Freedom from the Global Handcuff
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Brief bio of David W. Oaks, MindFreedom International Executive Director
Here's a capsule summary about David, director of MindFreedom International, along with links to his workshops and some of his popular speeches. For information about workshop and speaking engagements, contact the MindFreedom office.
David W. Oaks, director of MindFreedom International, has been a
psychiatric survivor human rights activist since 1976.
David was born on 16 September 1955 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. All of his grandparents were immigrants from Lithuania. Both of his grandfathers were coal miners in rural Illinois before moving to Chicago.
David's parents were working class loving parents who both worked in offices. David had a brief encounter with mental health care after his high school graduation from St. Ignatius College Prep in 1973.
In the Fall of 1973 David attended Harvard University on scholarships, including one from his father's Teamster's Union.
In David's sophomore, junior and senior year he experienced the psychiatric system. David was placed in psychiatric institutions five times. He was diagnosed both "schizophrenic" and "manic depressive" (now known as "bipolar") and underwent forced psychiatric
drugging and solitary confinement. David has been given neuroleptics (including Thorazine, Stelazine, Haldol, Mellaril, Navane), lithium, anti-depressants, etc.
It was while in a solitary confinement cell that David decided he wanted, once freed, to take action to improve the mental health system.
A psychiatrist at McLean Hospital, a Harvard teaching institution, told David that because he had a genetically-caused chemical imbalance he would have to remain on powerful neuroleptic psychiatric drugs the rest of his life.
That psychiatrist turned out to be incorrect.
Harvard's student
volunteer agency Phillips Brooks House placed David with one of the
early psychiatric survivor human rights organizations, Mental Patients
Liberation Front, which met at Vocations for Social Change near Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. David wrote his senior paper about community
organizing with psychiatric survivors, and graduated with honors in
1977.
With support from peers and his family, David used exercise, nutrition, counseling, wilderness trips, and employment to recover mental and emotional well being. He has been off all psychiatric drugs since 1977.
David helped form one of the first user-run psychiatric survivor activist drop-in centers with MPLF at the Stone Soup Art and Poetry Gallery, and later at an MPLF office across from the Boston Garden.
As well as his activist work in the field of human rights in the mental health system, David has also worked in the environmental, peace and social justice movements.
David lives with his wife Debra in Oregon and loves camping and gardening. David helped found and is a member of a men's support group which has met since 1989.
David is available for speaking engagements and workshops. He has presented on topics such as "community organizing for independent systems change in the mental health system" to a diverse range of participants including in Chile, Norway, Ireland, Turkey, Germany and throughout the USA.
E-mail address: oaks (at) mindfreedom.org
