2/27/2025

MindFreedom International Opposes Any Efforts to Erode the Rights of people with disabilities.

Along those ends, with support from the Seeding Justice Foundation, and MindFreedom Oregon, we are forming an ad hoc coalition,  to organize an emergency, coordinated opposition to two bad bills in the State of Oregon.

Senate Bill 171

House Bill 2467

If passed into law, these bills will make it easier to civilly commit individuals in Oregon. We consider this to be a statewide emergency. However, similar bills are being proposed in other states as well. Our effort to preserve human rights in the state of Oregon, is only one struggle among many other struggles happening throughout the USA and the world.

We must remain vigilant and active not simply during this emergency but long after we defeat these harmful bills.   We must also act locally but think globally.

 

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TAKE ACTION: FIRST STEPS

 

1. Familiarize yourself with the language of  Senate Bill 171  and House Bill 2467  by reading a Summary by David Oaks  and familiarize yourself with some of the key points outlined by our ally, Disability Rights Oregon under ‘Talking Points’ below.

2. Find out who your representative is

3. Familiarize yourself with how the Oregon Legislature works if needed.

4. Register to track the bill on the Oregon Legislative Information System.

5. Start preparing your response to these bills today. The dates when public testimony will be accepted may be announced on short notice. Be prepared. it may be helpful to read Guidelines for Testifying Before Lawmakers.

1. Decide the method by which you want to make your voice heard. You have the option of testifying in person by traveling to the capital, virtually, or by submitting written testimony. Whatever method you choose will require you to register (create an account) in OLIS

2. If you prefer learning how to register (create an account0 on OLIS from a written document, you may find How To Testify Against Senate Bill 171 helpful. This document also contains helpful details about visiting the capitol.

3. Whatever method you choose, your testimony will be publicly recorded. You may not submit testimony anonymously or ‘retract it’ once it is a part of the public record.

4. Plan in advance if you want to testify in person by traveling to the capitol. Often this requires being available on short notice. Therefore, have a transportation plan well in advance. If you need financial or other assistance to travel to the capital contact office@mindfreedom.org. Keep checking this site for more information about public and shared transportation options to the capitol.

5. You may get involved in other ways such as by participating in a phone tree, assisting us with event planning, assist others by transcribing and/or editing written testimony, helping us build a list of people to contact. A discussion list will be created for this coalition.

TALKING POINTS

According to the report entitled Improving Mental Health Outcomes, the “mental health system’s standard treatments are colossally unproductive and harmful” The evidence of harm from side effects of medication is well documented. New evidence such as the Harrow Study show that people who escape from life long dependence on so-called ‘antipsychotic’ drugs do substantially better in by every measure. Why would we forcibly subjected individuals to controversial treatment that has been proven to lower long term recovery rates?

Disability Rights Oregon, (DRO) is publicly opposing HB 2467 and SB 171 claiming on their website, that the new law is ridiculously vague. Here is a summary from their website:

Should Civil Commitment Statutes Be Expanded?

No. Oregon’s civil commitment statutes should not be applied to even more members of our community. The process is broken, discriminatory, traumatic, and rarely successful.

Nevertheless, an uninformed proposal to expand Oregon’s civil commitment statute is disappointingly being presented by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Here is why Disability Rights Oregon is fighting:

1. Arbitrary 30-Day “Dangerousness” Standard: The proposed law will allow someone to be involuntarily committed based on predicting their behavior 30 days in the future. This is unconstitutional and goes far beyond existing standards. No one can see the future. That’s why no other state uses such a vague, extended timeline.

2. Overly Broad Definition of “Serious Physical Harm”: The proposal’s language is so unclear it could allow judges to commit individuals for medical conditions unrelated to mental health. Someone with poorly managed diabetes, for instance, could be forcibly restrained and treated under this expanded definition—simply because a judge assumes they won’t take insulin.

3. Removal of Medical Expertise: Today, a qualified mental health clinician must examine and decide whether a person is dangerous to themselves or others before the court can involuntarily commit them. NAMI’s proposal threatens to remove critical medical judgment and replace it with a judge’s speculative guess.

DRO argues against the bill not only because it is absurdly vague, but because the cost is enormous. According to DRO’s website:

“Civil commitment is a terrible investment for Oregonians—especially after decades of disinvestment in our behavioral health system have led to today’s mental health, substance abuse, and homelessness crises. Civil commitment is the most expensive way to get care for the fewest people.”

• According to a 2023 Oregon Criminal Justice Commission Report (*see Page 19), it would cost more than $32 million to forcibly commit 100 people for 180 days.

• Instead of of diverting limited resources to a broken system, Oregon could invest that same amount of money in building preemptive solutions, such as each of the following:

  • 24-hour emergency mobile crisis response teams, like CAHOOTS in Eugene, in 40 more cities and towns;

  • Intensive, in-patient substance abuse treatment for 5,333 people; or

  • 20,100 additional shelter beds for homeless individuals and families.

LEGISLATIVE RESOURCES

How the Legislature Works (credit: Laura Rose Misaras)

How To Testify On 2025 SB 171 And HB 2467 (credit: Jacek Haciek)

Report on Mental Health Outcomes

ADAPT Guidelines for Testifying Before Lawmakers

SAMPLE TESTIMONY

Sample  testimony from Sarah Smith, mother of psychiatric survivor, Shield Coordinator for MindFreedom International

Family members who support this bill often do not understand how traumatizing and harmful involuntary treatment can be.

If these laws are passed, it will become easier in Oregon, to subject individuals like my daughter, when they experience a mental health crisis, to ineffective, inhumane psychiatric treatment without their expressed consent.

The bill’s main sponsor, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI-Oregon) claims that the bill’s supporters are showing greater ‘compassion’ by forcing individuals into ‘treatment’.

This bill is not about compassion; it’s about control.

My daughter was civilly committed twelve, consecutive times for a total of six years of forced drugging and institutionalization. She is finally living at home now and hasn’t been hospitalized for six years but she is a shadow of her former vibrant, creative, energetic, and loving self. She is so drugged, she goes days and days without being able to get out of bed, except to go to the bathroom or sit up long enough to eat a meal.

Our entire family is terrified of medical professionals, as it relates to my daughter’s forced psychiatric treatment. One of our biggest fears is when our daughter gets sick and needs to see a doctor or needs to see a dentist. On a monthly basis she must show up at Lane County Behavioral Health for a fifteen minute med check and to get the blood draw that will enable her to pick up her refill of the chemical straight jackets.

I wonder, will this be the day she relives her traumatic experiences of being at Oregon State Hospital? Is this the day that the drug fails to metabolize in her system or her body exhibits an intolerance to the ever increasing dosages? Is this the day her memories will cause her to dissociate, forget who she is and where she is, and scream at the top of her lungs? Is this the day she is considered to be having a ‘crisis’ and must be transported in a police car to the ER?

Our entire family suffers from toxic memories: from our precious daughter being hauled in front of a judge wearing scrubs wet from her urine due to the incontinence inducing drugs she was forcibly injected with, unable to think clearly and verbally defend herself, disarmed by by massive quantities of Haldol. No medical or legal staff caring enough to insist that she be allowed to change to attire more suitable to an official hearing. 

The judge banging his gavel sealing her fate, parroting the ‘expert’ who had only evaluated my daughter for less than thirty minutes on the worst day of her life

The memory of being told by an Oregon State Hospital psychiatrist that her experience of having living things crawling in her scalp was a delusion, a symptom of her disease, only to find out the following day that her two day stay at Lane County Jail had given her a case of head lice.

A memory of the administrator of a restrictive facility hauling her to her probation officer for not being treatment compliant because the drugs were giving her akathisia, and when attempting to argue with a probation officer, a police officer slamming her down, concussing her head on a bookshelf, and not receiving first-aid while bleeding, just a night in a jail cell.

A memory of seeing her in five point restraints in an ER and injected with a mind numbing dose of Haldol then being charged with assault for trying to defend herself

So when I take her for her monthly blood draw, I pray that her PTSD doesn’t flare up, I pray she remains silent, is compliant, keeps her head down. I know what the system can do. They harm young people, then blame our young people’s behavior on their ‘disease; The mental health system itself is sick and the professionals who work within are often traumatized themselves or delusional about the amount of good they do. This system itself is sick and violent, yet family members want to expose their precious children to this failed model and its reliance on forced psychiatry and state sanctioned violence.

I pray that my daughter doesn’t experience unbearable side effects such as akathisia or tardive dyskinesia.  I pray that she doesn’t experience the early mortality experienced by a huge number of heavily medicated consumers and ex-patients.

Many family members and survivors won’t go on record. I too am afraid. I won’t hide any longer.

I will not sit by and watch other family members misrepresent acts of violence against vulnerable people like my daughter as a form of  ‘compassion’ when there are ample, non-violent models to support individuals and families during a temporary crisis.

People like my daughter deserve real support when they experience a ‘crisis’.

Humane effective interventions for people in crisis do exist but our community doesn’t invest in them.  These alternative emphasize personal choice and empowerment and psycho social approaches. Why don’t we invest in them? Because they do not keep the gravy train running for big Pharma. They don’t get much attention from the mainstream, corporate press, lobbyists, or paid influencers. Parents, lawmakers and policymakers aren’t told about them

Some of these options are peer respites, Soteria Houses, and Open Dialogue, just to name a few. There are alternative training models for family members as well, including Emotional CPR, Families Healing Together, Survivors and Family Members Empowered,  Intentional Peer Support,  and Supported Decision Making.

I often wish I could go back in time and protect my beautiful, freedom-loving daughter from the ‘treatment’ she received by force.

It changed the trajectory of her life. It set her on a downward spiral. We lost our trust in psychiatric ‘experts’, as well as the judicial process. We live in fear.

Obviously, I can’t go back in time to erase this terrible experience but I can speak loudly in opposition to this bill in the hopes of preventing other parents from having to witness their child experience a similar harm.