http://www.mindfreedom.org 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.) daily 1 2006-08-28T23:42:01Z http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/balettajoes "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." No publisher pauldouglas 2006-09-13T06:47:27Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/bertramjanine "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." No publisher pauldouglas 2006-09-13T06:48:08Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/braunbeate "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." No publisher pauldouglas 2006-09-13T06:47:27Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/chabasisnskited "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." No publisher pauldouglas 2006-09-13T06:47:27Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/cohenoryx "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." No publisher pauldouglas 2006-09-13T06:46:46Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/david-w-oaks "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." No publisher david 2010-02-01T20:59:40Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/diamantadonita "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." No publisher pauldouglas 2006-09-13T06:46:46Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/dosantosandrea "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." No publisher pauldouglas 2006-09-13T06:46:46Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/ewbankrobertdrake "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." No publisher pauldouglas 2006-09-13T06:46:45Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/frankleonardr "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." No publisher pauldouglas 2006-09-13T06:46:45Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/gainesvictoriad "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." No publisher pauldouglas 2006-09-13T04:00:59Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/gottsteinjim "To me the main thing is that I have learned to recognize the warning signs and have been able to work out things that work for me. I could just quit taking assignments that lead me into the situation where I need to take the medication. But that wouldn't be a full life for me." No publisher jowen 2010-02-04T20:21:28Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/grayrobertj "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." No publisher pauldouglas 2006-09-13T04:00:58Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/greenebarb "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." No publisher pauldouglas 2006-09-13T04:00:58Z Personal Story http://www.mindfreedom.org/personal-stories/harmonjodya "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." No publisher pauldouglas 2006-09-13T03:59:51Z Personal Story