Jump to a specific topic: Membership and finances | Our services | Our values
1. Membership and finances
Q: How do I become a member of MFI?
A: Simply donate any amount to us either by paying through our secure online donation page or by sending a check in the mail to MindFreedom International at PO Box 11284, Eugene, OR 97440 USA.
Once we have received your payment, we will register you in our records as a paying member and add your email address to our mailing lists for Judi’s Room, the Shield program, and monthly newsletters, from which you may unsubscribe at any time.
Your membership will be valid for one year after the date of your payment. After that, you will have to manually renew your membership if you so choose. We will notify you of your impending membership expiration one month in advance.
Q: How much does membership cost?
A: Our recommended annual membership fee is $35 for those who can comfortably afford it and $20 for those with lower income. However, we welcome any amount.
Q: What if I can’t afford to pay a membership fee?
A: We understand. We will never deny membership to anyone for being unable to pay for their membership. To join us without paying a fee, simply email our office at office@mindfreedom.org with your contact information so that we can create a membership profile for you in our records and add you to our mailing lists. We will not ask for any proof of low income.
Q: Why does MFI charge a membership fee?
A: Although we refer to these payments as membership fees, they are effectually tax-deductible donations under section 501(c)(3) of the US Internal Revenue Code, as we rely on them to fund our operations.
Q: What is MFI’s privacy policy?
A: We keep our members’ personal information in a secure database, where it is accessible only by our office administrators and a select few volunteers who have signed non-disclosure agreements. We will not share or publicize any information about our members without their explicit permission, and we never sell personal information.
In the event that you are no longer interested in maintaining ties with MFI, you can contact our office at office@mindfreedom.org to request that we delete your profile in our database.
Q: Where do MFI’s funds come from?
A: We are powered solely by contributions from thousands of individuals like you, and occasional grants from independent foundations. We receive no funding from corporations, governments, political parties, or religious organizations.
Feel free to contact our office at office@mindfreedom.org to request copies of our 990 Forms that we have filed with the US Internal Revenue Service. You will see that we do a lot with limited resources!
2. Our services
Q: Can MFI provide me with legal advice?
A: No, we are not a legal advocacy organization and cannot provide legal services. The best we can do is potentially refer you to a legal agency or legal professional such as an attorney depending on whether we have any active affiliates in your area.
Q: Can MFI provide me with medical advice?
A: No. Although our website contains information about various medical topics, these materials should not be construed as an attempt to offer or render a medical opinion or otherwise engage in the practice of medicine.
Anyone seeking to stop taking psychiatric drugs should do so carefully and with proper medical advice. Quitting suddenly can be extremely dangerous.
Q: I believe I am being subjected to electromagnetic waves/implants/”V2K”/mind control. Can MFI help me with this?
A: No, we can only offer assistance pertaining directly to mental health care (namely forced drugging, electroshock, and/or institutionalization).
Q: May I copy and distribute MFI’s resources/materials?
A: Yes! Except for material whose copyright is retained by its individual creator, you are encouraged to use any and all of the material on our website with some rights reserved under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 2.5.
That means you are free to print, copy, distribute, and/or display our material and create derivative works thereof as long as you meet the following conditions:
- you give credit to the original author, including a link to mindfreedom.org, and
- you do not use any of our material for commercial purposes.
Click the CC button on the very bottom of any MFI webpage for more information about the Creative Commons.
FAIR USE NOTICE: Public portions of this web site may contain copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a “fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.
3. Our values
Q: Aren’t all critics of psychiatry involved with “Scientology”? Does MFI have any connections to that?
A: No, there are plenty of individuals and organizations with reasonable criticisms of psychiatry who are not connected to “Scientology”—like us.
MFI is not affiliated with nor sponsored by “The Church of Scientology” or its organization known as “The Citizens’ Commission on Human Rights” (CCHR), and we do not intend to associate with either in the future. This applies to all of our volunteers, staff, and leaders.
There is always a possibility that some of our non-representative members (i.e. those who are not volunteers, staff, or leaders) may privately subscribe to “Scientology” without our knowledge since we naturally do not investigate the individual ideologies of the people who sign up for memberships with us. However, should we have any “Scientologists” among our non-representative members, we will never use our organization as a platform for them to voice their beliefs.
Our attorney David Atkin has provided a signed letter to clarify and emphasize MFI’s independence.
Q: Is MFI anti-psychiatry?
A: No, we are “pro-choice”: we believe that each individual should have the right to make their own informed choices about accessing mental health care, including psychiatric services.
Many of our members are either dissident psychiatrists or people who choose to consume prescribed psychiatric drugs which they find beneficial. Often, it is those who are willingly taking prescriptions who are also the most passionate and active about challenging abuse in the psychiatric drug industry, as they have the most at stake—their lives are on the line.
At the same time, it is true that many human rights violations arise from the current dominance of psychiatric drugs in mental health care, squeezing out alternatives and facilitating the spread of disinformation, and we are among the few advocacy groups to openly speak out about the unethical way in which these drugs are promoted or even pushed on people.
We also advocate for the increased availability and accessibility of effective, humane alternatives to conventional psychiatry such as peer respites, which have demonstrated success in enabling people to move forward from mental health crises and extreme states without being institutionalized and subjected to coercive and/or intrusive treatment methods. Many of our members have had life-changing positive experiences with such alternatives and we are working with them to promote and expand upon these models. In fact, in October 2021 we helped start the International Peer Respite/Soteria Summit (IPRSS), a month-long summit for sharing information on how to establish and sustain Soteria houses and peer respites, and we are currently raising funds for the next one.