1. What would it mean to stop coercion in psychiatry? Tina Minkowitz Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry

2. Dreams and reality Psychiatrized people have always wanted to be free and whole and valued Wish for lifting of burdens also – relinquishing social roles, responsibilities Need for true asylum/respite Fear of madness: is that how we look to ourselves through others eyes? What does it mean to be free?

3. Life circumstances Trauma: family, sexual and other violence, poverty, war Psychiatry is structured as trauma: – Compliance and control/management agenda – Lying and withholding information – Labeling = shaming – Those in power demand loyalty and trust – Need we say, violence: restraint, seclusion, forced and coerced drugging and electroshock, confinement

4. How could it change? If psychiatry werent structured as trauma: – No legal power to use force or coercion – Narrative rather than diagnosis – What has happened to you? What do you need/want? It could help people recover from trauma – questioning, acknowledging fallibility, humility

5. Knowledge Models exist both peer-run and professional- run, honoring madness and recovery Changing systems/institutional cultures – need people inside and outside the system Public perceptions – going beyond anti-stigma to normality of madness

6. Process of change We will make a lot of mistakes in all directions Old culture dies hard in all of us Willingness to challenge and be gentle Commitment to end legal power of carers and legal inferiority of psychiatrized – unsound mind and incapacity Making the leap

7. Resources tminkowitz@earthlink.net www.chrusp.org www.wnusp.net www.internationaldisabilityalliance.org www.un.org/disabilities www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/disability