Dissident psychiatrist Peter Breggin splits with group he founded.

~~~~~~~

Folks, this is all I know:

These people are my friends, and they're not getting along.

And for now, ICSPP has a new and different web site:

ICSPPOnline.org

The facts? Blessedly, I have few right now. I am not in the middle of this dispute, and I'm not a mediator.

For years I've applauded, encouraged, supported the network of concerned psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals, known as International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP).

When I've been lucky, I've been able to attend their conferences, and have found everyone welcoming and encouraging of our activism at MindFreedom International. ICSPP has always been a truly great sponsor group of MFI, especially during the historic 2003 hunger strike that MindFreedom sponsored, when ICSPP members form the MFI Scientific Advisory Board, that is still active to this day.

I don't have any special knowledge about ICSPP's inner workings, but everyone I know there has been really supportive of mental health consumers and psychiatric survivors having a choice in mental health care. Sure, some survivors may have grumbled that not enough of us can afford to go to their conference. But the ICSPP folks I've know have gone out of their way to do what they can to include psychiatric survivor activism, and help me get there when I can.

Peter Breggin was a founder of ICSPP, and with his wife Ginger worked hard leading it, but in 2002 he publicly announced that while he was not retiring, he was pulling back to encourage new stewardship of this community.

And, this is all I know, as of today:

When one goes to the old ICSPP web site today - http://www.icspp.org - it is re-directed to an entirely new web site, "Empathic Therapy," a brand new organization started by Dr. Breggin.

ICSPP has issued a statement on Earth Day, 22 April 2010 from their board of directors about the matter, to read it click here.

Peter's new web site advertises a new conference -- called "Dr. Breggin's New Annual Conference."

But this is not just a redirect from ICSPP to a new web site.

Dr. Breggin apparently has some truly big issues with ICSPP, significant enough to go public. He ends the new web home page with this critical comment:

"Dr. Breggin is no longer affiliated with the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology which he founded and led from 1972-2002, and Dr. Breggin will no longer be involved in its conferences. Dr. Breggin’s new conferences will be fun, inspiring, and devoted to addressing your personal needs and goals as a therapist, counselor, or teacher."

(And I hope, mental health consumers and psychiatric survivors.)

So, this is all I know. And I'll have to take a guess on the "why":

Fractures, divisions and infighting have plagued social change since day one. It's one of the ways the system wins. People in the system may disagree with each other, but the system holds them together. Artificially, perhaps, but it's still a kind of unity.

Unfortunately, such infighting is not confined to those who are extremely marginalized and often poor survivors of forced electroshock, forced psychiatric drugging, mis-labeling and other abuse.

Such infighting can also happen among mental health professionals themselves.

I guess we can just witness and encourage all of our friends to consider the first six words of the MindFreedom mission statement:

"In a spirit of mutual cooperation..."

We started MindFreedom's coalition to apply the concept of peer mutual support to activism. These hard-won lessons don't just apply to people with diagnoses, they apply to everyone. My friend Dr. Breggin is a hero for many of us, including me, but so are many of the other psychiatrists and psychologists who are fighting each day for a nonviolent revolution in the mental health system.

In terms of empathy, we've been there when it comes to struggles with one another. Heck, when it came to tussling with one another, a friend of Peter's and mine, Rae Unzicker, could give as good as she got, maybe better. But Rae kept a vision of who this movement is about.

We may not all fit in the same exact organization, but at least work we need to work together in some way, shape or form in the same movement, a movement that must have a laser focus on the people we are all fighting for.

I don't have an MD or a PhD. But after 34 years of community organizing, that's also what I know.