Personal Stories

The MindFreedom Personal Story Project collects histories from psychiatric survivors and mental health consumers about their experiences of survival, resistance, recovery and self-determination in the mental health system. Many participants in the project have struggled through difficult emotional times, and all have suffered through psychiatric labeling and an often abusive and patronizing mental health system, yet they survived, and even thrive. Thank you to psychiatric survivor Oryx Cohen who first initiated this MFI program as an intern in the MFI Eugene office. (Please note that these are the personal stories of those who shared them, and do not necessarily reflect the views and positions of MFI.)

Terry Bailey-Pullen by radio volunteer — last modified 2006-10-09 13:12

"On that very same day, I was given the antidepressant Nortryptaline when I was still in a coma-like state, without my wife knowing about it - on top of the 9 other drugs that I was taking at that time... I was not given a CT scan at all. The consultant of neurology was under the misguided impression that anxiety was causing my collapse and that I had a psychogenic coma!!!"

Joe S Baletta by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 23:47

"The most important thing in a person’s recovery process is to know that someone cares for you, someone outside yourself, and that you can care for yourself and that you can love yourself and get over those demons that haunt us all, that drive us crazy. You have to get up with some love in your heart and you have to be able to know that you can do something that you love."

Janine Bertram by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 23:48

"In my agony, in my pain, in my utter insanity, my light was so faint it hardly flickered, and now…, and now I’m strong. I'm a strong healthy person. And if I can recover, cope on a daily basis and keep shining, all of us can. Every psychiatric survivor can make it."

Beate Braun by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 23:47

"If you are diagnosed with schizophrenia, they talk with you like you are not there. They talk about you but not with you, but you have to hear it. But if you really want to talk, the doctors and nurses in the hospital don't have time for a conversation."

Ted Chabasinski by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 23:47

"When Miss Callaghan had discovered enough "symptoms," I was sent to the Bellevue children's psychiatric ward, to be officially diagnosed and to made an experimental animal for Doctor Bender. I was one of the first children to be "treated" with electric shock. I was six years old."

Oryx Cohen by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 23:46

"Meeting so many people who have fought through an oppressive mental health system, who have been forcibly electroshocked and drugged, who have been treated as less than human--and who are now leading accomplished and fulfilling lives as authors, directors of organizations, social activists, etc., has been inspiring and empowering. I just hope that eventually the general public will hear our stories and take them as their own."

Donita Diamata by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 23:46

"I didn't get better because of anything that the clinicians did for me. I got better because I surrounded myself by people who showed that they cared about me who got me laughing again."

Andrea DoSantos by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 23:46

"What led to the mania was actually an antidepressant. I was prescribed "PROZAC," which after a month or so got rid of the depression but lead to a full blown manic episode. The fact that I had the mania as a side effect of Prozac was what made me decide that I couldn't accept their diagnosis as bipolar."

Robert D Ewbank by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 23:46

"I got to Clinic 3 in the morning and I was on the floor crying because I didn’t want to see anybody hurt. It was like a zoo. It was like a weird, toxic, horrible, blown-out nuclear plague that you couldn’t wake up from. It was unreal."

Janet Foner by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-12-20 14:35

"My children were not born until a few years after I was in the hospital, so they did not know about it until I told them. My younger son immediately started crying. He was outraged that anyone could have treated me like that. My older son made a very insightful cartoon about how bad the mental health system is."

Leonard R Frank by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 23:46

"We have to be witnesses for those millions who are not speaking up now for whatever reason. That’s the role that I feel our movement needs to play right now in society--to speak up, tell the truth about what we have known, what we have experienced in our own lives."

Victoria D Gaines by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 21:00

"I am just naturally an energetic, passionate, playful enthusiastic, non-conformist weirdo who can be taken for a nut when it so suits peoples' fancies. Once I realized what was going on in my life, I made sure I got away from those in the mental health system and others who wished me harm, so that I was able to settle back into my peaceful, uneventful life."

Vikki Gilbert by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 21:00

"The akathesia was so intense that I almost killed myself. I was also so plastered to the couch that I barely showered. I couldn’t write or read (sheer hell for a poet). The passion disappeared from my being. The once highly charged, politically radical woman vanished."

Robert J Gray by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 21:00

"At first, I was tricked into voluntarily taking Navane and Haldol by being told that I had to take them as a condition of having shelter."

Barb Greene by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 21:00

"Looking back, I realize that I was heartbroken because I was in this horrible living situation and not getting any support or validation for how I was feeling. Instead of dealing with that, they shocked my mind. This treatment was completely and totally irrelevant to what was going on for me. What I was going through was an emotional thing and not a mental thing."

Jody A Harmon by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

"I'm a psychiatric survivor, and I don't use that term loosely. I have been stored in warehouses labeled hospitals. I have endured weekly lectures termed therapy. I have been zapped until my brain burns white. I have been held down, tied down, put down. I have had pills forced down my throat and needles plunged into my flesh. All this to make me 'normal,' a mold I will never fit."

Leah I Harris by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

"How wrong it all was I wouldn't realize until over a decade had passed and I began to educate myself about the psychiatric survivor movement. Now that I look back, I think it's obscene that a traumatized little child would be drugged up. It makes me sick. I want to reach out to that 7 year old child, to hug her and hold her to me and tell her that it was going to be OK, that she would get through it and she would be a better person for it."

Mike Hlebechuk by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

"Why did the doctors tell me--an intelligent, gifted person--that I would never work, would never get through school, would be on medications for the rest of my life, and should stay on social security disability indefinitely? I tend to excel at whatever I do, but I was told I'd never do anything beyond a social security check."

Susie K Irwin by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

"I want to be a part of connecting to other people--letting them know they’re not alone, and helping them discover within themselves that they can do whatever they can set their minds to."

Paul Levy by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 21:00

"We, as a society, need to recognize the existence of genuine spiritual emergences. It is crucially important for us to do this, for those who pass through this process successfully and become accomplished shamans, healers and teachers, have enormous gifts and blessings to share that will benefit us all. I had been doing Buddhist meditation for a full year before that lightning bolt flashed through my mind."

Anthony S Lipinsky by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

"The worst part of the mental health system is that there are so many well-meaning professionals that look at you as a lesser order human being--a human being who has to be controlled, made dependent, ordered about. That is not the way to treat a person who has a tendency to be depressed and suicidal. That is the perfect way to create depressed people by making them dependent, making them different, and making them feel that they stand out in a negative way."

Victoria Molta by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

"I can only say I have been through a spiritual transformation. A snake slips off an old, useless piece of skin and I too discarded a part of myself, the victim."

Barbara Nichols by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

"I can’t tell you how happy I was to get my degree from Portland State. My father was a physician and he told me when I was 18 that I was not smart enough to go to school. Now I’m the only one out of five children to have a degree and I just feel really amazed. I am amazed that I would really stick with it because my disability--whether it’s from the medications or from a depressive way that I look at life—doesn’t always motivate me to get things done. I’m very happy to have gotten this done."

David W Oaks by David W. Oaks — last modified 2007-07-25 16:35

"Through a Haldol haze I meticulously printed out the legal letter and filed it. I found out later that the authorities reacted by contacting my parents, asking them to either commit me, seek guardianship, dissaude me, etc. My mother told them, 'If our David wants to try freedom, we support him.' I managed to stumble out of the institution when the taxi arrived, and that was the last time a psychiatric institution held me."

Carol J Patterson by Mike Tierney — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

The truth is, you can't heal me without my cooperation, you cannot. There's no such thing as forced healing.

Pat Risser by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

"I had been brainwashed by the psychiatric system to be hopeless, helpless and overly dependent. So now I've dedicated the greater part of my life to try and reach people who are currently affected by the system and deprogram them from the cult of psychiatry."

Gail Roberts by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

"My first stop was the ecstatic and exotic mania of a completely different reality, Japan, where I quickly attained a celebrity status as I have a resemblance, at least according to the Japanese, to Elizabeth Taylor. I started to get rich teaching English and had to stuff my yen under my tatami mat. When I had to leave quickly to avoid deportation, I was devastated."

Clover Smith by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

"One morning, 12 drug years later, engulfed in sickness, I called the current psychiatrist and yelled, "What do psychiatrists think in their head? My mind is cured when my body is dead!" I slammed the phone down and never swallowed their pills again; I had taken the first step toward wellness."

Scott P Snedecor by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

"This chemical imbalance thing is about the most wacky thing I've ever heard. I don't think I've ever had a Thorazine deficiency in my life! I don't think people get Zoloft deficiencies."

Don Weitz by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

"I was damn lucky to have escaped electroshock and brain damage including permanent memory loss. Thousands of psychiatric survivors were not so fortunate, many have died and will die from psychiatry's 'safe and effective, lifesaving treatment' such as electroshock and forced drugging with neuroleptics and/or antidepressants."

Kris Yates by Paul Glaspie — last modified 2006-09-12 20:59

"Sometimes I have this tremendous sadness because I think that I might be in a much bigger place than I am now. I’m happy with my life but I’m also 51 years old. I might have been where I am now twenty years ago had all this not happened. I figure I’m here in spite of the mental health system."