solidarity in diversity in our mad world
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International Survivor History - Solidarity in multicultural diversity.
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solidarity in diversity in our mad world
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The Sankofa bird flies forward while looking backward with an egg in its
mouth. The egg symbolises the future.
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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.
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About 1705 Ukawsaw Gronniosaw was born a prince in Africa, somewhere near
Lake Chad. -
But he was a prince with a difference: He was considered foolish or insane.
Sold into slavery, he crossed the Atlantic, and became a domestic slave in
New York. Eventually he was granted freedom and crossed the Atlantic again
to England
He published A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars In the Life
of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince, As related by
Himself.
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1764 - 1847
Mad Mary Lamb and her brother Charles were Authors of children's stories
and poetry that were read throughout the
English-speaking world.
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7.7.1845 Alleged Lunatics Friend Society formed by ex-lunatics and alleged
lunatics in London. Amongst those it befriended was Edward L. Peithman, a
German confined for approaching Prince Albert. Eventually he was allowed to
return to Germany.
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After a difference of religious opinion,
Elizabeth Packard was confined in an Illinois (USA) asylum by her husband
After her release in 1863, she successfully campaigned on women's rights
and mental health and civil liberties.
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Vincent van Gogh born Netherlands 30.3.1853
He set the world alight with his convulsive paintings
Shot himself in France 29.7.1890
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Clifford Beers
30.3.1876 - 9.7.1943
USA mental patient
Published his autobiography A Mind
that Found Itself in 1908.
Beers formed the International Committee for
Mental Hygiene in 1919 and this led, eventually, to the present World
Federation for Mental Health.
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1.1.1907 In Germany, August Natterer saw a vision lasting about
half an hour and including about 1,000 images. He spent much of his life
drawing these images, some of which featured in 1922 in Hans Prinzhorn's
Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the Mentally Ill)
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The Royal Albert Institution for the Feeble-minded of the Northern Counties
- Collective action 18.7.1924
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
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Spring 1939, a Reich Committee for Scientific Research of Hereditary and
Severe Constitutional Diseases was established that oversaw the killing
of
an estimated 5,000 'deformed' children in a 'euthanasia' programme that
finished in November 1944. In July 1939 planning of the 'T4' programme of
'mercy killings' of the insane began
We remember those who do not survive
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In January 1955 Peter Whitehead at Rampton top security hospital in England
decided he was wrongfully shut away... Peter 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"
Working through the National Council for Civil Liberties, large numbers of
patients, including Peter, won their liberty in the 1950s.
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1957: Recovery groups, now known as Grow began in Hurstville, Sydney,
Australia. Started by former mental patients who met through Alcoholics
Anonymous. The organisation started in Ireland in 1969
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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.
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1970 The first official patiëntenraad (patient council) was formed
in the (large) psychiatric hospital at Coudewater (western Netherlands)
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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]
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Madness Network News, published in California from 1972 to 1986, and
those who travelled the world with it, linked us together.
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June 1973 A conference at Fresnes, near Paris, brought together
groups from France, Spain, Britain and Germany. A future meeting was
planned
for Holland
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1978 On Our Own. Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health
System by Judi Chamberlin (born New York 1944). Judi visited London,
Holland and Iceland in 1982 - Her book inspired Mary O'Hagan in New Zealand
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Canada 1980: "Cabbages of the world unite" - The call that led the world-
wide network of what is now called, Disabled People's International.
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October 1982 Frank Bangay's Solidarity Poster:
"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"
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International user revolution at the World Mental Health Conference held in
Brighton, England in July 1985. Patient representatives
from the USA, Holland and Denmark were invited as speakers, but the main
English group had to set up its stall outside the conference. Outraged, the
international users negotiated their English comrades entry into the
conference. United, the users took over a section of the conference and
produced their own part of the Mental Health Charter.
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1987 in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Psychiatric Survivors ran
support groups, drop-ins and accommodation, produced information for
survivors and played a role in local mental health politics. It's founder,
Mary O'Hagan, went on a world journey in 1990 and Survivors Speak
Out in England published her Stopovers on my way home from mars.
Reflective journey through the psychiatric survivor movement in the USA,
Britain and the Netherlands in 1993
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1990 "the initiative was taken in the Netherlands to form a network of
associations of (former) psychiatric patients from various European
countries."
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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.
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Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO),
established in 1996, explored the history of the African diaspora in its
search for health through history.
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The tigers and their cubs.
SIMBA (SHARE IN MAUDSELY BLACK ACTION)
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dispensed
with "transparencies, statistics and charts" when it addressed the Maudsley
management in 2000. The group thought it would
be "so much more powerful to do it through prose and poetry" - and to take
their children
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Psychiatric Survivors' Archive Toronto (Canada) began meeting regularly in
January 2001 - They now have an extensive archive classified as
organisational and personal.
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March 2001 Issue one of aaina - a mental health advocacy newsletter
- published in India
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2003: Crona "Dark One". Gender is just one thing s/he does not know how to
deal with.
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The international language of Japanese
comics explores a madness in everyone.
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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. The Pan African Network of Users and Survivors of
Psychiatry is now called the Pan African Network of People with
Psychosocial Disabilities
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2010
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solidarity in diversity in our mad world
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solidarity in diversity in our mad world
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