[D66] The Boston Declaration on Psychiatric Oppression

[J.N.]

_*The Boston Declaration on Psychiatric Oppression*_*
*
The Fourth Annual North American Conference on Human Rights and
Psychiatric Oppression meeting in Boston Massachusetts, May 28-31, 1976,
adopts the following positions:

*We oppose INVOLUNTARY PSYCHIATRIC INTERVENTION*, including, but not
limited to involuntary civil commitment, forced psychiatric procedures,
and " voluntary" procedures without informed consent;
  because it is immoral and unconstitutional;
  because it is a denial of freedom, due process of law, and the right
to be let alone;
  because it is a denial of the individual's right to control his or her
own soul, mind and body.
*
We oppose FORCED PSYCHIATRIC PROCEDURES*, such as drugging, shock,
psycho-surgery, restraints, seclusion, and aversive behavior modification
  because they humiliate, debilitate, immobilize, and injure;
  because they are at best quackery (attempts to " cure" non-existent
diseases) and at worst torture (brutal, painful techniques to control
human thought, feeling and conduct.)

*We oppose the PSYCHIATRIC SYSTEM*
  because it is inherently tyrannical;
  because it is an extra-legal, parallel police force which suppresses
cultural and political dissidence;
  because it punishes individuals who have had or claim to have had
spiritual experiences, and invalidates those experiences by defining
them as "symptoms" of " mental illness" ;
  because it uses the trappings of medicine and science to mask the
social control function it serves;
  because it feeds on the poor and powerless: the elderly, women,
children, sexual minorities, Third World people;
  because it creates a stigmatized class of society which is easily
oppressed and controlled;
  because it invalidates the real needs of poor people by offering
social welfare under the guise of psychiatric "care and treatment" ;
  because its growing influence in education, the prisons, the military,
government, industry, and medicine threatens to turn society into a
psychiatric state, made up of two classes, those who give " therapy" 
and those who receive it;
  because it is similar in important ways to the Inquisition, chattel
slavery, and Nazi and Soviet concentration camps; *that it* *cannot be
reformed but must be abolished.**
***
*We oppose the CONCEPT OF "MENTAL ILLNESS" *
  because it justifies involuntary psychiatric intervention, especially
the imprisonment of individuals who have not been convicted of any crime.

*We oppose the use of PSYCHIATRIC TERMS*
  because they are fundamentally stigmatizing, demeaning, unscientific
and superstitious, and propose that plain English in their place: for
example:

    Plain English                                Psychiatric Term

    Psychiatric Inmate                         Mental patient, mentally
disabled, mentally handicapped person
    Psychiatric Institution                    Mental hospital
    Psychiatric System                        Mental health system
    Psychiatric Procedure                    Treatment
    Characteristic, Trait                      Symptom
    Conduct                                       Behavior
    Drug                                           Medication
    Drugging                                     Pharmacotherapy
    Electroshock                                Electroconvulsive therapy

*WE BELIEVE:*
  that people have the right to suicide.
  that alleged dangerousness, whether to oneself or others, should not
be considered grounds for denying that person personal liberty; that
only proven criminal acts should be the basis for such denial;
  that person charged with crimes should be tried in the criminal
justice system with due process of law and that psychiatric
professionals should not be given expert witness status.
  that attention should be focused not on the potential dangerousness of
the psychiatric defendant, but on the actual criminality of those who
use involuntary psychiatric interventions.
  that there should be no involuntary psychiatric interventions in
prisons; that the prison system should be reformed and humanized.
  that as long as one person's liberty is restricted no one is free.
  that a voluntary network of care and support should be developed to
serve the needs of people without limiting their rights or lessening
their dignity or self-respect.
  that the psychiatric system is by definition a pacification program
controlled by psychiatrists and designed to help, persuade, coerce
people into adjusting to established social norms. Throughout society,
more and more people are abandoning these norms. More and more people
are demanding self-determination and community control. More and more
people are realizing that economic and political power is concentrated
in the hands of a few, who are determined to keep it - by any means
necessary including involuntary psychiatric intervention. But we are
asserting that as an instrument of social control, involuntary
psychiatric intervention is a procedure whose time has gone. *We are
demanding an end to involuntary psychiatric intervention and we are
demanding individual liberty and social justice. We intend to make these
words real and will not rest until we do.*
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