MindFreedom Radio News Release

   Four Powerful Women Who Are Challenging Psychiatry Are Guests on
   MindFreedom Internet Radio for December 2006.

    Felicia McCarty, Mary Maddock of Ireland, Paula Caplan and Janet Foner.

To listen free, just live click on http://www.theprn.org every Wednesday in December 2006 at 4 pm EST, 1 pm PST. Or listen or download MP3’s later from the archives, which now work.

During the show you are invited to phone in live toll free with your questions or comments, or e-mail them at any time to radio(at)mindfreedom(dot)org.

Each MF Radio Show begins and ends with the latest news and resources about changing the mental health system, and is hosted by David Oaks, psychiatric survivor, human rights activist for 30 years, and director of MindFreedom International. MF Radio and archives are always free.

December Schedule & Brief Bio’s for MF Radio

6 December 2006 — Felicia McCarty, mother, activist and psychiatric survivor.

Felicia is a psychiatric survivor whose son Steven also ended up in the psychiatric system for 30 long years. Hear about her decades of fierce activism for her son and others, and about his recent tragic suspicious and unnecessary death inside a California psychiatric institution. Felicia is a long-time organizer with MindFreedom Southern California.

13 December 2006 — Mary Maddock, psychiatric survivor, author and activist in Cork, Ireland.

Mary is active in the non violent revolution of the mental health system in Ireland and all over the world. She co-founded MindFreedom Ireland with her suportive husband Jim. They have just now published their book, “Soul Survivor: A Personal Encounter with Psychiatry.”

Mary says, “I have been a psychiatric survivor of six glorious years, having been a psychiatric slave for twenty years, because I was chemically lobotomized by three powerful psychiatric drugs. Education was one of the important reasons why I discovered my liberation. On reading ‘Toxic Psychiatry’ by Peter Breggin and finding MindFreedom International, with their encouragement, support and enlightenment, I rediscovered myself in my late fifties. Every morning now I am happy to be alive in body, mind and spirit again.”

By coincidence, Felicia and Mary both like to call themselves tigresses who are challenging the psychiatric system.

20 December 2006 — Paula J. Caplan, MA, PhD, psychologist and author, is one of the main critics of the way psychiatry labels people with their unscientific “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual” (DSM).

Paula is a clinical and research psychologist, playwright, director, and actor. She is a Lecturer at Harvard, teaching Psychology of Sex and Gender, and a Fellow at Harvard’s DuBois Institute. She is the author of 10 books including, “Don’t Blame Mother: Mending the Mother-Daughter Relationship” and “They Say You’re Crazy: How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal.” She is also an editor and one of the writers of “Bias in Psychiatric Diagnosis.”

27 December 2006 — Janet Foner is a psychiatric survivor with a Master’s degree in Community Psychology who is a champion of humane alternatives to the mental health system.

From 1990 to 2000, Janet co-founded and co-directed MindFreedom. She also since 1978 helped found the movement of psychiatric survivors within the International Re-evaluation Counseling Communities and has since 1992 been the International Liberation Reference Person for Mental Health Liberation in that organization. In that capacity she leads workshops across the USA and in many countries on mental health liberation, and is currently working to start a drug-free counseling center where people can get off psychiatric drugs. Janet says, “I am committed to seeing that mental health oppression is ended.”

Janet is chair of the MindFreedom Choice in Mental Health Care Campaign, which is planning a conference called “Creative Revolution in Healing: Turning Our Minds Around” in July 2007 in Connecticut. For info see http://www.MindFreedom.org or e-mail creativerevolution(at)mindfreedom(dot)org.