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NARPA 2006 conference success
BALTIMORE, MD, USA: Report from 2006 National Association for Rights Protection & Advocacy 25th Annual Conference: Emphasis on Social Justice and youth activism. Next year: Los Angeles.
Leah Harris, psychiatric survivor and NARPA board member
The National Association for Rights Protection & Advocacy held their 25th annual conference which ends today after three days in Baltimore 18 November 2006. NARPA is the founding organization of MindFreedom International.
Highlights included:
The Road to Freedom bus tour kicked off at the NARPA conference. Arriving with Yoshiko Dart, the bus began its own year tour at the NARPA conference. Jim Ward, with his family and advocates such as documentarian Tom Olin, left Washington, DC to travel throughout the USA in their special educaitonal bus, accompanied by Tom's photo. The bus found convenient parking as it arrived for the opening of the NARPA conference on Wednesday, 15 November -- those turned out to be circuit court judge parking, but no matter. After a nice stay the bus was returning on Friday.
NARPA President Jim Gottstein announced the core groups such as PsychRights, which he founded, MindFreedom, International Center for Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and NARPA itself, had all decided to have a special focus on youth issues, the drugging of children, and screening.
Friday lunch Keynoter Leah Harris, on the NARPA board, gave a passionate keynote about her own experience as a "teenage mental patient," and called for involving youth in empowering ways in campaigns to save youth from psychiatric human rights violations and violence. Leah said of her experiences in the mental health system as a young person, "I needed validation. I needed to hear that most people struggle. I learned early to 'play along, say what they want, get the hell out'. I decied to stop being passive, to advocate for myself."
In her steps toward activism, Leah gave thanks to author and psychiatrist Peter Breggin, as well as to MindFreedom's oral history project which first helped her come out of the closet as a psychiatric survivor. "It was an internal revolution. I was radicalized. It wasn't the front page of the Washington Post, but it has a ripple effect," said Leah.
Leah ended by calling for younger people to become involved in ehlping to lead "resistance to corporate psychiatry," and encouraged all activists in this difficult field to "take care of your selves and be truly well."
While this year's NARPA had one of the smaller registrations, organizers said they are looking forward to getting out information earlier to the grassroots in preparation for their 2007 NARPA in Los Angeles.
