Info Document Actions Print this Personal Stories Donita Diamata “I didn’t get better because of anything that the clinicians did for me. I got better because I surrounded myself by people who showed that they cared about me who got me laughing again.” Contact info: private Currently doing: Donita is directing the Renaissance Center in…
The MindFreedom Personal Story Project collects histories from psychiatric survivors and mental health consumers about their experiences of survival, resistance, recovery and self-determination in the mental health system. Many participants in the project have struggled through difficult emotional times, and all have suffered through psychiatric labeling and an often abusive and patronizing mental health system,…
Info Document Actions Print this Personal Stories Andrea DoSantos “What led to the mania was actually an antidepressant. I was prescribed “PROZAC,” which after a month or so got rid of the depression but lead to a full blown manic episode. The fact that I had the mania as a side effect of Prozac was…
Info Document Actions Print this Personal Stories Robert D Ewbank “I got to Clinic 3 in the morning and I was on the floor crying because I didn’t want to see anybody hurt. It was like a zoo. It was like a weird, toxic, horrible, blown-out nuclear plague that you couldn’t wake up from. It…
Info Document Actions Print this Personal Stories Leonard R Frank “We have to be witnesses for those millions who are not speaking up now for whatever reason. That’s the role that I feel our movement needs to play right now in society–to speak up, tell the truth about what we have known, what we have…
Info Document Actions Print this Personal Stories Victoria D Gaines “I am just naturally an energetic, passionate, playful enthusiastic, non-conformist weirdo who can be taken for a nut when it so suits peoples’ fancies. Once I realized what was going on in my life, I made sure I got away from those in the mental…
Info Document Actions Print this Personal Stories Robert J Gray “At first, I was tricked into voluntarily taking Navane and Haldol by being told that I had to take them as a condition of having shelter.” Born: 31 July 1962 Contact info: St. Paul, Minnesota,USA Currently doing: Robert is a 411 operator. Mental health experience:…
Info Document Actions Print this Personal Stories Barb Greene “Looking back, I realize that I was heartbroken because I was in this horrible living situation and not getting any support or validation for how I was feeling. Instead of dealing with that, they shocked my mind. This treatment was completely and totally irrelevant to what…
Info Document Actions Print this Personal Stories Jody A Harmon “I’m a psychiatric survivor, and I don’t use that term loosely. I have been stored in warehouses labeled hospitals. I have endured weekly lectures termed therapy. I have been zapped until my brain burns white. I have been held down, tied down, put down. I…
Info Document Actions Print this Personal Stories Leah I Harris “How wrong it all was I wouldn’t realize until over a decade had passed and I began to educate myself about the psychiatric survivor movement. Now that I look back, I think it’s obscene that a traumatized little child would be drugged up. It makes…