OCCUPY PSYCHIATRY: Protest the APA in San Francisco

PROTEST AT THE AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION'S ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Sunday, May 19, 2013
11:30am-5:30pm

Moscone Center, 747 Howard Street, San Francisco



http://occupypsychiatry.net/occupyapa2013/130513OccupyAPANewsRelease.pdf



On May 19th, MindFreedom International, the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights®), and the California Client Action Workgroup, organized under the Occupy Psychiatry banner, will protest of the American Psychiatric Association’s 2013 Annual Conference at the Moscone Center, 747 Howard St, San Francisco, California from 11:30 am until 5:30 pm.

The American Psychiatric Association is being charged with serious human rights abuses, coercing people to undergo brain-damaging psychiatric drugs and electroshock, psychiatric profiling, scientific fraud, and psychiatric labeling, including the already discredited Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) to be released at the conference.

Psychiatric survivor, psychotherapist and MindFreedom Board Member Matthew Morrissey will speak and MC the protest rally and demonstration which will feature the following speakers:

§ Leonard Roy Frank, psychiatric survivor and editor.” As psychiatrist Thomas Szasz wrote in 2008, ‘Modern psychiatry — with its Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of nonexisting diseases and their coercive cures — is a monument to quackery on a scale undreamed of in the annals of medicine.’ Now is the time for the people to hold the American Psychiatric Association and its members accountable for their crimes against humanity.”

§ Ted Chabasinski, psychiatric survivor and lawyer, who was electroshocked for experimental purposes when he was six years old. “The increased labeling and drugging of children, and the way the new DSM puts everyone at risk for being called ‘mentally ill’ must be stopped. Everyone must realize that they too can be called crazy, not just those who have already been dragged into and trapped by the system.”

§ Chaya Grossberg, psychiatric survivor and healer. “Rather than being a source for healing, the American Psychiatric Association has damaged the souls and bodies of millions of Americans.”

§ Michael Cornwall, PhD, licensed therapist and human rights activist. “The profession of psychiatry lives in a collective state of denial. Psychiatrists are true believers with a religious fundamentalist type of fervor that allows them to routinely injure, and frequently hasten the death of those they are sworn to heal. But the reckoning is upon them. Their blatant human rights violations will not stand the light of day.”

§ James B. (Jim) Gottstein, Esq., psychiatric survivor and lawyer. “Hundreds of thousands of people are locked up and drugged or electroshocked against their will every day under the auspices of the American Psychiatric Association. These are human rights abuses on a massive scale in violation of United States and International Law. The American Psychiatric Association must be held accountable for its role in these horrors.”

There will also be an open microphone for protestors who want to speak. At least portions of the protest will be live-streamed at ustream.tv on the Occupy Psychiatry Channel, http://bit.ly/10kf0cS.



Contacts:
Matthew Morrissey (415) 722-6317 mattmorr21 [at] yahoo.com
Jim Gottstein (907) 274-7686 jim.gottstein [at] psychrights.org