.2009) - Those present probably included Anne Plumb, Rosemary Moore, Celia Hughes, Roger K., Peter Beresford, Rob Ford, Robin Hanau and Hugh Lansdowne.

    UKSurvivors message from "Roger k" dated 6.8.2000:

    "I was at the Survivors Speak Out AGM. So was Rosemary. Early on she stated her opinion that SSO has died because so many high quality people have moved on to other things. I know a lot of people have stopped coming for whatever reason. But the announcement of death seemed premature to the meeting and we hay on. The will be a meeting in September for the purpose of producing a newsletter for the members."

    "There was a great deal of goodwill towards the name Survivors Speak Out and towards its purpose of giving a purely survivor perspective on the issues of the day - even if our voices are not all saying the same thing they need to be heard. Survivors Speak Out can be a contact point and a source of information."

    "We talked about using the internet as a method of spreading information. Ann pointed out that not everyone had access to the net. I personally found the meeting tiring and found it difficult to concentrate but that is because I have been missing a lot of sleep recently."

    7.10.2000 Message on UKSurvivors: Below are the minutes of a both a Board Meeting and a General Meeting of Survivors Speak Out held today:

    Minutes of SSO Meetings at Diorama on 7/10/00

    Board Meeting

    1200 Celia and Rob present - inquorate.

    1245 Robin arrives - only received notification this morning. Now quorate.

    Agreed:
    To change bank account to Co-op bank.
    Signatories are: Celia, Rob and Robin.

    Members meeting

    1300 Present: Celia, Rob, Robin, Roger.

    1 Constitutionally only survivors can be directors. This was agreeable to all present.
    2 Agreed:
    There will be two categories of members.
    Full members must be survivors.
    Other members are Associate members.
    Associate members may attend meetings, but may not vote. They may be excluded from a meeting by a majority vote of full members present.
    Membership for 2000/1 will be #5.
    There will be no group membership.
    A membership form will be included in the Newsletter to go out in the next two weeks.

    1400 Hugh arrives.
    There was no further agreement.

    1500 Meeting ends.

    Next Members' meeting: 1300 on Saturday 11 November at Diorama, 32-34 Osnaburgh St, London.

    November 2000 Newsletter The current position with regard to Survivors Speak Out is as follows: It has no money. It has a treasurer - Celia Hughes. It has a Secretary - Rob Ford. It has four directors (this is technical - it must have directors as it is a limited company). These are: Celia, Rob, Robin Hanau and Hugh Lansdowne. Any survivors interested can meet on the second Saturday of the month at Diorama, 34 Osnaburgh Street, London (two minutes walk from Great Portland Street tube station). The meetings are at 1pm and the next dates are: 9 December and 13 January.
    At the last meeting it was agreed that we would charge £5 to all members, to enable us to communicate with them. Only survivors can be full members, with voting rights. All others can be associate members, without voting rights. There will be no group membership.
    If you wish to (re)join, please complete the form below and send it, together with a £5 note (not our responsibility) or a cheque for £5 made out to "Survivors Speak Out" to:
    Rob Ford, 101 Harrow Road, Leicester, LE3 0JY. What you receive in return depends upon what people are prepared to do.
    Celia and Rob have agreed that they will put something out in February.

    "After a year of silence a call for renewal of membership arrived in February 2002 apologising that 'you seem to have received very little for your subscription in the past year. However, your money has gone towards answering the many letters we receive asking for help. SSO still disseminates information to survivors and helps inform professionals ...' That is the last I heard from SSO." (Anne Plumb email 30.8.2009)

    Survivors Speak Out Publications Price List - 2003 44 Seldon House, Stewarts Road, London, SW8 4DP - 0207 622 5738. Plus attached "Survivors Speak Out" sheet explaining the aims and activities of the group. Andrew Roberts' collection)

    An April 2004 Mental Health Directory has this entry

    Survivors Speak Out 0207 622 5738
    44 Seldon House
    Stewarts Road
    London
    SW8 4DP
    Survivors of the Mental Health Services of all ages. SSO has become smaller but it is still committed to the following aims: Challenging the worst excesses of the statutory mental health service in an open and intelligent way. Promoting self and peer advocacy and supporting and encouraging survivors. If you would like to be part of a small group doing a big job, please contact us.
    We regret we are unable to have visitors at this address.
    You can contact us: 24 hours, 7 days a week
    You can be referred by: Self

    18.11.2004 Survivors Speak Out event on "Human Rights and Mental Health" at The British Institute of Human Rights. eighteen page briefing document in Andrew Roberts' collection)

    8.6.2005 Guardian article "Know Your Rights" in which Carolina Gottard explains the British Institute of Human Rights.

    Friday 29.7.2005 "FREE TRAINING DAY - HUMAN RIGHTS ACT and MENTAL HEALTH - ALL WELCOME - 10AM-5PM - METHODIST CHURCH HALL, 71 STATION ROAD, ADDLESTONE, SURREY external source

    Wednesday 18.4.2007 Minute of Meeting of Survivors Speak Out at Diorama. Present: Hugh Lansdowne, Angela McManus, Steve Brewer and William Collins [Bill]. Apologies: Robin Hannau.

    Wednesday 16.5.2007 Next Meeting "same-lace-same-time"

    Leaflet Andrew Roberts' collection): "Survivors Speak Out at Diorama 3-7 Euston Road - opposite Warren Street Tube. Walk towards huge multicoloured Wall design of hair dryer you will see DIORAMA written vertically in coloured mosaic, then turn right when you see D4 you will find the entrance in 2 minutes. Advice about benefits, and airing of issues regarding abuse in psychiatry. CONTACT BILL COLLINS (telephone number and email address) TO CHECK THE TIMES AND DATES OF THE MONTHLY FREE MEETINGS. IF YOU WOULD JUST LIKE TO TALK ABOUT YOUR CONCERNS, TELEPHONE MIRANDA (telephone number)

    SOAP (Speak Out Against Psychiatry)

    Active members include Cheryl Prax - Jake Sebastian - Sharon Racklyeft -

    2012

    18.3.2014

    9.4.2014

    About Us notice on website

    We are a group of survivors, carers, mental health professionals and concerned citizens who are campaigning for humane treatment for those experiencing mental distress.

    We believe that the current mental health system's focus on diagnosis and drug treatment is damaging to the long term mental wellbeing of the community, and really only serves the interests of those who profit from this approach. Children are being diagnosed with disorders such as ADHD and put on powerful stimulants. People experiencing psychosis are being given long term treatment with anti-psychotics, in-spite of the huge body of evidence showing they cause brain damage and make symptoms worse in the long run. Old people who are distressed and isolated in our nursing homes are being kept quiet using tranquilizors and anti-psychotics. People are still being given Electro Convulsive Therapy (in some cases without their consent) in-spite of widespread public belief that this treatment no longer happens.

    What We Are Doing About It

  • Organizing protests to give survivors the chance to speak out and to educate the public about what is happening in our psychiatric system.
  • Educating people as to how they can help people in distress rather than leaving it up to the "experts"
  • Offering advocacy and taking direct action on individuals' behalf.
  • Promoting and implementing alternatives to the current system, such as the Open Dialogue approach

    How Can You Get Involved?

    Anybody is welcome to join our group. We appreciate any help organising protests, offering compassionate support to people in distress, or anything else you want to help with! We have regular meetings and can be found on Facebook here. Please contact us if you would like to get involved, or if you would like support with the mental health system.

    Mind Annual Conference 1986
    'Public Image - Private Pain'
    13.11.1986 and 14.11.1986
    Hammersmith Town Hall, London, W6

    Seminar A1. Double Jeopardy - Black people who are labelled 'mentally ill' Brent Black People and Mental Health Project
    Seminar A2. Using Local Broadcasting "A workshop led by the Media Project of the Volunteer Centre"
    Seminar A3. Public-Image-Private Pain " LINK's view of the conference topic, Tam Graham, Charlie Reid, Vince Edkins, Vera McLay, Tassy Thompson"
    Seminar A4. Discrimination and Disability ""
    Seminar A5. Mirror Images "Media portrayals of people with mental health problems - an examination of a month of cuttings from the Daily Mirror. Andrew Hughes, Rod Hartle, Lindsey Dyer"
    Seminar A6. Whoops Apocalypse Continued ""
    Seminar A7. Video in Transition "Thurstine Basset"
    Fringe meetings: Should Psychiatry be Abolished? Arguments against reform "A presentation by members of CAPO"

    We're Not Mad We're Angry

    "This programme has been made collectively by a group of people who have been through the psychiatric system..

    Peter Campbell - Peter Connor - Tony Corbett - John Hoolahan - Dee Kraaij - Mike Lawson - Annie Newnham - Helen Schoenberg - Nick Simons - Andy Smith - John Tasker - Jan Walcraft - Barbara Woodall

    Script: Peter Campbell"

    From Hackney Health Emergancy HealthLetter Number 3, Spring 1987

    PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES: PATIENTS TAKE THE INITIATIVE

    The Psychiatric Day Hospital (on the Hackney Hospital site) is being given a much needed shake up by a revitalised Patients Committee, backed by the Community Health Council and City and Hackney Association for Mental Health (CHAMH).

    The Committee has drawn up a comprehensive list of demands, many of which have already been met. Staff have, after some hesitation, agreed that all patients on medication will receive written information about possible side effects. A DHSS liaison officer is visiting every month to sort out welfare benefits problems. The Patients Committee is linking with CHAMH to arrange a day for prospective employers to visit and see for themselves what skills the patients have.

    Negotiations are underway for patients to have a common room where they can meet friends. Further demands are for more group and individual therapy, and classes. There are plans to assist in-patients in F Block to also have their own voice.

    There is still much to be done, but the recent progress shows what can be achieved if patients take matter into their own hands and staff are willing to co-operate.

    Meanwhile, the day hospital staff are planning more community based activities which people will be able to join in without having to be formally admitted to the hospital, with a medical diagnosis and the resulting stigma. There is a similar situation at the German Hospital: the occupational therapy department has been closed down at very short notice, but staff are arranging for groups to meet at local health centres and community centres. Already a support group, a creative writing group and a dance and movement group are underway. Albion Road Day Centre, run by Hackney Social Services is also organising activities in different locations. This has not been entirely from choice: the premises, which have always been unsuitable, have been partially closed down because of a dangerous roof.

    Not all the users of the services welcome the changes. Some day hospital patients, for example, value having a place they can go to every day where they feel safe, and do not think their needs are being taken into account. Two projects being set up by community groups aim to deal with problems which can be reinforced by statutory provision: racism and addiction to tranquillisers.

    The Black Mental Health Organisation is setting up a drop-in centre for people from Black and minority ethnic groups who are coping with mental distress. It will be in Median Road, E5 and will employ a coordinator, advice worker and a counsellor.

    CHAMH has applied for Inner City Partnership Funding for three workers to run a project to help people come off tranquillisers and find better alternatives. The Health Authority has recommended it to the Department of Environment and CHAMH is hoping to hear that the grant has been approved in the summer. The project has grown out of two self-help groups which are already meeting in the area.

    Hackney Mental Health Action Group is a campaigning group of users and ex-users of the mental health system and other people sympathetic to its aims. It is currently writing a Charter of Rights for mentally distressed people, and planning a series of films at the Rio Cinema and a public meeting on 'User Control Over Services'.

    We have a situation where the statutory services are struggling along and 'user' groups and community groups are taking the initiative. Workers in the NHS and Social Services are finding it hard to unite and campaign for the resources they need to do their jobs. It is ironic that the so-called 'mentally ill1 are showing the initiative. A partnership between the two could be even more effective in creating services which best meet people's needs.

    JIM READ
    HACKNEY MENTAL HEALTH ACTION GROUP

    Contact Addresses:

    City and Hackney Association for Mental Health 345a Mare Street, London E.8. Tel: 985-4239

    Black Mental Health Organisation 8 Batley Road London N.16 Tel: 249-2374

    Hackney Mental Health Action Group c/o Community Health Council 210 Kingsland Road London E.2. Tel: 739-6308

    Edale memories

    Anne Plumb's memories

    I also began to appreciate what was being achieved by survivors/service users within National Mind... and Mind's contribution towards setting up the Survivors Speak Out Edale Conference

    On our way to the Edale Conference, Andrew Hughes and I finding ourselves parked up in a railway siding - we were talking too much to listen to announcements - and were in the wrong carriage. That's what can happen when we get the opportunity to talk about our direct experiences and how mental health services need to be changed!

    The Edale meeting ... itself - 100 or so people, mostly with psychiatric labels (and at least one on weekend release from hospital) in this Derbyshire Youth Hostel. What would the tabloids of today had to say?

    Mike Lawson with a suitcase full of tape recordings and related material from radio interviews Peter Breggin had been giving in the States on the toxicity of psychiatric drugs.

    Peter Campbell at the evening's entertaintment performing (with some else) a Shuffle - if I remember correctly, an in-house take on TD (tardive dyskensia).

    Jan Wallcraft's memories

    I joined Survivors Speak Out in 1986, and went to the ground-breaking Edale conference in summer 1987: a big and personally terrifying moment for me. I spent the first day curled up in my dormitory, crying with panic and loneliness, until I was found and given love and support. I went on to thoroughly enjoy the event; a coming together of a diverse group of self-advocates, activists, and people setting up patients' councils and tranx withdrawal groups. I began to realise that I was part of a movement that would enable me to be myself in a way that hadn't been possible before.



    SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT CONFERENCE 1987 CHARTER OF NEEDS AND DEMANDS

    The national conference of psychiatric system survivors held on September 18-20 1987 unanimously agreed the following list of needs and demands:

    1. That mental health service providers recognise and use pepple's first hand experience of emotional distress for the good of others.

    2. Provision of refuge, planned and under the control of survivors of psychiatry.

    3. Provision of free counselling for all.

    4. Choice of services including self-help alternatives.

    5. A Government review of services, with recipients sharing their views.

    6. Provision of resources to implement self-advocacy for all users.

    7. Adequate funding for non-medical community services, especially crisis intervention.

    8. Facility for representation of users and ex-users of services on statutory bodies. Including Community Health Councils, Mental Health Tribunals and the Mental Health Act Commission.

    9. Full and free access to all personal medical records.

    10. Legal protection and means of redress for all psychiatric patients.

    11. Establishment of the democratic right of staff to refuse to administer any treatment without risk of sanction or prejudice.

    12. The phasing out of electro-convulsive therapy and psychosurgery.

    13. Independent monitoring of drug use and its consequences.

    14. Provision for all patients of full written and verbal information on treatments, including adverse research findings.

    15. An end to discrimination against people who recieve, or have recieved, psychiatric services: with particular regard to housing, employment, insurance etc.



    Statement from Survivors Speak Out following Edale Conference 1987.

    The right of self-advocacy among recipients of psychiatric services is now being accepted in tandem with the increasing evidence of the oppressive and damaging effects caused by the implementation of the medical model.

    The claim that resources are not available is untrue. What is needed is a redirection of those resources to provide benefit rather than medicalisation imposed as a result of dubious psychiatric theories.

    As survivors of the psychiatric system, we make the following demands:

    1. The right to choose. The right of individuals in time of emotional distress to choose freely what kind of help they want. The provision of the fullest range of services and information about them to enable such choices to be real.

    2. Sufficient social security benefits, housing and employment opportunities without the usual stigmas, to enable real rehabilitation from psychiatry.

    3. A proper spectrum of resources for self-advocacy groups and facilities for self-management, based on a real acceptance that recipients are competent, creative and caring.

    4. A positive response from official bodies to practical proposals put forward by recipients. The opportunity to make our skills and experience effective.

    5. The right to be valued for what we are and what we might become. Not for what we were, or were thought to be, either in recent times or in this or proceeding centuries.



    FROM THE SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT CONFERENCE
    TO The Viscount Colville, Chairman. Mental Health Act Commission. Room 22. Hepburn House, Marsham Street, London, SW1F 4HW.

    RE: COMPULSORY TREATMENT IN THE COMMUNITY DISCUSSION PAPER. MARCH 1987

    The following resolution was unanimously carried at the first national conference organised by Survivors Speak Out, a UK-wide group of psychiatric system survivors (Edale. September 18-20 1987):

    "We oppose the proposed introduction of compulsory treatment in the community, which would extend the scope of the Mental Health Act 1983"

    During the conference the following objections were expressed:

    1. This legislation would infringe basic human rights and civil liberties by enforcing treatment on persons who are not detained in a psychiatric hospital.

    2. This power is not found in other areas of medicine

    3. The proposed amendments to the 1983 Act would remove the right of choice.

    4. People do not merely default on their medication but exercise their right not to take medication. This decision is made through experience and access to information.

    5. There is a danger that compulsion may take the place of provision for appropriate community care and that it would simply become a cheap option.

    6. Where appropriate services are provided it is shown that crisis is less likely

    For these reasons, we believe that the 1983 Mental Health Act sufficiently empowers professionals in their dealings with in their dealings with those in distress.

    Therefore, while desiring both better legislation and more appropriate services, we would support your option A.1. NO CHANGE.

    We ask that you consider this resolution and our listed objections, which are the unanimous view of the conference.


    Signed on behalf of the Survivors Speak Out Conference by

    Jackie Biggs,
    1 Cowings Mead,
    Northolt
    Middx UB5 5SA
    01 845 2977.



    PRESS RELEASE FROM 1ST SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT CONFERENCE.
    SEPTEMBER 21, 1987

    VOICES OF EXPERIENCE

    Proposals for a new law which would give psychiatrists the power to force treatment on patients in their own homes are this week condemned as a cheap option to the government's stated aim of providing care in the community, as mental hospitals all over the country are closed down.

    The first national conference of mental health system survivors is making a detailed submission to the mental health Act Commission, which is currently considering proposals for a Community Treatment Order amendment to the Mental Health Act 1983.

    The conference, organised by Survivors Speak Out, the national body on the forefront of the new consumer movement in mental health, was held at Edale, Derbyshire, over the last weekend.

    The submission to the Commission is one of many new initiatives instigated at the conference.

    A comprehensive statement of needs and demands was also formulated by the 100-plus patients and ex-patients who believe they have valuable evidence to offer as a result of their experience of distress and the psychiatric system. The first 15-point list is enclosed.

    Representatives from local self-help and action groups were able to make plans to begin to organise on a regional basis - a step towards setting up a wider national lobby.

    Discussions were held on alternative treatments, women and mental health, use and abuse of major tranquillisers, community care, user involvement in service planning, survival without medication; and mental health and the media.

    There is a common feeling among those at the conference that patients and ex-patients are the only people who truly know what is needed when individuals are in extreme distress. The alternative to psychiatry would include provision of non medical support, true sanctuary, free counselling for all and real community care.

    The conference proved by example that the alternatives work. one patient said: "This weekend has been more helpful to me through mutual support than many years of medication were."

    Another had the choice of attending the conference, or being admitted to a psychiatric hospital: "My consultant wanted to admit me. I chose to come here. I can only thank everyone because coming here has done me far more good than any mental hospital could."

    end.

    Contact for enquiries:
    Jackie Biggs or Mike Lawson: 01 845 2877



    REPORT OF THE FIRST NATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR USERS OF PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES.
    SEPTEMBER 1987

    [Two pages to be entered]

    Loraine Bell
    Conference Co-ordinator

    12 October 1987

    LB/PJG

    New Musical Express debate

    A member of the "Band of Holy Joy" ("LB") gave an interview to New Musical Express (16.6.1987) in which he spoke of his experience as a psychiatric nurse and was critical of patient treatment. Tony Rimbaud of Carshalton, Surrey, responded in defence of psychiatric treatment (20.6.1987) and Frank Bangay responded to this in criticism of it from The Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression

    Email from Terry Simpson on Tuesday 15.7.2008

    Subject: Leeds Psychiatric Survivors Group

    Today - July 15th 2008 is a little piece of Survivors history since Margaret Noddings and I closed the account of the group she set up in 1987 - then called Leeds Psychiatric Users Action Group.

    The group was very active in Leeds in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I came across it in 1988 when it ran a two page spead in the Leeds Other Paper, an anarchist newspaper we used to have (later called the Northern Star). The article was a full on manifesto which took no prisoners, and I'd love to see it now. It pulled me in anyway.

    The group was heavily involved in campigning on community care issues and even once joined in a gay pride march through Leeds (against Clause whatever it was), with our own banner with the group's name on it.

    It provided a lot of the impetus to set up Leeds Mental Health Advocacy Group and also later Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service.

    I remember the constitution stating that the agm had to be held under Aries, the star sign of Marjorie, our then secretary who had drawn up the document.

    The £22.30 which had been in the dormant account for the last twelve years is to be put towards the Mad Pride gig that is happening at the Common Place in Leeds tomorrow evening.

    London Alliance for Mental Health Action

    Thursday 8.10.1987 Inaugural meeting of the London Alliance for Mental Health Action (LAMHA pronounced llama)

    Statement of goals

    1) To inform the public, mental health workers and managers, and politicians that:

      a) most of what is called "mental illness" is directly caused by social and political factors (including poverty, homelessness, isolation, discrimination against 'minority groups') and by an unnecessary fear of people who have experiences or feelings deemed unacceptable by the majority.

      b) people labelled as 'mentally ill' must have the same human and legal rights as everyone else.

      c) many of the treatments currently used by psychiatry do little to improve the recipients wellbeing and are often physically and psychologically damaging.

    2) To provide a forum for information exchange between progressive mental health groups in the London area.

    3) To develop links with other groups who support our goals (e.g. trade unions, civil liberties groups, women's groups, ethnic minority groups, lesbian and gay groups, and socialist organisations) to build a unified campaign in relation to 1)

    Structure

    1) Chair, Vice-Chair (to facilitate meetings only), Secretary, Treasurer, Membership Secretary - three of the five posts must be filled by users

    2) All LAMHA members to consider themselves spokespersons

    3) Membership open to anyone who accepts LAMHA's goals

    4) An AGM to elect officers, report on past year, plan priorities for coming year etc

    5) An agenda for monthly meetings to be set at the beginning of each meeting. Minutes circulated to all members

    6) An individual can be removed from a meeting, or from membership, only by a two-thirds majority of members at a meeting

    7) All other decisions to be taken, if time does not allow consensus to be realised, by majority vote.

    Outline based on an email from Louise Pembroke with additional material from Peter Campbell

    We met at Camden Mind when David Hill was the Director and it was based in Kentish Town. [Peter: In the first year or so meetings seem to have been attended by 12 to 25 people. The group had no regular funding, but relied on donations. It usuall met at the Hacker Centre in Kentish Town (a Day Centre run by Mind in Camden)].

    LAMHA was important because we did the very first demo [5.12.1987] against initial community treatment order proposals. We organised a really good demo marching to the Royal College of Psychiatrists under police escort and laid a wreath at their doorstep. [Peter: LAMHA was a major organiser of the Day of Action against Community Treatment Orders... which included a march from Marble Arch to the Royal College of Psychiatrists and a demonstration there. This was the first example of service users taking to the streets to demonstrate for some time]

    Around that time or the year after there was a debate at an Royal College of Psychiatrists conference in Brighton with Lucy Scott Moncrief which Dave Lowson [Brighton and Hove Mind, now Wales Mind] gatecrashed to give out leaflets giving the aerguments against community treatment orders.

    LAMHA also did other good stuff such as street theatre. We did street theatre beside those dreadful SANE posters with the distorted black & white faces and red slogans - something like, 'He's thinks he's Jesus, You think he's a killer, they hope he'll go away'. I dressed up in a white coat as the needle hypodermic wielding psychiatrist. Annie Newnham [who was very active in the demo and the making of 'We're not Mad'] was in a nurses uniform. We 'forcibly' injected and medicated [lucozade and smarties!] and gave a running commentary and demonstration of the effects of medication and clinical names for those effects.

    Lastly, LAMHA put a 'Psychiatry on Trial' drama, that I didn't participate in. It was good direct action stuff.

    Opinions about the movement given to Anne Rogers and Pilgrim Pilgrim between Autumn 1988 and 1989

    I think broadly what the user movement is saying is that we have something to contribute to society in general to understanding of mental health and mental health issues and to the improvement of the quality of services in various ways. I think also what the user movement is saying is that as a group, we have been devalued and stigmatised. This is no longer acceptable and the way to confront that is to actually speak out, to be active, to be political and to actually challenge this. (SSO/ LAMHA) [Probably Peter Campbell]

    Some say that the psychiatric system is actually a tool of class oppression and one shouldn't make any accommodation to it at all. . . In psychiatry there is certainly too much emphasis on the medical approach but other professional groups have a wider viewpoint. They are less enemies. Generally nurses and psychologists and occupational therapists are more open minded. . . But what annoys me all too often is that psychiatrists and other mental health workers say 'accept what you are given' and 'we know better' . . . but they don't know better. The truth is as a human race we don't really understand much about this area [of emotional distress]. (SSO/LAMHA) [Probably Peter Campbell]

    . . the NSF [National Schizophrenia Fellowship], tend to focus on people being ill, people being out of control, needing help. That's their ideology. And then underneath, it seems to be saying, 'they are a burden to us, we want to get rid of these people'. And in getting rid of them that involves actually removing people's liberty. . . . The types of solutions that the NSF are proposing are very much the solutions which we're not proposing . . . more medication, more physical control, more removal from the community, possibly more ECT. At the propaganda level, what they are putting forward, and what we're putting forward are totally different. (SSO/LAMHA) [Probably Peter Campbell - But he is not as sure as with the previous two]

    I think we need to have a lot more input into the training of junior doctors. Ouite a few of us now have been invited to psychiatric training. This is wonderful because if you get in at an early stage this is when the doctors' minds are reasonably open, maybe that will influence what they are thinking later on. It is really difficult to influence people who have been doing this for twenty years and feel very threatened by any criticism of the way they operate. (MINDLINK) [Jan Wallcraft]

    I think the users' movement is at too early a stage to have much impact on planning. But in a lot of areas there are users involved in planning and we are getting people on to health authorities and joint planning teams. But maybe not in large enough numbers and quickly enough to be influential. Even then they can be tokenised and patronised and not listened to. (MINDLINK) [Jan Wallcraft]

    In 1987 Mary O'Hagan set up the Auckland group, Psychiatric Survivors after reading On Our Own by Judi Chamberlin. She describes it as the first self-help group of its kind in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The organisation ran support groups, drop-ins and accommodation, produced information for survivors and played a role in local mental health politics.

    At the end of 1989 Mary was granted a Winston Churchill Fellowship to go to the United States, Britain and the Netherlands, which she did in March, April and May 1990.

    "I visited mostly survivor run self-help organisations as well as a few services and health promotion organisations that were trying to get survivors to participate in decision making."

    Her report was published in 1993. (external source).

    Mary was the first chairperson of the World Federation of Psychiatric Users between 1991 and 1995.

    She was appointed a New Zealand Mental Health Commissioner in 2001, and served until 2007.

    Mary was interviewed on video in Milan in June 2005 (You Tube). This interview is from the DVD "Visions" - for further info try

    Mary is currently an international consultant on recovery and service user issues.

    History of MindLink

    January 1985 Mind Consumer Network idea

    Summer 1987 Steering group Mind Consumer Advisory Panel

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet January 1987:

    "Mind Consumer network meeting - Feedback. Attended by members of SSO Jan 1987. Desire of Chris Heginbotham to form an advisory user Forum, to be one voice amongst other advisory groups.Opposition expressed to the idea of SSO representing consumers. Proposed that a letter should be written, that Mind should take the iniative in contacting individual groups and forming representation from this.Another similar meeting March 3rd, anyone interested can attend. Users also invited to share planning of next Mind conference, to be about half those involved."

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet April/May 1987:

    "Mind has now found the money to fund a part-time worker to set up their consumer network. There is also a consumer advisory panel involving about 15 'consumers' which will be advising the worker in setting the network up and in working out how it will fit into the existing structures of Mind. It looks as if the post of worker will be advertised at the end of June/July and the chances are that a 'survivor' will fill the post..."

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet August 1987:

    "The part-time worker post for Mind's Consumer network is still in the pipeleine - although the advertising of it has not yet been spotted. Hopefully there will be someone in post by the time the Mind conference comes round in November. Will it be a service-user?"

    9.10.1987 Hackney Mental Health Action Group AGM elected Lisa Haywood and Ian Ray- Todd as co-chairs and Lisa Haywood to the "MIND Consumer Advisory Panel"

    Survivors Speak Out Newssheet November 1987:

    "It's good to be able to report that the pulse of Mind's Consumer advisory Network seems to be quickening at last. The post has now been advertised... "

    Mind Consumer Advisory Panel

    Paragraph from Mind website: "The MIND Consumer Network was set up in 1987 [1988] to inform and advise MIND on the experiences, views and opinions of service users, and to have a direct route into policy development. The following year Spring 1989, the Network was renamed 'MINDLINK' and had doubled its membership. It formed a consumer advisory panel with members from the regions, reporting to the council of management. By 1993, there were over 1,000 members, and Mind Link was becoming increasingly influential, being asked to write training manuals on user empowerment and to help with the work of the Mental Health Task Force. Membership continues to grow, and there is now a list of user/trainers available to provide training on mental health issues."

    MIND CONSUMERS NETWORK [Newsletter: MINDWAVES] [1988]

    In December 1987 Jan Wallcraft was employed in Mind's national office to set up ways in which people with direct experience of psychiatric services could have a bigger say in Mind. The main way she tried to make this happen was by setting up a network of recipients or users of psychiatric services. (Progress report after the first three years - January 1991)

    Jan Wallcraft says she first remembers hearing about Judi Chamberlin when she started at Mind "in 1987 and Anny Brackx was gearing up to publish On Our Own as a Mind publication. I read it and identified with so much she said, and I think her ideas continued to influence my thinking and writing about service user led crisis services, my PhD, and all my work thenceforth." (Tribute January 2010)

    Disability Now May 1988

    "Mind, the mental health charity, has set up a national "consumer" network of more than 350 members who have had personal experience of mental hospitals. Their views will help influence Mind's future policies at an important time when more and more mental hospitals are closing and the future of "community care" is still being debated. Anyone interested in joining the network should contact Jan Wallcraft, Mind, 22 Harley Street, London, W1N 2ED tel: 01-637 0741."

    16.5.1988 Large meeting in Exeter at which representatives from a number of South-West groups discussed their progress and problems. "South-West Mind Consumer Network" began as a Survivors Speak Out group. It later voted to meet as a Mind group " to make it possible for SW Mind to continue to coordinate meetings and help with travel expenses". Ingrid Barker was the contact at South West Mind , Bath 64670

    21.5.1988 Large meeting in Oldham of "North-West Mind Consumer Network" (the first of the regional networks) elected a working group to take the network forward. By August it had 270 members and was seeking funds from the "NCVO"

    "There was considerable rivalry between the Manchester and Liverpool factions within the Mind Consumer Network. It was a wonder we ever managed any collaboration. I think there was a time when a quarter of the national Network membership was based in the North West, and that mostly in the two big cities." (Email, Andrew Hughes, 17.4.2010)

    MINDWAVES The Newsletter of the Mind Consumer Network

    MINDWAVES Issue 1 August 1988


    MINDWAVES Issue 2 December 1988

    MINDWAVES The Newsletter of MINDLINK, The Mind Consumer Network (Printed)

    MINDWAVES Issue 3 Spring 1989

    Issue 4 Summer 1989

    30.11.1989 to 1.11.1989 Mind's "Annual Conference and Exhibition" welcomed Ros Hepplewhite as Mind's new Director.

    MINDWAVES Double Issue 5+6 Autumn/Winter 1989/1990
    Contains Norman Howard's report on "Patient Groups in Manchester" (page 10). See
    extracts

    MINDWAVES Issue 7 Spring 1990

    MINDWAVES Issue 8 Summer 1990

    Mindlink South East Steering Group minutes 14.11.1990. Present: Jan Wallcraft, Edna Collins, Ann Neeter, Lisa Haywood. Apologies: Marion Beeforth.

    MINDWAVES Double Issue 9/10 Autumn/Winter 1990/1991

    1991 MIND'S 1991 USER INVOLVEMENT POLICY

    Sometime in 1991 (?) Jan Wallcraft was placed on a one year disciplinary charge for supporting a member against orders from Ros Hepplewhite and (possibly) for having an unruly sense of humour (!!) Ros left before the year expired.

    7.3.1991 CAP Meeting: Ros Hepplewhite (not present) "asked for CAPS opinion on whether formal meetings with representatives from independent user movement should resume, be regular and minuted, with reps from SSO, National Advocacy Network and MINDLINK (survivor/user reps only)."

    MINDWAVES Double Issue 11/12 Spring/Summer 1991

    Late 1991? Jo Lucas, Developments Director, took over from Ros Hepplewhite the management of Jan Wallcraft as MINDLink Coordinator.

    MINDWAVES Double Issue 13/14 Autumn/Winter 1991/1992

    MINDWAVES Issue 15 Summer 1992 includes "One thing well" about Valerie Argent
    Also information about
    survivor group funding

    1993 MIND's Policy on User Involvement - Written by Liz Sayce

    "This policy is an updated version of MIND's 1991 User Involvement Policy. It aims to guide MIND and other mental health services in continuing to develop successful user involvement." (archive copy)

    MINDWAVES Issue 16 Spring 1993

    "I am leaving MIND at the end of March to go freelance as a mental health writer, trainer, consultant and part time aromatherapist" 1993 to 2004 - coordinator Maddie Chapman

    Spring 1994 Mind Link mailing relaunched as The Information Pack. It had a specially designed cover which wrapped around the loose inserts. It stayed in this format until August 2000.

    Late 1994 Information Pack issue 2 "Members News" contained a letter from "Jo Lucas. Developments Director" saying that he would be leaving MIND at Christmas after six years. He had managed the MIMDLink Coordinator "for the last three years and seen MINDlink grow and take its place very securely within MIND" Mary Nettle was chair of MindLink from 1996 until 2001. Other chairs (co-chairs) have included Brian McDonald, Kay Sheldon, Richard Jackson, Becky Derham, Tina Coldham, David Ralph, Kenny Hurley and Paul Roberts.

    1998 Karol Bradbury was employed as "Mind Link Administrator" from 1998 to 2007/2008.

    August 2000 Stapled mailing introduced.

    22.8.2001 to 14.4.2003 internet archive of Mind Link webpage

    Mind Link National Advisory Panel

    2003 Tina Coldham elected as a representative from the South East/South West regions. She served two three years terms, retiring early in 2009, and was co-chair from January 2007.

    26.6.2003 to 23.5.2008 internet archive of Mind Link webpage

    September 2003 Mind Link's mailing began to be called Mind Link Magazine, but it was still hand-printed and stapled together using coloured sheets of paper.

    2004 Mind Link coordinator Madie Chapman was succeeded by Shannon O'Neil as "Mind Link Development Manager" from 2004 to 2008.

    "we produced the forerunner of the magazine as we know it today in October 2004, then switched to a glossy format in Spring 2005."

    Phil Ruthen was representative from the South East/South West regions of Mind on the "Mind Link National Advisory Panel" from March 2004 to August 2005. On 3.5.2008, he wrote: "the Mind Link National Advisory Panel... is both an advisory body and representative body internally in Mind to guide its policies and practices. A primary role too is to connect 'grass-root' support with the charity's direction in campaigns and information supply. When I was there it had little formal power within Mind's governing structures; that might have changed with Mind's governance reviews recently. The Panel, consists of approximately 24 elected representatives from regional and diverse communities of the Mind Link network membership, being approx 2300 members at present. It was until recently, if not still, arguably the most democratic elected service user/survivor board in England and Wales, with the largest constituencies and potentially most diverse membership in the movement. How far NSUN has taken on this position is an interesting question."

    Vicki Ensor has been the Mind Link administrator since late 2007.

    2008 Shannon O'Neil became Head of Involvement at Mind. She was replaced (1.7.2008) by Hayley Bacon who became "Mind Link Coordinator".

    Early October 2011 First issue of a Quarterly Mind Membership News replaced a number of Mind publications including Mind Link Magazine and Diverse Minds.

    Thursday 24.2.2011 Final meeting of the Mind Link National Advisory Panel

    Friday 25.2.2011 Meeting in which Alison Faulkner took part

    "I have a kind of confession to make. Last week saw the final meeting of the Mindlink NAP and I was involved in facilitating them in thinking about the future of 'involvement' in Mind. I thought it an important event in Survivors History - hence my posting. Involvement in Mind is no longer called 'user involvement' as they are now broadening out their concept of involvement to include people with direct experience of mental distress who may nor may not have used mental health services. Some of you may already be aware of this, but I thought you might be interested if not"

    Jan Wallcraft 6.3.2011

    My two-penorth on Mindlink.

    Yes, Mindlink was preceded by the Consumer Advisory Panel, Mind's first attempt at involving service users directly. A very good attempt, since it included people such as Peter Campbell, Mike Lawson, Lisa Haywood and Peter Beresford. Mind only set this up in response to strong lobbying from survivors, they were pretty paternalistic in their general outlook at that time as I found in 1985-1986 when I spent 6 months there on a student placement. Staff who did have mental health problems themselves kept it quiet, though one or two did confess this to me privately. I did my placement partly in the Information and policy dept, working with Alison Cobb, where I got the role of writing a new policy on ECT for them. I wrote one which said that ECT should never be given without consent, which Alison supported but the Council of Management who had a heavy contingent of psychiatrists threw it out. I also worked with Laureen Levy, the Women's Policy Officer, based at the South East Mind office in Euston.

    The panel lobbied Mind to set up some kind of network. The director at the time was Chris Heginbotham. Mind put in a funding proposal (to the Government I think?) for funds to set up a network, but did not get the funds, and eventually Chris decided to put in some Mind funding for a half-time post to set up a network with some strict limits. It was to run for 2 years (I think), and have a limited number of members (my guess is about 200 though I may be wrong on the figure). It was a top-down approach, Mind would consult this panel of service users of its own services on Mind policies. Their reward was free Mind membership and a discount on Open Mind.

    I was just getting involved with survivor networks and finishing my degree in 1987, and decided this job had my name on it. I'd been chair of Islington Women and Mental Health for a year, and been on the editorial group of We're Not Mad, We're Angry, and had attended the Edale conference, as well as working at Mind the previous year. I got the job, starting in December 1987. I was determined to go beyond the remit I had been given, and make the network interactive - i.e. service users needed to be put in contact with each other, not just consulted by Mind staff. And I decided it would grow beyond the original numbers and become permanent. The challenge was to make it effective, but not to try to take the initiative away from the existing user survivor organisations such as SSO and lots of other groups and networks around the country. As Peter Campbell has said on one of the threads, that might have happened if SSO had not existed first. So the fact that it was an internal Mind network with the key aim of making an impact on Mind policies was no bad thing really. It limited what Mindlink could be, but it stopped us from getting over- ambitious.

    Some of the Consumer Advisory Panel stayed on, and were key in shaping the direction. We renamed the network Mindlink in 1988 and started Mindwaves, very low tech, only an old Amstrad computer. I had big ideas about survivors taking over Mind, but not much self confidence really, so I desperately needed the support of the panel and input from survivors inside and outside Mind. It wasn't easy, as Mind staff weren't used to consulting service users, and I've written elsewhere that in many cases it was only when staff moved on and were replaced by new people who came in and accepted Mindlink's existence that we really got a lot of co-operation from the staff - with honourable exceptions of course. Ally Cobb in particular, was great and is now even more fabulous! Laureen Levy too, I am still in touch with her.

    Ros Hepplewhite - a former director of a Trust on the south coast I think. A mega-challenge - to Mindlink, and to Mind staff. She did give us a hard time, however she got rid of one member of staff who was a thorn in everyone's flesh and appointed Liz Sayce who was a great policy director. She generally made good appointments. She put a lot of pressure on me, demanding stats of Mindlink very quickly, to give to Council of Management. This turned out to be a useful exercise, so I'd say she was a mixed experience.

    The worst part for me was when I got on the wrong side of her in trying to support a Mindlink member. She was line managing me at the time, for some reason. My line manager Chris Shaw had left and maybe not yet been replaced. Ros told me that she had given me an order (not to get involved with a dispute this Mindlink member was in) which I had disobeyed. I said that I would not have made a good SS officer! She freaked at this and I was lucky to only get a one-year disciplinary charge - the next step if I'd put another foot wrong would have been dismissal. So, no stress then! She left before my disciplinary year was out, and I got Jo Lucas as my line manager, and Judi Clements came in as Mind director. A generally better era.

    I got some funding in my second year so I could become full-time Part of the funding was to support advocacy and patients' councils, so I worked with the people setting up National Advocacy Network, later UKAN, and then we began holding networking meetings at Mind between Mindlink, UKAN and SSO to share info. The rest of the new funding went to support regional networks of Mindlink (I had kept trying to get regional offices of Mind to support local meetings of Mindlink members but they had complained, fairly, they had no budget for this). So we now had a small amount of money for each Mind region to allow Mindlink members to meet and plan training events, which they did, with some good results.

    Each new director has found Mindlink a bit of a challenge and has reiterated that Mindlink IS part of Mind, cannot have its own policy agenda and speak publicly against Mind, but you'd expect that. I always said to Mindlink members who felt restricted by this that there was nothing to prevent them also belonging to other user networks and speaking out as members of those. In my time at Mind, lots of Mindlink members were also involved in SSO, UKAN, MDF etc, and we tried to keep abreast of all the groups and their activities and encourage this.

    I have to admit that despite the ongoing tendency for paternalism, I came to love many of the Mind staff. There were some fab people in the information section, on the advice line, in policy, in the legal department. I remember this when I think of the criticisisms of national charities. There are legitimate reasons to question the role of the voluntary sector in mental health, but don't diss all the people who work for them, a lot are good, genuine people, a lot are survivors and a lot work their butts off and could probably get paid a lot more elsewhere.

    I am sad to hear of the demise of the national advisory panel, as I know so much work has gone in to making it representative and keeping it so, and providing a good service to local Mindlink members so they can feel more involved. Paul Farmer reassured me last time I met him that Mindlink was not going to be abolished, that it would remain a part of Mind, but this is symbolic of the most far-reaching attempt yet to limit its role in the organisation I fear, much further than Ros Hepplewhite went.

    1988 Mind the Gap Theatre Company - an inclusive theatre group for actors with and without a learning disability - founded. (external link to history). One of its founding members is Anna-Marie Heslop, who has since appeared on The Bill and in The Doctors in October 2006 - (external link)

    Hearing Voices Network
    79 Lever Street.
    Manchester M1 1FL

    Enquiries and information: 0845 122 8641


    Autumn 1994: Schizophrenia Media Agency, c/o Hearing Voices Network, 1st Floor, Fourways House, 16 Tariff St, Manchester M1 2FN. Tel: 061-228 3896.

    About the Network

    The first UK Hearing Voices group was formed in 1988 in Manchester.

    It was inspired by the pioneering work of Professor Marius Romme and Sondra Escher from Maastricht University, and a Dutch self help group, Foundation Resonance.

    Following a national conference held in London in 1990, the Independent on Sunday newspaper published a prominent article on the topic which generated a lot of correspondence. As a result we decided to establish a network of voice hearers and individuals who were interested in the experience of hearing voices.

    In 1989 the Manchester group organised a speaking tour in the north of England for Marius Romme and his colleagues Sondra Escher and Anse Graf. The meetings were well attended by people who hear voices, their relatives, friends and carers and interested mental health professionals.

    Since this time the work of the Network has been well reported in publications such as OpenMind, journals, local and national newspapers and the broadcasting media. Members of the group have continued to maintain a relationship with Rome and Escher, regularly visiting and attending conferences in Maastricht and throughout the world.

    Hearing Voices Self-Help Groups

    Hearing Voices groups are typically, a number of people who share the experience of hearing voices, coming together to help and support each other, they exchange information and learn from each other, They share the same problems and may have similar life situations. Sometimes the group may include relatives and carers of people who hear voices.

    The purpose of hearing voices groups is to offer a safe haven where people feel accepted and comfortable. They also have an aim of offering an opportunity to for people to accept and 'live with their voices', in a way that gives some control and helps them to regain some power over their lives.

    A New Approach

    Hearing voices has been regarded by psychiatry as 'auditory hallucinations', and in many cases a symptom of schizophrenia. However not everyone who hears voices has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. There are conflicting theories from psychiatrists, psychologists and voice hearers about why people do hear voices . We believe that they are similar to dreams, symbols of our unconscious minds. Although the Network is open to many diverse opinions we accept the explanation of each individual voice hearer.

    Traditionally , the usual treatment for voice hearing has been major tranquillisers, administered to reduce the delusions and hallucinations . However not everyone responds to this treatment. There are some psychiatrists and psychologists who now work with people who hear voices using talking therapies and exploring the meaning of the voices.

    Although this is not yet 'the norm', this practice is increasing. As the improvement in individuals who are encouraged to talk about their voices becomes more apparent and increasing number of health professionals are beginning to understand that the key to understanding voices lies in the 'content' of the voices.

    Distress Awareness Training Agency Anne Plumb's narratives
    Andrew Hughes' narratives

    From Anne Plumb's memories:

    The [early 1980s?] was also a time when individuals, or local organisations,/groups were being invited to give presentations to social worker departments, universities etc. Lindsey Dyer, director of North West Mind was especially active in encouraging this as was David Brandon, also in Preston, who published the booklet, Voices of Experience 1981.

    "As well as being part of the same geographical community north of Manchester," [the people who set up DATA] "had a community of interest arising from the survivor movement." (Vivien Lindow 1994)

    Andrew Hughes, a friend of Anne, was often invited to give presentations. Andrew had worked with North West Mind (David Brandon and Lindsey Dyer) and within Rochdale and Oldham Minds.

    Andrew and Tony Riley had been invited in various capacities to give talks for some time, from their associations with local MINDs and Anne began to join in shared sessions. It was one of these events, a multi disciplinary event organised in Preston by North West Mind, the King's Fund Centre and Good Practices in Mental Health that made us realise that there was a need for a co-operative of trainers all of whom would have direct personal experience of emotional and mental distress. As we explained to Viv Lindow

    "We found that we were, on the whole, slotted into other people's agendas,programmes and events, with little say in what went on before, or would occur after, our presentation."

    We might arrive just before our slot - and leave straight after. For all we knew our contribution could be ignored, distorted , misunderstood - or wholeheartedly accepted! On this occasion, we had stayed on to the end of the meeting. In concluding the meeting, one of the organisers listed service-user needs - most of them spot-on, but not "stabilisation". It seemed clear to me that we needed to be remain at meetings to challenge such assumptions and to have some say in the overall organisation of training events

    So, some of us in Rochdale felt that we did not have enough control of the events as a whole and set up D.A.T.A (Distress Awareness Training Agency) as a Survivor Collective in 1987. Andrew Hughes and Tony Riley (both in Mind) and Anne.

    In Rochdale, Anne Plumb, Andrew Hughes and Tony Riley began to meet as an informal splinter group from the Manchester Survivors Speak Out group set up following the September 1987 National Survivors Speak Out meeting at Edale

    The fourth member of DATA, Helen Gibb, joined in 1988.

    Anne worked closely with Andrew Hughes as a training colleague in DATA. In training, she would focus on the meaning of survivors speaking out. Andrew, drawing on his experience, focused more on service provision.

    We went down the path of setting ourselves up as a co-operative with the local Co-operative Development Agency but, for a variety of reasons, did not follow this through with registration. Rather than employ a development worker to set up the project some members of our co-operative were paid, pro-rata, based on a development worker's salary. Individual contributions were organised to take into account the different benefit and tax arrangement we had, with one member sometimes donating a fee to avoid the tax complications of an irregular 'second' job. Those on benefits adopted an arrangement accepted elsewhere by the DSS, to receive fees for training sessions in 3 parts representing preparation; training and evaluation, thus spreading payment over three or more weeks. As for work style, one of us commented to Viv Lindow that

    "I've always had this notion of myself as a person not very good at working in teams ...but we do seem to operate well. it's nice because there's a feeling of equality..."
    Much of our early work was doing training with social and care workers, either through the local authorities or universities, in particular the Social Work Department at Manchester University.

    I had to more or less drop out of DATA by late 1993 through domestic commitments. We had just reached a point when the Training Officer was open to joint organisation of a whole programmes - which would have gone far beyond enabling us just to have control over our own sessions as was happening, but she also moved on.

    DATA moved on; a couple of new members joined. Rose Snow was one. Andrew continued to work as a trainer and consultant with DATA (as well as Tony?) and in a personal capacity. He should be able to fill you in on their involvements. Tony had, by 1995, become employed with Having a Voice, an advocacy project set up by North Manchester Health Authority.

    I'm not sure where the line is drawn between service user consultation and research, as I know DATA was asked, at one point, to find out some users views on a social services proposal, but we felt the Social Services Department had already made up its mind and that there were other problems with this invitation (if I recall correctly!).


    Andrew Hughes Spring 1995

    "Tony and I met while he worked at Rochdale MIND and I was on the executive commitee there"

    "Anne and I had contact while I was on a group producing Rochdale MIND's newsletter"

    "Tony and I had in the past been asked to give talks about our experiences and perspectives. Anne had written articles on issue relevant to mental health"

    "Tony ... took the step of writting to Anne and me to suggest the setting up of a group."

    "Later in 1988 we applied for a grant..." 20.6.1988? - "At around this time a fourth person, Helen Gibb, joined our group".

    "Since late 1989 much of the public speaking work has been carried out by Anne and me..."

    "eventually we put on the training workshops on May 29 and 30 1993"

    21.6.1994 Training workshop at the University of Manchester co- presented by Andrew Hughes and another member.


    Internet archives:

    10.12.2003

    DISTRESSS AWARENESS TRAINING AGENCY

    The well established Distress Awareness Training Agency, D.A.T.A., a collective of individuals all with direct personal experience of emotional and mental distress, provides service-user led training, research and consultancy services.

    Clients are wide-ranging and have included universities, colleges, user groups, providers of health and social care and helath service commissioners. D.A.T.A. also provides input into educational programmes, supports the development of service-user involvement and offers service- user perspectives on services and treatment.

    Recently, D.A.T.A. has worked on evaluation of user involvement and of person centred planning in secure mental health services. D.A.T.A. is now providing support and training to other groups of service users around the North West to enable them to become more involved in providing training to their local mental health workers.

    D.A.T.A.'s broad aim is to promote positive attitudes towards, and positive images of, people with experience of mental distress.

    History

    D.A.T.A. people Link to archive


    11.12.2003

    Early History

    In 1987, Tony Riley was a part time development worker at Rochdale and District MIND. At the same time, Andrew Hughes was a member of the executive committee there. Tony and Andrew worked together on a project to relaunch the newsletter. One of the first tasks conducted was a search of previous articles submitted to the newsletter. There was one such article, by Anne Plumb, exploring the notion of "consumerism" within mental distress services.

    The previous editorial group had rejected this thoughtful piece of writing. Tony and Andrew lost no time in contacting Anne, apologising for the original omission of the article and begging permission to use it in the next newsletter. After some reluctance, Anne agreed.

    Anne, Tony and Andrew found that they were being invited to give "consumer perspectives" at various events and on training courses. As individuals, they had found themselves slotted into other people's agendas, programmes and events, with little say in what went on before and after our presentations. Certain issues, such as work and employment, which were important to them, could only be touched on in training sessions. These factors, combined with an increasing need for "mental health" training, led to Tony, Anne and Andrew setting up a collective of distress awareness trainers in May 1988, Distress Awareness Training Agency.

    Among our early "customers" were voluntary organisations like NACRO (National Association for Care and Resettlement of Offenders), CVS's (Councils for Voluntary Services), CHC's (Community Health Councils) together with Social Services Departments, Health Authorities and Universities.

    Link to archive

    20.11.2001

    Andrew, Caroline, Rose, Munir and Ann are the current management group within D.A.T.A. We also have a wider network of associates who bring specific expertise or experience to our projects from time to time

    Link to archive

    3.12.2003

    Andrew Hughes is the coordinator of Distress Awareness Training Agency, the U.K.'s longest established collective of mental health system user/survivor trainers. He owns Mental Health Training, an organisation providing educational, research and consultancy services to Universities, mental health service providers,user run organisations and others. Andrew is the editor of Survivors' United Network newsletter and ezine resources. In his limited spare time he is a devoted father of four with a keen interest in bonsai and allotment gardening.

    Link to archive

    ADDRESS LIST OF GROUPS INVOLVED IN MENTAL HEALTH ' SELF- ADVOCACY .. MAY 1988.....

    LINK GAMH: 2 Queen's Crescent, Glasgow G4 9BH.

    COLLINGWOOD PATIENTS' COUNCIL: Collingwood Day Unit, St. Nicholas Hospital, 4 Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne.

    LEEDS PSYCHIATRIC USERS ACTION GROUP: c/o 56 Ridge Terrace, Leeds 6. LS6 2DA.

    MANCHESTER: for information about Manchester Group contact - Steve Brown, Flat 4, 107 Withington Raad, Whally Range, Manchester.

    CONTACT: Chesterfield Community Centre, Tontine Road, Chesterfield S4O 1QU.

    NOTTINGHAM PATIENTS' COUNCILS SUPPORT GROUP: 114 Mansfield Road, Nottingham NG1 3HL.

    CAMPAIGN AGAINST PSYCHIATRIC OPPRESSION (CAPO): c/o Frank Bangay, 28A Edgar House, Kingsmead Estate, Homerton Road, London E9

    BRITISH NETWORK FOR ALTERNATIVES TO PSYCHIATRY (BNAP): 158 Rivermead Court, Hurlingham, London SW6.

    EALING MENTAL HEALTH ACTION GROUP: c/o John Ainsworth, 52A Burlington Gardens, Acton, London W3.

    BARNET ACTION MENTAL HEALTH: c/o Dee Kraaij, 91 Millwards, Hatfield, Herts.

    CAMDEN MENTAL HEALTH CONSORTIUM: c/o Rose and Mark Hacker Centre, 5/6 Anglers Lane, London NW5.3DG

    ISLINGTON FORUM: The Old Darkroom, The Laundry, Sparsholt Road, Islington, London, N19.

    ISLINGTON WOMEN AND MENTAL HEALTH: Caxton House, 129 St.Johns Way, London N19.

    WESTMINSTER MENTAL HEALTH ACTION GROUP: c/o Westminster MIND, 526 Harrow Road, London W9.

    HACKNEY MENTAL HEALTH ACTION GROUP: c/o CHC, 210 Kingsland Road, London E2 8EB.

    CITY AND HACKNEY FEDERATION OF CONSUMERS OF MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES: c/o CHC, 210 Kingsland Road, London E2 8 EB.

    LONDON ALLIANCE FOR MENTAL HEALTH ACTION (LAMHA): c/o Hacker Centre, 5/6 Anglers Lane, London NW5 3DG.

    INSIGHT: c/o Richard Pennell, Brighton Mental Health Group, 17/19 Ditchling Rise, Brighton BN1 UQL.

    CAFE CLUB: Bedford House, Amoy Street, Southampton.

    BRISTOL SURVIVORS: Secretary Felicity Couch, 139 Ashley Road, Montpelier, Bristol BS6 5NU.

    BRISTOL CRISIS SERVICE FOR WOMEN: c/o The Women's Centre, 44 The Grove, Bristol BS1.

    WOMANKIND: c/o University Settlement, 43 Ducie Road, Barton Hill, Bristol.

    Bristol Womankind: Womankind Bristol Settlement, 43 Ducie Road, Barton Hill, Bristol, BS5 OAX. Telephone Bristol 556164. Contact Pam Trevithick, Development Worker (Mindlink August 1988)

    WESTON SURVIVORS: c/o FRIEND, 39A/B Oxford Street, Weston-super-Mare.

    WINCHESTER GROUP: c/o Glen Cawes, 22 Devon Close, Chandlers Ford, Eastleigh, Hants.

    MILTON KEYNES MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACY GROUP: c/o Cripps Lodge Resource Centre, Broadlands, Nether field, Milton Keynes, MK6

    EXETER SERVICE USERS GROUP: Larkby, Victoria Park Road, Exeter.

    ...... This address list has been compiled by SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT, secretary, Peter Campbell, 33 Lichfield Road, London NW2 2RG.
    ...... It does not claim to be comprehensive. It is the latest of a continuing series.............

    SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT

    MAY 1988..

    Peter Barham established The Hamlet Trust in 1988 to help develop alternative services for people with mental health problems. Its first major project was to help establish a user-led and complementary initiative, the Bradford Mental Health Advocacy Group. The experience of this and similar projects in Britain and Europe formed the basis of Hamlet's work today, the main focus of which lies in its work with communities which have found themselves in the midst of social and economic upheaval following the collapse of Communism.

    Since 1990 Hamlet has worked to establish, support and develop a Network of Member Organisations (all of which, like Hamlet, are non-governmental organisations, or NGOs) throughout Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Hamlet's aim is that these organisations are both based in their communities and are led by service-users themselves. Since the establishment of the first Network Member in Krakow, Poland, the Network has grown rapidly. Today [about 2003] it comprises of more than 50 NGOs in 18 different countries.


    An enquiry into the experiences of a group of people with a history of schizophrenic illness was supported by the Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust . The Bradford Development Project arose directly out of this research project and subsequently contributed significantly to the genesis of the Hamlet Trust and its initial foray into Eastern Europe. Ben and others in the Bradford group played a very direct and significant role in the early 1990s in seeding exchanges between user/survivor groups in Britain and in the countries of Easter Europe. A group of user/survivors from Poland travelled over to Bradford in a minibus for a very successful visit; some of the Bradford group then returned the visit, and one thing then led to another and many other groups became involved. But it was the Bradford group who really showed us the way. Ben himself was involved with Hamlet over a long period, visiting a number of countries and contributing actively at workshops. I last saw him at a special event in 2003, I believe. (Peter Barham 26.5.2009)

    Bradford and Airedale Mental Health Advocacy Group

    BAMHAG (Bradford and Airedale Mental Health Advocacy Group) is a specialist, service-user led organisation with almost 20 years experience that provides independent and confidential mental health advocacy. BAMHAG also provides a befriending and liaison service as a separate project.

    Beyond Diagnosis was started in 1989 and was led by a steering group and they developed a subscription base. It's aims according to first edition were: "...to create a magazine based on the contributions of people who have been seen as mentally ill or who have had associated experiences. Thus it is hoped to give value to their creativity, ideas and experiences and also to raise awareness of this value among those who view themselves in a different category to the 'mentally ill'"

    I'm a bit hazy on how it all got started. John MacDonald was the first editor and I am in touch with him, so he would be the best person to ask.

    I believe Vincent Donnelly had experience of early word processing (pagemaker or something similar) and helped with the page layouts. I'm not sure who paid for the printing of it, but can find out. It may have been the Stafford Centre, a NSF project. According to the first editorial, many Scottish and Lothian groups offered support of one kind or another. It was also the time of the Scottish Users Network and several people were involved in both Beyond Diagnosis and SUN. It says in editorial that SUN offered support to develop beyond the magazines Lothian base. Through SUN they became in contact with "Heed" the newssheet of self help groups in Glasgow organised by Link- Glasgow Association for Mental Health.

    When I met John MacDonald last week I think he said that Vincent Donnelly had some connection with Glasgow Link. He mentioned the names Tam Graham and Rosemary Burns as early Link members and early SSO members. Have I got that right?

    Rosemary and Tam apparently split from GAMH and were involved in setting up Charlie Reid Centre in Glasgow. I think Vincent was involved somewhere here, or worked for GAMH. He helped set up Beyond Diagnosis. Actually, when I look at first edition now - he is listed as Link - GAMH! 58 Fox Street Glasgow. Help, my detective skills are rubbish!

    Deputy editors were: Anne MacDonald, Marion Denovan. Editorial Consultant: James Milroy. Secretary: Jeff Haddow. Chairperson: Vincent Donnelly. Members were Julia White, Jeff Frew (worker) Ben Morris. Thanks were given to: Maureen O'Neil, Donald Macdougall, Ian Healy, Maureen Evans and Gordon Shaw.

    Organisations that offered support were listed as: GAMH, SUN, Heed Newsletter, SAMH, NSF, Stafford Centre, Social Services, Barony Housing Association, Craigmillar Mental Health Project, Staff at Northumberland and Colinton Mains Hostels, Association for Mental Welfare in East Lothian, Midlothian Association for Mental Health, Edinburgh Association Mental Health.

    (Email Kirsten Maclean 29.9.2008)

    Survivors' Poetry

    Charity No. 1010177 Company No. 2955445; Registered in England Registered Office: c/o Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, 1 St Mary's Terrace, W 2 (Poetry Express 2017) 1SU

    http://www.survivorspoetry.com/ [Website slowly faded out of existence. For sale by the end of 2017] archive

    TheFed archive of Poetry Express

    Poetry Express is a digital journal which will be sent to you if you email the editor at the email address given on the cover.


    Survivors' Poetry's address was

    Survivors' Poetry
    Studio 11, Bickerton House
    25-27 Bickerton Road
    Archway
    London N19 5JT
    Telephone: 020 7281 4654
    Fax: 020 7281 7894


    Survivors' Poetry History

    This history is based on, or began with, a November 2003 Arts Council paper Celebrating disability arts, with amendments. Funding, year by year, has been added to provide structure. Items have been inserted from different sources (shown).

    Index: 1991 - 1992 - 1993 - 1994 - 1995 - 1996 - 1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013 - 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018 -

    In the early years, campaigning organisations such as the Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression (CAPO) and Survivors Speak Out were providing a voice for people with mental distress, and ran fundraising events with music and poetry performers.

    "The original inspiration for Survivors Poetry derives from Frank Bangay of CAPO - who organised numerous poetry events and published poetry magazines with great love and dedication throughout the 1980s without receiving funding or official recognition. Frank Bangay is now a principle organiser for Survivors Poetry" (Introduction to Survivor's Poetry - From Dark to Light)

    Then in 1991 a new organisation, called Survivors' Poetry, was started by a group of poets - Frank Bangay - Peter Campbell - Hilary Porter - and Joe Bidder. The four had met through the poetry events put on by CAPO. although they were not all CAPO members.

    1991/1992: £11,750 Arts Council funding from Disability Projects
    1991/1992: £7,000 Funding programmes - events from London Arts Board
    In 1991 Survivors Poetry received funding from the Arts Council to organise a series of poetry workshops and performances and to produce an anthology of poetry. It held fortnightly workshops in a venue provided by Mind in Camden and performances of poetry and music at Hampden Community Centre near Euston (Introduction to Survivor's Poetry - From Dark to Light)

    The new organisation was immediately successful. Joe Bidder is quoted as saying:

    "There was enormous demand. Our original venue was too small, and people were just overflowing on to the street."

    16.11.1991 Event that was packed out?

    March 1992: A further grant for "an extensive national outreach project to promote further similar schemes in the regions of the UK" (Introduction to Survivor's Poetry - From Dark to Light)

    The group soon employed an outreach worker, who developed a pack giving guidelines for setting up a survivors' poetry group. New groups were formed in Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow, Bristol and further afield.

    1992/1993: £7,000 Funding programmes - events from London Arts Board

    July 1992 Survivor's Poetry - From Dark to Light

    1993 IT! Poems by Paulette NG

    1993/1994 £3,750 Arts Council funding from the Great Britain touring fund for touring coordination and £6,800 from Disabiliy Projects

    December 1993 - March 1994 Survivors' Poetry UK tour: Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol, Wolverhampton (source)

    6.7.1994 Demonstration by Disability Arts Consortium to protest against Arts Council's decision to close its Disability Unit.

    1994/1995 £7,572 Arts Council funding from Disabiliy Projects and £3,600 from Literature Touring

    April 1995 Under The Asylum Tree A Survivors' Poetry anthology, published. It includes: an introduction by Georg MacDonald and works by Billy Childish - Michael Horovitz (A Parody of 'On Westminster Bridge') - Isha "When" - Jade Reidy - Martin Henderson "The Sanctuary in North London" - Patrick McManus "Great Day for my Suicide" - Ian Jentle "But I don't want a Dog" - Val Stein "After all, they are size six and a half" - Kim Christopher "Sink City"

    [Illustrated. Edited by Jenny Ford, Colin Hambrook and Hilary Porter. Published: London: Survivors' Press, 1995. 203 pages: 22cm. ISBN: 1874595011 (paparback)]

    Denise Greene collection. COPAC lists copies in several libraries.

    1995/1996 £9,500 Arts Council funding from Disability Projects and £1,750 from Independent Tours

    "Survivors' Poetry grew slowly. By 1996 it had eight groups in and around London"

    1996 And the World Really Had Changed Leeds Survivor Poets. 1996.

    4.4.1996 Launch of Brixton Community Sanctuary Anthology

    10.10.1996 Sweet, Sour and Serious - Survivors' Poetry Scotland.

    1996/1997 £10,000 Arts Council funding from Disability Projects and £61,802 from Capital Project One

    November 1997 Beyond Bedlam: Poems written out of mental distress, edited by Ken Smith and Matthew Sweeney. Anvil Press

    1997/1998 £10,000 Arts Council funding from Disability Projects and £249,764 from Arts for Everyone - Main scheme

    "In 1997 Survivors' Poetry was successful in applying for Arts for Everyone Main money, which gave £249,763 of project funding over three years.The project was intended to take Survivors' Poetry to national and international prominence, culminating in the publication of two anthologies of poetry from Russian survivors. Joe Bidder, who had been the director of Survivors' Poetry since its foundation, saw the successful application as his parting action to ensure the future of the group. It provided financial security for Survivors' Poetry, but the positive balance sheet made underlying problems less visible to the trustees.The four project employees were over-burdened because the amount of work involved in the project had been underestimated; the volunteers were in danger of feeling marginalised; the director had been unwell - at which point it became clear that some funds from Arts for Everyone had been used to subsidise core costs." (Annabel Jackson 2003)

    May 1998 Joe Bidder left as Director. Succeeded, for one year, by Victoria Field. External link to profile of Victoria Field

    1998/1999 £10,000 Arts Council funding from Disability Access

    September/October 1998 Survivors Poetry Newsletter 1

    "A SURVIVOR MAY BE DEFINED AS A PERSON WITH A CURRENT OR PAST EXPERIENCE OF PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS , A RECIPIENT OF ECT, TRANQUILLISERS OR OTHER MEDICATION , A USER OF COUNSELLING SERVICES , A SURVIVOR OF SEXUAL ABUSE , CHILD ABUSE AND ANY OTHER PERSON WHO HAS EMPATHY WITH THE EXPERIENCES OF SURVIVORS . "

    November/December 1998 Survivor's Poetry Newsletter Number Two: (downloadable pdf)

    Survivors'poetry in the news
    An article in October's Positive Health magazine examined the ways in which creative writing can help during times of distress. This article was picked up by 'The Editor' supplement of The Guardian on Saturday 10th October. Victoria Field gave an interview on the BBC World Service Outlook programme which was broadcast to a global audience on Wednesday 14th October. BBC Radio Bristol are also planning to feature our work. An article on Survivors' Poetry also appeared in the September issue of Umbrella.

    January/February/March 1999 Survivor's Poetry Newsletter Number Three: (downloadable pdf) Includes notice of Frank Bangay's book and request for advance orders/

    April/May/June 1999 Survivor's Poetry Newsletter Number Four: (downloadable pdf) - Picture: "Introducing Alistair Brinkley".

    9.3.1999 to 19.3.1999 Survivors' Poetry "Fresher than Green, Brighter than Orange". An exhibition of poems by Irish women at Diorama Foyer. Anthology of same name available from Survivors Press. (source)

    End of April 1999 Clare Douglas succeded Victoria Field as Director.

    June 1999 Naked Songs and Rhythms of Hope by Frank Bangay was not published by Survivors Poetry, but self-published. It contained this brief account of Frank's work at Survivors Poetry: "Frank was a founder member of Survivors Poetry. From 1992 until 1997, as a voluntary worker, he organised and co-organised many performances and workshops in Psychiatric Hospitals, Day Centres, Sheltered Housing and other similar settings around London, through this continuing to help many survivor poets get their voices across. He is currently helping to establish a Survivor Writing Group at CORE Arts in Hackney."

    July/August/September 1999 Survivor's Poetry Newsletter Number Five: (downloadable pdf) Clare Douglas writes: "Many of you will know me as a familiar name and face at Survivors' Poetry since 1996 when I became Administrator. I'm delighted to say that it is now my privilege to have been appointed Director since the end of April."

    October/November/December 1999 Survivor's Poetry Newsletter Number Six: (downloadable pdf) Listed Survivors Poetry Network (throughout UK) addresses and details

    January/February/March 2000 Survivor's Poetry Newsletter Number Seven: (downloadable pdf)

    Competions to rename the newsletter and London events

    "The publication started in the late 1990s as Survivors' Poetry Newsletter, and was then in printed form, quarterly. It became Poetry Express in July 2000 - the winning suggestion in our competition for readers to rename the newsletter - and was initially both printed and published online." (Dave Russell 18.11.2013)

    date Survivor's Poetry Newsletter Number Eight: (downloadable pdf) [NO]

    1999/2000 £16,830 Arts Council funding from Independent Initiatives

    June 2000 "An Uphill Struggle, But it's Been Worth It" by Frank Bangay published in Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture. Much of this consisted of an appreciation of Survivors Poetry as "our own space, for ourselves, to perform and learn" (page 102) and a critical appraisal of the forces that led to "grass roots poets, and activities like workshops in sheltered housing, to be overlooked". (page 103)

    July/August/September 2000 Poetry Express Number Nine: (downloadable pdf) - Renaming London events competition: Survivors' Poetry at Somers Town Community Centre becomes Somers Town Blues Night: poetry and songs by survivors. (Name suggested by Alistair Brinkley who runs the event) - Open Readings at the Poetry Café becomes Wired on Words: Survivor's Open Mic. every month at the Poetry Café. (Name suggested by Heather Beveridge, London) - The Camden Workshops becomes Write on the edge: poetry workshops by survivors for survivors (Name suggested by Martin Thomas, Cardiff).

    2000/2001 £15,000 Arts Council funding from Education life-long learning

    Sharon Holder raises rescue funds

    October/November/December 2000 Poetry Express Number 10: (downloadable pdf) "not the glossy, 16 page Newsletter you've become used to ... more of a "Poetry Expresso"". "Due to a serious staffing shortage (Demet Dayanch, Finance Worker, Clare Douglas, Director and Lisa Boardman, Information and Volunteer Coordinator have left the organisation recently) ... "A full edition of Poetry Express will return in January." "Sharon Holder is the new Acting-Director of Survivors' Poetry." (downloadable pdf)

    "A member of staff took on the onerous, and not entirely welcome, task of director, and was successful in raising rescue funds from the John Paul Getty Trust and the Lloyds TSB Foundation. The London Arts Board and Arts Council of England joined in to provide a package of core funding of around £102,000 per annum, which came on-stream at the start of 2002." (Annabel Jackson 2003)

    January/February/March 2001 Survivor's Poetry Newsletter Number 11: (downloadable pdf)

    Summer 2001 Survivor's Poetry Newsletter Number 12: (downloadable pdf)

    Sharon Holder (Acting Director and Outreach) left in June 2001. For a while Emma Parish (Information/Administration) was the only salaried member of staff.

    28.7.2001 Survivors' Poetry. Launch of Write on the Edge anthology (Somers Town Community Centre) (source)

    2001/2002 £10,000 Arts Council funding from Education life-long learning - £5,000 from Literature one-off award (London Arts Board) - and £25,600 Regular funding (through London Arts Board)

    Winter 2001/2002 Poetry Express Number 13: (downloadable pdf) The editor changes her name from Emma Parrish to [Mrs] Emma Watson. "Following four months of being the only member of staff, I have been joined by our new director, Alison Combes". Includes: From the New Director: Alison Combes

    14 and 15 are missing: Do you have a copy?

    date Survivor's Poetry Newsletter Number 14: (downloadable pdf) [NO]

    date Survivor's Poetry Newsletter Number 15: (downloadable pdf) [NO]

    January 2002 Survivors' Poetry inviting submissions on the theme of "We Have Come Through". Deadline 28.2.2002. (source)

    A survey showed that of the 2200 members of Survivors Poetry, only about 750 could attend one of the 25 plus national local creative writing groups. Reasons why the majority were unable to attend included physical or mental disability, immobility, financial disability, and geographical location. John Hirst aimed Solo Survivor Magazine at such readers. It is Poetry and art magazine for sufferers and survivors of mental and physical disabilities. (source)

    February 2002 Launch of Solo Survivor Magazine Quarterly

    Summer 2002 Solo Survivor Magazine issue two

    Winter 2002/2013 Poetry Express Number 16: (downloadable pdf) The Spirituslity Issue. "Four page poetry broadsheet inside" Editors: Alison Coombes, James Ferguson, Roy Holland. 16 pages.

    26.11.2002 At The Krazy Kats and Dogs Klub (Chat's Palace) Celebration of 10 years of Survivors' Poetry , MC Emerald. (source)

    2002/2003 £67,000 Arts Council Regular funding (through National office) and £35,600 Regular funding (through London regional office)

    The Guardian, Thursday 20.3.2003 "Director, Survivors' Poetry, charity: Alison Combes Salary: £28,000 for four-day week; £33,000 pro rata" (weblink). "Sometimes it seems that the days that are rewarding are in the minority".

    2003 We have come through: 100 poems celebrating courage in overcoming depression and trauma edited by Peter Forbes. Published: Tarset: Bloodaxe, 2003 in association with Survivors' Poetry. 142 pages. ISBN: 1852246197

    2003 Ten Russian poets: surviving the twentieth century edited by Richard McKane; with translations by Richard McKane and others. London: Anvil Press Poetry in assocation with Survivors' Poetry, 2003. 265 pages. ISBN: 0856463280


    From Celebrating Disability Arts 2003

    Today [2003] it is a truly national charity with more than 2,500 members and more than 30 groups across the UK. Indeed, it might even claim to be an international organisation - with supporters based as far afield as the United States and Australia - and members across Europe too.

    Though Survivors' Poetry was specifically set up as a literature organisation rather than therapy group, it was undoubtedly having a positive effect on people.

    "Suddenly people's skills were being valued; their lives were changed",
    Joe Bidder explains.

    These days, the focus of Survivors' Poetry's work has expanded, with an emphasis on publishing in the form of the flagship magazine Poetry Express, as well as various pamphlets and anthologies.

    The Survivors' Poetry structure may seem similar to Disability Arts Forums (DAFs), but Colin Hambrook, who was involved with Survivors' Poetry from a very early stage, disagrees: 'There are huge differences, because a lot of what the DAFs do is about working with mainstream organisations. Survivors groups are about small numbers of people supporting and assisting each other in their creative work. They are almost like self-help groups.'

    Well into its second decade of life, and now in receipt of major Arts Council funding, Survivors' Poetry looks set to continue expanding its field of operation for some time to come.


    2003/2004 £105,850 Arts Council Regular funding

    Simon Jenner arrives as "interim manager"

    Spring/Summer 2003 Poetry Express. Number 17. Interim Manager Simon Jenner. Alison Combes ill. (downloadable pdf)

    Autumn/Winter 2003 Poetry Express. Number 18. Issue edited by Interim Manager Simon Jenner. 19 pages. Alison Combes ill. (downloadable pdf)

    2005 Poetry Express Number 19. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    2004/2005 £130,850 Arts Council Regular funding

    Autumn 2004/Winter 2005 Poetry Express Number 20. Editor James Ferguson. 47 pages. "Bumper issue" (downloadable pdf) - Includes "Chipshop and Battlefield. Alan Morrison on David Kessel"

    2005/2006 £165,850 Arts Council Regular funding

    Spring/Summer 2005 Poetry Express Number 21. Editor (downloadable pdf) - Contains "The Importance of Being Frank - Xochitl Tuck on survivor poet Frank Bangay" pages 18-19

    Survivors' Poetry National Mentoring Scheme 2005 - 2006. Funded and sponsored by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

    "Survivors' Poetry is a national literature and performance charity. Set up in 1992 [1991] by four poets with first-hand experience of the mental health system, Survivors' Poetry now (2006) comprises a network of 28 groups and more than 2,000 members world-wide. Current address: Survivors' Poetry, Studio 11, Bickerton House, 25-27 Bickerton Road, Archway, N19 5JT London. Telephone: 02072 814 654 Email:info@survivorspoetry.org.uk. website: http://www.survivorspoetry.com

    Reviews of Poetry Express 21 - 22 - 23

    2005 The Arts Council cut (completely?) the funding to Survivors' Poetry (effective from April 2006) - See news 23.8.2005
    In 2006, the group set up a website: See archive

    2006/2007 No Regular funding

    Survivors' Poetry National Mentoring Scheme 2006 - 2007. Funded and sponsored by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

    25.4.2006 Radio 4 interview with Joe Bidder and Professor Femi Oyebode


    Thursday 13.4.2006 Launch of David Kessel's Collected Poems (1970-2006) O the Windows of the Bookshop Must be Broken and Lee Wilson's You've got an eyelash May 2006 David Amery's review of O the Windows of the Bookshop Must be Broken in the short lived Penniless Press called it "poignant" that publication "by Survivors Poetry, the UK organisation to promote the work of "survivors" of the mental health system, should coincide with the loss of their English Arts Council funding". because "If ever a book shows the value of the survivor voice and the importance of the survivor movement, this is it".


    Arts Council funding to Survivor's Poetry has been restored. Following information from Arts Council list of regularly funded organisations

    Survivors' Poetry
    Website address: www.survivorspoetry.org.uk
    Region: London
    Constituency: Islington North
    2008/2009 £56,485
    2009/2010 £58,010
    2010/2011 £59,576
    Survivors' Poetry is a national literature organisation dedicated to celebrating the creative expression of survivors of the mental health system and to promoting poetry by survivors of mental distress. It does this through its website, workshops, performances, readings, training and publications. Our funding supports the director's post and some core costs.

    Winter 2005/2006 Poetry Express Number 23. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    2006 Poetry Express Number 24. Editor (downloadable pdf) (No)

    Winter 2007 Poetry Express Number 25. Editor Piers Marter (downloadable pdf)

    Spring 2008 Poetry Express Number 26. Editor Piers Marter (downloadable pdf) - Featured Artist Colin Hambrook

    5.6.2008 A Kevin Coyne Tribute, at the Poetry Café Covent Garden, organised by Frank Bangay in collaboration with Survivors Poetry

    2008 Poetry Express Number 27. Editor (downloadable pdf)
    Peter Street on photography - The Whitchurch Project, Cardiff - A Horton Sequence by Peter Carpenter - The Survivors' History Group

    Winter 2008 Poetry Express Number 28. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    2009 Poetry Express Number 29. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Summer 2009 Poetry Express Number 30. Editor (downloadable pdf)
    Includes an update from the Survivors History Group by its chair, Peter Campbell, and a review of This is Survivor Research by Dave Russell.

    Spring 2010 Poetry Express Number 31. Editor (downloadable pdf) - Problems of "disinvestment"

    Number 32. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Number 33. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Number 34. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Number 35. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Summer 2011 Poetry Express Number 36. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Number 37. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Number 38. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Number 39. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Number 40. Editor (downloadable pdf) -

    Number 41. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    2013 not dated Poetry Express Number 42. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Number 43. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Number 44. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    October 2014? not dated Poetry Express Number 45. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    December 2014? not dated Poetry Express Number 46. Editor (downloadable pdf)
    c/o Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, 1 St Mary's Terrace, W2 1SU - Contributions to Dave Russell (Editor) at an email address.

    National Portfolio funding 2012-2015 £161,561
    National Portfolio funding 2015-2018 £0

    February 2015? not dated Poetry Express Number 47. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Thursday 7.5.2015 UK General Election - Poetry Express 48 appeared in the midst of the campaign

    April 2015? not dated Poetry Express Number 48. Editor (downloadable pdf) "I write now at the lowest point in Survivor Poetry's financial and official fortunes" (Simon Jenner, Director)

    May/June 2015? not dated Poetry Express Number 49. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    September 2015? not dated Poetry Express Number 50. Editor (downloadable pdf) "This issue marks the Newsletter's 17th anniversary; the first issue came out in 1998, with Victoria Field.

    Income £36,292 - Spending: £29,198 (Period ending 31st March 2016)

    Financial ups and downs 2006 to 2016

    April 2016? not dated Poetry Express Number 51. Editor (downloadable pdf) "The current funding cycle ends in June. It doesn't mean we will, since I hope to be at the end of a computer and will receive emails". (Simon Jenner)

    Number 52. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Number 53. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Number 54. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    October 2017? not dated Poetry Express Number 55. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    Number 56. Editor (downloadable pdf) Number 57. Editor (downloadable pdf) Number 58. Editor (downloadable pdf)

    UKAN (United Kingdom Advocacy Network) Current Address

    Postal address from September 2009:

    UK Advocacy Network
    8 Beulah View
    Leeds
    LS6 2LA

    website: http://www.u-kan.co.uk/

    email addresses: see website

    UKAN Forum

    "Advocacy and involvement in the field of mental health were part of a list of 15 "needs and demands" produced by Survivors Speak Out, the campaigning group, after the Edale Conference in September 1987. That document refers to "provision of resources to implement self-advocacy for all users", and "facility for representation of users and ex-users of services on statutory bodies". Of the fifteen needs and demands most are still to be achieved, but advocacy and involvement seem to be areas where most progress has been made." Terry Simpson 2007

    The UK Advocacy Network (UKAN) described itself (2003/2004) as founded in 1990 - But also spoke of 2003/2004 as "ten years on".

    weblinks to check 1 - 2 - 3

    1990 - 1991 - 1992 - 1993 - 1994 - 1995 - 1996 - 1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - 2017 - 2018 -

    Thursday 15.3.1990 - Friday 16.3.1990 User Involvement - The Way Forward Patients Council conference in Nottingham, organised by Nottinghamshire Patient Council and Nottinghamshire Advocacy Group. Information from Colin Gell NPCSG, Kilbourne Street, Nottingham.. ( MINDWAVES Autumn/Winter 1989/1990) - A conference (of mental health service users) at the International Conference Centre in Nottingham.

    "held by Nottingham Patients Council Support Group and the Nottingham Advocacy Group to explore the possibility of establishing a National Independent body to represent Patient's Councils, User Forums and Advocacy Projects." (Terry Simpson, email 27.5.2008)

    The conference was jointly funded by the Nottingham Social Services, Nottingham Health Authority and National Mind (MINDWAVES Spring 1990, p.7) -

    Four years ago, people used to say - "It can't happen here - Okay they've got patients Councils in Holland, but they've got a better class of loony there" - but we've done it in Nottingham. It is just a matter of people getting together and pushing away at it (Colin Gell, opening the conference)

    160 "survivors and mental health workers" from Nottingham and England, Scotland and Wales, attended. "At the end, a decision was made to work towards a new national body to link together User Councils, Advocacy and Self Advocacy projects to share information, support each other and lobby for better resources" (MINDWAVES Spring 1990, p.7) -

    The accounts book for 1990/1991 show the first payment into the account for the network was £400 from Nottingham Advocacy Group in May 1990. The second was £200 from Survivors Speak Out in June 1990. The third was £1000 from Research and Development in Psychiatry - now the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, also in June 1990. This enabled the planning group to meet. The National Advocacy Network Steering Group developed the idea of a grass roots directed organisation to be based outside London. (Terry Simpson, email 18.5.2008)

    National Advocacy Network Conference

    24.1.1991 - 25.1.1991 First National Advocacy Network conference, held in Nottingham. Attended by 80 percent users and 20 percent 'professionals'. Voted to establish a National Advocacy Network as a confederation of independent groups with its initial administrative base in Nottingham. Terry Simpson's archives include the pack for this conference. Its contents include an A4 sheet by Peter Campbell with a brief history of Survivors Speak Out.

    "Although the January 1991 conference filled the International Conference Centre in Nottingham it was oversubscribed - a copy of a letter from the Treasurer Brian Hoser dated December 1990 politely tells someone they have not gained a place, and explains that once the limit was reached a further 70 people applied and had to be turned down. The conference was arranged around workshops to debate the design of the future network, and agreed to set up a formal body, to be a charity and a company, based in Nottingham." (Terry Simpson, email 27.5.2008)

    A slightly different history is contained in Marian Barnes history of Nottingham Advocacy Group. She says that the UK Advocacy Network (UKAN) was established in 1991, to support the growing number of local advocacy groups following a conference organised by Nottingham Advocacy Group.

    "The conference held in 1991 to mark NAG's fifth year was in part a response to users feeling that they were always in a minority at Mind conferences and the creation of UKAN (with Edna Conlan from the Milton Keynes Advocacy Group as the Chair) was an indication of the growing confidence of the user movement at a national level."

    October 1991 "National Advocacy Network, 359 Nottingham Road, New Basford, Nottingham, NG7 7EU. Contact Brian Hoser 060 700170 or Edna Conlan 0908 662286 National network of users and ex-users committed to promoting self-advocacy" (Madness - A Study Guide 1991 p.32)

    With regard to relationships between Mindlink, Survivors Speak Out and the National Advocacy Network Steering Group, Terry Simpson's archives contain a paper titled The National Advocacy Network which is undated but obviously written in the aftermath of the 1991 conference. It contains the following paragraph.
    "What of the relationship between the three national organisations? Jan Wallcraft, Co-ordinator of Mindlink, is Vice Chair and Peter Campbell of Survivors Speak Out is a valued member of the National Advocacy Network Steering Group, and both organisations have contributed financially to the National Advocacy Network conference. Peter writes of the relationship of the groups in the 1991 conference pack 'it is likely that many of the aims and objectives will be similar to those of Survivors - there will be a need to develop co-operation between the organisations and to develop areas of differentiation'."

    26.11.1991 Mental Health Service Users as Trainers event in Nottingham

    United Kingdom Advocacy Network

    It took three years to fully set up the Network

    Tuesday 29.9.1992 Inaugural General Meeting of the National Advocacy Network (Details: Roberta Graley - telephone or Edna Conlan - telephone) (MINDWAVES Summer 1992, p.8)

    Held at the International Community Centre in Nottingham. It changed the name to United Kingdom Advocacy Network (UKAN). This meeting made various decisions about the network (for instance that it would be organised on a regional basis), and reversed the decision to have the base in Nottingham - a vote taken showed a majority in favour of Sheffield. (Terry Simpson, email 27.5.2008)

    Paddy McGowan was one of the founders of the United Kingdom Advocacy Network and served on its Management Committee.

    10.10.1992 First World Mental Health Day - Representatives of Mindlink, Survivors Speak Out and the United Kingdom Advocacy Network (UKAN) met the then Secretary of State for Health.

    Summer 1993 Progress Report Newsletter. UKAN United Kingdom Advocacy Network Issue No.1. Summer 93. Cover and two pages. Note on (19.3.2007?) "Terry. Please file with the whole collection of The Adv.s. As far as I know it is the only one. J x" Secretary Roberta Graley, The Paddocks, Rhodesia, Worksop, Notts, S80 3HW. "As soon as we can secure premises we will be employing a worker. We have a grant of £50,000 over two years to employ and support a full-time Administrator/Co- ordinator. One of the tasks for the worker will be to produce a newsletter"

    November 1993 office base in Sheffield opened at Premier House on Cross Burgess Street, Sheffield. Roberta Graley (now Wetherell) and Terry Simpson were the first paid workers, job sharing the post of Co- ordinator/ Administrator. (Terry Simpson, email 27.5.2008)

    Terry Simpson was a manager of the UK Advocacy Network (UKAN) between 1993 and 2002. He continued as its chair.

    These were paid for "by the first major grant we got", which was from the Mental Health Foundation. The Network was named UKAN, the United Kingdom Advocacy Network "The collection and dissemination of information on advocacy and user involvement, which had been happening in an ad hoc way, could now be channelled through a recognised office base."

    12.6.1993 Queen's Birthday Honours list included "Mrs Edna Conlan, chair, UK Advocacy Network, for services to improving mental health" Order of the British Empire Member (MBE)

    28.7.1993 Terry Simpson not yet employed by UKAN - He started work for UKAN in November 1993

    1.3.1994 Have We Got Views for You - User Evaluation of Case Management by Marion Beeforth - Edna Conlan - and Roberta Graley.

    27.4.1994 "Forging Our Futures" conference at the Forte Crest Hotel on Manchester Road in Sheffield - part of the Mental Health Task Force process - Organised by Roberta Graley and Terry Simpson of UKAN

    UKAN News September 1994 (white pages) appears to be the draft for UKAN News October 1994. Put together by Terry. UKAN, Premier House, 14 Cross Street, Sheffield, S1 2HG - See above and below

    UKAN News became The Advocate. There were twenty nine editions of The Advocate to March 2007, and a final two in 2009. See Late Spring 1995 - Autumn/Winter 1995 - Late Summer 1996 - Autumn/Winter 1996 - Summer 1997 - Christmas 1997 - Spring 1998 - Summer 1998 - Autumn 1998 - May 1999 - November 1999 - January 2000 - August 2000 - November 2000 - May 2001 - August 2001 - December 2001 - February 2002 - October 2002 - February 2003 - June 2003 - October 2003 - June 2004 - September 2004 - February 2005 - July 2005 - October 2005 - September 2006 - March 2007 - Spring 2009 - Winter 2009.

    In 1994 UKAN undertook a survey of attitudes to ECT in its member groups. Gillian Mullins and Patrick Wood designed it and Justine Morrison analysed it and wrote a report on it. Terry Simpson remembers reading that it was the biggest user led survey on ECT until then. Over 300 people responded. The people were self-selected through UKAN groups, and so only people who were already active responded - Also only people who were recovered enough from it TO respond - So the methodology will no doubt be questioned. Still it was an interesting survey based on a questionnaire with open and closed questions. Terry thinks there is much more information, including qualitative information in the form of personal statements, than there was ever time to fully analyse. He may still have the responses, if anyone is keen to do this. There were some very interesting things - About a third of people felt ECT had been damaging, but the percentages of people who were forced to have it and who thought it was damaging were way up on that. (Forum mailing 14.8.2008)

    Terry Simpson 2018: Achievement one of UKAN: "Training - producing the first training pack for user/survivor led advocacy, as well as an "advocacy reader", A Clear Voice, A Clear Vision, and mental health advocacy standards".

    1994 Advocacy: A Code of Practice published by the UKAN/NHS Executive Mental Health Task Force User Group. "This landmark publication developed by UKAN as part of the government appointed Mental Health Task Force was the first document to outline principles and good practice in mental health advocacy. Much of the work on principles and standards since then has repeated or been influenced by its content". (UKAN online)

    March 1995 UKAN Training and Development Unit set up as a resource for user / survivor groups throughout the UK. Originally staffed by two part-time Training and Development Workers, the unit has worked closely with users / survivors from many areas, providing training, assisting in the design of training courses and providing support to new groups or those who are experiencing problems or in need of advice. "We produced the first edition of the UKAN Advocacy Training Pack the following year". (quote from 2004)

    Late Spring 1995 The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection from UKAN May 2017

    Autumn/Winter 1995 The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection from UKAN May 2017

    Late Summer 1996 Issue 1 of 1996 The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection from UKAN May 2017

    Autumn/Winter 1996 Issue 2 of 1996 The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection from UKAN May 2017

    UKAN website 1997/1998 "Are you a: Patients Council? User Forum? Advocacy Project? User/Survivor Led and Run Group? If so, UKAN is for You! - UKAN is the National Federation of Patients Councils, User Forums, Advocacy Projects and User / Survivor led groups operating within mental health. UKAN attempts to work closely with other User/Survivor groups, notably Survivors Speak Out and Mindlink"

    4.3.1997 UKAN AGM in Grosvenor House Hotel, Sheffield. About 100 people attended.

    1.7.1997 Resignations of UKAN Chair Sharon Chadwick (replaced by Andrew Wetherell) and Treasurer, George Ronald (replaced by Kay Sheldon)

    Summer 1997 - Issue 1 of 1997 - The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection from Graham Estop's collection].

    Please Note our new address: UKAN, Volserve House, 14-18 West Bar Green, Sheffield, S1 2DA.

    Christmas 1997 - Issue 2 of 1997 - The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection from UKAN May 2017. Includes "Special Hospitals Roadshow" by Liz Skelton

    May 1998 marriage of Andrew R Wetherell and Roberta M Graley registered St Albans, Hertfordshire

    Spring 1998 - Vol.2 Issue 3 - The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection from Graham Estop's collection] Filing cabinet cover

    Summer 1998 - Vol.2 Issue 4 - The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection from Graham Estop's collection] Elephant cover.

    [Autumn 1998 The Advocate is scarce. Terry only has one copy]

    Autumn 1998 - Issue 3 (that is what it says) The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection. A photocopy from UKAN May 2017. "The Advocate is now being printed by Rampton Hospital". Contains "The Specials" by Andrew Wetherell, and "Rampton Hospital Authority: Advocate".

    Edna Conlan and Christina Young from UKAN were members of the working party set up by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, chaired by Professor Philip Graham, which reported on Patient Advocacy in February 1999. The other members were Brian McGinnis from MENCAP and Victoria Thomas from the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Research Unit. The Working Party administered by Deborah Hart from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. - external link to a copy of the report no longer available. I have an offline copy.

    1999 Gillian Mullins and Patrick Wood, Advocacy Training Pack published Sheffield by the U.K. Advocacy Network. ISBN: 0953730301 In ring-binder. (A second edition was published in 2001)

    History on UKAN website

    UK Advocacy Network is a company limited by guarantee. Registered in England number 3796174 incorporated 25.6.1999 (application 16.9.1998). Dissolved 4.6.2013. Registered office: 14 - 18 West Bar Green, Sheffield, S1 2DA. (Registration and other documents) - Registered as a Charity No. 1077676 on 5.10.1999. Removed 9.2.2011. "Does not operate". Charitable objects: To promote the interests of the users (in other words those people who are in receipt of medical care, medical advice, social support and other benefits) and ex-users (in other words people who have in the past received medical care, medical advice, social support and other benefits) of the mental health services in England Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland"

    May 1999 The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection. From UKAN May 2017. Cover: The Fool's Cap World Map. anon circa 1590

    Tuesday 13.7.1999 and Wednesday 14.7.1999 Annual General Meeting. The network at this point consisted of 246 groups. The two-day AGM had workshops on the Tuesday on Advocacy and Homelessness; The Mental Health Act Review; a Black and Minority Ethnic Forum; Advocacy in Forensic settings; A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Forum and a meeting of representatives from National User Groups (Representatives from Reclaim Bedlam, Mad Pride, US Network (Wales), ECT Anonymous, Mindlink, and National Voices attended this). One hundred and thirteen people attended the AGM on the Wednesday from groups all over the UK. Proposals were debated on the Mental Health Act Review, Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT) (two motions), a motion for a campaign for advocacy to be survivor led; Advanced Directives, and the problem of drugs on wards. (Summary by Terry Simpson).

    "From the start our definition of advocacy was very broad, and included any activity that was empowering to survivors/people in the system. The list of 240 groups in the 1998/9 annual report lists Performing Minds from Bradford, and Leeds Survivors Poetry Group, who were both performance based; campaigning groups like Women and Medical Practice, and ECT Anonymous; self-help groups relating to specific conditions like HASFAD (Help and Support for Anxiety and Depression), and the Depression Alliance, as well as user forums, patient's councils and advocacy groups of many descriptions." (Terry Simpson).

    November 1999 The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection. From UKAN May 2017. Cover: 'Kidnapped Art' in the Prinzhorn Collection.

    January 2000 The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection. From UKAN May 2017. Mental Health Act Review cover.

    August 2000 The Advocate Andrew Roberts' collection from Graham Estop's collection] Mental Health Alliance lobby (7.6.2000) cover. Contains "Advocacy in Special Hospitals" by Peter Crozier.

    November 2000 The Advocate. Andrew Roberts' collection. Ian, Terry Simpson, Justine ad Brian cover.

    2001 Gillian Mullins edited A Clear Voice, A Clear Vision: The Advocacy Reader 94 pages, ISBN: 0953730328, publishedby the U.K. Advocacy Network. Spiral bound.

    May 2001 The Advocate.   Andrew Roberts' collection. Terry Simpson in Georgia cover. "It was always part of UKAN's original vision to help set up an international survivors network, so when I was invited by Jo Lucas of the Hamlet Trust to do some training for survivors and professionals in Georgia... I had a good excuse."

    August 2001 The Advocate.   Andrew Roberts' collection. Mouse cover. Carol Jenkin: Acting Chair since May and now Chair.

    December 2001 The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection. From UKAN May 2017. Cover: Advocacy ball back in the right court.

    February 2002 The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection. From UKAN May 2017. Cover: Have a Heart

    Terry left

    May 2002 The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection. From UKAN May 2017. Cover: Welsh Advocacy

    30.7.2002 The Regaining Control Conference 2002 - Oxford. Organised by National Voices Forum and UK Advocacy Network

    October 2002 The Advocate.   Andrew Roberts' collection. Cover: Cafe cartoon.

    Over 300 groups were affiliated in about 2003. (On Our Own Terms 2003 Table 4)

    Internet Archive search results

    February 2003 The Advocate.   Andrew Roberts' collection. Memories of Pete Shaughnessy.

    Liz Skelton (Information worker) had produced the newsletter for over six years but "since Terry's departure I've become increasingly involved in other work". The following editions were edited by Patrick Wood, who changed the style.

    23.3.2003 We just got started - help wanted

    June 2003 The Advocate.   Andrew Roberts' collection [The Arts issue]

    October 2003 The Advocate.   Andrew Roberts' collection Articles by Roberta Wetherell (Nee Graley) on 10th Anniversary: "Advocacy in secure settings... A dream come true? It can be a nightmare!" and "UKAN - The Early Days".

    2004 Advocacy Today and Tomorrow: the UK Advocacy Network Training Tool researched and written by Patrick Wood (1962- ) and Gillian Mullins, Sheffield: U.K. Advocacy Network, ISBN: 0953730352 (spiral) 110 pages. [Andrew Roberts' collection. Contents: Introduction to mental health advocacy training. Notes on the use of this training tool. Advocacy in mental health 1. Advocacy in mental health 2. Ethical considerations/Principles of advocacy. Advocacy in action. Communication. Negotiating with statutory/voluntary agencies. Complaints. Difficult situations. Stigma and social exclusion. Working together as a group. Volunteers and employees. Support. Practical exercises. Summary of basic principles of advocacy. Quick reference guide.

    February 2004 The Advocate [Andrew Roberts' collection. From UKAN May 2017. Cover: "Winter Solstice 2003" by Patrick Wood. "The views of Patrick Wood are not necessarily the views of UKAN"

      June 2004 The Advocate included Tom Hore (Bristol) on an advocacy service for people in prison; Elizabeth Winder on what advocates want from an advocacy network; Steve Brewer on Crisis support in community care; Keith Halsall and Stephen Korsa-Acquah on special hospitals; Janet Cresswell on Regional Secure Units;
    Carol Jenkin on the need for consultation with Black users/survivors; and Jan Wallcraft on On Our Own Terms, a report on the user movement. Andrew Roberts' collection. Copies of this edition were distributed at the Survivor History Group meeting on 24.10.2018 as one of Terry Simpson's "snapshots" of UKAN.

    "UKAN's bid to develop regional advocacy networks was turned down because it did not meet the Department of Helth's requirements" (page 2)

      September 2004 The Advocate included articles by Peter Campbell, Sarah Holmes and Cate Short on Independent Mental Health Act Advocacy; messages of support for UKAN from members, other organisations and individuals; and Janet Meagher on user involvement. Andrew Roberts' collection. Includes "Redundant with Regret" by Liz Skelton

    29.11.2004 At last - ten years on and we have a website

      February 2005 The Advocate included "From Advocacy to Empowerment", a discussion document on the future of UKAN; Liz Skelton on UKAN's future direction; and Anne O'Donnell on developments in mental health advocacy in Scotland. Andrew Roberts' collection

      July 2005 The Advocate included Patrick Wood on his 10 years as UKAN Training and Development Worker; Terry Simpson on members' responses to the discussion document on the future of UKAN; Jan Wallcraft on social inclusion in mental health; and Eamon Rooney on self-help and empowerment. [Andrew Roberts' collection. From UKAN May 2017.

    2.9.2005 About UKAN

    "You may have heard recently that UKAN is having some difficulty. We have lost our main funding source so are currently seeking more finance. We've got some irons in the fire, but they aren't hot enough yet to do much with"

      October 2005 The Advocate included articles by Liz Skelton, Peter Campbell and David Oaks on user/survivor organisations accepting money from drug companies; a review of Phil Hutchinson's Sick Note from Scapegoat Hill; and information about the government's response to the report of the Joint Committee on the draft Mental Health Bill. Andrew Roberts' collection

    22.6.2006 improved website

    11.6.2007 archive was designed 2006 and lists the October 2005 Advocate as its latest back issue.

      September 2006 A larger than usual issue of The Advocate included articles by Sharon Cullerton and Patrick Wood on user led mental health advocacy; Graham Estop looking back at the On Our Own Terms report; Terry Simpson on UKAN's concerns about the Network Planning Group; a service recipient on their experience of compulsion in the community; Miranda Morland on the service user movement; Shaun McNeil and Chris O'Sullivan on the formation of VOX- Voices Of eXperience (Scotland); Anthony Davis on 'boundaries' in advocacy; Mark Ellerby on recovery; Andrew Voyce on the 73A Art Group; a review of Peter Campbell's 'Brown Linoleum Green Lawns'; and the winning entries in the Poems for Learning competition. Andrew Roberts' collection

      March 2007 The Advocate included articles by Colin Gell, Jan Wallcraft and Terry Simpson on the origins of UKAN; Louise Relton, Mary Nettle and Peter Campbell on UKAN and mental health advocacy; Una Parker on UKAN and ECT Anonymous; and a message of support for UKAN from David Oaks. Andrew Roberts' collection

    20.3.2007 archive - Why we have withdrawn from the Network Planning Group

    Spring 2007 UKAN Office in Sheffield closed. Terry Simpson, its chair, "brought about 20 boxes of archive material relating to the group to my house in Leeds. In these and on disc is pretty much a definitive record of what happened in that group between 1990 and the present day. I also have at least one box of newsletters from survivor groups who were /are UKAN members dating from the mid 1990s, which show a good representation of the kind of things people were thinking of and doing around that time."

    Planet Advocacy, June - August 2007, Issue no. 20 "Advocacy and the Revolution of Empowerment" by Terry Simpson, Chair of the UK Advocacy Network (UKAN)

    Spring 2009 The Advocate.   Andrew Roberts' collection. A 32-page issue including Peter Linnett's 'Which way to Utopia? Thoughts on "user involvement"; an interview with Una Parker of ECT Anonymous; Andrew Wetherell on advocacy and its role in mental health services; poetry by Peter Campbell and Suzan Arisoy; and Terry Simpson's report on 'A Conversation with Thomas Szasz'. Available online - archive - this site

    Tuesday 1.9.2009 "A piece of living history - we had our UKAN AGM today in Sheffield - showed one of Louise Pembroke's films, had some survivor poetry from Tom Halloran of Leeds Survivor Poets, a talk about the European Users and Survivors Network, a first hand account of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry conference in Kampala earlier this year, a laughter workshop by the incomparable Kate Hull Rodgers - and did some housework stuff in between." Email from Terry Simpson

    mid September 2009 Registered office of UKAN changed from "UK Advocacy Network, Volserve House, 14 - 18 West Bar Green, SHEFFIELD S1 2DA" to "UK Advocacy Network, 8 Beulah View, Leeds LS6 2LA". Terry Simpson email 15.9.2009 "I changed it with Companies House last week, since the old address in Sheffield is being refurbished, mail is going missing, and we don't really have a connection there any more."

    Winter 2009 The Advocate.   A 20-page issue including Peter Beresford, Chair of Shaping Our Lives, on the survivor movement; Mike Bush, mental health lecturer, on the Impact of suicide on others; a report on international networking by Peter Munn; Mad Pride Ireland's John McCarthy on the normality of madness; photos by Mark Davies; and a tribute to survivor artist Linda Hart. Available online - archive - this site

    UKAN website appears to have been last updated in 2009/2010. archive

    April 2017 Patrick Wood's UKAN Resource File - (archive). "The document ... consists of extracts from the UKAN website as it stood towards the end of 2009. UKAN's major achievements were behind it at that time, although the organisation continued to attract strong and partisan support from a significant group of committed survivors. The unedited text offers up a snapshot of UKAN's history, ethos and activities and provides a primary source for anyone with an interest in the linked histories of advocacy and the survivor movement in the UK."

    October 2018 Terry Simpson's "The significance of UKAN within the Survivor's Movement; its strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures, and the politics of its ultimate demise"

    Early 1990s The idea of AdvoCard is conceived by service users and research and meetings are happening.

    1993-1994 A steering group of service users forms. Negotiations with Edinburgh City Council around funding.

    August - November 1994 Karen Anderson, Jane Rubens and Janette McDougall are in post.

    December 1994 The first Management Committee Meeting takes place.

    Spring 1995 The first training course for volunteers is held. Advocacy begins to be offered.

    May 1996 AdvoCard moves from East Norton Place to Leith Walk to larger premises.

    1996-1997 Malcolm Chisholm visits AdvoCard to learn more about what we do.

    1997-1998 Our first MHSG evaluation involving a number of service users.

    1999 Our first independent evaluation by consultants John Bonnar and Associates.

    2000 AdvoCard given funding to move into South East sector of Edinburgh.

    2001 AdvoCard given funding to develop the service City wide. Bryan Davies and Jean Crombie are in post. We move to new larger premises on Leith Walk.

    2002 The official launch as city wide at the City Chambers with Malcolm Chisholm (MSP and Health Minister) as guest speaker.

    2003 AdvoCard continues to develop as a city wide service including developing an outreach service.

    2004 Negotiations begin to build capacity within AdvoCard to meet the demands of the new Act.

    2005 AdvoCard has a new service based at Norton Park for individuals subject to the new Act. Jane Laidlaw, Devrim Turkay, Vincent Gill, Jackie McGinty, Jane Cairns and Marion Hadland are in post.

    email from Jim Read 18.3.2012

    I think I had something to do with the survivor group being set up. My memory is that I met informally with Yvonne Christie at the King's Fund to talk about racism in mental health services. While talking with her I said I would like to see a meeting between people from the survivors' movement and members of the Royal College of Psychiatrists - presumably to see if we could find some areas of mutual understanding. Yvonne suggested that I propose it to Barbara Stocking, who was head of the Kings Fund, and she might be able to set it up. This I did and while I was talking to her Barbara raised the issue of survivor involvement in the Task Force.

    ... I think there was a meeting with a few survivors to work out our involvement in the Task Force and I have an idea that the core working group would consist of three people from each of the main networks: SSO, UKAN and MindLink. I believe I became one of the SSO representatives, but I am not sure how or what that was understood to mean.

    Somehow decisions were then made that our work would be to produce some materials which would be useful for survivors. They are listed in the back of the Forging Our Futures. My main role was as a member of the working group which produced the Guidelines for a Charter of Users of Mental Health Services. There had already been the original charter which came from the SSO Edale Conference. Other charters had been produced, such as the Brighton User Charter. (I have a copy dated 22.1.1990.) But at this time the Government had got keen on Charters for everything. I have a copy of the NHS Patients Charter I have a copy dated 'reprinted 4/93.

    My memory of producing the Task Force charter guidelines was is largely positive. There was a great deal of consultant and constructive discussion.

    [Jim rssigned from the Task Force at one time] But I was back involved for the Forging Our Futures Conference.

    The point of the charter guidelines we produced was that they would form the basis of local charters. Subsequently I was certainly involved (as an independent consultant) in facilitating various meetings around the country intended to make this happen but I am not sure how far they got. I have the impression that the Government lost interest in Charters even before New Labour were elected.

    I think at the time the survivors movement was quite confident, growing in influence and size. Through the Task Force we got access to a lot of resource which enabled us to do good work. I do not think we were over-impressed, though. It just seemed to represent some progress.

    Sadly, though, looking back it seems to have been the highpoint (so far) of survivor involvement at national level. New Labour turned out to have a dreadful attitude towards us - a shock to those of us who voted for them.


    Anne Plumb quotes this paragraph from the minutes of a meeting on 19.10.1992

    "In the meeting there was then considerable discussion of what empowering users really mean. There were concerns that managers (for example, purchasers) are asking users to come and sit on planning groups and so on. For some user groups this is not their perception of their main task which is about empowering the individuals in their own lives and in getting the services they want. It was agreed, though, that while different individuals and groups would have different agendas there is both a need to empower the individual user and to influence services. However, the latter does not mean users 'slotting into' structures and processes set up by managers. There has to be negotiation with users about how they can operate best to influence services."


    Jan Wallcraft. MINDWAVES Spring 1993,

    Meeting with Virginia Bottomley on 18th December 1992

    Virginia Bottomley, the Minister of Health invited representatives of the mental health self-advocacy movement to meet her just before Christmas. Present were: Peter Campbell and Dave Keay from Survivors Speak out, Jan Wallcraft and Lisa Haywood from MINDLINK and Edna Conlan from UK Advocacy Network.

    We explained the aims and objectives of the three user organisations. We explained why many users do not like being described as 'mentally ill', and prefer the term 'mental or emotional distress'

    Peter and Dave talked about their experience of psychosis and said that even during psychosis they were enough in touch with reality to know whether they were being treated well or badly.

    Edna described what advocacy meant in practice. She said that it was relatively easy to consult articulate service-users but to get the involvement of people in the back wards it was necessary to spend a lot of time visiting them, getting to know them and building up trust.

    Lisa talked about the Mental Health Act Commission and how little power it had.

    Mrs Bottomley was very interested in all we had to say, and mentioned her own experience of seeing a patient surrounded by professionals on a ward round and how dehumanising the process seemed to be. We old her that ward rounds were one thing that many patients complain about. It was a very constructive meeting and I feel helped to build bridges between the user movement and the Department of Health.

    Mental Health Task Force

    Recollections of Tony Day

    I became the Task Force's Development Manager (1993-1995).

    Working once again with David King, and based at Richmond House in Whitehall, I:

    created Grassroots (the Mental Health Task Force newsletter), and was solely responsible for it as Editor and Business Manager throughout its 41 editions, building to a national circulation of 10,000;

    commissioned five video films, targeted at health and social care purchasers, to raise awareness and encourage innovation. This work included specification of content, approval of scripts, off line edits, and arranging launch and distribution. The film subjects included supported accommodation, race and mental health, and user involvement;

    managed the production of eight Task Force publications, including editing/re-writing, gaining ministerial approval, and making arrangements for publication;

    managed a grants programme (with a budget of £500,000), including designing selection criteria, managing the selection process, monitoring the progress of 40 award winners, and helping them with dissemination of the results.

    Peripheral duties included escorting and advising the Secretary of State, writing or contributing to Minister's speeches, preparing submissions to Ministers, and representing the Task Force on departmental committees. I also worked closely with the Task Force's national user group, which brought together (for the first time) representatives of the three main service user groupings - MINDlink, UKAN, and Survivors Speak Out.

    The Task Force had been set up for a limited two year period, and so ceased to exist in 1995. The NHS Executive, however, chose to continue my secondment for a further year. My tasks were to oversee the residual loose ends of Task Force projects (such as the small grants programme), and I continued to edit Grassroots until the then Secretary of State ordered its demise.

    I spent part of my time at Quarry House, Leeds, where as secondee to the Mental Health Unit, NHS Executive (1995-1996) I took the lead in developing proposed new national Patient's Charter standards in mental health. I drafted the consultative booklet The Patient's Charter and Mental Health Services, and completed the difficult task of finding forms of words acceptable to many diverse interests. These included Government ministers, service users, the professions (especially medicine), and managers in the field.

    During this period I was also asked to work two to three days a week for Matt Muijen at The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (1994-1996). Here I co-ordinated implementation of the £3 million Sainsbury Mental Health Initiative, drafting contracts with the eight award winners, negotiating their agreement, and setting up and supervising monitoring arrangements.

    In March 1996 my secondment arrangements came to an end and I took redundancy from Exeter Health Authority. During my first year as a freelance.... (website)

    Recollections of Terry Simpson

    I do not remember any formal agreements, invitations, or contracts with the Task Force. It seemed more of an informal arrangement at the time, but from a UKAN perspective that was partly Edna's style anyway. I attended a couple of meetings at Richmond House for the working groups that put together the Patient's Charter, and the Advocacy Code of Practice. I am not sure if we were paid for these working groups or not?

    Roberta Wetherell (then Graley) was more heavily involved than I was - we were at the time job sharing the Co-ordinator/Administrator job at the UKAN office in Sheffield. It is true that Edna and Roberta were quite heavily involved with the Task Force User Group, and influential in the Forging Our Futures series of regional events.

    Roberta and I organised the Sheffield one, and I organised one of the regional meetings that went towards the Building On Experience Training Pack (the other publication the Task Force User Group produced - we actually used the Board room of Leeds Mental Health Trust for that meeting, which was quite a heady experience.)

    I thought the Task Force User Group was a fairly genuine attempt to get people involved, at least at the level of the people who were managing it.

    Attitudes seemed generally respectful and the Code in particular was useful in establishing UKAN at that time. It was a tool that people could quote from in their local situation to try and establish advocacy. Also the Charter was used to create local ones in some places, though probably these were of limited practical value. Having a DOH stamp of approval on relatively radical documents was quite significant at that particular period, I think.

    Afterwards I think the Task Force segued into a national project aiming to set standards across the whole field. I can not remember the official name of this, but it was heavily peopled by professionals fighting their corner, and my impression was that users were pushed out. The user representatives on the main group resigned at some point. The whole thing was grinding along until Labour got elected and had to distance themselves from everything the other lot had stood for. So everything seemed to go deadly silent in 1997. After a suitable lapse they revived the idea in their own image and suddenly we got the National Service Framework in 1999, without much (or any?) survivor movement input.

    Mental Health Task Force Service User Group

    email from Anne Plumb 25.8.2009

    Anne Plumb has minutes of two early meetings - 19.10.1992 and a memorandum from Jan Wallcraft 29.4.1993 - which probably came via SSO Newsletters? - and a couple of handouts from those producing the Local Charter (Marion Beeforth, Colin, Jim Read, Jan).

    What is especially interesting is Jan's memorandum. First David King (government official) described his brief ...

    "To deliver management objectives on flow of capital and revenue for strategic planning...To look at other options/providers/cost structures in mental health apart from traditional health services ones...To get the concept of consumer satisfaction into the mental health arena which is difficult because of the underlying element of compulsory treatment... To bring in a notion of quality for users ...To inform what is going on - bringing discussion of hospital closure into the public arena, so people understand the issues (as) talk of hospital closures brings strong reactions, and lobbying from MPs."

    Jan the suggested that the users present ( Peter Campbell from Survivors Speak Out - Jim Read Independent Trainer - Jan Wallcraft from MINDLINK - Edna Conlan from UKAN) put forward their concerns to see if there was any overlap or meeting point. She writes.

    " We then put forward our agenda, eg, promoting and providing patients' councils, self-advocvacy, users as trainers, building our own networks, empowerment at our own pace in our own way, not as a service specifiied by and controlled by the department of health or other statutory bodies. We talked about quality not being easily definable or measurable in financial terms.

    In the end, David King asked us to convene a meeting to set up a users group to feed into his work (...There seems to be various possibilities to get funding ... I think we will have to guard against our work being marginalised and separate from the main work of the Task Force, rather than as it should be, informing the whole task .... "

    Jan adds that what was distinctly missing from the Patients' Charter document was the processes of consultation and involvement, "which are far more important than setting detailed standards".

    Anne Plumb comments

    "Judging by the documents produced the demands of the service-users seem to have been significantly met and its clear these demands came from the considerable experience of the survivors/service users involved.. What is less encouraging is to what then happened to these booklets into which so much work went and which were 'spot on'. This is what is so frustrating - one government initiative follows another, but with no reference to what has gone on before, as government officers, ministers, governments change. The same has happened with local authority initiatives. New Labour could have learned from the Tories here about meaningful engagement with service users but, now of course, the survivor/service user organisation is not the same as it was then."


    MENTAL HEALTH TASK FORCE USER GROUP - FINAL CONFERENCE

    Users United:

    I admit to feeling some trepidation before the Task Force User Conference in Derby. It was a daunting prospect - a 2 day national residential conference, organized entirely by the Task Force User Group, bringing together 200 survivors and users and 100 mental health managers and workers. There were so many ways in which it could have gone wrong or turned sour - differences among the participants, the stress of a big event, all the problems, mishaps and tensions that can arise. There were a few hiccups in the organizing, and some parts that didn't quite work, but thanks to phenomenal hard work by Kevin Burnand of MINDLINK in particular, and all the Conference Group, and the patience and goodwill of the participants, the atmosphere was very uplifting, cooperative, united and positive.

    I could not help remembering the first survivor-run residential conference in 1987 - a organized by SSO at Edale - that, too had its stresses and problems, but also created a tremendous spirit of unity and euphoria which forged strong links between people and carried the movement forward. The Derby Conference was a measure of how far we have come nationally since then (though unlike Edale, this conference only covered England - not the UK).

    It was a vastly bigger and more expensive event, attended by John Bowis, the junior Minister for Health and a number of other influential people, such as Professor Elaine Murphy of the Mental Health Act Commission. Peter Campbell and Louise Pembroke were among the speakers.

    It showed how much we have moved from the margins to the mainstream, and I think that on the whole we have managed to do that without diluting the message.

    The main results of the conference, apart from all the networking and information-sharing, were the introduction of the publications produced by the User Group, the endorsement of the Advocacy Code of Practice and the Users' Charter Guidelines, the final bringing together of the research on what users/survivors want and don't want from services, and the vote in favour of carrying on similar national work in the future.

    All the voting was unanimously in favour, without even any abstentions - which either means we have produced some brilliant work, or that it is so bland no-one could possibly dissent from it! Do send for copies (free from the address below) and make up your own mind.

    I feel very proud of the Building on Experience Training Pack, which Mary Nettle, Roberta Graley and myself produced from the work done on the 5 Survivors as Trainers days.

    The Task Force User Group is now at an end, though there will be attempts to get funding for some form of national user forum to continue.

    The Task Force User Group publications,
    Guidelines for a Local Charter for Users of Mental Health Services
    A Code of Practice for Advocacy
    Building on Experience Training Pack
    are available free from:

    BAPS,
    Health Publications Unit
    Heywood Stores
    Manchester Road,
    Heywood,
    Lancashire OLIO 2PZ

    Jan Wallcraft

    EDITOR OF THIS NEWSLETTER: Jan Wallcraft

    City and Hackney Community Health Council Newsletter April 1995:

    Patients' Council Active at Hackney Hospital

    Hackney Hospital Patients' Council which was set up almost exactly a year ago is extremely active in supporting patients on the Hackney Wards. Four part-time workers visit the wards on a regular basis in the late afternoon or early evening. They then take up with Ward Managers issues raised during the visits. These have included complaints about high levels of medication, lack or information on admission and about discharge, boredom and lack of privacy. Once again there is concern from women patients about male staff going into sleeping areas unannounced and the inability to fully enclose sleeping cubicles - making it impossible to even change clothes in privacy. The Council works closely with City and Hackney Mind's advocacy project also based at Hackney Hospital. The Council and the Advocacy Project can be contacted on 0181 919 8050 or 0181 919 8092

    Counselling at Mind

    From this month the counselling project at City and Hackney Mind is fully operational. This project has been set up in response to the huge demand for counselling. People can self refer - ring Yetunde Onifade at Mind, on 0181 533 6220 or leave a message on the answerphone.

    Hackney Hospital Closure Underway

    Next week Hanover and Victoria, the two wards at Hackney Hospital which care for mentally infirm older people, will move to the newly built nursing home on the Hackney site. This will be the first stage of the closure of all the old wards at the Hackney. During the summer, probably July, other wards and day care provision will move into the new buildings at the Homerton.

    Communicate - from 1994

    1999 Description preserved in a 23.4.2001 archive of links from the Mad Pride website.

    Communicate is a group of service users (and mental health professionals who support its aims: Allies), who meet on a monthly basis. It started from a user initiative in '94

    This was a conference held in the Maudsley Hospital for service users and mental health professionals with the aim of trying to bring about a dialogue between the two groups.

    From that conference and a similar second conference, a group emerged which decided to work on issues of concern to service users.

    Communicate is now a large network of users which has a growing voice in how services should be provided in the Bethlem and Maudsley Trust. We endeavour to offer each other mutual support and also highlight areas of poor practice within the Trust.

    Where services do meet our needs we will fight to retain those services if they come under threat by cutting or closure. We are a 'self advocacy' group and are involved in getting our voices heard.

    Communicate members are nominated by the group to serve on various Trust committees and have a direct influence on the work going on there. Members also take part in staff training and are beginning to be involved in staff recruitment.

    What Is The Aim Of Communicate?

    The aim of Communicate is to aid and support service users to determine their own destinies through the development of mutual support and self advocacy. It will campaign for services which are sensitive to users' needs.

    Adapted From COMMUNICATE's Draft Constitution.

    When And Where Are The Meetings?

    The group meets once a month on a Thursday from 2.30pm - 4.30pm in the Professional Development Centre at the Maudsley Hospital. (Contact Communicate for dates).

    What Are The Reasons For Meetings?

    a) To clarify issues of concern by listening to fellow service users.

    b) To agree on further action if agreed to be necessary.

    c) To allow each user to voice their views without interruption.

    d) To receive feedback from users who serve on committees etc.

    e) To learn communication skills and gather information from each other.

    How Are The Meetings Run?

    We run the meetings with a chairperson and a formal agenda. There is, more often than not, some space to raise issues that are not on the agenda. To manage the meetings productively we also operate some ground rules.

    The Ground Rules:

    Meetings are run in the spirit of mutual support and respect for each other. Confidentiality is paramount except on issues we agree to take forward to some other body.

    No one person holds the floor and we try to give equal space to each other.
    When issues are being debated we speak through the Chair only.
    We are sensitive to equal opportunities and do not tolerate racism, sexism or other oppressive forms of behaviour.

    What Else Does Communicate Do?

    Apart from the formal meetings, the day to day business of Communicate is run by a sub-group called Outreach.

    Individual initiatives are welcome but we endeavour to get actions ratified at our main Communicate meetings which take place monthly (starting in January).

    Outreach members run social evenings in the User Room at the Maudsley for users who are in-patients. Members are also involved in visits to the wards and updating the Outreach noticeboards.

    Communicate User Room
    Bethlem & Maudsley NHS Trust
    Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill, SE5 8AZ ENGLAND
    Contact Number For User Room Phone:
    +44-(0)171-703 6333, Extension 5987

    Having a Voice website archive


    1990 - 1992 - 1995 - 1998 - 1999 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 -


    Tony Riley was employed by Having a Voice from 1990 to 31.3.2006. Archive December 2001: "My background is in community development work. I am employed as a user involvement development worker I started work with Having A Voice ten years ago.

    Altaf Ramtoola was employed by Having a Voice from 1990

    Ruth Madden was involved with Having a Voice in a voluntary capacity, helped to set up Having a Voice Ltd and served on its Management, before becoming an administrative worker and later coordinator.

    Helen Spandler was employed by Having a Voice Ltd from summer 1995 to (summer?) 1998

    Hilary Wright was employed by Having a Voice Ltd from 1998

    Michael Grierson was employed by Having a Voice Ltd from

    Ruth Madden was employed as coordinator by Having a Voice from 2002 to 2004. She shared the role with Paul Ripley from September 2002. She left Having a Voice in 2004/2005


    Manchester Users' Support Group Asylum Autumn 1990 - - Asylum Summer 1992

    "Having a Voice started off in North Manchester, funded by the Trust following a conference on User involvement. They were always very connected with North Manchester Users Group." (Helen Spandler 20.8.2012) [See Manchester Users Support Group and 1989 Having a Voice Conference for people who use Mental Health Services in North Manchester.


    1993


    Having a Voice Limited
    Company Number IP28175R
    Registered Office
    ABRAHAM MOSS CENTRE
    CRESCENT ROAD
    CRUMPSALL
    MANCHESTER
    Company Type Industrial/Provident
    Incorporation Date 6.4.1995

    Having a Voice based at Crumpsall Library, Abraham Moss Centre, Crescent Road, M8 5UF

    Having a Voice Ltd was the user led organisation that Tony and Altaf helped to establish and which, in turn, employed Helen Spandler. Later, Having a Voice Ltd employed another development worker, Hilary Wright (when Helen was still there), and then Mike Grierson (after Helen left).

    Founding members of Having a Voice Limited were:
    Tony Riley,
    Altaf Ramtoola
    Ruth Madden
    Bill Griffiths
    Brian Leckey
    Noel Best
    Alan Hartman
    Kathleen Thomas


    1995 (Helen Spandler 20.8.2012 continued) "Having a Voice was managed by Voluntary Action Manchester [Company 00204472 incorporated 13.3.1925. Before 3.3.1992 known as Manchester Council for Voluntary Service] who supported it becoming a Ltd company and they started an east Manchester project which was which was entirely user led. The project in east Manchester came about partly because the trust closed down Powell Street Day Centre, which was a well-loved mental health resource in Clayton in east Manchester. The service users were very annoyed about this and one of the things the trust did to alleviate the distress this caused was to give some funding to Having a Voice to set up user run projects in the area - Basically they paid for a full time development worker in east Manchester - I worked in this role for three years [1995-1998] and was managed by the Having a Voice management committee which was then entirely user led. We set up a number of user run initiatives, including the east Manchester user group and a number of drop-in and advice sessions and we were involved in the north Manchester Crisis service. Having a Voice went on to employ at least one other worker in east Manchester.

    North and East Manchester are both quite deprived areas - North Manchester was more ethnically diverse (it has a large Asian and Jewish population - Having a Voice supported the AWAAZ Asian user group and the Jewish User Group for many years). East Manchester was (and is) more of a traditional white working class area. Since this time it has been subject to a lot of regeneration efforts - and it has been the re-developed with the commonwealth games and the Manchester City Stadium.

    Helen was based at The Venture Centre in East Manchester. Tony was based at the Abraham Moss Centre

    Having a Voice supported NMUG amongst many other local groups. But I would say that AWAAZ and NMUG were the most active groups in North Manchester when I was involved and the groups that HAV worked most closely with. Members of NMUG were part of the HAV ltd management committee. NMUG were based (as I'm sure you know) at North Manchester General Hospital. I would need to consult some annual reports to remind myself of some of the things they did. I do remember that NMUG set up a Sports and Leisure club - run by and for local services users.


    Having a Voice 1998

    A second worker (with Helen Spandler) employed in 1998 by Having a Voice Ltd was Hilary Wright.

    The Directors of Having a Voice Limited in 1998 were Penny Taylor, Brian Leckey (Chair) , Noel Best, Kathleen Thomas, Paul Hollins (treasurer), Anthony Johnson; Joe Graham Stierl, Lisa Doherty (secretary); Vincent Doherty; and Joe Hodgkinson


    "The Anxiety Group was set up in September 1999. There are lots of different symptoms of anxiety some of which are Generalized Anxiety Disorder, OCD, Agoraphobia, Panic Attacks, Anxiety Attacks. Anxiety is a problem that can be greatly reduced with help and support. The Anxiety Group is a supportive group, members pass information, coping techniques, ideas in fact anything that will reduce anxiety. If anybody is interested in becoming a member of the anxiety group then you can contact either Ruth [Madden] or Jean on 223 9838/4438.

    Ruth Madden had moved from the Management Group into an administrative role.

    Between (about) 1999 and 2001 that Miichael Grierson was appointed in place of Hilary Wright and later became manager of Having a Voice


    Having a Voice on the web. The first saved webpage is "Copyright 1999" "Revised: November 10, 2001" Designed by Ian Runciman (Impact Web Design). Archived first on 9.12.2001



    SMALL VOICES
    Newsletter of the UK Federation of Smaller Mental Health Agencies
    Registered Charity No. 1058342 Autumn 1999

    Celebrating breaches

    It was not just the Berlin Wall which came down in late 1989 a metaphorical barrier collapsed around the same time many miles away in Manchester. For around the time that news cameras were focused on capturing the reunification of Germany Manchester was about to give a voice to its own marginalised people. Having A Voice was established to help community based mental health groups develop their own strengths and now employs three staff. Development worker Tony Riley explains although they tend to concentrate efforts on North and East Manchester there is also a drive to forge city wide links as there are pockets of need in even the more salubrious suburbs.

    Having secured limited company status in 1995 the micro organisation also recognised a need to convert one of its existing posts to concentrate on its own management and development needs.


    The Sports and Leisure Group started January 2000. It was open to people or groups in Manchester who had experienced some form of mental health problem. The aim of the Group was "to promote mental well being through physical activities and opportunities to socialise with like minded people."

    The group had places at "the Y Club" [Manchester city centre's largest health club], where "lots of our members have personal workout routines".

    In June 2000 we had a trip to Buxton which was a good day out for our members, sandwiches were provided for all who participated.

    In August 2000 we had a weekend away in the Workington, (near the Lake District), we saw the Lake District when we drove past it ha ha.

    There are lots of plans for future outings.

    What do our members think of the Sports and Leisure group:-
    'Makes you feel good about yourself'
    'It makes your day'
    'Makes you feel relaxed and more energetic'
    'Gives you a purpose in life'
    'Very beneficial for socialising, it makes you feel better'
    'I find it hard to motivate myself and I do find doing things like this on my own difficult, but with a group its much less formidable'


    The archive for December 2001 lists
    "Senior Staff":

    Tony Riley
    My background is in community development work,
    I am employed as a user involvement development Worker
    I started work with Having A voice ten years ago.
    Main tasks: To provide support for service users to develop self help/self advocacy groups and services. - To represent their interests in the management of mental health services - To help service users to present their views of services to service managers - To help managers to consult and involve service users in the management of mental health services.
    Support for Groups: Tony supports the Frank Cohen Support Group which runs a drop in support centre for people with alcohol problems in North Manchester - Tony helped to establish a City -Wide User Forum called the Talkshop for the City of Manchester - Tony has developed user-led meetings at the primary care mental health teams in North Manchester which provide feedback for the staff and management of the services. - Tony supports user representatives on the Mental Health Joint Commissioning Board and the Board of Manchester Health Partnerships.
    Main contacts: Mental Health Joint Commissioning Board - Shadow Board of the Mental Health Partnership - Social Services Department - City Wide User Forum.

    Michael Grierson
    I support the work of the management committee, supervise and support the staff and encourage our members in their efforts to run user-led groups and activities. That is to say, I watch a lot of people working! A lot of my time is spent liaising with our main funders, reviewing our contracted work and looking at ways of developing our services. I support some of our members on committees such as the East Manchester Primary Care Mental Health Working Party. It is a big effort to try and keep up to date with currently unfolding policy developments such as clinical governance, the health improvement program, the Mental Health Act review and the move to Trust status for local primary care groups. It is important to do so in order that Having a voice is well placed to take advantage of opportunities for user-led developments. I act as a Practice Teacher for social work students who take their placements with us. Occasionally I make use of my social research background. For example, I have helped the local depot clinic nursing staff with a piece of research they undertook to review the effectiveness of their working practices.

    Graham Stierl
    Graham is the Vice Chairman of the Management Committee at Having a voice, a post which he has held for two years. Graham also acts as a user representative at meetings and on committees which include: Crisis Point Advisory Committee. Mental Health Sub - Committee of the North Manchester Health Care Trust. Manchester City- wide User Forum. Board of Manchester Mental Health Partnership. Acorn Fund of Mental Health Advisory Panel. North Manchester Community Health Council. Mental Health Advocacy Advisory Group, North West Mental Health Development Centre User Reference Group. Cornerstone Primary Care Resource Centre Management Committee


    November 2001 Mind Conference in Scarborough - Possible that Having a Voice members went including Ruth Madden and Tony Riley. However, Ruth places the conference in the mid-1990s. Jo Brand was there.


    The Management Committee for 2001 - 2002 are

    Brian Leckey (Chairperson)
    Graham Stierl (Vice Chairperson)
    Bill Tompson (Treasurer)
    Susannah Marshall (Co-opted) (Secretary)
    Noel Best
    Paul Ripley
    Paul Fiorini
    Gordon Derench
    Gwen Grant
    Kath Thomas
    Penny Taylor
    Anthony Sheehan
    Irene Cocker
    Lynne Buksh


    Ruth Madden: Having a Voice brought concept of Recovery to Manchester. Mary Ellen Copeland came to Manchester. Following this the Recovery Project was established at Having a Voice.


    Spring 2002 Start of three year funding for the Recovery Project. Computers and Recovery were linked. The Recovery Project moved to the Progress Centre in March 2003

    Michael Grierson moved from being the manager of Having a Voice to manager of the Recovery Project. Susannah Marshall was employed as the Recovery Worker and Ruth Madden became the Having a Voice Ltd Manager.


    October 2002 archive, but earlier relevance:

    Ruth Madden, Project Coordinator Responsible for the overall coordination of the Having a Voice organisation with the support and supervision of the Management Committee

    Tony Riley. User involvement development worker To provide support for service users to develop self help/self advocacy groups and services. To represent their interests in the management of mental health services. To help service users to present their views of services to service managers. To help managers to consult and involve service users in the management of mental health services.

    Michael Grierson. Recovery Project Manager. Responsible for the development of the recovery project.

    Carole Lovett. Outreach development worker Responsible for the development of outreach projects in the community

    Having a Voice newsletter August 2002

    10.12.2002 News archive
    "Paul Ripley and Mike Grierson have now returned from the United States and we will update you shortly on their highly successful trip"
    Ruth Madden: The reason for Paul and Mike going to the United States was to study Recovery


    Summer 2002 Restoring a canal barge owned by local entrepreneur John Cox of Reddish and John who allowed Having a Voice use of the barge free of charge. "Having a voice members were making the most of the rare Manchester sunny weather last Sunday in an effort to get some restoration work done on the boat. It all went well apart from the odd mishap with the paint. There will be more restoration days over the coming weeks. Ask Ruth if you would like to become involved".
    Ruth Madden recalls Tony Riley coming on a long weekend trip in the barge. She noticed how careful he had to be about eating food. Eating chips was odd for him. Tony was very careful about food - Apart from nuts and bananas which he was not supposed to eat, but did.


    OLES: Online Emotional Support: See Computers and Recovery - The Link - 2003 - Deborah Reddicen 2005 - 2006 and Broadband assists and picture.


    4.7.2002?

    Computers and Recovery - The Link

    Why Computers?

    Until fairly recently, Mental Health Service users have relied on Professionals to provide treatments, tell them how to live their life and generally make decisions for them. Enter 'The Recovery Vision'. Led in this Country by dedicated professionals like Mike Grierson in conjunction with the users themselves, drop in's and peer support groups have become common place to go along with counselling, therapies and treatments.. At last people with long term difficulties can see a chink of light at the end of that long dark tunnel. No more do they have to suffer in silence and quiet ignorance of their Illness. They now "HAVE A VOICE" a say in how they want to manage their own well being. A real chance, to make for themselves, a better quality of life.

    This involves a lot of support. Support from family and friends. Support from mental health professionals, and possibly most importantly peer support.

    So where do computers fit into this framework of support.

    Firstly peer to peer networks require a communication medium. A way for people to come into contact with each other and interact. If you think about it logically, a multi media computer is the ideal tool. Imagine for a minute being so ill you can't leave the house. Imagine this and then add to it the fact that you live alone and you have few, if any friends. you have become isolated and withdrawn from society and have no support whatsoever. So what options are open to you? Not many! Now imagine this scenario. You turn on your computer, log into the Recovery Central website and suddenly you are chatting in a room with several other sufferers. Not only has this but you have a choice of rooms to suit the symptoms from which you are suffering. Now add to this a microphone and a web cam and you are in touch with several million people from all over the world and from all walks of life. All together in one place, sharing stories and information online. Leaving messages for you in the forums on message boards and e-mailing you everyday with messages of support. Suddenly the world isn't a 12ft by 15ft room with four grey walls to bounce your own voice off, but a challenging multi media world full of colour, sound and more importantly 'peer support'.

    This is the hope that computers can bring to sufferers.

    Obviously along the road to this vision, training and support is vital. This is what we want to give people in these situations. Simply the opportunity to join in with the world. We want to give some of the most vulnerable people in society the chance to gain that support from their own safe haven.

    Something along these lines is already underway in the United States.

    Nothing in this country is available for people in these kinds of situations. It is our intention to correct that statistic.

    And the Internet isn't the end of the line as far as the recovery/ICT links go.

    Along with online activities, we want to offer Music and Arts therapies through the computer medium, as well as the opportunity to gain vocational computer skills for those who wish to go back into the working sector.
    These might include such subjects as:

    Word Processing
    Spreadsheets for accounting and book keeping
    Database manipulation
    Desktop Publishing
    Digital arts and photography
    Musical composition and creation
    Web site design and construction
    Interactive slide shows

    Hand in hand with the training go the following:

    Electronic support structures:

    Training for Mental health professionals by the users themselves in how to use ICT to aid recovery and well being.

    The creation and assimilation of user run databases online and off line to access information that they are at the moment denied through lack of knowledge.

    The development of electronic self management workbooks

    Internet Research and treatments
    User focused training on research and retrieval techniques for finding relevant information.
    Training for professionals. Too much time is wasted searching for information which could easily be found with the right training.

    The Opportunity Knocks for us all to learn now what will become second nature to the children of tomorrow. Let's not it slip through our fingers


    16.9.2002 Paul Ripley succesfully interviewed for job share of coordinators post with Ruth Madden. Paul and Mike Grierson went to the USA on a trip. Tony Riley, along with Ian Runciman and Paul Ripley, attended business master classes run by Social City Enterprises as part of the Business Icons competition. The competition will award £20,000 to the winner with the best idea for a community business to help them with start up costs. "This forms part of our overall strategy to create and develop a Cyber Cafe run by Having a Voice in the M11 area".


    Manchester City Council website

    Having a Voice
    Category: Health, Voluntary Groups
    Keywords: Mental Health
    Ward: Bradford

    Details:
    Promotes involvement of mental health service users in North Manchester. Aims: to promote self advocacy amongst mental health service users; to develop user-led services in North Manchester. Groups and activities: Monday pm, Leisure Group; Tuesday pm, Open Door Drop-in; Wednesday pm, Women's Group; Thursday pm, Anxiety Management Group. Counselling by appointment.

    Contact Name: Tony Riley

    Contact Address:
    Mill Street Venture Centre
    491 Mill St
    Manchester
    M11 2AD

    Meeting Venue Details:
    Room F7 Mill Street Venture Centre
    491 Mill St
    Manchester
    M11 2AD

    Telephone:
    0161 223 4438


    Fax: 0161 223 4438

    Accessible Parking Yes

    Wheelchair Access Yes

    Accessible Toilet Yes

    Lift to All Floors Yes

    Website: www.havingavoice.org


    14.11.2002 Mind Conference in Cardiff - Possible that Having a Voice members went. Probaby included Ruth Madden and Tony Riley, in the company of Justin Larner of Manchester Mind. Ruth says that it was at a Cardiff conference of Mind that the idea for the Feel Good Factor Project was generated. See 2003


    In March 2003 the Recovery Project moved from The Venture Centre to the Progress Centre in Ardwick Green, though was still part of Having a Voice. In Spring 2003 (Newsletter) it had almost come to the end of its first year, with two more years of funding left.
    "we are coming to the end of the first round of Recovery Courses. These have run for 1 and a half hours each week for 14 weeks and have taken place at Harphurey Day Centre,
    Victoria Park Day Centre, Gorton Drop in and Having a Voice. The aim of the courses has been to introduce people to Recovery and to offer skills and information to people about how best to manage their well being. Now this round of courses has finished, we have the task of looking back on them, seeing what has worked and what hasn't and how best to run our future courses within the community Mental Health Teams, creative Support, Crisis Point and Home Options, to name a few. We also have other plans on the horizon, such as Recovery fun days, a Recovery radio show, and a writing group. If anyone would like to know more, please contact Mike or Susannah on 0161 274 3337



    16.4.2003

    Ruth Madden: Coordinator
    Paul Ripley: Coordinator
    Tony Riley: User involvement development worker
    Mike Grierson: Recovery Project Manager
    Ian Runciman: Webmaster and Network Administrator
    Recovery Project Workers (Susannah Marshall and Mike Grierson)
    The Computer Group
    Oles: Online Emotional Support Project
    The Feel Good Factor Project workers

    Having a Voice newsletter Spring 2003

    2.6.2003? Full website archive (with frames)


    Spring 2003 Ruth Madden and Tony Riley started Feel Good Factor Project. This was about enabling people to be socially active. Activities included swimming and football. Ran for three years. Paid for by East Manchester. A "load" of money had been made available in the area and Having a Voice were successful with their tender.
    Purpose is to help people find their own ways to improve their quality of life and feel good.
    For people around Beswich, Clayton and Openshaw.
    Drop-ins to chill out, meet other people and take part in activities.
    Activities are decided by those that attend, include trips away, shared lunches, physical activity and leisure pursuits, complementary therapies, techniques for relaxation and stress management, being creative, building self esteem and confidence.
    Support and signpost people towards accessing other community facilities.
    Volunteer opportunities to help organise and run activites.


    8.6.2003: Added Nicola Kennedy: Volunteer Coordinator


    15.2.2004

    Ruth Madden Coordinator
    Paul Ripley Coordinator
    Tony Riley User involvement development worker
    Mike Grierson and recovery project not listed
    Ian Runciman now Office Manager and Network Administrator
    The Feel Good Factor Project workers (Julie & Louise)
    Volunteer Coordinator: Deborah Reddicen


    2004/2005 Ruth Madden left Having a Voice to work for Tameside Third Sector Coalition (T3SC)


    9.3.2005 and 12.4.2005

    Paul Ripley: Having a Voice coordinator
    Deborah Reddicen: Volunteer coordinator
    Tony Riley: User participation development worker
    Ian Runciman: Office Manager/Network Administrator/Website Manager
    Christina Lord: The Feel Good Factor Project worker
    Susannah Marshall: Recovery Project


    9.9.2005

    Tom Mclean - Having a Voice Coordinator
    Paul Ripley - Media Project worker
    Deborah Reddicen - OLES coordinator
    Tony Riley - User participation development worker
    Ian Runciman - Office & ICT Manager
    Christina Lord - Feel Good Factor Project
    Susannah Marshall (Recovery Project worker)


    The role of Having a Voice and its place in the community (A 21 page report)
    Adobe Acrobat 382kb
    Microsoft word 117kb

    Threatened Closure of Having A Voice by July 05

    You may be familiar with Having A Voice as an independent provider of mental health services for adults in East Manchester. Many people who use Having A Voice do so as a result of a recommendation or referral from their GP. They subsequently find our service an invaluable source of support, advocacy and social contact.

    As we are an independent service, our funding comes from a number of sources. Our core funding has been provided for over ten years by the Manchester Mental Health Joint Commissioning Executive. However, they have recently informed us of their intentions to withdraw the core funding which currently finances the post of our Co-ordinator, Development Worker and a substantial part of our overheads.

    They intend to use these funds toward financing a hospital-based advocacy service in Manchester. The remainder of the funds needed for this will be made up of amounts they have previously given to three other user-led mental health organisations : AWAAZ, MACA, and the African and Caribbean Mental Health Services.

    There are two main implications behind the JCE's decision. One is the devastating effect it will have on our organisation. Having A Voice will, as a result, be reduced to two projects. We will no longer be able to offer a 9 to 5, Mon - Fri service, nor will we be able to offer a drop-in, self- help groups or social activities. In short, we will not be able to offer our 140+ members an open and accessible service. Those who access us will therefore have to seek support if they are able, from other mental health services, many of which are already over-stretched.

    The second implication centres upon advocacy. The funding the JCE is now going to re-direct into a hospital-based advocacy service, was originally awarded to the four user-groups mentioned to support advocacy work. Having A Voice itself focuses on peer advocacy, MACA is an independent advocacy provider, AWAAZ works with people from the Asian communities, and ACMHS with those from Afro-Caribbean communities. As such they have provided a range of advocacy to a number of people across Manchester. The JCE are now reacting at the eleventh hour to the government's requirement to provide an independent, specialist advocacy service.

    The JCE's intention to locate this service in a hospital, and offer it only to those on a mental health section will mean others in need of advocacy services will not be able to access them, as the services currently based in the community of which Having A Voice is one, are to be cut. Manchester has a higher than average occurrence of mental illness. It also has a shortage of hospital beds in the psychiatric sector, therefore, most of those who are experiencing mental ill health are, in fact in the community. Added to this, there is doubt that an advocacy service, which is based within a hospital can be truly independent. This issue is one of serious concern.

    We are now working to oppose the JCE's cuts, not only to save our service, but also to ensure the policy on advocacy in Manchester takes the above concerns into account. In order to do this, we need your support. You can help us in one of two ways :

    Write a letter in support of Having A Voice, and the services it provides, including any views you may have on the provision of advocacy in Manchester for those with mental health issues. Please forward any letters to the Co- ordinator at the above address.

    Attend a public meeting we have organised to be held on Friday 18th February at 1.00 pm. The venue for this will be the conference room at the above address. We will be inviting the JCE to this, as well as health and community organisations who support Having A Voice, and of course HAV members.

    We are sincerely appealing for your support as the future survival of Having a Voice, a user-led organisation which has developed over 15 years, is now under serious threat.

    B. Leckey
    The Chair

    11.3.2005 HAV a heart North and East Manchester Advertiser


    2006

    Community North West website: [This article may have been entered on the web about January 2006]

    The Venture Centre is in East Manchester.

    Self help for mental health

    Having a Voice is a user led voluntary organisation based in East Manchester. Having a Voice supports people who use mental health services and they get involved in the evaluation and planning to improve these services across Manchester. Members run self help groups and they promote a range of positive activities that bolster people's mental well being. Having a Voice is a unique organisation, it is managed by users for users. The ethos is one of providing services based on demand and need. The emphasis is on peer support, with all projects aiming to facilitate and accommodate that process.

    The aims of HAV are to help users present their views and opinions to service managers and to enable service users to take part in planning mental health services. HAV support services users to set up user controlled groups and services. HAV has been working to promote user involvement for ten years.

    This approach is underpinned by HAV providing training in life skills, developing self-confidence and promoting self-advocacy. Peer support focuses on sharing coping strategies, techniques around recovery and self - development, all of which aid a sense of well-being. Peer advocates who have experience of the mental health system, will support someone during an interview with their GP or psychiatrist. HAV was instrumental in setting up Manchester Advocacy Services, which now operates independently from HAV. Setting up projects to be independent of HAV is another of HAV's aims.

    Counselling offered voluntarily is also available to HAV members. Volunteering on the part of users is seen as part of the recovery process, helping to develop self-confidence and life skills.

    In an innovative scheme, two members of HAV sit in on assessments with newly trained psychiatrists at Manchester Royal Infirmary. Over a period of eight weeks the psychiatrists will get feedback on their listening and interviewing skills and the assessment they made of the service user.

    The Recovery Project is another aspect of HAV's work, which involves educating health service professionals and others, including Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust, Manchester University, Crisis Point, as well as user-groups, drop-ins and community groups. HAV run 12 week long structured workshops, led by service users, in aspects of the recovery process as experienced by service users.

    HAV can tailor this training to the needs of the particular organisation, whether it's an hour's introduction to the issues, or a full day's workshop. They numbers range from small groups up to larger numbers and conference presentations.

    Online Emotional Support (O.L.E.S) offers out of hours counselling. This is another of HAV's innovative projects, trying to support online support. O.L.E.S. is available either by text, voice, webcam or all three. This is a new service live online. More information is available on the OLES website. Oles offers emotional support for people who are experiencing a crisis. This service is free, confidential and independent with one to one support available on Monday evenings and Wednesday evenings between the hours of 7.30 pm and 10 pm. This service is limited at present to people who live in Manchester.

    The service has been entered for the 2005 UK E-Well Being Awards. In six months, 47 people used the online service, which is an encouraging number for a pilot project.

    This is just a brief outline of three of HAV's projects.

    More details of all HAV's projects may be found on their website or by contacting Tom Mclean:

    The Venture Centre 491 Mill Street Beswick Manchester M11 2AD

    Phone: 0161 223 4438 Fax 0161 223 9838


    Broadband Assists a Mental Health Support Group includes picture of "The OLES development team"

    Tom Mclean, Mark Coupe and Deborah Reddicen


    31.3.2006 Tony Riley's retirement party. A DVD "Tony Riley - Our Tribute. 1990-2006 was prepared by Paul Ripley

    DVD includes: Presenter: Paul Ripley - Speakers: 1)Male - 2) Male who had worked with Tony for 15 years - 3) Male who met Tony 15 years ago when speaker worked at the Advice centre downstairs at Crumpsall Library and having a Voice had a small office upstairs. - 4) Ruth Madden and another lady in dialogue (also 7 and 11) - 5) Male who had worked with Tony for "six long months" and learnt that he was the "fount of all knowledge" - 6) Elaine Dixon from Harp - 8) Male. - 9) Two women who had known Tony for about a year. - 10) Mark Coupe of OLES first met Tony when he visited him at Clayton (Community) Farm. He thought "There's a guy who seems to know what he talks about" - 12) Male who spoke about Tony "as a person": "How many people genuinely take time to ask how people are?" - 13) Lady from duo with Ruth (above). She wanted Tony to volunteer for MAS [Manchester Advocacy Service] - 14) Ruth Madden: "You are the face of mental health in Manchester" - 15) Lady at the piano urging Tony to volunteer for Having a Voice not Manchester Advocacy Service - 16) Male - 17) onwards ....


    26.6.2006 Mark Coupe from Manchester Having a Voice service users group one of three people who attended a round table on media representations of suicide organised in Manchester by Journalist Terry Williams, who runs Media in Mind. The other two were Daniel Madge, manager of Manchester Mental Health Partnerships and Caroline Nuttall of the Self Help Services and National Phobics Society. (source)


    2007 Help! Manchester

    Having a Voice
    0161 223 4438
    enquiries@havingavoice.org
    www.havingavoice.org
    The Venture Centre, 491 Mill Street,
    Beswick, Manchester, M11 2AD

    A user run voluntary sector organisation for people aged over 18 and experiencing mental health issues. Provides access to self-help groups: Mental Health Recovery workshops focusing on self-help and coping strategies, these workshops are structured and run over a twelve week period. There is a peer support drop in at the Venture Centre, Monday to Friday 10am - 5pm, for a chance to meet others over a tea or coffee.

    Also offered is a Counselling Service, this confidential free service is available by self-referral, help with benefits and DLA. The Media Project offers opportunities to get involved in making films.


    Last website, August 2007:
    Having A Voice, The Venture Centre, 491 Mill Street, Openshaw, Manchester, M11 2AD


    23.4.2007 Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation (GMCVO) ran an event on service user involvement at the St Thomas Centre.

    Presentations available from the event are:
    BME workshop.ppt
    Daniel Madge Presentation.ppt
    Emily Brown Presentation.ppt
    Having a Voice Presentation.ppt
    Refugee Action Workshop.ppt


    Awaaz logo Awaaz

    contact details about 2000:

    For all your enquiries; you can contact us by:

    Phone: 0161- 720 8850

    Post:

    Awaaz Group
    464 Cheetham Hill Road
    Manchester
    M8 9JW

    History on website

    Awaaz users group was set up in 1994 with the support and help of Having a Voice. There had been and still is very low take up of psychiatric services by Asian people living in North Manchester although there is a sizable Asian population living in North Manchester. Professionals were of the opinion that Asian people support each other very well and used this to explain the low uptake of psychiatric services. The few Asian people who were referred to the psychiatric system felt angry about the way they were treated. One of the Asian users who was using Park House at that time had been to a user group in the hospital where his needs were not met. He felt that the needs of Asian people could only be addressed if Asian users and careers got together to look at the needs of Asian people.

    With the support and help of Having a Voice, an Asian users group was set up. Three other Asian users joined the group and they started meeting on a monthly basis in Park House. It soon became apparent that if the group was to grow the meetings should happen in the community where the majority of Asian users or potential users were. The road to setting up an Asian user group managed and run by Asian service users was a long one. First of all there were very few service users using the service and those who used it did not want to be identified as service users due to the acute stigma within Asian communities associated with psychiatric services.

    We looked around for a model Asian user group in the country but could not find one. The first step was to build trust with users and the community and start a group that people would feel free to come to. The issues that needed addressing were:

    1. Confidentiality

    2. How to set up users group where people did not want to be identified as service users.

    3. The issue of gender. Men and women in the same room for a drop-in group for Asian people seemed a non starter at the time.

    4. Would service users who were struggling coping in their own lives with very few appropriate services be able to take on managing and running a project ?

    We were determined that we would go ahead and do it rather than spending a lot of time thinking about it. The way we decided to start it was to offer something to existing Asian service users. The three main principles we agreed on were:

    A safe place where people were not identified with their psychiatric label

    A user friendly place where people would be looked at as individuals A place where Asian service users views would be taken seriously. This was done through a drop-in once a week which was funded by a small grant from Social Services who were sympathetic, and offered office space in Woodville and expenses to cover office costs.

    It soon transpired that people wanted a one-stop service under one roof, an organization that they could trust, that would deal with their day to day problems, give them space and take them seriously no matter how trivial their problem.

    Another problem was to get more people involved. We wanted to advertise ourselves without making existing users feel uncomfortable and deal with the taboo associated with mental illness. We started an Urdu/English newsletter in which we set out to address the issue from a statistical point that one in four people suffer from some sort of mental health problem and that it was as common as any other illness. We made regular visits to the mental health unit in North Manchester and were determined that every Asian patient admitted or using the out patients knew about Awaaz.

    We took on the role of advocate for existing service users and made ourselves available for Asian people who needed an independent advocacy service. Advocates were users or ex-users of mental health services and knew not only the system but had the added advantage of knowing the cultural and linguistic background.

    The slogan the National Self Harm Network started with was "campaigning for the rights and understanding of people who self harm". Louise Pembroke explains what was meant by "campaigning".

    National Self Harm Network was from the start (1995), and for the six years I was involved in setting it up/chairing, very much focussed on campaigning, awareness raising and promoting survivor defined thinking/approaches.

    I attended a Mind conference and did a workshop on self harm speaking of our rights (or lack of them) and then invited people in the main auditorium who felt common ground with me to join me in forming a network to promote our rights and to contact me at Survivors Speak Out.

    I started the initial work from the Survivors Speak Out office where I took support calls, gathered names of interested people and information.

    When we obtained separate premises this progressed to receiving around 50 letters a week from people speaking of their experiences [and workers]. What I read in those thousands of letters did not change much in both the positive and negative, I so wish I had collated data..we can all be wise with hindsight but you get side tracked with the practicalities.

    These were the days of meeting in each others homes, hand written mailouts, stealing reams of paper for photocopying from other offices in the building, lugging a suitcase to a charity prepared to frank it.

    We did not have a computer initially and traded training sessions in exchange for office space at one point. We often exchanged skills for the resources we needed.

    The first two seminars were funded by Mindlink who were really supportive of us. The first looked at what we wanted to do, what were the issues as we saw them, then the second was a 'working seminar' where we put together a letter to the Department of Health regarding existing guidance and what service users actually needed. Then three of us met people at the Department of Health.

    The original leaflets we produced were sent to every Accident and Emergency department in the United Kingdom. That was around 300 departments. I certainly viewed that as campaigning because those leaflets were quite forthright regarding treatment in Accident and Emergency.

    Campaigning does not have to be a demo or a single specific event - It can be a longer term strategy, a series of operations and include teaching, writing and simply spending time with people discussing and debating issues.

    We were talking to many different people in different settings about survivor written materials, rights, advocacy, 'consultant letters', advance directives, questioning diagnosis and prohibitive models of treatment.

    We produced the first self management workbook and first book on harm minimisation. Also the first conferences for people who self harm on practical harm minimisation which was quite a strident step to take then given the concept had not been openly discussed within mental health mags/journals/conference circuit/policy makers let alone imparting to people how to cut more safely with an exhibition table of dressings. I can tell we took a deep breath but need not have worried because we had taken the cue from members and they were two of the most uplifting and positive survivor conferences I have had the privilege to be part of. These cutting edge events I certainly define as being part of campaigning.

    The History of CAPITAL

    CAPITAL was formed as the result of an initiative by Andrea Linell (of West Sussex Social Services?) to involve mental health service users in the training of Social Workers and other mental health professionals in 1997.

    The service users that came together were greatly encouraged by the positive response to their contribution. They were able to appoint a Co- ordinator, Veronica Dewan, and a lead trainer, Jim Read, to lead what became known as CAPITAL (Clients And Professionals In Training And Learning).

    March 1997 Veronica Dewan appointed by West Sussex Social Services to set up a Users as Trainers' Project as a training project for people in West Sussex who use mental health services.

    8.3.1997 Taster Day for new recruits (the "1997 group") - Approximately 40 people.

    May 1997 Planning for the group started by Andrea Linell, Sandra Trebble, Jim Read and Veronica Dewan with money from the Mental Illness Specific grant.

    28.8.1997 to 7.11.1997 Phase one training for first recruits began. Some of the subjects covered (in the two phases) were: mental health services, DSS benefits, mental health legislation, taditional and alternative therapies plus user empowerment. Participants were also trained in all aspects of delivering presentations, planning training sessions and facilitating courses.

    Even before they finished the course, members were asked to work alongside social workers and other mental health professionals on their training courses.

    2.3.1998 to 5.6.1998 Phase two training for first recruits to Users to Trainers' Project. Name changed to Capital Project Trust. The acronym Clients And Professionals In Training And Learning reflects the professional approach of their work.

    June 1998Veronica Dewan left Capital Project for a permanent position. Andrea helped members to keep communication and events going for a few months.

    Summer/Autumn 1998 Anne Beales appointed as co-ordinator

    By 1999 CAPITAL had gained great recognition and respect from professionals. As further funding was made available from the Mental Health Grant it was decided to recruit another 30 members for training.

    7.5.1999 Taster Day for new recruits (the "1999 group") - Approximately 30 people.

    April 1999 Training continued for the 1997 group.

    July 1999 Training commenced for the 1999 group.

    June 2000 1997 and 1999 groups merged.

    Between 1999 and 2001 demand for work by CAPITAL members grew and they were giving presentations, providing training and being consulted by a professional and voluntary organisations all over West Sussex and elsewhere in the country. Staff moved from working in their own homes, cars and cafes to an office in Bognor.

    November 2000 Office open in Bognor

    In 2001 CAPITAL had grown and diversified into other areas of service user involvement. The membership continued to be made up of service users in the West Sussex area. 2001 was also the year that the organisation registered first as a company limited by guarantee and then (9.7.2001) as a charity.

    28.2.2002 AGM and elections of new trustees/directors. One member was elected as Company Secretary and seven members became company directors. These eight members formed the Board of Trustees. CAPITAL was (and still is) led by service users.

    2003 Anne Beales became Director of the organisation.

    February 2004 AGM and elections of new trustees/directors.

    May 2004 All members merged

    May 2004 Taster Day for new recruits (the "2004 group") - approximately 10 people

    June 2004 Training started for new recruits.

    August 2004 Office and admin staff moved to new premises in Bognor and Worthing.

    November 2004 Anne Beales left to become Director in Together's Service User Involvement Directorate. In her new post she has continued to work with CAPITAL. Debbie Southwood became the new director of CAPITAL.

    Spring 2006 Capitells - Introduced by "Debbie-Ann".

    "Every month on a Tuesday afternoon we have a trustee meeting, sometimes called a board meeting, at the Lodge, the main CAPITAL office at Swandean. On a good day all seven trustees would be there including Debbie- Ann Southwood, the Director of CAPITAL, and Marie Butcher, the minute secretary. However, we usually get less than seven trustees at the meetings. We need at least three trustees for a quorum if we are to take a vote and make decisions. We may also have a guest speaker or someone providing training for the trustees, but they do not stay for the business part of the trustee meeting." (Howard Pearce on being a CAPITAL Trustee)

    Summer 2006 Issue 7 of Capitells - Introduced by "Debbie-Ann". Announced new website - Which contains the following (under history)

    Today CAPITAL has around 75 active members from across West Sussex and seven members of staff. Our offices are currently in Bognor Regis and Worthing. We work to achieve our mission by influencing the planning, development and implementation of mental health services. Our work has expanded and we actively seek opportunities to ensure the views and aspirations of mental health service users are prominent with service providers and commissioners. We are proud of our achievements which include:

  • Research work such as the TRUE project, the Best Value Review of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services
  • Tutoring within Primary Care with 'Trailblazers'
  • Providing training for Approved Social Workers and other professionals
  • Evaluation work including work with Assertive Outreach in the Western area
  • Membership of Approved Social Worker appointment panels
  • Consultation work around 'Shaping the Future of Services' Acute Solutions and inpatient work
  • Needs assessment/'Ques' project
  • Recognition of our work on the Psychosis Revisited course Consultation for 'Choose and Book'
  • Work to influence the reprovision of services in the North of West Sussex

    CAPITAL continues to become increasingly professional in its approach as it grows. We achieve this without losing the original character and autonomy of the organisation. Our members, trustees and staff bring a unique collection of experience to the organisation which provides a rich resource for the development of mental health services.

    In the past year we have successfully consolidated the organisation to prepare for the future. We have listened and heard the views of members, ensuring that these form the focus of our development. Our Service Level Agreement with the Mental Health Commissioning Team has been updated and agreed. Financial challenges have been managed and we have developed robust financial plans. Our work with other service user groups and the wider voluntary sector across West Sussex have grown and will continue to do so with the formation of pan Sussex service delivery.

    Our criterion for success is primarily the wellbeing and support of the members. We are successful when service uses, both within CAPITAL and beyond, experience an improvement in their lives as a result of our work.

    Early Spring 2007 Debbie Southwood left CAPITAL. Clare Ockwell was Acting Director for four months. Clare became Training and Research Coordinator

    Late Spring 2007 Issue 9 of Capitells

    June 2007 Beverley Smith employed as Charity and Business Coordinator

    Capital's tenth anniversary celebrations at Billingshurst
Village Centre 28.8.2007 Capital's tenth anniversary celebrations at Billingshurst Village Centre

    2007 "Learning from Experience: The CAPITAL Project" by Clare Ockwell in Teaching Mental Health

    Thursday 29.5.2008 Clare Ockwell spoke, at a conference with historians, about the use of survivor history in CAPITAL training sessions.

    October 2008 Worthing and Bognor offices moved into new premises in Bognor.

    December 2008 First edition of Clare Ockwell's "A History of Service User Involvement Quiz" (See downloads)

    Spring 2009 Beverley Smith left

    mid 2009 "CAPITAL is a professional structured business. The recruitment and training programme continues with a steady membership of about 119. Members continue to attend presentations, training courses, consultations, meetings etc. They also meet in local areas once a month and get together once every quarter. Close work with Sussex Partnership NHS Trust, Social and Caring Services and Primary Care Trusts also continues. The CAPITAL Administration Centre is in the heart of the seaside town of Bognor Regis.

    Currently support and funding comes from the Primary Care Trust Commissioners and further areas for funding are always being considered. The CAPITAL Project will continue to expand with the aim of working with other service user groups and alongside professionals to improve services." (Marie Butcher - 2009)

    Wednesday 9.9.2009 Clare Ockwell gave practical examples of the use of history in training in CAPITAL at a conference on teaching and learning

  • Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO)

    In 2007 a website was established, first archive 16.11.2007 that says "'We arrived here from all parts of Africa and the Caribbean and now we are one'. Welcome to the THACMHO Website. Come Celebrate in our 'Decade of Delivery'!"

    THACMHO "is a voluntary organisation that is lead and run by Users and ex-Users of mental health services. It was set up in 1996 to consult on and campaign for better mental health services in the borough. The aim is to achieve a more comprehensive state of health for our communities that recognises the mind body and spirit as one in relation to all round well-being."
    Our symbol Tabono was chosen in 1997 to reflect the aspirations of the organisation and comes from the Akan people of Ghana, it represents strength, confidence and perseverance. We believe that it assisted us to overcome many of the challenges we faced as a Black organisation in the UK.

    In addition to providing support and a weekly Drop In service we also run a Health Through History Project which aims to help members gain self-esteem and a stronger identity in support of their mental health. The project has allowed us to take forward our objective of combating the stigmas surrounding mental health by developing historical walks and producing a book on 18th century Africans who lived in London's East End. We have held a Reminiscence Conference on West Indian Seamen who came to London during the 1950's and1960's. This led to an Education Pack for schools in Tower Hamlets, and we look forward to the launch during Black History Month of a leaflet titled, The Black History of the Tower of London.

    This project uses an African cencept called Sankofa. This concept is represented by a bird walking forward whilst looking back. It has allowed us to use our past as a positive reference point and have given us hope for the future. And these two symbols combine to represent our logo.


    THACMHO website - first archive 5.10.2011

    Tower Hamlets African & Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO)
    Address The Brady Centre, 192-196 Hanbury Street, Whitechapel, London, E1 5HU
    THACMHO is a 'User led User run' voluntary group that has played a leading role in researching and publicising the African history of London's East End. Our 'Health Through History Initiative' is a social model of mental health, which includes:

    -Power Writers: A literary account of five African writers who came to the East End towards the end of the 1800's. Now been developed as an Heritage Walk, the latest computer technology is currently being applied to create an interactive walk in partnership with Kingston University.

    -Sailors of the Caribbean: Arose from the 'Reminiscence Conference of West Indian Seamen' held in February 2004. The 'Reminiscence Report' followed in November 2004, after which a schools educational pack was created. Currently we're developing a series of 'Oral History' projects around this.

    -African History at the Tower of London: A research project which led to the publication of our in report in February 2008.

    Area Bethnal Green South, Spitalfields & Banglatown / LAP 2


    Thursday 28.7.2010 THACMHO Annual General Meeting at the Brady Centre. Received Annual Report 2010- 2011 with Programme and officers. Foreword by Sandra Griffiths, Head of Mellow. Chair's Report from Philip Morgan. Drop In and Out of Hours Report. Health Through History Initiative by Fabian Tompsett. Therapeutic Environment Development Officer's Report by Fabian Tompsett. Financial Report - Considerations Updated (a poem about THACMHO's Annual General Meetings) by Daniel Johnson.


    Survivors History Group 29.9.2010:

    Tower Hamlets African Caribbean Mental Health Organisation

    Fabian and Philip reported on the work that is done by THACMHO (Tower Hamlets African Caribbean Mental Health Organisation). They also reported on the Birmingham conference last July, where they held a session during the seminar.

    Philip highlighted how more people need and/or want less medication these days and how more important is to be part of a good community that supports everyone with love and care. Good slogans are "medication NO - therapeutic community YES" and "Love and life". Mental health activists talking about institutions - conscious and democratic - social context rather than pathologising. Hearing Voices create their own therapeutic communities.

    THACMHO has been going now for fifteen years and has always looked at finding the way forward to progress. Its funding is from the local authority, but it needs diverse sources, but ethical. Fabian talked about the Dialectics of Liberation Conference organised at the Round House in London by psychiatrist David Cooper and others in July 1967. He paid particular attention to the talk of Stokely Carmichael on "Black Power" which criticised the individualist approach and contrasted "individual racism" and "institutional racism". Carmichael quoted Frantz Fanon as saying

    "Freud insisted that the individual facto be taken into account through psychoanalysis. It will be seen that the black man's alienation is not an individual question. It is a question of socio- diagnostics"

    Andrew talked about the origin of THACMHO's "Health Through History Initiative". Philip had explained this as arising from discussions about why people from an African and Caribbean background are over-represented on psychiatric wards. THACMHO linked this to negative self-images arising from the way black history has been erased by slavery and racism. By exploring black history, Afro-Caribbean people find a way to restore pride and self- esteem. Although the collective experience is different for survivors generally, Andrew thought we could all find a restoration of self-esteem in studying our history.

    Frank asked what dialectics means. Fabian said it was about movement. You could think in polarised terms like "It is day" or "It is night", but dialectics thinks in ways that allow us to understand how we move from one to the other. An example he gave was that the identification of institutional racialism becomes bureaucratised in ethnic monitoring, creating a need to revive the issues.

    Peter asked "What are you doing about history?". Philip mentioned Health the book about Power writers and Reminiscence for Seaman (many in retirement now) as well as African history at the Tower of London (see website). More good slogans are "Today is the result of yesterday" and "The past does matter it has affected us".

    Philip and Fabian talked about oral history and the importance of preserving interviews.

    We finished by agreeing that there is a need for a history of THAMHCO and hoping that the Survivors History Group and THAMHCO will work together to create one.


    Survivors History Group 24.11.2010:

    THACMHO is preparing a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund and would like to work in partnership with SHG. The discussion centred on developing resources and skills for collecting, cataloguing and conserving archives.


    Survivors History Group 25.1.2012:

    We heard about the planned closure of Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO) in March with deep regret. THACMHO was established in 1996. Its projects include "The Health Through History Initiative" which has been an inspiration to us all as survivor historians. We resolved to work with THACMHO to preserve its heritage. They are talking to Bishopsgate Institute about preserving their archives. A final report is planned, which will review the history. This could be published by Social Action for Health with a web version on the Survivors History website. THACMHO has already published "A Decade of Delivery" outlining ten years of its history.


    Survivors History Group Wednesday 4.4.2012.

    THACMHO situation report - Fabian Tompsett. Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO) is a user led and user run voluntary group formed in 1996 with mental health service users, that has played a leading role in researching and publicising the African history of London's East End. With limited resources the organisation is exploring alternative models for survival. THACMHO has been working with MELLOW which was founded in 2000 as part of East London NHS Foundation Trust to work with African and Caribbean people with mental health problems. THACMHO works in Tower Hamlet, Mellow covers Hackney and the City of London as well.

    MELLOW is not so user-led but is known to engage well with community. Andrew queried whether THACMHO's archives could be lost, as donating records will allow for their storage but may mean giving up access. Fabian reported that agreement is being negotiated with Bishopsgate Institute. Their financial commitment to cataloguing these records is not yet known and open access to THACMHO's archives is yet to be agreed. Fabian agreed to keep the Survivors' History Group informed of progress.


    Thursday 19.12.2013 4.30pm to 8pm at Oxford House, Derbyshire Street, Bethnal Green. "Celebrating Our Strengths. A Time to Change Network Event". "An evening of poetry, song and inspirational talks featuring the voices of African and Caribbean people with lived experience of mental health problems and from the community" Featuring: Paul Conoville (Chelsea Football Club first Black Player) - Roy Hayde (Spoken word artist) - Miryam Solomon (Singer/Songwriter). "This event will contribute to Time to Change's campaign to tackle mental health stigma and discrimination experienced by African and Caribbean Communities". Presented by THACMHO and East London Hopefuls. Contact Geraldo@safh....


    Wednesday 29.10.2014 3pm to 9pm at Oxford House, Derbyshire Street, Bethnal Green. "Promoting Well Being. A Black History Month Event. "Come and join us celebrate the healing power of creative activities, heritage discussions, performances, good food and a mellow vibe!" Music and Food. Exhibitions: THACMHO's Health Through History and Power Writers and the Struggle Against Slavery. Workshops on African Drumming, African centred Jewellery making and Power Writers and the Struggle Against Slavery. Performances: Singing - Poetry - Comedy - Black History Quiz - "Kakatsitsi Master Drummers: Performing Rhythms and Chants from West Africa. Presented by THACMHO. Contact Geraldo@safh....


    2017

    PHILIP MORGAN

    Survivors have sought to preserve a living heritage that consists of ourselves and our ancestors. This tradition was dramatically promoted by Philip Morgan, who has just joined the ancestors. I first encountered Philip at a meeting of the Friends of East End Loonies in October 2009 where he was demonstrating the thesis of Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO) that we will regain our health and identity through history. THACMHO emerged when patients in an east London psychiatric unit asked themselves why so many of them were black. They concluded that they were treated as a people without culture and identity, and resolved to challenge that oppression. Philip had a large bag on stage into which he kept on disappearing to produce a new THACMHO publication about the history of African and Caribbean people in the East End. His performance was riveting, as were the African images he conjured up, including the Sankofa bird that flies forward while looking backward with an egg in its mouth. The egg symbolises the future. We must go back and reclaim our past so we can move forward; so we understand why and how we came to be who we are today.

    On Wednesday we can discuss how to preserve Philip's legacy. Asylum magazine has asked for an article about Philip and health through history. Relatives and friends of Philip are organising fundraising for a funeral celebration of his life

    https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/phil-spirit

    In November 1998, Sylvia Ellarby and Steve Turner, who were running an advocacy scheme in West Sussex at the time, organised a two-day national advocacy conference in Birmingham. One of the aims was to initiate the development of some kind of national advocacy network that was generic and inclusive. UKAN and CAIT served a very useful purpose, but only for those involved in mental health and citizen advocacy respectively. About 130 people attended the conference, and as well as speeches by Luke Clements and Edna Conlan and a variety of workshops, there was a debate on the possibility of a new national organisation. The feeling of the conference was that there was a need to network nationally, and the delegates decided that the mandate of such an organisation should be:

    to develop a national network;

    to organise an annual conference; and

    to create a national directory of advocacy schemes.

    The conference was much inspired by Marcia Ramsey's success with Advocacy 2000 in Scotland.

    A group of interested people began to meet regularly at various locations around England, and in March 2000, the second conference was held in Ilkley, West Yorkshire. 140 delegates attended, and they elected a management committee for what had become known as the National Advocacy Network, and renewed the organisation's mandate.

    Subsequent conferences have been in Stockport in November 2001, where a Government minister came to speak for the first time (Jacqui Smith), and Blackpool in November 2002.

    The conference is now regularly attended by 150 delegates from all over the UK, and the numbers are restricted only by the difficulty of finding large enough accessible and affordable venues.

    This year's (2003) conference is on 12th and 13th November at the Royal Albion Hotel on Brighton seafront.

    Retrieved from http://www.advocacywiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=National_Advocacy_Network

    Mad Pride logo Mad Pride logo
    Mad Pride

    20.6.1999 "first ever gig" - (archive - archive index)

    From the 6.3.2000 archive:

    About Mad Pride
    Events organised by Survivors of the mental health system

    MAD PRIDE is committed to ending discrimination against psychiatric patients, promoting survivor equality and celebrating Mad culture.

    WHAT IS MAD PRIDE? Mad Pride is an idea which came out of the 1997 Gay Pride Festival in London. A few survivors of the mental health system said "we could do with a festival like this". And so a motley collection of individuals got together and slowly started organising themselves so as to put on events. These Mad Pridesters did some research on the Name and Aims of the thing. Then they set about forming a non-profit-distributing company to develop MAD PRIDE. In 1999, they organised a series of gigs and concerts. The hope is that MAD PRIDE will really take off in the year 2000.

    Mad Pride now sees itself as part of the newest (but probably not the last) Civil Rights movement.

    Come to gigs. Organise your own festival, concert or event. (Just let us know you are doing this). Perform at MAD PRIDE's gigs and concerts. Let MAD PRIDE use your venue. Or just send a message of support to this webpage. Get involved in some way. Contact us now or read on.

    From the 4.11.1999 archive:

    AIMS OF MAD PRIDE Since MAD PRIDE was intended to be set up as a company, it has a number of "official" objects. It could be that MAD PRIDE will become a Charity as well as a Company Limited by Guarantee, and therefore the objects were designed with that in mind as well. The wording is taken from MAD PRIDE's Memorandum of Association. (At the time of writing it has yet to register as a Company).

    The objects for which MAD PRIDE is established are as follows: -

  • To promote positive images of mental health

  • To counteract discrimination and prejudice towards people who have experienced mental distress.

  • To educate the public in mental health issues

  • To campaign for better mental health provision

  • To campaign for less oppressive and more enabling legislation and practice guidelines.

  • To promote economic, social, environmental and cultural integration of user/survivors into mainstream society and their active participation and integration into community life.

    June 2000

    Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture

    Contents

    The Last 69 To Chingford, by Mark Roberts

    Into The Deep End, by Pete Shaughnessy

    The Need For A Mental Patients Union, by Eric Irwin and Friends

    A Play In The Wife, by Loiuse C.

    A Story of Madness, by Stephen Budd

    How I Became A Closet Nutter, by Terry Conway

    A Loveable Character, by Hugh Mulhall

    Family Friends, by Fatma Durmush

    Laid Up, by Debbie McNamara

    Advice: An A to Z, by Hanne Olsen

    Mad Pride and Prejudice, by Esther Leslie

    Turning The Asylum Into A Playground, by Robert Dellar

    Escape From The Edge, by Edward Murray

    An Uphill Struggle, But It's Been Worth It, by Frank Bangay

    Towards A Critical Madness, by Ben Watson

    Lexicography, by Jim MacDougall

    Psychosis As A Revolutionary Weapon, by Michael Howlett

    A Vision Of Elvis, by Luther Blissett

    Mental, by Chris P

    No Hangovers In Heaven, by Ted Curtis

    Ignore Ruth Kettle's Lies, Tim Telsa

    True Stories From The Archives Of Survival, by Terry Simpson

    Cuckoo's Don't Make Nests, Nick Blinko

    Heaven Is A Mad Place On Earth, by Simon Morris

    15.7.2000 London Festival - Clissold Park - (external link to report)

    Autumn 2000 Nutters With Attitude

    Thursday 14.11.2002 Mind "Roots to Recovery" Annual Conference at Cardiff included contributions from Mad Pride - External Link to archives

    " Robert Dellar talked about the history of Mad Pride in Hackney, and how everyone had cracked up again after the stress of the Clissold Park two-stage all-dayer in July 2000"

    " Ben Watson was the only speaker with a specially-written text, which ran as follows: Early this year, a music magazine asked for an article about madness and music [The Wire Feb 2002; reprinted Southwark Mind Newsletter Mar 2002]. Wire magazine allows its writers to roam across every musical genre, so I planned to write about madness in classical music, as well as in pop and rock. Mad Pride had already staged several rock gigs, so I was well prepared to talk about Punk as subaltern expression and mental relief for the under- privileged. What came as a surprise was to discover that actually the WHOLE of twentieth-century classical music stems from a "mad" composition - namely Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, a suite of semi-spoken songs for a moon-touched loon, which he composed in 1912"

    The "heyday" of the Mad Pride "originally formed by a small group of people in London" has been said to be from 1999 to 2003.

    Sunday 10.10.2004 Mad Pride for Mental Health Day

    27.11.2004 Launch event for Mad Chicks
    Post: Mad Chicks, c/o Esther Leslie, School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX.

    14.2.2005 "Kiss it" protest from Whitehall Place, past the Houses of Parliament to St Thomas's Hospital - website

    1.7.2005 MindFreedom's list of Mad Pride events in Canada, UK, Paris and the USA.

          12.7.2005 to 14.7.2005 The first Great Escape Bed Push from Bradford's Cygnet Hospital to Manchester (about 33 miles). Adam, Rufus, Amy, Ian, Paul, Menzie, Jill, Ellie, Tamasin. Rufus May in pyjamas - YouTube

    23.7.2005 Mad Pride Festival, Queens Park, Brighton - video

    Saturday 28.1.2006 "Mad Pride World Holocaust Day"

    9.10.2006 Mad Hatters of Bath

    Monday 7.8.2006: 10am: Start of bedpush from Mill View Psychiatric Hospital in Brighton 60 miles to the original site of 'Bedlam,' the Bethlem asylum in London. - Reports were made by Amy Sanderson. "a Crazy Escape from psychiatry. We have been chased by a massive syringe through Brighton... Today (10.8.2006) it's the last (hobbling!) push into Central London where we will be meeting more activists to pay a visit to Downing Street to drop off the Kiss It! petition against the harmful use of force in psychiatry. You can sign at www.kissit.org. We will also call in to the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital. The finale will be a Mad Hatter's Tea Party at the former sight of Bedlam where we chill out with tea and cakes and play croquet!"

    23.2.2007 Internet archive of bedpush.com

    Thursday 8.3.2007 Losing It 2007: Mad Chicks Sans Frontières archive

    Friday 13.7.2007 - 9.30am Start 2007 Great British Bed Push, from Callington Road Psychiatric hospital in Bristol to Queen Square, Bath (Saturday 14.7.2007). - press release

    Dolly Sen @ Mad Chix March 8th 2007 Elephant... video by Ted Curtis

    2008 John McCarthy founded Mad Pride Ireland. Thousands turned out for the first Mad Pride day in Fitzgerald Park

    Sunday 9.3.2008 Mad Chicks Losing It - archive

    14.7.2008 - Mad Pride Day Bath: video normality testing

    10.10.2008 Bed Push from St Ann's Psychiatric Hospital in Tottenham across North London to Parliament Hill.

    mid July 2010 Notices:

    The "surviving members of the classic Mad-Pride line-up" welcome all "mental health survivors" to a "public meeting to discuss and plan direct action to oppose and condemn government's attack on welfare benefits for those labelled mentally ill or otherwise disabled" at Pogo Cafe, 76 Clarence Road, Heckney, London, E5 8HB at 4pm Saturday 24.7.2010.

    The invitation comes from Simon Barnett, Robert Dellar, Debbie McNamara and Mark Roberts.

    "Mad Pride is now an international, loosely-connected network of cells devoted to promoting the civil liberties, social status and creative talents of people labelled mentally ill. It was originally formed by a small group of people in London, whose heyday was from 1999 to 2003. Pogo cafe is an autonomous, non-hierarchical, 100% vegan space run completely by volunteers"

    "We do not wish to be alarmist. We are aware that the stress caused by the governments' measures will increase the rate of suicides and mental distress. However, we wish to stress that IF WE WORK TOGETHER AND HELP EACH OTHER INDIVIDUALLY AND IN GROUPS, we will survive."

    6,000 stickers will be launched at his meeting, with three different slogans:

    BANKERS! HANDS OF OUR WELFARE BENEFITS! STOP THE SUICIDES - HANDS OF OUR BENEFITS! BACK TO WORK? NO CHANCE! - HANDS OF OUR BENEFITS.

    Saturday 24.7.2010: Mad Pride "public meeting to discuss and plan direct action to oppose and condemn government's attack on welfare benefits for those labelled mentally ill or otherwise disabled" at Pogo Cafe, 76 Clarence Road, Heckney, London, E5 8HB at 4pm

    1.8.2010 Mark Roberts circulated notes of the Pogo Cafe meeting - offline archive

    [Mad Pride] - Anti-Cuts Demo - London Tuesday Oct 26th 2010 - 1pm Date sent: Sun, 17 Oct 2010 01:41:00 +0100

    Hi Folks,

    This is to announce a survivor Anti-cuts Demo to be held at Speakers corner, Hyde Park (Marble Arch tube) from 1.00pm on Oct 26th 2010. Meet at the cafe at the corner of the park just there. A little further away is Hyde Park Corner tube - and it is a nice walk up the park - following Park Lane to Marble Arch.

    This will be our first demo for several years, but as we think you will agree the issue of Cuts is so terrifying that we could not stand by and do nothing.

    So let's show 'em we ain't gonna take this lying down.

    All survivors (and allies) are welcome to join up and post on the new Forum at http://madpride.org.uk/forum/

    Do join up and post. All opinions valued (but please no flaming or personal attacks). (NB as of this weekend 16th October there is a problem with Dreamhost databases. Hopefully this will be fixed by 18th Oct)

    And do come on the day if you can!

    Here are some fab photos of Street Art
    There is now a new Facebook group here
    madpridemark (i.e. me) from time to time is Twitting here

    Enquiries: 07542 459321 07766 124472

    yours madpridemark

    Notes: This is a general email sent out to all on Mad Pride UK lists to UK folk and in other parts of the world too.
    People in London (with no email address known) will be mailed out (snail mail).
    People's email addresses are not kept online or on the "cloud" at all.
    Nor are they divulged to any other organization.
    If you are interested please let others know if you can.

    15.10.2010 Peter Beresford's write-up on the Community Care blog

  • Little Wing is a forum for people with experience of mental health difficulties based in Dundee, Scotland. Established in February 2000 the organisation seeks to represent the views of those with experience of mental health difficulties through meaningful and effective involvement at all levels of planning, design and delivery of mental health care and recovery.


    2002?

    Westfield Association
    Full web archive

    The Westfield Association

    The Westfield Association was started in 1971 as a Dundee branch of the Mental Patients Union based in London. The founder members were James Stewart, David Henderson and Arthur Foote.

    Our first meeting place was the old Y.M.C.A building on Constitution Rd. Dundee. The building is now subsequently run by Dundee Voluntary Action and houses several voluntary organisations including Little Wing. Around a year later some controversy arose around the word 'Mental' being used in the Association's name, it was decided by the patrons that the name 'Mental Patients Union' was just adding further stigmatism. During a meeting in Westfield Place, Perth Road, Dundee, attended by a psychiatrist and strongly supported by students from Dundee University it was proposed, then agreed that the 'Mental Patients Union' by unanamous vote be disolved, thus the Westfield Association was born.

    The Associations meeting venue soon changed to St. Pauls Church on Commercial St. Dundee, it was at this time that the Westfield Association Constitution was created by founder Arthur Foote. From that point on the group was classified as a self-help group.

    The Westfield Association has fought successful cases involving social security for in-patients and for members who were in the locked ward at Liff Hospital, Dundee. During the 70's, 80's and early nineties the Westfield Association was not allowed to meet in Liff Hospital.

    In the late seventies articles and letters were published in Le Figaro a French, Paris based Newspaper, encouraging people who had experience of being mental patients to take on board the principles of the Westfield Association, and to form branches in France and other European countries. There are now branches in Holland, Belgium, Germany and recently in Madrid in Spain.

    If you would like more information about the Westfield Association please contact:

    William Dow 01382 642765

    2002 Chipmunkapublishing "The Mental Health Publisher".

    From the first website - Alexa information

    Chipmunkapublishing

    Chipmunkapublishing

    1) Jason Pegler - "A Can Of Madness"

    A Can Of Madness is an autobiography on manic depression by the founder of Chipmunkapublishing Jason Pegler. Jason's middle name is pro-active and has established remarkable contacts in the Uk and the US to fight for the rights of those who suffer from mental distress. He lectures explaining why he was driven to write such a personal account of his life and inspires others to do the same. He discusses his responsiblities as author, publisher and mouthpiece for the user movement. Funded by A Mind Millennium Award, which enabled Jason to realise his dream A Can Of Madness is already a significant text for the mental health user movement.

    2) Dolly Sen - "The World Is Full Of Laughter"

    On October 19th the memoir "The World Is Full Of Laughter" will be launched at the Lavender Pub, 112 Vauxhall Walk, London, SE11 5ER (0207 7735 4440). The book is a deeply moving personal account of a girl striving to come to terms with mental illness and is as hard hitting as A Can Of Madness in many respects. The book is a magnificient achievement and an engaging and spectacular read. Chipmunkapublishing are delighted to introduce their second author and anyone who is sensitive to mental health issues is welcome to attend. The event will start at 7.00pm sharp. The book will soon be available from this website and other sources.

    New Authors (Writing your problems down helps you deal with them!)

    Chipmunkapublishing specialises in publishing stories of people who suffer from mental distress. We will become the worldwide voice of the mentally ill for the 21st century. We encourage autobiographical accounts but issues of confidentiality where an author assumes a pseudonym are acceptable and can be discussed with team members.

    All work will be read and if your writing does not meet the requirements first time you can reapply. We will let you keep the copyright if you wish and we will print, market and distribute the book.

    A writer may take an active or as passive a role as is desired. We can do everything for you or if you are ambitious you can network via our database and contacts and with our advice. We will provide a mentoring role where possible whilst at the same time respecting that you may have other commitments or may have periods when you are not well. However we are not a professional counselling service and anyone who needs serious help should go to our links page to get help.

    The more you wish to publicise yourself and your book the more help you will get. Nothing would make the team happier than to see you move on from having the chipmunk logo on your book to having the Bloomsbury logo there. Chipmunk will understand. He's always smiling. Send in memoirs, novels, short stories, songs or poetry. Shorter works would have to be part of anthologies however and proceeds would go to help new authors.

    Once Chipmunkapublishing covers its initial costs (which will not take long as we will do a small print run for the first edition and then publish on a print on demand basis) you will get 10% of the proceeds from your book. Some authors are encouraged to apply for funding from other sources to pay for our costs. This could really make a difference for you if you want your book to be a big hit. This leaves us with more money to spend on marketing. There will never be any cost to you.

    Chipmunkapublishing promotes primarily through the charity circuit, conferences and Ecommerce.

    After publication of their book authors are invited to join Chipmunkapublishing or Equal Lives on a voluntary basis as a method of user empowerment if they are suitable and there are vacancies available.

    The user movement in England research, proposed by Diana Rose in the autumn of 2000, began in 2001 under Jan Wallcraft. It was published as On Our Own Terms (summary The Mental Health Service User Movement in England) in May and June 2003.

    Jan Wallcraft's study began in 2001 with these aims:

    (1) To describe and analyse the mental health service user/survivor movement in England (in particular to find out about the extent to which black service users are part of this or are organising separately)

    (2) To describe and analyse the extent and effectiveness of user involvement in England

    (3) To make policy recommendations to build on and improve the current situation.

    first half of 2001 A postal survey of "all local mental health user groups in England"

    "Jan Wallcraft's History". The two reports below were very important publications in the development of survivors' history, but some of their history should be read with caution. The research began in 2001.

    In a letter of 18.7.2003, Jan Wallcraft spoke of "the research into the mental health service user/survivor movement carried out by myself and the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health user research team". The The Mental Health Service User Movement in England is the "summary of the main findings" (20 pages of shiny paper) - On Our Own Terms is the "full report" (108 pages available as a .pdf file from the Sainsbury Centre website

    May 2003 - The Mental Health Service User Movement in England, by Jan Wallcraft and Michael Bryant. The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health Policy Paper; 2 19 pages.


    "Summary

    This policy paper aims to identify and analyse organisations comprising adults who are users of mental health services across England. No systematic attempt has been made until now to find out the extent and scope of the mental health service user/survivor movement, nor how far it represents the wider constituency of service users and survivors, including those from minority ethnic groups. A postal survey was conducted of all local mental health user groups in England. In all, 318 user groups responded to this survey and 25 were interviewed in depth. National leaders of the movement were also interviewed. All of the research was carried out by users themselves."

    2.6.2003 On Our Own Terms - Users and survivors of mental health services working together for support and change, by Jan Wallcraft with Jim Read and Angela Sweeney, published by The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health on behalf of the User Survey Steering Group

    Includes Table 4: "Key developments in the service user/survivor movement in England" which we have quoted from substantially.

    On Our Own Terms was "published on behalf of the User Survey Steering Group but copyright The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. However, "the views expressed in this report are those of the User Survey Steering Group and not necessarily those of the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health". There was some overlap between the User Survey Steering Group and the "research team".

    Service Users Research Enterprise (SURE)

    At the September 2014 meeting of the Survivors History Group, Constantina [Stan] Papoulias and Jenny Walke led a discussion about the Service Users Research Enterprise (SURE) and its current research projects.

    SURE is based at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London. Its research is collaborative, involving users and professionals, but it tries to test the effectiveness of services and treatments from the perspective of users and carers. SURE was founded by a clinical psychologist, Til Wykes, in 2001 and is co-directed by her and by Diana Rose, a psychologist who obtained her degree whilst a patient in a psychiatric hospital (early 1970s). Diana is a member of the Survivor History Group and a pioneer of survivor history as well as of survivor research. On 6.3.2014, Diana posted on our timeline the following historic message:

    "I have just been appointed Professor in User-Led Research at IoP, King's College London. No doubt some would see this as co-option of movement intellectuals but I am quite pleased and think I can make a difference 'inside' the system whilst respecting those who choose to do this from the outside. Best wishes, Diana"

    Before moving to SURE, Diana was the lead survivor researcher at the Sainsbury Centre. She has told the Survivor History Group that

    "Survivor research in mental health can be traced back to two programmes of work in Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) - Strategies for Living at the Mental Health Foundation, and User-Focused Monitoring at the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. These were established in 1996, the same year that INVOLVE was founded as Consumers in NHS Research".

    SURE is the largest unit within a university world wide to employ people who have both research skills and first-hand experience of mental health services and treatments. In January 2005 a paper "Information, consent and perceived coercion: patients' perspectives on electroconvulsive therapy" by Diana S. Rose, Til H. Wykes, Jonathan P. Bindman, and Pete S. Fleischmann, was published in The British Journal of Psychiatry. It showed that the patients view had been unfairly dismissed in much medical research. The article included a "Declaration of interest" that Diana Rose and Pete Fleischmann had been recipients of ECT and that Jonathan Bindman had administered it.

    SURE's work on consumer perspectives on ECT influenced current NICE guidelines, and in 2011-2012 Diana Rose co-chaired the NICE Guidelines on the Service User Experience in Adult Mental Health Services.

    Information about SURE's current projects will be found at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/depts/hspr/research/ciemh/sure/projects/SURE- Projects.aspx

    We discussed the project on drug side effect and the project about assessing the impact of user involvement. We were particularly interested in the Dragon Cafe (every Monday) where, we were told there are activities reporting on and discussing research.

    SURE is discussing writing a history of SURE and would like the history group to be involved. We all felt we needed to know more about SURE and welcomed the possibility of involvement in its history project, and Stan and Jenny's promise to come back.

    life and living "Resonance Radio programme made principally by and for psychiatric service users featuring music, arts and interviews" website - about life and living -

    Wednesday 1.5.2002 Earliest listings for Resonance104fm

    Tuesday 30.12.2003 First? Life and Living programme on Resonance104fm - "14.30 Life and Living - Slightly distressed magazine show - Mick Hobbs - (Listings)

    Wednesday 31.12.2003 - "23.00 Life and Living special - Counting down... a specially prepared transatlantic magazine mixdown leading to the New Year, Resonance style. - Mick Hobbs" (listings)

    Tuesday 6.1.2004 - "14.30 Life and Living - Slightly distressed magazine show. - The 'life and living' team - website - email - (listings)

    Tuesday 13.1.2004 as above

    29.11.2005 episode 129 - The first in the archive of programmes

    Whispers from The Offing is a collection of songs by various artists paying homage to four decades of Kevin Coyne's music

    Guardian 9.9.2002

    Mental health workers on the march

    Freedom fight

    Raekha Prasad

    Hundreds of demonstrators are planning to go ahead with a protest against the government's draft mental health bill, despite an offifcial rally having been cancelled for fear that marchers might be at risk, given the public mood following the Soham killings.

    The Mental Health Alliance, a coalition of organisations, called off the march in central London next Saturday because it "could not guaruantee the health and safety of march participants in the atmosphere of misunderstanding of people with mental health problems in the wake of events in Soham". Instead, the alliance intends to organise a lobby of parliament in mid-October.

    Most mental health charities are opposed to the draft bill, which would reform the 1983 Mental Health Act, because they say it would broaden unacceptably the vgrounds for compulsory treatment.

    Cully Downer, coordinator of Insight, a service users' group in Brighton, and an organiser of Saturday's protest, says he has received some 500 requests for information and hundreds of emails from people who plan to attend. He has met police to discuss security and says they have no concerns.

    "There's been an amazing amount of interest," Downer says. "We've had emails from all over the country saying: 'Go for it' and 'We're going to come.'

    "We didn't change our minds. The alliance changed theirs. There have been no threats to our safety. The alliance linked the opposition to the bill directly to Soham, but in our view there isn't a link."
    Information about the march at:
    http://pages.zdnet.com/cullyd/thenoforcecampaign - (archive)
    * The forcing issue, p10

    thepsychotic.org.uk EXTRACTS

    PHARMERS WEEKLY
    Over-medicated schizos cover-up

    probe

    The end of the line for the "I was only following the treatment plan" or so-called "Nuremberg" defence?

    Sectioning for beginners p.122

    "Pesky" Patients Problem? p.30

    Clinical uses for tear-gas p.130

    Drugging and drug issues for Drugsmen

    News in Brief

    Alliance postpones challenging stigma until public opinion is "more favourable"

    The Unholy Alliance, a collection of mentally healthy charities, today called off its planned challenge to discrimination and stigma in the light of recent items published in the Daily Mail suggesting that the public may, in the current climate, be prone to discrimination and stigma.

    PILL

    As Unholy Alliance chair, Pill Pharmaceutical, of Restructure, explained to The Psychotic, "We are in a very difficult position, on the one hand we need to break the link that the public has between madness and violence, but on the other, we don't want to upset anyone at this sensitive time. The last thing we want to do is to give the media the chance to make any connection between mad people and the events in Soham, so hopefully they won't read our press release which mentions both."

    BALL

    The death of the story was given further momentum by comments from Dick Stream, of Mind , which no-one can remember.

    NUT

    In a moment of group insanity, a number of survivors decided they were against discrimination and stigma anyway, but, as another spokesman for the Unholy Alliance, Countess Marmite Wallaby said "they're mad, so we don't expect anyone to pay any attention to them."

    KNACKER

    No one from Liberty was available to give two hoots.

    Charity Chief calls for access to "latest and best"

    Clive Previous, Chief Executive of Rebrand, has demanded that all mad people are given access to the latest modern logos. "Many thousands of people with NSF are stuck on the old-fashioned logos, sometimes for years on end," said Previous, "and this causes severe confusion, particularly with the proliferation of National Service Frameworks".

    "Most of today's modern logos have far fewer side effects, and the average member need not be exposed to a rebranding exercise for many years."

    TURKEY

    Mind, the National Association for Doves, supported the call for newer logos. Said Chief Executive, Dick Stream, "Doves no longer adequately represent our commitment to people with Mind Membership, we will be pressing for the adoption of a turkey as our logo of choice".

    DODO

    The sanity of the debate was briefly interrupted by Iver Diagnosis of SOS, an extinct user group, who suggested that more effort should go into alternatives to logos. Diagnosis said, "SOS would like a return to old-fashioned services that predate any form of logos, things like 'helping people deal with distress'". He was immediately detained for this obviously psychotic outburst.

    No-one from Consignia was available for comment.

    Stop press: Scientists discover link between new logo and rethinking crime and punishment, rethink disability, rethink music, rethink beer and rethink rubbish.

    Where

    Psychiatry

    Leads...

    Psychiatry has often led the way. We had out of town asylums long before supermarkets got in on the act. We used opiates and LSD before they became popular and made imaginative use of electricity long before IBM. And now, with the publication of this Act, we set an example that others must surely follow. Here are some suggestions:

    The Tall Buildings Act

    Following September 11, all buildings over three stories would be locked up for public safety.

    Andersons Law

    As a result of the risk of financial irregularities, all auditors would have their hands surgically removed to prevent them being dipped into any tills.

    Trains (Danger To Others) Act

    No train shall move out of a station unless preceded by a man with a red flag. Speed kills.

    Parliamentary allowances

    In recognition of the particularly distressing job performed by Members of Parliament, they have decided that six months of clinical insanity or dangerous personality disorder is insufficient to justify deeming a member's seat vacant. The Speaker of the House of Commons, Millicent Martin, said, "six months' clinical insanity is simply not enough to differentiate from their normal behaviour".

    Fairer financial treatment for the mad

    Currently there is a loophole that denies service providers the right to charge someone for a service they are compelled to receive. This is clearly discouraging the development of expensive services for people who don't want them. The government has signalled its determination to remove this anomaly. Further, in an attempt to stimulate innovation in this area, grants will be made available to help government supporters to develop new compulsory services, as well as a guaranteed income stream (patients under treatment orders).

    New research

    Scientists have discovered that prolonged exposure to mobile phones causes brain tumours in rats. The government quickly announced legislation banning the sale of mobile phones to rats.

    Safeguards for sensitive cases

    In order to ensure that complicated decisions are made in the most transparent and politically independent manner, restriction orders will be available for the Home Secretary to apply to "dodgy characters" at his discretion. These will be of unlimited duration and subject to scrutiny if the Home Secretary feels this is appropriate.

    CLASSIFIED

    New image sought

    Newspaper editors yesterday appealed for a new photograph of a psycho-killer to replace the ageing image of Christopher Clunis. A spokesman said, "don't bother, there's another ten years in this one."

    Pet rescue

    Toothless old watchdog (superseded by inflatable poodle) retiring. Never seen much action. Bloated and overweight. Seeks good retirement home. Extremely obedient but does not respond well to challenging tasks. Preference will be given to comfortable red bench in the SW1 area. Can you give MHAC a home?

    Have you seen?

    A confused and bewildered old chap answering to the name of LIBERTY? This ramshackle old codger is having trouble with his sight too. He was last seen heading towards Guantanamo Bay to ensure the Human Rights of the camp X-RAY inmates. He is sorely missed by all loonies in the bins of the United Kingdom who can't understand how he overlooked their Human Rights.

    The Psychotic believes

    Madness is an elevated state of mind. Many seek madness but only a minority achieve it. The Psychotic aims to bridge the gap between the incomprehensible world of the sane and the madness that we understand.

    The Psychotic is produced by mad people (a clinical diagnosis is helpful but not essential), if you wish to contribute, please contact us using the links below. All contributions are accepted on the following basis:

    all items copyright The Psychotic

    all contributions will be anonymous

    the anonymity of other contributors must be respected

    all contributions must be funny

    the editors sense of humour is final.

    Lost & Found

    Missing: the survivor movement, last seen in 1997 under a large pile of consultation documents.

    Not found: meaningful service user comment, anywhere in the media.

    Wanted: useful occupation for ASWs once duties under Mental Health Act are passed to Approved Mental Health Professionals (care assistants or work experience placements).

    Over-medicated schizos cover-up probe. The end of the line for the "I was only following the treatment plan" or so-called "Nuremberg" defence?

    PHARMERS'

    Drugging and drug issues for Drugsmen

    27 May 2005

    Rutland Healing Group
    Heritage Mental Health
    Recovery See Contact and information

    The Rutland Healing Group website (defunct, no archive found) described it as a steering group for Heritage Mental Health.

    The Rutland Healing Group is a user, past-user and carer group of like-minded friends who meet bi-weekly for supper and centering prayer.

    It started on 16.7.2004 with about 14 members.

    In summer 2005, the group started to plan a history of mental health project called Heritage Mental Health.

    Heritage Mental Health began in July 2007 with funding of £5,000 from Comic Relief.

    The project aims to increase awareness about the treatment of patients and to celebrate the progress made to combat stigmatisation and discrimination in this century. An exhibition will tour schools, museums, hospitals and churches in Leicestershire and Rutland.

    2008

    Exhibition

    From 7.3.2008 to 4.10.2008, Progress in our Age, the exihibition, will be touring Leicestershire and Rutland. See leaflet Lizzie with exhibition
    Lizzie Maitland with some of the exhibition's seven panels

    Book The project leader, researcher and volunteers have written an historical book with seven chapters discussing medicine and madness from the distant past top the present, with an eye to the future:

    Leicestershire and Rutland Heritage of Mental Health by Lizzie Maitland, Christopher Moore and Viv Addey. Advisory Editor Roland Wood
    Chapter 1: Early Medicine in The Ancient World, by Lizzie Maitland and Christopher Moore
    Chapter 2: The Divine Infliction of Madness in The Middle Ages, by Lizzie Maitland and Christopher Moore
    Chapter 3: Mental Healing, Confinement and Protest in Early Modern Period, by Lizzie Maitland and Christopher Moore.
    Chapter 4: Who Was 'Mad' in Eighteenth Century Britain?, by Christopher Moore
    Chapter 5: The Madman, His Family, The Parish, The Poor Law and Mad-Doctors Of 19th Century, by Lizzie Maitland and Christopher Moore
    Chapter 6: Psychiatric Compulsion or Care in the Community? by Lizzie Maitland, Christopher Moore, Roland Wood and Viv Addey.
    Chapter 7: Looking to the Future - A Medical Solution to Freedom, by Lizzie Maitland

    Pamphlets
    Users and past-users have written their Life-Stories in two pamphlets

    Recovery

    "Rutland Healing Group is becoming a charity and is changing its name to Recovery Resources' Charity in April 2008" (Maitland Moore and Addey 2008)

    4.7.2008 Constitution of Recovery
    Area of benefit: Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland 6.8.2008 Registered as charity 1125395 - RECOVERY
    Charitable objects: "To advance the education of the public in the subject of mental health. To promote the physical, emotional and mental health of sufferers of any mental health problem in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland through the provision of support, education, advocacy and practical counselling. To advance education, relieve mental health conditions, problems, discrimination and stigma; to preserve and protect mental health by the use of centring prayer, the Christian healing ministry and complementary alternative medicine."
    Website: http://www.recoveryresourcescharity.co.uk/

    Heads Up 1 -

    Heads Up 2 -

    2011 Current website does not mention the Progress in our Age exhibition or Leicestershire and Rutland Heritage of Mental Health book.

    13.12.2004 First web archive of cymar.org.uk. The website was archived until 11.4.2006, but with no recorded changes. Only 11.4.2006 archives appear recoverable.


    WHAT IS CYMAR?

    Cymar is the Welsh Association of Mental Health Patients' Councils and Advocacy Schemes.

    Cymar brings together like-minded people from all over Wales. It is a User- lead organisation aiming to encourage, develop and support Mental Health Advocacy in Wales.

    Funding has currently been obtained from the Mind Millennium Awards and the United Kingdom Advocacy Network.

    We are currently working to identify other sources of funding .

    Mind Cymru are supportive of the organisation and have nurtured and encouraged its development.

    A possible aim, to quote Terry Simpson of UKAN at the first CYMAR conference, might be for the organisation to protect the soul of advocacy, which after all is "the jewel in the Service User's Crown."

    Other recoverable files (re-archived on this site) are:
    Representatives

    Contesting Psychiatry: Social Movements in Mental Health by Nick Crossley. London: Routledge 2006

    "Building on his extensive research, the author explores the key social movements and organisations who have contested psychiatry and mental health in the UK between 1950 and 2000" (Google Books extracts)

    Contents

    Mark Cresswell:

    At the risk of gross over-simplification, I think the 'story' Nick presents of the period 1970 - 2000 (ish) is this: Political activism in mental health mirrors wider features of society and tracks socio-cultural change. In other words, when you have a political culture that stresses Left-wing activism, Marxism, the legitimacy of trade unionism, you will get mental health activism that follows suite. In terms of the history of user/survivor activism in Britain this sets up a series of 'correspondences' of the following kind:

  • 1970s - there is Left-wing activism/trade unionism (Scargill and the NUM/ 'beer and sandwiches at No. 10' etc.) therefore the MPU, the 'Fish' manifesto, a Marxist theoretical frame;

  • 1980s - Marxism declines, there is the rise of the 'New Right', an assault on trade union power (the Miners Strike), the ascendance of consumerism and managerialism in welfare therefore Survivors Speak Out, partnership, collaboration, user involvement in service planning/audit, 'experts by experience' etc.;

  • 1990s - the rise of anti-globalisation/anti-capitalism movements, direct action as a pattern of activism (Reclaim the Streets) influenced by anarchism therefore Mad Pride, 'separatism' and a positive revaluation of the 'madness experience'.

    Interviewees

    "35 key players were interviewed" (p.6) "not all interviews are cited in the study" (p.7)

    Interview 1 "psychiatrist... head of a Medical Research Council research unit at the time", p.112 and a lot later. Helen Spandler is sure this is Alec Jenner.

    Interview 2 "psychiatrist and activist" in "Social Movements and Working Utopias"


    Interview 2 "patient and MPU activist" Andrew Roberts (p.147... Two blanks in this quotation are filled in as Valerie and Brian Douieb). Interviewed 14.1.1998.

    Valerie and I were involved for a while in the Claimants' Union. I'd also been involved in PROP [a prisoners' rights organisation]. Brian Douieb was in what's now the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)

    Valerie and I were, for a time, very active in Tottenham Claimants Union. I think it was misleading of me to say I was "involved" in PROP.

    ... three people came from [name], one of whom was a racist, and whoever was trying to keep that meeting together was having to avoid getting racism written into the Mental Patient Union because [he said that] one of the problems with mental hospitals was that there were too many black nurses. I mean this guy was having a field day, y'know,... In theory there was nothing to stop that being written down and that being our policy. It would have been turned over at the next meeting but...

    This (page 156) refers to an event that I spoke to Nick about. The drift is correct but I think the detail of the account is inaccurate. I was distressed on the day of the interview, for personal reasons, and this may explain the inaccuracies and exaggeration in what I said.


    Interview 3 [interview 4 on p.166] a professional involved in BNAP (see p.171) - a woman (see p.178) - Clearly Shula Ramon who confirms (email 29.9.2012) that although she cannot recall all the detail, the general drift corresponds to what she said.

    Interview 4 "a social worker, academic and activist" in "Social Movements and Working Utopias"

    I came to Britain... I was quite convinced that Britain had community care in place in mental health... I was involved with the Laingian thing in '67, '68 and 69. I went to visit Cooper, where he was working in Shenley. I went to talk to him. I went to some of the seminars in London... I used to go regularly to Kingsley Hall and to the other community... I was convinced that there was a lot more of community care, in fact actually happening here. It took me a couple of years to understand that, you know the anti- psychiatry bit was totally isolated and had no bearing on the system. So I started to look around and to think, you know, does it exist anywhere? I was in the States a couple of times during the '70s and in fact in '82 I went to spend a month in community mental health centres in San Francisco, to see what they were doing there. And I was quite sure at the end that... whatever is happening in the States is not the solution. And then I read an article in The Guardian on the Italian thing, and I started to think 'how do I get to know it better'... And I met Basaglia, who cordially invited me to come and visit. [but he died before the visit was possible]... So I went to see Franca Basaglia [his wife] and she put me in contact with people in Trieste. And the person from Florence put me in contact with the people from Gorizia and that area. And then I went to spend a month in Cortona, which is near Arezzo. And at the end of the same year I went for a month to Trieste. So until about '86 I would go for about ... two months a year to different places in Italy.

    Nick notes that he was unclear about names on his tape. Shula Ramon has corrected "Contonia" (which does not exist) to Cortona, and Vicenza to Arezzo.

    People knew absolutely nothing about Italy. There weren't even misconceptions at that time. There were just no ideas. So we thought 'what can we do about that?' And together with the Italians we thought maybe we could bring some of them over to show what, to talk about what they were doing. Also to come with videos, with photographs, and they had an exhibition...

    British Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry

    We had a couple of meetings. We decided to meet on a regular basis. We wanted, obviously, to change views and practices in psychiatry. We were quite convinced that the medical model is not the best model for psychiatry, and also responsible for a lot of the problems. So we decided to go for specific campaigns rather than a very general crusade. And obviously to try to recruit people as well. we then had a couple of study days, one, in particular, about ECT and major drugs. we used the [London School of Economics]... as a place, as a space, but we also used sometimes [local] MIND [offices] especially in Hammersmith and Fulham, because one of the members was on the management committee there...

    ... it is very difficult, as I said, to get users to be the initiators. there were always one or two or three people but not as a group. It was basically impossible to get them to work as organisers. To do a different thing. They would initiate a very good idea that, you know, that could potentially do a lot, but they were not at that time able to organise things. And I think that this was problematic because the professionals were the organisers there was partly a sense of resentment, on both sides, of the sort of inequality, but also inevitably there was some imposition on say the structure of the day....

    ... quite often decisions were not taken or were not followed up and, you know, organisationally it was not an effective organisation basically.

    ... probably we soften, the professionals, we soften the hard edge of the messages in the way we would convey it. I think either because we didn't want to burn our bridges or we wanted to make the message possible for professionals to hear, lots of issues around that.

    ...there was all the time this insistence of making the distinction. So professionals were not allowed to be users and professionals. And at the time there were very few people who defined themselves as users who also worked. There were issues about... labelling

    Survivors Speak Out

    ... again there was no place to have a dual identity. But people like [name], who I met, I think, at the second meeting of Survivors, [...] She came to me at the end of the meeting and said, 'what a shame that the organisation cannot sustain the duality'. But it couldn't... So, you know, professionals cannot vote, cannot be members of committees...


    Interview 4 "Mental health professional and activist" p.167 - p.169 Manchester - May be Nigel Rose

    Interview 1 "a mental health worker and activist" in "Social Movements and Working Utopias"

    [We] "actually had a visit in Manchester, which was very exciting for us because... it... stimulated us to think. It felt right. It felt very much where we were at and we put a lot of effort into putting our own manifesto together and used that as a kind of discussion document with them!

    "I've been back to Trieste about four times and one of the things that I did was try and move people forward in manchester and try to get people more interested in what was going on... I organised sort of, about three or four separate visits and [name] did too... We either drove or flew groups of users and mental health workers to Trieste to see what was going on there. Stay for a week, have a look at what was possible and using that to stimulate people to think about how they might do things in their own context"


    Interview 5 "Mental health professional and activist", p.168
    might be
    Mark Greenwood - See quotes

    Interview 3 "a mental health worker and activist" in "Social Movements and Working Utopias"

    "a group from Manchester, especially Nigel Rose, Paul Baker, Mark Greenwood and AnnWalton [Anne Walton] played central roles" [in Asylum] (source)


    Interview 6 "Psychiatrist and activist" p.170 - Stephen Ticktin

    Interview 5 "psychiatrist and activist" in "Social Movements and Working Utopias"


    Interview 7 "Survivor activist" in PROMPT and CAPO, p.173. Probably Frank Bangay. See also p.180 about 1985. Frank says the quotes sound like him (there is only one other person they could be) and that he recalls someone telephoning him and meeting for an interview at Waterloo Station.


    Interview 8 "Survivor activist", p.175


    Interview 9 "Survivor activist", p.175 - At Brighton? in 1985 (see p.180) - p.188 on SSO and UKAN - p.204 interviewed in 1997 when he had been active for 15 years (1982) - Peter Campbell


    Interview 10 p.182 - a key ally who stepped down (see pp 185-186). Loraine Bell?


    Interview 11 "mental health professional and activist" from Chesterfield. p.181. Rick Hennelly confirms that he was interviewed


    Interview 12 "Survivor activist" Wales (p.187) See also p.207. Mike Lawson?


    Interview 13 Marjory Wallace


    Interview 14 p.197


    Interview 15 "Survivor activist" (p.202)


    Interview 16 "Survivor activist" (p.203)


    Interview 17 "Survivor activist" (p.207)


  • The History of the Survivors History Group

    "The Mental Health Service User/Survivor Movement Group" (long title) first met in April 2005 - Following a meeting in November 2004

      small love fish
    The group launched its (full) Manifesto in January 2006 - This is an extension of the short manifesto drafted in 2005

    Manifesto - we, as a group, aim to:

    Be committed to learning from history

    Value and celebrate the contribution that mental health service users/survivors have made and are making to that history

    Highlight the diversity of service users/survivors in all its expressions

    Highlight the diversity and creativity of the service user/survivor contribution through personal accounts, writings, poetry, art, music, drama, photography, campaigning, speaking, influencing...

    Collect, collate and preserve service user/survivor history

    Make service user/survivor history accessible to all who are interested in or studying mental health

    Use our history to inform and improve the future

    Operate as an independent group. The independence of any archive we set up is necessary to prevent limited access to such a resource and to expose the deliberate loss of history - in particular the lived experience of psychiatric system survivors.

    Be service user/survivor-led with a steering group made up of a majority of service users/survivors with some interested and co-opted allies

    The history of individuals is the root of the service user/survivor movement

    We agreed that the group would -

  • Say no to funding from drug companies

  • Be controlled by service users

  • Ensure easy access to any archives we create particularly for service users and members of the public

  • Reserve the right to comment on histories (of the movement) written by non-service users

  • Respond to articles/histories written by others about the history of the service user movement - and about the history of mental health services written from a service user perspective.

  • Encourage wider dissemination of the groups work and make as much material as possible available electronically

  • Acquire materials from the full range of people involved in the mental health service user movement including minority groups

  • Acquire material through loans and donations but when possible we will also purchase material.

  • Ensure that any historical materials or resources are kept safe kept safe and insured. We will also seek to develop the capacity/skills to repair any material that we acquire.

  • Develop a publications policy

  • Our basic founding principle is that service users own their history

  • Be conscious that we are making history as we work and seek to record the activities of the group


    History of the History Group

    Sometime in 2004, Thurstine Basset decided to clean out his loft space, where he came across a Glasgow Link video.

    Wednesday 21.7.2004 Thurstine sent an email headed "20 years since Glasgow Link presentation at Mind conference" to "a load of people" he thought would be interested.

    On Thursday 30.11.2004, Thurstine Basset and Peter Lindley organised a general meeting about service user history at the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.

    Arising out of this, the first meeting of the History of Mental Health Service User/Survivor Movement Group was called in April 2005

    Meetings were held on an (approximately) three-monthly basis from 2005 to 2007. At the October 2006 meeting it was minuted that "a fair amount has been done but an awful lot more needs doing".

    The group has attended three main conferences: In September 2005 - March 2006 - September 2006

    We participated in a mental health training conference in September 2005. This was the Annual Mental Health Training and Education conference at ORT House in Camden Town. We put on an exhibition and Thurstine Basset and Peter Campbell ran a workshop on teaching history of service user action.

    1) Begining of the Survivors History Portable Exhibition - 2) Idea for the Survivors History Training Programme

    During 2005, the group drew up its Manifesto, which outlines its aims. This was published in January 2006.

    There was then an exhibition of material on the Together stall at the Mind conference in March 2006

    Also in the Spring of 2006 we adapted an existing website on the history of mental patients unions to become this draft history of the movement.

    A history of the group published in OpenMind stimulated correspondence.

    The presentation we gave to open the Coming of Age Conference on Wednesday 6.9.2006 (detailed elsewhere) covered the whole period of the modern movement (1970s on). The first part, by Joan Hughes, has now been included on the web in the form it was presented and Peter Campbell has provided a personal account of the period from 1985 to 1995. Clare Ockwell is working on a version of her parts for the web.

    It has been agreed that the group needs to move forward in three key areas - (The website should report progress)

  • Archiving Working out what we want to collect - making copies of key documents - listing where collections are and what they contain.

  • An exhibition This might be held in Together's exhibition space. Designing the exhibition would bring together key documents which should be catalogued and copied, wherever possible.

  • Fund raising for an archivist

    The main meetings are now held about every six weeks. Meetings are minuted and an email mailing list, plus telephone and postal contact, keeps members informed between meetings. Attendance of members at meetings has fluctuated greatly.

    1.4.2008 Essex Conference We ran a books and information stall for the conference. This gave us the opportunity to develop our portable exhibition with the addition of Survivor Poetry of the 20th century.

  • History Group meetings listing draft:
    2004
    30.11.2004 (about 20 people at the Sainsbury Centre) "What are we going to do about the history of the mental health service user movement?"

    2005 January 2005 email
    21.4.2005 Lincoln House: Peter Campbell - Frank Bangay - Peter Lindley - Peter Munn - Peter Barham - Glenda Philpott Kimber - Peter Beresford - Andrew Daw - Thurstine Basset - Clare Ockwell
    20.6.2005 Lincoln House
    18.7.2005 10am-12.30: sub-group at the Sainsbury Centre attended by Dominic Walker, Peter Beresford and Thurstine Basset. Peter Campbell and Premila Trivedi unable to attend. Discussed funding, draft manifesto and a possible location for archives.
    3.8.2005 (planned for the Sainsbury Centre)
    [Thursday 15.9.2005: ORT Conference]
    [Following meetings at Together's office at Lincoln House]
    23.1.2006: Anne Beales (Chair) - Peter Campbell - Thurstine Basset - Frank Bangay - Peter Beresford - Glenda Philpott - Clare Ockwell - Principles and Manifesto agreed.

    2006 13.3.2006 12:30-16:00 [Notes on meeting not distributed - may not have been preserved]
    [27.3.2006: By attachments to email, Laura Schofield distributed extensive feedback from the 8.3.2006 Conference in Birmingham]
    15.5.2006 12:30-16:00: Anne Beales - Thurstine Basset - Frank Bangay - Andrew Roberts - Joan Hughes - Apologies from Clare Ockwell
    [10.7.2006: Email from Peter Campbell who was preparing an article about the group for OpenMind]
    Monday 7.8.2006: Anne Beales, Clare Ockwell, Andrew Roberts, Joan Hughes, Frank Bangay, Thurstine Basset. Meeting included preparation for 6.7.2006 Mind conference
    Together's new national office established at 12 Old Street, London, EC1V 9BE Telephone 020 7780 7300 - External link to contact information.
    Monday 30.10.2006: Thurstine Basset (Chair), Andrew Roberts, Clare Ockwell, Peter Campbell, Joan Hughes, Sara Stanton (minutes)

    2007 Monday 13.1.2007: Thurstine Basset, Anne Beales (Chair), Andrew Roberts, Clare Ockwell, Peter Campbell, Joan Hughes, Sara Stanton (minutes), Pete Bloomer and members of Speak Out! Mental Health History Project, Ian Fellows (Management Consultant), Frank Bangay
    15.3.2007 The Together Littlehampton office closed. Laura Schofield finished co-ordinating the group's meetings for Anne Beales. Sara Stanton took over for some time. Then Mandy Chainey. [Both at Together]. Task assumed by Andrew Roberts [Not at Together] in 2008.
    20.3.2007: Peter Campbell and Joan Hughes. Apologies in advance from Andrew Roberts (and others)
    [31.3.2007: Draft constitution circulated to the group by email from Andrew Roberts. Under the constitution, Anne Beales was later elected treasurer.]
    [27.4.2007: Grant from Hamlet Trust confirmed to the group by email from Peter Campbell]
    10.5.2007: Peter Campbell, Anne Beales, Frank Bangay, Joan Hughes, Peter Munn, Andrew Roberts. [Apologies from Sara Stanton]
    18.6.2007: Anne Beales (first part), Clare Ockwell, Peter Campbell, Frank Bangay, Joan Hughes (minutes), Andrew Roberts (chairing) Apologies: Peter Munn, Sara Stanton, David Kessel - Website adopted.
    Thursday 19.7.2007: Peter Campbell, Chandra Fowler, Joan Hughes, Andrew Roberts, Clare Ockwell. Apologies: Anne Beales, Peter Beresford, David Kessel.
    Wednesday 31.10.2007

    2008 Wednesday 6.2.2008 History Group Short List
    Thursday 21.2.2008 History Group Interviews
    Monday 25.2.2008 History Group Interviews
    Thursday 20.3.2008 Mandy Chainey, Peter Campbell, Philip Ruthen, Frank Bangay, Andrew Roberts. Apologies from Clare Ockwell and Anne Beales.
    Tuesday 1.4.2008 Essex Conference
    Wednesday 14.5.2008 To receive a report from our researcher. Anne Beales (chairing), Peter Campbell, Philip Ruthen, Frank Bangay, Andrew Roberts (minutes), Clare Ockwell, Thurstine Basset, Peter Barnham, David Armes, Ian Ray-Todd - Apologies and greetings from: Colin Gell, Richard Shrubb, Anne Cooke, Kati Turner, Neil Campbell, Peter Beresford, Peter Munn, Mandy Chainey, Joan Hughes, David Kessel. The group approved payment of £75 for three historic (1974 - 1975- 1976) videos to be converted to digital form for preservation and study. Andrew Roberts elecetd secretary.
    Thursday 29.5.2008 Special meetings with historians and a journalist on what survivor history is for. Andrew Roberts, Helen Spandler, Peter Campbell, Ian Ray-Todd, Phil Ruthen, Mark Cresswell, Catherine Jackson, Frank Bangay, Sophie, Clare Ockwell, Joan Hughes, Roger and Felicity Lansdowne.
    Thursday 19.6.2008: Researcher/Treasurer/Secretary sub-committee on funding and related issues
    Tuesday 1.7.2008 Catherine Jackson, Peter Campbell, Frank Bangay, Andrew Roberts. Probably at Bunhill Quaker Meeting House
    8.7.2008: Funding report due from Phil Ruthen
    8.7.2008 Phil Ruthen, Frank Bangay and Mick Hobbs to make podcast
    Tuesday 22.7.2008 11.30-1.30 in the Board Room at Together: Provisional agenda: 1) Proposed benefit event (Frank Bangay) - 2) Poetry evening - 3) Listing the group's achievements as the basis for development and fund-raising - Reviewing opportunities - Discussing where we are going and what our priorities should be - Discussing what we need to do to achieve this. 4) Discussion of Phil Ruthen's fundraising report. 5) Discussion of developments following our conference with historians.
    Tuesday 26.8.2008 11am-1.30 at Bunhill Quaker Meeting House
    10.9.2008 to 12.9.2008 Asylum Conference - meeting and exhibition
    Monday 22.9.2008 11am-1.30 in the Board Room at Together
    Premila Trivedi, Ian Ray-Todd, Phil Ruthen and Andrew Roberts (minutes). Anne Plumb in email contact. Phil reported on Open Mind article. Premila talked about the history of SIMBA
    23.10.2008 Bunhill Quaker Meeting House Ian Ray-Todd, Kati Turner, Hayley Bacon, Angela McManus, Jayasree Kalathil, Andrew Roberts
    7.11.2008 in the Board Room at Together
    10.12.2008 at Together Clare Ockwell chairing - Peter Campbell present - Andrew Roberts taking minutes - Also present: Phil Ruthen, Frank Bangay, Angela Sweeney, Ryan Davies, Premila Trivedi, Paul Moloney, Robin Hanau, David Pilgrim
    minutes
    2009 Monday 12.1.2009 in the Training Room at Together
    Monday 2.2.2009: Meetings cancelled by snow
    Monday 2.3.2009 at Together. Present (approximate order of arrival) Andrew Roberts - Patsy Staddon (from Bristol) - Joanna Moncrieff - Peter Barham - Clare Ockwell - Robin Hanau - Malaika Mahadev and Lizzie Maitland (both from Rutland). Apologies were received from Peter Campbell, Kati Turner, Anne Beales, Phil Ruthen, and others.
    Monday 6.4.2009 at Together. David Armes, David Webb, Michael Knight, Andrew Roberts, Peter Campbell.
    Monday 11.5.2009 at the Mental Health Foundation. Mary Nettle David Armes, Andrew Roberts, Patsy Staddon, Kevin Simpson, Nelsy, Kati Jane Turner, Angela Sweeney. Peter Campbell. Apologies from Eamer O'Keeffe, who could not find the building.
    Monday 1.6.2009 at Together Kevin Simpson, Peter Campbell. Angela Sweeney, Jagadish Jha, Ruth Sayers, David Armes, Eamer O'Keeffe, Barbara Norden, Andrew Roberts
    Monday 13.7.2009 at Together Andrew Roberts, Peter Campbell, Clare Ockwell, Frank Bangay, Sophie Mirrell, Angela Sweeney, David Armes, Michael Knight, Dinah Ibrahim. Apologies from Hilary Egan and others.
    Wednesday 5.8.2009 David Armes and Andrew Roberts visited Suresearch in Birmingham
    Monday 24.8.2009? Joan Hughes and friends celebration at Together.

    Monday 16.11.2009 FEEL Meeting: LARC Centre: Proposal for a joint Pageant of Survivor History adopted.
    Monday 21.12.2009 FEEL Meeting: LARC Centre:
    Monday 18.1.2010 FEEL Meeting: LARC Centre:

    2010 Thursday 21.1.2010 Survivors History Group at Bunhill Quaker Meeting House: David Armes, Peter Campbell, Andrew Roberts
    Monday 15.2.2010 FEEL Meeting: LARC Centre: Nathalie Fonnesu, Anton Manickam, David Kessel, Charleen Elliot, Nelsy, Maribel Moore, Sarah Barrattt, Sergio Almasy, Obin Ahmed, Crisp, Paolo Fiora, Andrew Roberts, Pia Khan and Frank Bangay.
    Wednesday 3.3.2010 FEEL Pageant Planning
    Monday 15.3.2010 FEEL Meeting: LARC Centre:
    Friday 19.3.2010 A Pageant of Survivor History
    Wednesday 7.4.2010 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Peter Campbell - David Armes - Sheila Beskine - Barbara Norden - Andrew Roberts - Robin Hanau - Nathalie Fonnesu - Issues discussed included the scope of the group and a proposal for a more visually effective exhibition.
    Wednesday 26.5.2010 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Fabian Tompsett - Peter Campbell - Joe Kelly - David Armes - Sheila Beskine - Nelsy - David Kessel - Andrew Roberts - Philip Morgan
    Wednesday 14.7.2010 Birmingham seminar
    Wednesday 28.7.2010 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Peter Campbell, Andrew Roberts, David Armes, Nelsy, Anton Manickham, Nat Fonnesu.
    Wednesday 25.8.2010 Nottingham Conference
    Wednesday 29.9.2010 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Peter Campbell, Andrew Roberts, Clare Ockwell, Carole Murray, Nat Fonnesu, Frank Bangay,
    Fabian Tompsett, Philip Morgan, Nelsy, Eamer O'Keeffe, Sophie Mirrell.
    Wednesday 24.11.2010 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Andrew Roberts - Clare Ockwell (Chai) -
    Sheila Beskine - Carole Murray - Frank Bangay - Fabian Tompsett (Minutes) - Philip Morgan - Nelsy - Eamer O'Keeffe - Daniel Johnson - Oisin Wall - Robert Deller.
    Discussed aims of group. What we do includes the context of survivor action. This would include the 15.7.1967 to 30.7.1967 Roundhouse Congress (London) on the "Dialectics of Liberation", largely organised by radical psychiatrists who later called themselves "anti-psychiatrists". Since May 2007, our main depository for information has been this website, but individual members of the group maintain substantial physical archives, listed on the website. A brief history of our accounts was given. There will be a regular sale of Asylum magazine at meetings and we discussed contributions on Survivors Speak out, the Self-Harm Movement, THACMHO and Robert Deller's Splitting in Two. We discussed the Self Defence Coalition. Sheila passed round Ginko leaves to remind everyone of the importance of non-verbal communication, and a line from the Holocaust Memorial in Kilcaldy was read: "We are as big or as small as the space we make for those who are not like us."
    2011 Wednesday 26.1.2011 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Andrew Roberts - Eamer O'Keeffe - Dominic Walker - Nat Fonnesu - Sheila Beskine - David Kessel - Frank Bangay - Fabian Tompsett - Philip Morgan -
    Agreed principles of autonomy of the parts of the group (eg London meeting and Internet Forum)
    Wednesday 30.3.2011 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Daniel Johnson -
    Sheila Beskine - Nat Fonnesu (in charge of the agenda) - Carol Murray - Fabian Tompsett (chairing) - Andrew Roberts (taking notes) - Frank Bangay.
    Agreed to focus our development work on: 1) networking with other groups involved in survivor history - 2) archiving printed records (in coordination with our web archiving)
    8.4.2011 Edinburgh David Reville (Canada) at Oor Mad History.
    Tuesday 12.4.2011 Preston. Anne Plumb representing the Survivors History Group.
    Thursday 14.4.2011 Manchester David Reville, Anne Plumb and Andrew Roberts, joint presentation
    Wednesday 25.5.2011 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Sheila Beskine - Peter Campbell - Nat Fonnesu (chairing) - Andrew Roberts (taking notes) - Frank Bangay - Nelsy - Carole Murray - Sophie Mirrell - Eamer O'Keeffe - Douglas Taylor.
    Wednesday 22.6.2011 Community Archives and Heritage Group AGM and Conference. Anne Plumb - Sheila Beskine - Fabian Tompsett - Philip Morgan - Andrew Roberts, attended from Survivors History Group.
    Wednesday 27.7.2011 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Anne Plumb - Fabian Tompsett (chairing) - Eamer O'Keeffe - Andrew Roberts (taking notes) - Frank Bangay - Graham Eastop
    Agreed tasks on archives (Graham to talk to Terry Simpson, Anne to talk to Bradford Commonweal, Fabian to talk to Craig Fees, Andrew to digest Community Archives material). Noted that Nina Rideout at Perceptions is keeping a copy of every magazine and newsletter. Frank noted about Eric Irwin: He spoke badly about Cane Hill where he recalled people being chained to radiators. Eric came into his own towards the end of PROMT. He came up with the name CAPO. His main strength was a speaker. He did not miss meetings or demonstrations. Disappointed that more people did not come to CAPO meetings. Did not organise Gigs. Wrote letters to express his point of view.
    Wednesday 28.9.2011 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Kyoko Shiina - Fabian Tompsett (chairing) - Eamer O'Keeffe - Andrew Roberts (taking notes) - Frank Bangay - Sheila Beskine - David Kessel - Philip Morgan - Carole Murray -
    Agreed a budget, short and long mailing lists, online catalogue of physical archives.
    Wednesday 30.11.2011 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Fabian Tompsett (chairing) - Peter Barham - Eamer O'Keeffe - Andrew Roberts (taking notes) - Graham Eastop - Sheila Beskine - Kyoko Shiina
    Launch of Critical perspectives on user involvement,. Copies are being sold at £15.00 instead of the cover price of £26.99 at our London meetings (Over 35% discount)
    Meeting approved (so far unaudited) accounts up to 31.12.2010

    2012 Wednesday 25.1.2012 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Fabian Tompsett (chairing) - Peter Barham - Andrew Roberts (taking notes) - Graham Eastop - Sheila Beskine - Carole Murray -
    Meeting modified annual reports up to 31.12.2011 and called for further discussion of the reports which will be modified and/or approved at the next meeting.
    Agreed to focus our development work on: networking and archiving (as agreed 30.3.2011) and the development of our narrative history based on histories written from different perspectives and interlinked.
    Wednesday 4.4.2012 Survivors History Group 1pm Together [NOT 28.3.2012] We will talk about Peter Campbell's contribution to writing the history of Survivors Speak Out and about other aspects of writing our history.
    Peter Campbell, Andrew Roberts, David Kessel, Peter Barham, Eamer O'Keefe, Fabian Tompsett, Peter McGeary.
    Survivor History Group News
    Wednesday 30.5.2012 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Peter Campbell, Andrew Roberts, Peter Barham, Ian Ray-Todd, Carole Murray, Graham Estop, Peter McGeary.
    Up to date Survivors (minutes)
    June 2012 The Survivor History Group visited Oor Mad History in Edinburgh.
    Thursday 21.6.2012 Travel to Edinburgh from different parts of England. Stay in a Youth Hostel.
    Friday 22.6.2012 Workshop and social meeting people involved in all aspects of Oor Mad History and others as well. Carole Murray (Sussex), Graham Estop (Sheffield), Anne Plumb (Greater Manchester), Andrew Roberts (London) and Mark Gallagher (Glasgow), met Anne O'Donnell, Be Morris, Colin Murray, Jimmy Osborne, Kirsten Maclean, Lin Clarke, Renata Edge, Rhian Thompson, Steve Tilley and others from Edinburgh.
    Saturday 23.6.2012 Visit the Oor Mad History archive and study how they do it.
    Sunday 24.6.2012 Travel home
    Wednesday 27.6.2012 Community Archives and Heritage Group AGM. Fabian Tompsett and Andrew Roberts.
    Survivor History Group News
    Wednesday 25.7.2012 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Peter Campbell, Andrew Roberts, Ian Ray-Todd, Graham Estop, Dina Ibrahim, Hagir Ahmed, Peter McGeary (taking notes).
    Wednesday 15.8.2012 Meeting about proposed book. Together. Thurstine Basset, Anne Plumb, Peter Campbell and Andrew Roberts
    Survivor History Bulletin
    Thursday 27.9.2012 Survivors History Group 1pm Together [NOT Wednesday 26.9.2012] Peter Barham, Peter Campbell, Andrew Roberts, Ian Ray-Todd, Graham Estop, Peter McGeary (taking notes).
    A photocopy of the Survivors Speak Out
    #Self Advocacy Action Pack was taken.
    Survivor History News
    Wednesday 28.11.2012 Survivors History Group 1pm Together. No minutes provided. Andrew Roberts, Peter Campbell, Peter Barham, Ian Ray-Todd, Dina Ibrahim, Hagir Ahmed, Moussa (amongst others) were present.
    Eamer O'Keeffe The Other Side of the Window - a collection of LGBT poems published Octobar 2012
    Copies made of Eating Distress 1991 notice - Nottingham Training the Trainers 1991 and its address list of attenders.

    2013 Wednesday 30.1.2013 Survivors History Group 1pm Together No minutes provided. Andrew Roberts, Peter Campbell, Ian Ray-Todd, Peter Barham and Hagir Ahmed (amongst others) were present.
    Agenda: Peter Campbell's report - Northern group (Graham and Anne and hoping to meet Terry?) - Internet (allocated 30 minutes) - David - Book (reviews of proposal were favourable, but we were asked to revise)
    Survivor History News
    Wednesday 10.4.2013 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Peter Barham, Peter Campbell, Andrew Roberts, Ian Ray-Todd, Graham Estop; Sheila Beskine, Hagir Ahmed, Frank Bangay, Nat Fonnesu, David Kessel, Peter McGeary (taking notes).
    Peter Campbell's account of research into the history of Survivors Speak Out from 1993-1996 was followed by a discussion of creativity in the survivor movement.
    Wednesday 29.5.2013 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Hagir Ahmed, Frank Bangay, Sheila Beskine, Peter Campbell, Carole Murray, Clare Ockwell Ian Ray-Todd, Andrew Roberts and Peter McGeary (taking notes).
    Agenda: Peter's research - Sheila's concerns - Minutes - Book - What else we do - Core Arts
    News from Survivor History.
    Wednesday 31.7.2013 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Hagir Ahmed, Frank Bangay, Sheila Beskine, Peter Campbell, Graham Estop (Sheffield), Nat Fonnesu, David Kessel, Ian Ray-Todd, Andrew Roberts, Christina Young (Liverpool) and Peter McGeary (taking notes).
    Agenda: Patsy Staddon's gift - Celebrating David Kessel - Chapter by Peter Campbell in a new book - Peter's research - Sheila's memories as an art therapist at St Clement's hospital, Mile End - Christina's Report - the St Clement's festival.
    Survivor History Group News September 2013
    Wednesday 25.9.2013 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Andrew Roberts, Sheila Beskine, Ian Ray-Todd. Peter Campbell, Peter Barham, David Kessel, Clare Ockwell and Peter McGeary.
    Agenda: "Our voices, Our choices, Our futures" - Art therapy
    [Wednesday 16.10.2013: Clare Ockwell the Survivors History Group at the Our voices, Our choices, Our futures conference of participants from secure hospitals in Milton Keynes]
    Survivor History November Notes
    Wednesday 27.11.2013 Survivors History Group 1pm
    Together
    Andrew Roberts, Sheila Beskine, Ian Ray-Todd, Peter Campbell, Peter Barham, Naheen Ali, Nathalie Fonnesu, Peter McGeary (Notes).
    Copy of accounts given to Peter Barham
    Agenda: Survivors Speak Out 1994-1996.
    Copies made of Away Day notes 3.12.1994 and Jim Read's paper ""Future of SSO" 1.12.1994
    Survivor History Group Minutes and Report

    2014 "unspeakable" events are unspoken
    Survivor History News
    More Survivor History Group News
    Wednesday 29.1.2014 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Frank Bangay, Peter Barham, Sheila Beskine, Peter Campbell, Brian Douieb, Liz Durkin, Nathalie Fonnesu, David Kessel, Barbara Morden (Birmingham), Andrew Roberts, Phil Ruthen, Peter McGeary (Notes).
    Agenda. The main item was a discussion of Eric Irwin and his contribution to the movement. Full list: OATS Project - Introduction - Louse/Helen Report - National Disability Arts - Patsy's book - Eric - Barbara's presentation.
    Wednesday 26.3.2014 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Discussion of The Last Asylum by Barbara Taylor and of the launch event in connection with this. Those who attended the launch shared their memories for the benefit of all.
    Wednesday 28.5.2014 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Peter Barham, Sheila Beskine, Thurstine Basset, Peter Campbell, Ian Ray-Todd, Andrew Roberts, Phil Ruthen, Peter McGeary (Notes).
    Agenda included a discussion of art and mental health in relation to Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). Peter Barham and Thurstine Basset visited Paris to research this for us. The meeting gave us another opportunity to investigate the way in which pictures, textures and objects communicate. The meeting was minuted by Peter McGeary and has now emerged as an illustrated web article


    Wednesday 30.7.2014 Survivors History Group 1pm Together Naheen Ali, Nathalie Fonnesu, Ian Ray-Todd, Andrew Roberts. We discussed various features of the Shuffle Festival including Deaf Films Screening. Ian, Nat and Naheen kept the meeting going with a lively discussion, which was not recorded, but seemed to be enjoyed.
    Wednesday 24.9.2014 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Constantina Papoulias and Jenny Walke led a discussion about the the Service Users Research Enterprise and its current research projects. Also present Ian Ray-Todd, Andrew Roberts, Nathalie Fonnesu, David Kessel, Peter Barham, Dina Ibrahim and Hagir Ahmed. We discussed the future of the Survivors History Group. Peter Barham and Andrew were asked to consider future meetings - using a draft of events for discussion made by the group - and report back. A set of notes was exchanged between them and Peter Campbell, Ian and Nat which included: The future of the group and related issues. Mary Barnes and survivor art along with visits to the exhibition. The poetry of Howard Mingham could be discussed. A web report on the meeting we had about Van Gogh has been put online and it was suggested we should have a similar report on the work of Mary and Howard - related to survivor history. June 2015 fifty years anniversary of the Kingsley Hall Asylum discussed. Suggested we could discuss the recently published collection of inmate's views. Also suggested a discussion of the history of survivors' responses to Community Treatment Orders
    [28.10.2014 Howard Mingham memorial. Brick Lane, 7pm-9.30pm
    David Kessel, Dina Ibrahim, Hagir Ahmed and Andrew Roberts attended]
    [23.11.2014 Feel November meeting. Sanity for Beginners]
    Andrew brought the accounts of the group up-to date and reconciled them with the bank account. Copies were been sent to Nat, Peter Campbell, Peter Barham and Ian.
    Wednesday 26.11.2014 Survivors History Group 1pm Together Jenny Walke, Andrew Roberts, Peter Barham, Nathalie Fonnesu, Ian Ray-Todd, Peter Campbell, Peter McGeary (Notes).
    The future of the group - and other issues.
    Accounts for 2014 were shown to the group and it was agreed that Peter Barham, Peter Campbell and Andrew Roberts to meet as a sub group in the New Year to discuss accounts, once Andrew has received full release of paperwork from the bank.
    2015
    [January to March 2015. Mary Barnes exhibition]
    [CANCELLED: Wednesday 28.1.2015
    Thursday 12.2.2015 Group visit to Mary Barnes exhibition and to Kingsley Hall
    Wednesday 25.3.2015 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Discussed Howard Mingham and Mary Barnes and survivor art.
    Present: Andy Brooker, Jenny Walke, Andrew Roberts, Nathalie Fonnesu, Peter Campbell, Emon (Notes), Nelsy, David Kessel, Naheen Ali,
    Saturday 28.3.2015 Jennifer Walke on the history of the present Bethlem at the Museum of the Mind.
    Tuesday 31.3.2015 Group visit to the Museum of the Mind
    Wednesday 27.5.2015 Survivors History Group 1pm. Together. Beyond Bedlam Peter Campbell started a discussion about collaboration and conflict in 1997 by reviewing "Beyond Bedlam: Poems written out of Mental Distress", which was published in 1997 in cooperation between Royal Bethlem and Survivors Poetry and Jenny Walke made a presentation about the modern Bethlem Hospital (1930 to the present)
    Present: Andrew Roberts, Ellen Camroux, Jenny Walke, Peter McGeary (Notes), Peter Barham, Peter Campbell, Nathalie Fonnesu, Nelsy, Frank Bangay.
    [June 2015: Fifty years Kingsley Hall Asylum]
    Survivor News
    Survivor History Special - Bethlehem Hospital.
    Wednesday 29.7.2015 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Introductions followed by a presentation of Standing up to madness - An autobiography by Nelsy and discussion. Nelsy focused on the contrast between "capitalist" and "natural" ways of relating to one another. Discussion followed by Peter Campbell's introduction to Mental Health Service Users in Research: Critical Sociological Perspectives, edited by Patsy Staddon and discussion. The fancy word of the day was autoethnography.
    Present: Andy Brooker, Jenny Walke, Andrew Roberts, Peter Campbell, Nelsy, David Kessel, Naheen Ali, Ellen Camroux, Peter McGeary (Notes), Hagir Ahmed, Melanie Anne Ball (Cassel), Orla Cassidy, Carla Mayes, Hélène Réglé (Club des peupliers, Paris), Ute Maria Kraemer, David Turner.
    [August 2015 Restructuring]
    Survivor History Group Newsletter Summer 2015
    Wednesday 30.9.2015 [NOT 23.9.2015] Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Present: Peter Barham, Frank Bangay, Peter Campbell, Ellen Camroux, Hagir Ahmed, Andrew Roberts, Jenny Walke, Graham Estop, Peter McGeary (Notes). Dina Ibrahim spoke to us by telephone.
    Graham spoke with regret of the loss of the National Perceptions Forum, a group of people with severe mental distress who were funded by Rethink, but "never controlled by Rethink". The main discussion was of Splitting in Two: Mad Pride and Punk Rock Oblivion led by Frank Bangay and Peter Campbell. David Kessel had been expected for a discussion of his Penny Poets Manifesto and the Schizophrenic Salvation Network introduced by Peter Barham, but was unable to.
    Wednesday 25.11.2015 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    We discussed a chapter by Anne Plumb in Helen Spandler, Jill Anderson and Bob Sapey's new collection of articles on Madness, distress and the politics of disablement. We heard from Laura Mitchison about a project on Centerprise history.
    Present: Andy Brooker, Hagir Ahmed, Andrew Roberts, Nathalie Fonnesu, David Turner, Naheen Ali, Laura Mitchison, Peter McGeary (Notes). After the main meetiing: Laura Able.
    Hagir Ahmed said that her Sudanese community group include many mentally distressed people who have witnessed trauma of war, including rape. Now experiencing domestic abuse and violence. In her view the medicalisation of health issues 'papers over the cracks' that originate in peoples misuse of others.
    Wednesday 27.1.2016 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Present: Andy Brooker, Hagir Ahmed, Andrew Roberts, Ute Maria Kraemer, Jenny Walke, Nelsy, Peter Barham , Peter McGeary (Notes).
    UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: out of the frying pan into the fire?
    Wednesday 30.3.2016 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Present: Andy Brooker, Andrew Roberts, Naheen Ali, Laura Able (from Halifax), Frank Bangay, Peter Campbell, Peter McGeary (Notes).
    Discussions focused around Madness, Distress and the Politics of Disablement. Laura asked "what would change if society and services were related to a social model of mental distress?". We thought that multiple meanings of being a survivor included the intersection of race, class, family, employment and unemployment, mental distress and other categories. (See chapters by Frank Keating and Barker and Iantaffi). We wondered how many societies had welfare systems that provide the possibility of surviving without paid employment? In their chapter, Russo and Shulkes, say discussions of "disability" include whether this is the name we want for our own experience, disability as qualifying for welfare, and disability as a concept around which to campaign for rights (as in the UN Convention). Andrew, Frank and others thought the survivor movement has given insufficient attention to welfare issues. We bookmarked Wallcraft and Hopper's chapter on Amaryta Sen's "capabilities approach" which rethinks the "framework of welfare economics". Andy Brooker noted the debate and book launch for All Our Welfare - Towards participatory social policy by Peter Beresford on 11.5.2016. We received news of the pending publication of Searching for a Rose Garden, with articles by many of our members, in mid-May.
    Wednesday 27.4.2016 Survivors History Group Extraordinary Meeting 1pm Together - Talking to Patsy Staddon
    Present: Andy Brooker, Andrew Roberts, Peter McGeary (Notes), Patsy Staddon and Bonnie the Poodle.
    Wednesday 25.5.2016 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Andrew Roberts, Peter McGeary (Notes), Frank Bangay, Peter Campbell
    Peter Campbell on the relations between the disability and survivors movements. Wednesday 27.7.2016 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Andrew Roberts, Graham Estop, Liz Davies, Naheen, Jasna Russo, Elaine. Nelsey, Jenny Walke, Andy Brooker, Peter McGeary
    What would a survivor history museum contain?
    Wednesday 28.9.2016 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Andrew Roberts, Helen Spandler, Dina Poursanidou, Graham Estop, Ute Kraemer, Brian Douieb, Peter Barham, Ann Plumb, Frank Bangay, Peter Campbell, Peter McGeary.
    Saturday 20.10.2016 Charlotte Mew plaque unveiling at 2pm
    Wednesday 30.11.2016 Survivors History Group 1pm Together CANCELLED

    From Andrew Roberts Wednesday 9.11.2016

    "In January 2015 we had to cancel a meeting of the Survivors History Group. This followed a difficult period working out how we could mange as a group, raising money, and monitoring accounts, for example.

    "Careful thought and discussion followed and, as a result, we separated the groups administrative issues from the general meetings (they are dealt with by a small finance group) and prepared a series of meetings with substantial discussions of themes (Mary Barnes and creativity, for example) and books. These have been much appreciated, but although records have been kept of the discussions, these have not been adequately reported to readers of the email newsletter. This is is one of the many things on which I have fallen behind.

    "The meetings we fully planned finished in September. Because of the personal problems of members, we have decided to suspend future meetings whilst we seek people to plan and run them. Andy Brooker has suggested that we put together a small group of people in the London area who could take on collective responsibility for planning and organising some London meetings. Together have said they will be happy to continue providing our free meeting space when we are ready to resume.

    "Those of us who currently organise the meetings will carry on. What we seek is other people to join us so that routine tasks like being responsible for a meeting, welcoming people, making hot drinks and (possibly) providing refreshments, are shared. If you think you could help with this, please let me know. Once we have a few volunteers, we can discuss planning a London programme for 2017.

    Best wishes, Andrew [Roberts]

    Wednesday 25.1.2017 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Stephanie Taylor King, Peter McGeary, Naheen, Andrew Roberts
    The history (and future) of NSUN, "an independent, service-user-led charity that connects people with experience of mental health issues to give us a stronger voice in shaping policy and services". Presentation by Stephanie Taylor King, who is the web editor and information officer (part time) at NSUN
    We also discused the team organisation for the London meetings, the latest Asylum magazines, the Charlotte Mew plaque, SUMP and Rose Gardens as topics for future meetings.
    Survivor History (including NSUN)
    Wednesday 29.3.2017 Survivors History Group 1pm Together
    Cheryl Prax, Frank Bangay, Peter Campbell, Andrew Roberts, Peter McGeary (Notes), Nelsy, Andy Brooker, Graham Estop, Nathalie Fonnesu, Stephanie Taylor King, Shahd Ibrahim Mukhayer and Mohamed Mukhayer.
    A meeting about preserving our past and supporting each other now and in the future. Recalling who we are and who we are becoming (together).
    In the second half of the meeting we remembered the lives of Dina Ibrahim (1982- 2017) and Robert Dellar (1964- 2016) and Patricia Chambers (1965-2016) and discussed a proposal for a more extensive coverage of survivor lives in Asylum magazine. We also looked at the Asylum article "Don't Be Mean. Be Kind" by the Edinburgh survivors study group "Mad People's History and Identity". We discussed experiences of suicide, of family and friends supporting on another, and of asylum and community in the Sudan and in England.
    We began with discussion of "Supporting each other in the future" in Peter Beresford's book All Our Welfare - Towards participatory social policy . Andrew Roberts presented a paper relating All Our Welfare to survivor history. This provides background to the Survivor History Group's London meetings this year. We have received a letter about the Science Museum's new Medicine Galleries and another about an historic concert featuring poems of Charlotte Mew set to music.
    Thursday 20.4.2017 Andrew Roberts attended archiving session at the Bishopsgate Institute, where we plan to deposit the Mental Patients and Survivors archives preserved by Andrew and Peter Campbell.
    Monday 24.4.2017 Charlotte Mew recital at Temple
    Meeting7.5.2017 Sunday 7.5.2017 History walks through Homerton listening to pre-recorded audio about birth, madness and creativity, inside and out of the Institution. Voices representing people associated with Centerprise, the Mental Patients' Union and Core Arts. Starting Homerton Station at 2.25 and 3.25pm. Available online. Followed by the launch of Centerprise history projects at Sutton House. 2 and 4 Homerton High Street, London E9 6JQ, from 5pm to 7pm. Attended by Liz Davies - Brian Douieb - Helen Spandler - Liz Brosnan - Andy Brooker - Andrew Roberts - Nathalie Fonnesu and others from Survivors History. From 4pm to 5pm we met at Sutton House to discuss memories of the Mental Patients Union, the connection between Centerprise and MPU, the work of the MPU and the ongoing legacy.
    Wednesday 31.5.2017 Survivors History Group 1pm Together.
    Fabian Tompsett, Ajay Sawhney, Kerum Wallwork, Anne Plumb, Oisín Wall and Katie Gonzalez-Bell from the Science Museum, Graham Estop, Frank Bangay, Peter McGeary (Notes), Gordon Joly, Diana Rose, Sam Shakes, Nathalie Fonnesu, Stephanie Taylor King, Sarah Chaney, Andrew Roberts
    This meeting, about our living survivor heritage in people, objects, archives, websites, plaques, museums and art collections, began with an introduction from Fabian and Sam to the "healththrough history" legacy of Philip Morgan. Asylum magazine will be publishing memories of Patricia Chambers and Dina Ibrahim and has requested one on the legacy of Philip Morgan and health through history. We looked at an Asylum article about Leonard Roy Frank. Sarah Chaney, author of the Wellcome Library article (15.12.2016) "Where is the survivor archive?" then spoke and led discussion. legacy
    Thursday 15.6.2017 Philip Morgan's funeral. See crowd funding
    28.6.2017 Asylum Conference, Manchester
    Wednesday 26.7.2017 Survivors History Group 1pm. This will be the last at Together, 12 Old Street, as Together are moving.
    Kerum Wallwork, Anne Plumb, Sam Shakes, Nathalie Fonnesu, Stephanie Taylor King, Graham Estop, Andrew Roberts, Peter McGeary (Notes), Peter Campbell, Ute Kraemer, Denise McKenna, Stefano Peria, Drew McFadyen.
    Rose Gardens: Alternative dreams and realities - A discussion based on Searching for a Rose Garden: challenging psychiatry, fostering Mad Studies - a collection of articles edited by Jasna Russo and Angela Sweeney. See Survivors and Rose Gardens discussion document. We first discussed the evolution of the concept or poetic symbol (metaphor) of a rose garden. We then discussed (inadequately) the idea of "alternatives to something" and the alternatives projects discussed in the book. Finally we discussed "what is Mad Studies"? The Asylum slot focusing on the summer issue and articles in preparation. An article by Nat about David Kessel] was circulated, but David was not present to discuss it. News included our meeting at Wesley's Chapel in September and November. We will set up a heritage sub-group to discuss proposals respecting archives.
    9.9.2017 Loonies Fest at Kingsley Hall.
    16.9.2017 Kingsley Hall open houses
    Wednesday 27.9.2017 Survivors History Group 1pm-5pm. New meeting place: Lower Meeting Room, Wesley's Chapel, 49 City Road, London, EC1Y 1AU. Near Old Street underground station.
    Peter Campbell, Peter Barham, Peter McGeary (Notes), Sam Shakes, Kerum Wallwork, Liz Brosnan, Fabian Tompsett, Angela Sweeney, Daryl Brown, David Kessel. Andrew Roberts,
    The history and future of Welfare and participation - Based on Peter Beresford's book All Our Welfare - Towards participatory social policy , published in 2016. Peter Barham discussed what the book contained generally. He hopes to have this published as a review. Peter Campbell discussed the relevance of the book to the survivor movement. Peter Campbell, Angela Sweeney and Andrew Roberts have prepared some questions to send to Peter Beresford. Andrew talked about just "being together" at the family gathering after Dina's death and we looked at some features of Asylum magazine which emphasised community and mutual support. Sam Shakes introduced her books, Daryl Brown spoke about the work he has been doing on psychiatric drugs and sexual dysfunction and we had a wide ranging discussion of possible ways forward for the group.
    QUESTIONS: Peter Campbell: Peter Beresford talks about the disability movement's criticisms of charities. What does he think about the relationship between the survivor movement and major mental health charities over the years? - Does survivor involvement actually work? Looking at the 1980s and 1990s, I would say a lot of involvement did not achieve very much change. I do not know what the situation is like now. - Peter Beresford mentions Judi Chamberlin's book and talks about user-led alternatives. To what extent do these actually exist? Again, I think not a lot in the 1980s and 1990s, but I do not know about nowadays. Angela hopes for a discussion "round the current role of the media regarding the welfare system. There has been a stigma to claiming benefits for as long as I can remember, but we are now living in an age where TV programmes focus on people who receive benefits in horribly negative, damaging and stigmatising ways. I think it perpetuates an 'us and them' attitude, whereby people who work can hold and express denigrating attitudes towards people who do not. As a community and a society we do not sanction people who express those denigrating views. I am not sure what the solution is, but it would be interesting to think about and discuss. Andrew related the discussion to Peter Beresford's vision of a participatory welfare system. the implication of much of what was said seemed to be that more participation would mean more assimilation.
    Wednesday 29.11.2017 Survivors History Group 1pm - 5pm: Lower Meeting Room, Wesley's Chapel, 49 City Road, London, EC1Y 1AU. Near Old Street underground station.
    Peter McGeary (Notes), Sam Shakes, Kerum Wallwork, Liz Brosnan, Daryl Brown, Andrew Roberts, Stephanie Taylor King, Graham Estop, Jessica Campbell, Lucy Goldsmith, Liam Kirk, Dina Poursanidou, Helen Spandler, Andy Brooker, Mark Gallagher, Jenny Walke, Steffan Blayney, Ruth Silverleaf, Akriti Mehta, Ajay Sawhney, Frank Bangay, Ben Glass.
    Spirits of past, present and things yet to be (Christmas Carol). Peter McGeary, as the jolly spirit of the present, brought us food and drink to start our meeting in a friendly way. Spirits of the past then took us down the SUMP to the Scottish Union of Mental Patients of the early 1970s, and its part in survivor history. Mark Gallagher of the University of Glasgow told us about Thomas Ritchie. Mark is the author of in the "History of Psychiatry" called "From asylum to action in Scotland: the emergence of the Scottish Union of Mental Patients, 1971-2". We discussed the concepts of space and permeability that Mark uses. We all occupy physical and social spaces within which we have to act and some of these are more open to the world outside than others. Thomas Ritchie sought to secure his freedom from the space of Hartwood Hospital, near Glasgow, using a collective "grievance" of himself and other patients. We discussed the methods he used, how he found ways to interact with outside organisations and media, and the records he left. Mark's work is based on this SUMP archive, which Andrew Roberts showed us. After another round of refreshments, Helen Spandler spoke about the archive of Asylum magazine at te Wellcome collection at Euston and her plan to create a book from articles form its thirty year history. The spirit of things to be then suggested new ways to run the Survivors History Group in 2018 (see below). Bringing tears and hope, we talked about working with the Friends of Philip Morgan to preserve his legacy of "health through history", related this to survivor responses to deaths and other tragedies and to an extract from one of Sam Shakes' fairy tales for all ages. Liz Davies and Brian Douieb, founders of the Mental Patients Union in 1973, were unable to attend because of their work with survivors of child abuse. We are considering an email network of people, like them, on the history of patients unions in the 1970s.

    The spirit of things yet to be?

    From 2018 the Survivors History Group has a new pattern of meetings. Instead of regular bi-monthly ones we have more diverse ones working with others and with archives. One reason for this is to allow more attention to be paid to the development and preservation of physical and digital survivor archives. Four or five "events" are planned are planned for 2018. The first will be a Spirit of Philip Morgan joint event on Saturday 5.5.2018

    We are working on topics that will be Asylum magazine features and entries for the survivors history website. Some of these will link to meetings.


    Identity - Who am I?
  • The March edition of Asylum contains an article called "Creative identities, in the spirit of Philip Morgan" about contributions of survivors descending from Africa and Asia to the English survivor movement. It also contains a review Ravaged Wonderful Earth by William Park and an article discussing this relation to the preservation of survivor identity and culture. Both will be part of our Spirit of Philip Morgan exhibition.

  • We are cooperating with Jayasree Kalathil on a project to record the history of Black and Asian survivor history. This is part of the EURIKHA project
  • At Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, 277 Bancroft Road, London E1 4DQ

    The A11 on this map is Mile End Road. Buses 25 and 205 run along this road. Stepney Green is the nearest tube. The library and archives is on the east side of Bancroft Road, before you reach Alderney Road.

    During May 2018, Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives will re-stage the Power Writers Exhibition in memory of Philip Morgan (known as Spirit) and his work for Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO).

    The exhibition was launched by a special meeting on Saturday 5.5.2018 from noon to 4pm Remembering Philip Morgan, SPiRiT and his contribution to African and Caribbean history in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets at Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives. flyer pdf

    Four hours of memories and companionship hosted by the Friends of Philip Morgan (which includes the Survivors History Group). To include a presentation on survivor history and a survivor history exhibition. Everyone welcome. The launch coincides with the first anniversary of Philip's death. It is an open meeting and will discuss the significance of Health through History to all of us, as well as being a reunion for some, a time to reflect on how we cope with grief and also carry the legacy of our cultural "ancestors" forward.

    Wednesday 24.10.2018 10am to 5pm in the at Wesley's Chapel in City Road, London
    Harry Cumberbatch,, Sam Shakes, Liam Kirk, Anne Plumb (Manchester), Nelsy, Terry Simpson (speaker from Leeds), Peter McGeary (notes), Ruth Silverleaf and Akriti Mehta (EURIKHA), Steffan Blayney, Peter Barham, Keira Pratt-Boyden, Ben Ellsworth, Carolina Talavavera, Sabine Stuetz, Dina Poursanidou, Graham Estop (Shefield), Trevor Francillia, Frank Bangay, Nathalie Fonnesu, Christina Young (Liverpool), Naheen Ali, Fabian Tompsett, Raymond Smith, Lauri Allen, Vincenzo Passante, Karen Clarke, Andrew Roberts, Gemma Smith (Museum of Methodism).

    Main activities in the Kwanglim Room on the first floor, which is larger than the room we previously used. Throughot the day exhibitions were provided in the Kwanglim Room by different groups. We met at 10am to set these up.

    There was a morning talk (in the Kwanglim Room) on Methodism and madness in 18th century London and America (see outline of talk), followed by a film and tour of the Museum of Methodism (in the basement). The talk started twice (11am and 11.30am) because the speaker (Andrew Roberts) mistook the time! In the first session he talked about the mental experiences of John Marrant, author of A narrative of the Lord's wonderful dealings with John Marrant, a black (1785). Everyone received a copy of Power Writers and the Struggle Against Slavery (with information about John Marrant). The second session was more about John Wesley's book Primitive Physic (1747 and 1770) with its alternative therapies for Lunacy and Raging Madness, and the conflict between the madhouses of east London and the early Methodists. Copies of Primitive Physic were on sale in the Museum of Methodism.

    Documentation for the matters outlined in the talk will be found in Enthusiasm and Religious Melancholy on this site.

    Sometime after 12pm we were shown film about the history of Methodism in the Philadelphia Room, a large room in the basement, near the Museum of Methodism. After which people were able to visit the Museum using the leaflet "Museum of Methodism" as their guide. Some also visited Wesley's House, in the front of Wesley's Chapel, to see Wesley's machine for curing people with electricity. The online Teachers Information Pack is a useful guide.

    1pm Refreshments and socialising. Peter McGeary was our refreshments host.

    1.30 The Introduction started with details about claiming travel costs followed by an outline of changes to the Survivors History Group including the role of the Finance and General Purposes Committee and the possibility of an annual meeting similar to the present one. People presenting the exhibitions then introduced themselves and summarised what they had brought. After this, everyone else introduced themselves briefly. The number of people present meant this took some time, but it was time well spent. In introducing the afternoon speaker, Andrew Roberts said the whole day had been about networks. Historically, people who experienced extreme mental states have related to one another and others through religious organisations such as the Methodists and the history of the survivor movement before 1845 requires us to look at the history of spiritual organisations. Explicitly survivor organisations can be traced back to the 1960s (and before) and one of the most significant of these, uniting large numbers of groups, was the United Kingdom Advocacy Network of the 1990s and early part of the new millennium.

    2pm Terry Simpson talked about the significance of UKAN, the United Kingdom Advocacy Network, within the survivors movement, its strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures, and the politics of its ultimate demise. We circulated an outline of his talk before the meeting hoping this would help others join in the discussion, relating UKAN to activities they have knowledge of. There was a vigorous discussion that did just this.

    Terry's talk was and introduction to the general topic for the afernoon which was "MPU to NSUN via UKAN and Perceptions: The development of national (UK) networks from MPU in the 1970s to NSUN at present, with a special focus on UKAN (the United Kingdom Advocacy Network) and its magazine The Advocate and the National Voices Forum and its magazine Perceptions. Terry spoke with support from Graham Estop on the Voices Forum.

    We had hoped to have exhibition material about NSUN - The National Survivor User Network. In some senses, NSUN replaced UKAN. The future of NSUN itself is now difficult and it would be useful to examine the general issues relating to having a national survivor body, like UKAN and NSUN, that tries to bring us together.

    October 2018 Exhibitions

    A collection of The Advocate (UKAN's magazine) and some Perceptions magazines supported the talk and discussion. Terry distributed free copies of the June 2004 issue of The Advocate, which he used as one of his two "snapshots" of UKAN's activities.

    Dina Poursanidou, with help from Anne Plumb, provided an historic collection of Asylum magazines for looking at, plus present day ones to take away. Dina is a service user on the Asylum editorial collective. She told us that Asylum is not user-led but does seek to promote user led alternatives to medical psychiatry. It sees itself as a radical group. She thought it fair to describe it as run largely by 'academics', but the collective includes service users. They are all unpaid volunteers who put a lot of enthusiasm into producing the quarterly magazine. They seek to improve the diversity of the collective. Dina also spoke about the Survivor Researcher Network whose members are all survivors and whose slogan is "mental health knowledge built by service users and survivors. They have written a booklet called the SRN Manifesto Summary, copies of which Dina distributed.

    Harry Cumberbatch brought his display file (in historic order) of material about the first ten years of Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO). Copies of Power Writers and the Struggle Against Slavery were distributed and other THACMHO publications were displayed. Harry was supported by Raymond Smith and Fabian Tompsett. A collection in aid of the legacy group seeking to preserve THACMHOs archives and history raised £75.55p.

    Sam Shakes was present with her work. Books, artwork cards and mugs were available to view and buy. Sam told us that her experience of the Mental Health system led to her work supporting community models of Mental Health care. This is expressed in her art from 2008. The death of her friend Philip Morgan inspired her her latest project which is a writers group for people who have suffered loss, run at St Joseph's Hospice. Laurie Allen, a participant at the St Joseph's Hospice project, spoke about the book "Good Grief" that the group had produced and encouraged people to take inspiration from its helpful content. Sam, in her turn, inspired her five year old niece to write a story which has been published as a children's book.

    Anne Plumb provided material from her "Ear to the ground; Survivor Voices" collection.

    Friends of East End Loonies material provided leaflets and we had material by and about the survivor poets David Kessel and Howard Mingham.

    EURIKHA (Explorations of User Research: Impact, Knowledge and Historical Approaches) has been "Mapping the history of research, advocacy and activism by people with psychosocial disabilities, mental health service users and survivors.", THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, for about two years now. Members were present and briefly explained it, but will do so in greater detail in a future newsletter.

    3pm Refreshments, socialising and more opportunity to discuss exhibition material.

    2019

    Proposed meetings for 2019 are a visit to Bishopsgate Institute, in relation to creating a public archive of survivor material, and a topic meeting in the autumn, continuing our series related to the history of survivor networks, media and their archiving. This is a list of posible meetings and topics being considered:

  • At some time: A visit to the Bishopsgate Institute, opposite Liverpool Station, in London, to see and discuss the archiving of the collections currently stored by Peter Campbell and Andrew Roberts at their homes.

  • Possibly Autumn 2019 The history and future of Black and Minority Ethnic networks and media. Possibly open to comparison with other groups, if people wanted. Introduced by Jayasree Kalathil who is conducting research on the history of the Black and Minority Ethnic movement in the United Kingdom for EURIKHA. Archive material to examine and discuss to include SIMBA newsletters and THACMHO publications.

  • At some time: The history of Asylum magazine and the survivors movement from CAPO (Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression) to the present. Introduced by Anne Plumb and Helen Spandler

  • At some time: The history of survivor/user led alternatives and how they relate to mainstream provision like the United Kingdom's National Health Services. From People not Psychiatry (1969) and Judi Chamberlin's On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the mental health system (1978) to Peter Beresford's "participatory social policy" (2016) via "Searching for a Rose Garden. Fostering Real Alternatives to Psychiatry" in Berlin (2011). Introduced by Jasna Russo, Peter Beresford and Angela Sweeney. For case studies and archives we could search The Advocate, and Asylum.

  • A meeting outside London (Possibly Liverpool - Manchester - or Leeds) has been suggested, preferably in connection with an archive and the preservation of archives such as those held by Terry Simpson (in Leeds) and Anne Plumb (in Manchester).

    Themes we are working on with websites rather than meetings)

    Themes we are working on include the preservation of survivor culture including the work of Survivors Poetry (since 1991 and its pre-history), currently unfunded and maintained by volunteers, and the work consolidated in Ravaged Wonderful Earth - A Collection for David Kessel, which was published in 2013 and is now almost out of print.

  • We plan to continue working on our 2017 themes, including the history of NSUN - The National Survivor User Network (discussed January 2017) - Legacy: preserving our past (discussed March and May 2017) - Welfare and survivor history (discussed March and September 2017) - Roses: Alternative dreams and realities (discussed July 2017) - Mental Patients Unions and radical bookshops like Centerprise (the subject of an event in May) - the Scottish Union of Mental Patients and asylum roots (discussed in November).

  • Spring 2006 Some things you should know about user/survivor action: a Mind resource pack by Peter Campbell
    by Peter Campbell "This pack explains how and why the service user/survivor movement developed, what activists have been fighting for, what action they have taken, and what the movement has achieved. The pack is principally aimed at those who are not part of the movement, but whose work within the fringes of mental health services brings them into contact with it. Current activists will also find it an interesting (and perhaps provocative) read"

    8.3.2006 "Our Future Conference" in Birmingham. Organised by Together and the Mental Health Foundation

    The papers from this include a paper by Jan Wallcraft called On Our Own Terms with proposals for setting up a "National User Network".

    This statement by David Crepaz-Keay, the afternoon chair of the Conference, gives some idea of what it was about.

    "There has never been so much high quality service user involvement at a local level. People are involved in ways and activities that would not have seemed possible ten years ago. The people at this conference represent a snapshot of a huge volume of work that service users are doing day in and day out, predominantly on a voluntary basis.

    "Every month new groups spring up, new problems are encountered and new challenges overcome. At any one time, a group will be struggling with something that many others will have already solved. Our goal is to link these individuals and local groups together, so that the vast experience being built up can be of benefit to all.

    "We would like to build a national network of groups and individuals to help achieve this. This is not a new idea, nor is it our idea, rather it is another step on a journey started many years ago and continued by Survivors Speak Out,   UKAN,   On Our Own Terms and many others.

    "For too long the mental health world has been held back by the absence of an effective way to co-ordinate our energies and efforts; a way of learning from our combined successes and failures and responding quickly to the outside world. Over the next ten years, mental health services and the voluntary sector will change beyond recognition and we need to ensure that service users, as individuals and groups, are not left on the sidelines but are central to that change in all-over diversity."


    Report on SURF website:

    'Our Future - Doing it for Ourselves'
    MHF Conference Birmingham 8th March 2006

    For sometime I have felt that service user and carer groups needed to link up if they are to have an impact on the policies which shape the services being provided or planned. The wish to network with service users and carers in other areas was a significant wish amongst all service users and carers recently appointed to the National Institute of Mental Health in England North East, Yorkshire and Humber (NIMHENEYH) regional programme board.

    NIMHE is looking at service user and carer involvement with its own organisation after a partly critical report by the Health and Social Care Advisory Service (HASCAS) called 'Making A Real Difference' which NIMHE itself commissioned. One outcome of that report is a fund of £250,000 to improve service user and carer involvement within NIMHE. Just how that money is to be spent has yet to be decided so service users and carers have an opportunity to influence that decision.

    Fastening on a recommendation in the HASCAS report that a independent national service user forum be created the 'Mental health Foundation' in alliance with 'Together' put together this conference in Birmingham to discuss the establishment of a service user network; if successful the network would hold a database of service user groups, their competencies and contact details. The network could then:

    I. Direct agencies looking to consult with service users to the best groups for that purpose

    II. Help groups share techniques and best practice

    III. Help groups access training.

    As envisaged the network would be service user led, would cover England and Wales (Scotland have their own system) but it would not be a national service user voice instead relying on local groups to do the work.

    To my mind the advantage of this approach is that it doesn't duplicate what already exists; it shouldn't lead to a small all knowing clique developing who are the only people consulted and it should involve large numbers of people. It doesn't solve the problem of involving people who don't come forward to have their views heard who may have important things to say about the services they need and would access.

    Unfortunately there were no details about how the network would be set up, how it would be funded once the money currently NIMHE has runs out (even if they are able to win at least a share of the £250,000), how the network would be governed. Despite the talk there is still the possibility that the few could hijack a network for their own causes and that the centre could come to dominate; holding a federated structure to the grass roots level is always difficult.

    Many of the delegates at the conference expressed concern at the lack of detailed discussion about the principles behind the formation of such a network; we were asked to approve an outline set of principles which we were only given on the day without the chance to really look through them. Many people were sceptical that this was an attempt by two established, though highly respected bodies to grab the money and run the show.

    In summary I would say it was a good sales pitch which requires a lot more meat on the bones and a good business plan before we rush to sign up.

    Notes

    Together was formally known as the Mental After Care Association (Maca) and now describes itself at, "Together: Working for Wellbeing is a leading national charity working for wellbeing: that means we support people with mental health needs to get what they want from life and to feel happier." For additional information see: http://www.together-uk.org/

    The Mental Health Foundation describes itself , "The Mental Health Foundation exists to help people survive, recover from and prevent mental health problems." For more information see: www.mentalhealth.org.uk

    NIMHE (National Institute for Mental Health in England) primarily exists to look at how to implement government policy.

    My thanks to NIMHENEYH for funding this trip.

    The "Speak Out" project appeared to disappear. This Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Trust Userwatch blog for 10.1.2008 discusses its history and its disappearance. Unfortunately, neither the original nor the blog commentary appears archiveable.

    Speak Out! Mental Health History Project originated with Woodview Community Association with the proposals they put to the national lottery fund about January 2006. Support (and some funding) was gathered from the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust, particularly from its diversity directorate (which includes services to black and ethnic minority communities in Birmingham).

    Pete Bloomer started work as coordinator in early July 2006. His contract ends in July 2007.

    The project includes using service users/survivors as volunteers, as well as employing (paying) users/survivors as assistants. It aims that a high proportion of the volunteers should be afro-caribbean.

    A major aim is to produce an exhibition. This exhibition will be at Woodview Community Association (or a nearby library?) for its first three months, from May 2007, and then tour venues for another twenty one months.

    The other major aim is to put the project's work on a website. The website will remain available at least for five years with the provision to update it and for it to grow.

    Volunteers and assistants are being trained in recording oral history interviews, doing research using library resources and mental health awareness.

    The discipline of Oral History provides a method to record the experiance of individuals and to build a picture of the general viewpoint of people on the mental health services.

    Speak Out has spoken to several service user groups, at daycentres and User Voice Forums. They have done a number of stalls at mental health events in Birmingham. The most successful stall was at the World Mental Health Day event in Birmingham organised by the Positive Mental Health Group, where they distributed over 1,000 leaflets and got over 60 contacts. Altogether, they have distributed over 5,000 leaflets, have a mailing list of around 250 and, via Birmingham Mental Health Trust, have sent out communications to over 3,000 workers.

    The messages of the project should be to begin the process of recording and writing a history of people's experience of mental health in Birmingham - That our history is important - That services should be based on the experiences and wishes of service users - That service providers should take note of our experiences and seek to improve services - That there has been a variety of approaches to service provision which might be learned from in terms of service users/survivors experiences of them. That in particular the experience of the Black community as service users; has been too harsh and punitive, (tarnished as it is by racism) and that its contribution to service provision as a large component of the workforce has been under valued and not considered important enough by those planning service provision.

    Boards planned for Birmingham Exhibition

    Two boards with a timeline of the twentieth century, legislation and major events affecting mental health charted beside the timeline. Specifically charting changes in mental health services in Birmingham. [See, for example, 8.7.1911 - Fluphenazine - Birmingham Scandal - -

    A board on each of the three significant historic sites in Birmingham: - All Saints - Highcroft - The Rubery Hill and Hollymoor site.

    A board explaining and illustrating the significance of the change brought about by Care in the Community - [See Fluphenazine - Birmingham Scandal - ]

    A "horrible history" of 20th century treatments of mental illness. For example, the use of mercury, lobotomies, drilling holes in the skull, ECT, aversion therapy as treatment for homosexuality seen as a mental illness until 1958.

    Brief histories of Mental Health Services established to support the black and minority ethnic communities in Birmingham.

    Definition of mental illness - different people's definitions and how the definition and terminology has changed through the twentieth century. (The history of language on mental health is a measure of the cultural history and history of common (mis)understanding on mental health).

    Police and admissions. Using information from the website section.

    The image of mental health services, material developed around mental health and stigma surrounding mental illness.

    Slavery and its ongoing impact on black people and mental health

    "Why Black people suffer more from mental health problems" or .... do Black people suffer more from mental health problems?

    Drugs and mental health.

    Cause and effect - vox pops of peoples views.

    A board or display which lists clips from the Oral History interviews we have recorded and selected. Listing the subject of those clips, something about the person who gave the interview, and giving the facility for the visitor to press a button to play that clip. (with headphones).

    Leicester University Wednesday 6.9.2006 to Thursday 7.9.2006 Mind Conference: Coming of Age (external link) : "Twenty one years on from Mind's national conference in 1985, where service users were given an equal share of the platform for the first time, this 24-hour conference has been devised, directed and will be totally comprised of delegates and speakers who are service users and survivors"

    The conference began with a comprehensive history of the United Kingdom mental health survivors movement by three members of the History of Mental Health Service User/Survivor Movement Group. We will include all of this on this website. The first part (1970s), by Joan Hughes, is as presented. The second part, by Peter Campbell, took the story forward through the 1980s. Peter has provided a web account that draws on other talks as well. Clare Ockwell brought the story forward to the present.

    Monday 15.1.2007: Representatives of the Birmingham based Mental Health History Project , called "Speak Out" met in London with the Mental Health Service Users History Group. Speak out has received 12 months funding to research and produce an exhibition on The History of Mental Health Services in Birmingham in the Twentieth Century (1900 - 2000). This will have a particular focus on the experience of people from the Black and Minority Ethnic communities and their experience of mental health services.

    developing partners (dp) (we do not capitalise our name, to show solidarity with people who are excluded and forgotten and live their life at the bottom of the pile). We are all people who have used or continue to use services and / or survivors.

    "It all started with the introduction of the Research Governance Framework by the Department of Health in 2002"

    We started life in 2003 as the ARISE Project initially to undertake research that was of value to people on the ground. (ARISE powerpoint)

    Tees and North East Yorkshire NHS Trust established ARISE: Accessible Research Involvement for Service Evaluation, a service user and carer led research and development course, and DEVELOP, a service user and carer led independent research organisation. They sought to "build research capacity among service users and carers". Research commenced in July 2005.

    So what is it that people on the course are doing?

    The group from Hartlepool are Evaluating Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Services from a service user and carer perspective, this is being fed into the Regional evaluation of CRHT Services as part of the Evaluating New Mental Health Services Research Stream led by the 3 N's Trust in Newcastle.

    The group in Stockton are collaborating with a Community Researcher, Mark Hodgson, and are being paid by Tees Valley Arts to Evaluate the Phoenix Arts Project in Stockton from a service user perspective as this is an arts project specifically aimed at people with mental health needs.

    One member is looking at how mothers with mental health needs are assessed when they are involved with social services and there are questions being raised with regard to their capacity to parent.

    Another member is looking at the Compulsory Detention Process from a Human Rights perspective gathering information about service users experience of this process.

    Another member is looking at provision for and the experiences of members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Community in relation to Domestic Violence.

    Another member is undertaking an exploration of the lived experience of older carers, who are caring for an older adult with a learning disability

    Another member is looking at people's choice and preference in relation to mixed sex wards for people with mental health needs.

    We have recently set up as a developing partners.

    developing partners (dp) was founded in March 2007 by service users who had been part of ARISE. It is a social enterprise, set up with Department of Health Funding. All members had (and for some continue to have)mental health needs at some stage in their life - See (dp powerpoint) - google transcript of power point presentation - Word document

    Work we are currently involved in doing or developing:

    Working with the British Institute for Human Rights to develop Human Rights Training that we can deliver to service users, carers, user and carer groups, services and anyone who has a vested interest in furthering the empowerment of those people who use their services, across all public sector services. Developing a Service User Charter

    Legal Services Commission - Sectioning Process - We are consulting with people who have been sectioned about how the Legal Services Commission can increase access to legal aid for people who are sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

    Employment for people with Mental Health needs - Government Office North East - We are involved as equal partners in the North East Employment Strategy for people with Mental Health needs and have helped to shape it through our consultations with service users and are now working to share and spread the findings and to further its implementation.

    Young People who self harm - HTA, Department of Health - We have submitted a bid re young people who self harm with the University of Northumbria and a CAMHS Consultant.

    Mental Health First Aid - CSIP / NIMHE

    Access to Psychological Therapies - North Tees and Hartlepool PCT / NIMHE / CSIP

    Access to Primary Care Services for prisoners - PORSCH Network, Public Health Observatory

    Service User and Survivor Trainers Network - SUSTN National

    Information from Jacqui Lovell

    National Survivor User Network (website)

    In 2003 On Our Own Terms said there is a need for a national network to bring groups together, encourage good practice and build capacity within the sector. Inspired by this report service users and survivors employed within two voluntary sector organisations, Together and the Mental Health Foundation, organised a conference focused on discussing the possibility of setting up a national service user / survivor network.

    Nearly 200 service users and survivors attended the Our Future conference in Birmingham in March 2006. Out of the Birmingham conference a National Planning Group was formed. This National Planning Group included representatives from a whole range of service user and survivor led groups. Together they applied for and were successful in obtaining funding from Comic Relief and the Tudor Trust.

    They received grants of £500,000 from Comic Relief and £250,000 from the Tudor Trust to help establish the network over 5 years.

    Committee members were chosen by a group led by consultant Lisa Haywood who until Christmas 2006 was also vice chair of national Mind. Though leading the group, having been part of the steering group which developed this network of networks, Lisa only advised the panel and was not a decision maker. No member of the selection panel had been a member of the steering group and of the 9 chosen management committee members only 4 were previously on the steering group. (source)

    With the receipt of funding, the National Planning Group was dissolved and replaced by a management committee selected by an independent panel of service users and survivors. This management committee met for the first time in February 2007. Currently the NSUN management committee is:

    Anne Beales

    Tina Coldham

    David Crepaz-Keay (Treasurer)

    Mark Henderson

    Rob Henderson (Chair)

    Kath Lovell

    Chris Wright

    We plan to recruit another 10 people to this committee soon so that the management committee will eventually consist of 17 service users and survivors.

    Minutes - 19.3.2007 - 30.4.2007 - 16.5.2007 -

    By the beginning of May 2007 three members of staff had been employed. This staff team now share an office with Catch-A-Fiya a national network organisation for service users and survivors from Black and Minority Ethnic Communities. This staff team are:

    Chandra Fowler (Coordinator)

    Amma Djan (Finance and Administration)

    Laura Schofield (Communication and Media)

    In May 2007 the Inaugural Mission, Aims and Values of the Network were agreed along with a Strategy for the coming period. [Removed autumn 2008 - See archive of Google htm] The name NSUN was also finally agreed. We are planning an official launch in the autumn.

    27-29 Vauxhall Grove
    Vauxhall
    London
    SW8 1SY

    Inaugural Mission, Aims and Values

    To develop networking, which will engage, support and reflect the diversity of mental health service users and survivors across England.

    Aims

    1. Support individuals, existing groups and networks.

    2. Provide practical support and capacity building to strengthen and support survivors and service users in their activities.

    3. Facilitate and enable the widest range of survivors and service users to have a voice in informing and influencing local, regional and national developments in mental health.

    We will not become the voice for the service user and survivor movement nor supersede existing groups or networks.

    Core Values

  • prioritise those not well served by existing mechanisms
  • be open and transparent
  • respect and value diversity

    Minutes: 15.6.2007 - 18.7.2007 - 22.8.2007 -

    June 2007 Newsletter issue number 1

    end of September 2007 "Official website" went live

    Minutes: 17.10.2007 - 19.11.2007 -

    November 2007 Newsletter issue number 2

    6.11.2007 and 7.11.2007 Experience and innovation: working in partnership - Rockley Park, Poole, Dorset. A conference. - Flyer for - video

    Minutes: 19.12.2007 - 16.1.2008 - 18.2.2008 -

    Meeting minutes 16.4.2008 are about handover of responsibilities from Chandra Fowler (Network Coordinator), who is leaving -

    Chandra Fowler ceased being - Lisa Haywood appointed as interim Network Coordinator for six months. Chris Wright left the management committee.

    July 2008 Newsletter issue number 3

    Mental Health Today July/August 2008 "Network: Local service user groups have good reason to be wary of working with national organisations. But NSUN's partnership working in the North East could prove successful" Mark Henderson.

    Mark Henderson left the management committee. Alisdair Cameron, Ian Muhammad and Graham Saxton joined it.

    Membership fees abolished allowing free access to members' area (and database) on the web.

    October 2008 Newsletter issue number 4

    Currently the committee includes:

    Anne Beales
    Alisdair Cameron
    Tina Coldham
    David Crepaz-Keay (Treasurer)
    Rob Henderson (Chair)
    Kath Lovell
    Ian Muhammad
    Graham Saxton

    We plan to recruit more people to this committee soon so that it will eventually consist of 17 service users and survivors.

    8.3.2009 Sarah Yiannoullou became NSUN Manager.

    22.7.2009 NSUN Network

    15.4.2010 NSUN Network 2

    17.5.2010 Email Bulletin: "We are pleased to inform our members that we are now a fully independent organisation. NSUN is a charitable company. We are extremely grateful for the support our host organisation (Together, working for mental health wellbeing) has provided over the first 2 and a half years of NSUN's life. We will include a full update in our e-newsletter in June. We are currently redesigning the website and hope to go live next month, apologies for any inconveniences this may cause in the meantime. Sarah Yiannoullou, NSUN Manager"

    Autumn 2010 NSUN Network 3 "We are independent"

    Tuesday 1.11.2011 NSUN Annual General Meeting, Fazeley Studios Birmingham. Board of Trustees elected:

    Carolyn Anderson
    Alisdair Cameron
    Sarah Carr
    Susan Haworth
    Joyce Kallevik
    Nicholas Kennedy
    Kathleen Lovell
    Clare Ockwell
    Julia Smith
    Cyril Towse
    Dominic Makavachuma-Walker
    Karl Willet

    Honorary Officers:
    Chair: Kathleen Lovell
    Co-Vice Chair: Carolyn Anderson
    Co- Vice Chair: Dominic- Makavachuma-Walker
    Treasurer: Joyce Kallevik

    Autumn 2011 NSUN Network 4 "NSUN wins praise from funders"

    Spring/Summer 2012 NSUN Network 5

    Website updates from Sarah Yiannoullou 3.4.2014

    NSUN now has a Board of Trustees. A full list is available here

    Current NSUN staff

    NSUN finances/audited accounts

    NSUN annual members' survey

    News service and e-bulletins

    Information is regularly distributed to NSUN members via:

  • The weekly e-bulletins

  • The Homepage news service

  • The twice a year members' magazine 'Network'

    Survivor Research

    Dancing to our own tunes: reassessing black and minority ethnic mental health service user involvement by Jayasree Kalathil

    A review of values-based commissioning by Emma Perry

    Service-users' experience of recovery under the 2008 Care Programme Approach by Dorothy Gould

    Service user/survivor involvement standards

    4PI involvement standards by Alison Faulkner

  • Truth and Reconciliation in Psychiatry

    Draft in Wallcraft J. 8.2010 The Capabilities Approach in Mental Health - What ere the implications for research and outcome measurement

    ''Recovery' is no longer a service user led agenda

    The term 'recovery' in UK has been rendered almost meaningless. As most health and social care services in England are now following a recovery agenda, 'Recovery' is becoming equated with loss of services, loss of benefits, and a push towards returning to work, without the support, retraining and flexibility this would require

    From a service user perspective, there is a danger that 'Personalisation' policies also hide a hidden agenda of cost-saving rather than of providing services people need to live full lives.

    I argue we need a Truth and Reconciliation process before there can be trusting partnerships in mental health:

  • A recent recovery guideline for mental health professionals (Slade, 2009) argues that the first step towards genuine partnership around any new policy agenda in psychiatry should be to call for a public apology for the wrongs done in the name of psychiatric treatment.

  • It suggests that 'real reconciliation and partnership may only be possible once a line has been drawn, through the symbolism of an apology, which explicitly recognises the need for a new trajectory in the future'.

  • It argues that public apologies are justified when the dominant group has inflicted harm on the subordinate group over a sustained period. He mentions some examples where former psychiatric patients have called for public apologies.

  • It notes that a few very specific apologies in psychiatry have been made, but no more general acknowledgement of wrongful treatment.

    I and colleagues are calling for an official Apology for damaging treatments since psychiatry's origins circa 1850s

    Now that our human rights are (belatedly) internationally recognised, in the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), we think the time is right to call for an apology from our governments and professional psychiatric bodies for a list of wrongs (of which these are just a few possible examples):

  • Oppressive, incorrect and unproven medical theories underpinning damaging treatments dating from the 1850s onwards which have harmed us physically and psychologically (not to deny that many individuals working in psychiatry and mental health services do their best to help patients and service users. This is not about individuals but a chance for psychiatry as a whole to admit and redress the failings of its profession).

  • Creation of a body of dubious 'knowledge' based on research we had no involvement in or choice about, and which has been given legitimacy to overrule our own self-knowledge and expertise by experience.

  • Creating stigmatised services which isolate us from our families and friends and wider society and make it hard for us to recover our self- belief, health and social status.

    The right to reparation

    We suggest that the apology should be negotiated internationally - through our representatives at EC and UN level. It should be accompanied by demands for reparations including:

  • Provision of services defined by service users based on collective knowledge and expertise and service user/survivor controlled research

  • Early intervention in first break/psychosis which is non-medical and non-stigmatising and based on existing work such as Soteria and service user led crisis houses.

  • Financial help for peer support and self management

  • Education and training in individually chosen + valued skills

  • Legal status for advance directives, advance statements, living wills, fully negotiated care and treatment plans

  • Repeal of all forced treatment legislation which is discriminatory and out of line with CRPD


    Petition as copied from http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/truth_and_reconciliation_in_psychiatry/ on Tuesday 19.4.2011:

    The Petition

    TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION IN PSYCHIATRY (T.R.I.P.) -DRAFT STATEMENT

    Please read and sign this if you agree - whether or not you are a person who has been through psychiatric treatment.

    Introduction

    The term 'recovery' in mental health/illness is becoming equated (in the UK and possibly other countries) with loss of services, loss of benefits, and a push towards returning to work, without the support, retraining and flexibility this would require.

    Genuine partnership working is possible and would be welcomed by many using and working in mental health services. However this involves significant change.

    We, the signatories propose that one way to mark a change from old ways of decision making to one based on genuine, equal, power-sharing partnerships in mental health would be through a Truth and Reconciliation process.

    Truth and Reconciliation in mental health - why this is needed

    A recent recovery guideline for mental health professionals (Slade, 2009) argues that the first step towards genuine partnership around any new policy agenda in psychiatry should be to call for a public apology for the wrongs done in the name of psychiatric treatment.

    The book suggests that 'real reconciliation and partnership may only be possible once a line has been drawn, through the symbolism of an apology, which explicitly recognises the need for a new trajectory in the future'.

    It argues that public apologies are justified when the dominant group has inflicted harm on the subordinate group over a sustained period. It lists some examples where former psychiatric patients have called for public apologies.

    A few very specific apologies in psychiatry have been made, but no more general acknowledgement of wrongful treatment.

    We call for an official Apology for damaging treatments since the origins of psychiatry circa 1850s

    Now that our human rights are (belatedly) internationally recognised, in the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), we think the time is right to call for an apology from our governments and professional psychiatric bodies for a list of wrongs (of which these are just a few possible examples):

    Oppressive, incorrect and unproven medical theories underpinning damaging treatments dating from the 1850s * onwards which have been harmful physically and psychologically (not to deny that many individuals working in psychiatry and mental health services do their best to help patients and service users. This is not about individuals but a chance for psychiatry as a whole to admit and redress the failings of its profession).

    Creation of a body of dubious 'knowledge' based on research service users/patients had no involvement in or choice about, and which has been given legitimacy to overrule people's own self-knowledge and expertise by experience.

    Creating stigmatised services which isolate people from their families and friends and wider society and make it hard to recover self-belief, health and social status.

    The right to reparation

    We suggest that the apology should be negotiated internationally - through service user/survivor representatives at EC and UN level. It should be accompanied by demands for reparations including:

    Provision of services defined by service users based on collective knowledge and expertise and service user/survivor controlled research.

    Early intervention in first break/psychosis which is non-medical and non- stigmatising and based on existing work such as the original non-medical Soteria model and service user-led crisis houses. Finland currently has services offering a non medicalised approach which is having good rates of success.

    Financial help for peer support and self management.

    Education and training in individually chosen + valued skills.

    Legal status for advance directives, advance statements, living wills, fully negotiated care and treatment plans.

    Repeal of all forced treatment legislation which discriminates against people using mental health services and is out of line with CRPD

    * NOTE: It has been pointed out that psychiatric history does not start around 1850s, and that for people from black and minority ethnic communities there is a link to colonialism and slavery. 'Cartwright's definition of drapetomania is dated 1851, but this was preceded by decades of work which paved the way for it. Colonial history is also the history of scientific colonisation of entire peoples and this includes psychiatry'.

    ENDORSED BY:
    European Network of Users and Survivors in Psychiatry
    The Wellbeing Foundation, Ireland
    Mind Freedom International
    Marion Clark
    Jean Cozens
    Janie Greville
    Sabita Gurney-Branford
    Alastair Kemp
    Mary Nettle
    Mary O'Hagan
    Pam Hutton
    Dr. Heather Straughan
    Professor Philip Thomas
    Jan Verhaeg
    Dr. Jan Wallcraft
    Dr. David Webb

    References:

    Beresford, P., M. Nettle, et al. (2010 (forthcoming) Towards A Social Model Of Madness And Distress? Exploring what service users say, Joseph Rowntree.

    Hopper, K. (2007). "Rethinking social recovery in schizophrenia: What a capabilities approach might offer." Social Science & Medicine 65: 868-879.

    Hopper, K. (2009). Reframing First Breaks and Early Crisis: A Capabilities- Informed Approach, INTAR.

    Slade,M. (2009) Personal Recovery and Mental Illness, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

    UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

  • World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry
    http://www.wnusp.net/

    European Network of (ex-) Users and Survivors of Psychiatry
    http://www.enusp.org

    The World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry began as the World Federation of Psychiatric Users formed at the World Federation for Mental Health Congress in Mexico City in August 1991. These congresses, held every two years, were a convenient place for users to meet as there were always some attending anyway. First committee meeting was held on 23.8.1991. The people present were Jan Dirk van Abshoven from the Netherlands - Paolo del Vecchio and Bob Long (replacing Esperanza Isaac) from the USA - Mary O'Hagan and Pauline Hinds from New Zealand - Natosughi and Masaji Koganezawa from Japan - Adriana Lopez from Mexico - (External link to minutes). The name was changed to the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry in 1997. (History in 2004 minutes on Network's website)

    The European Network's website traces its history back to 1990 "when the initiative was taken in the Netherlands to form a network of associations of (former) psychiatric patients from various European countries."

    Documentation starts 27.10.1991 when the Europäisches Netzwerk von Psychiatrie-betroffenen (European Network of those Affected by Psychiatry), otherwise translated as the European Network of Users and Ex-Users in Mental Health (former inmates of madhouses) was formed in Amsterdam (Zandvoort), in the Netherlands. (Press Release 12.11.1991 - external link in German).

    This conference made the
    The Zandvoort Declaration on Common Interests

    General statements

    The European Network is against the medical unilateral approach to, and stigmatisation of, mental and emotional distress, human suffering and unconventional behaviour.

    The European Network should support users' autonomy and responsibility in making their own decisions (self-determination).

    Areas of main interests

  • To influence and try to change present treatment in psychiatry.

  • Create and support new alternatives to the psychiatric treatment.

  • The European Network should act against all kinds of discrimination in society concerning people who went through the psychiatric System. Actions

    Psychiatric treatment

  • Work on abolishing compulsory treatment.

  • Increasing users' influence on their own treatment (e.g. right to describe or define their own case, right to refuse professional 'aid', right to make correction of their own record).

  • To secure that users receive adequate information (e.g. right to receive written information about all possible risks of the treatment, the users' right to establish independent advocacy).

    Alternatives

  • Support and promote the right to professional drug free support.

  • Support of user groups setting up alternatives to medical psychiatry.

  • Support and promote the right to establish user-controlled initiatives inside and outside psychiatry.

    Discrimination in society

  • To fight psychiatric stigma.

  • To get work for a proper salary.

  • To fight for proper housing.

  • To monitor European or national legislation on aspects of discriminating laws.

  • The European Network organised its second conference at Elsinore (Denmark) in May 1994. There were contributions by Judi Chamberlin, Peter Lehmann, Mary O'Hagan, Jan Wallcraft and "many others", and speeches about the World Federation of Psychiatric Users, alternatives, the Psychiatric Will, social integration, human rights, treatment methods, and other topics.

    The third European network conference was in Reading (England) in 1997. At the Reading conference the network changed its name to the European Network of (ex-)Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (ENUSP)

    The World network at Lahti in Finland in 1997 elected a panel The USA panel members were elected by a ballot carried out afterwards in the USA. The others were elected by the (ex)users/survivors of psychiatry present at Lahti.

    The next European network conference was in Luxembourg in 1999. "In Luxembourg more than 90 delegates, all of them (ex-)users/survivors of psychiatry from 26 European countries, representing national and local associations, met and created an action plan for the coming years."

    World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry General Assembly and Conference 2001 in Vancouver, Canada.

    17.7.2004 to 21.7.2004 Joint conference of the European and World Networks held in Vejle (Denmark). (external link). Mary Nettle was elected as the new chair of the European network and served until 2010. archive. The next World conference was in 2009 in Kampala, Uganda. The next European conference was in 2010 in Thessaloniki, Greece.

    2005 Pan African Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry formed. Now called the Pan African Network of People with Psychosocial Disabilities . See the website - archive - history - another copy

    The inaugural meeting of organisations representing users and survivors on the African continent took place in 2005, in Kampala, Uganda with representative from Guinea, Ghana, South Africa, Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda. Country Organisations: Mental Health Uganda - National Organisation of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry of Rwanda - Tanzanian Users and Survivors of Psychiatry Organisation - The Ubuntu Centre, South Africa - Users and Survivors of Psychiatry of Kenya

    February 2007 First edition WNUSP-News - focusing on the recently adopted United Nations human rights treaty called, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities or CRPD, for short.

    In August 2007 the European Network had members in 39 European countries, "from Belarus to Ireland, from Portugal to Iceland".

    23.12.2008 Peter Lehmann posted on his website his paper Users and Survivors of Psychiatry on the International Stage: a snapshot. This is a personal paper aiming to give an overview of relevant events and issues since the Vejle (2004) conference.

    The next European conference is planned for 2009 in Thessaloniki, Greece. [Took place 2010]

    16.3.2009 - 20.3.2009 - World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry General Assembly and Conference 2009 in Kampala, Uganda
    Making our Rights a Reality - Human Rights in the Age of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Hosted by Mental Health Uganda. - invitation -

    28.9.2010 to 1.10.2010 "Determing our own future: The way forward for all European users and survivors of psychiatry", a European congress, run by the ENUSP and the Panhellenic Committee of (ex-) Users and Survivors of Psychiatry in Thessalonica, Greece - and the Ordinary General ENUSP Membership Assembly.

    14.11.2011 Facebook page for Pan African Network of People with Psychosocial Disabilities "The United Nations Enable Newsletter of October 2011 reported on the successful Cape Town Congress Of the Pan African Network of People with Psychosocial Disabilities"

    8.12.2013 to 10.12.2013 in Bucharest: A seminar that brought together 19 representatives of users/survivors groups from 12 European Union countries: Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Germany , Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Report

    From a July 2013 application for money for a partnesrhip programme between Landsforeningen SIND (The Danish Association for mental Health) advocates and Mental Health Uganda

    Landsforeningen SIND (The Danish Association for mental Health) advocates understanding and tolerance of people with mental illness and their families. SIND takes initiatives and support initiatives to promote men-tal well-being, prevention and treatment.

    SIND has some 5,000 members among which are people suffering from mental disorders, relatives and oth-ers - persons and institutions - with an interest in mental health. One of the goals of SIND is to advance un- derstanding and acceptance of mental illnesses among the mentally ill and among relatives, friends, col-leagues, employers and society in general. Information material and lectures are just two means to achieve the goal.

    Landsforeningen SIND was established in 1960 and has 16 districts and 34 local branches. Districts and local branches are managed by boards elected by and among the respective members. Landsforeningen SIND is managed by a national board comprised of the President, 10 members elected by the national con-gress and 1 member from each of the 16 districts.

    SIND has appointed three volunteers to be involved in activities regarding Uganda. The three SIND volun-teer members have broad experience with the mental health sector, international and public health, cultural and anthropological as well as experience from developing countries. They are the three persons who share the information with members and the board about the progress in the MHU and SIND cooperation and monitor the projects in Uganda.


    Mental Health Uganda (MHU) is a membership, indigenous national NGO of People with Mental Illness (PWMIs) and their care givers started by people affected by mental illnesses in 1997. MHU has grown in the last ten years into a national and grass-root based psychiatric user and care giver organization recognized to represent local people with and affected by mental illnesses. It began in three districts but has grown to spread up to 18 districts in all regions of the country.

    MHU's mission is to 'create a unified voice of people that influences the provision of required services and opportunities in favor of people with mental illness and families in Uganda, through; capacity building, net- working, advocacy and partnership'.

    In the last 15 years since its founding it has concentrated on the following areas:

    - Psychiatric user and family mobilization;

    - Membership and organizational empowerment and capacity building

    - Community sensitization and awareness raising about mental health for attitude change,

    - Advocacy for improved services and networking with other potential actors in the area of mental health and development.

    - Livelihood improvement for members and families

    - Networking and partnership

    Through the areas above MHU has moved in to influence for positive changes in favor using a united voice compared to the past where members didn't have a voice or a movement for action. Members have used this voice and made several achievements including recognition, rights and policy advocacy, achieving inclusion in certain areas, own education and skills development. The past has mainly been on building a psychiatric user movement, building its membership and organizational capacity, mental health and develop-ment advocacy and promotion of meaningful and sustainable livelihoods. MHU values building net works since we can't do everything and synergies of collaboration have enabled us to achieve much like in the areas of mental health service improvement despite the still inadequate services accessible to people with mental illnesses in many parts of the country but services are better that fifteen years ago and some of the improvement is attributable to the existence of a psychiatric user advocacy movement. The same is the case in access to developmental services through networks and advocacy.

    Membership

    From it`s founding in 1997/8 membership in MHU has belonged to People with mental illnesses (PWMIs) and their care givers. The average membership in each of the 18 district associations of MHU is about 120 members with some associations very strong, the more moderately developed and the young associations. That makes the registered membership in MHU to range between 2,000 to 2,600. The activities of MHU however benefit more than 2 million people who are directly affected in most times when a member of their family breaks down with mental illness. There are about 47% Caregivers and 52% 1%professional care givers in the general membership of MHU. The membership criteria includes: being a person with mental illness, a caregiver but have to pay membership fees (which varies) depending on the decision of the respective district assembly).

    Most care givers that join MHU are mostly those at home (Interested and committed Guardians, parents, spouses, children). Normally these must be caregivers with specific commitment and interest in the welfare of PWMIs they stay with. In some cases however in some associations (like five out of the 18 district asso-ciations of MHU in Uganda,) some mental health service providers are members in respective associations. Many care giver members have been struggling to care for or touched in some way by the plight of PWMIs and join trying to positively contribute to the lives of PWMIs. Caregivers are important to PWMIs in commu-nities long before, during and even after MHU opens up in their community which fits with a still communal society found in many parts of Uganda. It is good for their attitude, education and their contribution to best practices in MHU using their experiences. They are also a critical community entry point breaking barriers, in a stigmatizing and discriminating society. MHU membership is open in the same way to both men and women, women however outnumber men in all the associations this is believed to be due to attitudes and social roles related to care and health seeking behavior.

    MHU governance structure comprises five levels including

    - The local associations People near to each other come together to associate. They meet and support each other quite regularly. In some districts these are not yet created. And some members can directly relate to the district without this depending on their situation. Some MHU activities are also implemented using this level. Membership here could range between 5 to 30 people.

    - The district assembly All Local associations come together be annually in this assembly. Most MHU activities are implemented starting at this level to either go further down to fami-lies and individuals or up to the National and international levels. It is this level that nominates delegates that attend the MHU General assembly. For example Kabale association reports of 160 member ship

    - The National General Assembly Now meets once every 5 years formerly 3 years but may be reversed soon as this is a long time. It is the policy making organ in MHU, it elects the National Executive (The Board of Directors) and entrusts much of the powers to run the organization in this board till it meets again.

    - The Board of Directors It runs the organization on behalf of the members, answerable to the members, meets quarterly, monitors the secretariat. The current number is nine (9).

    - The Secretariat These are paid staff answerable to and employed by the Board of Directors but are also responsive to the aspirations gathered from the membership as they constantly interact with them.

    Volunteers

    MHU has active volunteers among its membership (specifically people with mental illnesses) who participate especially in its program work at all levels local, district, national and international levels. These volunteers are instrumental in:

     Policy and rights advocacy,

     Supporting the management structures.

    Networking, For instance Mr. Daniel Iga Mwesigwa effectively represented Psychiatry Users in Africa in the Ad hoc Committee Meetings at the UN during the drafting of the Convention on protection of the Dignity and Rights of PWDs.

    Volunteer program in MHU is also intended to expose various community work trainees to community men-tal health as an area of community development work with very specific challenges.

    Heartsounds Uganda web links

    October 2013 Archive

    'Heartsounds' is known also as 'Enkuba yomutima', the sound of the beating heart. The name recognises the leadership role that service users play in bringing empathy, strength and humanity to mental health care.

    The Heartsounds Tour happened in September 2008. It was the first time an NHS Mental Health Link had directly invited a group of mental health service users to participate in an exchange to a low income country. The group of six mental health service user champions went to Uganda to meet their counterparts to share learning about the role of those with personal experiences of mental health problems in transforming mental health care.

    At the time a social networking site http://heartsounds.ning.com was set up so experience and learning could be shared. City University commissioned a film of the tour which was subsequently shown as part of modules related to user involvement training. [See also]


    Some parts of these have been uploaded onto You Tube. See Mental Health Service user involvement, Butabika video 1


    During the Tour, Joseph Atukunda took a leadership role in expressing the views of service users to the Ugandan Minister for Health. He was so inspired by the potential role of service users in bringing about meaningful and positive change to Ugandan mental health, he took the brave step of resigning from his full time work to develop Heartsounds in Uganda.

    In his own home, he set up an internet cafe with a couple of computers in which those with a personal experience of mental health problems could use for free and that members of the public pay to use.

    He now has 12 computers, a library of books of 300 plus books, podcasting equipment and there are now more Ugandan members of the Heartsounds site than UK members. The cafe which proudly calls itself 'Mental Health Champion', is going from strength to strength and the group has registered as a Community Based Organisation and as a member of a savings and loan scheme.

    The group is leading the development of mental health peer support. See future plans.

    Other service user groups

    In Uganda, there are several incredible user organisations including Mental Health Uganda which operates across 18 districts and has set up drug banks to ensure consistency of medication supply, community education sessions and income generation activities.

    Basic Needs are a long standing leader in the development of innovative mental health and income generation projects in Uganda.

    The Masaka Branch of the Uganda Schizophrenia Fellowship and the Jinja users group are also creative and dynamic user groups striving to increase the recognition and opportunities of service expertise to have an impact on development.

    Butabika Hospital also houses an Occupational Therapy Department that is fighting to increase the work and social opportunities of the many patients living within the institution.

    UPIAS

    Introduction: UPIAS (The Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation) was an important organisation in the development of the disabled people's movement in the United Kingdom as it firmly placed "disability" within a social context. What follows is an edited extract from an article by political activist Judy Hunt which was first published in "Coalition" magazine in 2000.

    OUR HISTORY- The Start of the Union

    UPIAS was founded in 1972. It was started by Paul Hunt when he wrote a letter to the Guardian inviting disabled people to join with him to form a group to tackle disability. Paul formed his ideas whilst living in an institution. He and other residents had been involved in a long and bitter struggle with the authorities over the right of disabled people to have control over their lives.

    The group of people who responded to Paul's invitation, became UPIAS. Now what was unusual at this time, was that they decided to take some time, about 18 months, to discuss and consider disability before rushing into action, which was the more usual tendency. And so it was that UPIAS became the first disability liberation group in the UK, and one of the first in the world, and certainly the most advanced in the world.

    They said that disability was something that could be challenged and eliminated. They were, as the name The Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation suggests, in total opposition to Segregation, and not just "for Integration" which was already quite generally applauded. Lots of people were for Integration, but they came out and said "no, we're opposed to Segregation".

    The breakthrough came in 1981, which was declared International Year of Disabled People, by the United Nations. By this time, the union had developed a political vanguard, and it took the lead to start to build a grass-roots movement. What it did, was to invite the few national groups that then existed in the country, that were actually managed by disabled people, to come together to form a Council. This became the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People, or BCODP as it's known now.

    When that happened, the union introduced the BCODP to the social definition as a working basis for the new Council and they accepted it, which was a major step. The same year, 1981, similar changes had been going on internationally and there was a move to form a disabled people's international. BCODP was able to send representatives to the inaugural conference, in Singapore, and one of the members who went was Vic Finkelstein. He was then chair of the BCODP but he was also a member of UPIAS. They took the idea of the social definition to the DPI, argued the case and won the battle to get the DPI to accept the social definition, rather than go back to the World Health Organisation's medical definitions.

    UPIAS was important for exposing disability as an oppressive relationship, and a power relationship of control. It was these ideas, taken on by the disabled people's movement, that became the important liberating factor in the movement. The disabled people's movement represents a social movement of the most oppressed, the most disadvantaged people in society, with potentially the least control. And there I would extend it, and argue there are parallels for people with learning difficulties, for people who've been through the Mental Health system, and for elderly people - groups who have also been pushed out of the mainstream.


    Top of Page

    Our referencing suggestion for this page is a bibliography entry:

    Survivors History - Mental Health and Survivors Movements
    <http://studymore.org.uk/mpu.htm>

    and intext references to

    (Survivors History)

    See ABC Referencing for general advice.






    To contact the Survivors History Group, you can email Andrew Roberts (the Secretary) or write to the address below.
    The Survivors History Group is building a network of survivor historians and archivists across Britain and Ireland. Our two main centres are currently Manchester and London, but we look forward to centres in Bristol, Wales, Birmingham, Yorkshire, Tyneside, Scotland, Ireland and elsewhere. The work is carried out by volunteers and we are seeking to raise funds to help with expenses. badge
    Donations can be made as a cheque made out to Survivors History Group, or as unused stamps. Send to The Secretary, 177 Glenarm Road, London, E50NB. If you include your address, we will send you one of our badges to say thank you.

  • The first part of this web history was based on the content of papers from the Mental Patients Union and related groups in the care of Andrew Roberts. Helen Spandler's book, Asylum to Action, provides a recent account of the early history of this group. Peter Campbell's history includes later groups.

    Since then, the Survivor/User History Group has been developing this page as a full history of the movement and a multitude of other contributors have added to the story. This is now a collective history of the survivors movement and its context and we invite you to join in constructing it.

    Asylum to Action -
    Paddington Day Hospital, Therapeutic Communities and Beyond by Helen Spandler

    Some things you should know about user/survivor action: a Mind resource pack
    by Peter Campbell

    Index

    42nd Street

    aaina

    Altaf Ramtoola

    Adolph Meyer

    Advance Directives

    advocacy

    Advocacy 2000

    Advocacy France

    Advocacy Update

    Advocard -

    Afiya Trust

    Africa

    Alan Hartman

    Alan Leader

    Alec Jenner

    Alcoholics Anonymous

    Alastair Kemp

    Alistair Cox

    Alleged Lunatics Friend Society

    allies

    Alison Faulkner

    Alternative (Big) Conference

    Alternative Support Systems

    Alternatives to Everything

    Alternatives to the Mental Health System

    Andrew Hughes

    Andrew Roberts

    Andrew Voyce

    Andy Smith

    Angela Sweeney

    Anne Beales

    Anne Boldt

    Anne-Laure Donskoy

    Anne O'Donnell

    Anne Plumb - Anne Plumb Collection

    Anne Rogers

    Anselm Lionel- Rajah

    Aotearoa

    Archie Meek

    Archives: Access to Archives - disability arts - mental patients unions - museums - Public Records Office - Psychiatric Survivor Archives of Toronto - therapeutic communities - web -

    ARISE: Accessible Research Involvement for Service Evaluation

    Asia

    Association of Therapeutic Communities

    Asylum (magazine) - 1986 - 1987 - 1988 - 1989 - 1990 - 1991 - 1992 - 1993 - 1994 - 1995 - 1996 - 1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013 - 2014 - 2015 - 2016 -

    Asylum Associates

    Asylum to Action

    Asylum to Anarchy

    Asylums (Goffman)

    August Natterer

    Australia and New Zealand: 1788 - 1830 - 1838 - 1852 - 1863 - 1865 - 1870 - 1865 Recovery Groups 1957 - GROW 1970 - 1973 World Federation for Mental Health - Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council - Mental Health Services Conference 1991 - December 1994 - urban exploration - Susan Piddock 2002 - 2003 World Federation for Mental Health - Paranoia Network - David Webb - May 2012

    Avon Mental Health Measure

    Awaaz

    Aware

    Awareness

    Bamford Committee

    Bapu Trust

    Barbara Castle

    Barbara Poole

    Barbara Taylor

    Barry Prosser

    Bedlam FM

    Bed Push

    Bedlam in London

    Being Alongside

    Be Morris

    Ben Silcock

    Ben Watson

    Bethlem before

    Bethlem Bishopsgate

    [City Bedlam]

    Bethlem Moorfields 1676

    Bethlem St George's Fields 1815

    Bethlem Kent

    Better Services

    Beyond Bedlam women survivors

    Beyond Bedlam poems

    Beyond Bedlam poems again

    Beyond Diagnosis

    Big Alternative Conferances

    Big Untidy

    Bill Warwick

    BIT Information Service

    Birmingham and West Midlands conurbation: Tony Glynn - Joan Martin MSC - Claimants Union - Bill Warwick - Birmingham Scandal - Association for Mental Health - Official start survivor movement - Women's Counselling and Therapy Centre - Asylum Spring 1993 - National Voices - Chris Barchard - Hearing Voices Conference - Crisis project - Skallagrigg House 1997 - Survivors Speak Out - Self-Management of Schizophrenia - again - National Advocacy Network - again - Hearing Voices Conference 1998 - Recovery. An Alien Concept - Suresearch - Pathways Barriers and Aspirations 2000 - Handsell Conference 2000 - Critical psychiatry conference - Marian Barnes - INVOLVE2002/2003 - 2.6.2003 - NSF Voices - Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Mental Health 2006 - Our Future Conference - Speak Out - again - again - Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust UserWatch - International Service User Research Seminar - Birmingham Seminars 2010 - Survivor History -

    Birmingham Mental Health History

    Bishopsgate Institute

    Black History Month

    Black Women's Mental Health Project

    Bondevik

    Books Beyond Words

    Borderline UK

    Bowlby

    Bradford Mental Health Advocacy Group

    Brendan Maher

    Brian Davey

    Brian Douieb

    Brian Hartnett

    Brian Sinclair

    Brian Taylor

    Brighton Patients Council

    Bristol: asylums - museum collection - exhibition 1961 - Association for Mental Health 1965 - Shrew 1969 - Enough - Falling Wall Press 1971 - Ellen Malos 1972 - Inside Out 1973 - Mental Health in Bristol - 1977 - Bristol Womens Studies Group - Missing Link 1982 - Bristol Women and Mental Health 1984 - 1985 - Womankind - 1986 - Bristol Crisis Service for Women 1986 - Bristol Survivors May? 1987 - Bristol Crisis Line 1988 - Bristol Mind 1990 - 1992 - 1993 - 1993 again - 1987 - 1988 - 1996 - Avon Mental Health Measure 1996 - 1998 - Jeff Walker 2001 - 29.5.2002 Bristol Hearing Voices Network Self-Help Group - User Focused Monitoring April 2002 - Bristol Mind 2004 - April 2009 - 2014 -

    Bristol Association for Mental Health

    Bristol Crisis Service for Women

    Bristol Hearing Voices Network Self-Help Group -

    Bristol Mind

    Bristol Survivors

    Bristol Womens Centre

    Bristol Women's Information Centre

    Bristol Womens Liberation Group

    Bristol Women and Mental Health Survivors Group

    The British Network of Alternatives to Psychiatry

    Brixton Community Santuary Anthology

    Broadmoor Chronicle

    BUDDIES

    BUG: Brent User Group

    Bugs (Black Usere Group)

    Butabika East London Link

    Cahiers pour la Folie

    Camden: Friern - Camden Association for Mental Health - Prince of Wales Road - eviction (1973) - Your Rights in Camden 1975 - Channel 4 - Peter Campbell 1983 - Camden Mental Health Consortium 1984 - David Hill - Mike Lawson 1988 - House of Commons 1989 - Research - The Camden Bugle 1997 - Consortium website 2001 - Consortium end -

    Campaign to Abolish Borderline Personality Disorder Label (CABL)

    Campaign Against the Schizophrenia Label

    Campaign for the Mentally Handicapped

    Capital Project Trust

    CAPO (Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression)

    CAPS Consultation and Advocacy Promotion Service

    Carol Batton

    Carol Jenkin

    Carl Walster

    Castles in the Air

    Catch-A-Fiya Network

    Cathy Pelikan

    Celia Hughes

    Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Mental Health

    Center for Independent Living

    Centerprise

    Ceramic Hobs

    Charity Commissioners

    Charlie Reid

    Charlotte Mew

    Charterhouse Group

    Cherry Allfree

    Chesterfield

    Chesterton

    Child Guidance

    Chipmunkapublishing

    Chris Barchard

    Chris Heginbotham

    Chris Harrison

    Chris Price MP

    Christopher Clunis

    Christopher Mayhew

    Christine Andrew

    Christine Cowan

    Christmas Day in the Nuthouse

    Chronology of Disability Arts

    City and Hackney Association for Mental Health (later Mind)

    Citizens Commission on Human Rights

    CLAHRCs (Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care)

    Clare Allan

    Clare Ockwell

    Cliëntenbond

    Clifford Beers

    Colin Gell

    Colin Hambrook

    Colin Murray,

    Colin Roach,

    Collective Voice North West

    colonial asylums

    Comensus

    Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health

    Commonplace

    Community Action Projects

    Community Health Councils

    Community Levy for Alternative Projects (CLAP)

    Community Treatment Orders

    Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene

    [The] Consortium for Therapeutic Communities (TCTC)

    Contacting Survivor Groups: See National directory of service-user groups and Shaping Our Lives National User Network for United Kingdom groups.

    Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

    COPE

    Copeman

    Core Arts

    co-counselling

    Coudewater

    Coventry Crisis Intervention

    Creative Cafe

    Crisis Cards

    Crisis Line Bristol

    Critical Psychiatry Network

    Cymar: The Welsh Association of Mental Health Patients' Councils and Advocacy Schemes

    Dancing To Our Own Tunes

    Daniel Iga Mwesigwa

    Daniel Morgan

    Daryl Brown

    David Armes

    David Brandon

    David Crepaz Keay

    David Hill

    David Kessel

    David Pilgrim

    David Reville

    David Webb

    Debbie Roberts

    Declaration of Intent (provisional) MPU March 1973

    Declaration of Intent MPU April 1973

    De Gekkenkrant

    Dendron

    Denise Winn

    Depressives Anonymous - Depressives Associated - Depression Alliance -

    Dialectics of Liberation

    Diana Rose

    Diane Harrison

    Dina Ibrahim

    DIO Media

    Diorama

    Directory of Side Effects

    disability

    Disability Living Allowance Campaign

    Disablement Income Group

    Discourse Unit,

    distress

    Distress Awareness Training Agency (DATA)

    Dominic Walker

    Douglas Inchbold

    dp: developing partners

    Dragon Cafe

    drugs

    Dundee Mental Patients Union

    Durham: 1969 Winterton - 1977 Barham Thesis - SURF (Service Users Reaching Forward) - Mark Cresswell - Joint Special Interest Group for Psychosis

    Eamer O'Keeffe

    East Berkshire Mind

    East Lothian Involvement Group

    Ecoworks

    ECT:
    electro convulsive therapy

    ECT Anon

    Edale (1987)
    Before Edale - April 1986 - Summer 1986 - 1987

    Eddie Nkurunungi

    Edinburgh Users Forum

    Edith Haithwaite

    Edna Conlan

    Education and Action

    Edward Peck

    Edward Peithman

    Egerton Road

    Elizabeth Packard

    Emergence

    Engage Visually

    Enoch Powell

    EPOC

    Eric Irwin

    Ernie Morris

    eugenics

    Essex Hall

    Estelle Beninson

    Esther Leslie

    EURIKHA

    Experts by Experience

    Express Groups

    European Network of
    (ex-) Users and Survivors of Psychiatry

    Fabian Tompsett

    F.A. Jenner

    Family Life

    Feel Good Factor Project

    Felicity Couch

    F.E.E.L. - Friends of East End Loonies

    Felicity Tregear/Lansdowne

    Felix Post

    Film Visiting Committee

    Fish Pamphlet

    Footsteps Art

    Foucault - 8.2.1971 - November 1971 - 1972 - 7.11.1973

    Foundation Resonance

    Forging our Futures

    Frameworks for services

    Franco Basaglia

    Frank Bangay

    Freda Mew

    Fresnes 1973 (box)

    Fresnes prison

    Friends Anonymous
    (Ireland 1968)

    Gabrielle (Gay) Cox

    Galaxy FM

    GAP Glasgow Advisory People

    Gardes-Fous

    Gartloch

    Gartnavel

    Gateshead Mental Health Users Forum

    Gekkenkrant

    Gek'ooit

    Geoff Eley

    Getting To Know You (Manchester)

    Gilbert Keith Chesterton

    Glasgow Link Clubs

    global mental health

    Good Practices in Mental Health

    Graham Estop

    Graham Morgan

    Grassroots Bookshop

    Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People

    Greg Dropkin

    Groupe d'information sur le Asiles

    Groupe d'information sur les prisons

    GROW

    Grwp Clywed Lleisiau Sir Benfro

    Hackney Mental Health Action Group (1984 - )

    Hackney Mental Patients Association

    Hackney Day Hospital Patients Committee - ( Hackney Patients Committee ) (1984/1985 - )

    Hackney Hospital Mental Patients Union (1974- )

    Hackney Mental Patient's Association (1981 - )

    Hackney Mental Patients Union (1973 - )

    Hackney Patients Council (1994 - )

    Hackney Union of Mental Patients (1987- )

    Hackney Workers Educational Association

    Hamlet Trust

    Hammersmith and Fulham Black User Group

    Hanif Bobat

    Handsell Publishing

    Harry Cumberbatch

    Hartwood Hospital

    Have we got views for you

    Having A Voice

    Haywood Consultancy

    Health through History

    Hearing Voices - United Kingdom - Ireland

    Heartsounds box

    Heather Straughan

    Heavy Daze

    Heavy Load

    Helen Smith

    Helen Spandler

    Henk van Setten

    Henry Cotton

    Henry Mew

    Heritage Mental Health

    Hertfordshire ViewPoint

    Highland Users Group HUG)

    Hilary Porter

    history

    History group - 30.11.2004 - 14.1.2005 - 21.4.2005 - 15.9.2005 - 18.7.2005 - 3.8.2005 - meetings list

    Howard Geld (Howie the Harp)

    Howard Mingham

    Huber

    Humpty Dumpty

    Hywel Davies

    Ian Ray-Todd

    Ian Mooney

    Improving Access to Psychological Therapies

    India: Rigveda - Ayurveda medicine - zero - 1407 - 1488 - 1498 - 1502 - 1784 East India Company Act - James Mill 1817 - 1818 - 1833 Government of India Act - Max Müller 1847 1858 Government of India and lunacy Acts - MP 1895 - Ramanujan 1914 - Spike Milligan 1918 - Gandhi 1931 - Independence - Bhargavi Davar 1962 - Midnight's Children 1981 - Bhopal 1984 - British Census 1991 - Bapu Trust 1999 - Erwadi 2001 - aaina 2001 - HamletPathways 2004 - Meethi 2006 - 2007 - Jayasree Kalathil 2008 - Sackcloth Man 2009 - Asia 2013 -

    Ingrebourne Centre

    Ingrebourne Society

    Ingrid Barker

    Inquest

    Insane Liberation Front

    Inside Out (Bristol)

    Inside Out (Hackney)

    Inside Out (Glasgow)

    Institute of Psychiatry

    "International Committee for Mental Hygiene"

    International leadership exchange

    International Network of Alternatives To Psychiatry

    Intervoice

    INVOLVE

    Ireland: Tessa Redmond and Friends Anonymous - Brian Hartnett - Recovery 1969 - Eamer O'Keeffe - Schizophrenia Association of Ireland - Aware 1985 - Asylum April 1989 - IMPERO - Asylum Summer 1993 - Paddy McGowan 1994 - LAMP 1998 - poetry - IAN 1999 - Phrenz - Bamford 2002 - MindFreedom 2003 - Phrenz of the Media 2003 - January 2006 - IMHC 2006 - Hearing Voices 2006 - 31.1.2007 - European Network August 2007 - 22.10.2008 - poetry - - collaborative research

    Irene Tuffrey-Wijne

    Irish Advocacy Network

    Irish Mental Health Coalition

    Islington Women and Mental Health

    Ivy Buckland

    Jack Housden

    Jackie Biggs

    James Hadfield

    Jan Wallcraft

    Janet Cresswell

    Janet Foner

    Jayasree Kalathil

    Jean-Claude Polack

    Jeff Walker

    Jenny James

    Jill Molyneux

    Jim Read

    Jim Ward

    Joan Hughes

    Joe Bidder

    Joe Kelly

    John Bagge

    John Banks

    John Clare

    John Macdonald

    John Marrant

    John Thomas Perceval

    John Zammit

    Joint Special Interest Group for Psychosis

    Joseph Atukunda

    Judi Chamberlin

    Judi Clements

    Judith Watson

    Julian Barnett

    Justin Larner

    Kampala: 2009

    Kathryn Church

    Kathleen Rutty

    Kathy Sirockin

    Kati Turner

    Ken Lumb

    Kent PROMPT

    Kevin Coyne

    Kindred Minds

    King's Fund

    Kingsley Hall

    Kirsten Maclean

    Kirsti Reeves' list

    La Borde

    Laing

    Larry Gostin

    LAMHA

    Lawletter

    Leeds: Leeds Mental Patients Union - Terry Simpson - Leeds Patients Council - poetry tour - Leeds Mental Health Advocacy Group - And the World Really Had Changed in 1996 - crisis project - archive boxes 2007

    Leucotomy

    Lesley Mitchell

    Lewis Mantus

    Libellus Dementum

    Lin Bigwood

    L.A.M.P. (Life After Mental health Problems)

    Life after Mental Illness

    Life and Living - 2003

    Lindsey Dyer

    Link - Link Clubs

    LINks - Local Involvement Networks

    Lisa Haywood

    Liverpool Mind

    Liz Durkin

    Liz Sayce

    Local Involvement Networks (LINks)

    London Alliance for Mental Health Action

    Loren Mosher

    Lorraine Bell

    Louisa Lowe

    Louise Pembroke

    Lucy Johnstone

    LUNA

    Lunacy Law Amendment Society

    Lunacy Law Reform Association

    Lydia Yee

    MACA (Together)

    Mad Chicks

    MadforArts

    Mad Hatters of Bath

    madness

    Madness Network News

    Mad Persons Union

    Mad Pride - Mad Pride box - 15.3.1999 - 20.6.1999 - June 2000 - July 2010

    Mad Pride Ireland

    Mad Pride Toronto

    Mad Studies

    Mad World

    Maggy Ross

    Making a Scene

    Malcolm Chisholm

    Manchester and Greater Manchester (including Salford - Bury, Rochdale, Oldham, Tameside, Stockport, Trafford, Wigan and Bolton)
    People Not Psychiatry
    1973: Manchester Mental Patients Union -
    1978: North West Mind
    1979: Mind in Manchester - 1980: 42nd Street - 1982: Commonplace - Getting to Know You - 1985 Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People - 1987: Manchester Survivors Speak Out - 1988: Distress Awareness Training Agency - Manchester Users Support Group 1989 - Having a Voice 1990 - Hearing Voices - 1993: Survivors Poetry - 1994: Awaaz - 1995? Schizophrenia Media Agency - Psychology Politics Resistance
    2000 Terence McLaughlin's thesis - National Voices Forum Conference - UK Survivor Workers' conference - Collective Voice North West

    Manchester Mind

    Manchester Mental Patients Union - 20.4.1974 - 1979

    Manchester Social Media

    Manchester Users Support Group

    Manic Depressive Fellowship

    Margery Kempe

    Marion Denovan

    Mark Coupe

    Mark Cresswell

    Mark Gallagher

    Mark Greenwood

    Mark Roberts

    Marian Barnes

    Marius Romme

    Mary Barnes

    Mary Lamb

    Mary O'Hagan

    Mary Nettle

    Mary Riley

    Matthew O'Hara

    Matthew Trust

    Maudsley

    Mayola Road Mental Patients Union

    McPin Foundation

    Mel Gunasena

    Mellow

    Mencap

    Mental After Care Association

    mental distress

    Mental Distress in Old Age

    Mental Fight Club

    Mental Health Act Commission

    Mental Health Alliance

    Mental Health Film Council

    Mental Health Foundation - 1992 - 1994 - Alison Faulkner - 8.3.2006 - 31.3.2007 - National Survivor User Network

    Mental Health in Higher Education

    Mental Health Ireland

    Mental Health Media

    Mental Health Research Network

    Mental Health Resistance Network

    Mental Health Task Force

    Mental Health Uganda

    Mental Magazine UK

    Mental Patients Association, Vancouver

    mental patients unions - Scottish Union of Mental Patients (SUMP) - The Need for a Mental Patients Union - "The" Mental Patients Union - Broadmoor Hospital - Croydon - Dundee - Hackney Hospital - Horton Hospital - Hull - Leeds (index) - Manchester (index) - Mayola Road - Portsmouth - Roundway Hospital - Shenley Hospital - South West London -

    Methodists and madness

    Metropolitan Tavern

    Michael Barnett

    Michael Grierson

    Mike Lawson

    Mike Llywelyn Cox

    Millennium Awards

    Mind

    Mind conferences etc

    Mind Consumer Network idea - Crawshawbooth - Mind Consumer Advisory Network ballot -
    Mind Consumer Advisory Panel
    Mind Consumers Network - 1988

    MINDLink box

    Mind Local Associations

    Mind Out

    Mind publications

    MindFreedom

    MindFreedom Ireland

    Mind Yourself

    Minstead Lodge January 1986 - August 1986 - January 1987

    More Hackney

    Mother Care for Children in Hospital

    Moyna Peters

    MPU News 2 - MPU News 3 -

    Museum of the Mind

    museums index

    Myra Garrett

    Nathalie Fonnesu

    National Advocacy Network 1991 (developed into UKAN)

    National Advocacy Network (generic 1998 on)

    National Association of LINks Members (NALM)

    National BME Mental Health Network

    National Committee for Mental Hygiene (USA)

    National Council for Civil Liberties (UK)

    National Disability Arts Collection and Archive

    National Empowerment Center (USA)

    National Institute for Clinical Excellence and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

    National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)

    National Institute for Mental Health (USA)

    National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE)

    National Mental Health Development Unit

    National Perceptions Forum

    National Schizophrenia Fellowship

    National Self-Harm Network

    National Service User Executive

    National Society for Lunacy Reform

    National Society for Lunacy Law Reform

    National Survivor User Network

    National Voices Forum

    Neil Harris

    Nelsy

    Netherlands - 1970 - Mary O'Hagan 1993 - World Congress 16.7.1985 - WFMH Mexico 1991 -

    Network Planning Group

    Neurotics Anonymous

    Newcastle Patients Council

    Newhaven Journeyman

    New Horizons

    New Zealand - 1987 - 2001

    NICE: National Institute for Clinical Excellence

    Nick Crossley

    Nikki Llewellyn

    Nigel Rose

    Noele Arden

    normalisation

    Norman Clinton

    North East England: Newcastle Patients Council - SURF - Gateshead Mental Health Users Forum - North Tyne 2007 - Mark Cresswell

    Northtown Patients Committee

    North West Mind

    North West Mind Consumer Network

    North West Right to Refuse Electroshock Campaign

    Norwegian Prime Minister

    Nottinghamshire Associations 1977 - Brian Davey 1978 - Nottingham self-help group 1982 - Nottingham Mind - "Empowering the patient" 1985 - Minstead Lodge 1986 - Nottingham Advocacy Group 1986 - Summer 1986 list - July 1989 Colin Gell appointed - 15.3.1990 Conference - Nottingham Travels 1990s - EcoWorks 1992 - Training the Trainers 1992 - MakingWaves 2001 - Nottingham 2010 -

    Nottingham Advocacy Group

    Official starts of psychiatry: 1808 - 1850s

    Official starts of: survivor movement - survivor research

    Olaseni Lewis

    Online Emotional Support: OLES or O.L.E.S. Manchester

    On Our Own Terms

    On Our Own Terms Steering Group

    Oor Mad History

    Open Dialogue

    OpenMind - index

    Open Up

    Orville Blackwood

    Ottobah Cugoano

    Our Future Conference

    Oxford Survivors

    Paddington Day Hospital

    Pam Edwards

    Pam Jenkinson

    "Pan African Network of People with Psychosocial Disabilities"

    Pan African Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry

    Paranoia Network

    Parents of backward children

    Patients Association

    Patients Association Manchester

    Patients Case

    Patients' Councils: Avondale (Preston) - Bangour Village - Broadmoor - Brighton - Hackney - Leeds - Newcastle - Nottingham - Southampton - Whittingham -

    Patientenkollektivs

    Patients Protection Law Committee

    Patricia Chambers

    Patsy Staddon

    Paul Baker.

    Paul Reed

    Paul Ripley

    PEER (Peer Expertise in Education and Research)

    peer group therapy

    Pembrokeshire Hearing Voices Group

    Penny Hayes

    People First

    People not Psychiatry (PNP)

    People need People (PNP Manchester's other name)

    Perceptions

    Peter Barham

    Peter Barnes

    Peter Beresford

    Peter Breggin

    Peter Bullimore

    Peter Campbell

    Peter Lehmann

    Peter Lindley

    Peter Scott Blackman

    Peter Sedgwick

    Peter Shaughnessy

    Peter Thompson

    Peter Whitehead

    Pett archive

    Philip Morgan

    Philippe Bernardet

    Phil Ruthen

    Phil Virden

    Phobics Society

    Phoenix Patients' Collective

    Phoenix Rising

    Phrenz

    Phrenz of the Media

    Planet Advocate

    Platt Report

    Poetry - 1913 - 1916 - 1985 - 1986 - 1989/1990 - 1990 - 1991 - 1992 - 1993 - 1994 - 1995 - 1999 -

    Portsmouth Mental Patients Union

    Powell Street CMHC

    Premila Trivedi

    Prestwich Hospital - 1975 - 1977/1978

    Priory Group

    Progress Centre Ardwick Green

    PROP (Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners)

    Project Release

    PROMPT
    PROMPT box

    PROMPT Booklets: 5 - 6 - 5/6 - 7 - 8/9 - 11 - 12 -

    PROMPT Manifesto

    Psychiatric Oppression

    Psichiatria Democratica

    Psychiatric Survivor Archives of Toronto

    Psychiatrisés en lutte

    Pumpkin

    Rachel Grant Smith

    Rachel Perkins

    Raise

    Rat Myth and Magic

    Ravaged Wonderful Earth

    Raza Griffiths

    Reclaim Bedlam

    Recovery groups

    Recovery In-Sight Centre

    Recovery in the Bin

    recovery movement

    Recovery Project Manchester

    Red Rat

    re-evaluation counselling

    Research: needed - 1973 - 1982 - January 1988 - May 1988 - June 1990 - 1994 - 1996 - February 1997 - 2001 - 14.8.2001 - 2002 - April 2002 - 2003 - 2002/2003 - January 2003 - 18.7.2003 - Autumn 2003 - November 2003 - 16.11.2004 - ECT report January 2005 - 15.6.2005 - 15.9.2005 - October 2005 - Autumn 2005 - 21.11.2006 - - portable

    Release

    Renata Edge,

    Research Governance Framework

    Resseau Alternatif a la Psychiatrie

    Rhian Thompson

    Richard 'Cartoon' Campbell

    Richard Shrubb

    Richard Sutton

    Richmond Fellowship

    Rick Hennelly

    Rights: 1970

    Rights for Life

    Robert Dellar

    Robert Hobson

    Roberta Graley

    Robina Addis

    Robin Farquharson

    Robin Farquharson House

    Rocky Bennett

    Rochdale Mind

    Rodney Wiley

    Ron Coleman

    rose gardens

    Rosemary Moore

    Ros Hepplewhite

    Roz

    Ruth Madden

    Rutland Healing Group

    Sam Shakes

    SANE

    SANE Service User Group

    Sans Everything

    Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health

    SARA: Society for the Advancement of Research into Anorexia

    Sarah Gibson

    Sarah Wheeler

    Sarah Yiannoullou

    Sartre - April 1972

    Schizophrenia Ireland

    Schizophrenia Media Agency

    SCIE

    Scientologists

    Scotland: 1870 - 1928 - September 1963 - Summer 1966 September 1967 - 26.7.1971 - 7.4.1972 - 25.10.1981 - 1982 - 1984 - 1987 Edale - 8.1.1988 - 26.9.1988 - All Scotland - December 1988 - Bangour Village Patients Council 1988? - Awareness 1989 - REH Patients Council 1989 - early 1990s - Beyond Diagnosis launch 4.7.1990 - October 1990 - Beyond Diagnosis 2 Atumn 1990 - CAPS 1991 - East Lothian Involvement Group 1992 - Scottish Users Conference - November 1993 - January 1994 - Scottish Users Network March 1994 - 27.5.1994 - Beyond Diagonosis 7 - August 1995 - Closure of Psychiatric Hospitals - Highland Users Group (HUG) 6.1996 - West Lothian Patients' Council 16.8.1996 - 10.10.1996 - 1997 Framework - Edinburgh Users Forum 2000 - Well October 2001 - Malcolm Chisholm Minister 27.11.2001 - Independent Advocacy Alliance September 2002 - Naked Birdwatcher Spring 2003 - Mental Health Act 2003 - 2003-2005 art - Scottish Recovery Network late 2004 - Vox 11.12.2006 - Oor Mad History 9.2007 - collaborative research - Group visit June 2012 - Rights for Life 2015

    Scottish Hearing Voices Network

    Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance

    Scottish Recovery Network

    Scottish Union of Mental Patients (SUMP) -

    Scottish Users Conference

    Scottish Users Interest Group

    Scottish Users Network

    Secure Services

    Self Harm - 1989 - 1994 - 1995

    Self Management

    Service User Research Enterprise (SURE)

    Service Users in Research

    Shaping Our Lives

    Sheila Beskine

    Sheila Hollins

    Sheffield index: TO ENTER

    Shelley Harper

    Shuffle Festival

    Shulamit Ramon

    Sidney Briskin -

    Sidney Millin

    SIMBA

    Simon Barnett

    Simon Heyes

    Skallagrigg House

    Slough User-Led Consultation (SULC)

    Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)

    Socialist Patient Collective

    Sociolgy of Mental Health Study Group

    SOLNET: Shaping Our Lives National User Network

    Southwark Mind

    South West Mind

    Speaking from Experience

    Speak Out Against Psychiatry

    Speak Out Mental Health History - Birmingham - 2006 - 2007 -

    Special Olympics

    Special Olympics Lebanon

    SPiRiT

    SPK

    Stand to Reason

    State of Mind - 2009

    Stay Up Late

    Stephen Ticktin

    Steve Gillard

    Steve Tilley

    Steven Thompson

    St George's University of London

    Strategies for Living

    Su Budd

    SUGAR

    SUMP (Scottish Union of Mental Patients)

    SURE: Service User Research Enterprise

    Support Coalition International

    Suresearch - Service Users in Research and Education

    SURF (Service Users Reaching Forward)

    SURG

    SURGE: Service-User Research Group England

    SURGE Guidelines

    Survivor Arts Project

    Survivors Poetry - 1991 - 1992 - 1993 - 1994 - 1995 - 1996 - 1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 -

    Survivors Poetry Scotland

    survivor-research.com

    Survivor Researcher Network

    Survivors Speak Out - Peter Campbell's summary - Survivors Speak Out box - Minstead Lodge January 1986 - Asylum Summer 1986 - Survivors Speak Out newsheet (starting Summer 1986) - Edale September 1987 - Address List May 1988 - First AGM - 5.9.1989 - 16.9.1989 - Crisis Cards - 1992 - 1993 - Mental Health Task Force - office - Information Network December 1993 to February 1996 - 1994 - November 1994 Forging our Futures - 1995 - Advance Directives - January 1996 - 1996 - June 1996 - 1997 - January 1998 Birmingham - 2000 - 2003 - November 2004 - April 2007 -

    Survivors United Network (SUN) - Survivors United Network 1999-2002 - Sun International

    survivor/user enterprises

    Susan Rooke-Matthews

    Susannah Marshall

    Swan

    Sylvia Jeffares

    Tam (Thomas) Graham

    TAPS

    Ted Curtis

    Ted Ward

    Teresa Housden

    Terry Conway

    Terry Simpson

    Testimonies Project

    THACMHO

    Thalidomide

    The Advocate

    Therapeutic communities

    thepsychotic.org.uk

    Thomas Ritchie

    Thurstine Basset

    Time to Change

    Tina Coldham

    Together (MACA)

    Together Service User Involvement Directorate

    Tontine Road

    Tony Glynn

    Tony O'Donnell

    Tony Riley

    Tony Smythe

    Tony Whitehead

    Trieste

    Troubadour coffee house

    Truth and Reconciliation in Psychiatry

    Uganda

    Ukawsaw Gronniosaw

    UKAN (United Kingdom Advocacy Network)

    UKAN archive

    UK Federation of Smaller Mental Health Agencies

    UKSurvivors Yahoo group

    Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation - UPIAS box

    United Kingdom Advocacy Network (UKAN) - archive

    UK Mental Health Research Network

    United Nations

    UPIAS

    User Focused Monitoring programme

    User Focused Monitoring Bristol -

    user-led research

    user/survivor enterprises

    Valerie Amos

    Valerie Argent

    Veronica Dewan

    Victor Finkelstein

    Victoria Park Day Centre

    ViewPoint

    Victim to Victor workshops

    Victoria Helen Smith

    Vincent Gillespie

    Vincent van Gogh

    Viv Lindow

    Voices

    Voicewalks

    Voluntary Sector Mental Health Providers Forum

    Voice

    Voices

    VOX Voices of Experience

    Wales: Cardiff Mind office - Crisis Cards 1989 - Hearing Voices Late 1993 - Mind Millennium Awards - 2.3.2000 Cymrar (Advocacy in Wales) and All Wales User Network - 14.11.2002 Mind Conference Cardiff - Cymar 2004 - September 2004 - 30.3.2006 British Psychological Association Cardiff - August 2007 - Manchester conference 2008

    Watershed moments

    Water tower speech

    Wellcome Library

    Wellcome Witnesses

    Wentworth-Stanley Hall

    We're Not Mad We're Angry

    Wicked Fish

    Wikipedia editathon

    Winston Rose

    Wokingham and District Mind

    Wolfgang Huber

    Women and Mental Health Conference

    Women and Psychiatry group

    Womankind

    Women working with Women

    Wood Committee (1929)

    Working Like Crazy

    Working to Recovery Ltd

    World Federation for Mental Health

    World Federation of Psychiatric Users

    World Health Organisation

    World Hearing Voices Day

    World Mental Health Day

    World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry

    Wouter van de Graaf

    Your Rights in Mental Hospital

    Yvonne Christie

    Zito Trust

    Zyra



    "We proclaim the dignity of society's so-called mental patients"

    1973 and ever onwards

    It did not start in 2000. It did not start in 1985. It did not start in 1973. It certainly did not start in 1963, when I first experienced it as a patient. People are always claiming that their's was the start. But the only credible truth is that collective self advocacy by mental patients has been going on quietly for much longer than we know about. (Andrew Roberts)

    There was a perception that 1985 was when things really started. I think in 1985-1986 significant things did happen. But it is also clear there were things going on before 1985, and some of those things fed into what happened after 1985. Mind has focused on the World Federation Conference held in Brighton in 1985, as a starting point. I think the Mind conference in 1985 in Kensington was more significant, because it was the first national mental health conference where much of the programme was run by service users. Then in 1986 Survivors Speak Out was formed. (Peter Campbell)

    Many histories can be written - they will not all be the same. (Marian Barnes 2007)



    We cried together last night, but our tears were in solidarity with the sadness in the world, and through our solidarity through our tears we found strength





    Messages from THACMHO

    "Until the lion learns to write his own history, tales of the lion will continue to glorify the hunter" (African proverb)

    "The events that transpired five thousand years ago; five years ago or five minutes ago, have determined what will happen five minutes from now. All history is a current event." (John Henrik Clarke)

    "A people denied their history is a people deprived of their dignity" (Ali A. Mazuvi)

    "If one doesn't know where they came from, how can they know where they are at the present time, and how can they know where they are going in the future?" (Philip Morgan, Treasurer, THACMHO - Tower Hamlets African Caribbean Mental Health Organisation)

    "To the Survivor History Group. From one group of survivors to another as we are all family in more than one sense of the word." (Philip Morgan, inscription in the front of a book)

    THACMHO is a group of Afro-Caribbean mental health service users in Tower Hamlets who have been researching, teaching and publishing black history since 1996 in the belief that the cultural loss of identity leads to a lack of self-respect and is one of the reasons that Afro-Caribbean people are over-represented in psychiatric hospitals. They believe that health is holistic and that studying history is part of the process by which the whole person is established. They offer a "holistic approach to mental well-being by education, friendship and support"