STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

When I was six years old, New York City’s child “welfare” system took me from my foster parents and sent me to one of Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric wards. There, as part of an experimental group of (eventually) several hundred children, almost all of them wards of the state, I was given a course of twenty shock treatments by one of the leading child psychiatrists of her day. (The profession hasn’t changed much since then, except it has even more power.)  I was then shipped to a state hospital, where I spent the rest of my childhood.

Released at age seventeen, I went on to work my way through college, graduating with honors. Later, I served two stints in psychology graduate programs, but fortunately, it didn’t take. Eventually, I became a patients’ rights attorney, and am still an active member of the California State Bar.

I found out about what we then called the mental patients’ liberation movement in 1971, and have been active ever since in several cities in the U.S. and Canada. I am most proud of the campaign I led in my new home town, Berkeley, that persuaded our voters to ban shock treatment here.

I am 75, not young any more, but my life isn’t over yet, and I have rededicated myself to doing all I can so that what was done to me won’t happen to others.

Ted Chabasinski As We Scapegoat Schizophrenics Today, I Am Reminded of Nazi Germany

by

January 26, 2013

I was barely eight years old, an inmate of Rockland State Hospital, and the war in Europe was over. On the front page of every newspaper were the photographs taken by the soldiers who had just liberated the Nazi concentration camps.
Full Article →

Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs

Ted Chabasinski Our Task Is to Take Away the Power of Psychiatry

by

October 2, 2012

Taking away the power of psychiatry? How naive, some of you say. It can never happen. Anyway, some others say, why would we even want to do that? This comes especially from those who have been appointed by the psychiatric establishment to be our leaders, some of whom imagine themselves as becoming the leaders of psychiatry themselves.. And some people who I greatly respect say we should just focus on creating alternatives to the present system.
Full Article →

Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs

Ted Chabasinski The History and Future of Our Psychiatric Survivor Movement

by

August 18, 2012

Brothers and sisters, I want to tell you a little movement history which I am sure many of you don’t know.
Full Article →

Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs, Uncategorized

Ted Chabasinski Kristina

by

July 23, 2012

The hospital rep brought Kristina into the hearing room, a windowless cubicle so crowded there was barely room for them to get to the chairs. Kristina was eleven, a tiny little thing with big eyes and a serious and appealing …
Full Article →

Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs, Uncategorized | Tagged as:

Ted Chabasinski A Child on the Shock Ward

by

July 17, 2012

“I was six years old, and so, finally, all the symptoms of my supposed mental illness … especially, being born to a crazy mother, came to a head. And now I was officially a schizophrenic, proving that the disease was inherited.”
Full Article →

Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs