The scholars listed below endorse the principles of MindFreedom and work to share their research expertise and interests with communities worldwide. Read about their wonderful work and their personal endorsements of MindFreedom International.

Our Allies

Note: research institutions are listed for identification purposes only

 (in no particular order)

• Bill Anthony, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Boston University.
• Pamela J. Birrell, Ph.D. Senior Instructor and Head Undergraduate Advisor, Psychology Department, University of Oregon.
• Bonnie Burstow, Ph.D. Faculty member in the Department of Adult Education and Community Development at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at University of Toronto and long time antipsychiatry activist.  
• Paula Caplan, Ph.D. Research Associate, DuBois Institute, Harvard University
• Sumi Colligan, PhD, MPH, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
• Pat Deegan, Ph.D. Doctor of Clinical Psychology, Duquesne University, 1984; long-term community organizer and mental health consultant.
• Sue Estroff, Ph.D. Professor in the Department of Social Medicine, School of Medicine, and research professor in the departments of Anthropology and Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• Tom Greening, B.A., Ph.D. faculty member at the Saybrook Graduate School, Clinical Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Distinguished Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology.
• Jennifer M. Henke,  PhD, Adjunct Professor at the University of Oregon,  Eugene, Oregon. 
• Gail Hornstein, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology and Education, Mt. Holyoke University, Mass.
• Alicia Lucksted, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine
• Robert Menzies, Ph.D. Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto; MA (Criminology) University of Toronto; BA (Psychology) York University, Ontario, Canada.
• Linda Morrison, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, U.S.A.
• Michael O’Loughlin, Ph.D. (psychology, Columbia University) Professor at Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi, Long Island, New York.
• Laurie E. Powers, Ph.D. Associate Dean for Research, Director, Regional Research, Institute for Human Services, Professor of Social Work, Portland State University
• Janet Walcraft, Visiting Fellow, University of Hertfordshire, Honorary Fellow, University of Birmingham, School of Social Policy.
• Erick Fabris, lecturer in the School of Disability Studies, Ryerson University.

Profiles and Endorsements

Bill Anthony

Ph.D. Executive Director, Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Boston University.

“MFI does very important work–combining great strategies with great passion.”

Bill is the executive director of the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University. His areas of expertise include: identifying the dimensions of a recovery-oriented mental health system, developing treatment protocols for psychiatric rehabilitation, recognizing future issues for psychiatric rehabilitation, integrating psychiatric rehabilitation and community support system technology into managed care. For a wide list of Bill’s publications, please see: http://www.bu.edu/cpr/about/profiles/wanthony.html

Pamela J. Birrell

Ph.D., Senior Instructor and Head Undergraduate Advisor, Psychology Department, University of Oregon.

“Ethically and morally, it is important for academics to be willing to listen to the voices of those who suffer. MFI is an organization that provides voice to those who might otherwise be silenced by the powerful, and we must listen. Otherwise our theories and ideas will be incomplete and potentially harmful.”

Pamela has had extensive professional experience over three decades, not only in her private psychology practice but also in various professional roles in education at the University of Oregon Psychology Department, where she is presently employed as the Head Undergraduate Faculty Advisor. For a more detailed Vitae and listing of Pamela’s extensive publications, please see: http://www.uoregon.edu/~pbirrell/

MindFreedom is a vitally important organization standing up as it does for the human rights of people and communities traditionally pathologized and silenced. MindFreedom has a proud history intervening on the world stage. It combines at once an understanding of human rights, a commitment to building a better world, an international reach, a shrewd understanding of activist principles, and what every group who want to have an impact need s– a talent forgetting the work done and building consensus.  

Bonnie Burstow

Ph.D. Faculty member in the Department of AdultEducation and Community Development at Ontario Institute for Studies inEducation at University of Toronto and long time antipsychiatryactivist.

“MindFreedom is a vitally important organization standing up as it does for the human rights of people and communities traditionally pathologized and silenced. MindFreedom has a proud history intervening on the world stage. It combines at once an understanding of human rights, a commitment to building a better world, an international reach, a shrewd understanding of activist principles, and what every group who want to have an impact needs — a talent for getting the work done and building consensus.”

Bonnie Burstow (PhD.) is a faculty member at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at University of Toronto. She is also a long time antipsychiatry activist, for years was co-chair of Ontario Coalition to Stop Electroshock, has been chair of Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault since its inception, was chair of Resistance against Psychiatry, and she chaired the historical conference PsychOut. She was also on the editorial collective of Phoenix Rising for many years.

As an academic, her specialties include working with survivors of trauma, and creative empowerment work with the disenfranchized, with particular emphasis on the movements associated with psychiatric survivors, but also those associated with people who are homeless, sex trade workers, users of nonprescription drugs, prisoners, and undocumented people. Almost all of the masters and doctoral thesis which she supervises are connected with resistance, whether it be with respect to theatre of the oppressed, mounting cases against countries at the United Nations or more typical forms of resistance.

She has integrated antipsychiatry issues into courses which she has taught in a number of different disciplines, including adult education and community development, social work, counseling psychology, and film. Her areas of research include: women and electroshock, feminist therapy, radical understandings of trauma, political theatre, community organizing strategy, and ethical issues in research.

Examples of her publications are:

• The House on Lippincott. Toronto: Inanna Publications and Education Inc., 2006. (a novel about a Holocaust survivor family)
• Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, 1992.
• Feminist Antipsychiatry Praxis: Women and the Movement(s)” In Women, Madness and the Law: A Feminist Reader, eds. Wendy Chan, Dorothy Chunn, and Robert Menzies, London: Glasshouse Press, 2005, pp. 245-258.
• Invisible Theatre, Ethics, and the Adult Educator,” International Journal of Lifelong Education, Vol. 27, no. 3, 2008: pp. 273-288
• Understanding and Ending ECT: A Feminist Imperative, Canadian Woman Studies, Vol. 15, nos. 2 and 3, 2006: pp. 115-122.
• Electroshock as a Form of Violence Against Women, Violence Against Women, Vol. 12, No. 4, 2006: pp. 372-392.
• A Critique of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and the DSM, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 45, No. 4, 2005, pp. 429-445.
• Toward a Radical Understanding of Trauma and Trauma Work, Violence Against Women, Vol. 10, No. 11, 2003: pp. 1293-1317.

As a counterhegemonic academic, she is profoundly committed to expanding the spaces within academia for antipsychiatry knowledge, for mad knowledge and sees the bringing together of the academy and the community as essential.

Paula Caplan

Ph.D., Research Associate, DuBois Institute, Harvard University

“MindFreedom International is vital in the global movement toward a just and humane response by our societies to the inevitable human experience of emotional crisis. It highlights ongoing injustices against survivors/consumers and points toward alternatives that promote empowerment, choice and our shared spirit and humanity.”

Paula J. Caplan is a clinical and research psychologist, author, playwright, actor, and director. Paula received her A.B. with honors from Radcliffe College of Harvard University, and received her M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from Duke University. She is presently a Research Associate at the DuBois Institute, Harvard University, and previously she has been a Lecturer at Harvard in Women, Gender, and Sexuality and in the Psychology Department. She is former Full Professor of Applied Psychology and Head of the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and former Lecturer in Women’s Studies and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. For more information see: http://paulajcaplan.net/

Among her published books are the titles:

• You’re Smarter Than They Make You Feel: How the Experts Intimidate Us and What We Can Do About It
• They Say You’re Crazy: How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal

Pat Deegan

Ph.D. Doctor of Clinical Psychology, Duquesne University, 1984; long-term community organizer and mental health consultant.

“I have been a member of Mind Freedom International for many years. I am drawn to this organization because it champions the fundamental human rights of those of us diagnosed with mental disorders. When fundamental human rights are ignored, atrocities at the micro and macro level can occur under the guise of treatment. Clinical work and social policy must be continually informed by the fundamental rights guaranteed to all citizens. MindFreedom keeps us all honest and focused on what we value most: human rights and human dignity.”

After completing school Pat worked as a clinical director of community-based programs for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health from 1983-1987. Pat is an activist in the consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement and a co-founder of the National Empowerment Center, Inc., which is a federally funded, national technical assistance center run by consumer/survivors. Pat has given keynote addresses, lectures, and workshops across the world and has published widely with her work being translated into Spanish, Hebrew, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish and German. Pat’s current projects include researching a recovery-based approach to using psychiatric medications at the University of Kansas, developing recovery-based competences for mental health practitioners, helping to restore forgotten cemeteries at state hospitals, and helping consumers win money for new housing through the sale of state hospitals. She is the director of Pat Deegan & Associates, LLC, a consumer/survivor/ex-patient run organization. Pat is also a psychiatric survivor. For a more detailed bio, see: http://www.patdeegan.com/aboutus_bios.html

Sumi Colligan

PhD, MPH, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

Dr. Colligan is a full professor who teaches courses in cultural anthropology, disability studies, global social movements, and medical anthropology. She has served on the board of the Society for Disability Studies as well as the editorial board of the Disability Studies Quarterly. Broadly speaking, Professor Colligan is interested in ways in which oppressed groups articulate and act upon specific conceptions of social justice. Most recently, she has been conducting research on the disability rights movement in Israel. As a nascent social movement in dialogue with global human rights discourse(s), her study provides an opportunity to witness the forces of globalization and localization at play.

Sue Estroff

B.A., Ph.D, Professor in the Department of Social Medicine, School of Medicine, and research professor in the departments of Anthropology and Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“What MindFreedom is and does keeps the heart and soul of activism well nourished and focused. I look to MindFreedom for information, perspective, and wisdom, and regularly refer my students and colleague to the website and publications.”

Sue joined the UNC faculty in 1982, and was Chair of the Faculty from 2000-03. In 1984, she received the Margaret Mead award from the American Anthropological Association and Society for Applied Anthropology. She is past president of the Society for Medical Anthropology, and has been a visiting professor/lecturer at Universities in Ulm, Germany, Toronto, and Tokyo. Research areas: individuals with chronic illness and disabilities; cultural approaches to psychosis; sociocultural factors that influence the course of psychiatric disorders; disability income policy and practice; illness narratives; moral reasoning and the production of knowledge in qualitative scholarship; reconsidering the association of violence with persons with psychiatric disorders; and complexities of consent in maternal fetal surgery. Estroff teaches medical students, supervises dissertators in the Department of Anthropology, serves on thesis committees across campus, and teaches graduate seminars in methods and ethics.

Her publications include:

• The Social Medicine Reader (co-editor)
• “Ironic Interventions? Balancing Risks and Rewards” in First Episode Psychosis via Qualitative Inquiry  (in press)
• No Other Way to Go’ Pathways to Disability Income Among Persons with Severe, Persistent Mental Illness
• “Whose Story Is It Anyway: Authority, Voice, and Responsibility” in Narratives of Chronic Illness
• The Influence of Social Networks and Social Support on Violence by Persons with Serious Mental Illness
• Risk Reconsidered: targets of violence in the social networks of people with serious psychiatric disorders
• The Cultural Calculus of Consent in Experimental Maternal Fetal Surgery
• Recognizing and Responding To Early Psychosis: A Qualitative Analysis Of Individual Narratives
• From Stigma to Discrimination: An Analysis of Community Efforts to Reduce the Negative Consequences of a Psychiatric Disorder and Label

Estroff has served as a consultant to the Carter Center’s Mental Health Stigma program, The Hogg Foundation Scientific Advisory Board, and is a member of the mental health services in specialty mental health settings review committee at NIMH.

Tom Greening

B.A., Ph.D. faculty member at the Saybrook Graduate School, Clinical Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Distinguished Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology.

Greening received his B.A. from Yale University and then spent a year in Vienna on a Fulbright Fellowship. He attended graduate school at the University of Michigan, receiving a Ph. D. in 1958. Greening is a faculty member at the Saybrook Graduate School having been an adjunct professor for many years and serving on the founding board of directors. He is a Clinical Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Distinguished Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology. He is a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, American Board of Professional Psychology and a Fellow of four divisions of the American Psychological Association. He teaches courses in the area of personality theory, ethics in psychotherapy, humanistic psychology and psychotherapy, group therapy, and citizen diplomacy. He is the former editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, operates a private psychotherapy practice specializing in existential/humanistic/psychodynamic psychotherapy.

Tom is also a published poet and writer, with his works appearing in:

• The American Scholar
• Awakening
• Inquiring Mind
• Jazzbeat
• The Lyric
• The Nonviolent Activist
• ORIM: A Jewish Journal at Yale
• Sgraffito
• Ten Directions
• Journal of Poetry Therapy
• Somatics

For more information and contact details for Dr. Greening, see: http://www.tomgreening.com

See also, Saybrook University, http://www.saybrook.edu/

Gail Hornstein

Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Education, Mt. Holyoke University, Mass.

Gail specializes in the history of twentieth-century psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis, psychotherapy of psychosis, first-person narratives of madness, and psychiatric survivor movements. Professor Hornstein is now one of the world’s experts on these “First Person Accounts of Madness,” and maintains a list of more than 600 titles of such stories. Trained as a social psychologist and the author of a book and dozens of articles, Professor Hornstein teaches at Mt. Holyoke college in Massachusetts. Professor Hornstein has a deep commitment as an academic psychologist – who is not a therapist and has no role in the mental health system – to advancing the ideas of the psychiatric survivor movement.

Alicia Lucksted

Ph.D, Assistant Professor, Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine

“MFI is a crucial advocate in mental health circles — always well-informed, both hard-nosed and compassionate, dedicated, creative, and truly international.”

Dr. Alicia Lucksted’s research interests include applied mental health services and consumer recovery (especially with regard to serious mental illnesses, mental health self help, and qualitative and mixed methods in services research). Dr. Lucksted is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Michigan and received her Ph.D. from the Clinical/Community Psychology program at University of Maryland College Park in 1997. She completed a Post Doctoral Fellowship at the Center for Mental Health Policy and Services Research at the University of Pennsylvania before coming to the University of Maryland Baltimore Center for Mental Health Services Research in 1998, where she is an assistant professor of Psychiatry on the research faculty. Her professional work focuses on applied research towards improving public mental health services for people diagnosed with mental illnesses, self-help interventions among mental health consumers and their family members, qualitative methods in mental health services research, the welfare of gay, lesbian, bi, and transgender people in the mental health system, and consumer views of mental health services.

For a list of Alicia’s voluminous publications, see:

http://medschool.umaryland.edu/FACULTYRESEARCHPROFILE/viewprofile.aspx?id=5934

Robert Menzies

Professor of Sociology, Ph.D. (Sociology) University of Toronto; M.A. (Criminology) University of Toronto; B.A. (Psychology) York University, Ontario, Canada.

“As a psychiatric survivor activist, David Oaks has been speaking truth to power for more than three decades. I am proud to be associated with the MindFreedom International Academic Alliance, and I look forward to much productive collaboration as MFI continues to offer solidarity to psychiatrized people, and support for mental health rights around the globe.”

Robert’s research interests and expertise include sociology and history of psychiatry and public health, cultural and institutional constructions of madness, law, governance and social control, sociology of citizenship and social justice, contemporary men’s and fathers’ rights movements, and qualitative research methods. Dr. Menzies has taught at SFU since 1982, and recently spent a term as J.S. Woodsworth Resident Scholar in the Humanities. Dr. Menzies is a former recipient of the SFU Excellence in Teaching Award. His current projects include an in-progress book on the cultural history of ‘criminal insanity’, an inquiry into the encounters of racialized people with early 20th-century psychiatry, a study of eugenics and sterilization law in British Columbia, and, with colleagues across the country, the development of a research and education website on the history of madness in Canada.

Linda Morrison

Ph.D., received at M.S.W. at the University of Pittsburgh. Presently, Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA since 2007. Email: morrison2841@duq.edu

“MindFreedom International is a valuable source of support, information and advocacy for people worldwide who are questioning the practices of psychiatry, seeking alternatives and promoting human rights in the mental health system.”

Morrison, assistant professor of sociology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences, completed her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. Her Ph.D. was developed into a book, Talking Back To Psychiatry: The Psychiatric Consumer/survivor/ex-patient Movement. It has received critical acclaim for bringing the themes and issues of a little-known, complex social movement to the attention of sociologists, mental health professionals, and the general public. The book explores the movement’s history, its complex membership, its strategies and goals, and the varied response it has received from psychiatry, policy makers, and the public at large.

She teaches courses in social work, social welfare policy, introductory sociology, medical sociology and mental health, contributing to the development of the department’s concentration in social work. Her research pertains to mental patient’s rights social movements, and she is published in the area of community psychiatry.

Michael O’Loughlin

Ph.D. (psychology, Columbia University) Professor at Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi, Long Island, New York.

“MindFreedom is a vital resource for persons with psychiatric disabilities. Freedom is not a gift. It is prized for those who stand up for their rights. MindFreedom is on the forefront of that struggle.”

As well as his professorship, O’Loughlin also teaches and supervises in the graduate and postgraduate programs at Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi. He teaches in the department of curriculum and instruction in the school of education. He holds a Postdoctoral Certificate in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy from Adelphi University. He has a private practice in child and adult psychotherapy and psychoanalysis on Long Island, New York. His research interests and expertise are in intergenerational trauma and psychosis. He is a strong advocate for psychiatric rights. He has also written successful books on children’s issues and recently wrote, The Subject of Childhood (2009), and edited Imagining Children Otherwise: Theoretical and Critical Perspectives on Childhood Subjectivity (2010). He has published internationally and contributes regularly to public discourse on mental health issues around the world.

Laurie E. Powers

Ph.D., Associate Dean for Research, Director, Regional Research, Institute for Human Services, Professor of Social Work, Portland State University.

“MFI provides an essential voice for the rights and dignity of all people with mental health conditions.”

Laurie Powers is a distinguished professor of Social Work and Social Research at Portland State University (PSU), and director of the National Center for Self-Determination and 21st Century Leadership. Dr. Powers has been a Principal Investigator of 40 community-based, collaborative research, demonstration and training projects funded by federal and state agencies, and foundations. She has extensive experience in self-determination, student-directed transition planning, and adolescent transition. Currently, Dr. Powers is the principal investigator of the National Youth Leadership Network and the Making a Life projects. Prior to joining PSU, she was an associate professor of Public Health, Pediatrics and Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University, where in 1999 she was honored with the Faculty Leadership award.

For more information, see: http://www.ssw.pdx.edu/

Truth and Reconciliation in Psychiatry (TRIP) http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/truth_and_reconciliation_in_psychiatry/

 [Updated Sept. 2011]