MadFreedom Interviews Jim Gottstein of PsychRights

1
500

From MadFreedom/MadMediaMatters: Attorney Jim Gottstein discusses some of the challenges and strategies involved in providing legal advocacy for people imprisoned in psychiatric facilities and drugged against their will.

“It’s a really tough situation, because people are basically being labeled as ‘crazy’ by supposed experts, who claim that nothing they say should be believed. Fundamentally, I think the public needs to be educated about the truth: that what gets labeled ‘mental illness’ is not illness, and that the so-called ‘treatments’ forced on people actually make things worse, both for the person and in making the entire situation more dangerous. This is also true for psychiatric imprisonment, which is labeled ‘involuntary commitment,’ but, really, this is another way of saying psychiatric imprisonment.

We really need to make this message very public. That’s been hard, because there’s so much money on the other side. In fact, that’s one of the main goals I had in writing The Zyprexa Papers—to get this knowledge to the public.”

Interview →

Support MIA

MIA relies on the support of its readers to exist. Please consider a donation to help us provide news, essays, podcasts and continuing education courses that explore alternatives to the current paradigm of psychiatric care. Your tax-deductible donation will help build a community devoted to creating such change.

$
Select Payment Method
Personal Info

Credit Card Info
This is a secure SSL encrypted payment.

Billing Details

Donation Total: $20 One Time

1 COMMENT

  1. Thanks Jim for doing this interview.

    In order to try to maintain their field, it began to be laced with lies. In this very complex
    manner, psychiatry created it’s own prison, but where their subjects are the ones suffering.
    They are at the point where admitting one lie is dangerous.

    Actually psychiatry has a lot in common with the labels and traits they place on others.
    That is most likely the insult that people resist, when someone who is fucked up, labels the subject as “broken”, “damaged”.
    After all, we are all pretty good mind readers, or so we think.