Join MindFreedom International, this Thursday, January 30, 2025, at 6:00 pm pacific for a virtual ‘Teach-In’
Register HERE.
This event is co-sponsored by MindFreedom Oregon.
The purpose of the teach-in is to alert you about two bills being considered in the 2025 Oregon Legislature
Senate Bill 171
House Bill 2467
If these laws are passed, it will become easier in Oregon, to subject individuals experiencing a crisis, to ineffective, inhumane psychiatric treatment without their expressed consent. We urgently need your help to stop these bills from being passed.
Forced psychiatric interventions often involve confinement (being taken out of the community and put into a restrictive facility in another community), solitary confinement, restraints, handcuffs, police ‘escorts’, forced injections, poliice involvement in one’s home to ensure ‘medication compliance’ even forced shock.
The bill’s main sponsor, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI-Oregon) claims that the bill’s supporters are showing greater ‘compassion’ by forcing individuals into ‘treatment’. They paint opponents of the bill as lacking compassion for individuals with unmet basic needs. They accuse us of not caring about unsheltered individuals or people with disabilities languishing in jails without ‘treatment’.
This is a defamatory lie and a part of a clever public campaign to distract lawmakers from understanding the scope and severity of the psychiatric harm experienced by many in Oregon’s mental health system, or the harm that will follow if this bill becomes law.
On the contrary, our compassion is unassailable. because it compels us to vociferously oppose any form of state-sanctioned violence against people in distress, neurodivergent folk, or individuals with psycho-social disabilities.
Our compassion is informed by our first-hand experiences with the mental health system. That is why we will not take this lying down.
We will continue to support evidence-based models of crisis intervention such as the ones long promoted by MindFreedom HERE because they uphold the dignity, personhood, autonomy, and empowerment of every individual who has mental or emotional challenges. We will not allow our opponents to misrepresent acts of violence against vulnerable people as a form of ‘compassion’ when there are ample, non-violent models to support individuals and families during a temporary crisis.
We believe that both individuals and families in crisis deserve support. That is why, for decades, we have advocated tirelessly for humane, effective, community-based options for people in crisis. Some of these options are peer respites, Soteria Houses, and Open Dialogue, just to name a few. There are alternative training models for family members as well, including Emotional CPR, Families Healing Together, Survivors and Family Members Empowered, Intentional Peer Support, and Supported Decision Making.
There is no time to lose. The bills have been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Judiciary Committee and when they announce the period for submitting testimony, we need to be ready
Your participation in MFI’s Teach-In will prepare you to effectively speak truth to power. Pre-registration is required to attend. To register click HERE
Guest speakers including KK, MFI’s new Board President, and other activists/leaders who have years of legislative experience, will be on-hand to present information about the bill’s history and how to launch and an effective opposition.
If you need special accommodations to participate, please contact sarah@mindfreedom.org
According to a former Executive Director of National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) who led the charge against a similar bill in Ohio, this is a boilerplate law that NAMI and Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) are promoting in every state as a part of a coordinated, national initiative to make it easier to round up individuals and subject them to harmful, potentially lethal ‘treatment’ by force!!
Oregon lawmakers such as Senator Floyd Prozanski, a key sponsor of the Senate Bill, may be duped by NAMI’s fear and propaganda tactics, but we psychiatric survivors and allies know in our bones, that this is not the way to ‘fix’ Oregon’s broken mental health system!
If passed into law, these bills will have a profound impact on anyone in Oregon who experiences extreme mental, physical, or emotional distress. Fortunately, we have strong allies.
Disability Rights Oregon, (DRO) is vigorously opposing HB 2467 and SB 171 claiming on their website, that the new law is ridiculously vague. Under the proposed law, family members, in order to commit a loved one, simply need to testify that a loved one committed a violent act in the past or that they are likely to commit a violent act in the future (thirty days to be exact)!
Think about that for a moment….how can family members predict the behavior of a loved one in the future? Do family members possess prophetic powers?
DRO argues against the bill not only because it is absurdly vague, but because the cost is enormous. According to DRO’s website:
“Civil commitment is a terrible investment for Oregonians—especially after decades of disinvestment in our behavioral health system have led to today’s mental health, substance abuse, and homelessness crises. Civil commitment is the most expensive way to get care for the fewest people.”
-
According to a 2023 Oregon Criminal Justice Commission Report (*see Page 19), it would cost more than $32 million to forcibly commit 100 people for 180 days.
-
Instead of of diverting limited resources to a broken system, Oregon could invest that same amount of money in building preemptive solutions, such as each of the following:
-
24-hour emergency mobile crisis response teams, like CAHOOTS in Eugene, in 40 more cities and towns;
-
Intensive, in-patient substance abuse treatment for 5,333 people; or
-
20,100 additional shelter beds for homeless individuals and families.
-
Family members who support this bill often do not understand how traumatizing and harmful involuntary treatment can be. As a parent of a psychiatric survivor myself, I often wish I could go back in time and protect my beautiful, freedom-loving daughter from the ‘treatment’ she received when she experienced a crisis: five point restraints and being injected with Haldol at Peacehealth hospital in Eugene, Oregon.
It changed the trajectory of her life. It set her on a downward spiral: six years of civil commitment which was traumatic for her as well as our entire family. We lost our trust in psychiatric authorities, as well as the judicial process.
Obviously, I can’t go back in time to erase this terrible experience but I can speak loudly in opposition to this bill in the hopes of preventing other parents from having to witness their child experience a similar harm.
Whether you are a psychiatric survivor, a mental health service user, a family member, or a mental health professional, we need your help to stop this bill!
If you cannot attend the Teach-In on January 30 but you still want to get involved….
-
Do you have special skills to contribute? Fill out our volunteer form on our website HERE
-
Do you have organizing experience? Contact sarah@mindfreedom.org. Let’s talk!
-
Are you a member of MindFreedom International? Support our work financially by joining MFI or renewing your lapsed membership today. You can join by making a donation of any size on our secure website HERE
Resources to Testify at the Oregon Legislature
Oregon Legislature Notes (credit: Laura Rose Misaras)
How To Testify On 2025 SB 171 And HB 2467 (credit: Jacek Haciek)