October 7th Judi’s Room: Second Day of the PAIMI Symposium
Next month’s Judi’s Room, on October 7th from 6:00 to 8:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, is the second day of the PAIMI Symposium, sponsored by MindFreedom International and the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) and will feature a discussion of PAIMI success stories and barriers to success facilitated by Kristina (KK) Kapp, president of MindFreedom and Jim Gottstein, President of PsychRights. PAIMI stands for the Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness Act, which is federal legislation whose first of two purposes is “to ensure that the rights of individuals with mental illness are protected.”
The current mental health system reduces the recovery rate of people diagnosed with serious mental illness from a possible 80% to 5% and reduces their lifespan by 20 years on average. The Report on Improving Mental Health Outcomes (Outcomes Report) meticulously documents this with links to the sources cited and has never been rebutted. Extremely harmful and counterproductive psychiatric interventions are forced on people with no more than 10% of the people involuntarily committed, actually meeting the statutory and constitutional requirements and virtually no one meeting the forced drugging or electroshock constitutional requirements because that is only allowed if it is in their best interest and there is no less intrusive alternative. In other words, how can reducing someone’s possible recovery from an 80% chance to a five % chance be in their best interest? How can shortening their life be in their best interest? Similarly, there are almost always non-coercive approaches that could be used instead.
Since these forced psychiatric interventions that are so harmful and counterproductive are being implemented largely in violation of people’s rights, MindFreedom and PsychRights believe enforcing people’s rights in this regard should be the highest PAIMI priority of the Protection and Advocacy (P&A) agencies around the country.
The PAIMI Advisory Councils, whose membership is required to be comprised of at least 60% of people who are using or have used mental health services or their family members, are empowered by the PAIMI Act to jointly determine the PAIMI priorities to be pursued by their P&A agencies. This dynamic led KK and Jim to found the PAIMI Advisory Council Empowerment Project to get P&A agencies to adopt enforcing people’s rights not to be psychiatrically confined or drugged or electroshocked against their will in violation of their rights to be their highest PAIMI priority. The Symposium is part of that effort.
Thus, on the first day, October 6th from 2-5 EDT, Jim and KK will be presenting detailed information on how the PAIMI Act and the Advisory Councils are supposed to work and facilitating a discussion about it. If you are interested in attending, you can register here for both October 6th and 8th.
The second day, October 7th, as mentioned, is the regular Judi’s Room 6-8 EDT time slot and will be a discussion of PAIMI success stories and barriers to success. If you have a PAIMI success story or have encountered barriers we will love to hear about it. There is a separate Judi’s Room registration if you haven’t already registered for Judi’s Room and want to attend.
The third day, October 8th, from 2-5 EDt is about strategies and action steps with sections on enforcing people’s rights, organizing, and accountability, hopefully ending with commitments to move this effort forward. Again, If you are interested in attending, you can register here for both October 6th and 8th. We are very interested in hearing people’s thoughts on how to move forward.