Movement History of the Consumer/ Client/ Survivor/ Ex-patient/ Ex-Inmate/ User Community (Timeline Follows)

The history of the Consumer/ Client/ Survivor/ Ex-patient/ Ex-Inmate/ User Community is deeply enmeshed in and with other civil and human rights movements. To understand the depth of this intertwining, it is necessary to cover the history of slavery, women, children, people with disabilities, education, labor and other factors that play a role in creating who we are today. For instance, one Neanderthal, Shanidar 1, from a site in Iraq, dating to 45,000 years ago, died around age 50 with one arm amputated, loss of vision in one eye and other injuries. This and others are case studies where direct support or accommodation was necessary (first Peer Support predates medicine by several thousand years). In our past, it was acceptable practice for one human being to own another. In our past, it was acceptable for a man to beat his wife. In our past, it was acceptable for parents and adults to abuse and exploit children. As we evolve and mature as a society, the boundaries of acceptability are moving toward greater humanity. Someday, it is hoped that people with emotional difficulties will find equal footing with others in society.

“We are a movement among other movements for human rights and social justice, both in the United States and around the world. The story of our cause and our efforts compliments and at times overlaps those of the women’s movement, the anti-war movement, the disability rights movement, the civil rights movement, gay and lesbian rights movement, etc. We need only remember that a woman who held religious beliefs that differed from her husband could be diagnosed with insanity and institutionalized against her will (Elizabeth Packard). Attempts to escape slavery were considered a form of mental illness (drapetomania). Blacks who rioted in the 1970′s were deemed to have “protest psychosis” and some were thought to need brain surgery. Alan Turing was chemically castrated for being homosexual and later took his own life. It wasn’t until 1973 that homosexuality was taken off the list of mental disorders. The movements for human rights, civil rights, and social justice are an intricate fabric. Each thread is critically important to the whole story and to the strength of fabric. Our causes are intertwined and that’s what make us strong.” Patricia Deegan, Ph.D.

Why is history important?

History is important because it can help us to answer questions such as:

• How is "self-help" generally defined? What are the essential characteristics of "self-help"? What is the history and rationale for its use? How has it been instituted in different service fields?

• What is "mental health consumer/survivor self-help"? What is its history and the rationale for its use? What are its major philosophies, goals, values, and outcomes?

• What are consumer/survivor-operated self-help programs? What are the types of services delivered? How do the programs differ and how are they similar?

• How are consumer/survivor-operated self-help programs organized to achieve their aims? How are these efforts funded? How are they managed and administered? What sort of staffing patterns exist? What is the population that is served by these efforts? How are these efforts governed? What is the extent of program evaluation and research conducted with these programs? How do they interact with traditional, professional-run organizations, each other, and the external environment?

I think knowledge and understanding of our history and the principles and values of the movement are what’s called for. Too few people – especially people working in paid roles in the system – have any clue that the modern movement was based on human rights – not "illness and recovery." There were similar disparate branches of the movement in the 19th century too, and people need to know about that too. And it's important to remember the contributions of people who’ve gone before us. I just worry about this reverence of leaders stuff. (Darby Penney to David Gonzalez on Facebook on April 16, 2014 at 10:19pm)

Definition of Self-Help

Webster's Dictionary defines self-help as "the act or an instance of providing for or helping oneself without dependence on others" (Webster's, 1974). In more general terms, it is the process whereby individuals who share a common condition or interest assist themselves rather than relying on the assistance of others.

Over the past 25 years, American society (and the world in general) has witnessed a revolution in the way people access and receive help. The self-help movement has grown so dramatically that self-help and support groups now exist for everything from dream sharing to women's health. Self-help has gained such acceptance that the former Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. C. Everett Koop, observed that, "…the benefits of mutual aid are experienced by millions of people who turn to others with a similar problem to attempt to deal with their isolation, powerlessness, alienation…"

History of Self-Help

Self-help is not a new idea. People have been organizing to help themselves throughout history. Religious institutions have frequently played this role by offering support for common values, meeting basic material needs, and providing opportunities for socialization to their members. In the political arena, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Organization for Women (NOW), Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), ACT UP, ADAPT and countless others form self-help coalitions to redress civil and social wrongs, change policy in the public/private sectors, and promote education. The modern self-help movement traces its roots to Alcoholics Anonymous, founded in 1935 by two recovering alcoholics.

The mental health consumer/survivor self-help movement has experienced remarkable growth over the last two decades. The impact of this movement on mental health systems nationwide has been dramatic. No longer are people who use these services seen simply as passive recipients but as active participants at all levels in planning, providing, and evaluating services.

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The history of the C/S/X Movement is important. It's important that people understand that ours is a civil rights movement and not just peer support. Both are important but I don't want peer supporters to get co-opted so it's important that they understand that we come from a place of oppression. In our White dominated society, Black folks are often not considered equal. In our male dominated society, women are often not considered equal. Children are often considered "chattel" and those inequalities are, a source of oppression. I think those inequities lead to trauma and abuse. I think we are often considered as "less than." It's those attitudes that lead to it somehow being socially acceptable for police to Taser us, for psychiatric staff to drug us, to seclude and restrain us, for the courts to civilly commit us for our thoughts, moods, feelings or emotions. Understanding our shared oppression and our place in the greater movement for civil rights is important. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it."

The Timeline that follows the introductory sections includes overlapping pieces of history that are important or relevant to our C/S/X history. Included are pieces of the history of poverty, history of the Independent Living Movement for People with Disabilities, history of psychology and history of psychiatry, history of the Women’s movement, history of the youth movement, history of the civil rights movement, history of the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bi, trans) movement, history of the labor movement including child labor, important pieces of medical history and political history, and other important pieces of note that impacted upon us and our rights. All entries represent important points of note in striving for and attaining the right to our bodies, the right to our selves, our rights as human beings and overcoming the oppression of treating us as less than fully equal.

1. Did you know that prior to 1960 it was common for physicians and psychologists at state hospitals to be assigned help-patients who acted as personal servants in charge of house cleaning, gardening, laundry, and cooking?

2. Did you know that in 1995-97 at least four major books on the history of mental health care in America were written and not one contains first hand accounts from ex-patients?

3. Did you know that the federal government established the fully segregated Canton Indian Insane Asylum in South Dakota in 1902 and that the town of Canton has since built the Hiawatha Municipal Golf Course around the graves of 121 former inmates?

4. Did you know that only one type of mental illness was thought to exist in American slaves? It was called Drapetomania and was defined as the inexplicable urge of a slave to run away!

5. Did you know that there are people who still remember what it was like to be a patient at a state hospital in the 1930's? They remember working on the hospital farms, the experience of malarial treatments, wet packs, metrazol shock, insulin coma therapy and how (or if) things changed with the introduction of Thorazine in the 1950's.

6. Did you know that Central State Hospital in Virginia was established in 1869 exclusively for “colored insane”?

History of Mental Illness and Early Treatment in a Nutshell (Timeline follows)

Early man widely believed that mental illness was the result of supernatural phenomena such as spiritual or demonic possession, sorcery, the evil eye, or an angry deity and so responded with equally mystical, and sometimes brutal, treatments. Trephining (also referred to as trepanning) first occurred in Neolithic (last phase of the stone age c9000-8000bc) times. During this procedure, a hole, or trephine, was chipped into the skull using crude stone instruments. It was believed that through this opening the evil spirit(s)--thought to be inhabiting one’s head and causing their psychopathology--would be released and the individual would be cured. Some who underwent this procedure survived and may have lived for many years afterward as trephined skulls of primitive humans show signs of healing. Pressure on the brain may have also incidentally been relieved. This procedure endured through the centuries to treat various ailments such as skull fractures and migraines as well as mental illness, albeit with more sophisticated tools such as skull saws and drills developed solely for this purpose.

In ancient Mesopotamia, priest-doctors treated the mentally ill with magico-religious rituals as mental pathology was believed to mask demonic possession. Exorcisms, incantations, prayer, atonement, and other various mystical rituals were used to drive out the evil spirit. Other means attempted to appeal to the spirit with more human devices-- threats, bribery, punishment, and sometimes submission, were hoped to be an effective cure.

Hebrews believed that all illness was inflicted upon humans by God as punishment for committing sin, and even demons that were thought to cause some illnesses were attributed to God’s wrath. Yet, God was also seen as the ultimate healer and, generally, Hebrew physicians were priests who had special ways of appealing to the higher power in order to cure sickness. Along the same spiritual lines, ancient Persians attributed illness to demons and believed that good health could be achieved through proper precautions to prevent and protect one from diseases. These included adequate hygiene and purity of the mind and body achieved through good deeds and thoughts.

Ancient Egyptians seem to be the most forward-thinking in their treatment of mental illness as they recommended that those afflicted with mental pathology engage in recreational activities such as concerts, dances, and painting in order to relieve symptoms and achieve some sense of normalcy. The Egyptians were also very advanced in terms of medicine, surgery, and knowledge of the human body. Two papyri dating back to the sixteenth century BCE, the Edwin Smith papyrus and the Ebers papyrus, document early treatment of wounds, surgical operations, and identifies, very likely for the first time, the brain as the site of mental functions. These papyri also show that, despite innovative thinking about disease, magic and incantations were used to treat illnesses that were of unknown origin, often thought to be caused by supernatural forces such as demons or disgruntled divine beings. Ancient Egyptians also shared the early Greek belief that hysteria in women, now known as Conversion Disorder, was caused by a “wandering uterus,” and so used fumigation of the vagina to lure the organ back into proper position.

In all of these ancient civilizations, mental illness was attributed to some supernatural force, generally a displeased deity. Most illness, particularly mental illness, was thought to be afflicted upon an individual or group of peoples as punishment for their trespasses. In addition to the widespread use of exorcism and prayer, music was used a therapy to affect emotion, and the singing of charms and spells was performed in Babylonia, Assyria, the Mediterranean-Near East, and Egypt in hopes of achieving a cure.

Beliefs about mental illness and proper treatments were altered, and in some cases advanced, by early European thinkers. Between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE, Greek physician Hippocrates denied the long-held belief that mental illness was caused by supernatural forces and instead proposed that it stemmed from natural occurrences in the human body, particularly pathology in the brain. Hippocrates, and later the Roman physician Galen, introduced the concept of the four essential fluids of the human body—blood, phlegm, bile, and black bile—the combinations of which produced the unique personalities of individuals. Through the Middles Ages, mental illness was believed to result from an imbalance of these humors. In order to bring the body back into equilibrium, patients were given emetics, laxatives, and were bled using leeches or cupping. Specific purges included a concoction developed by Ptolemy called Hiera Logadii, which combined aloes, black hellebore, and colocynth and was believed to cleanse one of melancholy. Confectio Hamech was another laxative developed by the Arabs that contained myrobalans, rhubarb, and senna. Later, tobacco imported from America was popularly used to induce vomiting. Other treatments to affect the humors consisted of extracting blood from the forehead or tapping the cephalic, saphenous, and/or hemorroidal veins to draw corrupted humors away from the brain. In addition to purging and bloodletting (also known as phlebotomy), customized diets were recommended. For example, “raving madmen” were told to follow diets that were “cooling and diluting,” consisting of salad greens, barley water, and milk, and avoid wine and red meat.

Custody and care of the mentally ill were generally left to the individual’s family, although some outside intervention occurred. The first mental hospital was established in 792 CE Baghdad and was soon followed by others in Aleppo and Damascus—mass establishment of asylums and institutionalization took place much later, though. The mentally ill in the custody of family were widely abused and restrained, particularly in Christian Europe. Due to the shame and stigma attached to mental illness, many hid their mentally ill family members in cellars, caged them in pigpens, or put them under the control of servants. Others were abandoned by their families and left to a life of begging and vagrancy.

The social stigma attached to mental illness was, and to some extent still is, pronounced in countries that have strong ties to family honor and a reliance on marriages to create alliances and relieve families of burdensome daughters. In China, the mentally ill were concealed by their families for fear that the community would believe that the affliction was the result of immoral behavior by the individual and/or their relatives. The mentally ill were also thought to have “bad fate” that would negatively influence anyone who associated with the disturbed individual, scaring away potential suitors and leading to the idea that mental illness was contagious. Historically in Greece, “a mentally ill [family] member implies a hereditary, disabling condition in the bloodline and threatens [the family’s] identity as an honorable unit,” therefore treatment of the mentally ill in these cultures meant a life of hidden confinement or abandonment by one’s family. Mentally ill vagrants were left alone to wander the streets so long as they did not cause any social disorder. Those who were deemed dangerous or unmanageable, both in family homes or on the streets, were given over to police and thrown in jails or dungeons, sometimes for life. Particularly in Europe during the Middle Ages, beatings were administered to the mentally ill who acted out as punishment for the disturbances their behavior caused and as a means of “teaching” individuals out of their illnesses. Others who were considered nuisances were flogged out of town.

Through the Middle Ages and until the mass establishment of asylums, treatments for mental illness were offered by humanistic physicians, medical astrologers, apothecaries, and folk or traditional healers. Aside from secular exorcisms, prayers, charms, amulets, and other mystical treatments were available. In the 17th century, astral talismans were popular and were easily made using brass or tin emblems with astrological signs etched into them and cast at astrologically significant times. These were worn around the neck of the afflicted while they recited prayers. Also worn around the neck were scraps of Latin liturgy wrapped in paper, bundled with a leaf of mugwort or St. John’s Wort and tied with taffeta. Amulets were also used, supplemented by prayers and charms, to soothe troubled minds, prevent mystical infection, and protect against witches and evil spirits. Sedatives during the 17th century consisted of opium grains, unguents, and laudanum to “ease the torment” of mental illness.

Some treatment options existed beyond family custody and care, such as lodging the mentally ill in workhouses or checking them into general hospitals where they were frequently abandoned. The clergy also played a significant role in treating the mentally ill as “medical practice was a natural extension of ministers’ duty to relieve the afflictions of their flocks.” Private madhouses were established and run by members of the clergy to treat the mentally afflicted who could afford such care. Catholic nations regularly staffed mental health facilities with clergy, and most mentally ill individuals in Russia were housed in monasteries until asylums spread to this region of the world in the mid-1800s. To relieve mental illness, regular attendance in church had been recommended for years as well as pilgrimages to religious shrines. Priests often solaced mentally disturbed individuals by encouraging them to repent their sins and seek refuge in God’s mercy. Treatment in clergy-run facilities was a desirable alternative as the care was generally very humane, although these establishments could not treat the whole of the mentally ill population, especially as it seemed to grow in number.

In order to accommodate the burgeoning amount of mentally ill individuals, asylums were established around the world starting, most notably, from the sixteenth century onward. The first institution to open its doors in Europe is thought to be the Valencia mental hospital in Spain, in 1406. Although not much is known about the treatment patients received at this particular site, asylums were notorious for the deplorable living conditions and cruel abuse endured by those admitted. For many years, asylums were not facilities aimed at helping the mentally ill achieve any sense of normalcy or otherwise overcome their illnesses. Instead, asylums were merely reformed penal institutions where the mentally ill were abandoned by relatives or sentenced by the law and faced a life of inhumane treatment, all for the sake of lifting the burden off of ashamed families and preventing any possible disturbance in the community.

The majority of asylums were staffed by gravely untrained, unqualified individuals who treated mentally ill patients like animals. A case study describes a typical scene at La Bicetre, a hospital in Paris, starting with patients shackled to the wall in dark, cramped cells. Iron cuffs and collars permitted just enough movement to allow patients to feed themselves but not enough to lie down at night, so they were forced to sleep upright. Little attention was paid to the quality of the food or whether patients were adequately fed. There were no visitors to the cell except to deliver food, and the rooms were never cleaned. Patients had to make do with a little amount of straw to cover the cold floor and were forced to sit amongst their own waste that was also never cleaned up. These conditions were not all unique to La Bicetre, and this case study paints a fairly accurate picture of a typical scene in asylums around the world from approximately the 1500s to the mid-1800s, and in some places, the early 1900s.

The most infamous asylum was located in London, England—Saint Mary of Bethlehem. This monastery-turned-asylum began admitting the mentally ill in 1547 after Henry VIII announced its transformation. The institution soon earned the nickname “Bedlam” as its horrific conditions and practices were revealed. Violent patients were put on display like sideshow freaks for the public to peek at for the price of one penny; gentler patients were put out on the streets to beg for charity. It was customary in the middle ages until the 19th century in England and France to publicly display the insane through windows where their behaviors could be observed while they were chained to the walls of the asylum. In 17th century England, one penny was required for such a viewing and, according to one accounting, 400 hundred pounds was accumulated over the year which represented approximately 96,000 visits. It was not unusual for a family to take their children on a Sunday trip to see the insane in these facilities surrounding urban areas. At this time in history, madness or mental illness was not considered an illness; rather, it was thought that "madness borrowed its face from the mask of the beast," i.e., it was caused by sin and social deviance. According to a writing by St. Vincent DePaul: “The principal end from which such persons have been removed here, out of the storms of the great world, and introduced into this solitude as pensioners, is entirely to keep them from the slavery of sin, from being eternally damned, and to give them means to rejoice in a perfect contentment in this world and in the next.” By the end of the 18th century one out of every one hundred citizens of the city of Paris was confined in one or more of these institutions. It was not until after the Renaissance that mental illness was identified as an illness unique from other social deviancy, and thus began the segregation of persons with mental illness from others whom society thought undesirable.

Soon after the establishment of “Bedlam,” other countries began to follow suit and founded their own mental health facilities. San Hipolito was built in Mexico 1566 and claims the title of the first asylum in the Americas. La Maison de Chareton was the first mental facility in France, founded in 1641 in a suburb of Paris. Constructed in 1784, the Lunatics’ Tower in Vienna became a showplace. The elaborately decorated round tower contained square rooms in which the staff lived. The patients were housed in the spaces between the walls of the rooms and the wall of the tower and, like at Bedlam, were put on display for public amusement.

When staff did attempt to cure the patients, they followed the practices typical of the time period—purging and bloodletting, the most common. Other treatments included dousing the patient in either hot or ice-cold water to shock their minds back into a normal state. The belief that patients needed to choose rationality over insanity led to techniques aiming to intimidate. Blistering, physical restraints, threats, and straitjackets were employed to achieve this end. Powerful drugs were also administered, for example, to a hysterical patient in order to exhaust them. Around the mid-1700s, the Dutch Dr. Boerhaave invented the “gyrating chair” that became a popular tool in Europe and the United States. This instrument was intended to shake up the blood and tissues of the body to restore equilibrium, but instead resulted in rendering the patient unconscious without any recorded successes.

Although cruel treatment in asylums surely felt to the patients as if it had been going on for ages, conditions began to improve in the mid-to- late 1800s as reforms were called for, and this shameful and unenlightened period was somewhat brief in relation to the span of world history. One of the earliest reforms occurred at an asylum in Devon, England. This facility had employed opium, leeches, and purges as cures for mental illness, but in the mid-1800s emphasized non-restraint methods to affect patients’ health.

One of the most significant asylum reforms was introduced by Philippe Pinel in Paris. During the year of 1792, Pinel took charge of La Bicetre to test his hypothesis that mentally ill patients would improve if they were treated with kindness and consideration. Filth, noise, and abuse were eliminated quickly after patients were unchained, provided with sunny rooms, allowed to exercise freely on the asylum grounds, and were no longer treated like animals.

The same reforms were undertaken around this time by an English Quaker, William Tuke. Founded in 1796, the York Retreat in York, England was run by Tuke and other Quakers who stressed the importance of treating all people with respect and compassion, even the mentally ill. In keeping faithful to this ideal, the York Retreat was a pleasant country house, modeled on a domestic lifestyle, that allowed patients to live, work, and rest in a warm and religious environment that emphasized mildness, reason, and humanity.

This humanitarian movement spread across the Atlantic to the United States in the early 1800s. Stemming largely from the work of Pinel and Tuke, moral management emerged in America as “a wide-ranging method of treatment that focused on a patient’s social, individual, and occupational needs.” Applied to asylum care, moral management focused on the mentally ill individual’s spiritual and moral development as well as the rehabilitation of their personal character to lessen their mental ailments. These goals were sought through encouraging the patient to engage in manual labor and spiritual discussion, always accompanied by humane treatment.

Although moral management was highly effective, it largely failed to continue through the late 1800s for several reasons. First, ethnic prejudice created tension between staff and patients as immigration increased. The leaders of the moral management movement also failed to pass along their teachings, so there was a lack of replacements. Third, supporters of this movement did not realize that bigger hospitals differed from smaller ones in more ways than just size, leading to an overextension of hospital facilities. Biomedical advances also led to the demise of moral management as most believed that medicine would soon be the cure-all for physical as well as mental afflictions and, therefore, psychological and social help was not necessary. Lastly, the rise of a new movement called Mental Hygiene focused solely on the patient’s physical health and ignored their psychological disturbances. Although this new movement ended the effective reign of moral management and resulted in many patients becoming helpless and dependent, there were several humanitarian positives to Mental Hygiene.

Dorothea Dix was a schoolteacher forced to retire early due to her bouts of tuberculosis. Soon after she began teaching in a women’s prison and learned of the horrific conditions of jails, almshouses, and particularly mental health facilities, Dix commenced a forty-year long campaign to reform asylums called the Mental Hygiene movement. Although this movement did not directly affect patients’ mental illnesses, it raised millions of dollars to build hospitals that were suitable for proper care and influenced twenty American states to respond to her pleas for change, resulting in greater physical comfort of the patients. Dix also managed to oversee the opening of two institutions in Canada and completely revamp the systems of mental health care in Scotland and several other countries.

Improvements in asylum care continued in America and Europe, although sub-par conditions persisted in numerous American and European institutions. Many countries around the world were also slow, or failed completely, to implement sufficient reforms. For example, asylums in Nigeria, Africa were not even established until 1906 after citizens started complaining about the disruptive behavior of mentally ill individuals that were left to roam the streets and wander from village to village. Until that year, the mentally ill were either sent to asylums in Sierra Leone or locked in the lunatic ward of local prisons. When asylums were finally established in Lagos and Abeokuta, the conditions were less than pleasant. Common complaints included dark, overcrowded cells, a lack of basic supplies, poor bathing facilities, and the use of chains to restrain patients. Very little treatment was offered to help the patients with their mental illnesses with the exception of minimal occupational therapy and agricultural work as well as the administration of sedatives to keep patients calm and under control—a practice that was likely more beneficial to the staff than the afflicted.

Significant advances in psychological concepts after the mass establishment of asylums did not arise until the development of psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud in the late 1800s to early 1900s. Examination of an earlier practice, Mesmerism, must be mentioned first though as it is commonly posited to have provided a foundation for later psychoanalytic techniques. Austrian physician Franz Mesmer believed that human bodies contained a magnetic fluid that was affected by the planets and determined one’s health depending on its distribution. Mesmer concluded that all persons were capable of using their own magnetic forces to affect the magnetic fluid in others and considered himself to be powerful enough to cure illnesses with his “animal magnetism.” Mesmer gained a large following when he opened a clinic in Paris 1778 and started practicing his “mesmerism.” In order to affect cures, several patients at a time were seated around a tub containing various chemicals. Iron rods attached to the tub were applied to the afflicted parts of their body (as patients were generally hysterical and experiencing numbness or paralysis), after which Mesmer would emerge in light purple robe and circle around the room touching the patients either with his hand or with a wand. Although Mesmer’s techniques reportedly were effective, he was branded a fraud by his medical colleagues, and his “cures” were later believed to be the result of hypnotism, a psychoanalytic practice.

Between the years of 1888 and 1939, Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, published twenty-four volumes explaining his thoughts about personality and psychopathology called Psychoanalytic Theory. Freud believed that the human mind was structured in three divisions—the id, the ego, and the superego. The id functioned unconsciously, driven by the two main primal desires for sex and aggression. The superego functioned both consciously and unconsciously, demanding that the individual deny the id’s impulses and instead live a virtuous life, striving to meet society’s ideals. The ego also functioned both consciously and unconsciously and was deemed the mediator between an individual’s id and superego, always working to find a balance between what one desired and what society considered acceptable. The unconscious was thought to be the seat of psychopathology as it contained unacceptable desires and painful memories that had been repressed by the two higher functions as they would have been too unsettling to acknowledge. Freud believed that anxiety arose as these three parts of the human mind battled each other, resulting in mental illness and that if the individual could only reveal and address the content of their unconscious, then their mental ailments would be cured.

The resulting treatments created by Freud are known as psychoanalysis, or “talking cures” and began with hypnosis, a revised form of mesmerism. When this specific method did not prove to be effective, Freud turned to free association in which the patient was instructed to relax and share whatever thoughts came to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing they might have been. Freud believed that these thoughts would create a path that he could follow into the patient’s unconscious, where he could then retrieve years of repressed thoughts and feelings. The unconscious was also thought to be revealed through an individual’s beliefs, habits, and even slips of the tongue and pen, which came to be known as “Freudian slips.” Dream analysis was another popular method of treatment promoted by Freud. Patients were asked to record their dreams, sometimes every morning in a journal kept bedside. The psychoanalyst would then study the manifest content of the dream, or what was remembered by the patient, and search for latent content, or the unconscious materials that were thought to be censored by the conscious mind and instead encoded as symbols. Although Freud provoked many critics who considered his ideas pseudo-science, psychoanalysis was a very popular method of treating mental illness from the early to mid 1900s.

Also in development and widespread use during this time were somatic treatments for mental illness such as electroconvulsive therapy, psychosurgery, and psychopharmacology. These treatments were based on the biological model of mental pathology that assumes mental illness is the result of a biochemical imbalance in the body and can be compared to physical diseases. Therefore, somatic treatments were designed to correct an individual’s chemical imbalance in order to restore their mental health.

Electroconvulsive therapy has roots in methods designed to shock the body but without the aid of electricity. In 1933, Manfred Sakel reported his first experimental findings, testing the efficacy of insulin-shock treatment on schizophrenic patients in Berlin, Germany. Insulin was administered to the patient in a dose high enough to induce coma, and although the treatment seemed to be beneficial to individuals in the early stages of schizophrenia, it was not proven to be useful in advanced cases of schizophrenia. Sakel’s vague theoretical rationale for this specific method and the difficult regimen of care this treatment required also led to the abandonment of insulin-shock therapy.

Ladislaus Joseph von Meduna experimented with shock therapy and schizophrenia in Budapest, Hungary, also during the year 1933. Instead of insulin, Meduna injected patients with Metrazol, a less toxic synthetic preparation of camphor. This treatment was soon abandoned as it possessed a period of unpredictable length between injection and convulsions, giving the patient just enough time to become fearful and uncooperative. It also often produced convulsions that were so severe as to cause fractures.

Finally in 1938, Italian physicians Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini administered the first shock therapy using electricity to a schizophrenic patient and received successful results. This treatment soon became widespread and was used most often in America and Europe. There is some history of abuse associated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) though that took place in mental institutions. Because the idea of an electrical current being passed through one’s head is undoubtedly frightening, ECT was used to intimidate, control, and punish patients, some of whom were subjected to this treatment over a hundred times. Despite previous instances of abuse, this treatment is still used today, albeit with significant reforms. It is generally reserved only for the mentally ill who suffer from severe depression, especially of the variety accompanied by psychotic symptoms, and only as a last resort after the patient has not responded to any other treatments, including medication. Patients are also administered a general anesthetic and muscle relaxant prior to the treatment so that they do not suffer any discomfort and there is no danger of fractured bones. Electroconvulsive therapy is commonly performed on a patient three times a week until a dozen sessions are reached, although some patients may require more or less sessions to benefit. The only negative side effects reported are amnesia limited to the few hours before the session and disorientation; both disappear soon after ECT is stopped.

When electroconvulsive therapy was not effective, patients were sometimes forced to undergo psychosurgery, a practice that developed and was widely practiced in the 1930s to 1950s. It was in Portugal, 1935, that Egas Moniz performed the first lobotomy with the aid of a neurosurgeon, Almeida Lima; Walter Freeman was responsible for popularizing lobotomies in America. To execute this procedure, the patient was first shocked into a coma. The surgeon then hammered an instrument similar to an icepick through the top of each eye socket and severed the nerves connecting the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain. The intended purpose of the lobotomy was to calm uncontrollably violent or emotional patients, and it did--at first--prove to be successful. Because of the preliminary positive results and the facts that it was easy, inexpensive, and the average time it took to complete the procedure was only about ten minutes, lobotomies quickly spread around the world as a popular practice for severely mentally ill patients who were resistant to other treatments. It was only after tens of thousands of patients worldwide had undergone this procedure during the following twenty years that people started to take notice of its undesirable side effects. Lobotomies generally produced personalities that were lethargic and immature. Aside from a twenty-five percent death rate, lobotomies also resulted in patients that were unable to control their impulses, were unnaturally calm and shallow, and/or exhibited a total absence of feeling. Not surprisingly, this practice was quickly abandoned with the introduction of psychoactive drugs.

Since the late 1800s, substances such as chloryl hydrate, bromides, and barbiturates were administered to the mentally ill in order to sedate them, yet they were ineffective in treating the basic symptoms of psychosis. It was not until Australian psychiatrist J.F.J Cade introduced the psychotropic drug Lithium in 1949 that psychopharmacology really took off. A series of successful anti-psychotic drugs were introduced in the 1950s that did not cure psychosis but were able to control its symptoms. Chlorpromazine (commonly known as Thorazine) was the first of the anti-psychotic medications, discovered in France, 1952. Valium became the world’s most prescribed tranquilizer in the 1960s, and Prozac, introduced in 1987, became the most prescribed antidepressant.

The introduction of psychopharmacology is arguably one of the most significant and successful contributions to mental illness treatment, although it did lead to a movement that has been devastating to mental health care systems around the world, especially in the United States. The advent of psychoactive drugs convinced many that all illnesses would soon be effectively managed with medication, leading to the deinstitutionalization movement that rapidly occurred starting in the 1960s. It was believed that numerous community-based facilities would be conveniently available to the mentally ill should they choose to seek it out, although this plan was never sufficiently realized. Instead, thousands of the mentally ill discharged from institutions were incapable of living independently, medicated or not, and became homeless as a result of inadequate housing and follow-up care. In the 1980s, it was estimated that one-third of all homeless individuals in America were considered severely mentally ill. Lack of support and guidance led to the incarceration of over 100,000 mentally ill individuals in America as well. A 1992 survey reported that 7.2 percent of the inmate population was “overtly and seriously mentally ill;” over one-fourth of that population was being detained without charges until beds became available in one of the country’s few remaining mental hospitals.

Psychotropic medication has additionally allowed individuals to avoid directly confronting their mental health issues, for example through counseling. Despite successful advances in therapy, such as Roger’s Client-Centered Counseling and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, among many others, mentally ill individuals have found it easier to avoid the shame associated with mental illness in countries where psychopathology is profoundly stigmatized. For instance, since deinstitutionalization, community health centers, day-care facilities, short- and long-term residencies, vocational training programs, and mobile units have all been established in Greece, yet the majority of the mentally ill, aside from those suffering from severe psychosis, still treat themselves only with psychotropic medication as they find it easier to hide their mental ailments from their friends, family, and communities. Supernatural beliefs about mental illness persist in other countries around the world, motivating most individuals to consult traditional healers first to help restore their mental health before they seek out professional, medical assistance. Workers in Nigerian asylums claimed that individuals were often only admitted after traditional healers has exhausted all treatment possibilities, and even today this country is known for its ethnopsychiatry as its mental health facilities employ traditional healers and frequently incorporate their practices into more modern treatments. It is also common in several countries that mental health is a grossly misunderstood and ignored problem, leading to serious underdevelopment of mental health facilities. Some countries in the Arab world have the highest income per capita, yet all have mental health systems that are severely lacking, including Morocco, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and more. Individuals in these countries also continue to hold supernatural beliefs about mental illness and feel ashamed due to stigma, so they often consult traditional healers first with physical complaints, which are more likely psychosomatic symptoms. China is another country whose mental health services are limited due to stigma and misunderstanding. Confucian ideals about social order allow no wiggle-room for mental illness. Those afflicted with psychopathology rush to traditional healers, seek out prescriptions for psychoactive medication, or are begrudgingly taken care of by family members; the mentally ill who become disruptive to society are likely to be incarcerated.

This article has examined the major developments in mental health care as well as some interesting details about mental illness treatments throughout world history. Perceptions of mental health have changed greatly since the earliest civilizations and will continue to change as more is learned about the minds of humankind. Although significant advances have been made in this field of study that greatly benefit many individuals suffering from psychopathology, there remains much room for improvement. It will likely be ages before the workings of the human mind will be fully understood, if this is indeed an attainable goal.

A Terrifying Asylum Tour Of The Past

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/view/83870116/

Featured 02/10/2014

Serbian Psychiatric Hospital. Photo taken by George Georgiou who worked in Kosovo and Serbia between 1999 and 2002.

Female patients receiving Radium Therapy, early 20th century.

Chair used to calm hysterical patients -- looks an awful lot like an electric chair.

An insane asylum patient restrained by warders, Yorkshire, 1869, Henry Clarke.

A patient undergoing lateral cerebral diathermia treatment in the early 1920's. Diathermia used a galvanized current to jolt psychosis sufferers. Doctors eventually deemed it unsafe and unreliable.

Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA insane asylum, 1870's

A chronic schizophrenic patient stands in a catatonic position. He maintained this uncomfortable position for hours.

The Pilgram Psychiatric Center in Long Island, NY, USA could house as many as 14,000 patients at a time. This self-sufficient mental asylum adopted extremely aggressive methods of "curing the insane." Lobotomies and electric shock therapy were the norm. The doctors at this asylum started using large doses of insulin and metrozol to drive patients into a violent coma, just to be rid of them.

Basement dining.

A list of actual reasons for admission into the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum from the late 1800's

Pilgram State Hospital, Brentwood, NY, USA, 1940's

Lobotomy tools

Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry. Man in restraints, B, violent ward. 1945.

Mechanical slapping massage device at BC sanitarium.

Norwich State Hospital, Connecticut, USA

A mother who has tuberculosis, and is on strict bed rest, leaves her room at the sanatorium for a Sunday walk with her family... but she does not leave her bed.

Made by a paranoid schizophrenic patient

Cuenca, Spain, 1961 Insane asylum

Sections of brain encased in wax. West Park Mental Hospital "Mortuary."

Washington, D.C., circa 1921. "Foundling Hospital, playroom." Tots at the Washington Asylum for 'Foundlings.'

Self harm at an Asylum, 1964

Patients in steam cabinets, c 1910.

An X-ray image of needles driven into the flesh by a psychiatric patient.

Abandoned asylum, Limbiate, Italy

In the late 19th century it was a widely held belief that masturbation caused insanity and devices such as this were designed to prevent the wearer from touching or stimulating himself. They were often used in mental institutions.

17th-Century Insanity Mask.

Hydrotherapy first used in the early 1900's, immersion in a tub of water to make a patient relax when agitated or relieve some ailment, lasted a few hours to overnight. 1936

Self-decorated patient, Asylum life 1800's

Sunland Asylum...Dr. Freeman, the quack who did ice pick lobotomies. The procedure turned most "problem" patients into zombies.

Patient in restraint chair at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum, Wakefield, Yorkshire ca. 1869

There is no way out...

From: http://www.studentpulse.com/print?id=283

Some four thousand years ago, the ancient Egyptians did not differentiate between mental and physical illnesses; they believed that despite their manifestations, all diseases had physical causes. They thought the heart was responsible for mental symptoms. Hippocrates and the early Greeks believed as well that all illness resulted from a biological malfunction; in the case of depression, from an excess of “black bile”.

The ancients may have been off the mark as to specific causes, but their nonperjorative view of mental suffering and their search for medical causes were right on track. Some of the earliest views of mental illness follow:

Early Egypt: During this time period mental illness was believed to be caused by loss of status or money. The recommended treatment was to “talk it out”, and to turn to religion and faith. Suicide was accepted at this time.

Job/Old Testament: Despair and cognition was the accepted cause of mental illness; faith the cure.

Homer: Homer believed that mental illness was caused by God's taking a mind away. He offered no treatment.

Aeschylus: Demon possession was the theory of Aeschylus to explain Mental illness ; exorcism the cure.

Socrates: Socrates believed that mental illness was heaven-sent and not shameful in the least. He believed it to be a blessing, and therefore no treatment was required.

Aristotle: Melancholia was the cause of mental illness according to Aristotle, and music was the cure.

Hippocrates: It was the belief of Hippocrates that both melancholia and natural medical causes contributed to mental illness. He advised abstinence of various types, a natural vegetable diet and exercise as treatment.

Celsius: Celsus believed mental illness to be a form of madness to be treated with entertaining stories, diversion and persuasion therapy.

Galen: Psychic functions of the brain were considered by Galen to be the foremost cause of mental illness. Treatment consisted of confrontation, humor and exercise.

As history progressed, however, the “mind” view of mental illness came to predominate, and with it the conviction that the victim was to blame. Possession by evil spirits, moral weakness, and other such “explanations” made a stigma of mental illness and placed the responsibility for a cure on the resulting outcasts themselves. The most apparently ill were chained to walls in institutions such as the infamous Bedlam, where the rest of society could forget they existed.

Conditions in these institutions were horrible. “Inmates” as they were called were crowded into dark cells, sometimes sleeping five to a mattress on dank damp floors, chained in place. There was no fresh air, no light, very little nutrition and they were whipped and beaten for misbehavior much like wild animals. No differentiation was made between mentally ill and criminally insane; all were packed together. Some women were committed at this time simply for the “crime” of attempting to leave their husband, or at their husband's insistence in order to gain control of her assets.

They were not recognized as sick people and were accused of having abandoned themselves to shameful and forbidden practices with the devil, sorcerers and other demons (unbelievably there are people who still believe this today). The mentally ill were accused of having succumbed to spells, incantations and of having committed many sinful offences and crimes. They were persecuted without mercy and many of them were burned at the stake.

The few doctors who tried to convince the authorities and general public that the “insane” were mentally ill, and sick people who needed attention and care were ridiculed. Often they faced danger to their professional reputations and to their person as well.

During the 1700's many people were simply locked away by their families, perhaps for a lifetime. Poorer individuals were jailed or placed in publicly funded almshouses. They received basic car, but conditions were undeniably bad.

Institutional Care

During the 18th and 19th centuries, hospitals and asylums assumed the care of the mentally ill. The first hospital to accept and treat mentally ill patients was the Pennsylvania Hospital founded by the Quakers in 1752. Treatment there was the same as for other patients…clean surroundings, good care and nutrition, fresh air and light…in short the mentally ill were treated as human beings.

Asylums for the Mentally Ill

The word “asylum” means shelter or refuge. One definition found in the 10th edition of Webster's Dictionary is “an institution for the care of the destitute or sick and especially the insane”.

The first actual mental asylum in America opened in 1769 under the guidance of Benjamin Rush, who became known as “America's first psychiatrist.”

Benjamin Rush, who became known as America's first psychiatrist was a professor at America's first psychiatric hospital in 1769. This hospital, located in Williamsburg, Virginia was to be the only such institution in the country for fifty years.

Rush graduated from Princeton University at the age of fifteen, and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh in his twenties. Soon after he began to practice medicine he realized that his primary interest was in the treatment of the mentally ill. He divided the mentally ill roughly into two groups; those who suffered general intellectual derangement and whose problems seemed only partial.

Rush disapproved completely of restraint of any kind, for long periods of time. He outlawed the use of whips, chains and straitjackets and developed his own methods for keeping control. Looking at some of his methods, we may feel he was quite harsh, but in his day his methods were considered exceedingly humane.

The tranquilizing chair seen above (National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD drawing) was a device intended to heal by lowering the pulse and relaxing the muscles. It was designed to hold the head, body, arms and legs immobile for long periods of time and enable the patient to settle.

The gyrator, as its name suggests was a contraption similar to a spoke on a wheel. The patient was strapped to the board head outward and the wheel was rotated at a high rate of speed, sending the blood racing to his head and supposedly relieving his congested brain.

The circulating swing worked similar to the gyrator with the patient bound in place in a sitting position.

Looking back it is obvious the treatments were still primitive, but a change had been made.

Nearly fifty years later America's second asylum was built near Philadelphia by the Quakers and was called “The American Friends' Asylum”. This asylum, and others that followed embraced the teaching of Englishman William Tuke in providing “moral treatment” for its patients. No chains were used and violent patients were separated from the others.

In 1841 Dorothy Dix, an American woman, appalled at the conditions in jails and mental institutions where the mentally ill were housed began a forty-year quest to champion the mentally ill. Through her efforts more than thirty hospitals for indigent patients with mental illnesses were built.

By the mid 1800's many institutions were making the effort to truly help their residents, yet by today's standards their efforts were crude.

Real changes began to occur with the arrival of the twentieth century. During World War 1 it was discovered that large numbers of soldiers were incapacitated by emotional problems and it was plain to see that not just a few, but many suffered from abnormal behavior. It was reasoned that if trauma such as the war could cause such widespread symptoms, then it was reasonable to assume lesser trauma, perhaps occurring frequently could produce the same effect.

Mental illnesses began to be recognized as medical in origin and the classification as to type and symptoms proceeded.

In the 1940's and 50's medication was discovered that helped the severely mentally ill. Great hope was placed in these drugs, but it was soon discovered they did not cure the illness, although they were quite successful at ameliorating some of the symptoms. These medicines, the anti psychotics, are still in use today. ECT and insulin therapy was also discovered, and went a long way to helping especially those in depression. ECT, in a refined and safer mode is also practiced today.

Several serendipitous discoveries in the next several years nearly revolutionized the treatment of the mentally ill. New medications were discovered to help in most cases of severe mental conditions, and more new ones are being found.

Lifelong institutionalization is rare as patients recover enough to be cared for in their own homes and communities. Community help for the mentally ill has progressed enormously in the past even twenty years.

No, we still do not know the cause of the major mental illnesses, schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder (manic depression) or clinical depression but treatment is available. Researchers continue to look at the genetics in an attempt to identify the cause. Though it may not come in our time, it will for our children and their children.

The stigma of mental illness has not been eradicated, though the move to equate mental illness with physical illness has resulted in greater understanding on some fronts. We still have a long way to go in this area.

TIMELINE

45,000 BC

Among archaeological finds, there are at least 30 cases in which the disease or pathology was so severe, they must have had care in order to survive. These are case studies where direct support or accommodation was necessary (first Peer Support predates medicine by several thousand years). One Neanderthal, Shanidar 1, from a site in Iraq, dating to 45,000 years ago, who died around age 50 with one arm amputated, loss of vision in one eye and other injuries. Another is Windover boy from about 7,500 years ago, found in Florida, who had a severe congenital spinal malformation known as spina bifida, and lived to around age 15. The conclusion is that contrary to popular stereotypes of prehistoric people, under some conditions life 7,500 years ago and longer included an ability and willingness to help and sustain the chronically ill and handicapped. In another well-known case, the skeleton of a teenage boy, Romito 2, found at a site in Italy in the 1980s, and dating to 10,000 years ago, showed a form of severe dwarfism that left the boy with very short arms. His people were nomadic and they lived by hunting and gathering. He didn’t need nursing care, but the group would have had to accept that he couldn’t run at the same pace or participate in hunting in the same way others did. Another case is a skeleton of a young woman about 18 years old from a site on the Arabian Peninsula more than 4,000 years old indicated that the woman had a neuromuscular disease, perhaps polio. Her condition likely made it difficult for her to walk. She had exceedingly thin arm and leg bones with very little buildup of normal muscle attachments. She probably received round-the-clock care. But one problem that she had was apparently not a result of the disease. The teeth that she had were full of cavities, and she was “missing teeth from abscesses and periodontal disease. Those who cared for the young woman may have been too kind. Her people grew dates, and, perhaps to make her happy, they fed her a lot of sticky, gummy dates, which eventually just rotted her teeth out, unusual for someone so young.

33,000 BC

Dogs have been domesticated since approximately 33,000 years ago. Research shows that Dogs are the only animals in the animal kingdom that can read the emotions on your face much like humans. In other words dogs can tell at a glance if we are happy, angry or sad just by looking at our faces. Research shows that by petting a dog you help lower your blood pressure.

10,000 BC

In prehistoric times there was, as far as historians can tell, no division between medicine, magic and religion. In the Stone Age there is evidence of trepanning the skull, and also that parts of the cut skull were used as amulets. Study of cave drawings indicates that mesolithic people utilized a magical law relating to all human activities of the time, by which they made sense of the world. A cave painting in Ariege, France, shows a strange being with human feet and hands and antlers who has been identified as a 'psychiatrist (witch doctor)', but it is not clear how this identification has been made. Katherine Darton's “Notes of the history of mental health care” begins in 10,000 BC. She says "in prehistoric times there was, as far as historians can tell, no division between medicine, magic and religion." History of Mental Illness at the University of Derby begins some 10,000 years ago with trepanning - possibly to let evil spirits out, but this was before written records.

5,000 BC

Attempts to treat mental illness date back as early as 5000 BCE as evidenced by the discovery of trephined skulls in regions that were home to ancient world cultures

3,500 BC

The Disability Social History Project's Disability Social History Timeline begins in 3,500 BC with an account of the fitting of an artificial limb the Rig-Veda (sacred poem of India written in Sanskrit between 3500 and 1800 B.C. The Rig-Veda, an ancient sacred poem of India, is said to be the first written record of a prosthesis. Written in Sanskrit between 3500 and 1800 B.C., it recounts the story of a warrior, Queen Vishpla, who lost her leg in battle, was fitted with an iron prosthesis, and returned to battle.

3,100 BC

The Society of Laingian Studies' Timeline in the treatment of Madness begins in 3,100BC when "Menes, the founder of the 1st Dynasty writes The Secret Book of the Heart, describing 3 kinds of healers, the physician, the priest and the sorcerer".

2,850 BC

At Memphis, the temple of Imhotep, a great Egyptian healer who was deified, became a medical school where patients received sleep therapy, occupational therapy, excursions on the Nile, concerts, dances and painting. There were carefully worded malpractice laws and detailed clinical treatises; however psychiatric theory was largely magical, and successful treatments were attributed to amulets worn or to the patron god.

2,000 BC

The Talmud is full of psychological commentary. Rabbi Hunah stated that good men have bad dreams, implying that dreams are a safety valve for wishes repressed by moral principles. Judaism also suggested that sickness and madness were punishments for sins. In the Old Testament, Saul suffered from suicidal depression, Nebuchadnezzar had a psychotic fear of being a wolf, and Ezekial was coprophagic (eating of feces or dung), while David feigned madness to escape from the King of Gath. One effect of Hebrew psychiatry was that the religion of one God caused a lot of magical ideas to be discarded. However, despite the caring of the Hebrews, and the building of a special hospital for mentally ill people, statements like, 'a wizard shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones' were to be used in an inhumane way for centuries. Deuteronomy names insanity as one of the many curses that God will inflict on those who do not obey Him: 'the Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart'. Saul's psychotic episodes were attributed to an evil spirit sent by the Lord, and treated with music therapy: 'And it came to pass, when the evil spirit was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.' Rabbi Asi in ancient Judea recommended that disturbed patients should talk freely about their worries.

1792-1750 BC

King Hammurabi of Babylon issues the Code of Hammurabi, which creates the first code of laws: 3,600 lines of cuneiform, written on a diorite column, include protection of widows, orphans, and the weak against the strong. In Mesopotamia, according to the code of Hammurabi preserved in Cuneiform clay tablets, priest-physicians dealt especially with mental disturbance which was attributed to demonic possession, whilst 'lay' physicians dealt solely with physical injury. This was the first known division between mental and physical symptoms. These priest-physicians, the Asu, used psychotherapy, and studied dreams that were regarded as showing the will of the gods. Every physician had his own god and every disease its own demon. Diseases and drugs were codified, and the doctor was responsible for his patient, whose life story was studied in a holistic approach.

1550 BC

A page from the Ebers Papyrus.

The Ebers papyrus, one of the most important medical papyri of ancient Egypt, briefly mentioned clinical depression. In 1550 BC, the Egyptians wrote a book of medicine. It is likely a copy of a much older book, but it is quite fascinating to realize just how much the ancients knew about the human body and various diseases. While the cures were no better than a witches brew with "eye of newt", they did understand the various diseases. The only reference to anything coming close to psychiatry is in the section on the heart where anger and sadness are discussed. Biopsychiatrists love to quote the papyrus as proof that the Egyptians believed depression was caused by bodily diseases. But this is simply untrue. In fact the opposite is true. The Egyptians understood that anger and sadness caused body diseases in the heart. The papyrus reads: "When his Heart is afflicted and has tasted sadness, behold his Heart is closed in and darkness is in his body because of anger which is eating up his Heart."

900 BC

Ed Brown's annotated cases at Brown Medical School - archives begins with the feigned madness of David who became king of the Jews (9th century BC)

800 BC

The insanity defense, i.e., the forgiveness of criminal liability due to presence of a mental illness that impairs judgment or behavior, can be found in ancient Greek mythology. In the extensive myths concerning the demi-god Hercules, he is said later in his life to have killed his wife and three children due to a curse from the goddess Hera. Despite this massacre being witnessed by the town's people, he was nevertheless deemed to be nonculpable due to the mental confusion caused by the curse. That is, he was truly unaware that his acts were wrong and/or he was unable to conform his conduct to the law. This is precisely the formula of the modern "insanity defense." Accordingly, Hercules was found to be in need of care and treatment by his best friend, Amphitryon, and the townspeople, and he was given sympathetic counseling to prevent his own subsequent attempted suicide upon regaining his mental competency and realizing what he had done.

According to Homer, an eminent specialist, Melampus, pioneered the use of white hellebore for treating delusions, and Greek comedies frequently satirized the taking of the drug, which was considered a panacea. An eminent physician, Aesculapius, developed a form of sleep-therapy in luxurious surroundings, taking great care with patients' diet and exercise. Aesculapian temples, named after him, were built in places of particular beauty or near springs with medicinal waters, and there patients with psychological problems could be cared for and encouraged to sleep, with the suggestion that Aeculapius would appear in their dreams to cure them. The Asklepeia were ancient Greek dream hospitals where priests would prescribe treatment based on the patients' dreams.

735 BC

During the reign of Romulus in Rome, wife beating is accepted and condoned under The Laws of Chastisement. Under these laws, the husband has absolute rights to physically discipline his wife. Since by law a husband is held liable for crimes committed by his wife, this law was designed to protect the husband from harm caused by the wife's actions. These laws permit the husband to beat his wife with a rod or switch as long as its circumference is no greater than the girth of the base of the man's right thumb, hence "The Rule of Thumb." The tradition of these laws is perpetuated in English Common Law and throughout most of Europe.

600 BC

Many cities had temples to Asklepios known as an Asklepieion that provided cures for psychosomatic illnesses

600-500 BC

Buddhism, founded by Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), teaches that all other forms of righteousness "are not worth the sixteenth part of the emancipation of the heart through love and charity." In India, Buddha attributed human thoughts to our sensations and perceptions, which, he said, gradually and automatically combine into ideas. In China, Confucius said, 'A man can command his principles; principles do not master the man', and 'learning undigested by thought is labor lost; thought unassisted by learning is perilous'. In Greece, either Solon or Thales (sources differ) gave the famous advice, 'Know thyself'.

Witch doctors in Africa could only qualify for their profession by first having undergone convulsions and sickness themselves and a thorough exposure of their dreams.

Nebuchadnezzar or Nabonidus (whichever), in the 6th century BC, is the earliest in Joan's mad monarchs series

500-400 BC

The Talmud, a vast compilation of Oral Laws of Jews, prescribes exactly how charitable funds are collected and distributed, including the appointment of tax collectors to administer the system.

460-379 BC

Earliest records of the study and practice of alchemy among the Greeks of Asia Minor. It was long thought among the Magi that the various metals were connected with their astrological properties, but the goal of the alchemist was the pursuit of a "stone which isn't a stone"¹ reflected in the mystic's aim to free the soul from the evil confines of matter and return it to God.

430 BC

“Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.” Hippocrates, called the “Father of Medicine,” who was born in 460BC at Kos wrote 76 treatises which are still considered to be the foundations of modern medicine and psychiatry. Hippocrates (460-377 BC), influenced by humoral theory, proposed a triad of mental disorders termed melancholia, mania and phrenitis (an acute mental disorder accompanied by fever). He also spoke of other disorders such as phobia, and is credited with being the first physician to reject supernatural or divine explanations of illness. He believed that disease was the product of environmental factors, diet and living habits, not a punishment inflicted by the gods, and that the appropriate treatment depended on which bodily fluid, or humour, had caused the problem. However, he also objected to speculation about the etiology of madness (for example that it was seated in the heart and diaphragm or "phren") and favoured instead close behavioural observation. He treats mental disorders as diseases to be understood in terms of disturbed physiology, rather than reflections of the displeasure of the gods or evidence of demonic possession, as they were often treated in Egyptian, Indian, Greek, and Roman writings. Hippocrates recommended that the treatment of mental illness should be conducted in an asylum, i.e., a secure and safe retreat from the chaos, pressures and impure environment of crowded urban centers rather than having persons with mental illness whipped in public, or incarcerated in dungeon-like buildings. Later, Greek medical writers set out treatments for mentally ill people that include quiet, occupation, and the use of drugs such as the purgative hellebore. Family members care for most people with mental illness in ancient times. He described melancholia, postpartum psychosis, mania, phobias and paranoia, and was called as a psychiatric witness in trials. Hippocrates also believed that thoughts and feelings occur in the brain, rather than the heart as was often thought, and classified personality in terms of the four humors – fluids which in health were naturally equal in proportion (pepsis). When the four humors, blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm, were not in balance (dyscrasia, meaning “bad mixture”), a person would become sick and remain that way until the balance was somehow restored. Hippocratic therapy was directed towards restoring this balance. For instance, using citrus was thought to be beneficial when phlegm was overabundant. Hippocrates is credited with being the first physician to reject superstitions, legends and beliefs that credited supernatural or divine forces with causing illness. Hippocrates was credited by the disciples of Pythagoras of allying philosophy and medicine. He separated the discipline of medicine from religion, believing and arguing that disease was not a punishment inflicted by the gods but rather the product of environmental factors, diet, and living habits. Indeed there is not a single mention of a mystical illness in the entirety of the Hippocratic Corpus. Hippocratic medicine was humble and passive. The therapeutic approach was based on “the healing power of nature” (“vis medicatrix naturae” in Latin). According to this doctrine, the body contains within itself the power to re-balance the four humors and heal itself (physis). Hippocratic therapy focused on simply easing this natural process. To this end, Hippocrates believed “rest and immobilization [were] of capital importance”. In general, the Hippocratic medicine was very kind to the patient; treatment was gentle, and emphasized keeping the patient clean and sterile. For example, only clean water or wine were ever used on wounds, though “dry” treatment was preferable. Soothing balms were sometimes employed. Hippocrates was reluctant to administer drugs and engage in specialized treatment that might prove to be wrongly chosen; generalized therapy followed a generalized diagnosis. However, potent drugs were used on certain occasions. This passive approach was very successful in treating relatively simple ailments such as broken bones which required traction to stretch the skeletal system and relieve pressure on the injured area. Hippocrates believed the brain was involved in sensation and was as well the center of intelligence, argued that psychological disorders originated from natural reasons as other diseases, rather than reflections of the displeasure of the gods or evidence of demonic possession, and defined such clinical pictures as mania and melancholia. He further pointed out the relationship between the human brain and epilepsias and mentioned dementia Greek medical writers set out treatments for mentally ill people that include quiet, occupation, and the use of drugs such as the purgative hellebore.

400 BC

Plato, Greek student of Socrates, proposed a view of the soul (psyche) as a charioteer driving two horses, one noble, the other driven by base desires. Plato (427-347 BC) argued that there were two types of mental illness: "divinely inspired" mental illness that gave the person prophetic powers, and a second type that was caused by a physical disease. The charioteer struggles to balance their conflicting impulses. This is similar to Freud's theory of the superego, ego and id. Plato also discussed the origin of dreams, as well as the nature of sexual sublimation. In “The Laws” Plato also describes the place where those who did not measure up to the Greek ideal should be set aside. This was the earliest known description of what were to later to be places of isolation, a model for both asylums as well as German Concentration Camps in World War II. In ancient Greece and Rome, madness was associated stereotypically with aimless wandering and violence. However, Socrates considered positive aspects including prophesying (a ‘manic art’); mystical initiations and rituals; poetic inspiration; and the madness of lovers. Now often seen as the very epitome of rational thought and as the founder of philosophy, Socrates freely admitted to experiencing what are now called "command hallucinations" (then called his ‘daemon’). Pythagoras also heard voices. Socrates (in Plato's The Republic) recommends that "the offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be." In 387 BC Plato suggested that the brain is the mechanism of mental processes.

384-322 BC

Aristotle (384-322 BC), who studied under Plato, abandoned the divinely caused mental illness theory, and proposed instead that all mental illness was caused by physical problems. Aristotle said those "born deaf become senseless and incapable of reason." Aristotle recognizes man as a social animal who necessarily must cooperate with and assist his fellow man. Aristotle showed an awareness of the importance of genetic inheritance, and saw mental growth as a sequence of cause and effect: aspirations influence behavior and thus become causes. Aristotle saw actions, feelings and thoughts as a single unit. His awareness of the potential for change and his image of a self-actualized person accords with Erich Fromm's description. Aristotle, like Meyer, also believed in the concept of total reactions, rather than separating man's faculties. Aristotle said those "born deaf become senseless and incapable of reason." Arateus antedated modern concepts of mental disease as extensions of normal personality traits. The concept of personal will and ego and of emotional and rational behavior was defined by Pythagorus. Aristophanes' plays include classic Freudian free-association sessions, beginning 'come onto the couch'. It was Aristotle who not only defined the legal principle of informed consent which is essentially unchanged to this day, but also defined the two essential powers of a democratic government which are found in our own culture and law and underlie the two legal justifications for civil commitment of certain persons who are mentally ill. Aristotle, in his work the Nicomachean Ethics, essentially defined informed consent as a person's actions which are done with knowledge, rationality and without coercion. Informed consent in modern law - whether it concerns medical consent, involuntary psychiatric commitment or medication, the ability to enter into marriage or a contract, or whether a confession was voluntarily given to the police, etc. - is still a matter of a person's ability to receive and absorb the relevant knowledge, intelligently evaluate the risk and benefits of the decision, and to be free from any coercion. These same three legal elements still form the basis of court decisions, statutes, and they were endorsed by the Report of President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and on Biomedical and Behavioral Research. In terms of the government's role in society, Aristotle postulated that the government has two basic powers: the police power to protect its citizens from danger and harm (known as the "police power"), and its parens patriae power (a later Latin term applied to this concept by Roman Law) to help those in need of parental-type care, i.e., sustenance, protection, nurturing, and education. In other words, under parens patriae power, it is the government's responsibility to act as the ultimate parent of all citizens of the country who have no immediate family or friends to help them in times of need. These two powers respectively underlie and justify the two traditional forms of involuntary civil commitment. Aristotle believed the heart was the centre of intelligence and that the brain was a kind of radiator that cooled the blood that was overheated by a seething heart, which explained man's rational temperament. In 335 BC Aristotle suggested that the heart is the mechanism of mental processes.

280 BC

Theophrastus, having "...a long time observed the divers dispositions of men, having now lived ninety-nine years, conversed with all sorts of natures bad and good, and comparing them togither..." writes The Characters, the original DSM, comprised of exactly 28 personality disorders. The work contains thirty brief, vigorous, and trenchant outlines of moral types, which form a most valuable picture of the life of his time, and in fact of human nature in general.

Greek physician and philosopher Herophilus studied the nervous system and distinguished between sensory nerves and motor nerves. His work on blood and its movements led him to study and analyze the brain. He proposed that the brain housed the intellect rather than the heart. He was the first person to differentiate between the cerebrum and the cerebellum and to place individual importance on each portion. He looked more in depth into the network of nerves located in the cranium. He described the optic nerve and the oculomotor nerve for sight and eye movement. Through his dissection of the eye, he discovered the different sections and layers of the eye: the cornea, the retina, the iris, and the choroid also known as the choroid coat. Further study of the cranium led him to describe the calamus scriptorius which he believed was the seat of the human soul. Analysis of the nerves in the cranium allowed him to differentiate between nerves and blood vessels and to discover the differences between motor and sensory nerves. He believed that the sensory and motor nerves shot out from the brain and that the neural transmissions occurred by means of pneuma. Part of his belief system regarding the human body involved the pneuma, which he believed was a substance that flowed through the arteries along with the blood. Playing off of medical beliefs at the time, Herophilos stated that diseases occurred when an excess of one of the four humors impeded the pneuma from reaching the brain.

250 BC

Greek anatomist Erasistratus studied the brain and distinguished between the cerebrum and cerebellum. He considered atoms to be the essential body element, and he believed they were vitalized by the pneuma that circulated through the nerves. He also thought that the nerves moved a nervous spirit from the brain. He then differentiated between the function of the sensory and motor nerves, and linked them to the brain. He is credited with one of the first in-depth descriptions of the cerebrum and cerebellum.

218 BC

Marcus Sergius, a Roman general who led his legion against Carthage (presently Tunis) in the Second Punic War, sustained 23 injuries and a right arm amputation. An iron hand was fashioned to hold his shield and he was able to go back to battle. He was denied a chance to be a priest because one needed two normal hands.

202 BC

At the end of the Punic Wars, the family structure changes giving women more freedoms, including property rights and the right to sue their husbands for unjustified beatings. 

120-70 BC

Asclepiades introduced humane treatment of the mentally deranged; some of those treatments were based on interpreting dreams, described and defined the errors in perception and reasoning of the insane and emphasized the point that they should be treated under favorable environmental conditions

110 BC

To elicit the state of mind of the mentally disturbed person, Cicero designed an interview format that contained the following items:

1. Nomen (clan/tribe, region, connections)

2. Natura (sex, nationality, family status age, physique)

3. Victus (education, association, habits/life-style)

4. Fortuna (rich/poor, free/slave, social class)

5. Habitus (appearance)

6. Affectio (passions, emotions, temperament)

7. Studium (interests)

8. Consilium (motivation)

9. Factum (working history)

10. Casus (significant life events)

11. Orationes (form and content of discourse)

This assessment tool was used throughout the Roman Empire, was still used by the Celtic monasteries in the following centuries and continued in use until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century (i.e for about 1600 years). Cicero rejected the concept of the four humors, saying that melancholia was caused, not by black bile, as Hippocrates had suggested, but by violent rage, fear and grief.

Through long contact with Greek culture, and their eventual conquest of Greece, the Romans absorbed many Greek (and other) ideas on medicine.^[9] The humoral theory fell out of favor in some quarters. The Greek physician Asclepiades (c. 124 – 40 BC), who practiced in Rome, discarded it and advocated humane treatments, and had insane persons freed from confinement and treated them with natural therapy, such as diet and massages. Arateus (ca AD 30-90) argued that it is hard to pinpoint where a mental illness comes from. However, Galen (AD 129 –ca. 200), practicing in Greece and Rome, revived humoral theory.^[6] Galen, however, adopted a single symptom approach rather than broad diagnostic categories, for example studying separate states of sadness, excitement, confusion and memory loss.^[7]

Playwrights such as Homer, Sophocles and Euripides described madmen driven insane by the Gods, imbalanced humors or circumstances. As well as the triad (of which mania was often used as an overarching term for insanity) there were a variable and overlapping range of terms for such things as delusion, eccentricity, frenzy, and lunacy. Physician Celsus argued that insanity is really present when a continuous dementia begins due to the mind being at the mercy of imaginings. He suggested that people must heal their own souls through philosophy and personal strength. He described common practices of dietetics, bloodletting, drugs, talking therapy, incubation in temples, exorcism, incantations and amulets, as well as restraints and "tortures" to restore rationality, including starvation, being terrified suddenly, agitation of the spirit, and stoning and beating. Most, however, did not receive medical treatment but stayed with family or wandered the streets, vulnerable to assault and derision. Accounts of delusions from the time included people who thought themselves to be famous actors or speakers, animals, inanimate objects, or one of the gods. Some were arrested for political reasons, such as Jesus ben Ananias who was eventually released as a madman after showing no concern for his own fate during torture. It has been argued that Jesus of Nazareth was widely considered a dangerous madman, due partly to antisocial and disruptive outbursts including physical aggression, grandiose and nonsensical claims, and terse responses to official questioning - and may have been mocked as a king and crucified for that reason.

43 BC

March 20 in the year 43 BC Birth date of Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso, better known as Ovid. He is especially famous for his 15-volume Metamorphoses, based on stories from classic mythology. But here I include him because of the Tristia poems he wrote about 10 AD, two years after Roman emperor August had him exiled to the town of Tomis (present-day Constantza, a Black Sea port in Romania). Even experts are not sure about why Ovid was forced into exile. Some of the Tristia poems are fine examples of someone describing symptoms of depression – 2,000 years ago. Of course we can dispute whether Ovid’s depression does qualify as a form of mental illness, as in his case there was a very clear external reason for feeling depressed: his exile, his nostalgic longing for home. On the other hand, doesn’t the word “homesick” also suggest illness? And of course we could also, after the fact, interpret Ovid’s exile as a metaphor for depression. Isn’t depression a kind of permanent, hopeless exile from the happier world of our family and friends? Ovid’s troubles lasted until his death. He died in exile in Tomis, about 17 AD (when he was 60).

40 BC

Asclepiades was a Greek doctor who practiced in Rome, using a form of physiotherapy designed to move the oppositely charged 'atoms' of which the human body was formed. He invented a swinging bed which had a relaxing effect on emotionally disturbed patients, found music helpful, and spoke out strongly against incarceration of mentally ill people. He disliked the term 'insanity', referring to 'passions of sensations', and differentiated between hallucinations and delusions. Asclepiades waged a strong campaign against bleeding, which in fact went on for another 1500 years.

1

In the last years before Christ the influence of enlightened views of the Roman doctors began to decline, and Cornelius Celcus (25BC-50AD) recommended starvation, fetters and flogging and anything 'which thoroughly agitates the spirit'. He reinstated the idea that some illnesses were caused by the anger of the gods, and his words were used in the Middle Ages to justify the burning of witches. A contemporary of Christ's, he defends the idea that force had to be applied during treatment of insane. To him, the insane had to be punished with famines, fetters and beating, asserting that a sudden sense of fear could cause the insane to recover.

23-79

Pliny the Elder, the great Roman naturalist (who asserted that the Earth was a sphere and the heavens unfathomable) composes in 37 volumes a Natural History, devoting many of the volumes to the medicinal properties of plants and herbs, animals and the human body's own products, as well as the uses of charms in healing the afflictions of mind and body.

30

Christianity, a martyr's church during its first 250 years, in its religious writings cites Jesus Christ as teaching people's love for one another as God's will. The writings emphasize sympathy for poor, disabled, and dispossessed people. Recognized in law in the 4th century the Canon Law was codified in the 12th century to provide an elaborate discussion of the theory and practice of charity.

47

The use of nonconvulsive electrotherapy as a method for alleviating symptoms through suggestion dates back to Scribonius Largus (c. A.D. 47), who treated the headaches of the Roman emperor with an electric eel.

100

The Roman, Aretaeus, an eclectic medical philosopher, established the fact that manic and depressive states occur in the same individual and that lucid intervals exist between manic and depressive episodes. He also understood that not everyone with mental illness is destined to suffer intellectual deterioration, a fact not adequately emphasized until the twentieth century, if then, and he was very concerned about the welfare of his patients, understanding the undesirability of treatments that patients find unacceptable. He abandoned terms relating to the four humors and gave clear descriptions of emotional states. The Romans tended to concentrate on pleasant physical therapies: warm baths, massage, diet, well-lighted and pleasant rooms, and music. They also used shocks by electric eels.

129

Galen, Greek physician, born AD 129 in Pergamum, in what is now Turkey. He died about AD 216. His massive writings on medicine included the theory of the humours or body fluids (like blood) whose preponderance had a marked affect on a person's health and personality. (i.e., melancholy). Galen (129-200) was an anatomist rather than a physician, and borrowed ideas from many sources. He dedicated many of his writings to a Creator, a fact that led to his having a far greater influence over the Christian world in later centuries than his work perhaps merited, and helped to retard the development of medicine. As physician to the gladiators, Galen, (Claudius Galeno) who was also a writer, likely observed first-hand the consequences of brain and spinal injury. He dissected many animals and believed as Hippocrates did that the brain was the center of intelligence. His views on the role of the cerebrum and cerebellum prevailed for close to 1,500 years.

200

Soranus of Ephesus lived in the second century A.D. in Rome, and was a physician of Greek extraction. His recommendations for treatment of mental illness were more advanced than some employed fifteen hundred years later. He belonged to the "methodist" school of physicians (related to the philosophers Heraclitus and Epicurus) believing that the human body is composed of atoms constantly in motion. He theorized that disease was caused by a disturbance or an irregularity of these atoms. In light of the recent revelation that much of schizophrenia might be caused by a disturbance to chromosome number six, Soranus' view was remarkably close to the latest findings on the possible causes of some mental illness. Follower of Asclepiades, Soranus of Ephesus, said that patients should be kept in light, airy conditions, should not be beaten, kept in the dark or given poppy to make them drowsy, and he stressed the importance of convalescence and aftercare. He also took social background and culture into account and insisted on the importance of the doctor-patient relationship. Although he described mental distress in terms of an organic disturbance he treated it by psychological methods, minimizing the use of drugs and other physical treatments. But he also suggested that mania should be treated with the alkaline waters of the town. These waters contained high levels of lithium salts. Lithium treatment was rediscovered for manic depression by John Cade, an Australian psychiatrist, in 1948. Soranus described two kinds of mental illness, mania and melancholy, which are what we now call schizophrenia and depression. Although the actual treatments of Soranus' time included confinement in a dark room, flogging, starvation diet, making a patient drunk, and inducing sleep with drugs and opium, he dismissed these treatments as futile and haphazard. Rather, Soranus recommended treatments that included patients be: kept in rooms with modest light and adequate warmth and always on the ground floor to prevent suicide attempts; put on a simple diet with regular exercise; and restrained only if necessary, and if so, with bonds made of wool or soft materials to prevent injury. He also recommended that to avoid unnecessary injury, the servants who restrained them should use their hands and not clubs or other instruments. Soranus thought that the patient should be engaged in intellectual activities not only for therapeutic purposes but to detect the progress of the illness; accordingly, patients should be encouraged to talk to philosophers to "banish their fear and sorrow."(

300

The Church fathers re-establish the husband's patriarchal authority and the patriarchal values of Roman and Jewish law. The Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, has his wife burned alive when she is no longer of use to him. 

400

When the Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate, Augustine of Hippo developed the concept of the Catholic Church as a spiritual City of God (in a book of the same name), distinct from the material Earthly City. His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. Augustine's City of God was closely identified with the segment of the Church that adhered to the concept of the Trinity as defined by the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople. Augustine writes The City of God in part to respond to claims that Rome fell because it had abandoned paganism. Augustine's arguments against magic, differentiating it from miracle, were crucial in the early Church's fight against paganism and became a central thesis in the later denunciation of witches and witchcraft.

450

Caelius Aurelianus announces that devils were existing in the appearance of male or female human beings, whose primary task was to deceive the opposite sex, issuing in the centuries to follow of murder of thousands of the insane for the purpose of getting rid of the evil-souls and devils that possess them.

622

Mohammed's flight from Mecca to Medina, the beginning of Islam. The Koran, the book considered to be the revelation of God to Muhammad and the foundation of the religion Islam, sets forth five duties, the third of which is to give, prescribed alms generously and also to give some alms beyond the minimum.

680

Boniface brings Anglo-Saxon Christianity to the pagans in Germany, cutting down the pagan's sacred tree to build a church out of it

706

Hospitals in Islamic History by Dr Hossam Arafa "The first known hospital in Islam was built in Damascus in 706 AD". After 750 - Al-Fustat Hospital, Cairo, 872.

Hospitals for the so-called "insane" were established by the eighth century in Arabic countries (an asylum in Fez, Morocco early in the eighth century).

800

Baghdad Academy of Science founded

865

Rhazes (865-925), called 'the Persian Galen' (but 700 years later), was chief physician at Baghdad hospital where there was a psychiatric ward, and, because the Arabs had no fear of demons, patients were kindly treated. They used the writings of Galen and Aristotle to guide them, and appear to have made use of forms of behavior therapy.

872

In the Islamic world, the Bimaristans were described by European travelers, who wrote on their wonder at the care and kindness shown to lunatics. Ahmad ibn Tulun built a hospital in Cairo that provided care to the insane which included music therapy.

Middle Ages (900 – 1300)

In Europe, squires and noblemen beat their wives as regularly as they beat their serfs; the peasants faithfully followed their lords' example. The Church sanctions the subjection of women. Priests advise abused wives to win their husbands' good will through increased devotion and obedience. The habit of looking upon women as a species apart, without the same feelings and capacity for suffering which men possess, becomes inbred during the Middle Ages. In a Medieval theological manual, a man is given permission to "castigate his wife and beat her for correction…” 

900

Leechdom, Wortcunning and Star Craft of Early England, a collection of herbal prescriptions, gives remedies for melancholia, hallucinations, mental vacancy, dementia, and folly.

1020

Pūr Sinɑʼ (Persian ابن سینا or ابو علی سینا or پور سينا Pur-e Sina; [ˈpuːr ˈsiːnɑː] "son of Sina"; August c. 980 – June 1037), commonly known as Ibn Sīnā, or in Arabic writing Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Sīnā (Arabic أبو علي الحسين بن عبد الله بن سينا) or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 works on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived. In particular, 150 of his surviving works concentrate on philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on medicine. His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a vast philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine, which was a standard medical text at many medieval universities. The Canon of Medicine was used as a textbook in the universities of Montpellier and Leuven as late as 1650. Ibn Sīnā's Canon of Medicine provides an overview of all aspects of medicine according to the principles of Galen (and Hippocrates). His corpus also includes writing on philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics, as well as poetry. He is regarded as the most famous and influential polymath of the Islamic Golden Age. In The Canon of Medicine, Avicenna described a number of conditions, including melancholia. He described melancholia as a depressive type of mood disorder in which the person may become suspicious and develop certain types of phobias.Avicenna (Ibn Sina) suggests that the three ventricles of the brain perform five distinct cognitives processes: common sense, imagination, cogitation, estimation and memory. His Canon of Medicine, which asserted the fundamentals of neuroanatomy, was in use as a textbook in Europe and the East as late as the 17th century. His treatise De Anima, discusses the relationship of body and soul in man and the causes of melancholy, and advocated only humane treatment of the insane. Avicenna was the first to employ analytical treatment, including use of a free association method, in his treatment of the insane. Persian physician Avicenna recognized "physiological psychology" in the treatment of illnesses involving emotions, and developed a system for associating changes in the pulse rate with inner feelings.

In Salerno University, Constantinus Africanus (1020-1087) a Jew who became a Christian translated Hippocrates from Arabic into Latin. Once again the nervous system was examined and the brain seen as the seat of mental illness. Hydrotherapy was used.

1100’s

Medieval laymen had more enlightened attitudes toward mental health problems than did professionals, for poetry and other literature present very realistic views of the subject. The poems Amadas (late 12th century), and also Tristan both indicate an understanding of the idea that emotional crises may result in severe emotional disorders and that they may be corrected by a realistic psychological approach.

1100

Date given for "an asylum exclusively for sufferers from mental diseases at Mets" (Metz, northern France) (Catholic Encyclopedia)

1135

“In the patient let me ever see only the person.” -- From the Oath of Maimonides (Moses Maimonides 1135-1204)

1200

Geel, Belgium becomes an established place of pilgrimage and settlement for the mentally ill, it survives the centuries and still exists as a therapeutic community, although in modern times under the supervision of medical authorities.

Ch'an Buddhism spreads from China to Japan where it is called (at least in translation) Zen Buddhism

Universities of Paris and Oxford founded

1212

The Children's Crusade. Children marched in tens of thousands from Germany and France to Italy, believing that they could free the Holy Land supernaturally because they were pure in heart. Most of them were drowned, murdered, or sold into slavery

1215

King John of England signs the Magna Carta, forerunner of modern civil rights documents. The original of the Magna Carta documents is signed and issued in Runnymede, England. The Charter, also called Magna Carta Libertatum, required King John of England to proclaim certain liberties, and accept that his will was not arbitrary, for example by explicitly accepting that no "freeman" (in the sense of non-serf) could be punished except through the law of the land, a right which is still in existence today. Magna Carta was the first document forced onto an English King by a group of his subjects, the feudal barons, in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their privileges. It was preceded and directly influenced by the Charter of Liberties in 1100, in which King Henry I had specified particular areas wherein his powers would be limited. The modern right of due process traces its lineage directly to the Magna Carta. In the Magna Carta of 1215, the king relinquished some of his sovereignty to the courts of law when government actions affected a citizen's liberty or property. The same principle is what basically underlies the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

1247

Bethlehem Royal Hospital established in Bishopsgate outside the wall of London; later, one of the most famous old psychiatric hospitals was founded as a priory of the Order of St. Mary of Bethlem to collect alms for Crusaders; after the English government secularized it (confiscated by King Edward III), it started admitting mental patients by 1377, becoming known as Bedlam Hospital; in 1547 it was acquired by the City of London, operating until 1948; it is now part of the British NHS Foundation Trust. Bethlem Royal Hospital of London is a psychiatric hospital at Beckenham in the London Borough of Bromley. Although no longer in its original location and buildings, it is recognised as the world's first and oldest institution to specialize in the mentally ill. It has been variously known as St. Mary Bethlehem, Bethlem Hospital, Bethlehem Hospital and Bedlam. Bethlem has been a part of London since 1247, first as a priory for the sisters and brethren of the Order of the Star of Bethlehem, from where the building took its name. Its first site was in Bishopsgate (where Liverpool Street station now stands). In 1337 it became a hospital, and it admitted some mentally ill patients from 1357, but did not become a dedicated psychiatric hospital until later. Early sixteenth century maps show Bedlam, next to Bishopsgate, as a courtyard with a few stone buildings, a church and a garden. Conditions were consistently dreadful, and the care amounted to little more than restraint. The hospital was small; in 1403-4, it held six “insane” patients and three “sane” patient. In the 1600’s there were about 30 patients and the noise was “so hideous, so great; that they are more able to drive a man that hath his wits rather out of them.” Violent or dangerous patients were manacled and chained to the floor or wall. Some were allowed to leave, and licensed to beg. It was a Royal hospital, but controlled by the City of London after 1557, and managed by the Governors of Bridewell. Day to day management was in the hands of a Keeper, who received payment for each patient from their parish, livery company, or relatives. In 1598 an inspection showed neglect; the “Great Vault” (cesspit) badly needed emptying, and the kitchen drains needed replacing. There were 20 patients there, one of whom had been there over 25 years. In 1676, it was replaced by the larger Moorfields Bedlam.

1250

Pietro Albano (1250-1316) was burned to death by the Inquisition for minimizing spiritual principles in his attempt to unite Aristotle's thinking with the medical facts.

1284

Al- Mansuri Hospital, Cairo opened. At some time, this had music therapy for its mental patients.

1285

Dave Sheppard's Development of Mental Health Law and Practice begins in 1285 with a case that linked "the instigation of the devil" and being "frantic and mad"

1290

De Praerogativa Regis, the Act giving the King (or, possibly, regulating and already established) custody of the lands of natural fools and wardship of the property of the insane, may have been drawn up between 1255 and 1290. This is part of feudal law relating to the idea that all land is by gift from the highest lord (in England, the King). Until the English civil war and interregnum, all land reverted to the king on the chief tenant's death, to be reclaimed by any lawful heir on payment of a fee. The King's Officers, throughout the country, who regulated these affairs were called "Escheators." Escheators also held the inquisitions to determine if a land holder was a lunatic or idiot.

1300’s

The Black Death. 1/3 of the population from India to Iceland is wiped out, including about 1/2 of Britain

Casting out devils becomes the common treatment for the mentally ill

Medieval laymen had more enlightened attitudes toward mental health problems than did professionals, for poetry and other literature present very realistic views of the subject.

It was not until the 14th century that people with mental health problems were considered witches and again became victims of persecution. The physical care of the insane was better in the early middle ages than it was during the 17th and 18th centuries. In the early days of the Bethlehem hospital (Bedlam), which began to care for people with mental health problems in the 12th century, patients were treated with concern, and were issued with arm badges to wear so that they could be returned to hospital if their symptoms should recur. Apparently vagrants sometimes counterfeited the badges so that they could be taken for former patients of Bethlem.

Ironically, witchhunts began at the dawn of the Renaissance (1300-1700), provoked at least in part by anxiety about the sexual activities of some monks and nuns. The Church needed to take action against this and the blame fell upon women who stirred men's passions and were therefore seen as agents of the devil. At the same time severe plague killed 50 per cent of the population in Europe, leading to a conviction among some groups that it was sent as punishment for sin. These groups therefore practiced self-flagellation and humiliation to relieve their guilt. In the 15th century the ideology of the mass movement of witch hunting was codified in the Malleus Maleficorum, a gruesome and pornographic book. It consisted of three main parts, the first a collection of arguments in support of the existence of witches and witchcraft, concluding that to doubt their existence was to be a heretic; the second describing witches and how they may be identified; the third concerned with their treatment. A lot of the information was about deviant behavior, much of it overtly sexual. This was at least partly due to the belief that insanity was caused by possession by the devil, and a devil possessed a witch by copulating with her. As the ultimate salvation of the immortal soul was more important than the comforts of the possessed body, physical punishments such as drowning and burning were used to make the body an intolerable refuge for the devil. The wide dissemination of this book was greatly facilitated by the development of printing, and it ran into 10 editions. Another obvious and kinder treatment for the supposed possession was exorcism which often succeeded.

Some enlightened care was offered in monasteries. The Sisters of the Society of Hospitalers created hospitals offering good food, rest and calm, and a Franciscan monk, Bartholemew Anglicus in his book De Proprietatibis Rerum, prescribed music and occupation for depressed patients and sleep and gentle binding for frenzied patients. There was no hint of demonology.

1326

A section of a hospital was set aside for the “insane” in Europe.

1349

The Statute of Labourers, the first national level English law to control the movement of laborers, fixes a maximum wage and treats poor people as criminals, thus influencing colonial poor laws.

1371

Robert Denton, chaplain, obtained a license from King Edward III (paying 40 shillings for the license) to found a hospital in a house of his own in the parish of Berking Church, London, "for the men and women in the sad city who suddenly fall into a frenzy and lose their memory, who were to reside there until cured; with an oratory to the said hospital to the invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary", establishing the first “peer respite” household, predating the opening of Bedlam by close to 200 years.

1373

Sometime before her death in around 1438, Margery Kempe wrote The Autobiography of Margery Kempe, the first written record of a person having a vision and recovering from that vision. It is also believed to be first autobiography written in English.

1400’s

The Christian church vacillates between support of wife beating and encouraging husbands to be more compassionate and using moderation in their punishments of their wives. A medieval Christian scholar, Friar Cherbubino of Siena, writes Rules of Marriage, in support of wife beating. 

In general, medieval Europeans allow the mentally ill their freedom -- granted they are not dangerous. However, less enlightened treatment of people with mental disorders is also prevalent, with those people often labeled as witches and assumed to be inhabited by demons. Some religious orders, which care for the sick in general, also care for the mentally ill. Muslim Arabs, who establish asylums as early as the 8th century, carry on the quasi-scientific approach of the Greeks.

Already towards the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the new period an interest developed in attempting to treat schizophrenics by some form of shock. In Switzerland, schizophrenics were put into nets and lowered into lakes until they were almost drowned and then pulled out again. Sometimes short-lasting

remissions were witnessed. In other countries patients were hit with chains and whips. Some of these patients died. But again there were some very impressive recoveries and remissions. This kind of primitive shock treatment was considered to be of a magic [sic] nature. It was believed that the devil had possession of the human body and mind, and the only logical consequence of such ideas seemed to be the attempt to make the devil’s stay in these strange places of residence as miserable as possible.

1403

St. Mary of Bethlehem, or Bedlam, just outside London, first accepted psychiatric patients

1405

Christine de Pizan writes in The Book of the City of Ladies about women's basic humanity and better education and treatment in marriage for women. She accuses men of cruelty and beating their wives. 

1407

Asylum at Valencia founded by a monk named Joffre, out of pity for the lunatics whom he founded hooted by the crowds. The movement thus begun spread throughout Spain, and asylums were founded at Saragossa in 1425, at Seville in 1435, at Valladolid in 1436, and at Toledo before the end of the century. The first institution to open its doors in Europe is thought to be the Valencia mental hospital in Spain. Although not much is known about the treatment patients received at this particular site, asylums were notorious for the deplorable living conditions and cruel abuse endured by those admitted. For many years, asylums were not facilities aimed at helping the mentally ill achieve any sense of normalcy or otherwise overcome their illnesses. Instead, asylums were merely reformed penal institutions where the mentally ill were abandoned by relatives or sentenced by the law and faced a life of inhumane treatment, all for the sake of lifting the burden off of ashamed families and preventing any possible disturbance in the community.

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1409: Father Jofré

By Henk van Setten

A Street Incident

February 24, 1409 According to a traditional story, on this day an incident happened in the streets of the Spanish town of Valencia that would inspire the founding of an asylum for the insane. Some people claim that the Valencia asylum was the first one in Europe that functioned as a proper mental hospital rather than just a place to lock up the insane.

To follow the often-told story, on February 24, 1409 in a Valencia street a priest of the Order of Mercy (Father Joan-Gilabert Jofré, 1350-1417) ran into a group of youngsters who were harassing and assaulting a man who was mentally ill. They did so because they thought that the insane man was possessed by the devil.

Romantic 1887 depiction of Father Jofré’s intervention

Father Jofré intervened and took the wounded man to his convent to give him some protection and care. When the Father delivered a sermon in the Cathedral two days later, he used this opportunity to preach against “the irrational and cruel persecution” of mentally ill people who were “innocent, impotent and irresponsible.”

A Sermon

According to a romanticized version of this story (written down in 1848, four centuries later) the priest had said in his sermon:

“There are many important pious and charitable initiatives in this town, but a necessary one is lacking: a hospital or house where the innocent and frenzied would be brought together.

“Many poor, innocent and frenzied people wander through this city now, and they suffer great hardship, hunger and cold and harm, because due to their innocence and rage they do not know how to earn a living or to ask for the maintenance they need. Therefore, they sleep in the streets and die from hunger and cold.

“And many evil persons, who do not have God in their conscience, hurt them and point to where they are sleeping, and they also hurt and kill and abuse some innocent women.

“It also occurs that the frenzied poor themselves hurt other persons who are out wandering through the city. These things are known in the entire city of Valencia.

“Therefore it would be a holy enterprise for Valencia to build a hostel or hospital where such insane or innocent persons could be housed, so that they would not be wandering through the city and could not hurt nor be hurt.”

Among the people present in the church was a rich merchant, Lorenzo Salom. Touched by the sermon, he took the initiative to collect funds for establishing such a hospital and to get the initiative approved by the city council. They acquired a site to build an asylum just outside one of the city gates.

The Asylum

Asylum gate

On June 1, 1410 the institution was opened. It was called the ‘Hospital of the Innocents, Insane and Lunatics, under the protection of Our Lady St. Mary of the Innocents.’

The “innocents” here referred to the babies who at the time of Jesus had been killed by King Herod. The intended implication was that just like all these small innocent children had been admitted to heaven, so would there be a place for the insane – on earth and, after their death, in heaven.

The asylum proved successful and grew rapidly. Within a few years, in 1414, a special fraternity was founded to run it and to collect funds for the institution. One of their dedicated tasks was to make sure that when insane people died, they got a decent Christian burial.

The original asylum remained a well-functioning institution, although in 1545 it burnt down and 30 patients died in the fire. It was rebuilt. In the meantime several Spanish towns had quickly followed the Valencia example and established similar asylums: Saragossa in 1425, Seville in 1435, Valladolid in 1436, Toledo in 1480.

Father Jofré’s tomb

After his death in 1417, people began to venerate Father Jofré almost like a saint, although he never was officially canonized.

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1410

Insane asylum built in Padua, Italy.

1427

Bernard of Siena suggests that his male parishioners "exercise a little restraint and treat their wives with as much mercy as they would their hens and pigs."

1436

Margery Kempe tells a priest of her story of madness.

1460

Bedlam Hospital in London, England completes its conversion into a mental institution.

1484

Malleus Maleficorum (The Witches’ Hammer) by two Dominican German monks, Johann Sprenger and Heinrich Kraemer backed by a Papal Bull became the witch-hunter’s bible.

1492

Juan Luis Vives, born in Valencia in 1492, died in Bruges at the age of 48, respected by Erasmus, Henry VIII and St Thomas More. He put forward a concept of treatment for mental distress which we might do well to bear in mind today: “Since there is nothing in the world more excellent than man, nor in man than his mind, particular attention should be given to the welfare of the mind; and it should be considered a highest service if we either restore the minds of others to sanity or keep them sane and rational ... One ought to feel great compassion for so great a disaster to the health of the human mind, and it is of utmost importance that the treatment be such that insanity be not nourished and increased, as may result from mocking, exciting or irritating madmen…” Since he was also deeply committed to education for women, presumably he included everyone in this view.

1494

The care of orphans was particularly commended to bishops and monasteries during the Middle Ages. Many orphanages practised some form of "binding-out" in which children, as soon as they were old enough, were given as apprentices to households to ensure their support and their learning an occupation. Common law maintaining the King's peace was administered by the Court of Common Pleas (England) dealing with civil cases between parties by ordering the fine of debts and seizure of the goods of outlaws. Following the Peasants' Revolt, British constables were authorised under a 1383 statute to collar vagabonds and force them to show their means of support; if they could not, the penalty was gaol. Under a 1494 statute, vagabonds could be sentenced to the stocks for three days and nights; in 1530, whipping was added. The assumption was that vagabonds were unlicenced beggars.

1500’s

Virtually every form of care of the insane, as well as the monastic establishments in which they were received, disappear with the Reformation. Institutions for the insane start cropping up in Britain and across Europe:

In the 16th century, while demonology and witch-hunts continued, there were again those who put forward more enlightened beliefs.

Civil commitment was largely unknown as a governmental policy until the 16th century, and its use was not reserved exclusively to persons who were mentally ill, but rather began as isolation of many persons considered "undesirable" by society. Mental illness was not differentiated from other conditions such as idleness, drunkenness, homelessness, etc., which society condemned or sought to correct by the power of the state. Thus, the 16th century is sometimes called the era of "The Great Confinement."

Lord Hale, an English Jurist, sets the tradition of non-recognition of marital rape. He states that when women married, they "gave themselves to their husbands" in contract, and could not withdraw that consent until they divorced. "The husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent a [sic] contract with wife hath given herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract." This is the basis of the "contractual consent" theory. Lord Hale burned women at the stake as witches and has been characterized as a misogynist.

Abbe de Brantome raises the question, "but however great the authority of the husband may be, what sense is there for him to be allowed to kill his wife?"  

Early settlers in America base their laws on old English common-law that explicitly permits wife-beating for correctional purposes. However, the trend in the young states is towards declaring wife-beating illegal. One step towards that end is to allow the husband to whip his wife only with a switch no bigger than his thumb. 

During the reign of Ivan the Terrible in Russia, the State Church sanctions the oppression of women by issuing a Household Ordinance that describes when and how a man might most effectively beat his wife. He is allowed to kill a wife or serf for disciplinary purposes. A half a century later, many Russian women fight back. When they kill their husbands for all the injustices they have been forced to endure, their punishment is to be buried alive with only their heads above the ground, and left to die. It is not against the law for a husband to kill his wife. 

In England, "the Golden Age of the Rod" is used against women and children who are taught that it is their sacred duty to obey the man of the house. Violence against wives is encouraged throughout this time. 

1500

Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576) was the first physician to recognize the ability of the deaf to reason.

1508

Gotz von Berlichingen, German mercenary knight, had a reputation as a Robin Hood, protecting the peasants from their oppressors. In 1508 he lost his right arm in the Battle of Landshut. Gotz had two prosthetic iron hands made for himself. These were mechanical masterpieces. Each joint could be moved independently by setting with the sound hand and relaxed by a release and springs. The hand could pronate and supinate and was suspended with leather straps.

1515

Pope Innocent XIII, commissioned two priests to prepare a book concerning how to get rid of the devils and demons from the Christian World, by getting acquainted with them. These priests then prepared a book describing the devil, the ways to know it, and how to kill it, as well as the method of torturing the insane, with full details of various torturing methods and techniques. The insane were prosecuted before the religious courts (Inquisition) and burned alive to get rid of the devil located in their souls. Thus, more than hundred thousand mentally ill people were killed during the reign of Francois the First (1515-1547) in France. In the 16th. Century, in Geneva of Switzerland, more than five hundred insane people were burned in the squares of the city before the public, by fastening them to poles, within three months. Even in the 16th, century, Johann Wayer was thinking that seven million of devils were existed in the universe and advising to torture the insane who carried the devils in their body.

1520

Paracelsus, a contemporary of Vives, totally rejected demonology in dealing with mental distress. He saw it as a natural disease, writing, “We must not forget to explain the origin of the diseases which deprive man of his reason, as we know from experience that they develop out of man's disposition. The present-day clergy of Europe attribute such diseases to ghostly beings and threefold spirits: we are not inclined to believe them.”

Paracelsus (1493-1541) and another contemporary, Agrippa (1486-1535), disliked dangerous dispensing methods and complained of physicians recommended for their esoteric religions, splendid clothes and amulets. 'Simple and native medicines are quite neglected. Costly foreign remedies are preferred which latter are mixed in such enormous numbers that the action of one is counteracted by that of another'. But such ideas were treated with great suspicion by the religious community. Paracelsus claimed he learned all he knew from wise women – women skilled in the use of herbal remedies who acted as community midwives and laid out the dead.

Agrippa's pupil Johann Weyer (b.1515) managed to bring a profound influence on the treatment of mental distress. Weyer emphasized that illnesses attributed to witches came from natural causes, and made the revolutionary demand that witches should themselves be sent to physicians for treatment. Weyer also considered the effects of drug-induced hallucinations, and provided clinical descriptions of auditory hallucinations and persecution mania. However his book, De Praestigiis Daemonum was proscribed by the Catholic church, and he himself was accused of being a sorcerer.

Susannah Hornebolt (later, Whorstly) was the first known female artist in England.

1531

English Parliament registered the poor so that they could beg. The first poor law enacted a weekly collection of taxes to be distributed by the parishes in England.

1532

In 1532, the Parliament of Paris decided to arrest beggars and force them to work in the sewers of the city while chained in pairs. Such forced labor was also imposed upon poor scholars, indigents, peasants driven from their farms, disbanded soldiers or deserters, unemployed workers, impoverished students and even the sick.

1536

The Act for the Punishment of Sturdy Vagabonds and Beggars, enacted in England, increases penalties for begging and makes the parish the local government unit for poor relief, requiring local officials to provide resources by making voluntary contributions in churches.

Wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, beheaded for 'adultery'.

1542

Wife of Henry VIII, Catherine Howard, beheaded for 'improper conduct'.

1546

Poet Anne Askew (1521-1546) tortured in the Tower of London and burnt at the stake as a heretic.

1547

Insane asylum refounded as St. Mary of Bethlehem in London, England. Became known as Bedlam. Devoted entirely to psychiatric patients. The most infamous asylum was located in London, England—Saint Mary of Bethlehem. This monastery-turned-asylum began admitting the mentally ill in 1547 after Henry VIII announced its transformation. The institution soon earned the nickname “Bedlam” as its horrific conditions and practices were revealed. Violent patients were put on display like sideshow freaks for the public to peek at for the price of one penny; gentler patients were put out on the streets to beg for charity

1558

John Knox published The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.

William Bullein stated that rejection in love, coveting and greed are causes of madness, and he clearly rejects madness as having a physical cause. We all understand that "love sick" or "spring fever" are not bodily diseases, but a spiritual choices of emotions we feel. Bullein says that "talking" is the only hope a cure for insanity, not drugs: "The syckenes of the body must have medicine, the passions of the mind, must have good counsel. What pleasure hath a condemned man in music, or a dead man in phisicke? Nothing at all God knoweth. 'how many men have been caste away by thought, and most for loss of estimation, and some of other affections of the mind, as inordinate love, or coveting things that they can not gain, or obtaining those things that they can not keep, or ire of men's prosperity or good happy." (William Bullein, A new book entitled the government of health, 1558 AD)

1561

The national Church of Scotland set out a programme for spiritual reform, setting the principle of a school teacher for every parish church and free education. This was provided for by an Act of the Parliament of Scotland, passed in 1633, which introduced a tax to pay for this programme.

1566

San Hipolito was built in Mexico 1566 and claims the title of the first asylum in the Americas.

Mother Waterhouse became the first Englishwoman hanged for the 'crime' of witchcraft.

1570

Felix Platter, Switzerland, among the first to distinguish between various types of mental disorders.

1572

In England, Elizabethan Poor laws started a tax to provide care for the poor which would put migrants to work as relief workers for the other poor

1575

In England, by an act of Parliament of 1575, the government punished vagrants and confined the poor to institutes known as "houses of correction."

Lasso, a Spanish lawyer, concluded that those who learn to speak are no longer dumb and should have rights to progeniture.

1576

The British gave the poor materials to use to work from their homes and paid them by piece for what they got finished.

Bessie Dunlop of Lyne, Ayrshire, became the first Scottish woman to be burned as a witch.

1579

Publication of The Praise and Dispraise of Women (Anon, or poss C. Pyrrye.).

1582

St Osyth witch trials. Ursula Kempe and Elizabeth Bennet put to death.

1584

Thomas Cogan viewed man as having both a body and a soul. He stated that the mind was not connected with the body, but the soul. However, he took the view that the mind can cause the body to get sick if a student studies endlessly in the night. This is exactly what the Bible says: "But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body." Ecclesiastes 12:12. He outlines that physical exercise is for the body and study is exercise of the mind. He warns that that the mind will be harmed by laziness and lack of use. "As man doeth consist of two partes, that is of bodie, and soule, so exercise is of two sortes, that is to say of the bodie and of the minde. Hitherto I have spoken of exercise of the bodie, nowe I will entreat of exercise of the minde, which is Study. ... The activity of the mind is never still. Idlenesse therefore is not onely against nature, but also dulleth the minde, as Ovid woorthily writeth: In addition the mind grows dull when harmed by long inactivity, and its ability is much less than it was before." So Cogan clearly believes that over use or under use of the mind can lead to physical illness. While this is not true, the fact remains that Thomas rejected the idea that insanity was something the body does to the mind. (The haven of health, Thomas Cogan, 1584 AD, p 12)

1586

Timothy Bright, doctor and priest, viewed that the spirit could make the body sick and the body could make the mind delusional. He focuses on how the mind causes the body to become melancholy and forbids the taking medicines as a cure. Instead Bright recommends only counsel to be the cure. "The dayly experience of phrensies, madnesse, lunasies, and melancholy cured by .. . art in that kinde, hath caused some to judge more basely of the soule... I have layd open howe the bodie, and corporall things affect the soule, & how the body is affected of it againe : what the difference is betwixt natural melancholie, and that heavy hande of God upon the afflicted conscience, tormented with remorse of sinne, & feare of his judgement. ... The mad man, of what kinde soever he be of, as truly concludeth of that which fantasie ministreth of conceit, as the wisest : onely therein lieth the abuse and defect, that the organicall parts which are ordained embassadours, & notaries unto the mind in these cases, falsisie the report, and deliver corrupt recordes. This is to be helped, as it shall be declared more at large hereafter, by counsell only sincerely ministred, which is free from the corruptions of those officers, and delivereth truth unto the mind, wherby it putteth in practise contrary to these importunate and furious sollicitors. ... Here it first proceedeth from the mindes apprehension: there from the humour, which deluding the organicall actions, abuseth the minde, and draweth it into erronious judgement, through false testimony of the outward reporte. Here no medicine, no purgation, no cordiall, no tryacle or balme are able to assure the afflicted soule and trembling heart, now panting under the terrors of God : there in melancholy the vain opened, neesing powder or bearefoote ministred, cordialls of pearle, Saphires, and rubies, with such like, recomforte the heart throwne downe, & appaled with fantasticall feare. In this affliction, the perill is not of body, and corporall actions, or decay of servile, and temporall uses, but of the whole nature soule and body cut of from the life of God, and from the sweet influence of his favour, the fountaine of all happines and eternall felicity." (A treatise of melancholie, Timothy Bright, 1586 AD)

1589

Jane Anger published Jane Anger: Her Protection for Women.

1597

The Act for the Relief of the Poor of 1597 was a piece of poor law legislation in England and Wales. It provided the first complete code of poor relief and was later amended by the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601, which formed the basis of poor relief for the next two centuries. The Act established Overseers of the Poor. Poor Relief refers to any actions taken by either governmental or ecclesiastical bodies to relieve poverty experienced by a population. More specifically, the term poor relief is often used to discuss how European countries dealt with poverty from the time just around the end of the medieval era to modernity when systems changed from barter style economy to the early days of capitalism. Throughout this time frame, authorities have been confronted with such questions as, "Who exactly should benefit from legislation that is passed?" and "Who is ultimately responsible for the care of these individuals?". As a result of trying to answer these difficult questions, in addition to ever changing attitudes towards poverty, many methods have been instituted to remedy this social crisis. From the early part of the 16th century to the modern day, poverty legislation passed by the English Parliament has transformed from a systematic means of punishment to a system of governmental support and protection as a result of the creation of the Welfare State. The English Poor Laws were a system of poor relief which existed in England and Wales that developed out of late-medieval and Tudor-era laws being codified in 1587–98. The Poor Law system was in existence until the emergence of the modern welfare state after the Second World War. English Poor Law legislation can be traced back as far as 1536, when legislation was passed to deal with the impotent poor, although there is much earlier Tudor legislation dealing with the problems caused by vagrants and beggars. The history of the Poor Law in England and Wales is usually divided between two statutes, the Old Poor Law passed during the reign of Elizabeth I and the New Poor Law, passed in 1834, which significantly modified the existing system of poor relief. The later statute altered the Poor Law system from one which was administered haphazardly at a local parish level to a highly centralised system which encouraged the large-scale development of workhouses by Poor Law Unions. The Poor Law system fell into decline at the beginning of the 20th century owing to factors such as the introduction of the Liberal welfare reforms and the availability of other sources of assistance from friendly societies and trade unions, as well as piecemeal reforms which bypassed the Poor Law system. The Poor Law system was not formally abolished until the National Assistance Act 1948, with parts of the law remaining on the books until 1967.

1600’s

In the 17th century there was a widespread belief that if mad people behaved like animals, they should be treated like animals. People with mental health problems were often cared for privately.

Where an unmarried mother concealed the death of her baby, she was presumed guilty of infanticide unless she could prove that the baby was born dead (this requirement that the defendant prove her innocence was a reversal of the normal practice of requiring the prosecution to prove the defendant's guilt). Women were acquitted of this charge if they could demonstrate that they had prepared for the birth of the baby, for example by acquiring some kind of bedding. In 1678 children aged 10 were deemed able to engage in consensual sex.

Native American shamans, or medicine men, summoned supernatural powers to treat the mentally ill, incorporating rituals of atonement and purification.

1601

The Elizabethan Poor Law is enacted by the English Parliament, establishing three categories of people eligible for relief: (1) able-bodied poor people; (2) "impotent poor" people (that is, "unemployables"-aged, blind, and disabled people); and (3) dependent children. This law, on which colonial poor laws were based, became a fundamental concept in U.S. public welfare. The Poor Law Act was made to counter the first poor laws, parish workers start to whither away. The Poor Law was the social security system operating in England and Wales from the 16th century until the establishment of the Welfare State in the 20th century. The Impotent poor was a classification of poverty used to refer to those poor considered deserving of poor relief; a vagrant was a person who could work, but preferred not to. The law did not distinguish between the impotent poor and the criminal, so both received the same punishments. The law provided for "the putting out of children to be apprentices". Main points of the 1601 Act: The impotent poor (people who can't work) were to be cared for in almshouse or a poorhouse. The law offered relief to people who were unable to work: mainly those who were "lame, impotent, old, blind". The able-bodied poor were to be set to work in a House of Industry. Materials were to be provided for the poor to be set to work. The idle poor and vagrants were to be sent to a House of Correction or even prison. Pauper children would become apprentices.

1603

In 1603, William Shakespeare wrote a series of plays that depicted insanity. In many of Shakespeare's plays, insanity plays a central role. Shakespeare always provides a clear reason for the insanity in each play: Lady Macbeth from guilt of murder. King Lear goes mad because he is betrayed by his two daughters: "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks; rage, blow. You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks.". Hamlet goes insane after learning that his mother murdered his father. It is never given a biologic cause and the insane are not dragged off against their will to a mad house, because that was not the practice of the day, and insanity was not viewed as something medical doctors could treat. Shakespeare therefore, gives us a perfect window into history in 1600 AD and understands that the only hope of cure for the insane rests solely within themselves. Guilt from murder causes Lady Macbeth to go insane, hallucinate blood on her hands that she cannot clean and suffer insomnia: MACBETH: "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine [flesh-colored], making the green one red." (Macbeth: Act 2, Scene 2, 1603 AD) Later Macbeth calls for a doctor to cure his wife of her insanity: MACBETH: "How does your patient, doctor?" Doctor: "Not so sick, my lord, As she is troubled with thick coming fancies, That keep her from her rest." MACBETH: "Cure her of that. Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?" Doctor: "Therein the patient must minister to himself." MACBETH: "Throw physic [medical treatments] to the dogs; I'll none of it." (Macbeth: Act 5, Scene 3, 1603 AD) Notice that the doctor understood insanity was not a bodily illness, refused to treat her, stated only she can cure herself, and left her to live her life freely, though insane. This is exactly opposite to what would happen today when the psychiatrist would claim only he can treat her, lock her up in a mental hospital and treat her even it if was against her will. Notice MacBeth demanded some "potion", but the doctor knew non existed... exactly the same it true today.

1605

Francis Bacon believed that medical science was not helpful in understanding insanity. However Bacon did believe that the body could affect thinking and that the mind could affect the body: "Medicine is a Science, which hath been (as we have said) more professed, than labored, & yet more labored, than advanced; the labor having been, in my judgement, rather in circle, than in progression." He believed that insanity was something that occurred in the mind "affection" alone: "So in medicining of the Mind, after knowledge of the divers Characters of mens natures, it followeth in order to know the diseases and infirmities of the mind, which are no other then the perturbations & distempers of the affections ... Now Come we to those points which are within our own command and have force and operation upon the mind to affect the will & Appetite & to alter Manners: wherein they ought to have handled Custom, Exercise, Habit, Education, example, Imitation, Emulation, Company, Friends, praise, Reproof, exhortation, fame, laws, Books, studies : these as they have determinate use, in moralities, from these the mind suffereth, and of these are such receipts & Regiments compounded & described, as may seem to recover or preserve the health and Good estate of the mind, as far as pertaineth to humane Medycine." ... "So this league of mind and body, hath these two parts, How the one discloseth the other, and how the one worketh upon the other". (Advancement of Learning, Francis Bacon, 1605 AD)

1607

The British started migrating to North America some started calling the states home, but Britain was still their country. No matter what at this point most of the new American's whether wealthy or poor had to work to survive, they all had to pitch in and do the growing of food and building of homes and the education of their children.

In Ireland, from 1367 to 1607, suppression of the Brehon Laws which enumerated the rights and responsibilities of fostered children, their birth-parents and foster-parents. The Brehon Law concept of family was eroded and the Gaelic tradition of fosterage lost. It was ultimately replaced by the State controlled Poor Law system.

1606

In 1606, by decree of the French Parliament, it was ordered that the beggars could be whipped in the public squares, branded on the shoulders, shorn and then driven from the city. Archers were posted at the city gates to prevent re-entry.

Elizabeth Grymeston published Miscellanea.

1608

William Perkins believed that the Devil caused madness in people who were in a physically weakened melancholy state. The resulting actions that manifested madness were delusion, self deception, "conceits, and imaginary fancies". Insanity was caused partly from the devil's temptations and partly from the choices of the persons themselves. This was not demon possession, but demonic temptation that weak people yielded to. He stressed that madness was not caused by physical diseases, but spiritual choices. "This man hath a crazie braine, and is troubled with melancholy ... Witches of our times (say they) are aged persons, of weake braines, and troubled with abundance of melancholie, and the devill taketh advauntage of the humor, and so deludes them, perswading that they have made a league with him, when they have not, and consequently mooving them to imagine, that they doe, and may doe strange things, which indeed are done by himselfe, and not by them." (A discourse of the damned art of witchcraft, William Perkins, 1608 AD)

1609

John Downame describes how anger, being a "disease of the mind", has both a physiological effect on the body (red face, high blood pressure, hair standing on end) but a spiritual effect on the mind (loss of reason, wits). There are many case stories of people driven to raving madness because of unchecked anger. Ephesians 4:26 says, "Be angry, but to not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger." He states that the behaviour and effects of shorts bursts of anger are identical to madness, except for the length of time. His solution to anger to be silent or speak softly, is taken straight from the Bible: "A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger." Proverbs 15:1 "Like charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, So is a contentious man to kindle strife." Proverbs 26:21. The final solution is to gently warn and rebuke the person about the dangers anger will bring on his soul. Downame clearly understood that anger had its origin in the mind, but that it affected both mind and body. This was true. The Bible says that sin will make you sick. (A treatise of Anger, John Downame, 1609 AD)

1611

Emilia Lanyer published Salve Deus Rex Iudaeorum.

1613

Lady Elizabeth Carew's play The Tragedie of Marian the faire Queen of Jewry was the first play by a woman to be published.

1616

G. Bonifacio published a treatise discussing sign language, "Of The Art of Signs."

Rachel Speght published her defence of women, as A Mouzell (i.e. muzzle) for Melastomus, The Cynicall Bayter of, and foule mouthed Barker against Evahs Sex. Or an Apologetical Answere to the Irreligious and Illiterate Pamphlet made by Joseph Swetnam.

1617

Ester Sowernam (pseud) published her defence of women, as Ester hath hang'd Haman, or An Answere to a lewd Pamphlet, entituled, The Arraignment of Women

Constantia Munda (pseud) published her defence of women, as The Worming of a mad Dogge.

1619

On 9-14 August, 20 African blacks were brought to Jamestown on a Dutch ship and bought as indentured servants – which will lead to the introduction of black slavery in North America. (The Spanish had already brought African slaves with them to Central and South America.) Jamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. Established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 24, 1607 and considered permanent after brief abandonment in 1610, it followed several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Jamestown served as the capital of the colony for 83 years, from 1616 until 1699. Within a year of Jamestown's founding, the Virginia Company brought Polish and Dutch colonists to help improve the settlement. In 1619, the first documented Africans were brought to Jamestown, though the modern conception of slavery in the future United States did not begin in Virginia until 1660.

1620

Patients of the notoriously harsh Bethlem Hospital banded together and sent a “Petition of the Poor Distracted People in the House of Bedlam (concerned with conditions for inmates)” to the House of Lords.

1621

Robert Burton, Britain, published Anatomy of Melancholia, a description of depression. Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) written from his own experience, noted the aggression that lies behind depression, and proposed a therapeutic program of exercise, music, drugs and diet, with a stress on the importance of discussing problems with a close friend, or, if one is not available, with a doctor.

1621-1622

The Privy Council set up a commission to administer the poor laws, to see that they were fairly enacted and people were supposedly being treated fairly.

1624

Virginia Colony passes the first legislation recognizing services and needs of disabled sol-diers and sailors based on "special work" contributions to society.

1630

In 1630, the King of England established a commission to assure vigorous enforcement of the "poor laws," which of course included persons with mental illness, but did not differentiate them from this population of persons in need of correction. Specifically, these laws applied to: all those who live in idleness and will not work for reasonable wages and who spend what they have in taverns.... For those with wives and children inquiry must be made whether they were married and the children baptized.

1631

Richard Brathwaite published English Gentlewoman, which emphasised widows' chastity.

1632

Publication of The Lawes Resolutions of Women's Rights, or the Lawes Provision for Woemen, A Methodicall Collection of such Statutes and Customes, with the Cases, Opinions, Arguments and Points of Learning in the Law as doe properly concern Women (by an anonymous man).

It was recorded that Bethlem Royal Hospital, London had "below stairs a parlor, a kitchen, two larders, a long entry throughout the house, and 21 rooms wherein the poor distracted people lie, and above the stairs eight rooms more for servants and the poor to lie in." Inmates who were deemed dangerous or disturbing were chained, but Bethlem was an otherwise open building for its inhabitants to roam around its confines and possibly throughout the general neighborhood in which the hospital was situated. In 1676, Bethlem expanded into newly built premises at Moorfields with a capacity for 100 inmates.

1633

Dorothy Leigh published The Mothers Blessing.

1637

Anne Hutchinson (Women’s and religious rights) is convicted of sedition and expelled from the Massachusetts colony for her religious ideas.

First patent granted to a woman: Amye Everard, for her method of making tinctures from flowers

William Austin published Haec Homo Wherein the Excellency of the Creation of Woman is described by way of an Essaie.

1640

Mary Tattle-well and Ioane Hit-him-home (pseuds) published The Women's Sharpe Revenge.

1641

La Maison de Chareton was the first mental facility in France, founded in 1641 in a suburb of Paris.

Publication of A True Copie of the Petition of the Gentlewoman and Tradesmen's Wives in and about the City of London. Delivered to the Honorable the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses of the House of Commons in Parliment the 4th of February 1641.

Thomas Heywood published Gynaikeion: or, Nine bookes of various history. Concerning women.

1642

Plymouth Colony enacts a poor law that directs that relief cases be discussed at town meetings.

1647

The first colonial Poor Law enacted by Rhode Island emphasizes public responsibility for relief of the poor, to maintain the impotent, and to employ the able, and shall appoint an overseer for the same purpose. Sec. 43 Eliz. 2.

The maids petition. To the Honourable members of both Houses. Or the humble petition of the well-affected, within and without the lines of communication, virgins, maids, and other young women not married.

1648

Leveller women demonstrated in London, calling for equal rights for women and presenting a petition.

1649

Ten thousand Leveller women signed the second women's petition to parliament. To the supream authority of England the Commons assembled in Parliament. The humble petition of diverse wel-affected weomen.

1650

Mary Stiff published The good womens cryes against the excise of all their commodities.

1652

The Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers, is founded in England. Quakers will make vital contributions to the abolitionist and suffrage movements in the United States. One Quaker woman, Mary Dyer, will be hanged in 1660 for preaching in Boston.

Pierre Le Moyne published The gallery of heroick women.

1656

King Louis XIV of France founded Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris for prostitutes and the mentally defective. In relative terms, a major improvement and dramatic change of social attitude came with the decree in 1656 of King Louis XIII establishing the Hôspital Général in Paris to help the poor, military invalids, and the sick. For the first time, this decree required the publicly chartered hospital to accept, lodge, and feed those who presented themselves. The director of the hospital had a lifetime appointment and city-wide jurisdiction, which was immune from review by courts or any other government body. The decree provided: “They have all power of authority, of direction, of administration, of commerce, of police, of jurisdiction, of correction and punishment over all the poor of Paris, both within and without the Hôspital Général....” The directors having for these purposes stakes, irons, prisons, and dungeons in said Hôspital Général and the places hereto appertaining so much as they deem necessary. No appeal would be accepted from the regulations they establish within the said Hôspital; and as for such regulations as intervene without, they would be executed according to their form and tenor, not withstanding opposition or whatsoever appeal made or to be made and without prejudice to these, and for which, notwithstanding all defense or suits for justice no distinction would be made. The purpose of the Hôspital Général Act of Paris was to prevent "mendicancy [begging] and idleness as source of all disorders." When England's King Henry IV began the siege of Paris it had one hundred thousand inhabitants, 30,000 beggars with 6,000 residents in the Hôspital Général. Despite the draconian nature of the Hôspital Général of Paris, it was nevertheless an improvement over banishment and posting archers at the city gates or, in the words of Anatole Francois Thibauet: "The Law in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the street, and to steal bread - the rich as well as the poor." For the first time, there was a governmental obligation to take care of all the needy who "presented" themselves, the unemployed, the sick, etc., at the expense of the nation, albeit there was also an obligation upon the recipients of such care to work for their keep.

George Horton published Now or never: or, a new Parliament of women assembled and met together neer the Popes-Head in Moor-Fields, on the Back-side of Allsuch; adjoyning upon Shoreditch.

George Fox published The woman learning in silence: or, The mysterie of the womans subiection to her husband.

1657

Scots' Charitable Society, the first American "friendly society," founded in Boston, represents the starts of voluntary societies to meet special welfare needs.

The first almshouse is established in Rensselaerswyck, New York, followed by one in Plymouth in 1658 and another in Boston in 1660.

T. Heywood published The Generall History of Women, containing lives of the most Holy and Profane, the most Famous and Infamous of all ages.

1659

Anna Maria von Schurman (a German) published in London The Learned Maid; or, Whether a Maid May Be a Scholar? A logick exercise written in latine by that incomparable virgin Anna Maria a Schurman of Vtrecht.

1661

Rev. John Ashbourne was stabbed by a patient who had been cared for in his house. Ashbourne was renowned in Suffolk as a 'clerical mad-doctor', and after his death Ashbourne's wife and son, who unlike Ashbourne had received the Cambridge license to practice medicine from Trinity College, continued to run the 'mad-business' until at least 1686. This system of private treatment began with Helkiah Crooke, physician to James I and Bethlem Hospital who took patients into his own home for treatment. From boarding a single lunatic it was a short step to providing accommodation for numbers of patients, and thus setting up a private madhouse.

1662

The Settlement Act (Law of Settlement and Removal) is passed by the English Parliament to prevent movement of indigent groups from parish to parish in search of relief. The law makes residence a requirement for assistance, thus influencing American colonies.

1667

Maria Askew published Women's Speaking.

1669

Pieter Andriannszoon Verduyn (verduuin), a Dutch Surgeon, introduces the first non-locking, below knee prosthesis. It bears a striking similarity to today's joint and corset prosthesis.

1670

Two doctors set up madhouses in London in the 1670s. John Archer, one of Charles II's 'Physicians in Ordinary', and Thomas Allen, a physician at Bethlem Hospital who also ran a private asylum. Allen seems to have been a humanitarian scientist who prevented his colleagues from transfusing sheep's blood into a man, and also ordered the first postmortem recorded at the Bethlem Hospital. One of his patients was James Carkesse, a clerk in Samuel Pepys's office at the Admiralty. Treatment varied according to ability to pay. Elsewhere in the country a Mistress Miller 'mad for two years' was treated by diet, glysters (large syringes used for purging), leeches, fresh cyder drinks, warm herb baths, and applying animal organs such as 'warm lungs of lambs' to her shaven head.

The first play written by a woman was performed on the stage. Aphra Behn's The Forc'd marriage ran for six days at the Duke's Theatre, Lincoln's Inn.

1672

Thomas Willis, a neuroanatomist and doctor and a founder of the Royal Society, speaking of treatment of the mentally ill said, “The primary object is naturally curative discipline, threats, fetters and blows are needed as much as medical treatment...Truly nothing is more necessary and more effective for the recovery of these people than forcing them to respect and fear intimidation. By this method, the mind, held back by restraint, is induced to give up its arrogance and wild ideas and it soon becomes meek and orderly. This is why maniacs often recover much sooner if they are treated with torture and torments in a hovel instead of with medicaments.” In 1672 he published the earliest English work on medical psychology, 'Two Discourses concerning The Soul of Brutes, Which is that of the Vital and Sensitive of Man'. His anatomical treatise De Anima Brutorum, described psychology in terms of brain function. Willis could be seen as an early pioneer of the mind-brain supervenience claim prominent in present day neuropsychiatry and philosophy of mind. Unfortunately, his enlightenment did not affect his treatment of patients, advocating in some cases to hit the patient over the head with sticks.

1673

Mrs. Bathsua Makin published An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen in Religion, Manners, Arts and Tongues.

1674

T. Golborne published A Friendly Apology on behalf of Women's Excellency, with Examples of more Women Worthies.

1676

George Fox published This is an encuragement to all the womens-meetings in the world.

The old “Bedlam” hospital is replaced by the larger Moorfields Bedlam. The new Bethlem was for show, and it was showy. It had public gardens and was modeled on a French palace. Lunatics were on display for a fee, with locals and foreigners coming to look, perhaps after a visit to the zoo animals at the Tower of London. In 1695, Thomas Tryon, an early anti-slavery abolitionist and pacifist, complained about allowing such visits on holy days: “It is a very undecent, inhuman thing to make... a show... by exposing them, and naked too perhaps of either sexes, to the idle curiosity of every vain boy, petulant wench, or drunken companion, going along from one apartment to the other, and crying out; this woman is in for love, that man for jealousy. He has over-studied himself, and the like.” It took several hundred years for English law to become concerned with the conditions in institutions and the procedure for confining people in them. In 1744, Parliament enacted An Act for Regulating Madhouses, which for the first time gave physicians the power to commit.

1677

Francois Poulain de La Barre published The woman as good as the man, or, The equallity of both sexes.

1678

In England, children aged 10 were deemed able to engage in consensual sex.

1683

Publication of Haec Et Hic, or the Feminine Gender more Worthy than the Masculine (Anon), with a Dedication in MS to Mrs Eldridge.

1684

"Discipline, threats, fetters, and blows are needed as much as medical treatment.... Truly nothing is more necessary and more effective for the recovery of these people than forcing them to respect and fear intimidation. By this method, the mind, held back by restraint, is induced to give up its arrogance and wild ideas and it soon becomes meek & orderly. This is why maniacs often recover much sooner if they are treated with tortures & torments in a hovel instead of with medicaments." -Thomas Willis

Alice Molland of Exeter became the last Englishwoman to be hanged as a witch.

1687

Isaac Newton‚s "Principia Mathematica" set the stage for hundreds of years of scientific and technological discoveries. This was the beginning of new forms of transportation and electrical advances

1692

Witchcraft and demonic possession were common explanations for mental illness. The Salem witchcraft trials sentenced nineteen people to hanging. The Salem Witch Trials set a tone for future harsh treatment of marginalized citizens.

The Province of Massachusetts Bay Acts establish indenture contracting or "binding out" for poor children so they will live "under some orderly family government."

1693

First ever women's magazine. The Ladies' Mercury was a single sheet, published by John Dunton, and consisting of a problem page.

1694

Mary Astell published A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of Their True and Greatest Interest, by a Lover of Her Sex. Dedicated to Princess Ann of Denmark. (Anon)

Publication of The Ladies' Dictionary. (Written by men, mainly about property law.)

1697

The Workhouse Test Act is passed by the English Parliament as a means of forcing unemployed people to work for relief; the act is copied by the colonies.

The poor had to wear certain colored badges to identify themselves. In England, a decree of 1697 created an appointed office of justice of the peace to establish houses of correction in various provinces and to collect taxes for their support. By the end of the 18th century in England there were 126 such facilities. Through the 17th century, persons with mental illness were not segregated in any way from persons who were poor, unemployment, physically ill or debilitated, merely idle or social deviant. The horrors of these hospitals were numerous and punitively based upon theories of illness and idleness. In this age, the view of mental illness was largely that of the "animalistic theory," i.e., those who were mentally ill were very similar to animals who did not feel pain, nor cold, nor severe punishment but rather thrived under such conditions. Indeed, many of the cells in which such persons were confined were built to resemble animal cages and the resident inmates, including women, were often crowded naked in these very tiny rooms.

Mary Astell published An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, in a Letter to a Lady, by a Lady (Anon).

1700’s

The 18th century saw the development of new asylums built to house people with mental health problems separately from houses of correction and poor houses. One of these was the New Bethlem, seen to be so magnificent it was thought 'everyone might become half mad in order to lodge there'. (Palatial as it looked, it was built on a land-fill site and deteriorated rapidly.) Whilst mental hospitals that followed New Bethlem were reasonably managed in London, the provincial institutions were often very poor. At Newcastle there were 'chains, iron bars, dungeon-like cells, many close, cold, dark holes, less comfortable than cow houses. There was no separation of the sexes, no classification, and for medical treatment the old exploded system of restraint and coercion.'

Private mad houses proliferated in Britain, becoming prosperous and competitive. Due, perhaps, to the absence of a centralised state response to the social problem of madness until the nineteenth-century, private madhouses proliferated in eighteenth-century England on a scale unseen elsewhere. References to such institutions are limited for the seventeenth-century but it is evident that by the start of the eighteenth-century the so-called 'trade in lunacy' was well established. In a curious precursor to group homes and outpatient commitment, the 1700s and 1800s saw in England not only the creation of small private madhouses but one or two person commitments/confinements for the rich, with the referring physicians often having a financial stake in the facility. Daniel Defoe, an ardent critic of private madhouses, estimated in 1724 that there were fifteen then operating in the London area. Defoe may have exaggerated but exact figures for private metropolitan madhouses are only available from 1774 when licensing legislation was introduced and sixteen institutions were recorded. At least two of these, Hoxton House and Wood's Close, Clerkenwell, had been in operation since the seventeenth-century. By 1807, the number had only increased to seventeen. It is conjectured that this limited growth in the number of London madhouses is likely to reflect the fact that vested interests, especially the College of Physicians, exercised considerable control in preventing new entrants to the market. Thus, rather than a proliferation of private madhouses in London, existing institutions tended to expand considerably in size. The establishments which increased most during the eighteenth-century, such as Hoxton House, did so by accepting pauper patients rather than private, middle-class, fee-paying patients. Significantly, pauper patients, unlike their private counterparts, were not subject to inspection under the 1774 legislation. http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/study/mhhtim.htm:
Madhouses for the Rich: When the very rich were lunatic or idiot, their relatives could afford to confine them as single lunatics - as the British Royal Family did in 1788, 1801, 1811 and 1916. One motive for this was secrecy. Madhouses for two or more inmates were more vulnerable to the risk of exposure, because more people were involved, and because the registration of inmates was required from 1774, but they might provide more humane custody at a lower price. Physicians and others who arranged single confinement, would also refer people to private madhouses, in which they would have some financial stake. Some of these catered especially for the rich. Whitmore became a madhouse in 1757. Thomas Warburton's association with Willis, building up its aristocratic clientele, probably dates from the 1790s, before the second episode of the King's madness. Rev Willis became Dr Willis in 1759 - which gives some indication of the start of his business. John Monro opened Brooke House in 1759. Ticehurst may have opened in 1763, Cleve Hill (later Brislington) in 1794. Sidney House (later Manor House) admitted its first patient on 1.8.1829. An article by Harriet Martineau in 1834 argued that rich lunatics would be better cared for in asylums than singly. The case for the "domestic" (single) treatment of some patients was argued by Dr Edward James Seymour (1831/1832). Those who managed asylums for the rich usually also provided single houses as an option.

1700

Philgynes published The freedom of the fair sex asserted: or, Woman the crown of the creation.

Mary Astell published Some Reflections Upon Marriage Occasioned by the Duke and Duchess of Mazarine's Case.

Publication of Baron and Feme: a Treatise of the Common Law Concerning Husbands and Wives.

1701

Lady Mary Lee Chudleigh published The Ladies Defence.

1703

John Broughton first used the word "psychology" in his book Psychologia: ...the nature of the rational soul.

The New Plymouth Colony Acts establish systems of indenture and apprenticeships for children.

1709

First women's magazine edited by a woman - The Female Tatler - was published by Mary de la Riviere Manley.

1712

Jane Wenham, the wise woman of Walkerene, became the last woman to be tried for 'witchcraft'.

1716

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu published Answer to a Love Letter.

1721

A German trial transcript documents lesbian violence. The women are on trial for lesbianism when domestic violence is revealed. The defendent, Catharina Linck, is sentenced to death. The codefendent, Catharina Muhlhahn, receives 3 years in jail and is then banished - not because she was the victim, but because she was "simple-minded.

1723

The Poor Act established work houses.

1724

After being plagued with guilt over the Salem Witch Trials, influential New England Puritan minister Cotton Mather (1663-1728), broke with superstition by advancing physical explanations for mental illnesses over demonic explanations

1727

Janet Horne or Dornoch became the last woman in Scotland to be burned as a witch.

1729

The Ursuline Sisters of New Orleans establish a private home to care for mothers and children who are survivors of Indian massacres and a smallpox epidemic.

1732

In England, a woman pregnant with a "bastard" was required to declare the fact and to name the father. In 1733, the putative father became responsible for maintaining his illegitimate child; failing to do so could result in gaol. The parish would then support the mother and child, until the father agreed to do so, whereupon he would reimburse the parish — although this rarely happened. In 1744, a bastard took the 'settlement' of its mother (under the Poor Law, a person's place of origin or later established residence, being the Parish responsible for the person if destitute) regardless of where the child was actually born. Previously, a bastard took settlement from its place of birth. The mother was to be publicly whipped.

Publication of A Treatise of Feme Couverts: Or, the Lady's Law, Containing all the Laws and Statutes Relating to Women.

1734

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu published (as 'Sophia') Woman not Inferior to Man.

1735

Publication of An Essay in Praise of Women, or a Looking Glass for Ladies (Anon).

Publication of The Hardships of the English Laws, In relation to Wives. With an Explanation of the Original Curse of Subjection Passed Upon the Woman. In an Humble Address to the Legislature. (by an anonymous woman).

1736

Sir Matthew Hale's Pleas of the Crown decreed that no husband can be guilty of rape for on marriage every woman gives up her right ever to refuse sex.

English Statues against witchcraft repealed.

1739

The London-Citizen Exceedingly Injured; or, a British Inquisition Display’d, in an Account of the Unparallel’d Case of a Citizen of London, Bookseller to the Late Queen, Who Was in a Most Unjust and Arbitrary Manner Sent on the 23rd of March Last, 1738, by One Robert Wightman, a Mere Stranger, to a Private Madhouse. London: T. Cooper by Cruden, Alexander.

The Foundling Hospital was established in London by the philanthropic sea captain Thomas Coram as a home for the "education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children." Children were seldom taken after they were twelve months old. On reception they were sent to wet nurses in the countryside, where they stayed until they were about four or five years old. At sixteen girls were generally apprenticed as servants for four years; at fourteen, boys became apprentices in varying occupations for seven years.

Mary Collier published The Woman's Labour.

1740

Mr. Cruden Greatly Injured: An Account of a Trial between Mr. Alexander Cruden, Bookseller to the Late Queen, Plaintif, and Dr. Monro, Matthew Wright, John Oswald, and John Davis, Defendants; in the Court of the Common-Pleas in Westminster Hall July 17, 1739, on an Action of Trespass, Assault and Imprisonment: the Said Mr. Cruden, Tho’ in His Right Senses, Having Been Unjustly Confined and Barbarously Used in the Said Matthew Wright’s Private Madhouse at Bethnal-Green for Nine Weeks and Six Days, till He Made His Wonderful Escape May 31, 1738. To Which is Added a Surprising Account of Several Other Persons, Who Have Been Mostly Unjustly Confined in Private Madhouses. London: A. Injured by Alexander Cruden

The first Almshouse (poor house) established in Boston

1743

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu published (as 'Sophia') Woman's Superior Excellence over Man.

1744

Parliament enacted An Act for Regulating Madhouses, which for the first time gave physicians the power to commit.

1745

One of the earliest records dealing with the issue of insanity among African-Americans was in 1745 when the South Carolina Colonial assembly took up the case of Kate, a slave woman, who had been accused of killing a child. After being placed in the local jail, it was determined that Kate was “out of her Senses” and she was not brought to trial. However, the problem of how to care for Kate was an issue since her owner was too poor to pay for her confinement and South Carolina had made no provision for the public maintenance of slaves. Ultimately, the colonial assembly passed an act that made each parish in the colony responsible for the public maintenance of lunatic slaves whose owners were unable to care for them (McCandless, 1997). Not surprisingly, there is no further record of what happened to Kate or what circumstances led to the murder of the child.

Hannah Snell enlisted in the English army, disguised as a man. She became a marine, and her true sex was not discovered until 1750.

1746

Benjamin Rush was born in Philadelphia. He was about 15 years old when he graduated from the College of New Jersey at Princeton and decided that his life career should be as a doctor. He is widely identified as the father of American psychiatry.

1750's

Bills of Enclosure forced many farmers off their lands which ended in high unemployment and riots, the relief taxes started growing out of control again

1750

The Acts and Laws of His Majesty’s English Colony of Connecticut in New England in America provided an Act for Relieving, and Ordering of Idiots, Impotent, Distracted, and Idle Persons. This act stated that those considered “idiots, impotent, distracted, and idle persons” should be cared for at home by their closest relative. If such a person had no relative then the town or the colony itself took direct responsibility.

The gyrator, as its name suggests was a contraption similar to a spoke on a wheel. The patient was strapped to the board head outward and the wheel was rotated at a high rate of speed, sending the blood racing to his head and supposedly relieving his congested brain.

Around the mid-1700s, the Dutch Dr. Boerhaave invented the “gyrating chair” that became a popular tool in Europe and the United States. This instrument was intended to shake up the blood and tissues of the body to restore equilibrium, but instead resulted in rendering the patient unconscious without any recorded successes

Amy Hutchinson of Ely became the first documented female poisoner when she laced her husband's ale with arsenic. She was convicted of 'petit treason' and burned to death.

1751

First mental hospital in the United States, Pennsylvania University Hospital where a basement was reserved for people identified as mentally ill. It began admitting mentally disturbed patients in 1752. Pennsylvania authorized the Benjamin Franklin-founded Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia to accommodate mental patients. An 1895 history reported: “In the earlier days of the Hospital, even down to quite recent times, the mode of commitment of the insane was so easy and free from formality that a few words hastily scribbled upon a chance piece of paper were sufficient to place a supposedly insane person in the Hospital and deprive him of personal liberty... [After application to the hospital managers or a physician, the person was admitted.] Once in his cells, or quarters for the insane, the patient had no appeal from the opinion of the attending physician."

Publication of Beauty's Triumph, or the Superiority of the Fair Sex invincibly Proved. (Anon).

1752

George Ballard (Magdalen College, Oxford) published Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain who have been celebrated for their Writings or Skill in the Learned Languages.

1754

The Adventures of Alexander the Corrector, Wherein Is Given an Account of His Being Unjustly Sent to Chelsea, and of His Bad Usage during the Time of his Chelsea Campaign . . . with an Account of the Chelsea-Academies, or the Private Places for the Confinement of Such As Are Supposed to Be Deprived of the Exercise of Their Reason by Alexander Cruden.

1755

Samuel Heinicke establishes first oral school for the deaf in the world in Germany.

Charles Michel Abbe del' Epee establishes first free school for the deaf in the world, Paris, France.

Mrs Eliza Haywood published The Female Spectator, the first magazine for women written by a woman. (Pub. as 'Anon' - only in the 7th edition was her name printed.)

Probably the first electroconvulsive treatment for mental illness was administered by the French physician J. B. LeRoy in 1755 on a patient with a psychogenic blindness.

1756

Having procured an apparatus on purpose, I ordered several persons to be electrified who were ill of various disorders; some of whom found an immediate, some a gradual, cure. From this time I appointed, first some hours in every week and afterward an hour in every day, wherein any that desired it might try the virtue of this surprising medicine.... To this day, while hundreds, perhaps thousands, have received unspeakable good, I have not known one man, woman, or child, who has received any hurt thereby; so when I hear any talk of the danger of being electrified (especially if they are medical men who talk so), I cannot but impute it to great want either of sense or honesty. JOHN WESLEY (English evangelist and founder of Methodism), journal, 9 November 1756. Comment: “The desideratum [: or, electricity made plain and useful. By a lover of mankind, and of common sense] was written to popularize what he considered the cheapest, safest, and most successful treatment for ‘nervous Cases of every Kind,’ namely electricity” (Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine, eds., “John Wesley,” Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry (1535-1860), 1963). The desideratum was published in 1760.

1757

Benjamin Franklin introduced a form of ECT, for which the rich were expected to make a donation of sixpence, but the poor 'to be electrified gratis'.

1758

William Battie (1703-1776) was a pioneer in the care of mental patients (from whose name the term 'batty' is derived), who helped raise the 'mad business' to a respectable medical specialty. He wrote Treatise on Madness in 1758, calling for treatments to be utilized on rich and poor mental patients alike in asylums, helping make psychiatry a respectable profession, and was founding medical officer of St Luke's Hospital in London. He was part of a new school of thought, that institutionalizing patients in asylums was in itself therapeutic: their purpose in confining individuals was not just to protect them and society, but was in itself curative. He recognized that mental nurses needed special training, and wrote that madness is 'as manageable as many other distempers' and that its victims 'ought by no means to be abandoned, much less shut up in loathsome prisons as criminals or nuisances to the society'. He advocated therapeutic asylums as opposed to prisons.

Lucy Hutchinson published her republican history of the Interregnum (she also wrote about her early life and the biography of Elizabeth Cary was written by one of her daughters)

1760

Thomas Braidwood opened first school for the deaf in England.

Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris (INJS) school for the deaf founded in Paris, France.

1763

Catherine Macaulay published History of England (in eight volumes, final one pub. 1783).

1767

Publication of An Unfortunate Mother's Advice to her Absent Daughters, in a letter to Miss Pennington. 4th edition. (Anon.)

1768

Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser (Mrs Lloyd) became the first two women elected to the Royal Academy.

1769

Benjamin Rush gets his degree from the University of Edinburgh and returned to the United States to become the first professor of chemistry in the American colonies and later University of Pennsylvania‚s first professor of medicine. He was also one of the patriot plotters of the Revolution, a member of Congress, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Rush was named Physician General of the Continental Army. He came to the conclusion that heavy drinking was destroying the fighting ability of more American soldiers then British weapons ever would. He studied the effects of intemperance and decided its greatest cause was the false view the general public had of alcohol as a health tonic and medicinal cure all.

The term neurosis was coined by Doctor William Cullen (Scottish) to refer to "disorders of sense and motion" caused by a "general affection of the nervous system."

1770's

New therapies at this time included water immersion: “the greatest remedy is to throw the patient unwarily into the sea, and to keep him under water as long as he can possibly bear without being stifled.” Another method was a special spinning stool which spun the patient round until he was dizzy. The spinning was supposed to rearrange the brain contents into the right positions. Another specialist created a novel form of drama therapy involving lion's dens and executions which was part of a concept of 'non-injurious torture'. Other doctors believed in horse-riding, and George Cheyne, who saw melancholia as a particularly English condition, advocated a milk, seed and vegetable diet. Even King George III was subjected to hot irons, enemas and emetics and was chained to his bed in a straitjacket.

1770

The Boston Massacre took place between the British and the statesmen, there was growing frustrations against Britain by the states.

A law was passed in England against women entrapping husbands by 'scents, paints, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, high-heeled shoes or bolstered hips'.

1772

Pageant: James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw's life narrative

The earliest recorded mutual self-help societies of individuals with alcohol abuse problems are created by Native Americans - White WL. Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery, Lighthouse Institute Publications, 1998.

1773

The first public mental hospital, Williamsburg Asylum, is established in Williamsburg, Virginia, the Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds was the first building in North America devoted solely to the treatment of the mentally ill. It was later named the Eastern Lunatic Asylum. Dr. Benjamin Rush, of the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, begins pioneering efforts to improve mental health treatment leading him to be known as the "Father of American Psychiatry". Dr. Rush also articulates the concept of alcoholism as a disease and is among the first individuals to prescribe abstinence from alcohol as the sole remedy. It is later renamed Eastern Hospital. Three years before the Declaration of Independence was written, the first mental health hospital in U.S., named Eastern State Hospital, opens in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1773. On October 12, 1773, the first patient was admitted to the Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds in Williamsburg, Virginia, the first North American facility of its kind. The governor, an Enlightenment man, had prevailed upon the assembly to create a place where "a poor unhappy set of people who are deprived of their senses and wander about the countryside, terrifying the rest of their fellow creatures" could, with the help of experts, reclaim their "lost reason." The Governor pressed for the facility because he believed science could be employed to cure "persons who are so unhappy as to be deprived of their reason." He was concerned about "a poor unhappy set of people who are deprived of their senses and wander about the countryside, terrifying the rest of their fellow creatures." He proposed a hospital for these unfortunates staffed by doctors who would "endeavour to restore to them their lost reason." There were 24 cells, each had a strong door with a barred window that looked on a central hall, a mattress, a chamber pot, and an iron ring in the wall to which the patient's wrist or leg fetters were attached. The cells were reserved for dangerous individuals or for patients who might be treated and discharged. In those days, treatment consisted of restraint, strong drugs, plunge baths and other "shock" water treatment, bleeding, and blistering salves. An electrostatic machine was installed. In 1790, the hospital was expanded and, in 1799, two dungeon like cells were dug "under the first floor of the hospital for reception of patients who may be in a state of raving phrenzy." Over the next 100 years, the rest of the country followed suit, taking "lunaticks" out of cages in jail basements after Boston schoolteacher Dorothea Dix happened into one such dungeon in 1841 and launched a fact-finding and activism rampage that led to the establishment of 110 public psych hospitals by 1880.

Tranquilizer Chair - Benjamin Rush, the “father of American psychiatry,” theorized that insanity was caused by “morbid” qualities in the blood, leading him to conclude that as much as “four-fifths of the blood in the body” should be drawn away; Rush bled one patient 47 times, removing four gallons of blood over time. He also strapped patients horizontally to a board and spun them around at great speeds. He confined others in his “Tranquilizer Chair' that completely immobilized every part of their body for long periods and blocked their sight with a bizarre wooden shroud, while they were doused in ice-cold water.

Dr. Benjamin Rush’s portrait still adorns the official seal of the American Psychiatric Association. As part of his program to improve the care given mental patients admitted to the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, Dr. Rush struck at the hearsay, superstition, and ignorance surrounding mental illness. He introduced occupational therapy, amusements, and exercise for patients and saw to it that they had decent, clean quarters. The person most responsible for the early spread of moral treatment in the United States was Benjamin Rush (1745–1813), an eminent physician at Pennsylvania Hospital. He limited his practice to mental illness and developed innovative, humane approaches to treatment. He required that the hospital hire intelligent and sensitive attendants to work closely with patients, reading and talking to them and taking them on regular walks. He also suggested that it would be therapeutic for doctors to give small gifts to their patients every so often. However, Rush's treatment methods included bloodletting (bleeding), purging, hot and cold baths, mercury, and strapping patients to spinning boards and “tranquilizer” chairs.

In England a Bill passed the Commons on The Regulation of Private Madhouses, but it was thrown out by the Lords.

The Boston tea party shows America’s non compliance with the Kings rules.

Poor Law in England stipulated that fathers must pay towards support of illegitimate children.

Mr Russell published Essay on the Character, Manners and Genius of Women in different ages. Enlarged from the French of M. Thomas.

1774

In England it became essential to produce a medical certificate confirming insanity before non-pauper lunatics could be confined, but the rights of paupers were totally disregarded. For the wealthy there was still the far more human alternative of being the individual private patient of a doctor or clergyman.

One More Proof of the Iniquitous Abuse of Private Madhouses by Samuel Bruckshaw.

The Case, Petition, and Address of Samuel Bruckshaw, who Suffered a Most Severe Imprisonment, for Very Near the Whole Year, Loaded with Irons, without Being Heard in his Defense, Nay Even without Being Accused, and at Last Denied an Appeal to a Jury. Humbly Offered to the Perusal and Consideration of the Public by Samuel Bruckshaw.

On July 28, 1774, Franz Otto Mesmer, a Viennese doctor stumbled on what may have been a clue to mental illness. Mesmer, an Austrian doctor who believed that "animal magnetism" would cure medical illness, seemed to be successful at treating hysteria in group sessions. Although his ideas and methods met with skepticism and ridicule within the medical profession and he was forced to retire, the concepts of suggestion and hypnotism survived. He was treating a twenty nine year old woman who suffered from severe episodes of convulsions (beginning with headache, and followed by delerium, vomiting, paroxysms of rage, then a partial paralysis). On this day he tried something new, and brought to her bed three magnets, placing one over each leg and a third heart-shaped one on her stomach. She convulsed…then was amazingly free of pain! Following a few more treatments her attacks disappeared completely…though they later returned and further treatment was required. For the most part Mesmer was judged a “quack” by his colleagues and accused of fraud. Mesmer's discovery that one man may possess enough power over another to relieve psychic illness led to the knowledge that, with help, man possesses the power within himself to heal himself. In effect, Mesmer mesmerized his patients and helped open the door to psychoanalysis. Franz Mesmer detailed his cure for some mental illness, originally called mesmerism and now known as hypnosis.

The First Continental Congress met and the first shots at the American Revolution rang out.

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Patrick and Sarah Henry: Mental illness in 18th century America

By Rose Gallenberger is a graduate student in the Public History program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, June 23, 2015

Curator Dr. Katherine Ott invited students in Dr. Samuel J. Redman's Museum/Historic Site Interpretation Seminar to explore the museum's disability history collections and write blog posts sharing their research. 

"Give me liberty, or give me death!" School children learn these words that Patrick Henry exclaimed on the eve of the American Revolution. However, that is nearly all most Americans know about this Founding Father from Virginia. This year's anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act is a good time to recover the history of how people in the past, including statesmen such as Patrick Henry, understood disability. Henry's wife, Sarah Shelton Henry, dealt with depression and violent outbursts. Despite recommendations, together they refused to place her in a hospital, instead providing care for her at home until her death.

Patrick Henry postage stamp, issued October 1958. Collections of the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum.

Patrick and Sarah knew each other from childhood and fell in love. They married in 1754 at a very young age, even by 18th century American standards. He was 18 and she 16, and together they had six children. After the sixth child, Sarah became increasingly unwell.

There is little information on the specific nature of Sarah's illness, nor is there a record of Sarah's participation in decisions about her treatment. But there is no doubt that she experienced mental instability. She was ill in 1774 with signs dating back to 1767. She was emotionally unsettled and became violent at times, to the point that she had to be restrained by a strait-dress (an early form of a strait-jacket) to prevent her from harming herself and others. Patrick knew he had to do something to help his wife and care for his family.

Mental illness was understood very differently in the 18th century compared to now. The populace generally viewed it as sinful and criminal, a sign of the devil. A new hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia, the Eastern State Hospital, opened in 1773 specifically for the mentally ill. It served as an alternative to prison or other punishments. The treatments were harsh but also common—patients were bled, blistered, subjected to pain, shock, and terror. They were dunked in water and restrained, resulting in injury or death. The fact that there was an institution separate from almshouses and hospitals for treating the mentally ill is noteworthy. Eastern State Hospital represented progress in care for the mentally ill.

The Hospital's rebuilt original 1773 building as it stands today in Williamsburg, Virginia Reconstruction. Photograph by Ryan Lintelman via Wikimedia Commons. February 28, 2006.

Patrick Henry, who had spent much time in Williamsburg, knew about the hospital and refused to send Sarah there. The Henrys were a family of some wealth, and this probably helped in the decision for Sarah to remain at their home, Scotchtown Plantation. They created a small apartment for her in a sunny section of the mansion's basement. Patrick assigned a slave to serve as a nurse to her, and he also aided directly in her care. He and the children visited her often, and their eldest daughter and her husband moved home to help care for her mother. Sarah died in 1775, possibly of suicide, but historians do not know the exact cause of her death.

Scotchtown, residence of Patrick and Sarah Shelton Henry. Courtesy of Preservation Virginia.

Patrick had the option to send Sarah away to an institution, and although ground-breaking at the time, hospitalization would have resulted in a much lower quality of life for his wife. Whether his decision was a result of love for his wife or concern for his reputation and political ambition, his approach to mental illness was remarkably innovative for the 18th century. The example of Sarah Shelton Henry and the Eastern State Hospital mark the beginning of a wave of reform in the approach to mental illness and disability.

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1775

The Battle of Bunker Hill, then Paul Revere's famous ride through the night which called to the statesmen that the British were coming and it was time to act.

Mrs Hester Chapone published Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, with a Dedication to Mrs Elizabeth Carter.

1776

The Declaration of Independence is adopted on July 4 by action of the Second Continental Congress. Stephen Hopkins, a man with cerebral palsy, is one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Hopkins is known for saying "my hands may tremble, my heart does not."

Benjamin Rush, MD (1746–1813), signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dean of the Medical School at the University of Pennsylvania and the “Father of American Psychiatry,” described Negroes as suffering from an affliction called Negritude, which was thought to be a mild form of leprosy. The only cure for the disorder was to become white. It is unclear as to how many cases of Negritude were successfully treated. The irony of Rush’s medical observations was that he was a leading mental health reformer and co-founder of the first anti-slavery society in America. Rush’s portrait still adorns the official seal of the American Psychiatric Association. However, Dr. Rush’s observation, “The Africans become insane, we are told, in some instances, soon after they enter upon the toils of perpetual slavery in the West Indies,” is not often cited in discussions of mental illness and African-Americans, however valuable it might be in understanding the traumatic impact of enslavement and oppression on Africans and their descendants.

Inhabitants of Bedlam were a tourist attraction.

Thomas Paine published his pamphlet called "Common Sense", The colonists wrote the Declaration of Independence that stated, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." They adopted a flag of their own.

During the second Continental Congress, Abigail Adams entreats her husband John to "remember the ladies" in the new code of laws he is writing.

1777

American Founding Fathers wrote the Articles of Confederation

John Howard completes his study of English prison life and inhumane treatment of prisoners; his study influences reform efforts in the United States.

Arnoldi, a German pastor, believed education of the deaf should begin as early as four years.

English Publication of The Law Respecting Women as they Regard their Natural Rights, or their Connections and Conduct.

1778

Austrian physician Franz Mesmer believed that human bodies contained a magnetic fluid that was affected by the planets and determined one’s health depending on its distribution. Mesmer concluded that all persons were capable of using their own magnetic forces to affect the magnetic fluid in others and considered himself to be powerful enough to cure illnesses with his “animal magnetism.” Mesmer gained a large following when he opened a clinic in Paris 1778 and started practicing his “mesmerism.” In order to affect cures, several patients at a time were seated around a tub containing various chemicals. Iron rods attached to the tub were applied to the afflicted parts of their body (as patients were generally hysterical and experiencing numbness or paralysis), after which Mesmer would emerge in light purple robe and circle around the room touching the patients either with his hand or with a wand. Although Mesmer’s techniques reportedly were effective, he was branded a fraud by his medical colleagues, and his “cures” were later believed to be the result of hypnotism, a psychoanalytic practice

Benjamin Rush published his "Directions for Preserving the Health of Soldiers", where he refuted that liquor relieved fatigue, sustained hard labor, and protected a man against heat, cold, fevers, and other common diseases. When Rush retired he devoted himself to research of the mind and body. Rush was among the first to advance the theory that "mental" problems often could be traced to diseases of the body. He became convinced that heavy drinking was a medical, moral, and social evil, and the public needed to be educated about it.

Fanny Burney published Evelina.

1779

In England, the Penitentiary Act, drafted by Prison reformer John Howard, introduced state prisons as an alternative to the death penalty or transportation. The prison population had risen after the US Declaration of Independence, because the American Colonies had been used as the destination for transported criminals. Howard's 1777 report had identified appalling conditions in most of the prisons he inspected. The Howard League for Penal Reform emerged as a result, publishing in 2006 the findings of an independent inquiry by Lord Carlile of Berriew QC into physical restraint, solitary confinement and forcible strip searching of children in prisons, secure training centres and local authority secure children's homes.

The Ladies of LLangollen - Sarah Ponsonby (1755-1831) and Lady Eleanor Butler - eloped and set up home together.

1780

Royalist Margaret Cavendish's pubished her science-fiction utopia The Blazing World.

English Justice Buller opined that a man may beat his wife.

1782

The Gilbert Act established poor houses and gave the poor the right to work and not just draw support.

William Alexander M.D. published The History of Women from the Earliest Antiquity to the Present Time 3rd edition.

1784

Constructed in 1784, the Lunatics’ Tower in Vienna became a showplace. The elaborately decorated round tower contained square rooms in which the staff lived. The patients were housed in the spaces between the walls of the rooms and the wall of the tower and, like at Bedlam, were put on display for public amusement. When staff did attempt to cure the patients, they followed the practices typical of the time period—purging and bloodletting, the most common. Other treatments included dousing the patient in either hot or ice-cold water to shock their minds back into a normal state. The belief that patients needed to choose rationality over insanity led to techniques aiming to intimidate: blistering, physical restraints, threats, and straitjackets were employed to achieve this end. Powerful drugs (chloryl hydrate, bromides, and barbiturates) were also administered, for example, to a hysterical patient in order to exhaust them.

After seeing a group of blind men being cruelly exhibited in a Paris sideshow, Valentin Valentin Haüy, known as the "father and apostle of the blind," establishes the Institution for Blind Children to help make life for the blind more "tolerable." Huay also discovered that sightless persons could read texts printed with raised letters.

Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles (INJA) school for the blind founded in Paris, France.

Benjamin Rush published his Inquiry into the "Effects of Spirituous Liquors on the Human Body and Mind", the first scientific attack against alcohol. He said alcohol had no nutritional value and instead of improving health it aggravated most diseases and caused many. It might be okay to consume an occasional beer or wine, but whiskey and rum caused a man to be stupid, loud, cruel, filthy, and obscene.

1785

Under the Enlightened concern of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo in Florence, Italian physician Vincenzo Chiarugi instituted humanitarian reforms. Between 1785 and 1788 he managed to outlaw chains as a means of restraint at the Santa Dorotea hospital, building on prior attempts made there since the 1750s. From 1788 at the newly renovated St. Bonifacio Hospital he did the same, and led the development of new rules establishing a more humane regime.

1787

The U.S. Constitution is completed in Convention on September 17. The Constitution was drawn up, the Federalist Essays were written in support of the constitution and against those that did not believe in it.

Mary Wollstonecraft published Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, with Reflections on Female Conduct.

In the month of November, 1787, a porter of the India warehouses was sent to me by a lady of great humanity for advice, being in a state of melancholy [for almost a year], induced by the death of one of his children.... He was quiet, would suffer his wife to lead him about the house, but he never spoke to her; he sighed frequently, and was inattentive to everything that passed.... I covered his head with a flannel, and rubbed the electric sparks all over the cranium; he seemed to feel it disagreeable, but said nothing. On the second visit, finding no inconvenience had ensued, I passed six small shocks through the brain in different directions. As soon as he got into an adjoining room, and saw his wife, he spoke to her, and in the evening was cheerful, expressing himself, as if he thought he should soon go to his work again. I repeated the shock in like manner on the third and fourth day, after which he went to work: I desired to see him every Sunday, which I did for three months after, and he remained perfectly well. JOHN BIRCH (English surgeon), “John Birch,” published in Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine, eds., Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry (1535-1860), 1963.

1788

The Constitution is ratified into law.

Sisterhood of Hand-Spinners formed in Leicester, possibly the first female trades union.

1789

During the Enlightenment attitudes towards the mentally ill began to change. It came to be viewed as a disorder that required compassionate treatment that would aid in the rehabilitation of the victim. When the ruling monarch of the United Kingdom George III, who suffered from a mental disorder, experienced a remission in 1789, mental illness came to be seen as something which could be treated and cured. The introduction of moral treatment was initiated independently by the French doctor Philippe Pinel and the English Quaker William Tuke.

1790

Work Houses were established so the poor could make clothing.

The colony of New Jersey grants the vote to "all free inhabitants."

The first state public orphanage is founded in Charleston, South Carolina.

Catherine Macaulay published Letters on Education.

1791

The Bill of Rights is ratified on December 15 by Virginia; 10 of the 12 proposed amendments became part of the U.S. Constitution. The Bill of Rights was amended to the U.S. Constitution. The first ten amendments were drawn up to limit governmental powers and protect the basic rights and liberties of individuals. The Bill of Rights includes the following basic ideas: 1. seperation of church and state 2. need for a regulated militia and right to bear arms 3. no quartering of soldiers 4. no unreasonable search and seizures 5. prohibits criminal charges without trial by jury of peers 6. right to a speedy public trial with an impartial jury 7. juries can be demanded for civil cases 8. no excessive bail or fines 9. these rights shall not infringe on rights of other people 10. powers given to the United States government and not prohibited to the states are reserved to the states or to the people

Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Women.

1792

William Tuke (1732-1822), a Quaker tea merchant, founded the Retreat at York. Tuke was the patriarch of a notable Quaker family from York, England. Tuke admired Pinel greatly and followed his ideas, providing an atmosphere of benevolence, comfort and sympathy for his patients. William Tuke's son Henry (1755-1814) and grandson Samuel (1784-1857) continued at York in the same humanitarian spirit.

In A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft seeks changes in the education for women and kinder treatment by husbands and lovers. 

1793

Philippe Pinel released the first mental patients from confinement in the first massive movement for more humane treatment of the mentally ill. French physician Phillipe Pinel was appointed to Bicêtre Hospital in south Paris, ordering chains removed from mental patients, and founding Moral Treatment. In 1809 he published the first description of dementia praecox (schizophrenia). According to psychiatric legend, French psychologist Phillip Pinel strikes the chains from mental patients held in the Bastille in France. Paris had two madhouses, the Bicetre and the Salpetriere. Philip Pinel (1745-1826), the leading French psychiatrist of his day, was the first to say that the "mentally deranged" were diseased rather than sinful or immoral. In 1793, he removed the chains and restraints from the inmates at the Bicetre Asylum, and later from those at Salpetriere. Along with the English reformer William Turk, he originated the method of "moral management," using gentle treatment and patience rather than physical abuse and chains on hospital patients. Conditions were horrific! Crying, screaming depressed men and women lived in damp dungeons without light or air in chains, guarded by convicts who treated them like wild beasts.

Phillipe Pinel writes Treatise on Insanity in which he develops a four-part medical classification for the major mental illnesses: melancholy, dementia, mania without delirium, and mania with delirium. Philip Pinel (1745-1826), the leading French psychiatrist of his day, was the first to say that the “mentally deranged” were diseased rather than sinful or immoral. In 1793, he removed the chains and restraints from the inmates at the Bicetre asylum, and later from those at Salpetriere. Along with the English reformer William Tuke, he originated the method of “moral management,” using gentle treatment and patience rather than physical abuse and chains on hospital patients. Pinel is credited with revolutionizing the Hospitals in France but in fact the humanitarian reforms were begun by Jean-Baptiste Pussin and his wife. Pussin had himself been a patient at the Bicetre, and it became the policy there to choose staff from among recovered or convalescing patients. Pinel described these people as best placed to understand the needs of the inmates as a result of what they themselves had experienced (Peer Support!). Pinel went on to Salpetriere where he carried out similar reforms, establishing a regime of study and medical care to replace the bloodletting, purging and ducking that had previously been used. Chiarugi in Italy as well as Tuke in England independently arrived at the same conclusions at the same time or earlier. The ex-patient Jean-Baptiste Pussin and his wife Margueritte, and the physician Philippe Pinel (1745–1826), are also recognized as the first instigators of more humane conditions in asylums. From the early 1780s, Pussin had been in charge of the mental hospital division of the La Bicêtre, an asylum in Paris for male patients. From the mid 1780s, Pinel was publishing articles on links between emotions, social conditions and insanity. In 1792 (formally recorded in 1793), Pinel became the chief physician at the Bicetre. Pussin showed Pinel how really knowing the patients meant they could be managed with sympathy and kindness as well as authority and control. In 1797, Pussin first freed patients of their chains and banned physical punishment, although straitjackets could be used instead. Patients were allowed to move freely about the hospital grounds, and eventually dark dungeons were replaced with sunny, well-ventilated rooms. Pussin and Pinel's approach was seen as remarkably successful and they later brought similar reforms to a mental hospital in Paris for female patients, La Salpetrière. Pinel's student and successor, Jean Esquirol (1772–1840), went on to help establish 10 new mental hospitals that operated on the same principles. There was an emphasis on the selection and supervision of attendants in order to establish a suitable setting to facilitate psychological work, and particularly on the employment of ex-patients as they were thought most likely to refrain from inhumane treatment while being able to stand up to pleading, menaces, or complaining. Pinel used the term “traitement moral” for the new approach. “Moral” in French had a mixed meaning of both psychological/emotional and moral. Before the Enlightenment, the mentally ill were treated in inhumane ways - such as being chained, beaten and starved. There seemed to be no effective treatment available. In 1793, Pinel challenged this idea when he removed the chains from patients at the Asylum de Bicêtre in Paris. He replaced purging, bleeding and blistering with simple humane psychological treatments such as separating patients and categorising them according to different disorders, along with observing and talking to patients. Before Pinel, 60% of the patients at Asylum de Bicêtre died of disease, suicide or other causes within their first 2 years of admission. Under Pinel’s supervision, this decreased to less than 20%. Pinel thought that those suffering from mental illness could be rehabilitated and released back into society. His theories on mental illness were the first to span both physiological and psychological explanations. He suggested that mental illness was the consequence of having too much social or psychological stress, or the result of either hereditary causes or damage to the body. He is credited as the first person to keep written case studies on patients, which concentrated on their long-term treatment. Pinel saw asylums as places for treatment and not places to hide the mentally ill. They were to be places where patients were seen as sick human beings deserving of dignity, compassion and medical treatment. Under Pinel, who lived from 1745 to 1826, the place of residence for the mentally ill was converted from a mad house into a hospital. His reforms were soon emulated all over Europe.

The US Congress passes fugitive slave laws

1795

In England, the Speenhamland System, an amendment to the Poor Law, named after a meeting at the Pelican Inn in Speenhamland, Berkshire, where the local magistrates or squirearchy devised the system as a means to alleviate hardship caused by a spike in grain prices. Families were paid extra to top up wages to a set level, which varied according to the number of children and the price of bread. For example if bread was 1s 2d a loaf, the wages of a family with two children was topped up to 8s 6d. If bread rose to 1s 8d the wages were topped up to 11s 0d. The system aggravated the underlying causes of poverty, allowing employers (often farmers) to pay below subsistence wages, because the parish made up the difference to keep their workers alive. Low incomes remained unchanged and the poor rate contributors subsidised the farmers, so that landowners sought other means of dealing with the poor e.g. the workhouse. The Poor Law Commissioners' Report of 1834 called the Speenhamland System a "universal system of pauperism."

Maria Edgeworth published Letters for Literary Ladies.

1796

“Address to Humanity, Containing a Letter to Dr. Thomas Monro; a Receipt to Make a Lunatic, and Seize his Estate and a Sketch of a True Smiling Hyena” by William Belcher.

Founded in 1796, the York Retreat in York, England was run by William Tuke and other Quakers who stressed the importance of treating all people with respect and compassion, even the mentally ill. In keeping faithful to this ideal, the York Retreat was a pleasant country house, modeled on a domestic lifestyle, that allowed patients to live, work, and rest in a warm and religious environment that emphasized mildness, reason, and humanity.

Publication of The Rights of Infants by the revolutionary philosopher, Thomas Spence.

1797

Massachusetts enacts the first law regarding insane people as a special group of dependents.

Thomas Gisborne M.A. published An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex.

Mary Hays published An Appeal to the Men of Great Britain on Behalf of the Women (Anon.)

1798

John Haslam (British) describes general paralysis of the insane in Observations of Insanity, a condition that is now known to be caused by syphilis.

The U.S. Public Health Service is established following severe epidemics in Eastern sea-board cities, which were caused by diseases brought into the country as a result of increased shipping and immigration.

Priscilla Wakefield published Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex, with Suggestions for its Improvement

1799

Edward Moore published Fables for the Female Sex.

Mary Ann Radcliffe published The Female Advocate, or an attempt to Recover the Rights of Women from Male Usurpation.

Anne Frances Randall (pseud. of Mary Darby Robinson) published Letter to the Women of England on the Injustice of Mental Subordination.

1800’s

At the beginning of the nineteenth century a public outcry about conditions in asylums led to the setting up of a select committee 'to consider of provision being made for the better regulation of madhouses in England'. The report describes appalling conditions of inadequate clothing, cramped and crowded accommodation filthy with excrement on straw, with patients chained to the walls, and in one case, a surgeon who was known to be drunk and insane. As David Stafford-Clark wrote in Psychiatry Today, “It may seem beyond belief that physicians could contemplate other human beings naked, cold, crusted with their own excrement, chained and starving in the dark on stone floors, without pity and without remorse. But they could, and they did, and it is only by the exertions and the example of exceptional men that our own standards have been raised above this appalling state.” Asylum staff spent much of their working life locked away with their patients. Husband and wife teams were a feature of asylum organization in the early 19th century, many sharing their home life with their patients. In Britain, one such couple was George and Catherine Jepson at the Retreat in York, and Dr. and Mrs. Ellis at the Hanwell Asylum. Patients who came under these humanitarian regimes were lucky; many more were kept in conditions where fear and cruelty prevailed.

In America, the recognition of excessive drinking as an addiction emerged between 1790 and 1830. Inebriates found themselves non-speciality places - jails, county farms, almshouses, water cure institutions, and insane asylums. Failure to control or rehabilitate inebriates lead to a call for new approaches and the rise of Inebriate Asylums. Using a medical approach, people began thinking about excessive drinking as an inherited or acquired disease and could be cured in special institutions set up for that purpose. Emphasized physical causes of the disorder and used physical methods of treatment such as: drug therapies; aversion therapy; hydrotherapy; and, electrical stimulation.

In the first part of the 19th century, a lot of doctors, such as Conolly, Kirkbride, Bucknill, and Daniel Hack Tuke were proud to work in the new asylums. There was also a new endeavor to study insanity. Esquirol in France followed the lead given by Pinel in attempting a classification of mental disorder. A line of successors in France and later in Germany culminated in Emil Kraepelin (1855-1927), a student of Wundt's, who produced a systematic classification of mental disease which forms the basis of modern systems. This is an attempt at grouping by causes as well as by symptoms, and in Kraepelin's work can be seen the merging of two psychological traditions: the experimental and the medical. At the same time growth in populations of asylums mirrored growth in unemployment and poverty following social upheaval caused by industrial revolution. An English Quaker named William Tuke (1732–1819) independently led the development of a radical new type of institution in northern England, following the death of a fellow Quaker in a local asylum in 1790. In 1796, with the help of fellow Quakers and others, he founded the York Retreat, where eventually about 30 patients lived as part of a small community in a quiet country house and engaged in a combination of rest, talk, and manual work. Rejecting medical theories and techniques, the efforts of the York Retreat centered around minimizing restraints and cultivating rationality and moral strength. The entire Tuke family became known as some of the founders of moral treatment. They created a family-style ethos and patients performed chores to give them a sense of contribution. There was a daily routine of both work and leisure time. If patients behaved well, they were rewarded; if they behaved poorly, there was some minimal use of restraints or instilling of fear. The patients were told that treatment depended on their conduct. In this sense, the patient's moral autonomy was recognized. William Tuke's grandson, Samuel Tuke, published an influential work in the early 19th century on the methods of the retreat; Pinel's Treatise On Insanity had by then been published, and Samuel Tuke translated his term as “moral treatment”.

The 18th century saw the beginning of modern psychology as a separate discipline. The word psychology was used in the first half of the century to mean the secular philosophical analysis and interpretation of mental phenomena. In the latter half of the 19th century its reference shifted from a predominantly philosophic to a predominantly scientific study of mental phenomena. Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) is commonly regarded as the founder of scientific psychology. Although other people began experimental psychology earlier, Wundt had the first laboratory for teaching and research in the subject. Alexander Bain (1818-1903) was not an experimenter but wrote two very influential books, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859). At the same time there were considerable influences from the growing understanding of the physiology of the nervous system.

One development of the late 18th century which had a significant influence on the development of psychological practice was Mesmerism. Franz Mesmer began by using magnets in the belief that they exercised some influence on the human body. He later abandoned this notion, but induced a number of phenomena which are now recognized as suggestion and hypnosis. Others in the 19th century took up mesmerism as an aid to medicine, and it was James Braid who attributed the phenomena to processes within the person, expectations arising from suggestion coupled with a narrowing of attention. An active school of hypnosis developed in Paris under the leadership of J.M. Charcot who established a notable neurological clinic at La Salpetriere. His work influenced Ribot who established a psychological laboratory under Beaunis and Binet.

Charcot teaching about “hysteria” with “Blanche” (Marie Wittman)

In the closing years of the 19th century several medical psychologists were developing psychogenic theories of the neuroses. Outstanding among them were Pierre Janet (1859-1949) and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), a pupil and protégé of Charcot. Janet's view was that the neurotic lacked sufficient mental energy to hold his psyche together in a state of integration; as a result parts of it functioned in disassociation from the rest. Freud's view by contrast was that there were diverse mental energies in conflict with one another. Early in the development of his theory he spoke of the sex instincts versus the moral instincts; later of libido versus ego, and finally of eros (life instincts) versus thanatos (death instincts). Freud also proposed three major components to the psyche (strangely translated from German into Latin rather than English by his translators): das Es (the It, or Id) symbolizing instinct or unconscious desire, das Ich (the I, or Ego) and das UberIch (the Upper-I, conscience or Superego). Freud's ideas are the basis for psychoanalytic theory. Although this began as a contribution to psychopathology, it quickly expanded into a more general theory. The interpretation of dreams, the explanation of slips of the tongue and of the pen, and an account of the psychic origins of art, religion and society began with Freud and have become part of everyday currency. Literature and literary criticism, art, morality and religion have all felt this influence.

1800

There are only eight institutions for abused and neglected children in the U.S.

1801

“The Strange Effects of Faith with Remarkable Prophecies” by Joanna Southcott

Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard establishes the principles and methods used today in the education of the mentally disabled through his controversial work with Victor, the "wild boy of Aveyron."

Philippe Pinel in France, takes over the Bicêtre insane asylum and forbids the use of chains and shackles. He removes patients from dungeons, provides them with sunny rooms, and also allows them to exercise on the grounds. Yet in other places, mistreatment persists. Simultaneously, William Tuke in England and Eli Todd in America were working to reform treatment in their respective countries.

English census reveals that women outnumber men by 400,000 (surplus of unmarried women).

1802

Dorothea Dix, born April 4th in Hampden, Maine, whose devotion to the mentally ill led to widespread reforms in the U.S. and abroad. She left home at 10, was teaching school by 14, and founded a Boston home for girls while still in her teens. She was one of the first Americans to argue that mentally ill people should not be treated as criminals and imprisoned, and she established the first hospitals dedicated to humane treatment of the insane. A Boston schoolteacher, Dorothea Dix (1802–1887), made humane care a public and a political concern in the US. In 1841 Dix visited a local prison to teach Sunday school and was shocked at the conditions for the inmates. She subsequently became very interested in prison conditions and later expanded her crusade to include the poor and mentally ill people all over the country. She spoke to many state legislatures about the horrible sights she had witnessed at the prisons and called for reform. Dix fought for new laws and greater government funding to improve the treatment of people with mental disorders from 1841 until 1881, and personally helped establish 32 state hospitals that were to offer moral treatment. Many asylums were built on the so-called Kirkbride Plan.

The Factory Acts were a series of Acts of the English Parliament passed to limit the number of hours worked by women and children, first in the textile industry, then later in all industries. The Factories Act 1802, sometimes also called the "Health and Morals of Apprentices Act,"

1803

February 14, 1803 John Thomas Perceval, founder of the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society born (Gault, H. 2010, p.49). He died 1876.

Mary Hays published Female Biography.

Methodist conference bans women from preaching.

1804

First woman jockey to compete in a horse race: Alicia Meynell (age 22), riding Colonel Thornton's 20 year-old-horse horse Vingarillo against one other competitor over four miles at York. She rode side-saddle, and lost.

Aldini was reported to have cured two cases of melancholia by passing galvanic current through the brain

1805

Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) became one of the earliest advocates of humane treatment for the mentally ill with the publication in 1805 of Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon Diseases of the Mind, the first American textbook of psychiatry. Rush wrote the first American book on psychiatry, Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind. The only psychiatric text in the U.S. for the next 70 years emphasized moral treatment: respect and re-education, not punishment.

1806

The Philanthropic Society was incorporated by Act of Parliament, sanctioning its work with juvenile delinquents and began by opening homes where children were trained in cottage industries working under the instruction of skilled tradesmen. Remaining central in development of measures dealing with young offenders the Society is now the charity, Catch 22, formerly Rainer.

Americans became aware of innovations in France and England as Philippe Pinel’s treatise on insanity appeared in 1806 with wide circulation in the United States.

1807

New Jersey women lose their vote, with the repeal sponsored by a politician who was nearly defeated by a female voting block ten years earlier.

1808

German physician Johann Christian Reil coined the term “psychiatry.” Reil used the term 'psychiaterie' in a short-lived journal he set up with J.C. Hoffbauer, Beytrage zur Beforderung einer Curmethode auf psychischem Wege (1808: 169). He argued there should not just be a branch of medicine (psychische Medizin) or of theology or penal practice, but a discipline in its own right with trained practitioners. He also sought to publicize the plight of the insane in the asylums, and to develop a 'psychical' method of treatment, consistent with the moral treatment movement of the times. He was critical of Frenchman Philippe Pinel, however. Reil was mainly theoretical, with little direct clinical experience, by contrast with Pinel. Reil is considered a writer within the German Romantic context and his 1803 work Rhapsodien uber die Anwendung der psychischen Kurmethode auf Geisteszeruttungen ('Rhapsodies about applying the methods of treatment to disorganized spirits') has been called the most important document of Romantic psychiatry. Reil didn't conceptualize madness as just a break from reason but as a reflection of wider social conditions, and believed that advances in civilization created more madness. He saw this as due not to physical lesions in the brain or to hereditary evil, but as a disturbance in the harmony of the mind's functions (forms of awareness or presence), rooted in the nervous system.

Franz Gall wrote about phrenology (the idea that a person’s skull shape and placement of bumps on the head can reveal personality traits.

1809

Louis Braille is born (January 4) at Coupvray, near Paris. At three years of age an accident deprived him of his sight, and in 1819 he was sent to the Paris Blind School (originated by Valentin Hauy).

Austrian Franz Joseph Gall suggested that bumps on the skull reflected personality traits such as generosity, secretiveness and destructiveness. Start of phrenology.

An anonymous woman in Leominster became the last one in England to be ducked as a common scold.

1810

“Madness: Exhibiting a Singular Case of Insanity, and a No Less Remarkable Difference in Medical Opinion: Developing the Nature of Assailment, and the Manner of Working Events; with a Description of the Torture Experienced by Bomb-Bursting, Lobster-Cracking, and Lengthening the Brain” by John Halsam (ed.)

Lucy Aikin published Epistles on Women, exemplifying their Character and Condition at Various Ages.

1811

“A Letter to Dr. R. D. Willis: to Which are Added, Copies of Three Other Letters: Published in the Hope of Rousing a Humane Nation to the Consideration of the Miseries Arising from Private Madhouses: with a Preliminary Address to Lord Erskine” by Anne Mary Crowe.

Female lace workers combined to raise wages at Loughborough, England.

1812

America is at war with Britian again

American physician Benjamin Rush became one of the earliest advocates of humane treatment for the mentally ill with the publication of Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon Diseases of the Mind, the first American textbook on psychiatry.

1813

“The Second Book of Wonders” by Joanna Southcott.

Dr. Benjamin Rush became the head of the Connecticut Society for the Reformation of Morals; they had many of America’s most important citizens involved, men of wealth, political power and social prestige. This helped the wealthy take advantage of the poor. Before his death Rush predicted the day that everyone would shun rum and whiskey entirely as a matter of self-control and long and happy lives. A Dr. Billy J. Clark read Rush’s paper which he agreed with, and then rushed to his minister’s house to proclaim they were becoming drunkards which started the temperance movement. Then another man, Reverend Lyman Beecher, who was taught by his parents that liquor was evil and drinking a sin, decided to get it out of the churches. Temperance Reform: The Inebriate Homes; Reform inebriates by enlisting their involvement in the growing American temperance movement; Mutual aid societies arose such as the Washingtonians, Native American temperance societies, reform clubs; Emphasized short voluntary stays and non-physical methods of treatment; Alcoholism recovery viewed as a process of moral reform

As transportation changed and new technology came about the few wealthy land-owners and those in positions of leadership took advantage of this to grow a new industrial empire that took advantage of the poor. They created a large military and financial advantage over one sixth of humanity. This idea came to be viewed as the natural order of things, or the "White man’s rule", which they did with a mix of naivete, compassion, and brutality. The Indians were the first people that the British oppressed and defeated, no matter the cost to civilization, calling them savages because the Indians were trying to defend themselves, their territory, their customs and their values. The Indians cherished nature more then the white man cherished wealth. Then came mass production. Some Indians started to give up the fight to keep their land.

Connecticut enacts the first labor legislation to require mill owners to have children in fac-tories taught reading, writing, and arithmetic.

1814

Elizabeth Hamilton published Letters addressed to the Daughter of a Nobleman, on the Formation of Religious and Moral Principle. 3rd edition.

1815

Thomas H. Gallaudet departed the America for Europe to seek methods to teach the deaf.

First school for the deaf in US founded in Goochland, Virgina.

1816

Laurent Clerc, a Deaf French man, returns to America with Thomas H. Gallaudet.

“Early Life of William Cowper” by Wiliam Cowper.

1817

The American School for the Deaf, the Gallaudet School, is founded in Hartford, Connecticut. This is the first permanent, free school for disabled children anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons, the first permanent school for the deaf in America, opened in Hartford on April 15.

1818

“Bethlehem Hospital” by Urbane Metcalf.

A cobbler, John Pounds, began to use his shop in Portsmouth as a base for educational activity for local poor children neglected by other institutions. Part of his concern was also to educate his disabled nephew. The Ragged School movement subsequently found powerful support in active philanthropists when public attention was aroused to the prevalence of juvenile delinquency by Thomas Guthrie in 1840. An estimated 300,000 children passed through the London Ragged Schools alone between the early 1840s and 1881.

New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia Societies for the Prevention of Pauperism are established to help victims of the depression following the War of 1812.

After visiting Newgate Prison, Elizabeth Fry became particularly concerned at the conditions in which women prisoners and their children were held. Fry later presented evidence to the House of Commons in 1818, which led to the interior of Newgate being rebuilt with individual cells.

1819

The U.S. House of Representatives passes a bill that grants the Connecticut Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb six sections of public land.

1821

Longview State Hospital

According to the History of Cincinnati, “The movement for the erection of a commercial hospital in Cincinnati was inaugurated by Dr. Daniel Drake, and the plan of an insane department was added at his sole suggestion.” On January 22, 1821, Ohio’s legislature appropriated $10,000 to assist in the construction of the Commercial Hospital and Lunatic Asylum for the State of Ohio at Cincinnati. Construction was completed on January 27, 1824. It was primarily a county institution, and the state regularly contributed to its maintenance. In 1860, it became Longview State Hospital.

The first law was passed barring abortions after “quickening.”

The element Lithium was first isolated from Lithium oxide and described by English chemist William Thomas Brande.

Harriet Martineau published Female Writers on Practical Divinity (under a male pseudonym).

1822

American School for the Deaf adds vocational training to curriculum.

The first state institution for deaf people is established in Kentucky.

Miss Sarah Berry appointed by the Dean of Wells as Registrar of the Consistorial Diaconal Court of Wells.

1823

“Fiction or the Memories of Francis Barnett” 2 vols. by Francis Barnett.

French physiologist Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens showed that the cerebellum played a part in coordinating movement, and concluded that the cerebrum was involved in perception and sensation.

John Stuart Mill jailed for distributing pamphlets on birth control.

1824

The first poor house was established in New York

The House of Refuge, the first state-funded institution for juvenile delinquents, is founded in New York.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is organized in the War Department. It is later (1849) moved to the Department of the Interior.

A decision by the Mississippi Supreme Court in Bradley v. State 2 Miss. (Walker) 156 (1824), allows a husband to administer only "moderate” chastisement in cases of emergency.

Hannah More published Essays on Various Subjects, Principally Designed for Young Ladies.

Mrs Taylor of Ongar published Maternal Solicitude for a Daughter's best Interests. 11th edition.

1825

“A Description of the Crimes and Horrors in the Interior of Warburton's Private Mad-House at Hoxton, Commonly Called Whibmore House” by John Mitford.

Anna Wheeler/William Thompson published Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, against the Pretentions of the Other half, Men, to retain them in political and thence in civil and domestic slavery.

1826

“Part Second of the Crimes and Horrors of the Interior of Warburton's Private Mad-Houses at Hoxton and Bethnal Green and of These Establishments in General with Reasons for Their Total Abolition” by John Mitford.

Jean Baptiste Bouillaud read a paper before the Royal Academy of Medicine in France that argued that speech was localized in the frontal lobes, just as Josef Gall had suggested earlier based on brain injury studies.

In England, 'S.E.' wrote an impassioned letter to the Liverpool Mercury on the Condition of Women in Society.

In England, Mrs B. published Women as Professionals.

1827

“Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment of Derangement. Founded on an Extensive Moral and Medical Practice in the Treatment of Lunatics. Together With the Particulars of the Sensations and Ideas of a Gentleman During Mental Alternation, Written by Himself During His Confinement.” by Paul Slade Knight.

The Massachusetts legislature suggests building asylums for “lunatics and persons furiously mad” then being held in jails.

Textbook on phrenology sold more than 100,000 copies.

1829

African-Americans were frequently housed in public (as opposed to private) facilities such as the poorhouse, jail or the insane asylum. These facilities almost always had substandard conditions. If conditions in the facility were poor for white patients, conditions were completely inhumane for African-American patients. For instance, one of the first patients admitted to the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum in1829 was a fourteen year-old slave named Jefferson. Jefferson’s name was not recorded in the admission book and he was reportedly housed in the yard. The young slave was admitted as a favor to his owner since the facility did not officially receive blacks.

Fanny Wright brought German mental science into the schools as a way to bring about compliance. The 10 ideas behind this were 1) The removal of active literacy 2) Destroying and changing real history 3) Substituting Social Studies for other studies 4) The dilution of people‚s understanding of economics; politics; and religion 5) The replacement of learning with physical education and counseling 6) Lack of drills 7) The forcing of both willing and unwilling students together 8) Longer school days with shop classes substituting other real learning experiences 9) Shifting from those with the most stake in a child‚s life to those with the least 10) Low levels of hostility against interpretations of meaning and lack of debate or discussion.

Louis Braille invents the raised point alphabet that has come to be known as Braille

Author Frances Wright travels the United States on a paid lecture tour, perhaps the first ever by a woman. She attacks organized religion for the secondary place it assigns women, and advocates the empowerment of women through divorce and birth control.

The Parens Patriae laws or state laws over parents were instituted from the old English King’s law. Parents were on trial with their neighbors, they were being watched, and if not found suitable then children were removed and transferred to the parent substitute.

In England, a husband's absolute power of chastisement is abolished. 

The New England Asylum for the Blind (later the Perkins Institution), the first such private institution, is founded in Boston. Dr. John Fisher charters the first school for the blind in the United States upon his return from France where he observed advancements in the education of people who were blind.

1830

“Narrative of the Treatment Experienced by John Tempest, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister at Law during Fourteen Months Solitary Confinement under a False Imputation of Lunacy” by John Tempest

The national underground railroad for slaves was started.

Congress wrote it into law that the Indians land no longer belonged to them and forced them onto settlements.

Alice Cogswell (August 31, 1805 – December 30, 1830) was the inspiration to Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet for the creation of the now American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. At the age of two, she became ill with "spotted fever" (cerebra-spinal meningitis). This illness took her hearing and later she lost her speech as well. At the time, deafness was viewed as equivalent to a mental illness, and it was believed that the deaf could not be taught. Gallaudet moved into the house next door to hers when she was nine years old. He soon noticed that she wasn't interacting with the other children, and when he asked why, he was informed that she was deaf. Intrigued, he decided to teach her to communicate through pictures and writing letters in the dirt. He and Alice's father, Dr. Mason Cogswell, decided that a formal school would be best for her, but no such school existed in the United States. Gallaudet went to Europe for 15 months, bringing Laurent Clerc back with him upon his return. During the time of his absence, Alice attended a hearing school and somewhat furthered her education, though the situation was not ideal. She was very lively, and enjoyed reading, sewing, and dancing. She was reportedly very good at mimicking others, and was fascinated by the concept of music. Alice Cogswell and six other deaf students entered the school that would become the American School for the Deaf in April 1817. She died at the age of twenty-five on December 30, 1830, exactly thirteen days after the death of her father. On the campus of the present American School for the Deaf at Hartford stands a statue of Gallaudet and Cogswell. Another statue of Gallaudet and Cogswell stands in front of Gallaudet University campus as Gallaudet sit on chair and Alice stood next to him to share their communication of "A" in fingerspelling. The Alice Cogswell statue (American School for the Deaf Founders Memorial), by Frances Laughlin Wadsworth, also represents her as a young girl. Alice Cogswell is known today as a remarkable figure in the history of deaf culture, representing an extraordinary breakthrough in deaf education. She proved to the world that not only are the deaf capable of being taught, they are also capable of the same level of intelligence that the hearing are. Alice stands as a perfect example of Dr. I. King Jordan's famous quote, "Deaf people can do anything hearing people can do, except hear."

Christmas 1830 In Dublin, John Thomas Perveval was "unfortunately deprived of the use of reason". He was admitted to a private asylum (in England) in January 1831

1831

Victor Cousin, French Philosopher, said public schooling would be good economic and social control for the new industrial proletariat, the class of industrial wage earners who, possessing neither capital nor production means, must earn their living by selling their labor.

James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) served as the 20th President of the United States, after completing nine consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.

He was a strong opponent of slavery. Garfield was one of the founders of the Republican Party and in 1859 was elected to the Ohio legislature. On the outbreak of the American Civil War Garfield joined the Uni

on Army and was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel. He helped recruit the 42nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry and commanded a brigade at Shiloh (April, 1862). After fighting at Chickamauga (September, 1863), Garfield was promoted to the rank of major general.

Garfield left the army after he was elected to the 38th Congress and over the next few years became a prominent member of the Radical Republicans. This group favoured the abolition of slavery and believed that freed slaves should have complete equality with white citizens.

Garfield opposed the policies of President Andrew Johnson and argued in Congress that Southern plantations should be taken from their owners and divided among the former slaves. He also attacked Johnson when he attempted to veto the extension of the Freeman's Bureau, the Civil Rights Bill and the Reconstruction Acts.

In November, 1867, the Judiciary Committee voted 5-4 that Andrew Johnson be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. The majority report contained a series of charges including pardoning traitors, profiting from the illegal disposal of railroads in Tennessee, defying Congress, denying the right to reconstruct the South and attempts to prevent the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Garfield supported Johnson's impeachment but was unhappy that his replacement would be Benjamin Wade. Garfield warned that Wade was "a man of violent passions, extreme opinions and narrow views who was surrounded by the worst and most violent elements in the Republican Party." Despite this objections, Garfield voted for impeachment. However, the 35 to 19 vote, was one short of the required two-thirds majority for conviction.

Garfield remained a member of Congress for seventeen years. During this time her served as chairman of the Banking Committee (1869-71) and in 1880 was asked to organize the campaign of John Sherman, who was attempting to become the Republican Party presidential candidate.

During the campaign Garfield was so impressive that he became one of the candidates and after 36 ballots defeated Ulysses S. Grant and James G. Blaine for the nomination. To preserve party unity, the conservative Chester Arthur, became the vice-presidential candidate.

The Democratic Party nominated Winfield S. Hancock, who like Garfield had been a senior officer during the American Civil War. It was a close election and Garfield won by 4,449,053 votes to 4,442,030.

In his inaugural speech Garfield returned to the issue that had first brought him into politics: "The elevation of the (black) race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787. It has liberated the master as well as the slave from a relation which wronged and enfeebled both."

Garfield attempted to select a Cabinet that would retain the unity of the Republican Party. However, Roscoe Conking, the leader of the Stalwart group, was unhappy with some of Garfield's choices and refused to serve in his administration.

On 2nd July, 1881, Garfield was waiting for a train in Washington with Robert Lincoln, his Secretary of War, when Charles J. Guiteau, shot him in the back. A supporter of Roscoe Conking, Guiteau, surrendered to the police with the words: "I am a Stalwart. Chester Arthur is now the president of the United States. After a four month struggle James Garfield died on 19th September, 1881 and Chester Arthur became president.

An American slave, Nat Turner, led the most successful slave rebellion in U.S. history. Being taught by his mother to fight slavery, he embraced religion and felt he was called upon by God to help others escape from slavery. Banding together with about 75 others, he killed the White man and family who owned‚ him and went on for two days and nights to kill about 60 White people. Eventually the state militia ended the revolt, and he was eventually hanged. This rebellion was critical and one of many acts by slaves to demand just treatment in the racially unjust civic society of the U.S. Though the rebellion led to harsher legislation against slaves (education, assembly, movement), it also put an end to the white Southern myth that slaves were content or too passive to revolt.

In England, Mr Hunt MP presented Mary Smith's petition for votes for women to the House of Commons.

1832

Using rooms in his father's house located in downtown Boston, Samuel Gridley Howe, the School's first director, begins teaching a handful of blind students. The Perkins School for the Blind in Boston admits its first two students, the sisters Sophia and Abbey Carter. This is the first time “disabled” students are able to attend school.

The first state mental hospital, Massachusetts Worcester Lunatic Asylum is built.

The New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics and Other Workingmen condemn child labor.

In England, 1500 women card-setters at Peep Green Yorkshire came out on strike for equal pay.

1833

“An Account of the Imprisonment and Sufferings of Robert Fuller, of Cambridge, Boston” by Robert Fuller.

Enrollment grows at the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, and Thomas Perkins, vice president and School trustee, offers his larger home to the School to meet the growing demand for educational services for children who are blind.

In England, Mrs John Sandford published Woman in her Social and Domestic Character, 3rd edition.

1834

Vermont Asylum for the Insane also known as Battleboro Retreat, founded. Anna Hunt Marsh (birth year unknown, died 1834) established the Vermont Asylum of the Insane in 1834. Marsh was born and raised in Hinsdale, New Hampshire. She was the widow of physician Perley Marsh. She is responsible for the creation of the Brattleboro Retreat, originally known as the Vermont Asylum for the Insane. She was the first woman credited with starting a hospital for the mentally ill. She was responsible for selecting the trustees before her death. A bad healing experience leading to the death of a member of her family has been suggested as an impetus to her idea of creating a humane care option. Her vision was a facility patterned on a Quaker concept called moral treatment. She didn't have much to do with Brattleboro until she died, but her influence is enormous. Upon her death, her will instructed heirs to build a mental hospital in Brattleboro. This was founded in 1834 with her $10,000 bequest. The Brattleboro Retreat grew in popularity and had success treating people with a combination of fresh air, exercise, good food, and other treatments for the “insane.” Large porches on the buildings allowed patients to sit and read, relax, and recover. As of 2006, the Brattleboro Retreat, now named Retreat Healthcare, is still in operation serving a wide variety of mental conditions. It is a 1000-acre (4 km²) campus of many large buildings, a working farm, and lots of land to explore.

In England, the New Poor Law assumed all women dependent on men. All illegitimate children to be the sole responsibility of the mother until they reached 16.

A Poor House tax was established that defined the poor on the basis of adults, children, old or non-able bodied adults. The workhouse system was set up in England and Wales under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, although many individual houses existed before this legislation. The Poor Law Reform Act, the first major poor law legislation in England since the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601, influences American social welfare with its emphasis on complete assumption by able-bodied people of responsibility for their own economic security. Inmates entered and left as they liked and would receive free food and accommodation. However, workhouse life was made as harsh and degrading as possible so that only the truly destitute would apply. Accounts of the terrible conditions in some workhouses include references to women who would not speak and children who refused to play.

In England, 'M.B.' writes an extraordinary (for its time) piece about women in the Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music and Romance.

Ernst Heinrich Weber published his perception theory of ‘Just Noticeable DIfference,’ now known as Weber’s Law.

1835

On March 5, 1835, the General Assembly passed an act to establish The Lunatic Asylum of Ohio and appointed three directors. A 30-acre tract of land north of Broad Street and about one mile east of where the Statehouse would be located was purchased. Construction of the asylum cost $61,000 and the first patient was admitted on November 30, 1838.

1836

The Transcendental movement in literature and philosophy was part of a general turn in U.S. literature to build national civic pride with a distinctly American literary identity, it was viewed as the beginning of an American Renaissance in literature. Transcendentalism was based on a belief in the unity of all creation, the natural goodness of people, and insight over logic for life’s truths. Transcendentalists were influential as leaders in reform movements for anarchy, socialism, and communism; suffrage for women; better conditions for workers; temperance; modifications of dress and diet; the rise of free religion; educational innovation; and other humanitarian causes.

The first restrictive child labor law is enacted in Massachusetts (at the time, two-fifths of all employees in New England factories were aged 7 to 16 years). Massachusetts creates the first state child labor law where children under 15 working in factories have to attend school for at least 3 months per year.

Marc Dax presented case studies in Montpellier that showed that speech disorders were consistently associated with lesions in the left hemisphere. Dax's son published the manuscript in 1865.

1837

The first state institution for blind people is established in Ohio.

Laura Bridgman enrolls in the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston and becomes the first documented deafblind person to be educated. Years later, Bridgman teaches Perkins student Anne Sullivan how to communicate with a person who is deafblind.

William IV died, succeeded by niece, Princess Victoria.

In England, Harriet Martineau published Society in America.

1838

Although Tuke, Pinel and others had tried to do away with physical restraint, it remained widespread in the 19th century. At the Lincoln Asylum in England, Robert Gardiner Hill, with the support of Edward Parker Charlesworth, pioneered a mode of treatment that suited "all types" of patients, so that mechanical restraints and coercion could be dispensed with—a situation he finally achieved in 1838. In 1839 Sergeant John Adams and Dr. John Conolly were impressed by the work of Hill, and introduced the method into their Hanwell Asylum, by then the largest in the country. Hill's system was adapted, since Conolly was unable to supervise each attendant as closely as Hill had done. By September 1839, mechanical restraint was no longer required for any patient.

“Scenes in a Mad House” Boston: Samuel N. Dickinson authored by John Barton Derby who spent time as an inmate of McLean Asylum for a brief period.

“A Narrative of the Treatment Experienced by a Gentleman, During a State of Mental Derangement; Designed to Explain the Causes and the Nature of Insanity, and to Expose the Injudicious Conduct Pursued Towards Many Unfortunate Sufferers Under That Calamity.” 2 vols. by John Percavel 1838 and 1840 (republished, with an introduction by Gregory Bateson, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961).

In 1838 Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Dickens' second novel, is the first in the English language to centre upon a child protagonist throughout. The book calls attention to various contemporary social evils, including the Poor Law, which required that poor people work in workhouses,^[22] child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals. A later character, Jo in Bleak House, is portrayed as a street child, relentlessly pursued by a police inspector.

Victoria Claflin, the sixth of ten children, was born in Homer, Ohio on September 23, 1838. When Victoria was a child the family was forced to leave Homer after her father, Reuben Claflin, was accused of an insurance fraud. She received very little education and spent most of her childhood with her family's travelling medicine show.

At the age of fifteen Victoria married Canning Woodhull. The following year she gave birth to Byron Woodhull. Over the next few years she earned a living by telling fortunes, selling patent medicines and performing a spiritualist act with her sister, Tennessee Claflin.

Canning Woodhull was an alcoholic and in 1864 she divorced him and two years later married Colonel James Blood. In 1868 Victoria Woodhull moved to New York City where she became friends with millionaire railroad magnate, Cornelius Vanderbilt. With Vanderbilt's backing, the enterprising sisters went into business as Wall Street's FIRST female stockbrokers. The sisters made a large amount of money and this enabled them to publish their own journal, Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly.

Woodhull's journal was used to promote women's suffrage and other radical causes such as the 8 hour work day, graduated income tax, and profit sharing. Woodhull also exposed fraudulent activities that were then rampant in the stock market. Woodhull became the leader of the International Working Men's Association (the First International) in New York City and in 1872 controversially became the FIRST person to publish The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

In May 1872 Victoria Woodhull was nominated as the presidential candidate of the Equal Rights Party. (The FIRST female Presidentoal nominee.) Although laws prohibited women from voting, there was nothing stopping women from running for office. Woodhull suggested that Frederick Douglass should become her running partner but he declined the offer.

During the campaign Woodhull called for the "reform of political and social abuses; the emancipation of labor, and the enfranchisement of women". Woodhull also argued in favour of improved civil rights and the abolition of capital punishment. These policies gained her the support of socialists, trade unionists and women suffragists. However, conservative leaders of the American Woman Suffrage Association, such as Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were shocked by some of her more extreme ideas and supported Horace Greeley in the election.

Friends of President Ulysses Grant decided to attack Victoria Woodhull's character and she was accused of having affairs with married men. It was also alleged that Victoria's previous husband was an alcoholic and her sister, Utica Claflin, took drugs. Woodhull became convinced that Henry Ward Beecher was behind these stories and decided to fight back. She now published a story in the Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly that Beecher was having an affair with a married woman.

Woodhull was arrested and charged under the Comstock Act for sending obscene literature through the mail and was in prison on election day. (Woodhull's name did not appear on the ballot because she was one year short of the Constitutionally mandated age of thirty-five.) Over the next seven months Woodhull was arrested eight times and had to endure several trials for obscenity and libel. She was eventually acquitted of all charges but the legal bills forced her into bankruptcy.

In 1878 Woodhull moved to England. She continued to campaign for women's rights and in 1895 she established the Humanitarian newspaper.

Victoria Woodhull died on 9th June, 1927.

Sarah Grimké publishes "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women." She and her sister Angelina will be active in both the suffrage and the abolitionist movements.

In England, Harriet Martineau published How to Observe; Morals and Manners.

Sarah Ellis published The Women of England, Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits.

In England, R. Mence Esq. published The Mutual Rights of Husband and Wife, with a Draft of a Bill to replace that of Mr Sergt. Talfourd.

1839

In England, under the Custody of Infants Act, custody of children under 7 years old was assigned to mothers. Child Custody Act enabled a mother to be given custody of children under seven.

In England, Sarah Lewis published Women's Mission.

Sixty-five students are enrolled at the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, and a still larger facility is needed. Thomas Perkins sells his house and donates the proceeds in order to move the School to a former hotel in South Boston. In honor of his generosity, the School is named for Perkins.

1840's

The Washingtonians, an organization with the central tenant that 'social camaraderie was sufficient to sustain sobriety,' enlist recovering alcoholics as missionaries to individuals with drinking disorders, thus pioneering the notion of service as a tool of self-help.

Dorothea Dix crusades for asylum reform.

Day nurseries began in Boston for low-income working wives and widows of merchant seamen. Day care "was founded as a social service to alleviate the child care problems of parents who had to work, and to prevent young children from suicidal acts from thinking of being unloved ."

1840

In 1840 there were only eight asylums for the insane in the U.S. Dorothea Dix investigates the care provided to insane people. She ultimately is responsible for establishing 41 state hospitals and the federal St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, DC. Dorothea Dix’s crusading led to establishment or enlargement of 32 mental hospitals, and transfer of the mentally ill from poorhouses and jails. Dorothea Dix begins her work on behalf of people with disabilities incarcerated in jails and poorhouses. A Boston schoolteacher, Dorothea Dix (1802-1887), made humane care a public and a political concern in the United States. In 1841, Dix visited a local prison to teach Sunday school and was shocked at the conditions for the inmates. She subsequently became very interested in prison conditions and later expanded her crusade to include the poor and mentally ill people all over the country. She spoke to many state legislatures about the horrible sights (people were being housed in county jails, private homes and the basements of public buildings) she had witnessed at the prisons and called for reform. From 1841 to 1881, Dix fought for new laws and greater government funding to improve the treatment of people with mental disorders and personally helped establish 32 state hospitals that were to offer moral treatment. In the mid-nineteenth century, Dorothea Lynde Dix was influential in changing conditions in institutions in New England. In 1881, at 40th anniversary of the Medico-Psychological Association at University College, Daniel Tuke, the president, paid respect to her “who has a claim to the gratitude of mankind for having consecrated the best years of her life to the fearless advocacy of the cause of the insane.”

In Mettray, north of the city of Tours, France a private reformatory, the Mettray Penal Colony, without walls, was opened by penal reformer Frédéric-Auguste Demetz in 1840 for the rehabilitation of young males aged between 6 and 21. At that time children and teenagers were routinely imprisoned with adults. Boys who were mostly deprived, disadvantaged or adandoned children, many of whom had committed only Summary offences or petty crime, were housed. Their heads were shaved, they wore uniforms, and up to age 12 spent most of the day studying arithmetic, writing and reading. Older boys had one hour of classes, with the rest of the day spent working. Reformatory Schools were modelled on Mettray, and the Borstal system, established in 1905, separated adolescents from adult prisoners. In the twentieth century Mettray became the focus for Michel Foucault because of its various systems and expressions of power and led Foucault to suggest that Mettray began the descent into modern penal theories and their inherent power structures.

The first attempt to measure the extent of mental illness and mental retardation in the United States occurred with the U.S. Census of 1840. The census included the category ‘insane and idiotic.’ The census used the single category of "idiocy/insanity." The 1840 census revealed dramatically increased rates of insanity among free blacks. African-American physician James McCune Smith challenged the findings of the 1840 census, which was frequently used by pro-slavery writers to confirm that enslavement was beneficial to slaves. Dr. Smith wrote, “Freedom has not made us ‘mad.’ It has strengthened our minds by throwing us upon our own resources.” Former slaves were also incarcerated because they played a role in providing cheap labor to staff psychiatric hospitals. The Georgia Lunatic Asylum, which would come to be known as the largest lunatic asylum in the world, was operated exclusively by slave labor from 1841–1847, when the first white attendants were hired. The slave attendants and help-patients were a critical adjunct to hospital staff.

Mercein vs. People said the moment a child is born it (owes allegiance to the government) of the country of its birth and is entitled to the protection of that government and the powers of parents pass from the parents to the government of the United States.

Orester Brownson said, “A system of education may as well be a religion established by law.”

Labor yards were beginning to be established for the poor.

Margaret Fuller was an acclaimed United States writer who pushed for civic awareness in women’s rights and social reform. Fuller wrote influential book reviews and reports on social issues such as the treatment of women prisoners and the insane. Fuller's "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" is the earliest and most American exploration of women's role in society. Overall, she emphasized that women should learn “self-dependence” because too often they are taught to depend on others (particularly men in marriage) for their well-being.

In England, Harriet Martineau published Women's Rights and Duties, considered with Relation to their Influence on Society and on her Condition.(Anon.)

In England, Judge upholds a man's right to lock up his wife and beat her 'in moderation'.

In England, Sydney Owenson Morgan published Woman and her Master, 2 volumes.

World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London. Accredited female delegates from the USA excluded from taking part on grounds of their sex. Abolitionists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton attend, but they are barred from participating in the meeting. This snub leads them to decide to hold a women's rights convention when they return to America.

1840-1859

James Esdaile, resident in Calcutta, uses hypnosis for anesthesia in operations performed on his patients.

1841

Dorothea Dix, a schoolteacher forced to retire due to her bouts of tuberculousis, begins her work on behalf of people with disabilities incarcerated in jails and poorhouses. She has all of them labeled as mentally ill rather than troubled or troublemakers. A Boston schoolteacher, Dorothea Dix (1802-1887), made humane care a public and a political concern in the United States. In 1841 Dix visited a local prison to teach Sunday school and was shocked at the conditions for the inmates. She subsequently became very interested in prison conditions and later expanded her crusade to include the poor and mentally ill people all over the country. She spoke to many state legislatures about the horrible sights (people were being housed in county jails, private homes and the basements of public buildings) she had witnessed at the prisons and called for reform. Dix fought for new laws and greater government funding to improve the treatment of people with mental disorders from 1841 until 1881, and personally helped establish 32 state hospitals that were to offer moral treatment. In the mid-nineteenth century Dorothea Lynde Dix was influential in changing conditions in institutions in New England, and in 1881 at 40th anniversary of the Medico-Psychological Association at University College, Daniel Tuke, the president, paid respect to her 'who has a claim to the gratitude of mankind for having consecrated the best years of her life to the fearless advocacy of the cause of the insane'. U.S. reformer Dorothea Dix observes that mentally ill people in Massachusetts, both men and women and all ages, are incarcerated with criminals and left unclothed and in darkness and without heat or bathrooms. Many are chained and beaten. Over the next 40 years, Dix will lobby to establish 32 state hospitals for the mentally ill. On a tour of Europe in 1854-56, she convinces Pope Pius IX to examine how cruelly the mentally ill are treated.

“The Madhouse System” by Richard Paternoster.

The American Annals of the Deaf begins publication at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut.

What became the Royal College of Psychiatrists, then known as the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane, was founded in England, receiving a royal charter in 1926.

In England, Governesses' Benevolent Institution founded.

In England, Mother Marian Rebecca Hughes of Oxford became the first woman to take the religious vows in the Church of England since the Reformation.

In England, Lady Rolle became the first woman governor of Bridewell and Bethlem Royal Hospitals.

In England, Mrs John Mylne published Woman and Her Social Position in the Westminster Gazette.

1842

“A Sketch of the Life of Elizabeth T. Stone, and of Her Persecution, with an Appendix of Her Treatment and Sufferings While in the Charleston McLean Asylum Where She was Confined Under the Pretence of Insanity.” Boston: Author; Elizabeth Stone.

“Scene in a Private Mad-House.” Asylum Journal. 1(1): 1 by Anonymous

Charles Dickens visits the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston and enthusiastically praises Howe's work with Laura Bridgman in his book, American Notes. Years later, Kate Adams Keller reads Dickens' book and realizes there is hope that her six-year-old daughter, Helen - deafblind since age 19 months, can be educated.

Massachusetts limits children to working 10 hours per day. Several states follow suit, but do not consistently enforce their laws.

Robert Hartley and associates organize the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, which later merges with the Charity Organization Society of New York to form the present Community Service Society.

In England, Ashley's Mines and Collieries Act. Women and children were excluded from the mines, as a result within two years 1,000 Staffordshire women had lost their jobs.

In England, Louis Aime-Martin published The Education of Mothers of Families; or, The Civilisation of the Human Race by Women.

In England, The Rev. Benjamin Parsons published The Mental and Moral Dignity of Woman.

1843

“Remarks by Elizabeth T. Stone, upon the Statements Made by H.B. Skinner, in the Pulpit of the Hamilton Chapel, on Sunday Afternoon, 18th of June 1843, in Reference to What She Had Stated Concerning His Being Chaplain in the Charlestown McLean Asylum: and Also a Further Relation on Her Suffering While Confined in That Place for 16 months and 20 days.” Boston: Author; Elizabeth Stone.

Dorothea Dix, a leader in the "Moral Treatment" Movement, convinces the Massachusetts legislature to expand Worcester Lunatic Asylum. She is also responsible for building several other state mental hospitals that later become public disgraces.

There were approximately 24 hospitals–totaling only 2,561 beds–available for treating mental illness in the United States.

James Braid, Scottish surgeon begins use of hypnotic trance as a form of anesthesia. Coined the term hypnosis, derived from the Greek hypnos, meaning sleep.

Horace Mann helped to clean the streets of beggars, vagrants, and gypsies through his efforts at journalism.

A call for popular education came from the authorities of industry, clergy professionals, and scientists in order to further this goal.

Oregon territorial government adopts laws for care of the mentally ill.

In England, Association for the Aid of Milliners and Dressmakers founded.

In England, Marion Reid published (as Mrs Hugo Reid) A Plea for Woman, being a Vindication of the Importance and Extent of her Natural Sphere of Action.

1844

Founding of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). At a meeting in 1844 in Philadelphia, 13 superintendents and organizers of insane asylums and hospitals formed the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (AMSAII). The group included Thomas Kirkbride, creator of the asylum model which was used throughout the United States. At the meeting they passed the first proposition of the new organization: "It is the unanimous sense of this convention that the attempt to abandon entirely the use of all means of personal restraint is not sanctioned by the true interests of the insane." The name of the organization was changed in 1892 to The American Medico-Psychological Association to allow assistant physicians working in mental hospitals to become members. In 1921, the name was changed to the present American Psychiatric Association. The APA emblem, dating to 1890, became more officially adopted from that year. It was a round medallion with a purported facial likeness of Benjamin Rush and 13 stars over his head to represent the 13 founders of the organization. The outer ring contains the words "American Psychiatric Association 1844,” Rush's name and an M.D. The Association was Incorporated in the District of Columbia in 1927. The Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane included among its tenets:

• Insanity is a disease to which everyone is liable.

• Properly and promptly treated, it is about as curable as most other serious diseases.

• In the majority of cases it is better and more successfully treated in well-organized institutions than at home.

• Overcrowding is an evil of serious magnitude.

• The insane should never be kept in penal institutions.

June 12, 1844 Pageant: John Clare's The Nightingale

Drapery clerk George Williams organizes the first Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in London.

In England, Factory Act (women and children).

In England, Ann Richelieu Lamb published Can Woman Regenerate Society?

1845

The origin of the notion that the state's parens patriae power, the power to protect the patient's own safety or that of others, justifies involuntary commitment came in the Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court's decision in In re Josiah Oakes, 8 Law Rep. 123 (1845), on a habeas corpus petition filed on behalf of an elderly Massachusetts resident who was committed to a private psychiatric facility on his parent's application after he married a young woman of "unsavory character" a few days after his wife's death. This is the case most cited by modern courts and writers as the foundation for involuntary treatment.

Alleged Lunatics' Friends Society organized by former mental patients in England. This organization is seen as the forerunner of present day advocacy groups. The group lasted until 1863. July 1, 1845, John Thomas Perceval’s petition presented to the House of Commons. July 7, 1845 the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society was formed. (Gault, H. 2010, p.190)

The “Lunacy Act” is passed concerning running good hospitals. The Lunacy Act 1845 and the County Asylums Act 1845 were passed in England and Wales, leading to the setting up of the Lunacy Commission.

Earlier in the year, 5,000 women cotton mill workers in and around Pittsburgh go on strike for a 10-hour day and an end to child labor. Months into the strike, hundreds marched on the Blackstock Mill, one of the largest in the area. The women broke down the factory's gates and forcibly expelled the scabs, while the men who accompanied them kept the police at bay.

Sweden passes an Inheritance Law that gives women and men equal inheritance rights. 

In England, Margaret Fuller published Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

1845-1850

The Great Irish Famines mark the destruction of potato crops and people become paupers by the droves and subsequently fled to America seeking opportunity.

1846

John Augustus, a shoemaker in Boston, gives up his work as a shoemaker to devote time to taking people on probation from the courts; from 1841 to 1858, Augustus took 1,152 men and 794 women on probation.

“The Lily of the West: On Human Nature, Education, the Mind, Insanity, with Ten Letters as a Sequel to the Alphabet; the Conquest of Man, Early Days; a Farewell to My Native Home, the Song of the Chieftain's Daughter, Tree of Liberty, and the Beauties of Nature and Art,” by G. Grimes, an Inmate of the Lunatic Asylum of Tennessee. Nashville. Grimes, Green.

“A Secret Worth Knowing: A Treatise on the Most Important Secret in the World: Simply to say, Insanity, by G. Grimes, an Inmate of the Lunatic Asylum of Tennessee.” Nashville: Nashville Union, Grimes, Green.

American Annals of the Deaf began publication at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford.

In England, Anna Jameson published 'Woman's Mission' and 'Woman's Position ' On the Relative Social Position of Mothers and Governesses.

In England, Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) published translation of Strauss's Das Leben Jesu (Life of Jesus).

In England, Eliza Lynn Linton, an anti-feminist (!) became the first salaried woman journalist in Britain, working for the Morning Chronicle.

1847

“Thirty-Two Years of the Life of an Adventurer” New York: by Drake, John H.

“A Secret Worth Knowing: A Treatise on Insanity, the Only Work of the Kind in the United States or, Perhaps in the Known World: Founded on General Observation and Truth,” by G. Grimes, an Inmate of the Lunatic Asylum of Tennessee. New York: W. H. Graham. Grimes, Green.

“Best interest of the Child” test, which is not suppose to be seen as unregulated, but governed as far as the case will admit, by fixed rules and principles.

In England, the Juvenile Offenders Act allowed children under the age of fourteen to be tried summarily before two magistrates, speeding up the process of trial for children, and removing it from the publicity of the higher courts. The age limit was raised to sixteen in 1850.

In England, Ann Knight, an elderly Quaker, published the first leaflet that advocated votes for women .

In England, (also in 1850) Factory Acts (women and children restricted to 10 1/2 hour day).

In England, Chloroform first used in childbirth.

1848

The first residential institution for people with mental retardation is founded by Samuel Gridley Howe at the Perkins Institution in Boston. During the next century, hundreds of thousands of developmentally disabled children and adults will be institutionalized, many for their entire lives. Samuel Gridley Howe told the Massachusetts legislature, “There are at least a thousand persons of this class who not only contribute nothing to the common stock, but who are ravenous consumers, who are idle and often mischievous, and who are dead weight upon the prosperity of the state.”

After much campaigning by American Dorothea Dix, New Jersey built a humane hospital for the insane. Over 30 states followed its lead.

Pennsylvania establishes the first minimum wage law in the United States.

The Communist Manifesto, published by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, influences worker demands in the United States for labor and social welfare reforms.

The Adoption Act passed and “Psychological Parenthood” was accepted.

Russia fell to the socialist revolution or communism.

“Illustrations of Insanity Furnished by the Letters and Writings of the Insane.” American Journal of Insanity. 4: 290-308 by Anonymous.

Phineas Gage, a Vermont railwayman, was an affable person until an incident in 1848. While blasting rock, an iron bar embedded itself in the front part of Phineas Gage's brain. Phineas Gage suffered brain damage when an iron pole pierces his brain. His personality was changed but his intellect remained intact suggesting that an area of the brain plays a role in personality. He survived the operation to remove it, though his personality changed radically. He became irreverent, profane, rude and impatient, all contrary to his nature before the accident. The 25 year old was blasting the ground prior to laying train tracks. This technique involved putting explosive powder with a fuse into a hole, covering the hole with sand and lighting the fuse. Unfortunately, Gage accidentally tamped the powder into the hole before sand was poured in. When the powder was struck with the tamping rod, it ignited. The blast drove the rod through Gage’s head. The inch-thick shaft entered through his left cheekbone and left eye and exited through his skull. Gage survived the accident and within 2 months he could walk, talk and was generally aware of his surroundings. However, his once affable personality had been replaced by less desirable qualities and characteristics such as lying, excessive use of abusive language and non-dependability. He was no longer recognised as the same man: ‘The equilibrium … between his intellectual faculties and animal propensities seems to have been destroyed’, according to Harlow, a physician from Boston, 1868. Gage eventually died from epilepsy 13 years after the incident and his skull was donated to medical research. Upon examination, it was found that the change in personality was a result of severe damage to the frontal lobes of the brain. Early theories concerning Gage’s sudden change in behaviour were not readily accepted. There was scepticism at the time about whether the brain could govern human behaviour. More recently, neurologists have returned to the case to ascertain the full extent of the damage to his brain. It appears that the frontal lobes necessary for language and motor function were unaffected whilst the underside of the frontal lobes were heavily damaged, causing the anti-social behaviour. This phenomenon has also been detected in present day cases of people suffering from tumours, accidents or neurosurgery. The case of Phineas Gage was the first to be publicised that demonstrated a biological basis for behaviour. It therefore became an early explanation for abnormal behaviour and mental illness - a seminal case in the detection and causes of medical illness.

In England, the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society campaigned for sweeping reforms to the asylum system and abuses of the moral treatment approach. In the United States,

Three hundred people attend the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Among the attendees are Amelia Bloomer, Charlotte Woodward, and Frederick Douglas. Lucretia Mott's husband James presides. Stanton authors the Declaration of Sentiments, which sets the agenda for decades of women's activism. A larger meeting follows in Rochester. Lucretia Mott (January 3, 1793-November 11, 1880) was an American Quaker abolitionist, women’s rights activist and social reformer. She helped organize women’s abolitionist societies, since anti-slavery organizations would not admit women as members. In 1840, she attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London, where she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. From their conversations, sparked the idea of creating a mass meeting to address women’s rights. In 1848, they called the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York with the help of her sister, Martha Coffin Wright, and others. She devoted her life advocating for equal economic opportunity, school and prison reform and supported women’s equal political status, including sufferage.

In England, First college for women founded by Rev. F.D. Maurice. Queen's College , Harley Street, London, established for governesses.

In England, Joseph Hume MP moved a resolution in parliament to give votes to women .

1849

“Five Months in the New York State Lunatic Asylum, by an Inmate.” Buffalo: L. Danforth by Anonymous

British psychiatrist John Charles Bucknill used electrical stimulation of the skin and potassium oxide to treat asylum patients with melancholic depression. Electrical stimulation became widespread during the late nineteenth century, but safety concerns reduced its use.

On 23 January 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell (3 February 1821 – 31 May 1910) became the first woman to achieve a medical degree in the United States. Emily Blackwell (October 8, 1826 – September 7, 1910), born in Bristol, England, was the second woman to earn a medical degree at what is now Case Western Reserve University, and the third openly identified woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. Inspired by the example of her older sister, Elizabeth, Emily studied medicine, earning her degree in 1854. In 1857 the Blackwell sisters and Marie Zakrzewska established the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children. In 1832 the family emigrated to the US, and in 1837 settled near Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1857 the Blackwell sisters and Marie Zakrzewska established the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children. From the beginning Emily took responsibility for management of the infirmary and in large part for the raising of funds. For the next forty years Emily managed the infirmary, overseeing surgery, nursing, and bookkeeping. Emily traveled to Albany to convince the legislature to provide the hospital with funds that would ensure long-term financial stability. She transformed an institution housed in a rented, sixteen-room house into a fully-fledged hospital. By 1874 the infirmary served over 7,000 patients annually. During the American Civil War Blackwell helped organize the Women's Central Association of Relief, which selected and trained nurses for service in the war. Emily and Elizabeth Blackwell and Mary Livermore also played an important role in the development of the United States Sanitary Commission. After the war, in 1868 the Blackwell sisters established the Women's Medical College in New York City. Emily became professor of obstetrics and, in 1869, when Elizabeth moved to London to help form the London School of Medicine for Women, became dean of the college. In 1876 it became a three-year institution, and in 1893 it became a four-year college, ahead of much of the profession. By 1899 the college had trained 364 women doctors. From 1883, Blackwell lived with her partner Elizabeth Cushier, who also served as a doctor at the infirmary. Blackwell and Cushier retired at the turn of the century. After traveling abroad for a year and a half, they spent the next winters at their home in Montclair, New Jersey and summers in Maine. Blackwell died on September 7, 1910 in York Cliffs, Maine, a few months after her sister Elizabeth's death in England.

“Mr. Dyce Sombre's Refutation of the Charge of Lunacy Brought Against Him in the Court of Chancer.” Paris by Dvee Sombre.

In England, Bedford College for Women founded.

1850

The first school for "idiotic and feebleminded" youths is incorporated in Massachusetts.

“The Ohio Lunatic Asylum.” The Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology. 3: 456-90, by Anonymous.

The Massachusetts legislature grants property rights to women.

The 1850 census, the first reliable enumeration of mentally ill persons in the United States, counted 4,730 insane persons in the total population of 23,261,000

In the 1850s, Superintendent of Eastern State Lunatic Asylum in Virginia, John Minson Galt, II suggested a day-patient approach similar to the town of Geel (present-day Germany), where patients went into town and interacted with the community during the day and returned to the hospital at night to sleep. The Court of Directors rejected this proposal. The idea was a century ahead of its time and re-emerged as deinstitutionalization in the 1900s. However, Dr. Galt did carry out an experiment with deinstitutionalization in Williamsburg that lasted for a decade. Convalescing patients who behaved well and had good self-control (approximately half of the 280 patients at the time), had the freedom of the town at all times during the day. The townspeople were also encouraged to visit and socialize with patients still confined to the hospital grounds. Many of these changes were a part of a new era called "moral management," brought about due to a change in social perception of mental illness.

The first mandated reform schools, taught “respect for authority, self-control, and discipline.” They spoke of reform schools in phrases such as, “Here is real home.” They took the kids to reform schools and then adopted them out before parents could get them back.

In 1800 there were only eight institutions for abused and neglected children in the U.S. By 1850, there are ninety institutions for abused and neglected children in the U.S.

The number of children aged 15 years and younger in Irish Workhouses reaches its historic high, at 115,639.

In England, Emily Shirreff and Maria G. Grey published Thoughts on Self-Culture: Addressed to Women.

In England, S. Margaret Fuller published Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

In England, North London Collegiate School founded by Frances Buss.

1851

In his article, “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race,” Dr. Samuel Cartwright, a prominent Louisiana physician and one of the leading authorities in his time on the medical care of Negroes, identified two mental disorders peculiar to slaves. Drapetomia, or the disease causing Negroes to run away, was noted as a condition, “unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptom, the absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers.” Dr. Cartwright observed, “The cause in most cases, that induces the Negro to run away from service, is such a disease of the mind as in any other species of alienation, and much more curable, as a general rule.” Dr. Cartwright was so helpful as to identify preventive measures for dealing with potential cases of drapetomania. Slaves showing incipient drapetomania, reflected in sulky and dissatisfied behavior should be whipped —- strictly as a therapeutic early intervention. Planter and overseers were encouraged to utilize whipping as the primary intervention once the disease had progressed to the stage of actually running away. Overall, Cartwright suggested that Negroes should be kept in a submissive state and treated like children, with “care, kindness, attention and humanity, to prevent and cure them from running away.” Dr. Cartwright also diagnosed Dysaethesia Aethiopica, or “hebetude of the mind and obtuse sensibility of the body -— a disease peculiar to Negroes called by overseers —- Rascality.” Dysaethesia Aethiopica differed from other species of mental disease since physical signs and lesions accompanied it. The ever-resourceful Dr.Cartwright determined that whipping could also cure this disorder. Of course, one wonders if the whipping were not the cause of the “lesions” that confirmed the diagnosis. Not surprisingly, Dr. Cartwright was a leading thinker in the pro-slavery movement. Dr.Cartwright, in his article “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race,” chided his anti-slavery colleagues by noting, “The northern physicians and people have noticed the symptoms, but not the disease from which they spring. They ignorantly attribute the symptoms to the debasing influence of slavery on the mind without considering that those who have never been in slavery, or their fathers before them, are the most afflicted, and the latest from the slave-holding south the least. The disease is the natural offspring of Negro liberty —- the liberty to be idle, to wallow in filth, and to indulge in improper food and drinks.”Dysaethesia Aethiopica was a mental illness described by Dr. Cartwright that proposed a theory for the cause of laziness among slaves. Today, dysaesthesia aethiopica is considered an example of pseudoscience and part of the edifice of scientific racism.

Friern Hospital (formerly Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum) was a psychiatric hospital in Colney Hatch in what is now the London Borough of Barnet. The hospital was built as the Second Middlesex County Asylum and was in operation from 1851 to 1993. At the time of construction, the asylum had 1250 beds and was the largest and most modern asylum in Europe. At its height Colney Hatch was home to 3500 mental patients and had the longest corridor in Britain (It would take a visitor more than two hours to walk the wards). For much of the 20th century, its name was synonymous among Londoners with any mental institution.

Sojourner Truth delivers her "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio.

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Sojourner Truth (1797-1883): Ain't I A Woman?

A very moving piece from abolitionist, women's rights proponent, and former slave Sojourner Truth that was originally delivered in 1851. Yep, before the Civil War, before the right to vote for anybody but white men ... THAT 1851.

Delivered 1851
Women's Convention, Akron, Ohio

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.

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The YMCA is founded in North America (Montreal).

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet died on September 10.

Traveler's Aid (now Traveler's Aid International) is founded by Bryan Mullanphy in St. Louis, Missouri.

In Ohio’s Constitution of 1851, there is a section stating, Institutions for the benefit of the insane, blind, deaf and dumb shall always be fostered and supported by the state.

The second National Woman's Rights Convention is held in Worcester, Massachusetts; celebrities new to the list of endorsers include educator Horace Mann, New York Tribune columnist Elizabeth Oakes Smith, and Reverend Harry Ward Beecher, one of the nation's most popular preachers. Lucretia Mott presides. Westminster Review publishes John Stuart Mill's article, "On the Enfranchisement of Women." Mill later admits that the piece is the work of his companion, Harriet Hardy Taylor.

“Autobiography of the Rev. William Walford.” London by William Walford.

“Astounding Disclosures! Three Years in a Mad House, by a Victim. A True Account of the Barbarous, Inhuman and Cruel Treatment of Isaac H. Hunt, in the Maine Insane Hospital, in the Years 1844, '45, '46 and '47, by Drs. Isaac Ray, James Bates, and Their Assistants and Attendants.” Skowhegan: The Author. Hunt, Isaac H.

“The Opal Volume 1.” New York: Utica State Lunatic Asylum. Edited by the “Patients.” The Opal (1851–1860) was a ten volume Journal produced by patients of Utica State Lunatic Asylum in New York, which has been viewed in part as an early liberation movement.

Massachusetts passed the first modern adoption law, recognizing adoption as a social and legal operation based on child welfare rather than adult interests. The Adoption of Children Act was an important turning point that directed judges to ensure that adoption decrees were “fit and proper.” How this determination was to be made was left entirely to judicial discretion.

Nathanial Hawthorne’s book, "The Scarlet Letter," came out. This was a moral book about an unwed mother trying to raise her child, cast out of society to live in the woods as punishment for her sins of moral impropriety; the surprise was the child’s father was the priest.

In England, Mrs J.S. Mill (nee Harriet Taylor) published The Enfranchisement of Women in the Westminster Review.

In England, Women's Suffrage Petition presented to the House of Lords.

1852

“Startling Facts from the Census,” was published in the American Journal of Insanity. It argued that slavery kept blacks well, because there was a higher incidence of insanity in Blacks in the North than the South.

“Insanity Among the Colored Population of the Free States” by Dr. Jarvis. Jarvis writes to “disabuse any readers mind” of the information released in “startling facts from the census”. Jarvis' investigation into the Census actually created what is now called the “modern census” as he found the statistics were largely unreliable.

Dayton State Hospital Athens State Hospital

Cleveland State Hospital Columbus State Hospital

In 1852, the Ohio legislature approved the expansion of the Columbus Asylum. State hospitals were established in Cleveland and Dayton in 1855 and in Athens in 1874. Many psychiatric hospitals built during this period in Ohio and other states followed the Kirkbride architectural style. Thomas S. Kirkbride, one of the founders of the American Psychiatric Association, was an authority on construction, organization and general arrangement of psychiatric hospitals. He felt that the most economical type of construction involved a center hall for offices, employee living areas, a church and recreation facilities. Off both sides of the center were a series of wings that stepped back progressively. New patients were placed on wards farthest from the center. As their conditions improved, patients were moved closer to the center hall. Hence, the term, back ward, which referred to areas where patients with the most intractable illnesses lived.

French physician Bénédict Augustin Morel published Traite des Maladies Mentales (2 vols.); the 2nd ed. (1860) coined the term "dementia praecox" (demence precoce) for patients suffering from "stupor" (melancholia). In 1857 he published Traité des Dégénérescences, promoting an understanding of mental illness based upon the theory of Degeneration, which became one of the most influential concepts in psychiatry for the rest of the century.

“A Letter from a Patient.” The Opal – A monthly Periodical of the State Lunatic Asylum, Devoted to Usefulness. 2: 245-246. Anonymous. “The Opal Volume 2.” New York: Utica State Lunatic Asylum. Edited by the “Patients.”

“Astounding Disclosures! Three Years in a Mad House, by a Victim. Contains Also: A Short Account of Miss Elizabeth T. Stone in the McLean Asylum at Somerville, Mass. and a Short Account of the Burning of the Maine Asylum, Dec. 4th, 1850.” Skowhegan: The Author: Hunt, Isaac H.

The first forced public education began in Massachusetts

Newspaper editor Clara Howard Nichols addresses the Vermont Senate on the topic of women's property rights, a major issue for the suffragists.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is published.

In England, Anna Jameson published Legends of the Madonna, as presented in the fine arts.

In England, Florence Nightingale wrote the book Cassandra that highlights the problems of women’s entitlement to education - she decided not to publish the book.

In England, G.H. Lewes published The Lady Novelists.

In England, Publication of Man's Duties to Woman. (Anon.)

In England, Judge rules that a man may not force his wife to live with him.

1853

The Children's Aid Society of New York, the first child placement agency separate from an institutional program, is founded by the Reverend Charles Loring Brace.

On April 20, 1853 Harriet Tubman began her work on the Underground Railroad. Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most well-known of all the Underground Railroad’s “conductors.” During a ten-year span she made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 enslaved Africans to freedom. She never lost a single passenger. "I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."

Invention of the hypodermic syringe; its use to inject morphine to reduce pain rapidly became widespread during the Civil War.

Dorothea Dix is credited for the creation of the first public mental hospital in Harrisburg Pennsylvania.

“Passages from the History of a Wasted Life.” Boston: Benj. B. Mussey. Middle-Aged Man [pseud.].

“The Opal Volume 3.” New York: Utica State Lunatic Asylum. Edited by the “Patients.”

Charles Loring Brace founded the Children's Aid Society to take in children living on the streets.’

On the occasion of the World's Fair in New York City, suffragists hold a meeting in the Broadway Tabernacle. It will go down in history as "The Mob Convention," marred by "hissing, yelling, stamping, and all manner of unseemly interruptions."

The World's Temperance Convention is held, also in New York City. Women delegates, including Rev. Antoinette Brown and Susan B. Anthony, are not allowed to speak.

In England, Margaretta Grey published A Lady Must Not Work.

In England, Aggravated Assaults Act passed, to increase penalties for wife beating.

In England, Queen Victoria given chloroform during childbirth.

In England, J.J.S. Wharton M.A. published An Expostion of the Laws relating to the Women of England, showing their Rights, Remedies and Responsibilities in every position in life.

1854

Dorthea Dix's (born April 4, 1802) diligent work in the 1840's for the humane treatment of people identified as “mentally ill,” convinces many states to construct special institutions for the “mentally ill.” “Man is not made better by being degraded.” A bill that authorized grants of public land to establish hospitals for insane people and that was initiated by Dorothea Dix and passed unanimously by Congress is vetoed by President Franklin Pierce. The rationale for the veto is that the general welfare clause in the U.S. Constitution reserves such care to the states, not to the federal government, an interpretation that establishes federal welfare policy until the Social Security Act of 1935. Legislation was passed at the federal level to provide aid to the states for these mental institutions. President Franklin Pierce felt that it was the states responsibility to ensure the social welfare, not the federal government. He vetoed the Indigent Insane Bill. This was one example of the controversy of who has responsibility, state or federal government. This bill would have provided a grant of land for “the relief and support of indigent, curable and incurable insane.” Its passage by Congress was the culmination of more than six years of intense work by Dix and her allies in trying to provide asylums that would emphasize “moral treatment” approaches to mental illness. President Pierce, in his veto message, said, “If Congress has the power to make provisions for the indigent insane, the whole field of public beneficence is thrown open to the care and culture of the federal government. I readily acknowledge the duty incumbent on us all to provide for those who, in the mysterious order of providence, are subject to want and to disease of body or mind, but I cannot find any authority in the Constitution that makes the federal government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States.”

“A Chapter from Real Life. By a Recovered Patient.” The Opal – A monthly Periodical of the State Lunatic Asylum, Devoted to Usefulness. 4: 48-50. Anonymous. “The Opal Volume 4.” New York: Utica State Lunatic Asylum. Edited by the “Patients.”

“Letters of a Lunatic: A Brief Exposition of My University Life During the Years 1853-1854.” New York: The Author. Adler, George J.

The New England Gallaudet Association of the Deaf is founded in Montpelier, Vermont.

Tewksbury State Hospital and Infirmary was established in 1854 on a 250 acre farm, as one of three state almshouses needed to help care for the unprecedented influx of immigrants into Massachusetts at that time. The almshouses were the Commonwealth's first venture into caring for the poor, a duty which had previously been carried out by the cities and towns. Opened on May 1, 1854 with a capacity for 500, the almshouse population grew to 668 by the end of the first week, and to over 800 by May 20th. By December 2, 1854, 2,193 "paupers" had been admitted. Nearly 90% of these listed European countries as their birthplace. The almshouse reported having 14 employees at that time, and was spending 94.5 cents per week per resident. The most famous patient in the almshouse during the 19th century was Anne Sullivan, who later became the tutor and companion of Helen Keller. Anne Sullivan spent most of her early life at the almshouse (her alcoholic father left her and her brother there) before being transferred to the Perkins School for the Blind, now located in Watertown, Massachusetts where she was valedictorian of her class. Her brother died due to a hip problem at a young age, while in the almshouse. At age 20 Sullivan left the school in Watertown to go to Helen Keller's home in Alabama. One of the buildings on today's Tewksbury Hospital Campus is named for Ms. Sullivan. Reflecting its changing mission, the Tewksbury Almshouse became Tewksbury State Hospital in 1900, the Massachusetts State Infirmary in 1909, and Tewksbury State Hospital and Infirmary in 1938. Over the years, facilities were added for treating tuberculosis and other contagious diseases such as smallpox, venereal diseases and typhoid fever. Meanwhile it continued to serve as a last resort for many patients in need of shelter and supervised care, especially during the late 1920s and 1930s.

The Massachusetts legislature grants property rights to women.

The first day nursery in the United States opens in New York City

In 1854 Charles Loring Brace led the Children's Aid Society to start the Orphan Train with stops across the West, where they were adopted and often given work.

In Reformatory Schools in England, Mary Carpenter's research and lobbying contributed to the Youthful Offenders Act 1854 and the Reformatory Schools (Scotland) Act 1854. These enabled voluntary schools to be certified as efficient by the Inspector of Prisons, and allowed courts to send them convicted juvenile offenders under 16 for a period of 2 to 5 years, instead of prison. Parents were required to contribute to the cost. Carpenter's 1851 publication Reformatory Schools for the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes and for Juvenile Offenders was the first to coin the term 'Dangerous Classes' with respect to the lower classes, and the perceived propensity to criminality, of poor people.

In England, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon published A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women, together with a few Observations thereon.

1855

The first Federal facility, Government Hospital for the Insane opened in Washington, D.C. It was renamed St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in 1916.

Prominent suffragists Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell marry; they eliminate the vow of obedience from the ceremony and include a protest against unfair marriage laws.

The first Young Men's Hebrew Association is organized in Baltimore. The YMCA is organized in Boston by retired sea captain Thomas C. Sullivan.

“Life in the Asylum.” The Opal – A monthly Periodical of the State Lunatic Asylum, Devoted to Usefulness. 5: 4-6. Anonymous, New York: Utica State Lunatic Asylum. Edited by the “Patients.”

“Letters to the People on Health and Happiness.” New York: Harper and Brothers. Beecher, Catherine.

“Two Years and Three Months in the New York Lunatic Asylum at Utica.” Syracuse: Published by the Author. Davis, Phebe B.

“Scenes from the Life of a Sufferer: Being the Narrative of a Residence in Morningside Asylum.” Edinburgh. by Anonymous

In England, Mrs Henry Davies Pochin published (under pseudonym Justitia) The Right of Women to the Exercise of the Elective Franchise.

In England, George Eliot published Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft.

In England, A woman was appointed as an overseer of the poor at Undermillbeck, Westmoreland.

In England, Stephen Fullom published The History of Woman, And her Connexion with Religion, Civilization, and Domestic Manners, from the earliest period (denounced by George Eliot).

In England, Mrs Jameson published Sisters of Charity, Catholic and Protestant, Abroad and at Home.

1856

The Opal Volume 6 New York: Utica State Lunatic Asylum. Edited by the “Patients.”

In England, Mrs Jameson published The Communion of Labour, a Second Lecture on the Social Employments of Women.

In England, Margaret Maria Brewster published Work, Plenty to Do and How to Do It. (Edinburgh.)

In England, Bessie Rayner Parkes published Remarks on the Education of Girls.

In England, Caroline Frances Cornwallis published The Property of Married Women.

In England, Emily Shirreff published Intellectual Education, and its influence on the Character and Happiness of Women.

In England, Petition for women to retain their property upon marriage was presented. Organised by Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon andBessie Rayner Parkes , its 26,000 signatories included Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jane Carlyle (wife of Thomas), Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Gaskell.

1857

The Opal Volume 7 New York: Utica State Lunatic Asylum. Edited by the “Patients.”

The Supreme Court rules on the Dred Scott case, deciding that Dred Scott was still a slave, even though he was in free territory. The court also declares that no African American’s were citizens of the United States, which also meant they could not sue in a federal court. This decision also denied the power of Congress to restrict slavery in any federal territory. The decision sharpened the national debate over slavery. James Buchanan is President. He took office at a time of great division and uproar over slavery. The nation was headed toward civil war, and he could not avert it. Buchanan personally opposed slavery, but as a public official he felt bound to sustain it where sanctioned by law. What some considered vacillation was an expression of three fundamental convictions: (1) that only by compromise between the parts could a federal republic survive; (2) that citizens had to obey the law even when they thought it unjust; and (3) that questions of morality could not be settled by political action. Despite the secession movement, he succeeded in preventing hostilities between North and South, and he turned over to Lincoln a nation at peace with eight slave states still in the Union.

A Massachusetts court is the first to recognize the spousal rape exemption. The court in Commonwealth v. Fogerty, relies solely on Lord Hale's statement (1500's) in recognizing in dictum that marriage to the victim was a defense to rape. 

In England, the Industrial Schools Act 1857 allowed magistrates to send disorderly children to a residential industrial school, resolving the problems of juvenile delinquency by removing poor and neglected children from their home environment into a boarding school. An 1876 Act led to non-residential day schools of a similar kind. In 1986 Professor Sir Leon Radzinowitz noted the practice of Economic conscription, where, ‘there was a network of 208 schools: 43 reformatories, 132 industrial schools, 21 day industrial schools and 12 truant schools’ by the eve of the First World War, alongside a negligible education system for the poor.

In England, Association for the Promotion of the Employment of Women established.

In England, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon published Women and Work.

In England, Caroline Frances Cornwallis published Capabilities and Disabilities of Women.

In England, Elizabeth Strutt published The Feminine Soul, its Nature and Attributes.

In England, Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act passed, by which divorce and separation became available to women. Previously, each divorce needed a separate Act of Parliament.

In England, Ladies' Sanitary Association founded.

In England, Matrimonial Causes Act (legally separated wife given right to keep what she earns; man may divorce wife for adultery, whereas wife must prove adultery aggravated by cruelty or desertion).

In England, Englishwoman's Journal started by Bessie Rayner Parkes and Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon . It later became the Englishwoman's Review.

1858

Henry Knight cut the ribbon on the first institution for Undesirables in Connecticut stating, “Being consumers and not producers, they are a great pecuniary burden in the state.”

Medical Registration Act of 1858 which brought together physicians, apothecaries and surgeons and also controlled who went into the medical profession. An Act to Regulate the Qualifications of Practitioners in Medicine and Surgery was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which created the General Medical Council to regulate doctors in the UK, set up register of doctors who had to pass prescribed exams. Describing its purpose, the Act notes that "it is expedient that Persons requiring Medical Aid should be enabled to distinguish qualified from unqualified Practitioners". The Act creates the position of Registrar of the General Medical Council — an office still in existence today — whose duty is to keep up-to-date records of those registered to practice medicine and to make them publicly available. The Act has now been almost entirely repealed. The current law governing medical regulation is the Medical Act 1983. It stated that under the Poor Law system Boards of Guardians could only employ those qualified in medicine and surgery as Poor Law Doctors. Under a clause in the Act that recognized doctors with foreign degrees practising in Britain, Elizabeth Blackwell was able to become the first woman to have her name entered on the Medical Register (1 January 1859). http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/21-22/90/contents/enacted

Laurent Clerc retired from teaching at age 73. Louis Laurent Marie Clerc (26 December 1785 – 18 July 1869) was called "The Apostle of the Deaf in America" by generations of American deaf people. He was taught by Abbe Sicard, at the famous school for the Deaf in Paris, Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets. With Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, he co-founded the first school for the deaf in North America, the Hartford Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb on April 15, 1817 in the old Bennet's City Hotel, Hartford, Connecticut. The school was subsequently renamed the American School for the Deaf and in 1821 moved to its present site. The school remains the oldest existing school for the deaf in North America. Born December 26, 1785 in La Balme-les-Grottes, Isère, a village on the northeastern edge of Lyon to Joseph-François Clerc and Marie-Élisabeth Candy in the small village of La Balme where his father was the mayor, Laurent Clerc's home was a typical bourgeois household. When he was a year old, Clerc, while momentarily unattended, fell from a chair into the hearth, suffering a blow to the head and sustaining a permanent scar on the right side of his face below his ear. Clerc's family believed his deafness and inability to smell were caused by this accident, but Clerc later wrote that he was not certain and that he may have been born deaf and without the ability to smell or taste. The facial scar was later the basis for his name sign, the "U" hand shape stroked twice downward along the right cheek. Clerc's name sign would become the best known and most recognizable name sign in American deaf history and Clerc became the most renowned deaf person in American history. Clerc attended the famous school for the Deaf in Paris and was taught by Abbe Sicard. Clerc eventually became a teacher there. In 1815 he traveled to England to give a lecture and there first met Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. Gallaudet was invited to visit the school in Paris, where, in 1816, he invited Clerc to accompany him to The United States to establish the first permanent school for the Deaf (American School for the Deaf) in Hartford, CT. "Every creature, every work of God, is admirably well made; but if any one appears imperfect in our eyes, it does not belong to us to criticise it. Perhaps that which we do not find right in its kind, turns to our advantage, without our being able to perceive it. Let us look at the state of the heavens, one while the sun shines, another time it does not appear; now the weather is fine; again it is unpleasant; one day is hot, another is cold; another time it is rainy, snowy or cloudy; every thing is variable and inconstant. Let us look at the surface of the earth: here the ground is flat; there it is hilly and mountainous; in other places it is sandy; in others it is barren; and elsewhere it is productive. Let us, in thought, go into an orchard or forest. What do we see? Trees high or low, large or small, upright or crooked, fruitful or unfruitful. Let us look at the birds of the air, and at the fishes of the sea, nothing resembles another thing. Let us look at the beasts. We see among the same kinds some of different forms, of different dimensions, domestic or wild, harmless or ferocious, useful or useless, pleasing or hideous. Some are bred for men's sakes; some for their own pleasures and amusements; some are of no use to us. There are faults in their organization as well as in that of men. Those who are acquainted with the veterinary art, know this well; but as for us who have not made a study of this science, we seem not to discover or remark these faults. Let us now come to ourselves. Our intellectual faculties as well as our corporeal organization have their imperfections. There are faculties both of the mind and heart, which education improve; there are others which it does not correct. I class in this number, idiotism, imbecility, dulness. But nothing can correct the infirmities of the bodily organization, such as deafness, blindness, lameness, palsy, crookedness, ugliness. The sight of a beautiful person does not make another so likewise, a blind person does not render another blind. Why then should a deaf person make others so also? Why are we Deaf and Dumb? Is it from the difference of our ears? But our ears are like yours; is it that there may be some infirmity? But they are as well organized as yours. Why then are we Deaf and Dumb? I do not know, as you do not know why there are infirmities in your bodies, nor why there are among the human kind, white, black, red and yellow men. The Deaf and Dumb are everywhere, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in Europe and America. They existed before you spoke of them and before you saw them." – Laurent Clerc, 1818.

The Opal Volume 8 New York: Utica State Lunatic Asylum. Edited by the “Patients.”

In England, The first swimming bath for ladies was opened, at Marylebone.

In England, Henry Thomas Buckle published The Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge, a Discourse delivered to the Royal Institution, 19th March 1858. (Pub. Leipzig.)

1859

Charles Darwin published the On the Origin of Species, detailing his view of evolution and expanding on the theory of ‘Survival of the fittest.’ The Origin of Species, published by Charles Darwin, sets forth the theory of evolution, which provides a scientific approach to the understanding of plant and animal development. Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species” led to a pessimistic feeling that insanity, instead of being concerned with the will and moral management was a hereditary incapacity, leading to reduced concern for the unfortunate, and a feeling that the mad ought to be locked up.

The Opal Volume 9 New York: Utica State Lunatic Asylum. Edited by the “Patients.”

Josef Breuer published Traite Clinique et Therapeutique de L'Hysterie.

In England, Harriet Martineau published Female Industry.

In England, Isaac Reeve published The Intellect of Woman not Naturally Inferior to that of Man. 3rd edition.

In England, Society for the Employment of Women founded.

In England, The North East Lancashire Amalgamated Society was formed and accepted male and female mill workers.

1860

“The travels and experiences of Miss Phebe B. Davis, of Barnard, Windsor County, VT, being a sequel to her two years and three months in the N.Y. state lunatic asylum at Utica, N.Y.” by Davis, Phebe. B.

Belgian psychiatrist Benedict Morel described the case of a 13-year-old boy, formerly an excellent pupil, who lost interest in school, became withdrawn, seclusive, quiet, and seemed to forget everything he had learned. He spoke often of killing his father. Morel called this mental deterioriation demence precoce, generally associated with old age. German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin later adopted the term dementia praecox to refer to conditions in which mental deterioration began early in life.

The Braille system was introduced to America and was taught with some success at the St. Louis School for the Blind. Simon Pollak demonstrates the use of braille at the Missouri School for the Blind.

The Gaffaudet Guide and Deaf Mutes' Companion becomes the first publication in the United States aimed at a disabled readership.

The University of Iowa became the first state university to admit women on an equal basis with men. They were also the first public U.S. university to grant a law degree to a woman (Mary B. Hickey Wilkinson, 1873), to grant a law degree to an African American (G. Alexander Clark, 1879), and to put an African American on a varsity athletic squad (Frank Kinney Holbrook, 1895).

By 1860, twenty states had laws limiting abortion

“Seven Months in the Kingston Lunatic Asylum, and What I Saw There,” by Ann Pratt.

In England, First admission of women students to the Royal Academy (Miss Herford).

In England, Institution for the Employment of Needlewomen founded.

In England, Law copying office for women opened.

In England, Victoria Printing Press established.

1861-1865

The Civil War. Suffrage efforts nearly come to a complete halt as women put their enfranchisement aside and pitch in for the war effort.

Of 27 million Americans, 8,500 are hospitalized in psychiatric institutions.

1861

The American Civil War (1861 - 1865) creates thousands of amputees, 30,000 amputations in the Union Army alone. The first amputee of the war was a young Confederate soldier in Churchville, Virginia.

The U.S. Sanitary Commission, a forerunner of the American Red Cross, is established by the Secretary of War to encourage women's volunteer service during the Civil War.

Susan B. Anthony & Elizabeth Cady Stanton – “Could the dark secrets of those insane asylums be brought to light...we would be shocked to know the countless number of rebellious wives, sisters and daughters that are thus annually sacrificed to false customs and conventionalisms and barbarous laws made by men for women.”

John Stuart Mill writes The Subjection of Women, but waits 8 years to publish it because he did not think the public was ready to accept his essay. He pleads for Parliament to reform the divorce laws to allow women to divorce on the grounds of violence and cruelty. 

During 1861, the Civil war that freed the slaves also gave Americans great lessons on how to produce things that our country had to have based on mass consumption even if the quality of them was often inferior. American Veterans worked to assist the newly freed slaves. Some slaves were considered mentally ill just for trying to run away. (Drapetomania)

Helen Adams Keller is born In Tuscumbia, Alabama.

“The American Godhead: or, the Constitution of the United States Cast Down by Northern Slavery, or by the Power of Insane Hospitals.” Boston: The Author: Stone, Elizabeth.

“The Opal Volume 10,” New York: Utica State Lunatic Asylum. Edited by the “Patients.”

Dr. J. C. Hawthorne opens a private “insane asylum” in Portland.

Harriet Ann Jacobs, who was born into slavery in 1813, wrote one of the earliest autobiographical accounts of life as female slave. Jacobs published “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” which included descriptions of the sexual abuse endured by female slaves, in 1861.

French physician Paul Broca discovered an area in the left frontal lobe that plays a key role in language development.

In England, My Life and What Shall I Do With It? a Question for Young Gentlewomen, by an Old Maid (Miss March Phillips.)

In England, Offences Against the Person Act reduced the penalty for abortion from execution to life imprisonment.

In England, Lectures in physiology opened to ladies at University College.

In England, Offences Against the Persons Act made abortion a statutory offence. It confirmed the age of consent as 12, and made carnal knowledge of a girl under ten a felony and of a girl ten to twelve a misdemeanour.

1862

“Statement of Mrs. Lydia B. Denny, Wife of Reuben S. Denny, of Boston, in Regard to Her Alleged Insanity.” n.p. Denny, Lydia B.

The Veterans Reserve Corps is formed by the U.S. Army. After the war, many of its members join the Freedman's Bureau to work with recently emancipated slaves.

On December 6, 1862 President Lincoln refused to pardon the 38 Santee Sioux people sentenced to hang for protecting their land during the Dakota War of 1862. In early December, 303 Sioux prisoners were convicted of murder and rape by military tribunals and sentenced to death. Some trials lasted less than 5 minutes. No one explained the proceedings to the defendants, nor were the Sioux represented by a defense in court. President Lincoln personally reviewed the trial records to distinguish between those who had engaged in warfare against the U.S., versus those who had committed crimes of rape and murder against civilians. The Army executed the 38 remaining prisoners by hanging on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota. It remains the largest mass execution in American history.

Congress passed the Homestead Act giving the Indians land to the settlers.

Freedmen's Aid Societies are established in the North to send teachers and relief supplies to former slaves in the South.

The Port Royal Experiment, a precursor to the Freedmen's Bureau, is begun. It is a presidentially authorized but voluntarily funded relief and rehabilitation program to relieve the destitution of 10,000 slaves who have been abandoned on island plantations.

Mary Jane Patterson became the first African-American woman to receive a BA degree when she graduated from Oberlin College. Patterson went on to teach in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and eventually settled in Washington DC. She served as principal of the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth (now known as Dunbar High School) in DC during the 1870s—she was the school’s first African-American principal.

U.S. women take the places of men in factories, arsenals, bakeries, retail shops, and government offices as the military draft creates severe labor shortages

In England, First voyage of Miss Rye to Australia; start of her system of emigration.

In England, Ladies Negro Emancipation Society founded.

In England, New Church Order of Deaconesses founded.

In England, Social Science Congress in London; many women took part.

1863

Mary Church was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on September23, 1863. Both her parents, Robert Church and Louisa Ayers, were both former slaves. Robert was the son of his white master, Charles Church.

During the Memphis race riots in 1866 Mary's father was shot in the head and left for dead. He survived the attack and eventually became a successful businessman. He speculated in the property market and was considered to be the wealthiest black man in the South.

Mary was an outstanding student and after graduating from Oberlin College, Ohio, in 1884, she taught at a black secondary school in Washington and at Wilberforce College in Ohio. Through her father, Mary met Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. She was especially close to Douglass and worked with him on several civil rights campaigns.

After a two year travelling and studying in France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and England (1888-1890), Mary returned to the United States where she married Robert Heberton Terrell, a lawyer who was later to become the first black municipal court judge in Washington.

In 1892 Church's friend, Tom Moss, a grocer from Memphis, was lynched by a white mob. Church and Frederick Douglass had a meeting with Benjamin Harrison concerning this case but the president was unwilling to make a public statement condemning lynching.

Church was an active member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and was particularly concerned about ensuring the organization continued to fight for black women getting the vote. With Josephine Ruffin she formed the Federation of Afro-American Women and in 1896 she co- founded the National Association of Colored Women with Harriet Tubman and became the first president of the newly formed association.

She said this about the National Association of Colored Women,

"Through the National Association of Colored Women, which was formed by the union of two large organizations in July, 1896, and which is now the only national body among colored women, much good has been done in the past, and more will be accomplished in the future, we hope."

In 1904 Church was invited to speak at the Berlin International Congress of Women. She was the only black woman at the conference and determined to make a good impression she created a sensation when she gave her speech in German, French and English.

During the First World War Church and her daughter, Phillis Terrell joined Alice Paul and Lucy Burns of the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage (CUWS) in picketing the White House. She was particularly upset when in one demonstration outside of the White House, leaders of the party asked the black suffragist, Ida Wells-Barnett, not to march with other members. It was feared that identification with black civil rights would lose the support of white women in the South. Despite pressure from people like Mary White Ovington, leaders of the CUWS refused to publicly state that she endorsed black female suffrage.

In 1909 Church joined with Mary White Ovington to form the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). The first meeting of the NAACP was held on 12th February, 1909. Early members included Josephine Ruffin, Jane Addams, Inez Milholland, William Du Bois, Charles Darrow, Charles Edward Russell, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, and Ida Wells-Barnett.

Church wrote several books including her autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World (1940). In the early 1950s she was involved in the struggle against segregation in public eating places in Washington. Mary Church Terrell died in Annapolis on 24th July, 1954.

The New York Catholic Protectory is established. It eventually becomes the largest single institution for children in the country.

The first State Board of Charities is established in Massachusetts to supervise the administration of state charitable, medical, and penal institutions.

In England, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon published Of those who are the property of others, and of the great power that holds others as property.

In England, Queen's Institute founded in Dublin, for the industrial training of women.

1864

“The Monomaniac, or Shirley Hall Asylum.” New York: James G. Gregory. Gilbert, William.

New York State Inebriate Asylum - first treatment center - based on belief that treatment had to be coerced. Commitments to Inebriate Asylums common "until the patient is cured."

The U.S. Congress authorized the Columbus Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind to confer college degrees, and President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill into law on April 8. Edward Miner Gallaudet was made president of the entire corporation, including the college. It was the first college in the world established for people with disabilities, and is now known as Gallaudet University. The enabling act giving the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and Blind the authority to confer college degrees is signed by President Abraham Lincoln, making it the first college in the world expressly established for people with disabilities. A year later, the institution's blind students are transferred to the Maryland Institution at Baltimore, leaving the Columbia Institution with a student body made up entirely of deaf students. The institution would eventually be renamed Gallaudet College, and then Gallaudet University.

“The Exposure on Board the Atlantic and Pacific Car of the Emancipation for the Slaves of Old Columbia…or, Christianity and Calvinism Compared, with an Appeal to the Government to Emancipate the Slaves of the Marriage of the Union.” Chicago: Author Packard, Elizabeth Parsons Ware.

In England, First Contagious Diseases Act passed (women living in certain garrison towns liable to be declared prostitutes and forcibly examined for venereal disease). The opponents of the CD Acts were against them for these reasons: •They applied only to women and not to men, even though men also had VD •Diagnosis was often uncertain and syphilis was incurable, in any case •The medical examination was carried out by men, was extremely painful and humiliating, and left many women traumatised for life •The medical examination could (and did) destroy a woman's virginity and could (and did) cause miscarriages •No other British citizens were forced into and locked in hospitals for any other contagious disease •No other British citizen could be imprisoned for committing no offence (habeus corpus) •The Acts created a 'class' of women sanctioned by the government to be used by men for sex •Anyone with a grudge against any woman could report her as being a prostitute and have her examined •Women who had nothing to do with prostitution could (and were) falsely accused, ruining their reputations •Women who had nothing to do with prostitution could (and were) forcibly examined •A special branch of plain-clothed police were used to spy on women •Any woman who happened to be out of doors after dusk, going about her normal business, could be (and was) accused •It amounted to the state regulation of prostitution, a national disgrace •Prostitution was not inevitable, it arose from lack of money and lack of education and career opportunities for women •Prostitution was male abuse of females, against the wishes of God, and immoral: Supporters of the Acts argued that: •Men could not be examined, because they objected to it •Prostitution cannot be prevented, so you might as well just provide clean women for men to use •If a woman is innocent, she has nothing to fear from being medically examined •The scheme was already operating in India and Malta •The defence of the realm was at stake because so many fighting men had VD

In England, Female Medical and Obstetrical Society founded.

In England, Working Women's College founded at Queen's Square.

In England, Alexandra Magazine published for four monthly editions.

1865

“Great Disclosure of Spiritual Wickedness!! In High Places with an Appeal to the Government to Protect the Inalienable Rights of Married Women.” Boston: Author. Packard, Elizabeth Parsons Ware.

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; he was focused on Civil Rights.

The Freedmen's Bureau was formed. The Freedmen's Bureau (Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands) is founded as a joint effort of the federal government with private and philanthropic organizations. The bureau provides food, clothing, and shelter for freedmen and refugees; administers justice to protect the rights of black men; protects freedmen and refugees from physical violence and fraud; and provides education.

Slavery is abolished by the 13th amendment, which is ratified on December 6.

Memorial Day was started by former slaves on May, 1, 1865 in Charleston, SC to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp years earlier. They dug up the bodies and worked for 2 weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom. They then held a parade of 10,000 people led by 2,800 Black children where they marched, sang and celebrated. Note the “Bellamy Salute.” (See Francis Bellamy, 1892) The 1868 celebration was inspired by local observances that had taken place in various locations in the three years since the end of the Civil War. In fact, several cities claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day, including Columbus, Mississippi; Macon, Georgia; Richmond, Virginia; Boalsburg, Pennsylvania; and Carbondale, Illinois. In 1966, the federal government, under the direction of President Lyndon B. Johnson, declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day. They chose Waterloo--which had first celebrated the day on May 5, 1866--because the town had made Memorial Day an annual, community-wide event, during which businesses closed and residents decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags. Decoration Day was observed by many towns beginning back in 1861, the gathering spoken of here was the first nationally publicized event specifically because it was observed by former slaves. The Executive Order of Commander-in-Chief General Logan made it an officially recognized day of observance and it became a National Holiday under House Concurrent Resolution 587 in 1866.

The Klu Klux Klan was formed. They believed in European white supremacy and enforced their beliefs with violence.

wearing the Medal of Honor

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker (1832 – 1919) is recorded as the first female surgeon in the United States (Wirtzfeld, 2009). Her practice failed, evidently, because she refused to change her last name to that of her husband, Dr. Albert Miller. She became an army surgeon in 1863 and received the Congressional Medal of Honor for her service in the Civil War. In 1917, Congress revoked it. She refused to give it back and took it to her grave in 1919. At the beginning of the American Civil War, she volunteered for the Union Army as a civilian. At first, she was only allowed to practice as a nurse, as the U.S. Army had no female surgeons. During this period, she served at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), July 21, 1861 and at the Patent Office Hospital in Washington, D.C. She worked as an unpaid field surgeon near the Union front lines, including the Battle of Fredericksburg and in Chattanooga after the Battle of Chickamauga. As a suffragette, she was happy to see women serving as soldiers and alerted the press to the case of Frances Hook (a woman who disguised herself as a man to serve in the war) in Ward 2 of the Chattanooga hospital. In September 1862 Walker wrote to the War Department requesting employment on Secret Service to spy on the enemy, but the offer was declined. Finally, she was employed as a "Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon (civilian)" by the Army of the Cumberland in September 1863, becoming the first-ever female surgeon employed by the U.S. Army. Walker was later appointed assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry. During this service, she frequently crossed battle lines, treating civilians. On April 10, 1864 she was captured by Confederate troops and arrested as a spy, just after she finished helping a confederate doctor perform an amputation. She was sent to Castle Thunder in Richmond, Virginia and remained there until August 12, 1864 when she was released as part of a prisoner exchange. She went on to serve during the Battle of Atlanta and later as supervisor of a female prison in Louisville, Kentucky, and head of an orphanage in Tennessee. After the war, she became a writer and lecturer, supporting such issues as health care, temperance, women's rights and dress reform for women. She was frequently arrested for wearing masculine styled clothing and insisted on her right to wear clothing that she thought appropriate. She wrote two books that discussed women's rights and dress. She participated for several years with other leaders in the women's suffrage movement, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The initial stance of the movement, taking Dr. Walker's lead, was to say that women already had the right to vote, and Congress need only enact enabling legislation. After a number of fruitless years working at this, the movement took the new tack of working for a Constitutional amendment. This was diametrically opposed to Mary Walker's position, and she fell out of favor with the movement. She continued to attend conventions of the suffrage movement and distribute her own brand of literature, but was virtually ignored by the rest of the movement. Her penchant for wearing male-style clothing, including a top hat, only exacerbated the situation. She received a more positive reception in England than in the United States. After the war, Walker was recommended for the Medal of Honor by Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and George Henry Thomas. On November 11, 1865, President Andrew Johnson signed a bill to present her the medal. Citation: "Whereas it appears from official reports that Dr. Mary E. Walker, a graduate of medicine, "has rendered valuable service to the Government, and her efforts have been earnest and untiring in a variety of ways," and that she was assigned to duty and served as an assistant surgeon in charge of female prisoners at Louisville, Ky., upon the recommendation of Major-Generals Sherman and Thomas, and faithfully served as contract surgeon in the service of the United States, and has devoted herself with much patriotic zeal to the sick and wounded soldiers, both in the field and hospitals, to the detriment of her own health, and has also endured hardships as a prisoner of war four months in a Southern prison while acting as contract surgeon; and Whereas by reason of her not being a commissioned officer in the military service, a brevet or honorary rank cannot, under existing laws, be conferred upon her; and Whereas in the opinion of the President an honorable recognition of her services and sufferings should be made. It is ordered, That a testimonial thereof shall be hereby made and given to the said Dr. Mary E. Walker, and that the usual medal of honor for meritorious services be given her." In 1917, the U.S. Congress created a pension act for Medal of Honor recipients and in doing so created separate Army and Navy Medal of Honor Rolls. Only the Army decided to review eligibility for inclusion on the Army Medal of Honor Roll. The 1917 Medal of Honor Board deleted 911 names from the Army Medal of Honor Roll including that of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker and William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody. None of the 911 recipients were ordered to return their medals although on the question of whether the recipients could continue to wear their medals the Judge Advocate General advised the Medal of Honor Board that there was no obligation on the Army to police the matter. Walker continued to wear her medal until her death. Walker died on February 21, 1919, from natural causes at the age of 86 and is buried in Rural Cemetery Oswego, New York. She had a plain funeral, but an American flag was draped over her casket and she was buried in her black suit instead of a dress. Her death in 1919 came one year before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which guaranteed women the right to vote. President Jimmy Carter restored her medal posthumously in 1977.

In England, Elizabeth Garrett received her medical diploma from the Apothecaries' Hall.

In England, John Ruskin spoke out against women's suffrage.

In England, John Malcolm Ludlow published Woman's Work in the Church. Historical Notes on Deaconesses and Sisterhoods.

In England, Bessie Rayner Parkes published Essays on Women's Work. Dedicated to Mrs Jameson.

1866

Alfred Meyer (1866-1950) believed in living medicine, seeing the patient in his own world. His wife became what was later called a social worker, visiting Meyer's patients to learn more about their home backgrounds. Rather than seeing disturbance as a result of brain pathology he saw it as a reaction or maladjustment involving the total person. He helped to change the hospital's approach from custody to active therapy, and stressed the importance of unhurried conversations with patients.

The first municipal Board of Health is created by the New York Metropolitan Health Law.

The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), which originated in England in 1855, is founded in Boston by Grace Dodge. The YWCA establishes the first boarding house for female students, teachers, and factory workers in 1860 and the first child care facility in 1864. It initiates a history of "firsts" for helping women.

“Marital Power Exemplified in Mrs. Packard's Trial and Self-Defense from the Charge of Insanity; or, Three Years Imprisonment for Religious Belief, by the Arbitrary Will of a Husband, with an Appeal to the Government to so Change the Laws as to Afford Legal Protection to Married Women.” Hartford, CT: Case, Lockwood, Packard, Elizabeth Parsons Ware

The Eleventh National Women's Rights Convention, the first since the beginning of the Civil War, is held in New York City. Lucretia Mott presides over a merger between suffragists and the American Anti-Slavery Association: the new group is called the American Equal Rights Association.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing cruelty towards animals. Based in New York City since its inception in 1866, the organization's mission is "to provide effective means for the prevention of cruelty to animals throughout the United States." This organization was a partner in the creation of the American Humane Association in 1877 for the protection of children, pets and farm animals from abuse and neglect. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is formed. It predates the founding of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, established in 1875. Both predate any organization aimed at preventing cruelty to women. 

In England, Suffrage societies started in Edinburgh, London and Manchester.

In England, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon published Reasons for the Enfranchisement of Women.

In England, Emily Davies published The Higher Education of Women.

In England, Lydia Becker published Female Suffrage. (Reprinted from the Contemporary Review.)

In England, T. Chisholm Anstey Esq. published On Some Supposed Constitutional Restraints on the Parliamentary Franchise.

In England, Second CD Act

In England, Charlotte Carmichael Stopes published her essay Strong-Mindedness.

In England, First petition for the suffrage, signed by 1,499 eminent women, presented by John Stuart Mill. Signatories included Florence Nightingale and Mary Somerville.

In England, Isaac Baker Brown performed many clitoridectomies at his 50 bed private clinic in London. Eventually he was expelled from the Obstetrical Society.

1867

From the late 1860s until the 1970s, several American cities had ugly laws making it illegal for persons with "unsightly or disgusting" disabilities to appear in public. Some of these laws were called unsightly beggar ordinances. The first appearance of the ordinance seems to date to 1867 in San Francisco, California. The ordinance seems to have been welcomed particularly from the 1880s on in Western and particularly Midwestern cities with strong, networked cultures of reform, towns bound to each other and the rest of the nation by railroad ties. Its zone extended eastward, too. The state of Pennsylvania passed a state version of the law in the early 1890s. Some New Yorkers, inspired by Pennsylvania, made an unsuccessful attempt to get a city ordinance passed in 1895. The most commonly cited ugly law is that of the "City of Chicago Ordinance, 1911." The Chicago Municipal Code, sec. 36034 included an ordinance that provided: No person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object or improper person to be allowed in or on the public ways or other public places in this city, or shall therein or thereon expose himself to public view, under a penalty of not less than one dollar nor more than fifty dollars for each offense. Many states' ugly laws were not repealed until the mid-1970s. Chicago was the last to repeal its ugly law as late as 1974. Columbus, Ohio: General Offense Code, sec. 2387.04. Omaha, Nebraska: Unsightly Beggar Ordinance Nebraska Municipal Code of 1941, sec. 25. Punishments for being caught in public ranged from incarceration to fines of up to $50 for each offense.

“Life in a Lunatic Asylum: An Autobiographical Sketch.” London by Anonymous.

The state of Ohio authorizes county homes for children.

Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Clarina Nichols, and others travel to Kansas to agitate for women's suffrage. After months of campaigning, suffragists are defeated on the fall ballot.

A man in North Carolina is acquitted of giving his wife three licks with a switch about the size of one of his fingers, but smaller than his thumb. The reviewing appellate court later upheld the acquittal on the grounds that the court should "not interfere with family government in trifling cases." 

At the American Equal Rights Association annual meeting, opinions divide sharply on supporting the enfranchisement of black men before women.

In England, Ninon Kingsford published The Admission of Women to the Parliamentary Franchise.

In England, Professor F.W. Newman published Old England - Women's Right of Suffrage.

In England, Lydia Becker founded the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage.

In England, Helen Taylor published The Claims of Englishwomen to the Suffrage Considerered. (Reprinted from the Westminster Review.)

In England, John Stuart Mill's speech in the House of Commons for votes for women .

In England, Reform Act extended the vote to most working-class male householders.

1868

Mrs. Elizabeth Packard, (1816-1897) one of North America's first ex-insane asylum inmate activists, confined from 1860-63 in Illinois State Hospital for the Insane in Jacksonville, Illinois, published the first of several books and pamphlets in which she detailed her forced commitment by her husband in the Jacksonville (Illinois) insane Asylum.

Elizabeth Packard, founder of the Anti-Insane Asylum Society, published a series of books and pamphlets describing her experiences in the Illinois insane asylum to which her husband had had her committed. Elizabeth Packard was locked up in a state insane asylum in Illinois from 1860 - 1863 because she disagreed with some of her husband's religious views, had different ideas than he did about how to raise their children, and also because she opposed slavery while he was in favor of it. For daring to have such opinions, she spent three years confined as a madwoman.

In a series of publications and numerous public speeches, she recounted what happened to her and why laws and conditions in asylums needed to be changed. Some reports credit her years of work to getting 21-34 laws changed across the United States around these and related matters dealing with inmates' rights. She also visited asylum inmates in various states to offer her personal support. The American Bar Association, in a 1968 report, said that Elizabeth Packard was responsible for changes to commitment laws in Illinois, Iowa and Massachusetts and other states as well.

She was crucial to raising public consciousness in North America about the treatment of asylum inmates during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Some publications by Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard:

* Barbara Sapinsley, “The Private War of Mrs. Packard”. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

* 'Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard' in “Women of the Asylum: Voices from behind the Walls, 1840-1945”, edited by J. Geller and M. Harris. New York: Anchor Books, 1994: pages 58-68.

“Before I entered an insane asylum and learned its hidden life from the standpoint of the patient, I had not supposed that the inmates were outlaws, in the sense that the law did not protect them in any of their inalienable rights.” – Elizabeth Packard

She also founded the Anti-Insane Asylum Society in Illinois in 1868 (which apparently never became a viable organization) based on her experience of commitment in an Illinois Asylum. Her husband committed her because her religious beliefs were different than her,

From: Psychiatric News December 7, 2001

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/36/23/40

Volume 36 Number 23

© 2001 American Psychiatric Association

p. 40

History Notes

Pioneer for Patients’ Rights

By Lucy Ozarin, M.D.

While Dorothea Dix was pleading with state legislators in the mid-19th century to establish asylums for the mentally ill, Elizabeth Packard was engaged in a nationwide campaign to protect to the inmates of those asylums.

Mrs. Packard, the wife of a Presbyterian clergyman in Monteno, Ill., and mother of six children, was summarily committed in 1860 to the asylum in Jacksonville, Ill. At that time, Illinois law stated that “married women with infants who in judgment of the medical superintendents of the state asylums are evidently insane or distracted may be detained at the request of the husband or guardian without the evidence of insanity required in other cases.”

Mrs. Packard remained in the asylum for three years. She claimed her husband put her there because her liberal theological views differed from his Calvinist theology. She finally obtained a hearing before the asylum trustees, who ordered the asylum superintendent to return her to her husband. He subsequently locked her up in their home.

Learning that her husband was planning to have her committed to the Northhampton asylum in her native Massachusetts, Mrs. Packard smuggled a note to a friend who obtained a writ of habeus corpus from a local judge, and a jury trial over the issue followed. She was declared sane and then moved to her father’s house in Massachusetts, where she began a campaign against what she termed excesses of the asylums.

She published three books, which had extensive circulation and sales. (Copies of the books are in the APA Library Rare Books Room.)

The title page of the first book, published in 1866, reads: “Marital Power Exemplified in Mrs. Packard’s Trial and Self Deferral from the Charge of Insanity or Three Years Imprisonment for Religious Belief by the Arbitrary Will of a Husband with an Appeal to the Government to Change the Laws as to Afford Protection to Married Women.”

The second book, which was published in 1868, was titled The Prisoner’s Hidden Life or Insane Asylums Unveiled as Demonstrated by the Investigating Committee of the Legislature of Illinois Together with Mrs. Packard Coadjutor’s Testimony.

The third book, which came out in 1869, Modern Persecution or Insane Asylums Unveiled, recounted the experiences of patients whom Mrs. Packard met while she was in the asylum.

Having succeeded in arousing considerable public interest, Mrs. Packard fought for laws that would protect women’s rights regarding commitment, and she also championed a personal liberty bill, which the Illinois legislature passed in 1869. That law required a jury trial for before a person could be committed to an asylum, and it remained in effect for 25 years. Iowa enacted a similar law in 1872, and the Massachusetts legislature also took similar steps to safeguard the rights of patients.

Mrs. Packard’s campaign helped to mobilize sufficient public interest and support so that in 1880, a group of influential citizens and social reformers organized the National Society for the Protection of the Insane and the Prevention of Insanity. The society disbanded in 1886. Albert Deutsch, in his book The Mentally Ill in America, cites the unremitting antagonism of the National Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (forerunner of the American Psychiatric Association) as helping bring about the demise of the organization.

A long, unsigned editorial in the October 1869 issue of the American Journal of Insanity (now the American Journal of Psychiatry), presumably written by the editor, Dr. John Gray, superintendent of the Utica (N.Y.) State Hospital, begins, “For the last two or three years, the state of Illinois has been singularly under the influence of a handsome and talkative crazy woman and of a Legislature prompted by her to be crazy on at least one point,” and “an attractive person and a double-springed tongue gave force and persuasion to the direful romance of this fascinating woman, and she was successful enough, by her feminine arts, to bewitch a whole legislature.”

Dr. Gray portrayed Mrs. Packard as a crazy but fascinating (sexy?) woman, but perhaps she was an early feminist seeking the rights of women in a male-dominated society. Whichever was the case, she was quite successful.

On June 18, 1860, Mrs. Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard was abducted on her husband’s orders and taken to the insane asylum in Jacksonville, Illinois, where she spent the next three years. After she was released, she wrote profusely. In one volume, Modern Persecution or Insane Asylums Unveiled, she detailed her experiences during that time. For the first four months of my prison life, Dr. McFarland treated me himself, and caused me to be treated with all the respect of a hotel boarder, so far as lay in his power. As to medical treatment, I received none at all, either from himself, or his subordinates. And the same may be said with equal truth, of all the inmates. This is the general rule; those few cases where they receive any kind of medical treatment, are the exceptions. 0A little ale occasionally is the principal part of the medical treatment which these patients receive, unless his medical treatment consists in the “laying on of hands,” for this treatment is almost universally bestowed. But the manner in which this was practiced, varied very much in different cases. For the first four months the Doctor “laid his hands” very gently upon me, except that the pressure of my hand in his was sometimes quite perceptible, and sometimes, as I thought, longer continued than this healing process demanded! …But after these four months he laid his hands upon me in a different manner, and as I then thought and still do think, far too violently. There was no mistaking the character of these grips—no duplicity after this period, rendered this modern mode of treatment of doubtful interpretation to me. [The eighth] ward was then considered the worst in the house, inasmuch as it then contained some of the most dangerous class of patients, even worse than the fifth in this respect, and in respect to filth and pollution it surpassed the fifth at that time. It is not possible for me to conceive of a more fetid smell, than the atmosphere of this hall exhaled. An occupant of this hall would inevitably become so completely saturated with this most offensive effluvia that the odor of the eighth ward patients could be distinctly recognized at a great distance, even in the open air. I could, in a few moments after the Doctor put me in among them, even taste this most fetid scent at the pit of my stomach. Even our food and drink were so contaminated with it, we could taste nothing else sometimes. It at first seemed to me, I must soon become nothing less than a heap of putrefaction. But I have found out that I can live, move, breathe, and have a being, where I once thought I could not! The patients were never washed all over, although they were the lowest, filthiest class of prisoners. They could not wait upon themselves any more than an infant, in many instances, and none took the trouble to wait upon them. The accumulation of this defilement about their persons, their beds, their rooms, and the unfragrant puddles of water through which they would delight to wade and wallow, rendered the exhalations in every part of the hall almost intolerable. One night I was aroused from my slumbers by the screams of a new patient who was entered in my hall. The welcome she received from her keepers, Miss Smith and Miss Bailey, so frightened her that she supposed they were going to kill her. Therefore, for screaming under these circumstances, they forced her into a screen-room and locked her up. Still fearing the worst, she continued to call for “Help!” Instead of attempting to soothe and quiet her fears, they simply commanded her to stop screaming. But failing to obey their order, they then seized her violently and dragged her to the bathroom, where they plunged her into the bathtub of cold water. This shock so convulsed her in agony that she now screamed louder than before. They then drowned her voice by strangulation, by holding her under the water until nearly dead. When she could speak, she plead in the most piteous tones for “Help! Help!” But all in vain. The only response was “Will you scream any more?” She promised she would not, but to make it a thorough “subduing,” they plunged her several times after she had made them this promise! My room was directly opposite with open ventilators over both doors, I could distinctly hear all. This is what they call giving the patient a “good bath!” But the bewildered, frightened stranger finds it hard to see the “good” part of it. The patient was then led, wet and shivering, to her room, and ordered to bed with the threat, “If you halloo again, we shall give you another bath.”

Similarly, in Massachusetts at about the same time, Elizabeth Stone, also committed by her husband, tried to rally public opinion to the cause of stopping the unjust incarceration of the “insane.”

Stanton and Anthony have a falling out with longtime ally Horace Greely, editor of the New York Tribune. As a result, Stanton and Anthony begin publishing The Revolution, a weekly newspaper devoted to suffrage and other progressive causes.

Toledo State Hospital Massillon State Hospital

On the evening of November 18, 1868, the Columbus Asylum was almost wholly destroyed by fire. Six patients died in the fire, and the remaining 308 were transferred to the state’s asylums in Cleveland, Dayton and Cincinnati. The following year, the legislature authorized rebuilding the asylum on the same site but later decided to build on the hilltop west of downtown where 300 acres were purchased from William S. Sullivant for $250 per acre. The hospital was completed on July 4, 1877 at a cost just more than $1.5 million. State hospitals were established in Toledo in 1888 and in Massillon in 1898.

The Treaty of 1868 is negotiated between General Sherman and the Navajos. General Sherman insists that the Navajos select male leaders, thereby stripping women of their ability to participate in decision-making. The alien law destroys traditional relationships and concentrates power in the hands of male leaders. "Anglo" paternalism and patriarchy are introduced to Navajo men who learn several "traditions" including robbing women of economic and political power, and wife-beating. 

The Massachusetts Board of State Charities begins payments for orphans to board in private family homes.

The 14th amendment is ratified on July 9; it provides that all people born or naturalized in the United States are U.S. citizens and have rights no state can abridge or deny.

“Two years and four months in a lunatic asylum: From August 20th, 1863 to December 20th, 1865.” Saratoga Springs, NY: Van Benthuysen and Sons. Chase, Harim

“Mrs. Olsen’s Narrative of her One Year’s Imprisonment at Jacksonville Insane Asylum.” Appended to “The Prisoner’s Hidden Life or Insane Asylums Unveiled.” Elizabeth Packard. Chicago: Author. Olsen, Sophie.

“The Prisoner’s Hidden Life; or, Insane Asylums Unveiled.” Chicago: Author. Packard, Elizabeth Parsons Ware.

The Massachusetts Board of State Charities began paying for children to board in private family homes.

In England, General Election. Many women got on the register and voted. One woman (shop owner Lily Maxwell) voted in Manchester (for Jacob Bright).

In England, The Court of Common Pleas declared women's suffrage illegal.

In England, Publication of a list of MPs and other persons favourable to the Women's Suffrage Movement.

In England, Lydia Becker published Equality of Women, a paper read before the British Association at Norwich.

In England, Dr Pankhurst published The Right of Women to Vote Under the Reform Act of 1867.

In England, Frances Power Cobbe published Criminals, Idiots, Women and Minors: Is the Classification sound?

In England, Josephine Butler published The Education and Employment of Women.

1869

Sir Francis Galton, Influenced by Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species,’ publishes ‘Hereditary Genius,’ and argues that intellectual abilities are biological in nature.

The first wheelchair patent is registered with the U.S. Patent Office.

The first permanent state board of health and vital statistics is founded in Massachusetts.

Reasons for Admission to Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, 1864 to 1869

Central State Hospital in Virginia was established in 1869 exclusively for “colored insane.”

“The Life and Travels of Benjamin S. Snider: His Persecution, Fifteen Times a Prisoner.” Washington: The Author, Snider, Benjamin S.

In 1869, an agent was appointed to visit children in their homes. This was the beginning of placing out, a movement to care for children in families rather than institutions.

Propaganda flourished; if a textbook printed it and a teacher said it then it must be fact!

The President gave an 8 hour work day to federal employees all other workers still worked 10-12 if they wanted to or not.

The territory of Wyoming is the first to grant unrestricted suffrage to women. Arguments over the Fifteenth Amendment lead to a split in the movement.

Stanton and Anthony form the National Woman Suffrage Association; it allows only female membership and advocates for woman suffrage above all other issues. Lucy Stone forms the American Woman Suffrage Association, which supports the Fifteenth Amendment and invites men to participate.

In 1869, Susan B. Anthony occasionally mentioned abortion. Susan B. Anthony opposed abortion, which at the time was an unsafe medical procedure for women, endangering their health and life. She blamed men, laws and the "double standard" for driving women to abortion because they had no other options. "When a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is a sign that, by education or circumstances, she has been greatly wronged." She believed, as did many of the feminists of her era that only the achievement of women’s equality and freedom would end the need for abortion. Anthony used her anti-abortion writings as yet another argument for women’s rights. Woman’s rights Crusaders began marching through towns singing temperance songs.

In one of the first such court rulings, the parents of Samuel Fletcher, Jr. are found guilty of child abuse. Fletcher, who was born blind, was locked into the cellar of his family's house for several days by his parents. Upon escaping he notified authorities and his parents were arrested. They were fined $300 in one of the first court rulings that recognized children's right to be protected by law against abuse and cruelty.

Hungarian physician K.M. Benkert invents the term “homosexuality.” He argues against the legal repression of lesbians and gay men. “Their unfortunate conduct is not their fault,” says this “humanitarian psychiatrist,” because the urge is congenital (inborn).

Psychiatrist Karl von Westphal diagnoses a lesbian, labeling her “condition” as “contrary sexual feelings.” He concedes that the “condition” does not necessarily indicate insanity.

In England, Rev. Charles Kingsley published Women and Politics (reprinted from Macmillan's Magazine).

In England, Josephine Butler (ed.) published Woman's Work and Woman's Culture: a Series of Essays.

In England, First Women's college at Cambridge founded (Girton College).

In England, Mrs C.H. Spear published A Brief Essay on the Position of Women.

In England, John Stuart Mill published On the Subjection of Women.

In England, E. Lynn Linton published Ourselves: a Series of Essays on Women.

In England, Ladies' Educational Association founded in London. (It dissolved in 1878 when University College began admitting women).

In England, Municipal Reform Act gave women the vote in local elections.

In England, Telegraph service nationalised, and its twelve female staff thus became civil servants.

In England, Third CD Act .

In England, Women's Club and Institute opened in Newman St, London.

In England, Women's College opened at Hitchin (this became Girton).

In England, Endowed Schools Act created over 90 girls' schools.

1870’s

Jean Charcot worked with women and their hysteria for the first time.

Pierre Janet, a French medical psychologist, was the first to systemically explore and treat trauma memories that created hysteria (dissociation) symptoms. He believed these events were mentally "dissociated", set aside from ordinary processes of the mind, losing linkage to conscious thought.

Sylvia Fraser, incest survivor and author noted, 'we, as a society, prefer to believe infants lust after adults rather than parents initiate sexual contact with children'.

1870

“Lunatic Asylums: Their Use and Abuse.” New York. Titus, Mrs. Ann H.

“Narrative of a Pilgrim and Sojourner on Earth, from 1791 to the Present Year, 1870,” by Louisa Perina Courtauld Clemens.

Offices of the London School Board by Bodley and Garner, 1872-76. Demolished 1929.

In England, Prior to the Elementary Education Act 1870 act, very few schools existed, other than those run by the Church. The National Education League was established to promote elementary education for all children, free from religious control. The Act first introduced and enforced compulsory school attendance between the ages of 5 and 12, with school boards set up to ensure that children attended school; although exemptions were made for illness and travelling distance. The London School Board was highly influential and launched a number of political careers. The Church/State ethical divide in schooling, persists into the present day.

Archie Meek, who first suggested a union of mental patients to Thomas Ritchie, was born about 1870

The first of 112 of Thomas John Barnardo's Homes was founded, with destitution as the criterion for qualification. The project was supported by the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury and the first Earl Cairns. The system of operation was broadly as follows: infants and younger girls and boys are chiefly "boarded out" in rural districts; girls above 14 years of age are sent to 'industrial training homes' to be taught useful domestic occupations; boys above 17 years old are first tested in labour homes and then placed in employment at home, sent to sea or emigrated; boys between 13 – 17 years old were trained for trades for which they may be mentally or physically fitted.

The Massachusetts Board of State Charities appoints the first "agent" to visit children in foster homes.

The National Prison Association is founded in Cincinnati; it is renamed American Prison Association in 1954 and is now called the American Correctional Association.

The Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews of New York City opens; it is the first Jewish institutional home in the United States.

Ratification on February 3 of the 15th amendment to the U.S. Constitution establishes the right of citizens (except women) to vote, regardless of race, color, or previous servitude.

The American Woman Suffrage Association begins publishing the Woman's Journal, edited by Mary Livermore.

Esther Morris is appointed the justice of the peace of South Pass City, Wyoming: she is the first female government official.

The Fifteenth Amendment is ratified. Although its gender-neutral language appears to grant women the vote, women who go to the polls to test the amendment are turned away.

The Utah territory enfranchises women.

In England, Leavesden Mental Hospital was founded in 1870 on the outskirts of Abbots Langley by the Metropolitan Asylums Board as the Metropolitan Asylum for Chronic Imbeciles. At the same time the St Pancras Union Workhouse established an Industrial School across the road. In 1920, the asylum was renamed the Leavesden Mental Hospital. The London County Council took control in 1930. In April, 1932, the former St Pancras Industrial School was taken over as an annex for chronic cases. The hospital closed in 1997. The Jack the Ripper suspect, Aaron Kosminski, was admitted to Leavesden Asylum on 19 April 1894. Case notes indicate that Kosminski had been ill since at least 1885. His insanity took the form of auditory hallucinations, a paranoid fear of being fed by other people that drove him to pick up and eat food dropped as litter, and a refusal to wash or bathe.

In England, Women lost the right to retain British nationality when marrying a foreigner.

In England, Cambridge Local Examinations opened to girls and women.

In England, Education Act improved both schooling for girls and the teaching profession for women.

In England, School Board Act allowed women to stand for election. Elizabeth Garrett (later Anderson) and Emily Davies elected in London; Miss Becker in Manchester.

In England, Exams opened to women at Queen's University, Ireland.

In England, First Married Woman's Property Act .

In England, John D. Milne published Industrial Employment of Women, in the Middle and Lower Ranks.

In England, Josephine Butler published On the Moral Reclaimability of Prostitutes.

In England, The Women's Suffrage Journal first published. It continued monthly for 20 years.

In England, Mary Taylor published The First Duty of Women: a Series of Articles reprinted from the Victoria Magazine.

In England, Mrs Wm. Grey published Is the Exercise of Suffrage Unfeminine?

In England, Lady Amberley published her lecture The Claims of Women

In England, Ladies National Association for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts founded by Josephine Butler.

In England, Married Women's Property Act passed for England.

In England, National Indian Association founded by Miss Carpenter to improve the education of Indian women.

In England, Vigilance Association founded, chiefly engaged in women's issues.

1871

Alabama is the first state to rescind the legal right of men to beat their wives (Fulgrahm v. State). Massachusetts also declares wife beating illegal. 

“Behind Bars.” Boston: Lee & Shepard. Lunt, Adeline T.P.

The Descent of Man, published by Charles Darwin, applies the theory of evolution to the human species, thus breaking the authority of theologians in the life sciences and providing a basis for a scientific approach to humans and their social relationships.

In England, The Ladies' Life Assurance Company founded. Married women could, since the 1870 MWPA, insure their own lives with their own money.

In England, Home for Deserted Mothers and Infants founded at 3 Cumberland St, London.

In England, Working Women's Club changed to Berner Club. Moved to 9 Berners Street, London.

In England, A debate took place in the House of Commons on the Women's Disabilities Bill.

In England, John Walter Bourke published The Emancipation of Women (a lecture).

In England, A.H. published Words of Weight in the Woman Question (1,176 quotations arranged so as to form a consecutive argument).

In England, Ladies' National Health Association founded by Dr Elizabeth Blackwell.

In England, National Association for Promoting the Medical Education of Women founded. (Still extant 1894.)

In England, Law regarding married women's property changed in Ireland.

In England, National Union for Improving the Education of women founded by Mrs Grey.

1872

Clitoridectomies are performed in association with women’s mental disorders.

In England, Clifford Allbutt used the passage of electric current through the head for treatment of mania, brain-wasting, dementia and melancholia.

The American Public Health Association is founded (the Social Work Section is later formed in 1976).

“The Dangerous Classes of New York” and “Twenty, Years' Work among Them,” by Charles Loring Brace, exposes the conditions of immigrants and children and helps initiate the adoption movement in the United States.

“My Outlawry, A Tale of Madhouse Life.” London, by Louisa Lowe

“Report of a Case Heard in Queen's Bench, November 22nd, 1872, Charging the Commissioners in Lunacy with Concurring in the Improper Detention of a Falsely-Alleged Lunatic and Wrongfully Tampering with her Correspondence.” London by Louisa Lowe.

“How an Old Woman Obtained Passive Writing and the Outcome Thereof.” London, by Louisa Lowe

“A Nineteenth Century Adaptation of Old Inventions to the Repression of New Thoughts and Personal Liberty.” London, by Louisa Lowe

“Gagging in Madhouses as Practised by Government Servants in a Letter to the People, by one of the Gagged.” London, by Louisa Lowe

Alexander G. Bell opened speech school for teachers of the deaf in Boston.

The New York State Charities Aid Association was organized. Charities were comprised mostly of upper class elite women.

The beginning of the Urban Mission Movement. Water Street Mission opened in New York City by Jerry and Maria McAuley, both redeemed alcoholics. Catered to homeless inebriates and special needs of the Skid Row alcoholic. Forerunner of the Salvation Army, viewed recovery from addiction as a process of religious conversion - a process of spiritual rebirth

A suffrage proposal before the Dakota Territory legislature loses by one vote.

“The Lunacy Laws and Trade in Lunacy in a Correspondence with the Earl of Shaftesbury.” London, by Louisa Lowe

In England, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon published Reasons for and against the Enfranchisement of Women.

In England, Infant Life Protection Act tries to abolish baby-farming.

In England, Girls' Public Day School Company founded.

In England, Baroness Coutts became the first woman to be granted the Freedom of the City of London.

In England, Girton College founded. Staff and students of Hitchin College moved into it.

In England, Infant Life Protection Act.

In England, New Bastardy Act passed. Fathers once again responsible (equally with the mother) for support of illegitimate children.

In England, New Hospital for Women founded at Marylebone, with female doctors.

1873

“Modern Persecution; or Insane Asylums Unveiled.” Hartford: Author: Packard, Elizabeth Parsons Ware.

The Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles for Immoral Use it was part of a campaign for legislating public morality in the United States. The Comstock Law was meant to stop trade in "obscene literature" and "immoral articles." In reality, the Comstock Law targeted not only obscenity and "dirty books" but also birth control devices, abortion, and information on sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases. The Comstock Law was widely used to prosecute those who distributed such information.

On June 19 the prominent American suffragist Susan B. Anthony was sentenced and fined for voting in the 1872 Presidential Election. Anthony was arrested in November 1872 for "illegally voting" as a woman and her two-day trial concluded in Rochester, New York. At her trial, the judge refused to allow Anthony to testify on her own behalf and, after she was convicted, he read an opinion that he had written before the trial even started. The sentence was a $100 fine to which she declared, "I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.” True to her words, she never paid the fine for the rest of her life!

In England, Custody of Infants Act passed. Enabled a husband, upon separation, to give up custody of children to his wife.

In England, Reported that, of 50,000 children born annually out of wedlock, 30,000 died within 6 months.

In England, First School Board Election in Scotland: 20 women elected.

In England, First school of the Girls' Public Day School Company opened at Chelsea.

In England, Mrs Nassau Senior appointed Assistant Inspector of Workhouses. First ever government appointment of a lady.

In England, Second English School Board.

1874

Carl Wernicke published his work on the frontal lobe, detailing that damage to a specific area damages the ability to understand or produce language.

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) – the first national organization composed of community-based groups – was founded and focused on the problems that alcohol caused families and society. The Women's Christian Temperance Union is founded by Annie Wittenmeyer of Iowa. Within a few years the WCTU will have 25,000 members, and under the leadership of Frances Willard, will provide important support to the suffrage movement.

In the case of Minor vs. Happersett, the Supreme Court rules that the Fourteenth Amendment does not grant women the right to vote.

Representatives of the State Boards of Charities of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Wisconsin organize the Conference of Boards of Public Charities within the American Social Science Association on May 20. An annual conference, in 1879 it became the National Conference of Charities and Correction in a takeover by the voluntary agencies. It was a precursor to the National Conference of Social Work, renamed in 1917. The organization became the National Council on Social Welfare in July 1956.

A referendum gives Michigan's male voters the chance to enfranchise women, but they vote against women's suffrage.

The "finger-switch" rule is disavowed when the Supreme Court of North Carolina rules that "the husband has no right to chastise his wife under any circumstances." The court goes on to say, "If no permanent injury has been inflicted, nor malice, cruelty nor dangerous violence shown by the husband, it is better to draw the curtain, shut out the public gaze and leave the parties to forget and forgive."

Opening its doors, the Athens Lunatic Asylum welcomed its first patient in 1874. This state-of-the-art mental hospital was based on the design of renowned architect Thomas Kirkbride and embraced the current societal trends toward institutionalizing the insane. The hospital began as a type of long- term care for those not easily accepted or able to function in society. The typical meaning of “asylum” at the time was a safe haven with little likelihood of departure.

“Ten Years and Ten Months in Lunatic Asylums in Different States.” Hoosick Falls: The Author, Swan, Moses

Mary Ellen Wilson (1864–1956) or sometimes Mary Ellen McCormack was an American whose case of child abuse led to the creation of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. As an eight-year old, she was severely abused by her stepparents, Francis and Mary Connolly. Mary Ellen was born to Francis and Thomas Wilson of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. Upon Thomas's death, Francis had to take a job and was no longer able to stay at home to raise her infant daughter. She boarded her daughter with a woman named Mary Score, a common practice at the time. When Francis Wilson's financial situation worsened, she began to miss her visitation dates with her daughter and was no longer able to make child care payments to Score. Score turned Mary Ellen, now almost two, into the New York City Department of Charities. The Department placed Mary Ellen under the care of Mary Connolly and Thomas McCormack. According to Mary Connolly's court testimony, Thomas McCormack, Mary Connolly's first husband, claimed to be Mary Ellen Wilson's biological father. The Department of Charities placed Mary Ellen into the McCormacks' care illegally, without the proper papers or receipts served. Thomas McCormack signed an "indenture" agreement upon retrieving Mary Ellen from the Department of Charities' care, but did not explain his or his wife's relationship with the child to Commissioner of Charities and Correction. The McCormacks were required to report the child's condition annually to the Department, but, according to Mary Connolly's later court testimony, this only occurred once or twice during Mary Ellen's stay. Mary Ellen Wilson was not allowed to go outside, except at night in her own yard, and was regularly beaten by her adopted parents. Police rescue the eight year old after the head of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals calls them on Mary Ellen's behalf. Mrs. Connelly was sentenced to jail for one year. That year the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded, the first organization of its kind. Shortly after Mary Ellen came into the McCormacks' care, Thomas McCormack died. Mary McCormack married Francis Connolly, moving together with Mary Ellen to an apartment on West 41st Street. It was at this address that neighbors first became aware of young Mary Ellen's mistreatment. When the Connollys moved to a new address, one of the concerned neighbors from their 41st Street apartment asked Etta Angell Wheeler, a Methodist missionary who worked in the area, to check in on the child. Wheeler, under the pretext of asking Mrs. Connolly's help in caring for Connolly's new neighbor, the chronically ill and home-bound Mary Smitt, gained access to the Connollys' apartment to see Mary Ellen's state for herself. When Ms. Wheeler saw evidence of physical abuse, malnourishment, and neglect in Mary Ellen's condition, Wheeler began to research legal options to redress and protect the young girl. After finding the local authorities reluctant to act upon the child cruelty laws currently in place, Wheeler turned to a local advocate for the animal humane movement and the founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Henry Bergh. With the help of neighbors' testimony, Wheeler and Burgh successfully removed Mary Ellen from the Connolly home and took Mary Connolly to trial. Elbridge Thomas Gerry of American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals took her case to the New York State Supreme Court in 1874. She was now 10 years old. The deliberate cruelties and deprivations inflicted on Mary Ellen Wilson by her adopted parents included the following: regular and severe beatings; insufficient food; being forced to sleep on the floor; having no warm clothes to wear in cold weather; being frequently left alone inside a darkened, locked room; being forbidden to go outdoors, except at night in her own yard. The child testified in court regarding the abuse she had suffered, and afterward – on April 10, 1874 – she said: “My father and mother are both dead. I don’t know how old I am. I have no recollection of a time when I did not live with the Connollys. Mamma has been in the habit of whipping and beating me almost every day. She used to whip me with a twisted whip—a raw hide. The whip always left a black and blue mark on my body. I have now the black and blue marks on my head which were made by mamma, and also a cut on the left side of my forehead which was made by a pair of scissors. She struck me with the scissors and cut me; I have no recollection of ever having been kissed by any one—have never been kissed by mamma. I have never been taken on my mamma's lap and caressed or petted. I never dared to speak to anybody, because if I did I would get whipped. I do not know for what I was whipped—mamma never said anything to me when she whipped me. I do not want to go back to live with mamma, because she beats me so. I have no recollection ever being on the street in my life.” Mrs. Connolly was sentenced to jail for one year. That year the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded, the first organization of its kind. In 1888 at age 24, Mary Ellen married Louis Schutt. They had two children together. Schutt had three children from his previous marriage, and they later adopted an orphaned girl. Mary Ellen died in 1956, at 92. Mary Ellen’s case history is considered crucial to the beginnings of Social Work as a profession.

In England, College for Working Women opened in Fitzroy St, London.

In England, Emma Paterson published a series of articles about sweated female labour and called a conference to discuss the problem.

In England, Emma Paterson formed the Women's Protective and Provident League.

In England, Emma Paterson formed the Society of Women Employed in Bookbinding with 300 members.

In England, London School of Medicine for Women founded.

In England, Protection Orders granted to wives in Scotland.

In England, Women's Peace and Arbitration Auxiliary of the London Peace Society formed.

In England, Dr Henry Maudsley published Sex and Mind in Education.

In England, Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson published Sex and Mind in Education: A Reply.

1875

New York State grants per capita subsidies to the New York Catholic Protectory for the care of children who would otherwise be public charges.

The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is incorporated. The "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children" was formed.

William Pryor Letchworth (May 26, 1823 – December 1, 1910) was an American businessman notable for his charitable work. In 1873, he accepted an appointment to the New York State Board of Charities. "In 1875 he had inspected all the orphan asylums, poor-houses, city alms houses, and juvenile reformatories in the state which had an aggregate population of 17,791 children." The result of his investigation was a successful recommendation to remove all children under 2 years of age from these institutions. In 1878, Letchworth was elected to President of the Board. Letchworth resigned from the State Board of Charities in 1897. He then spent the next few years traveling around Europe and the United States at his own expense to explore the plight of the insane, epileptics and poor children. From this research he wrote two books entitled "The Insane in Foreign Countries" and "Care and Treatment of Epileptics". Many of his methods would later be used by Craig Colony, a State epileptic hospital he helped to establish in Western New York in 1896. His charity work was extended as he served as President for the National Association for the Study of Epilepsy and the Care of Treatment of Epilepsy, and as President of the First New York State Conference of Charities and Corrections, as well as President of the National Conference of Charities and Correction held in St. Louis in 1884.

The American Neurological Association was established by eighteen physicians at a meeting in New York City in 1875 and the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases was designated as their official organ in the following year.

Eastern Asylum for the Colored Insane, Goldsboro, North Carolina, 1875

North Carolina General Assembly appropriated $10,000 to build a “colored insane asylum”

Michigan and Minnesota women win the right to vote in school elections.

In England, Ernest Eiloart published The Laws Relating to Women.

In England, Emma Paterson formed the Society of Dressmakers, Milliners and Mantlemakers.

In England, Albermarle Club opened. Admits ladies and gentlemen.

In England, Amendment to the Offences Against the Person Act raised the age of consent to 13.

In England, Employment of Women Office opened in Brighton.

In England, First female clerks employed by Post Office Savings Bank.

In England, First woman elected as Poor Law Guardian (Martha Merrington, South Kensington.)

In England, First woman lawyer's office opened in London by Miss Orme.

In England, Madras Medical School opened to women.

In England, Metropolitan and National Nursing Association formed.

In England, Newnham College for Ladies opened at Cambridge.

In England, Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland opened its exams to women.

In England, Women delegates admitted to the Trades' Congress in Glasgow.

1876

The New York State Reformatory at Elmira is founded; it is a model penal institution for children. Zebulon K. Brockway, a noted corrections reformer and founder of the National Prison Association, is appointed as the first warden.

The American Association for the Study of the Feeble-Minded is organized. (The name is changed to the American Association on Mental Deficiency in 1933 and to the American Association on Mental Retardation in 1987)

Alexander Bell got patent for his telephone invention; exhibited it at Philadelphia Exposition that summer.

“A Mad World and Its Inhabitants.” New York: Appleton by Chambers, Julius

“Lunatic Asylums: and How I Became an Inmate of One.” Chicago: Ottaway and Colbert, Metcalf, Ada.

Working Men's Party proposes banning the employment of children under the age of 14.

In England, British Women's Temperance Association founded.

In England, Emma Paterson formed the Society of Upholsteresses (survived till 1894).

In England, Employment for Women office opened in Glasgow.

In England, First woman pharmacist in London, Miss Isabella Clarke.

In England, King and Queen's College of Physicians, Ireland, confers medical degrees on women.

In England, Manchester New College admits women.

In England, St Andrews University instituted a Diploma for Women, the L.L.A.

In England, Plan-tracing office for women opened by Miss Crosbie.

In England, Russell-Gurney's Act enabled universities to admit women to degrees.

In England, Scholarships for women established at Bristol University College.

1877

The first Charity Organization Society is founded in December in Buffalo by the Reverend S. Humphreys Gurteen. The society operates on four principles: (1) detailed investigation of applicants, (2) a central system of registration to avoid duplication, (3) cooperation between the various relief agencies, and (4) extensive use of the volunteers in the role of "friendly visitors."

The roots of the Take Back the Night rallies were started by women to protest the fear and violence they felt from what was being done to them, the women held a candle and walked through the streets singing.

“Am I a Lunatic? Or, Dr. Henry T. Helmbold's Exposure of his Personal Experience in the Lunatic Asylums of Europe and America.” New York: Helmbold, Henry

Formation of the American Humane Association for the protection of children, pets and farm animals from abuse and neglect. The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and several Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals across the U.S. joined together to form the American Humane Association.

In England, Manchester and Salford College for women founded.

In England, Royal Free Hospital admits women as medical students.

In England, School Board elections return many women candidates.

In England, Teachers Training and Registration Society formed.

In England, The first five women passed their medical degree examinations at King and Queen's College of Physicians, Ireland.

In England, Trinity College, London, opens musical exams to women.

In England, University of St Andrews admits women to its Literate in Arts degree.

In England, Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act 1857 for publishing Charles Knowlton's Fruits of Philosophy, a work on birth control . They were convicted but acquitted on appeal, the subsequent publicity resulting in a decline in the birth rate. Mrs Besant later published The Law of Population.

In England, Women's deputation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in support of the Women's Disabilities Removal Bill (that would give women the vote).

1878

G. Stanley Hall received the first American Ph.D. in psychology. He later founded the American Psychological Association.

“The History of My Orphanage, or the Outpourings of an Alleged Lunatic.” London by Georgina Weldon.

Joel W. Smith presents his Modified Braille to the American Association of Instructors of the Blind. The association rejects his system, continuing to endorse instead New York Point, which blind readers complain is more difficult to read and write. What follows is a “War of the Dots” in which blind advocates for the most part prefer Modified Braille, while sighted teachers and administrators, who control funds for transcribing, prefer New York Point. It was the first time the users of disability services wanted some thing different from the service providers and got together on it.

“The Mystic Key; or The Asylum Secret Unlocked.” Hartford: Author, Packard, Elizabeth Parsons Ware.

A federal amendment to grant women the right to vote is introduced for the first time by Senator A.A. Sargeant of California.

The first International Woman's Rights Congress is held in Paris, France.

Francis Power Cobbe publishes Wife Torture in England. She denounces the treatment of wives in Liverpool's "Kicking District." She documents 6,000 of the most brutal assaults on women over a 3-year period who had been maimed, blinded, trampled, burned and murdered. Cobbe presents a theory that abuse continues because of the belief that a man's wife is his property. Her concerns are moved forward by male parliamentarians and the Matrimonial Causes Act is passed. The Act allows victims of violence to obtain a legal separation from the husband; entitles them custody of the children; and to retain earnings and property secured during the separation. Such a separation order can only be obtained if the husband has been convicted of aggravated assault and the court considers her in grave danger. 

In England, Miss Eleanor Ormerod became the first woman elected to membership of the Meteorological Society.

In England, Surgical registrar Miss Louisa Aldrich Blake became the first woman to be awarded the degree of diploma of M.S. Lond.

In England, Married Women's Property Law amended in Scotland.

In England, W. Gregory Walker published The Married Women's Property Acts, their relation to the Doctrine of Separate Uses.

In England, Frances Power Cobbe published Wife Torture in England, a tract about domestic violence .

In England, Matrimonial Causes Amendment Act helped battered wives by allowing a judicial separation, maintenance payments and children to remain with the mother.

In England, London University became the first to grant degrees and full membership to women.

1879

Wilhelm Wundt established the first formal psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany, marking the formal beginning of the study of human emotions, behaviors, and cognitions, and where he introduced a scientific approach to psychology and performed many experiments to measure peoples' reaction time. This event is considered the birth of psychology. Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German physician, psychologist, physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the founding figures of modern psychology. As a matter of fact, Wundt, who noted psychology as a science apart from biology and philosophy, was the first person to ever call himself a Psychologist. He is widely regarded as the "father of experimental psychology". In 1879, Wundt founded the first formal laboratory for psychological research at the University of Leipzig. This marked psychology as an independent field of study. By creating this laboratory he was able to explore the nature of religious beliefs, identify mental disorders and abnormal behavior, and find damaged parts of the brain. In doing so, he was able to establish psychology as a separate science from other topics. He also formed the first journal for psychological research in 1881. Wundt applied himself to writing a work that came to be one of the most important in the history of psychology, Principles of Physiological Psychology in 1874. This was the first textbook that was written pertaining to the field of psychology. Wundt claimed that the book was "an attempt to mark out [psychology] as a new domain of science.” The Principles utilized a system of psychology that sought to investigate the immediate experiences of consciousness, including feelings, emotions, volitions and ideas, mainly explored through Wundt's system of "internal perception", or the self-examination of conscious experience by objective observation of one's consciousness.

Francis Galton utilizes the method of word association.

Franklin B. Sanborn, chair of the Massachusetts State Board of Charities, advocates use of foster homes for delinquent and dependent children.

The Conference of Boards of Public Charities is renamed the National Conference of Charities and Correction in the first session, independent of the American Social Science Association (1865).

Lightner Witmer uses for the first time the term clinical psychology.

“A Sketch of Psychiatry in Southern States.” Presidential Address, American Medico-Psychological Association.Baltimore. Powell,T.O.

“Behind the Scenes; Or, Life in an Insane Asylum.” Chicago: Culver. Smith, Lydia Adeline Jackson Button; Hoyne and Co.

“I was therefore ‘removed,’ half-dying, in a state of semi-consciousness, I can scarcely remember how, to the castellated mansion mentioned in my first chapter. The wrong should have been impossible, of course; but it is possible, and it is law. My liberty, and my very existence as an individual being, had been signed away behind my back. In my weakened perceptions I at first thought that the mansion was an hotel. Left alone in a big room on the first evening, I was puzzled by the entrance of a wild-looking man, who described figures in the air with his hand, to an accompaniment of gibber, ate a pudding with his fingers at the other end of a long table, and retired. My nerve was shaken to its weakest, remember; and I was alone with him! It was not an hotel. It was a lunatic asylum.” Thus the barrister and author Herman Charles Merivale (1839-1906) recounted his first evening in the lunatic asylum that was to be his home for several months in 1875, in My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, by a Sane Patient, published in 1879. The “castellated mansion” of Merivale’s nightmarish recollection was Ticehurst House, an 18th-century pile in the depths of the Weald of Sussex, that had by Merivale’s day been in operation for about eighty years as a private madhouse run by a local family of medical practitioners, the Newingtons. Merivale was admitted to the asylum on 23 February 1875 and from that date until his release there are regular bulletins from the superintending physician on his mental state, attitude to the staff, sleeping habits, drug treatment, food intake, bowel movements, trips into the country, and a host of other indications of his progress, at first on a daily basis and gradually reducing to an intermittent, perfunctory note. On release on 8 September he is described as ‘relieved’, although there is little evidence in the clinical notes of the previous six months of any improvement in his condition, beyond his eventual agreement to attend church. Sure enough, Merivale was back in Ticehurst within a year and unsurprisingly described as ‘never thoroughly cured’. His situation had apparently taken a turn for the worse: he was now not only suicidal but a danger to others, having attempted to strangle his companion. His notes conclude with a copy of a letter to the Commissioners of Lunacy from Dr Newington advising against Merivale’s transfer out of the asylum to ‘single care’, in other words care at home, in view of his violent tendencies. This recommendation was evidently ignored as Merivale was transferred out on 9 March 1877, ‘not improved’. Merivale’s book gives a rare personal account of the asylum experience. For most of the thousand patients treated at Ticehurst, there is no patient’s voice to set against the institutional record, but there are occasional glimpses into their world in the written ramblings or disturbing sketches that were included in the casebooks as evidence of their mental condition.

In England, Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville opened in Oxford.

In England, London School Board elects nine women.

In England, Pharmaceutical Society admits women as members.

1880

The issue of housing Black and white mental patients in the same facility was a struggle in both Northern and Southern States since many leading mental health experts felt that it undermined the mental health of white patients to be housed with African-Americans. The distress of having Blacks and white patients in close proximity to one another was balanced by the unwillingness to fund segregated facilities for black patients. In March 1875, the North Carolina General Assembly appropriated $10,000 to build a colored insane asylum. The Eastern Asylum for the Colored Insane was opened in 1880 with accommodations for four hundred and twenty patients. The facility at Goldsboro underwent several name changes throughout its history and remains in operation as a psychiatric facility

Seven categories of mental illness used for U.S. census data: mania, melancholia, monomania, paresis, dementia, dipsomania, epilepsy. The 1880 census of mentally ill persons, the most complete survey ever carried out in the United States, identified 40,942 “insane persons” in “hospitals and asylums for the insane.” It also reported finding only 397 “insane persons” in jails and prisons, constituting less than 1 percent (0.7 percent) of the jail and prison population.

By 1880 a coalition of neurologists, charity reformers and a few reform minded asylum superintendents were ready to form the National Association for the Protection of the Insane and the Prevention of Insanity (N.A.P.I.P.I.). Dedicated (in George Miller Beard's words) to "obtaining universal recognition of the fact that it is no disgrace to be crazy," this organization provided a forum for neurologists to continue their attack on the management of American asylums. They pointed to the growing isolation of asylum superintendents from new developments in medicine, the seemingly excessive preoccupation of the superintendents with the physical plants of their asylums, the superintendents' lack of scientific training and the paucity of scientific research done in asylums. They also joined with English psychiatrists in complaining about the use of mechanical restraints on insane patients in the United States.

The Salvation Army is founded in the United Statei after William Booth established it in London in 1878.

The International Congress of Educators of the Deaf, at a conference in Milan, Italy, calls for the suppression of sign languages and the firing of all deaf teachers at schools for the deaf. This triumph of oralism is seen by deaf advocates as a direct attack upon their culture.

The National Convention of Deaf Mutes meets in Cincinnati, Ohio, the nucleus of what will become the National Association of the Deaf (NAD). The first major issue taken on by the NAD is oralism and the suppression of American Sign Language.

“A Blighted Life: A True Story.” (orig. pub. 1880; reprinted, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996) by Bulwer Rosina Lytton.

In England, following campaigning by the National Education League the Elementary Education Act 1880 made schooling compulsory until the age of ten and also established attendance officers to enforce attendance, so that parents who objected to compulsory education, arguing they needed children to earn a wage, could be fined for keeping their children out of school. School leaving age was raised with successive Acts from ten to age fourteen in 1918.

In England, the law is changed to allow a wife who had been habitually beaten by her husband to the point of "endangering her life" to separate from him, but cannot divorce him. 

In England, Bill giving greater protection to little girls under 13

In England, Burials Bill gives women the right to conduct funeral services.

In England, Charter of Royal University of Ireland admits women as members.

In England, First suffrage demonstration, in Manchester. Followed by demos in other towns.

In England, First three women to graduate in Britain were Elizabeth Creak, Marianne Andrews and Elizabeth Hills.

In England, Mason College founded in Birmingham.

In England, Mrs James Brander appointed Inspector of Schools in Madras.

1881

At the 40th anniversary of the Medico-Psychological Association at University College, Daniel Hake Tuke, the president, paid respect to Dorthea Dix, 'who has a claim to the gratitude of mankind for having consecrated the best years of her life to the fearless advocacy of the cause of the insane.’

Clara Barton organizes the American Association of the Red Cross, which is renamed the American National Red Cross in 1893 and the American Red Cross in 1978.

Booker T Washington founds the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, a leading black educational institution that emphasizes industrial training as a means to self-respect and economic independence for African Americans.

Howe Press is established to emboss books, first in Boston Line Type and later in Braille, a new technology created by Louis Braille to help people who are blind read and write.

[In cases of enuresis, or bedwetting] I apply usually [in the region of the boy’s sexual organ] a tolerably strong current for one to two minutes; at the close, a wire electrode is introduced about two centimeters into the urethra — in girls I apply “small” sponge electrode between the labia close to the meatus urethrae — and the faradic current passed for one to two minutes with such a strength that a distinct, somewhat painful sensation is produced. WILHELM ERB (German physician), Handbook of Electrotherapy, 1881,

The first National Convention of the American Federation of Labor passes a resolution calling on states to ban children under 14 from all gainful employment.

In England, Cambridge University admits women to Tripos Examinations.

In England, Civil Service appoints female clerks by open competition.

In England, Durham University votes to admit women.

In England, Isle of Man gives the vote to 700 women property owners

In England, Married Women's Property Act for Scotland.

In England, Poor Law Guardians Association for Promoting the Return of ladies founded; seven ladies elected in London.

1882

Maryland is the first state to pass a law that makes wife-beating a crime, punishable by 40 lashes, or a year in jail. 

Francis Galton in England established an anthropometric lab for the statistical analysis of differences among people.

“An Insight into an Insane Asylum.” Louisville, KY: The Author, Camp, Joseph.

“How I Escaped the Mad Doctors.” London by Georgina Weldon.

Due to subversion by the liquor industry, the suffragists lose electoral battles in Nebraska and Indiana.

In England, Married Women's Property Act passed. No difference between femme sole and femme couverte. A married woman having separate property was liable for the support of her parents, husband, children and grandchildren becoming chargeable to any union or parish.

In England, Municipal Franchise Act for Scotland allows women to vote in local elections .

In England, Florence Pomeroy, Viscountess Harberton, president of the Rational Dress movement, introduced her invention of the divided skirt to the Natioanl Health Society.

1883

Sir Francis Galton in England coins the term eugenics, in his book “Essays in Eugenics,” to describe his pseudo-science of “improving the stock” of humanity. Galton speculated, “The question was then forced upon me – Could not the race of men be similarly improved? Could not the undesirables be got rid of and the desirables multiplied?” Sir Frances Galton’s Pseudo scientific theory was to improve the stock of people by preventing people with disabilities, people of color, Catholics, Jews, poor people, and other undesirables from having children. These people were refused by law to marry, they were sterilized against their will including children. The eugenics movement, taken up by Americans, leads to passage in the United States of laws to prevent people with various disabilities from moving to this country, marrying, or having children. In many instances, it leads to the institutionalization and forced sterilization of people with disabilities or poor people, including children. Eugenics campaigns against people of color and immigrants led to passage of “Jim Crow” laws in the South and legislation restricting immigration by southern and eastern Europeans, Asians, Africans, and Jews. The U.S. eugenics movement was a key inspiration for Nazi Germany's similar programs to segregate and sterilize mentally disabled people, and German scientists even traveled to California to study our program of forced sterilization.

William Edward Hartpole Lecky, (26 March 1838–22 October 1903), an Irish historian (father of positive atheism) said, "Once a system of reward and punishment is set up and widely broadcast rulers will never be seriously questioned".

Emil Kraepelin (circa 1886)

Mental illness is studied more scientifically as German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin distinguishes mental disorders. Kraepelin is sometimes referred to as the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, as well as of psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics. Kraepelin believed the chief origin of psychiatric disease to be biological and genetic malfunction. Though subsequent research will disprove some of his findings, his fundamental distinction between manic-depressive psychosis and schizophrenia holds to this day. Kraepelin's major work, "Compendium der Psychiatrie", was first published in 1883. In it, he argued that psychiatry was a branch of medical science and should be investigated by observation and experimentation like the other natural sciences. He called for research into the physical causes of mental illness, and started to establish the foundations of the modern classification system for mental disorders. Kraepelin proposed that by studying case histories and identifying specific disorders, the progression of mental illness could be predicted, after taking into account individual differences in personality and patient age at the onset of disease. Kraepelin spoke out against the barbarous treatment that was prevalent in the psychiatric asylums of the time, and crusaded against alcohol, capital punishment and the imprisonment rather than treatment of the insane. Kraepelin postulated that there is a specific brain or other biological pathology underlying each of the major psychiatric disorders. As a colleague of Alois Alzheimer, and co-discoverer of Alzheimer's disease, it was his laboratory which discovered its pathologic basis. Kraepelin was confident that it would someday be possible to identify the pathologic basis of each of the major psychiatric disorders. Upon moving to become Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the University of Munich in 1903, Kraepelin increasingly wrote on social policy issues. He was a strong and influential proponent of eugenics and racial hygiene. His publications included a focus on alcoholism, crime, degeneration and hysteria. He was concerned to preserve and enhance the German people, the Volk, in the sense of nation or race. He appears to have held Lamarckian concepts of evolution, such that cultural deterioration could be inherited. He was a strong ally and promoter of the work of fellow psychiatrist Ernst Rudin to clarify the mechanisms of genetic inheritance as to make a so-called 'empirical genetic prognosis'. Martin Brune has pointed out that Kraepelin and Rudin also appear to have been ardent advocates of a self-domestication theory, a version of social darwinism which held that modern culture was not allowing people to be weeded out, resulting in more mental disorder and deterioration of the gene pool. Kraepelin saw a number of 'symptoms' of this, such as "weakening of viability and resistance, decreasing fertility, proletarianisation, and moral damage due to 'penning up people' [original 'Zusammenpferchung']". He also wrote that "the number of idiots, epileptics, psychopaths, criminals, prostitutes, and tramps who descend from alcoholic and syphilitic parents, and who transfer their inferiority to their offspring, is incalculable." He felt that "the well-known example of the Jews, with their strong disposition towards nervous and mental disorders, teaches us that their extraordinarily advanced domestication may eventually imprint clear marks on the race". Brune states that Kraepelin's nosological system was 'to a great deal, built on the degeneration paradigm'.

"For fourteen years I have lived under an incarceration that cut me off from the real world, took away my civil rights, deprived me of my name, took away everything I owned, destroyed my entire existence without even being able to say why." --Hersilie Rouy, circa 1865. Rouy was a psychiatric inmate-- aka "patient"-- during the mid 1800s in France. She documented her experiences in a memoir, 'Mémoires d'une aliénée', published in 1883.

The first laboratory of psychology in America is established at Johns Hopkins University.

Phenothiazines developed as synthetic dyes.

The Federal Civil Service Commission is established.

“A Checkered Life.” Chicago: S. P. Rounds by Joyce, John A.

“The Bastilles of England; or The Lunacy Laws at Work.” London by Louisa Lowe.

“The Memorial Scrapbook; A Combination of Precedents.” Boston: Pennell, Lemira Clarissa.

Samuel Gompers leads the New York Labor Movement targets the end of child labor in cigar making by successfully sponsoring legislation that bans the practice in tenements, where thousands of young children work in the trade.

Women in the Washington territory are granted full voting rights. Prominent suffragists travel to Liverpool, where they form the International Council of Women. At this meeting, the leaders of the National and American associations work together, laying the foundation for a reconciliation between these two groups.

Oregon State Hospital opened in Salem, Oregon.

In England, Conference of Liberal Associations in Leeds votes for women's suffrage.

In England, First government appointment of a medical woman when Miss E. Shove appointed physician to the female staff of the Post Office.

In England, First women elected as Poor Law Managers in Scotland (by now 26 in England).

In England, Memorial to Gladstone for women's suffrage signed by 100 liberal MPs.

In England, Mr Stansfeld's resolution against the CD Acts passed in the House of Commons.

In England, University of Wales resolved to admit women.

In England, Suspension of the CD Acts.

In England, J.H. published The wonders of the female world, or a general history of women.

In England, Hugh Mason proposed a motion for women's suffrage and was defeated (114 for; 130 against).

In England, The Women’s Co-operative Guild is established. Supports women's suffrage, advocates Maternity Insurance Benefit, organises education classes for women.

1884

Germany under Bismarck, inaugurates accident, sickness, and old age insurance for workers, influencing future U.S. worker demands for social welfare measures.

Toynbee Hall, the first social settlement, is opened in East London by Samuel A. Barnett, vicar of St. Jude's Parish. Visited by many Americans, it became a model for American settlement houses.

Lawyer, pacifist, and feminist Belva Ann Lockwood was the first female lawyer to practice before the Supreme Court. She founded the National Equal Rights Party, and was its candidate for president in 1884 and 1888.

“A Palace Prison; or, The Past and the Present.” New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert Anonymous.

There were 600 Alms houses in the United States; they started moving people from work houses to poor houses if they wanted to get relief.

“Another Section of the ‘M.S.B.’” by L.C.P.

“A Boomerang for a Swarm of B.B.B.’s.” Boston: Pennell, Lemira Clarissa

In England, The Northern Counties Amalgamated Association of Weavers was established for male and female workers.

In England, Widow Sophie Bryant became the first woman to receive a Doctora of Science degree, receiving hers in Mathematical and Natural Sciences at London University..

In England, Custody of Infants' Bill passed its second reading by 134

In England, First woman to gain a M.A. degree: Mary Clara Dawes, A Girton student.

In England, Mrs Bryant first woman to be awarded BSc degree, at London University.

In England, Reform Act extended the vote to most adult men.

In England, Royal Irish University confers B.A. degrees on nine women students.

1885

Virginia established an asylum for the “colored insane” in Petersburg that received its first patients in April 1885. At that time there were approximately four hundred “insane Negroes” in the state, all of whom were cared for in the Petersburg facility. Apparently little concern was given to the ability of family and friends throughout the state to visit their loved ones at the facility that was so far from home for so many.

A mountain of bison skulls. Prior to U.S. Civil War, Comanche Indians lived nomadic lives on North America's western great plains. These world's finest horsemen followed bison migrations across Texas & Oklahoma Panhandles as well as adjoining areas of Colorado, New Mexico, and Kansas. After the war (1865), millions of bison are slaughtered over 10 years to drive off about 35,000 Indians. Cowboys and ranchers move cattle in to feed on buffalo grass. But this tough treeless environment that's well suited for bison kills off domesticated cattle. Farmers soon replace cowboys when US government offers free homesteads of the former Native American homeland.

England’s Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 raises age of consent from 13 to 16, introduced measures intended to protect girls from sexual exploitation and criminalises male homosexual behaviour. Criminal Law Amendment Act raised the age of consent to 16, deemed sexual assault on girls under 13 as felonies and aged 13 to 16 as misdemeanours.

Princess Alice of Battenberg, later Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark (Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie; 25 February 1885 – 5 December 1969), was the mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II. She was congenitally deaf, and grew up in Germany, England and the Mediterranean. After marrying Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark in 1903, she lived in Greece until the exile of most of the Greek royal family in 1917. On returning to Greece a few years later, her husband was blamed in part for the defeat of Greece in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), and the family were once again forced into exile until the restoration of the Greek monarchy in 1935. In 1930, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to a sanatorium; thereafter, she lived separately from her husband. After her recovery, she devoted most of her remaining years to charity work in Greece. She stayed in Athens during the Second World War, sheltering Jewish refugees, for which she is recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" at Yad Vashem. After the war, she stayed in Greece and founded an Orthodox nursing order of nuns known as the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary. After the fall of King Constantine II of Greece and the imposition of military rule in Greece in 1967, she was invited by her son and daughter-in-law to live at Buckingham Palace in London, where she died two years later. Her remains were transferred to the Mount of Olives in 1988.

The first course on social reform is initiated by Dr. Francis G. Peabody at Harvard University. It is Philosophy 11, described as "The Ethics of Social Reform: The Questions of Charity, Divorce, the Indians, Labor, Prisons, Temperance, Etc., as Problems of Practical Ethics-Lectures, Essays and Practical Observations."

Herman Ebbinghaus introduced the nonsense syllable as a means to study memory processes.

“The Right Spirit.” Buffalo, NY: Courier by Cottier, Lizzie D.

“Prospectus of Hospital Revelations; How Opinions Vary.” Pennell, Lemira Clarissa

“Twenty-Five Years with the Insane.” Detroit: John MacFarlane. Putnam, Daniel.

Nearly 70 years before Brown v. Board of Education desegregated American public schools, Mary Tape (Tape v. Hurley) sued the San Francisco School District to offer public education to all Chinese children. (Photo: Tape family. Berkeley Heritage.)

“The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford.” New York: Dodd, Mead. Rutherford, Mark.

In England, Hospital for Women opened in Edinburgh, all doctors women.

In England, Miss Mason appointed Poor Law Inspector of Boarding Out.

In England, Primrose League, Ladies Executive Committee founded.

In England, Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland, admits women to diplomas.

In England, Three women appointed to the Metropolitan Asylums Board.

In England, Vigilance Association founded.

In England, W.T. Stead published the Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon, exposing the prevalence of child prostitution.

1886

“Psychopathia Sexualis” by German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing creates the terms “sadism” and “masochism” and thereby claims for psychiatry the right to determine the socially acceptable bounds of sexuality. Krafft-Ebing and other psychiatrists spelled out what they considered to be normal, healthy sexuality and correspondingly postulated that practitioners of sadism or masochism were abnormal psychopaths or sexual deviants. Despite any scientific evidence to support them, these claims became part of popular western culture. Psychopathia Sexualis also referred to homosexuality as a “physiologically based psychiatric pathology” that can be attributed to a congenital weakness of the nervous system.

Sigmund Freud began performing therapy in Vienna, marking the beginning of personality theory.

The first settlement house in the United States, the Neighborhood Guild (now the University Settlement), is founded on New York City's Lower East Side.

The Glasgow Herald reports that a judge, Sir Francis Buller, ruled that "a man was entitled to beat his wife with a stick provided it was no thicker than his thumb," thus creating the popular, and sexist, idiom, “rule of thumb.”

A lower court in North Carolina, as a result of the 1874 North Carolina Supreme Court ruling, declares that a criminal indictment cannot be brought against a husband unless the battery is so great as to result in permanent injury, endanger life and limb, or be malicious beyond all reasonable bounds. 

“From Under the Cloud or, Personal Reminiscences of Insanity.” Cincinnati: Printed by Robert Clarke for the Author. Agnew, Anna. This Red Book is Partly a Reprint of What Was Published in 1883, and Later.

“And Earlier Letters from Prominent Men. Instructions to Dr. Harlow from Springfield, His Letters from the Hospitals, and Much Else.” Boston: n.p.. Pennell, Lemira Clarissa

In England, CD Acts repealed.

In England, Conference of Women's Liberal Associations.

In England, Conjoint Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons of Scotland opened Triple Qualification to women (medicine, surgery and midwifery).

In England, Guardianship of Infants Act. A mother could from now be legal guardian of her own children after her husband's death.

In England, Holloway College for Women opened.

In England, University Women's Club founded.

In England, Married Women's Maintenance Act. A woman entitled to maintenance after her husband's desertion.

In England, First woman dental surgeon to practice in England was an American, Dr Olgavon Oertzen.

In England, Three deaconesses ordained by the Bishop of London.

In England, Women's Disabilities Bill passed second reading.

1887

The only 19th century National Conference of Charities and Correction "dealing with indians and Negroes" is organized in 1887 and 1892 by Phillip C. Garrett, who states that the society had a special responsibility toward "the Indian because of being displaced and toward the Negro because of being here through no wish of their own.

The first attempt at cooperative financing is made in Denver.

Dorothea Dix dies. She was an activist and reformist for improving the environments and conditions of lunatic asylums. She is credited with the establishment of dozens of institutions.

An image from 'Ten Days in a Mad-House', written in 1887 by journalist Elizabeth Cochrane (pen name Nellie Bly.)

“Ten Days in a Madhouse; or, Nellie Bly’s Experience on Blackwell’s Island. Feigning Insanity in Order to Reveal Asylum Horrors.” New York: Norman L. Munro by Bly, Nellie. (Elizabeth Cochrane). It was rare for a woman to hold a job in the 19th century. It was even rarer for one to work at as a newspaper reporter — and rarer still to have that paper send her undercover, to expose the brutality and neglect within a New York mental institution. But in 1887, that's exactly what Nellie Bly did. Bly had herself involuntarily committed to the Blackwell's Island Insane Asylum for ten days. (She checked into a women's boarding facility, acted erratically, and then allowed the all-too-eager boarding house employees to call the loony bin). After gaining entrance to the facility, the 23-year-old reverted back to a normal, sane pattern of behavior and tried to get them to release her. “Yet strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted the crazier I was thought to be,” she wrote in her series of articles for the New York World. Bly recounted stories of spoiled food, nurses who kept patients awake all night, ice cold baths, beatings and forced feedings. The articles aroused public outcry, brought on much needed political reform, and were so popular that Bly turned them into a book, called Ten Days in a Mad-House (which is still in print). A few years later, she turned the fictional “Around the World in Eighty Days” into reality—and made the trip in just 72 days.

“Life Among the Insane.” North American Review. 144: 190-199 by Brinkle, Andrianna P.

Growing success in educating children who are blind leads Perkins to open the first kindergarten for the blind in the U.S. Director Michael Anagnos sends Perkins graduate Anne Sullivan to teach Helen Keller at her home in Alabama.

Anne Sullivan meets Helen Keller for the first time in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Helen Keller returns to the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston with her teacher Anne Sullivan, where they remain until 1893.

Women admitted to the National Deaf-Mute College (now Gallaudet).

“The Life Story of Sarah Victor.” Cleveland: Williams Victor, Sarah M.

The Supreme Court strikes down the law that enfranchised women in the Washington territory. Meanwhile, Congress denies women in Utah their right to vote. Kansas women win the right to vote in municipal elections.

Rhode Island becomes the first eastern state to vote on a women's suffrage referendum, but it does not pass.

In England, Leith Hospital in Scotland opened to women students.

In England, Miss Agnata Ramsay awarded a First in Classics at Cambridge, causing huge publicity nation-wide. (She married the master of Trinity, Montague Butler.)

In England, Mrs Power Lalor appointed Inspector of Lace in Ireland.

In England, Municipal Franchise for women in Belfast passed.

In England, National Dental Hospital opened to women students.

In England, University Club for Women founded.

In England, Women's Liberal Federation formed.

1888

The first modern lobotomy was performed by the Swiss doctor Gustav Burckhardt who removed eighteen grams of healthy brain tissue from a woman in order to "quiet" her.

“Hospital Revelations.” Pennell, Lemira Clarissa

“Hospitals for the Insane. Viewed from the Standpoint of Personal Experience, by a Recovered Patient.” Alienist and Neurologist. 9: 51-57. Rutz-Rees, Janet E.

In England, Frances Power Cobbe published The Duties of Women (a course of lectures). 8th American edition.

In England, Emily Pfeiffer published Women and Work.

In England, Publication of The Law in Relation to Women by A Lawyer (i.e. Anon.).

In England, 65 female Poor Law Guardians elected.

In England, Local Government Electors Act gave women the vote for county councils.

In England, Women's Liberal Unionist Association formed.

In England, Strike of 700 women matchmakers, led by Annie Besant.

In England, The Trades Unions' Congress resolves equal pay for equal work.

In England, Mrs Edward Butler became the first female motorcyclist.

In England, Correspondence on the theme Is Marriage a Failure? drew 27,000 letters to the Daily Telegraph.

1889

“An Explanation to the Public as to Why Mrs. Lemira Clarissa Pennell Was Confined in the Insane Hospital and the Portland Poor House.” Augusta, Maine: n.p.. Pennell, Lemira Clarissa.

Jane Addams Knitting class at the Henry Street Settlement, New York, New York, Library of Congress,

Hull House, the most famous settlement house, is opened on September 14 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr on Chicago's West Side. Hull House (Chicago) became one of the first organizations in the United States to provide after school programs for children and youth. Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, was born on September 6, 1860. In 1889, Jane Addams and her friend, Ellen Gates Starr, founded Hull House, a settlement house, in a large home in Chicago. Hull House women began by undertaking studies of neighborhood conditions, contributing to the development of social work as a field. Reformers initiated programs to address poor working conditions, malnutrition, low wages, poor sanitation, and a host of other pressing problems. Settlement House Women: In the late 19th century, middle-class women began to found “settlement houses” in poor and working-class neighborhoods in urban areas. Middle-class reformers, often women, would live in settlement houses and undertake reform work in surrounding neighborhoods. Settlement houses offered middle class women the chance to live in a female-dominated space, independent of familial control. Many settlement house workers formed lasting friendships, sometimes developing lifetime partnerships with other women. Settlement workers often carried out sociological research in their surrounding communities, and offered childcare services, English-language classes, meeting spaces, and healthcare services for residents in their community. Eventually, settlement house workers often convinced municipal and state governments to assume responsibility for programs they had initiated. In addition, settlement house workers often moved from undertaking community service to lobbying local, state, and national governments to pass reform legislation, such as minimum wage laws, workplace safety standards, and sanitation regulations. The most well known settlement house was Hull House, founded in a Chicago neighborhood in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Starr. Also well known was the Henry Street Settlement, founded in 1893 in New York City by Lillian Wald. By 1910, there were more than 400 settlement houses nation-wide. In 1911, settlement house leaders formed the National Settlement House League to share expertise and coordinate programs.

In England, Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children founded.

In England, Women's Franchise League founded.

In England, Suffrage rally in London on 21st June attended by 300,000 people.

In England, Women's Enfranchisement Bill failed.

In England, Chrystal Macmillan became the first woman to address the House of Lords when she pleaded in person Scottish women graduiates' claim to the parliamentary vote. (Sixteen years later she was called to the Bar.).

In England, 'A lady' was appointed rate collector at Pirbright.

1890 to 1920

The percentage of the population considered feebleminded and condemned to institutional confinement, more then doubled. The Social Hygiene movement was to control the genetics of the people; this was complete medical policing. They stopped the so called feeble minded from marrying to stop them from breeding. Then they forcibly sterilized them. There had to be a mechanism in place to change the way that people thought and expressed themselves and behaved.

The National Education Association or NEA was a way to alter the nation’s economy, politics, social relationships, and future direction.

States started opening up the idea of workers compensation it built into the ideal of the system of relief that those who worked and got hurt or disabled would need to be paid. Progressive activists push for the creation of state Worker's Compensation programs. By 1913, some 21 states have established some form of Worker's Compensation; the figure rises to 43 by 1919.

1890's

Pierre Janet wrote, "certain happenings would leave indelible and distressing memories - memories to which the sufferer was continually returning, and by which she was tormented by day and by night." Janet found that, though trauma memories were subconscious, they continued to influence current perceptions, behavior, and state of mind.

In Canada, in the l890s a Dr. R.M. Bucke, Medical Superintendent of London Psychiatric Hospital, performed gynecological operations to relieve "hysterical" symptoms in women. He saw a close connection between gynecological deformities and psychiatric conditions.

1890

Dr. Gottlieb performed partial lobotomies on six patients of a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland. He drilled holes into their heads and extracted sections of their frontal lobes. One died after the operation, and another was found dead in a river 10 days after release. In an attempt to alter the behavior of six severely agitated patients, Dr. Gottlieb Burckhardt, superintendent of a Swiss psychiatric hospital, drilled holes in their heads and extracted sections of the frontal lobes. Two patients died. The surgery was considered morally reprehensible at the time.

James McKeen Cattell, America, formed his own lab to study reaction time differences among people, collaborated with Francis Galton in using this method to study intelligence. He coined the term mental tests, and began the testing movement. The term “Mental Tests” was coined by James Cattell, beginning the specialization in psychology now known as psychological assessment.

Sir Francis Galton developed the technique known as the correlation to better understand the interrelationships in his intelligence studies.

“How the Other Half Lives,” by Jacob A. Riis, is published. A documentary and photographic account of housing conditions in New York City slums, it helps initiate the U.S. public housing movement.

New York passes “The State Care Act” that fosters state responsibility for mental health services. Also included was the creation of New York State Inebriate Asylum, situated in Binghamton and the earliest institution of the kind ever established. New York State passed the State Care Act, ordering indigent mentally ill patients out of poor-houses and into state hospitals for treatment and developing the first institution in the U.S. for psychiatric research.

The 1890 Lunacy Act was very different from the 1845 Lunacy Act, which was about running good hospitals; the 1890 Act was about locking people up. At the same time advances in general medical knowledge from strict attention to pathology and bacteriology led to a search for organic causes of mental distress, and the doctors in the asylums, instead of going out and playing cricket with patients, began to spend their time on research instead in the hope of finding the causes of the conditions they were treating, by for example dissecting the brains of deceased patients.

William James' Principles of Psychology published. William James published ‘Principles of Psychology,’ that later became the foundation for functionalism.

“A Secret Institution.” New York: Bryant Publishing Co. Lathrop, Clarissa Caldwell.

“New Horrors” by Pennell, Lemira Clarissa

North Carolina Supreme Court removes the last of the restrictions on a husband's liability and prohibits a husband from committing even a slight assault upon his wife. 

The National and American associations merge to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Stanton becomes the new organization's first president.

In England, The first woman stockbroker: Miss Bell, of Bucklesbury, City of London.

In England, Over 685,000 women are eligible to vote in local elections in England and Wales.

In England, Phillipa Fawcett, a Newnham student, was placed above Senior Wrangler in the Cambridge mathematics tripos, yet the university withheld degrees from women.

In England, Clementina Black wrote the pamphlet On Marriage, which explained why some women were unwilling to get married.

1891

In Robert Burton’s synopsis of the causes of melancholy he lists god, devil, witches and magicians.

Frances Anasis Walker declared Anglo Saxons were committing racial suicide by inbreeding.

“Madhouses of America.” Cohoes: New York. Trull, William L.

In England, the practice of 'spiriting' i.e. kidnapping children for work in the Americas, had been sanctioned by the Privy Council since 1620, but the Custody of Children Act (the 'Barnardo’s Act) legalised the work of private emigration societies for removing poor children from workhouses, industrial schools, reformatories and private care facilities, to British colonies.

In England, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence wrote My Part in a Changing World, which is about her experiences as a social worker in a working class area of London.

In England, Regina v. Jackson, aka the Clitheroe Case. A man may no longer imprison his wife to enforce his conjugal rights.

In England, First edition of The Women's Penny Paper, the first weekly feminist newspaper. Edited by Lady Henry Somerset and published by Anne E. Holdsworth. Survives 3 years. They also later publish The Woman's Signal and The Woman's Herald.

1892

American Psychological Association (APA) founded. Founding of the American Psychological Association. Foundation of the American Psychological Association (APA) headed by G. Stanley Hall, with an initial membership of 42. Clinical psychology section formed in 1919.

School children performing the Bellamy salute, 1942

American Pledge of Allegiance - Francis Julius Bellamy (May 18, 1855 – August 28, 1931) was an American Baptist minister and author, best known for authoring the American Pledge of Allegiance. He was a Christian Socialist. In his Pledge, he is expressing the ideas of his first cousin, Edward Bellamy, author of the American socialist utopian novels, Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897). Needing someone to oversee the National Public School Celebration in 1892, Bellamy was assigned to work with James Upham at The Youth's Companion. That year was the 400th anniversary of Columbus reaching the New World was to coincide with the Celebration so something memorable was to be planned. The Pledge was published in the September 8, 1892, issue of the magazine, and immediately put to use in the campaign. Bellamy went to speak to a national meeting of school superintendents to promote the celebration; the convention liked the idea and selected a committee of leading educators to implement the program, including the immediate past president of the National Education Association. Bellamy was selected as the chair. Having received the official blessing of educators, Bellamy's committee now had the task of spreading the word across the nation and of designing an official program for schools to follow on the day of national celebration. He structured the program around a flag-raising ceremony and his pledge. His original Pledge read as follows: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to* the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" (* 'to' added in October 1892). The recital was accompanied with a salute to the flag known as the Bellamy salute, described in detail by Bellamy. That salute was our official one until 1942. During World War II, the salute was replaced with a hand-over-heart gesture because the original form involved stretching the arm out towards the flag in a manner that resembled the later Nazi salute. Hitler adopted the salute as well as Bellamy's socialism theorys. Francis Bellamy in his sermons and lectures and Edward Bellamy in his novels and articles described in detail how the middle class could create a planned economy with political, social and economic equality for all. The government would run a peace time economy similar to our present military industrial complex. In 1954, in response to the perceived threat of secular Communism, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words "under God," creating the 31-word pledge that is recited today. Bellamy commented on his thoughts as he created the pledge, and his reasons for choosing the careful wording: "It began as an intensive communing with salient points of our national history, from the Declaration of Independence onwards; with the makings of the Constitution... with the meaning of the Civil War; with the aspiration of the people... "The true reason for allegiance to the Flag is the 'republic for which it stands'. ...And what does that last thing, the Republic mean? It is the concise political word for the Nation - the One Nation which the Civil War was fought to prove. To make that One Nation idea clear, we must specify that it is indivisible, as Webster and Lincoln used to repeat in their great speeches. And its future? "Just here arose the temptation of the historic slogan of the French Revolution which meant so much to Jefferson and his friends, 'Liberty, equality, fraternity'. No, that would be too fanciful, too many thousands of years off in realization. But we as a nation do stand square on the doctrine of liberty and justice for all..."

“The Yellow Wallpaper.” New England Magazine. 5(5) 647-56. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins.

“The Great Drama; or, the Millennial Harbinger.” Hartford: Author; Packard, Elizabeth Parsons Ware.

The Democratic Party adopts a platform plank with recommendations to ban factory employment for children under 15.

ANOREXIA SCHOLASTICA -- IN 1892 Sir James Chichon-Browne, M.D., Head of Medico-Pshychological Association, wrote papers and announced in his presidential address that women and girls should be fearful of this female-only disease contracted from too much education. Symptoms included neuroticism, mania, somnambulism, coma, headaches, loss of morality, epileptic fits, insanity and an inability to gain weight despite eating plenty amounts of food In England,

Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews and Aberdeen admit women to membership and degrees.

In England, Ethel Mary Charles became the first woman professionally qualified architect and first female member of RIBA.

In England, Joseph Bridges Matthews published A Manual of the Law Relating to Married Women.

In England, The British Medical Association accepted female members.

In England, Emily Massingberd founded the Pioneer Club for women of advanced views. By 1894 its membership had grown to 500

In England, Women's Suffrage Bill failed.

1893

German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin clinically defined "dementia praecox", later reformulated as Schizophrenia.

“Three Years in a Mad House.” Chicago: Donohue, Henneberry Fleming, E. G.

Dr. T.D. Crothers, in his 1893 text The Diseases of Inebriety, traced the earliest efforts to treat alcoholism to ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome

In September, Lillian Wald founds the Nurses Settlement, a private nonsectarian home nursing service. In 1895 it moved to become the famous Henry Street Settlement.

As a result of the strategy of Carrie Chapman Catt, Colorado men make their state the second in which women have full voting rights.

In England, Baroness Coutts published Womans' Mission, a Series of Congress Papers on the Philanthropic Work of Women.

In England, M. Ostrogorski published The Rights of Women: a Comparative Study in History and Legislation. (Translated from French.)

In England, First woman factory inspector appointed.

In England, School leaving age raised from ten to 14

In England, Ladies' Golf Union founded.

In England, Maria Ogilvie gained a D.Sc at London University, becoming the first woman doctor of science.

1894

National Deaf-Mute College is renamed Gallaudet College in honor of deaf education pioneer Thomas Gallaudet

“American Charities,” by Amos G. Warner, is published. A social work classic, it is the first systematic attempt to describe the field of charities in the United States and to formulate the principles of relief.

William Wundt came up with the “Psychological Review” and trained 344 doctoral students.

The right to administer moderate chastisement is overruled in Mississippi in Harris v. State, 71 Miss. 462 (1894). 

In England, Edward Carpenter published Woman and her Place in a Free Society: Sex, Love, and its Place in a Free Society, Marriage in a Free Society (three short essays).

In England, Blanche Alethea Crackanthorpe published The Revolt of the Daughters (an article).

In England, Sarah Grand published The New Aspect of the Woman Question (an article).

In England, Local Government Act abolished the 5 property qualification for Poor Law guardians, making hundreds more women eligible to stand for election.

In England, Emmeline Pankhurst elected as a Poor Law Guardian in Manchester and Charlotte Despard elected in London.

1895

Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer of Austria published Studies on Hysteria, based on the case of Bertha Pappenheim (known as Anna O.), developing the Talking Cure; Freud and Breuer later split over Freud's obsession with sex.

Alfred Binet founded the first laboratory of psychodiagnosis.

[For a woman diagnosed with hysteria and a muscle disorder] we recommended the continuation of systematic kneading and faradization of the sensitive muscles, regardless of resulting pain, and I reserved to myself treatment of her legs with high tension electric currents, in order to be able to keep in touch with her.... In this way we brought about a slight improvement. In particular, she seemed to take quite a liking to the painful shocks produced by the high tension apparatus, and the stronger these were the more they seemed to push her own pains into the background. In the meantime my colleague was preparing the ground for psychical treatment, and when, after four weeks of my pretense treatment, I proposed the other method and gave her some account of its procedure and mode of operation, I met with quick understanding and little resistance. SIGMUND FREUD (Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, a form of psychotherapy), Studies in Hysteria, ch. 2, sect. 5, 1893-1895, tr. James and Alix Strachey, 1955. Thirty years later, Freud commented on this practice, “My knowledge of electrotherapy was derived from W. Erb’s textbook, which provided detailed instructions for the treatment of all the symptoms of nervous diseases. Unluckily, I was soon driven to see that following these instructions was of no help whatever and that what I had taken for an epitome of exact observations was merely the construction of fantasy.... The successes of electric treatment in nervous disorder (in so far as there were any) were the effect of suggestion on the part of the physician” (An Autobiographical Study, ch. 1, 1925, tr. James Strachey, 1927).

The National American association formally condemns Stanton's Women's Bible, a critique of Christianity.

The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage begins.

Dr. T.O. Powell, Superintendent of the Georgia Lunatic Asylum, reported an alarming increase in insanity and consumption among Negroes in Georgia. Dr. Powell noted that these conditions were virtually unheard of among Negroes up to 1860. A comparison of census records between 1860 and 1890 showed that insanity among Negroes had increased from one in 10,584 to one in 943. Dr. Powell believed that the hygienic and structured lives led by slaves served as protective factors against consumption and insanity. According to Dr.Powell, “Freedom, however, removed all hygienic restraints, and they were no longer obedient to the inexorable laws of health, plunging into all sort of excesses and vices, leading irregular lives, and having apparently little or no control over their appetites and passions.” To sum it up, freedom made us nuts. Apparently, Powell failed to factor abject poverty, further disruption of family and kinship ties, racism, and terrorism into the high rates of insanity. Other factors that may have influenced the rates of insanity following the Civil War were starvation and poor nutrition, which led to pellagra, a niacin deficiency with symptoms of loss of appetite, irritability and mental confusion. This disease disproportionately affected poor and displaced former slaves.

The first Federation of Jewish Charities is established in Boston.

The Married Women's Property Act (in England) makes conviction for assault sufficient grounds for divorce. 

In England, Three women served on the Royal Commission on Secondary Education.

In England, The Summary Jurisdiction (Married Women) Act (about separation orders).

In England, Edith Lanchester forced into a lunatic asylum for intending to live with her boyfriend.

In England, First woman in Britain to qualify as a dental surgeon: Dr Lilian Murray (later, Lindsay). Qualified LDS at Edinburgh.

In England, Alice Gordon reported that of 1,486 women who had a university education only 208 had married and 680 were teachers.

1896

Writings by John Dewey began the school of thought known as functionalism.

The first psychological clinic was developed at the University of Pennsylvania marking the birth of clinical psychology.

The first special class for "mentally deficient" people in an American public school is established in Providence, Rhode Island.

Volunteers of America is founded.

Dementia praecox is first diagnosed.

Sigmund Freud and Josef Breur, Austria, published Studies on Hysteria, a study of the unconscious mind.

Freud presented "The Aetiology of Hysteria", a report of 18 case studies. "I therefore put forward the thesis that at the bottom of every case of hysteria there are one or more occurrences of premature sexual experience." It was a closely reasoned, compassionate document, but Freud anticipated false memory arguments because of his bold stand.

“The Confessions of a Nervous Woman.” Post Graduate Monthly. Journal of Medicine and Surgery. 11: 364-368. Anonymous.

The National American association hires Ida Husted Harper to launch an expensive suffrage campaign in California, which ultimately fails.

In Washington, D.C., black women's organizations converge under the umbrella of the National Association of Colored Women, headed by Margaret Murray Washington and Mary Church Terrell.

Catt organizes her second successful western campaign; Idaho enfranchises women because Catt manages to sever the suffrage issue from the eastern movement and prohibition.

Utah becomes a state, and Utah women regain the vote.

In England, Georgiana Hill published Women in English Life, from Medieval to Modern Times.

In England, Lina Eckenstein published Woman under Monasticism. Chapters on Saint Lore and Convent Life between A.D.500 and A.D.1500.

In England, Women's suffrage petition of 257,000 signatures presented to parliament.

In England, Union of Practical Suffragists formed within the Women's Liberal Federation.

1897

The first state hospital for crippled children is founded in Minnesota.

The Alabama Insane Hospital was not for the exclusive use of African-Americans, but to accommodate the increasing number of African-American patients, separate facilities were created on the grounds. In 1897, Dr. T.O. Powell reported that the Alabama facility had about three hundred and fifty African-American patients. The facility maintained a “colony” of one hundred African-American men about two miles from the main facility. Dr. Powell noted, “They are contented, are the healthiest class of patients under this management and by their farm labor contribute to the support of the institution.” It is interesting to note that the positive presentation of the “colony farm” obscures the reality that the primary “treatment” provided to these African-American male patients was hard physical labor. It seems odd that individuals who had been incarcerated in an asylum due to their insanity were able perform tasks that must have required some degree of skill and focus. Dr. James Lawrence Thompson, in his memoir of life at the South Carolina State Hospital, noted, “It was customary to employ as many of the patients as possible—those who were in condition to work—both male and female, white and colored. The white females would make beds, sweep the floors, sew, work in the kitchen and even sweep the yards. The colored females would work on the wards in various ways and in the laundry. The colored males did most of the rough work, such as working on the farm, cutting wood and the like. The white males were somewhat handicapped in their work as it was not customary to have the white and colored males working together and we did not have land enough to have the white males work on the farm, hence they were confined to work mostly in cleaning up the yards and moving trash from about the building.” Perhaps patients, both African-American and white, could have benefited more from the restorative power of gainful employment provided in their own communities and with adequate financial compensation.

After much uproar by his contemporaries, many implicated as perpetrators, Freud denounced his theory and viewed incestuous accounts as mere sexual fantasies. Although in private correspondence Freud cited "seduction by the father" as the "essential point" in hysteria, he no longer challenged the patriarchal social values. Incriminating daughters was better for his career. This shift from believing trauma dissociation to a theory of repression in which a person's fantasies and desires caused emotional conflict became the basis for therapy until the mid 1970's. Freud now declared, "It was hardly credible that perverted acts against children were so general" and concluded patients' accounts were figments of the imaginations based on their own sexual desires for their fathers.

The National American association begins publishing the National Suffrage Bulletin, edited by Catt.

In England, National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) was founded. Motto: Faith, perseverance, patience.

In England, Over 729,000 women now eligible to vote in local elections in England and Wales.

In England, Ferdinand Faithfull Begg MP introduced a Woman Suffrage Bill supported by a petition of 257,796 signatures. It reached a second reading then was defeated by 230 to 159 votes.

In England, First woman car driver and car owner: actress Minnie Palmer.

1898

Frances Mary Albrier was born on September 21, 1898

In 1938 Frances Mary Albrier became the first woman elected to the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee. She also founded the East Bay Women’s Welfare Club whose goal was to get black teachers hired in the Berkeley schools. In 1939 she was the first woman elected to the Berkeley City Council where she led a five-year campaign to hire black teachers. This campaign saw success with the hiring of Ruth Acty in 1943. Albrier’s political involvement was driven by the reality that African Americans were “taxpayers without any representation in the city government or the schools of Berkeley. That was the message I wanted to get over to them.” In 1942 Frances Mary Albrier challenged racial and gender barriers in wartime Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond. She completed a welding course with twice the required hours because “I felt I had to be better because I was a black woman,” passed the welder’s test “with flying colors,” but her application was rejected by the Boilermakers Union in the shipyards because Kaiser “had not yet set up an auxiliary [union] for Negroes.” Bowing to Albrier’s threat of a lawsuit and pressure from the African American community, the Richmond union agreed to accept her dues and transfer them to an auxiliary in an Oakland shipyard. Frances Mary Albrier became the first black woman to be hired at Shipyard Number Two in Richmond. Reporting to work outfitted in welder’s regalia, her presence amazed the black shipwrights. She explained, “Well, I just happened to bust my way in here.” Albrier remained in the forefront of the fight to end auxiliaries and saw success with the 1945 James v. Marinship decision that outlawed auxiliaries. Frances Mary Albrier continued the fight for equality and social justice throughout her life. She received numerous awards for her lifetime of service, including the NAACP’s “Fight for Freedom Award,” and a citation from the California State Assembly for her “outstanding record of achievements in public service.”

Edward Thorndike developed the ‘Law of Effect,’ arguing that “a stimulus-response chain is strengthened if the outcome of that chain is positive.”

“Transactions of the Antiseptic Club.” New York: E.B. Treat. Abrams, Albert.

“A Madman's Musings: Being a Collection of Essays Written by a Patient During His Detention in a Private Madhouse.” London by Anonymous.

The New York School of Philanthropy was the first higher education program to train people who wanted to work in the field of charity, including child development and youth work, in the United States. It was established with a six-week summer program in 1898, and expanded to a full-year program in 1904.

The first social work training school is established as an annual summer course for agency workers by the New York Charity Organization Society, which in 1904 becomes the New York School of Philanthropy (and later the Columbia University School of Social Work).

The National Federation of Day Nurseries is organized.

In England, Correspondence on the theme Should Wives Work? drew 2,000 letters to the Daily Telegraph.

In England, Rational Dress League and its journal, Rational Dress Gazette founded. Lady Harberton a leading light.

In England, Hautboy Hotel in Ockham refused to serve Lady Harberton owing to her wearing her cycling outfit - knickerbockers.

In England, Nora Philips et al published A Dictionary of Employments Open to Women.

1899

The Kraepelinian dichotomy between affective psychosis and dementia praecox (schizophrenia) was introduced in the 6th edition of Emil Kraepelin's famous Lehrbuch.

On November 4 Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams (Die Tramdeutung).

William H. Baldwin wrote, "Know that it is a crime for any teacher, white or black, to educate the Negro for positions which are not open to him". It was possible to arrange ideas on a scale of races, classes, sexes, and historical stages grounded allegedly in God or Mother Nature itself.

The first US juvenile court is established in June as part of the Circuit Court of Chicago.

Florence Kelley, who initiated fact-finding as a basic approach to social action, organizes the National Consumers League in New York City. The league is a combination of several local leagues, the earliest of which was formed in New York by Josephine Shaw Lowell to campaign against sweatshops and to obtain limits on hours of work for girls.

“Friendly Visiting Among the Poor” by Mary E. Richmond, is published in January as "A Handbook of Charity Workers."

The National Conference of Jewish Charities is established in New York to coordinate the developing network of private Jewish social services.

In England, the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act allowed school authorities to make arrangements for ascertaining which children, by reason of mental or physical defect, were incapable of receiving proper benefit from instruction in the ordinary schools.

Courts begin to show signs that they might hold husbands responsible and found guilty of marital rape. In 1899, a Louisiana court in State v. Dowell condemns a husband's participation in the rape of his wife by a third party. 

“Professor Hieronymous” (trans. from 1895 Norwegian ed.), London by Bertha Amalia Skram.

“Experience of a Criminal” by A. Telso.

John Dewey becomes president of the American Psychological Association, openly advocates for children's rights, and later writes several books about progressive education that emphasize the necessity for children's rights in education and throughout democratic society. He is acknowledged as one of the heroes of the children's rights movement in the United States.

With Queen Victoria's ascension to the English throne, lawmakers begin enacting reforms regarding women. Wives can no longer be kept under lock and key, life-threatening beatings are considered grounds for divorce, and wives and daughters can no longer be sold into prostitution. 

In England, International Congress of Women held in London.

In England, Regina vs Clarence: a husband cannot be found guilty of rape even if he is suffering from VD.

1900's

Progressive activists push for the creation of state Workers' Compensation programs. By 1913, some 21 states have established some form of Worker's Compensation; the figure rises to 43 by 1919.

First institutions to treat addiction as a medical problem – i.e. early treatment centers – are created. There will be two major developments in psychology: Gestalt theory or a holistic approach, and behaviorism or stimulus-response theory. These two approaches begin to merge in the techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy which is increasingly practiced in the 21^st Century. In the 20th century the search for organic causes and treatments for mental health problems, continued, spurred on by the successful identification and treatment of conditions such as phenylketonuria and thyroid conditions. The observation of changes in emotional state in people treated for other conditions – for example the anti-depressant effect of iproniazid for tuberculosis – began the continuing search for biochemical treatments for every kind of mental state.

The end of the 19th century and beginning of the twentieth, patients suffering from neurosyphilis were found to improve after infections, supposedly because the heat of the fever killed the infective agent that caused syphilis. So fever treatment was given, using first tuberculin injections and, later, infected blood from malaria patients. The malaria was treated with quinine. Later on, syphilis was treated with arsenic compounds, and then, from the 1940s, with penicillin, before this stage was reached, and neurosyphilis was no longer seen.

By 1900, through the efforts primarily of physicians, the American Medical Association, and legislators most abortions in the states stood as outlawed.

Early in the 20th century, the “mental hygiene” movement came into being, due largely to the efforts of Clifford Whittingham Beers in New England. A former mental patient, Beers shocked readers with a graphic account of hospital conditions depicted in his famous book, “A Mind that Found Itself.”

First institutions to treat addiction as a medical problem – i.e. early treatment centers – are created. 

Preventive legislation was needed to curb the increasing dependence on the drugs in patient medicines; the Federal Food and Drug Act of 1906 removed narcotics from those products. 

The inspection of immigrants at Ellis Island included screening to detect the mentally disturbed and retarded among the thousands of men, women, and children arriving daily. The high incidence of mental disorders found among the immigrants prompted public recognition of mental illness as a national health problem.

Other psychotic illnesses were, and of course still are, less easy to treat because their cause is not known. Sedatives, in the form of alkaloids such as morphine (an opium derivative), hyoscyamus (derived from the plant henbane, and from which hyoscine was derived), and chloral hydrate, which is still available as a sleeping drug today. Intravenous and intramuscular injections of morphine began in the mid-nineteenth century. Some cases of mania were treated with apomorphine mixed with hyoscine to make them vomit, which wore them out and hence had a calming effect. For a while bromide was fashionable, and this led to the development of deep sleep treatment. This involved inducing prolonged sleep, for days at a time, disturbing the patient every few hours just enough to give them some nourishment and toilet them. After the long period of sleep, patients would apparently wake with their psychotic symptoms resolved. Later it was also used for mood disorders, and people were thought to wake up in a state more amenable to psychotherapy. When bromide was deemed too toxic, it was replaced with barbiturates, the most popular of which was Veronal. Deep sleep treatment continued to be used until the 1960s by which time it was discredited, although it has been suggested more recently as a way of getting heroin addicts through cold turkey.

Other physical treatments used in the 20th century include insulin coma therapy in which patients were given insulin to induce a coma and convulsions, and then brought round with glucose injections. Camphor injections were also used to induce fits in the 1930s, and had been used to treat psychosis during the eighteenth century. Fits were also induced with drugs including metrazol.

Psychosurgery (lobotomy) was used in the mid-20th century with an enthusiasm verging on abandon, and an appalling level of technical crudeness. A refined version is still practiced on a small number of patients.

In the 1st World War the treatment of shell shock with talking therapies by psychiatrists such as William Rivers led eventually to treatment for what is now called post traumatic stress disorder, with debriefing for victims of traumatic incidents such as hostages, and eventually to the regular provision of counseling for survivors of traumatic incidents. But some soldiers were treated by people such as Lewis Yealland at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, who used electric shock treatment - techniques that were nothing short of torture, but as effective in achieving their immediate goal as torture often is.

The approach to traumatic stress in the 2nd World War was a spur to the evolution of group therapy by people such as Wilfred Bion and Foulkes.

1900

Sigmund Freud presented his concepts of psychoanalysis in a publication entitled “The Interpretation of Dreams.” Sigmund Freud published ‘Interpretation of Dreams’ marking the beginning of Psychoanalytic Thought. The Interpretation of Dreams revolutionizes psychiatric theory and practice. He is the first to use the unconscious to treat psychiatric illness in patients by using 'psychoanalysis' - free association and interpretation of dreams. Freud, after studying with Jean Charcot at the Salpetrière in Paris, began to investigate the workings and inner depths of the mind as an alternative explanation for the increasing epidemic of hysteria in turn of the century Europe. This led Sigmund Freud to develop the technique of psychoanalysis in Vienna in the 1890s. Psychoanalysis was concerned primarily with understanding and treating mental disorders. For Freud the mind is active and complex with some mental processes operating unconsciously. Treatment of an individual could only be successful if the conflicts within the unconscious are acknowledged and then investigated in the conscious arena of therapy, thereby rendering the unconscious conscious. It is argued that Freud’s book ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ is one of the most significant books of the twentieth century, representing both the birth and formation of modern Psychoanalysis. Discoveries and legacy: According to Freud, the unconscious mind is hidden, and various techniques are necessary in order to unearth its conflicts. These techniques as developed by Freud are: Free Association - The patient lets their mind wander, saying the first thing that comes into their head; Para praxes - Involuntary slips of the tongue or pen, commonly known as Freudian slips; Projective tests - Ambiguous images that the patient is required to describe or create a story about; Dream analysis - The patient is requested to revisit their dreams, as it is believed that they represent wish fulfillment of hidden desires. Freud believed that dreams represent ‘the royal road to the unconscious.’ Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams. Marked the popularity of the psychoanalytic movement, which made popular such terms as the unconscious, the Oedipus complex, ego, id. Psychoanalysis placed much importance on sexuality and sexual development.

Inspection of immigrants at Ellis Island included screening to detect the “mentally disturbed and retarded”. The high incidence of mental disorders among immigrants prompted public recognition of mental illness as a national health problem.

The first female American to win an Olympic event was golfer Margaret Abbot. She won the 9-hole women’s golf tournament at the 1900 Paris games with a score of 47.

The total number of societies in the United States for the protection of children, or children and animals, was 161.

Anthony retires as the president of the National American and, to the surprise of many, recommends Carrie Chapman Catt as her successor; Catt is elected.

In 1900, Clifford Beers, a Yale graduate and young businessman, suffered an acute breakdown brought on by the illness and death of his brother. Shortly after a suicide attempt, Beers was hospitalized in a private Connecticut mental institution. At the mercy of untrained, incompetent attendants, he was subject to degrading treatment and mental and physical abuses. Beers spent the next few years hospitalized in various institutions, the worst being a state hospital in Middletown, Connecticut. The deplorable treatment he received in these institutions sparked a fearless determination to reform care for individuals with mental illnesses in the United States and abroad.

In England, Petition of 29,000 female Lancashire factory workers demanded the vote.

Russian neurologist Vladimir Bekhterev discovered the role of the hippocampus in memory.

1901

Charles Woodruff explained intellectual superiority of northern European Christians with essay on civilization & brain development. July, American Journal of Insanity.

The National Fraternal Society of the Deaf is founded by alumni at the Michigan School for the Deaf in Flint. It becomes the world's only fraternal life insurance company managed by deaf people. Through the first half of the century, it advocates for the rights of deaf people to purchase insurance and to obtain drivers' licenses. In 1903, business organizations brought their ideas into schools.

In education, William Beggley suggested teachers produce unquestioned obedience. Edward Thorndike installed the idea that the aim of teachers is to produce and prevent certain responses using year round schooling. Pavlovian bells would move children from class to class on schedule, like tiny robots or machines.

Jane Addams founded the Juvenile Protective Association to advocate against racism, child labor and exploitation, drug abuse and child prostitution in Chicago and their effects on child development.

The British Psychological Society was founded.

In England, Census reveals there were 212 female doctors in the UK.

In England, Census reveals there were a million more women than men in England and Wales.

In England, Birth rate dropped to 28.6 per 1,000, from 36 per 1,000 in 1876

German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer identified the first case of what later became known as Alzheimer's disease.

Sigmund Freud published The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.

1902

Helen Keller, the first deaf-blind person to matriculate at college, publishes her autobiography, The Story of My Life, in a serial 1903 form in Ladies' Home journal in the latter part of 1902, as a book in 1903.

Women from 10 nations meet in Washington, D.C. to plan an international effort for suffrage. Clara Barton is among the distinguished speakers.

New Hampshire's men vote down a women's suffrage referendum.

Maryland enacts the first US. worker's compensation law, which is declared unconstitutional in 1904.

“Care of Destitute, Neglected and Delinquent Children,” by Homer Folks, founder of the New York State Charities Aid Association, is a major influence on service directions in child welfare.

Goodwill Industries of America is founded.

“Inferno” (trans. M. Sandbach), London by August Strindberg.

In England, Hertha Ayrton was refused election to the Royal Society because she was a married woman.

Swiss-born psychiatrist Adolf Meyer became director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, influencing American psychiatry with his "common sense" approach which included keeping detailed patient records; he coined the term "mental hygiene".

1903

The Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy (now the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration) is founded by Graham Taylor.

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (1837 – 30 November 1930) was an Irish-American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent labor and community organizer. She then helped coordinate major strikes and cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World. Jones worked as a teacher and dressmaker, but after her husband and four children all died of yellow fever and her workshop was destroyed in a fire in 1871, she began working as an organizer for the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers union. From 1897, at around 60 years of age, she was known as Mother Jones. In 1902 she was called "the most dangerous woman in America" for her success in organizing mine workers and their families against the mine owners. In 1903, upset about the lax enforcement of the child labor laws in the Pennsylvania mines and silk mills, she organized a Children's March from Philadelphia to the home of then president Theodore Roosevelt in New York. Jones uttered words still invoked by union supporters more than a century later: "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." Already known as "the miners' angel" when she was denounced on the floor of the United States Senate as the "grandmother of all agitators," she replied: I hope to live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators. Mary Harris "Mother" Jones organized children working in mills and mines in the "Children's Crusade," a march from Kensington, Pennsylvania to Oyster Bay, New York, the home of President Theodore Roosevelt with banners demanding "We want time to play!" and "We want to go to school!" Though the President refused to meet with the marchers, the incident brought the issue of child labor to the forefront of the public agenda.

In England, Emmeline Pankhurst formed Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) with daughters Christabel and Sylvia. Motto: Deeds not Words.

1904

The first racial science laboratory opened based on Eugenics, or survival of the fittest and death of the unfit. It stayed open for 35 years until Hitler‚s invasion of Poland; at that point it quietly shut down. The first requirement of Eugenics was to get all the kids in public schools so they could sort them out or give them proper medical treatment. Several children were given adenoidectomies without parental consent or knowledge.

Clitoridectomies performed in association with women’s mental disorders.

The National Child Labor Committee, which is organized by a combination of New York and Chicago settlement groups, becomes primarily responsible for the 1909 White House Conference on Children.

The New York School of Philanthropy (now the Columbia University School of Social Work) is founded, with a one-year educational program.

The National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis (later the National Tuberculosis Association and now the American Lung Association) is founded on March 28.

“Poverty,” the classic work by Robert Hunter, is published; it states that at least 10 million Americans, or one out of every eight, are poor.

Dissidents from the International Council of Women form the more aggressive International Women Suffrage Alliance.

Because Catt must attend to her dying husband, Rev. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw takes over as president of the National American.

The National Child Labor Committee is formed to abolish all child labor. World-renowned photographer Lewis Hine produced much of his work for the organization.

In England, the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act gave the NSPCC a statutory right to intervene in child protection cases.

In England, First female minister of religion appointed in England: German-born Gertude von Petzold M.A. was appointed to Narborough Rd Church at Leicester.

1905

Sigmund Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality describes the stages of sexual development and explains the effects of infantile sexuality on sexual dysfunction. From 1905 to 1934, Freud takes issue with the psychiatric claim that homosexuality is an illness, giving it the dubious dignity of the label “arrested sexual development” instead. Freud is consistently more respectful of gay men than of lesbians, linking the existence of lesbians to penis envy – woman’s refusal to accept that she does not have a penis. Freud does not advocate treatment, as he does not consider homosexuality a disease. Most psychiatrists in Freud’s time and for some time afterward, however, disagree, using electroshock, drugs, lobotomy, and “aversion therapy” to “cure” it.

Carl Jung started using word-association methods to uncover unconscious processes.

Joseph Pratt, internist, and psychologist Elwood Worcester started to use supportive discussion with hospitalized psychiatric patients. Origins of group therapy.

In Texas, Frazier v. State, a husband is convicted of assault with the intent to commit rape. The appellate court overturns the conviction by essentially restating Lord Hale's rule of immunity dating back to the 1500's. 

Hugo Munsterberg a psychologist attempts to create standardized testing for students.

Beatrice Webb laid ground for the welfare state, when appointed to the British Royal Commission on the Poor Law she started a committee on employment. She laid down the idea of cradle to grave social security, and mustered enough support to get it passed.

Bernard Sachs, a Jewish-American neurologist, author of “A Treatise on the Nervous Diseases of Children” recommends that masturbation in children be treated by cautery to the spine and to the genitals. Cauterize is to burn, sear or destroy tissue. Sachs published several books, including Nervous and Mental Disorders from Birth through Adolescence, a reference work intended for professionals. In 1926 he published The Normal Child, a popular manual on child rearing intended for the general public. In the latter book he advocated a common-sense approach to parenting and the rejection of psychological theories, especially Freudian psychology. Sachs, of the notable Goldman–Sachs family, is the son of Joseph Sachs and Sophia Baer. His older brother Samuel Sachs was a co-founder of Goldman Sachs (an American multinational investment banking firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and other financial services primarily with institutional clients). His eldest brother Julius Sachs was a notable educator at Columbia University and founded Sachs Collegiate Institute. His nephew, Ernest Sachs (1879–1958), also became a notable physician.

Medical social work is initiated with the employment of Garnet I. Pelton by Richard L. Cabot, MD, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“Spiritual Adventures,” London by Arthur Symons.

In England, A specialist juvenile offenders court was tried in Birmingham, and formally established in the Children Act 1908, along with juvenile courts. Borstals, a kind of youth prison, were established under the Prevention of Crime Act, with the aim of separating youths from adult prisoners.

In England, Publication of Frances Power Cobbe's The Duties of Women (a series of lectures she gave in 1881).

In England, First militant acts in support of women's suffrage.

Alfred Binet’s Intelligence Test was published in France. French psychologists Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon created the Binet-Simon Scale to assess intellectual ability, marking the start of standardized psychological testing.

1906

The Journal of Abnormal Psychology was founded by Morton Prince.

Preventive legislation was needed to curb the increasing dependence on the drugs in patient medicines; the Federal Food and Drug Act of 1906 removed narcotics from those products.

Sir Charles Sherrington coined the term "synapse" to refer to the gap between to two excitable brain cells.

The National Recreation Association is organized, later becoming the National Recreation and Park Association following a 1965 merger of the American Institute of Park Executives, American Recreation Society, National Conference on State Parks, and National Recreation Association.

The Boys Clubs of America is founded in Boston.

The first school social workers' programs are introduced in Boston, Hartford, and New York under private agencies.

Paul Montroe wrote the purpose of education is to supply teachers with the fundamentals of an everlasting faith as broad as human nature and as deep as the life of the race...weaknesses and extravagance are the results of sustained inbreeding.

Stanton's daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, returns from England and is appalled by the National American association's conservatism. She responds by forming the Equality League of Self Supporting Women, to reach out to the working class.

“The Lunacy Law of the World: Being that of Each of the Forty-Eight States and Territories of the United States, with an Examination Thereof and Leading Cases Thereon; Together with that of the Six Great Powers of Europe—Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.” Roanoke Rapids, NC. by John Armstrong Chaloner.

In England, January Liberals win general election by an overwhelming majority. WSPU demands votes for women, promising to harass Liberals until this is achieved. March Daily Mail coins term 'suffragette' for militant suffragists. June Teresa Billington and Annie Kenney become

In England, Baroness Coutts became the first woman to be buried at Westminster Abbey.

In England, Gertrude Ederle, an American, became the first woman to swim the English Channel.

In England, A deputation of 300 women (led by Emily Davies) representing 50,000 textile workers, 22,000 women member of the Co-op Societies and 1,530 university graduates met the prime minister to demand votes for women. He urged patience.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (Russian: Ива́н Петро́вич Па́влов, IPA: [ɪˈvan pʲɪˈtrovʲɪt͡ɕ ˈpavləf] (26 September 1849 – 27 February 1936) was a Russian physiologist known primarily for his work in classical conditioning. From his childhood days Pavlov demonstrated intellectual brilliance along with an unusual energy which he named "the instinct for research". Inspired by the progressive ideas which D. I. Pisarev, the most eminent of the Russian literary critics of the 1860s and I. M. Sechenov, the father of Russian physiology, were spreading, Pavlov abandoned his religious career and decided to devote his life to science. In 1870 he enrolled in the physics and mathematics faculty at the University of Saint Petersburg to take the course in natural science. Ivan Pavlov devoted his life to the study of physiology and sciences, making several remarkable discoveries and ideas that were passed on from generation to generation. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904. After completing his doctorate, Pavlov went to Germany where he studied in Leipzig with Carl Ludwig in the Heidenhain laboratories in Breslau. He remained there from 1884 to 1886. Heidenhain was studying digestion in dogs, using an exteriorized section of the stomach. However, Pavlov perfected the technique by overcoming the problem of maintaining the external nerve supply. The exteriorized section became known as the Heidenhain or Pavlov pouch. starting in 1901, Pavlov was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for four successive years. However, he did not win because his nominations were not specific to any discovery and were based on a variety of laboratory findings. In 1904, Pavlov was awarded the Nobel laureate "in recognition of his work on the physiology of digestion, through which knowledge on vital aspects of the subject has been transformed and enlarged". While at the Institute of Experimental Medicine he carried out his classical experiments on the digestive glands which is how he eventually won the Nobel prize mentioned above. Pavlov investigated the gastric function of dogs, and later children, by externalizing a salivary gland so he could collect, measure, and analyze the saliva and what response it had to food under different conditions. He noticed that the dogs tended to salivate before food was actually delivered to their mouths, and set out to investigate this "psychic secretion", as he called it. Pavlov’s laboratory housed a full-scale kennel for the experimental animals. Pavlov was interested in observing their long-term physiological processes. This required keeping them alive and healthy in order to conduct chronic experiments, as he called them. These were experiments over time, designed to understand the normal functions of animals. This was a new kind of study, because previously experiments had been “acute,” meaning that the dog went through vivisection and was ultimately killed in the process. Pavlov contributed to many areas of physiology and neurological sciences. Most of his work involved research in temperament, conditioning and involuntary reflex actions. Pavlov performed and directed experiments on digestion, eventually publishing The Work of the Digestive Glands in 1897, after 12 years of research. His experiments earned him the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. These experiments included surgically extracting portions of the digestive system from animals, severing nerve bundles to determine the effects, and implanting fistulas between digestive organs and an external pouch to examine the organ's contents. This research served as a base for broad research on the digestive system. Further work on reflex actions involved involuntary reactions to stress and pain. Pavlov extended the definitions of the four temperament types under study at the time: phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine, and melancholic, updating the names to "the strong and impetuous type, the strong equilibrated and quiet type, the strong equilibrated and lively type, and the weak type." Pavlov and his researchers observed and began the study of transmarginal inhibition (TMI), the body's natural response of shutting down when exposed to overwhelming stress or pain by electric shock. This research showed how all temperament types responded to the stimuli the same way, but different temperaments move through the responses at different times. He commented "that the most basic inherited difference... was how soon they reached this shutdown point and that the quick-to-shut-down have a fundamentally different type of nervous system." Carl Jung continued Pavlov's work on TMI and correlated the observed shutdown types in animals with his own introverted and extroverted temperament types in humans. Introverted persons, he believed, were more sensitive to stimuli and reached a TMI state earlier than their extroverted counterparts. This continuing research branch is gaining the name highly sensitive persons. William Sargant and others continued the behavioural research in mental conditioning to achieve memory implantation and brainwashing (any effort aimed at instilling certain attitudes and beliefs in a person). The concept for which Pavlov is famous is the "conditioned reflex" (or in his own words the conditional reflex: the translation of условный рефлекс into English is debatable) he developed jointly with his assistant Ivan Filippovitch Tolochinov in 1901. He had come to learn this concept of conditioned reflex when examining the rates of salivations among dogs. Pavlov had learned then when a buzzer or metronome was sounded in subsequent time with food being presented to the dog in consecutive sequences, the dog will initially salivate when the food is presented. The dog will later come to associate the sound with the presentation of the food and salivate upon the presentation of that stimulus. Tolochinov, whose own term for the phenomenon had been "reflex at a distance", communicated the results at the Congress of Natural Sciences in Helsinki in 1903. Later the same year Pavlov more fully explained the findings, at the 14th International Medical Congress in Madrid, where he read a paper titled The Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals. As Pavlov's work became known in the West, particularly through the writings of John B. Watson, the idea of "conditioning" as an automatic form of learning became a key concept in the developing specialism of comparative psychology, and the general approach to psychology that underlay it, behaviorism. Pavlov's work with classical conditioning was of huge influence to how humans perceive themselves, their behavior and learning processes and his studies of classical conditioning continue to be central to modern behavior therapy. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell was an enthusiastic advocate of the importance of Pavlov's work for philosophy of mind. Pavlov's research on conditional reflexes greatly influenced not only science, but also popular culture. Pavlovian conditioning was a major theme in Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel, Brave New World, and also to a large degree in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. It is popularly believed that Pavlov always signaled the occurrence of food by ringing a bell. However, his writings record the use of a wide variety of stimuli, including electric shocks, whistles, metronomes, tuning forks, and a range of visual stimuli, in addition to the ring of a bell. It is less widely known that Pavlov's experiments on the conditional reflex extended to children, some of whom underwent surgical procedures, similar to those performed on the dogs, for the collection of saliva.

1907

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#Compulsory_sterilization

Eugenics takes hold in the USA. Eugenic Sterilization Law Spreads Like Wildfire. Indiana becomes the first state to enact a eugenic sterilization law—for "confirmed idiots, imbeciles and rapists"—in state institutions. The law spreads like wildfire and is enacted in 24 other states. Sterilization was made easier with the development of the vasectomy by Dr. Harry C. Sharpe.

The Russell Sage Foundation is incorporated "to improve the social and living conditions in the United States"; it later financed publication of the Social Work Year Book (now the Encyclopedia of Social Work, published by the NASW Press).

Psychiatric social work is initiated with the employment of Edith Burleigh and M. Antoinette Cannon by James J. Putnam, MD, to work with mental patients in the neurological clinic of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

The National Probation Association is founded (renamed the National Probation and Parole Association in 1947 and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in 1960).

Frances Kellor was an adopted child born to a poor window washer immigrant given to two wealthy elite parents, as such she advocated for adoption. It would bring National Unity she said. The Governor of New York appointed her, to lead anti-strike movements against any who might rebel.

The first issue of the Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind is published.

“The House of Quiet,” by Arthur Christopher Benson.

Oregon State Institution for the Feeble-Minded created.

In England, February 3,000 people march in heavy rain from Hyde Park to Strand in a protest dubbed 'The Mud March'. March Women's Suffrage Bill, introduced by W.H. Dickinson, is talked out at a second reading. Another 'raid' on the

In England, Women's Freedom League founded by Charlotte Despard and Teresa Billington-Grieg.

In England, The First Women’s Parliament attempted to force their way into Parliament to present a petition to the Prime Minister, who refused to see them.

In England, Henry Nevinson and Henry Brailsford founded the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage.

1908

The word schizophrenia—which translates roughly as “splitting of the mind” and comes from the Greek roots schizein (σχίζειν, “to split”) and phrēn, phren- (φρήν, φρεν-, “mind”)—was coined by Paul Eugen Bleuler in 1908 and was intended to describe the separation of function between personality, thinking, memory, and perception. Bleuler described the main symptoms as 4 A's: flattened Affect, Autism, impaired Association of ideas and Ambivalence. Bleuler realized that the illness was not a dementia as some of his patients improved rather than deteriorated and hence proposed the term schizophrenia instead.

The first community welfare council is organized in Pittsburgh as the Pittsburgh Associated Charities.

The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America begins to coordinate its network of social services.

Workers' compensation is enacted by the federal government; it represents the earliest form of social insurance in the United States.

Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon in France, on the behest of the government, developed the Binet-Simon Scale, the first measure of intelligence. Henry Goddard took the tests to America.

Clifford Beers publishes his autobiography, A Mind That Found Itself, detailing his degrading, dehumanizing experience in a Connecticut mental institution and calling for the reform of mental health care in America. Within a year, he will spearhead the founding of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, an education and advocacy group that will evolve into the National Mental Health Association. Clifford Whittingham Beers (1876-1943) publishes “A Mind That Found Itself,” an account of physical, emotional and sexual abuse he witnessed as a patient inside state and private mental institutions. This was the first published expose about mental institutions. The Mind That Found Itself, an account of his experience as a mental patient in a Connecticut mental institution which vividly describes the cruelty that was the norm of institutional care. This work promotes the founding of the mental hygiene movement in the United States. He had spent some time in a psychiatric hospital as a patient after throwing himself out of a fourth floor window believing he may have a brain tumor like his brother. He started the Clifford Beers Clinic in New Haven in 1913. It was the first outpatient mental health clinic in the United States. While Beers initially blamed psychiatrists for tolerating mistreatment of patients, and envisioned more ex-patient involvement in the movement, he was influenced by Adolf Meyer and the psychiatric establishment, and toned down his hostility as he needed their support for reforms. His reliance on rich donors and his need for approval from experts led him to hand over to psychiatrists the organization he helped establish. Adolf Meyer (September 13, 1866 in Niederweningen, near Zurich, Switzerland – March 17, 1950), was a Swiss psychiatrist who rose to prominence as the president of the American Psychiatric Association and was one of the most influential figures in psychiatry in the first half of the twentieth century. His focus on collecting detailed case histories on patients is the most prominent of his contributions; along with his insistence that patients could best be understood through consideration of their life situations. Beers was one of the biggest supporters of the eugenics movement in America, which also flourished in Germany during the early part of the Twentieth Century. Since the postwar period, both the public and the scientific community has generally associated eugenics with Nazi abuses, which included enforced racial hygiene, human experimentation, and the extermination of undesired population groups. Developments in genetic, genomic, and reproductive technologies at the end of the 20th century however, have raised many new questions and concerns about what exactly constitutes the meaning of eugenics and what its ethical and moral status is in the modern era. In 1908, Beers changed mental health care forever with the publication of A Mind That Found Itself, an autobiography chronicling his struggle with mental illness and the shameful state of mental health care in America. The book had an immediate impact, spreading his vision of a massive mental health reform movement across land and oceans. The actualization of the movement began that same year when Beers founded the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene.

In England, First woman mayor: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson elected at Aldeburgh.

In England, February Second reading of Stanger Bill, identical to Dickinson's Bill of 1907 - 271 votes for, 92 against. June WSPU organises seven processions from different parts of London to converge on Hyde Park for a rally. An estimated

In England, Women's National Anti Suffrage League founded.

In England, Petition against women having the vote drew 337,018 signatures.

1909

The New York Public School System adopts Modified, or American Braille for use in its classes for blind children, after public hearings in which blind advocates call for abandoning New York Point.

Jane Addams is elected as the first woman president of the National Conference of Charities and Correction (later the National Council on Social Welfare).

England's Royal Poor Law Commission majority report seeks to modify the Poor Law as "the principle of 1834:' defining the relationship of private, voluntary welfare organizations to the public assistance system. The minority recommends breaking up the Poor Law and transferring responsibility to divisions of local government, implying the creation of universal services and anticipating features of a 20th-century welfare state.

The Juvenile Psychopathic Institute is established in Chicago by Dr. Williwn Healy, on the initiative of Julia Lathrop, to study offenders brought to the juvenile court. The institute initiates delinquency research and examination of children by a professional team. William Healey established a child guidance clinic in Chicago for juvenile delinquents. It employed a team of psychiatrists, social workers and psychologists.

The Pittsburgh Survey, the first exhaustive description and analysis of a substantial modem city, is begun.

The Niagara Movement stimulates the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in May. The NAACP is a broad-based organization with interracial membership. Mary Church joined with Mary White Ovington to form the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). The first meeting was held on 12th February, 1909. Early members included Josephine Ruffin, Jane Addams, Inez Milholland, William Du Bois, Charles Darrow, Charles Edward Russell, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, and Ida Wells-Barnett.

The first folding wheelchairs are introduced for people with mobility disabilities.

Clifford Beers expanded the Connectifut Society for Mental Hygiene into the National Committee for Mental Hygiene in New York City. On February 19, 1909, Beers, along with philosopher William James and psychiatrist Adolf Meyer, embraced the future by creating the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, later the National Mental Health Association and what we know today as the Mental Health America. This was the forerunner of the National Mental Health Association (NMHA) (now named Mental Health America (MHA)). The Society, both in Connecticut then nationally, set forth the following goals: 1) To improve attitudes toward mental illness and the mentally ill; 2) Improve services for the mentally ill; 3) To work for the prevention of mental illness and promote mental health. The National Committee began fulfilling its mission of change immediately, initiating successful reforms in several states.

Sigmund Freud visited America and lectured on psychoanalysis at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, winning over the US psychiatric establishment.

Howard C. Hill published a textbook that showed on one page a cartoon of four hands symbolizing Law, Order, Science, and Trades interlocked to form a perfect swastika.

A factory inspector found that out of 500 children in 20 factories, 412 of them would rather return to work at the factory then go to the public school.

The Women's Trade Union League coordinates a large strike by 20,000 women workers in New York's garment district. Wealthy women support the strike with a boycott. Through strikes, working class women connect with suffrage movement.

Photograph shows half-length portrait of two girls wearing banners with slogan "ABOLISH CH[ILD] SLAVERY!!" in English and Yiddish ("(ני)דער מיט (קינד)ער שקלאפער(ײ)", "Nider mit Kinder Schklawerii"), one carrying American flag; spectators stand nearby. Probably taken during May 1, 1909 labor parade in New York City.

On January 25, 1909 President Theodore Roosevelt hosted the first White House Conference on Children after a Washington, D.C. lawyer named James West suggested it. West had spent all of his life in institutions and was concerned about the state of affairs. The conferences were held every decade through the 1970s. The First White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children declared that poverty alone should not be grounds for removing children from families. When children required placement for other reasons, however, they were to be placed in family homes. The first White House Conference on Children (concerned with the care of dependent children) is initiated under the sponsorship of President Theodore Roosevelt on the suggestion of James E. West, who later heads the Boy Scouts of America.

“A Man Remade: Or, Out of Delirium's Wonderland,” by Charles Roman.

“My Life as a Dissociated Personality,” by B.C.A. (with an introduction by Morton Prince, MD).

“The Maniac: A Realistic Study of Madness from the Maniac's Point of View,” by E. Thelmer.

Ellen Key publishes Century of the Child, an influential American book about children's rights.

In England, the Duchess of Montrose founded the Scottish Women's National Anti-Suffrage League.

In England, Church League for Women’s Suffrage founded.

In England, Women's National Anti Suffrage League had 10,000 members in 235 branches.

In England, Suffrage organisations use increasingly violent and drastic measures to further the cause.

In England, Marion Wallace Dunlop, a Scottish WSPU member, became the first suffragette to go on hunger strike. She refused to eat unless placed in the first division. After 91 hours she was released.

In England, September First case of hunger strikes and force-feeding (Winson Green prison, Birmingham).

1910

Emil Kraepelin first describes Alzheimer's Disease.

An eight year old newsie named Gurley. 18th & Washington Sts. Location: St. Louis, Missouri. May 1910

Sigmund Freud founded the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), with Carl Jung as the first president, and Otto Rank as the first secretary.

National Committee for Mental Hygiene facilitated the creation of more than 100 child guidance clinics in the United States aimed at prevention, early intervention and treatment.

Boris Sidis opened the Sidis Psychotherapeutic Institute (a private hospital) at Maplewood Farms in Portsmouth, NH for the treatment of nervous patients using the latest scientific methods.

Leonard Ayres said the schools were full of retarded children that could not learn.

The Boy Scouts of America'is founded by William D. Boyce. It originally was started in England by Lord Baden Powell.

The American Camping Association is founded to research, develop, and implement a program of inspection and accreditation of camps.

Camp Fire Girls (now Camp Fire Boys and Girls) is founded.

Catholic Charities is founded.

The first social work training program for black workers is started by Dr. George Edmund Haynes at Fisk University in Nashville. The National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes (now the National Urban League) is organized by Dr. George E. Haynes and Eugene Kinckle Jones through a union of the Committee for Improving the Industrial Conditions of Negroes in New York (formed in 1907); the National League for the Protection of Colored Women (formed in 1906); and the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes (formed in 1910).

Emma Smith DeVoe organizes a grass-roots campaign in Washington State, where women win full enfranchisement.

Blatch's Equality League changes its name to the Women's Political Union.

Emulating the grassroots tactics of labor activists, they organize America's first large-scale suffrage parade, which is held in New York City.

In England’s Home Office, allegations in John Bull of abuse at a boys' reformatory, the Akbar Nautical Training School, Heswall, included accusations that that boys were gagged before being birched, that boys who were ill were caned as malingerers, and that punishments included boys being drenched with cold water or being made to stand up all night for a trivial misdemeanour. It was further alleged that boys had died as a result of such punishments. The Home Office investigation rejected the allegations, but found that there had been instances of "irregular punishments".

Globalization was the view, Norman Angel wrote "The Great Illusion", which argued that national economics were so interdependent, that war among the leaders would be destructive. A war itself would cease once they clearly understood the cost and benefits of war.

“Autopsychology of the Manic-Depressive,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases. 37: 606-20. by Eva Charlotte Reid.

“The Autobiography of a Neurasthenic,” by M. A. Cleaves.

“Legally Dead: Experiences During Seventeen Weeks' Detention in a Private Asylum.” London, By Marcia Hamilcar

In England, Men’s Federation for Women’s Enfranchisement founded.

In England, Ellen Pitfield died of injuries received on Black Friday.

In England, First female pilot and parachute jumper: Edith Maud Cook flew Bleriot monoplanes. She was killed later that year making a descent in a balloon.

In England, Spring-summer All-party 'Conciliation Committee' drafts limited Women's suffrage bill, giving the vote only to householders. WSPU and Women's Freedom League suspend militancy. November The Conciliation Bill is abandoned.

In England, November 'Black Friday' - suffragettes march to Parliament Square and are brutally treated by police.

In England, Mrs Mary Clarke (Mrs Pankhurst's sister) and Cecila Wolseley Haig died from injuries received on Black Friday.

1911

Alfred Adler left Freud's Psychoanalytic Group to form his own school of thought, accusing Freud of overemphasizing sexuality and basing his theory on his own childhood.

Edward Thorndike published first article on animal intelligence leading to the theory of Operant Conditioning.

The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) was founded.

The state of Maryland opened its hospital for the colored insane in 1911 near Crownsville, MD. The first patients were composed of 12 patients from the Spring Grove facility and 112 inmates from jails or other asylums. The inmates, who lived in a temporary camp while they began to clear the land and operate the farm, built the facility. It was noted that Dr. Robert Winterode decided to “entrust” the patients with axes and tools to complete the construction. Prior to the opening of the Crownsville facility, African-American patients were housed in segregated facilities on other facilities and in local jails. At the turn of the century, African-American males at Maryland’s Spring Grove facility often spent up to eight months living in tents, made with patient labor, on the grounds. A cottage for African-American females was completed at Spring Grove in 1906.

Prior to 1911, Ohio’s psychiatric hospitals were operated by separate boards of trustees. In 1921, all state institutions were placed under the State Department of Public Welfare.

Paul Eugen Bleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist, popularizes the term 'schizophrenia' in his book, “Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias.” He writes that dementia praecox patients do not always develop dementia but instead, 'schizophrenia.' The cure for dementia praecox is said to be found in the restoration to consciousness of certain memories, and the illness is renamed schizophrenia. Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler introduced the term "schizophrenia" (literally split mind) to describe a condition characterized by disorganization of thought processes, incoherence of thought and emotion, and a turning inward, splitting off from reality. The split also refers to the split between the intellect and emotion, but not between personalities, as is commonly, and incorrectly, believed.

The First Mother's Aid Law is enacted in Illinois.

April 5, 1911, over 100,000 people marched in the funeral procession for the 146 young immigrant workers, primarily women, who perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

The first state workers' compensation law that was not later declared unconstitutional is enacted by the state of Washington.

The American Association for Organizing Family Social Work is formed to promote the development of family social work. (In 1930 the organization becomes the Family Welfare Association of America and in 1946 the Family Service Association of America. In 1983 the name is changed to Family Service America; in 1995 it is Families International, Inc.)

Catholic Big Brothers is founded.

Social workers are placed on payrolls of New York's mental hospitals. Aftercare work soon becomes an integral part of the services of such institutions throughout the United States.

The National Federation of Settlements is founded. (it became the National Federation of Settlements & Neighborhood Centers in 1959 and the United Neighborhood Centers of America in 1979.)

The Public Education Association made of bankers, society women, corporation lawyers, and those with private funds funded the NEA. They thought they needed to start at preschool level or younger, because parents and teachers could not see the mental difficulties that children were having and could not provide counseling for them. Funding came about so that school would be the social and mental referral service. Their report said they must bend the student to the reality of society. Schools should be an instrument of social progress and a means of altering cultures.

Dr. Arnold Gesell founded the Juvenile Psycho Clinic (later the Clinic of Child Development) at Yale.

The first family court is created in Buffalo, NY. Professionals believe that domestic relations courts will better solve family problems in a setting of discussion and reconciliation engineered by social service intervention. This is the beginning of the systematic official diversion and exclusion of violence against wives from the criminal justice system. 

Congress passes a joint resolution (P.R. 45) authorizing the appointment of a federal commission to investigate the subject of workers' compensation and the liability of employers for financial compensation to disabled workers.

With little help from the National American, California women win full voting rights.

In England, Miss Clemence Housman became the first woman to be imprisoned for refusing to pay taxes. She withheld her income tax and inhabited house duty as a protest against women's being denied the vote.

In England, Hilda Beatrice Hewlett (b1864) became the first woman to gain a pilot's licence. She qualified on a Henry Farman biplane at Brooklands Race Track for Certificate No 122 on 29th August.

In England, NUWSS boasts 411 branches.

In England, May Second Conciliation Bill debated, with large majority -167 in favour. Asquith pledges that time for a suffrage bill would be found during the life of the parliament. November Asquith announces that the government will introduce an adult

In England, Mrs Pankhurst tried for conspiracy.

In England, Olive Schreiner published Woman and Labour.

1912

Jo Ann Robinson, born April 17, 1912. Following the arrest of Rosa Parks, civil rights activist Jo Ann Robinson played a critical role in launching the Montgomery bus boycott.

“The Kaliikak Family” by Henry H. Goddard was a best selling book. It proposed that disability was linked to immorality and alleged that both were tied to genetics. It advanced the agenda of the eugenics movement. “The Threat of the Feeble Minded” (pamphlet) created a climate of hysteria allowing for massive human rights abuses of people with disabilities, including institutionalization and forced sterilization. The work was an extended case study of Goddard's for the inheritance of "feeble-mindedness," a general category referring to a variety of mental disabilities including mental retardation, learning disabilities, and mental illness. Goddard concluded that a variety of mental traits were hereditary and society should limit reproduction by people possessing these traits. The book begins by discussing the case of "Deborah Kallikak," a woman in Goddard's institution, the New Jersey Home for the Education and Care of Feebleminded Children (now Vineland Training School). In the course of investigating her genealogy, Goddard claims to have discovered that her family tree bore a curious and surprising moral tale. The book follows the genealogy of Martin Kallikak, Deborah's great-great-great grandfather, a Revolutionary War hero married to a Quaker woman. On his way back from battle, the normally morally upright Martin dallied one time with a "feeble-minded" barmaid. The young Martin soon reformed and went on with his upright life, becoming a respected New England citizen and father of a large family of prosperous individuals. All of the children that came from this relationship were "wholesome" and had no signs of retardation. But according to Goddard, a child was born by the dalliance with "the nameless feeble-minded girl". This single child, a male, went on to father more children, who fathered their own children, and on and on down the generations. And so with the Kallikaks, Goddard claims to have discovered, one has as close as one could imagine an experiment in the hereditability of intelligence, moral ability, and criminality. On the "feeble-minded" side of the Kallikak family, descended from the barmaid, the children wound up poor, insane, delinquent, and mentally retarded. Deborah was, in Goddard's assessment, "feeble-minded": a catch-all early 20th century term to describe various forms of mental retardation or learning deficiencies. Goddard was interested in the heritability of "feeble-mindedness"—and often wrote of the invisible threat of recessive "feeble-minded" genes carried by otherwise healthy and intelligent looking members of the population (Mendel's laws had only been rediscovered a decade before; Goddard's genetic shorthand was, in its day, considered to be on par with cutting edge science). It was in tracing the family history of Deborah that Goddard and his assistants—usually upper-class girls from nearby colleges—discovered that Deborah's family of drunks and criminals was related—through Martin Kallikak—to another family tree of economy and prosperity. On the "normal" side of the Kallikak family tree, the children ended up prosperous, intelligent, and morally upstanding. They were lawyers, ministers, and doctors. Goddard concluded from this that intelligence, sanity, and morality were hereditary, and every effort should be undertaken to keep the 'feeble-minded' from procreating, with the overall goal of potentially ending 'feeble-mindedness' and its accompanying traits. The damage from even one dalliance between a young man and a "feeble-minded" girl could create generations and generations worth of crime and poverty, with its members eventually living off the generosity of the state (and consequently taxpayers), Goddard argued. His work contains intricately constructed family trees, showing near-perfect Mendelian ratios in the inheritance of negative and positive traits. Unsurprisingly, Goddard recommended segregating them in institutions exactly like the one he himself ran, where they would be taught how to work various forms of menial labor. The paleontologist and science writer Stephen Jay Gould advanced the view that Goddard—or someone working with him—had retouched the photographs used in his book in order to make the "bad" Kallikaks appear more menacing. In older editions of the books, Gould said, it has become clearly evident that someone has drawn in darker, crazier looking eyes and menacing faces on the children and adults in the pictures. Gould argues that photographic reproduction in books was still then a very new art, and that audiences would not have been as keenly aware of photographic retouching, even on such a crude level. The 14 photos were subsequently studied further to show the nature of the retouching and subsequent use to help make Goddard's points.

Malaga Island, Maine was the site of a racially mixed settlement founded in 1794 and destroyed by the state of Maine in 1912 after its residents were declared feeble-minded and relocated to the Maine School for Feeble-minded or other locations. The real motivation for the relocation was racism and land-grab. In a final brutal act to obliterate the history of Malaga Island, the state destroyed all of the structures on the island and exhumed the bones of the dead, placed them in five large caskets and reburied them on the grounds of the state home.

William Stern developed the original formula for the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) after studying the scores on Binet’s intelligence test. The formula is mental age ÷ chronological age × 100 = IQ

1912 Max Wertheimer published research on the perception of movement, marking the beginnings of Gestalt Psychology.

Alaska's territorial legislature enfranchises women.

Abigail Scott Duniway dissuades National American members from involving themselves in Oregon's grassroots suffrage campaign; Oregon women win the vote.

Meanwhile, the Arizona territory becomes a state that includes women as voters. Kansas also enfranchises women.

Presidential candidates court the female vote for the first time. Democrat Woodrow Wilson wins the election.

Theodore Roosevelt’s platform suggested that common people step back and let experts make the decisions for them. Walter Lippman wrote "Public Opinion," which called on using severe restrictions of public debate. Common people traded their right to make challenges on important issues in order to have others take care of them. The upper echelon hid in private and made decisions for the masses. If you could not get to the source of the power, there was nothing you could do about it.

Japanese Americans owned 12,726 acres of farmland in California.

Congress created the U.S. Children's Bureau in the Department of Labor to investigate and report on all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of people. Julia Lathrop was appointed as its first chief, the first woman to head a federal agency.

The Children's Bureau was formed by the U.S. Congress in response to the 1909 White House Conference on Children. For the first time child welfare focused on more than disadvantaged children, and became focused on all children. The Children's Bureau Act (ch. 73, 37 Stat. 79) is passed on April 9. It establishes the U.S. Children's Bureau as a separate government agency, based on an idea initiated by Florence Kelley and Lillian Wald, Julia C. Lathrop is appointed the first chief.

Girl Scouts of the United States of America is founded.

Survey Associates, Inc., a membership society combining research and journalism methods for the advancement of general welfare, is founded. Publications are used as "shuttles of understanding"; Paul Kellogg is editor. Survey Midmonthly spans the fields of social work, and Survey Graphic, which is addressed to lay readers, swings wider arcs of social and economic concern.

Commercial maternity homes, and adoption ad investigations took place in Boston, New York, Baltimore, Chicago, and other cities.

“Eight and One-Half Years in Hell,” by Cyrus S. Turner.

“Autobiography of Roosevelt's Adversary,” by James Fullerton

“Remembrances of a Religio-Maniac,” Stratford-on-Avon, UK. by D. Davidson.

“Thy Rod and Thy Staff,” London by Arthor Christopher Benson.

In England, Harold Owen published Women Adrfit: The Menace of Suffragism.

In England, March Emily Green is arrested for smashing six windows in Glasgow's Sauchiehall Street. July Suffragettes throw hatchet into Asquith's open carriage in Dublin. November Scottish Suffragettes pour corrosive and flammable fluid into letterboxes in Kirkcaldy, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and

1913

The British Psychoanalytical Society was founded by Ernest Jones, who became Freud's biographer.

Carl G. Jung departed from Freudian views and developed his own theories citing Freud’s inability to acknowledge religion and spirituality. His new school of thought became known as Analytical Psychology. Citing Freud's inability to acknowledge religion and spirituality, Carl Jung split and developed his own theories; his new school of thought became known as Analytical Psychology.

Jacob L. Moreno pioneered Group Psychotherapy methods in Vienna, which emphasized spontaneity and interaction; they later became known as Psychodrama and Sociometry.

John E. Watson published ‘Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It’ marking the beginnings of Behavioral Psychology.

Congress investigated corporate power and influence, the investigation found certain corporations had too much control over every thing including education and social services because they could buy what they wanted, good or bad, right or wrong, too bad for the common man. Nothing could or would to change that.

Social Insurance, by I. M. Rubinow, advocates a comprehensive social insurance system to protect against sickness, old age, industrial accidents, invalidism, death, and unemployment.

The Modern Community Chest movement is begun with the organization of the Cleveland Federation for Charity and Philanthropy as an experiment in federated financing, after a first trial in Denver in 1888. The Community Chests and Councils of America is organized in 1918.

The US. Department of Labor and Department of Commerce are established on March 4.

Workers in 21 states could get some benefits if they got hurt at work or disabled.

Emil Kraepelin divided mental illness into those that could be cured and those that could not, thereby beginning classification schemes that still persist today.

Harriet Tubman died on March 10, 1913. Known as Moses to the more than 300 slaves she helped find freedom, Tubman was a fighter for abolition and women’s suffrage. Frederick Douglass often worked with her and admired her, writing, “The difference between us is very marked. Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day—you in the night. … The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism.”

Suffragist Alice Paul organizes 8,000 women for a parade through Washington. She becomes the leader of the Congressional Union (CU), a militant branch of the National American association.

Kate Gordon organizes the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference, where suffragists plan to lobby state legislatures for laws that will enfranchise white women only.

Illinois grants women a new form of partial suffrage by allowing them to vote only in presidential elections.

In England, E. Belfont Bax published The Fraud of Feminism.

In England, Cora Sutton Castle published A Statistical Study of Eminent Women.

In England, Emily Davison threw herself in front of King George V's horse. She died some days later in Epsom Cottage Hospital.

In England, The Cat and Mouse Act was passed. The Act permitted the release of hunger striking suffragettes from prison when they were on the point of death and their re-arrest when they were partially recovered.

In England, The first female magistrate: Miss Emily Duncan JP sworn in at West Ham, London.

In England, Sir Almroth Wright published The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage.

In England, January Franchise and Registration Bill is debated in Commons, with four Women's suffrage amendments. April Arabella Scott, Agnes and Elizabeth Thomson, and Edith Hudson are arrested for attempting to set fire to Kelso racecourse stand. April 'Cat and

1914-1918

During the First World War, among the persons responsible for torturing soldiers with painful electric shocks and disguising the brutality as therapy was the foremost neuropsychiatrist of Austria-Hungary and perhaps of Europe, Julius Wagner-Jauregg. In 1927, Wagner-Jauregg receives the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for introducing malaria treatment in medicine and psychiatry.

1914

The Harrison Act of was the first effort toward making it impossible for people with addictions to legally obtain drugs.

The first adult psychiatric clinic is directly linked to a family court in Chicago.

“Psychoanalytic Review” published 3 articles on blacks about their inability to work a job connected to mental disorders.

Sigmund Freud published On Narcissism: An Introduction.

In 1914, Frances Kellor opened a clearinghouse to get her message out. She called it, “The Division of Immigrant Education,” and they forced children into compulsory schooling. The Federal Bureau of Education endorsed this system. Rioting broke out, but the media downplayed it.

Andrew Carnegie gained influence over the Federal Council of Churches by extending heavy subsidies to it.

World War I broke out stopping the globalization movement temporarily. World War I destabilized the Russian czarist regime, unleashing the Bolshevik revolution. Communism took hold of Russia, it was a revolutionary doctrine of brutality and economic waste for seventy-five years, and Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin were responsible for it. Communism took over the former Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea and others aligned with it. It helped Hitler rise to power, it was an authoritarian power that was for the wealthy and gave little to the poor, and it left Russia in debt. Yet, Russia was a threat to the United States, and there was a cold war against nuclear weapons eventually, the United States so called won. Yet, the war scared some people into going dry and pushing for prohibition, so legislators made the laws. Unregulated moon shiners cropped up everywhere, they and the bootleggers, had a good business going. After the war there was growth in the chemical industry, the Volstead Act made it legal to make denatured alcohol drinking this could do all kinds of things to a body because it was poisonous. The bad stuff when drank could make one blind or brain damaged. Chemical companies flourished as well as every illegal manner of this denatured alcohol, some of it deadly. Eventually, the doctors were able to write prescriptions for the non-denatured alcohol, they called this drinking alcohol "medicine" because they thought it made some people feel and live better. Rum and liquor came over on ships. Prohibition had become a scandal killing many innocent people, and bunches of people were getting scared of the law. Bribery and payoffs were common. Everyone started rebelling and drinking again, they had to have places to do it so the speak easy became a popular hang out; the law was paid off to stay away from them. Night clubs opened almost everywhere, almost with immunity from the law, gangsters moved into high places of government, legitimate businesses, labor unions, employer associations, industrial racketeering, the protection rackets, blackmail and extortion; they also stepped up old crimes and killings. It was organized crime and the gangs had unbelievable power. The gangs used coercion, force, and criminal activities to keep the bootlegging going.

WWI-era psychiatrists observed that traumatized soldiers developed dissociative symptoms similar to female hysterics. But they saw the men's symptoms arising from trauma while women's symptoms were related to character, moral, and biological issues.

“Who's Looney Now?” by John Armstrong Chaloner.

The Senate votes on the "Susan B. Anthony" amendment, but it does not pass.

National Negro Health Week, the first health program for Negroes inaugurated by a Negro, is begun by Booker T Washington.

The Joint Distribution Committee for Relief of Jewish War Sufferers (now American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) is founded.

Nevada and Montana enfranchise women.

The CU alienates leaders of the National American association by campaigning against pro-suffrage Democrats in the congressional elections.

In England, United Suffragists formed.

In England, February Rhoda Robinson is arrested for burning down Allt-an-Fhionn mansion in Perthshire May King's portrait slashed at Royal Academy. Maude Edwards is arrested. June Suffragettes attempt to force their way into Buckingham Palace to petition the king. July

In England, August War is declared. WSPU suspends militancy and suffrage work; all imprisoned suffragettes are released.

In England, First World War begins and WSPU and NUWSS cease campaigning.

In England, Emmeline Pankhurst published My Own Story.

In England, First woman professional pilot: Mrs Buller, of the Cauldron Co, Hendon.

1915

Lima State Hospital

Lima State Hospital, which opened in 1915, served dangerous and homicidal patients from other state hospitals and mentally ill inmates from Ohio’s prisons. Lima staff also examined certain offenders for the courts to determine whether their crimes could have been caused by mental illness, mental deficiency or psychopathic personality.

Compulsory mandated public schools opened in New York; there was no public knowledge, input, or debate about it. Frances Kellor changed her focus. It was easy to use children against their parents in this way. It was the “civilian side of national defense,” she said, called the “National Security League.” She was unable to keep up the fear and anger, because no one gave them any trouble really.

The Child Welfare League of America was founded as the Bureau for Exchange of Information Among Child-Helping Organizations. The Bureau for Exchange of Information Among Child-Helping Organizations was founded and later renamed Child Welfare League of America in 1921.

Abraham Flexner in his address to the National Conference of Charities and Correction on "Is Social Work a Profession?" states social work does not qualify as a bona fide profession, consequently stimulating continual definition efforts by social workers.

In England, the teacher A.S.Neill wrote his first book in his Dominie series of semi-autobiographical novels, 'A Dominies Log'. This was the first of his writings to promote and advocate for children's rights in UK schools, especially the rights to play, to protection and to control their own learning. He went on to found what is now the oldest school based on children's rights, Summerhill (1921). The school and Neill's writings went on to influence schools and education systems around the world, including the UK.

Influential educator Abraham Flexner declared social work focused on children "hardly eligible" for professional status.

Anna Howard Shaw's tactical conservatism culminates in a loss of support from the National American members. She resigns and Catt replaces her as president.

“My Last Drink,” by Joseph H. Francis.

1916

Frances Kellor published “Straight America” to call for universal military service, mobilization, continuing build up, precisely engineered school curricula.

Callie Campbell, 11 years old, picks 75 to 125 pounds of cotton a day, and totes 50 pounds of it when sack gets full. "No, I don't like it very much." Potawotamie County, Oklahoma.

SLAVES REUNION. ANNIE PARRAM, AGE, 104; ANNA ANGALES, AGE 105; ELIZABETH BERKELEY, 125; SADIE THOMPSON, 110 (photo by Harris & Ewing at an Emancipation reunion in Washington, D.C.)

National health insurance is advocated by I. M. Rubinow, executive secretary of the American Medical Association Social Insurance Commission.

The American Birth Control League is founded (becoming the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1939).

Stanford-Binet intelligence test was published in the United States.

The first birth control clinic is opened by Margaret Sanger in Brooklyn, New York.

The Child Labor Act (ch. 676, 520 Stat. 1060) is passed by Congress on June 25; the act forbids interstate commerce of goods manufactured by child labor and is declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1918. Congress passes the first federal child labor law to prohibit the movement of goods across state lines if minimum age laws are violated. This law was in effect until 1918 when it was declared unconstitutional in the landmark case Hammer v. Dagenhart.

Ernst Rüdin (April 19, 1874 – October 22, 1952), was a Swiss psychiatrist, geneticist and eugenicist. Rüdin was born in St. Gallen, Switzerland. He is known as one of the fathers of racial hygiene. Influenced in racial hygiene and Social Darwinism by his brother-in-law Alfred Ploetz, Rüdin started his career as a psychiatrist and developed the concept of "empirical genetic prognosis" of mental disorders. He published his initial results on the genetics of schizophrenia in 1916. Rüdin was the director (1917–1945) of the Genealogical-Demographic Department at the German Institute for Psychiatric Research in Munich. He directed one of the first eugenics research institutes, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy in Munich, Germany. He also headed the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene [German Society for Racial Hygiene]; he was one of the first members of that organization to attempt to educate the public about the "dangers" of hereditary defectives and the value of the Nordic race as "culture creators". His research was later supported with manpower and financial funding from the German National Socialists. After 1945, Rüdin's connections to the Nazis were a major reason for criticisms of psychiatric genocide in Germany. Recognized as one of the fathers of National Socialist ideology, his work was endorsed officially by the Nazi Party. He wrote the official commentary for the racial policy of Nazi Germany: "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring"; and was awarded medals from the Nazis and Adolf Hitler personally. In 1933, Ernst Rüdin, Alfred Ploetz, and several other experts on racial hygiene were brought together to form the Expert Committee on Questions of Population and Racial Policy under Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick. The committee's ideas were used as a scientific basis to justify the racial policy of Nazi Germany. The "Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring" was passed by the German government on January 1, 1934. Rüdin was interned in US 1945, but already released 1946, after Max Planck campaigned on his behalf. Rudin said, "The significance of Rassenhygiene [racial hygiene] did not become evident to all aware Germans until the political activity of Adolf Hitler and only through his work has our 30-year long dream of translating Rassenhygiene into action finally become a reality." "Whoever is not physically or mentally fit must not pass on his defects to his children. The state must take care that only the fit produce children. Conversely, it must be regarded as reprehensible to withhold healthy children from the state."--at a speech to the German Society for Rassenhygiene, quoting Hitler.

British Braille became the English language standard (although New York Point and American Braille were both being used in the U.S.) because of the wealth of code already available in the British empire.

Woodrow Wilson promises that the Democratic Party Platform will endorse suffrage. Meanwhile, the CU transforms itself into the National Woman's Party. Montana elects suffragist Jeanette Rankin to the House of Representatives.

In England, in the early years of the 20th century the National Service League had urged compulsory military training for all men aged between 18 and 30. After the outbreak of World War I some two million men enlisted voluntarily, some in Pals battalions, but mostly in regular regiments and corps. Enthusiasm diminished as casualties increased, and the Military Service Act of January 1916 introduced conscription. Boys from the age of 18 were liable to be called-up for service^[39] Men of Class 1 (that is, 18 year olds), once enrolled, were given the option of returning home or remaining with the Colours and undergoing special training until they were 19.^[40] At the start of 1914 the British Army had a reported strength of 710,000 men including reserves. By the end of the war almost 1 in 4 of the total male population of the UK had joined, over five million men, and almost half the infantry were 19 or younger. Conscription ceased with the termination of hostilities on 11 November 1918 and all conscripts were discharged, if they had not already been so, on 31 March 1920.

1917

The Smith-Hughes Vocational Education Act became law. This act made federal monies available to states on a matching basis for vocational education programs. It established the Federal Board for Vocational Education which later administered the veteran and civilian vocational rehabilitation programs. This legislation (unintended at the time) is why Rehabilitation Counseling subsequently became associated with Colleges of Education in the USA.

Sigmund Freud published Introduction to Psychoanalysis, and Mourning and Melancholia.

At the request of the Surgeon General, the National Committee for Mental Hygiene drafted a mental ‘hygiene’ program, which was adopted by the Army and the Navy, in preparation for the First World War.

World War I brings with it a need to screen and classify military recruits. One of the tests was Robert Woodworth's Psychoneurotic Inventory, likely the first test to assess abnormal behavior.

Robert Yerkes (President of APA at the time) developed the Army Alpha and Beta Tests to measure intelligence in a group format. The tests were adopted for use with all new recruits in the U.S. military a year later.

Physiologic Shock Treatments using Malaria-Induced Fever began. The Austrian psychiatrist Julius von Wagner-Jauregg uses malaria-induced fever to cause remission in patients with slight or incomplete paralysis (also called dementia paralytica). Wagner-Jauregg discovered that general paresis, or neurosyphilis, can be treated by intentionally infecting the patient with malaria. Later received the Nobel Prize for his work.

Alfred Adler establishes the school of individual psychology and becomes the first psychoanalyst to challenge Freud. He coins the terms 'lifestyle' and 'inferiority complex' in his book, Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical Compensations.

Social Diagnosis, by Mary Richmond, is published in May. It is the first textbook on social casework, marking the development of a body of social work knowledge and techniques.

The first state department of public welfare is established in Illinois.

The National Conference of Charities and Correction becomes the National Conference of Social Work.

The National Social Workers Exchange (becoming, in 1921, the American Association of Social Workers and merging with other organizations to form NASW in 1955) is organized as "the only social work organization with specific concern for matters of personnel [and] additional functions pertaining to professional standards:'

The National Jewish Welfare Board is established (becoming the Jewish Welfare Board in 1977 and the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America in 1990).

Police begin arresting women who are picketing outside the White House. Some, including Paul and Lucy Burns, go on hunger strike while in jail; their militancy earns them sympathy from some quarters and disdain from others. The U.S. enters W.W.I. Under the leadership of Catt, the National American association aligns itself with the war effort in order to gain support for women's suffrage.

The Arkansas legislature grants women the right to vote in primary, but not general elections. The result of this partial suffrage is that white women win the vote, but black women do not.

Five midwestern states and Rhode Island grant women the right to vote in presidential elections only.

Bolsheviks give Soviet women full political power and legal equality and assure them access to all economic and cultural areas of Russian society. Legislation deals with the abolition of illegitimacy, the establishment of mother and child welfare centers, creation of day nurseries, the liberalization of abortion laws, and the simplification of marriage procedures.

Schools were under the control of the Education Trust Funds; this group consisted of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago, and the NEA.

Minnesota approved the first adoption law to seal all adoption records, from the past and there forward for many years. Minnesota passed first law mandating social investigation of all adoptions including home studies and providing for the confidentiality of adoption records.

A Committee on Statistics from what is now known as the American Psychiatric Association (APA), together with the National Commission on Mental Hygiene, developed a new guide for mental hospitals called the "Statistical Manual for the Use of Institutions for the Insane", which included 22 diagnoses. This is quite a change from the single category, "idiocy/insanity" in the 1840 Census.

“A Diary of Human Days,” by Mary MacLane

In England, Bill giving votes to certain women over 30 passes the Commons.

1918

The Smith-Sears Veterans Rehabilitation Act provided for the promotion of vocational rehabilitation and return to civil employment of disabled persons discharged from U.S. military. Soldier's Rehabilitation Act This act created a vocational rehabilitation program for disabled veterans that was administered by the Federal Board for Vocational Education. World War I was an impetus for the legislation. The Smith-Sears Veterans Vocational Rehabilitation Act establishes a federal vocational rehabilitation for disabled soldiers. The Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1918 (ch. 107, 40 Stat. 617) is passed on June 27. It establishes the first national program that provides physically handicapped veterans with occupational training and prostheses and, in 1920, is extended to provide rehabilitation in civilian life.

There are now 22 recognized categories of mental illness.

The American Psychoanalytic Association ruled that only individuals who have completed medical school and a psychiatric residency can become candidates for psychoanalytic training.

The American Association of Hospital Social Workers is organized. (It becomes the American Association of Medical Social Workers in 1934 and merges with other organizations to form NASW in 1955.)

The National Association of Jewish Center Workers is organized. (in 1970 it becomes the Association of Jewish Center Workers and in 1989 the Association of Jewish Center Professionals.)

The first formal training program for psychiatric social workers is instituted at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

The Community Chests and Councils of America is founded. (In 1956 it becomes the United Community Funds and Councils of America and in 1970 the United Way.)

President Wilson issues a statement supporting a federal amendment to grant woman's suffrage.

Rankin opens debate in the House on a new suffrage amendment, which passes.

President Wilson addresses the Senate in support of the Nineteenth Amendment, but it fails to win the required 2/3 majority of Senate votes.

An NEA report decreed that specified behaviors, health, and vocational training were central goals of education. Frances Kellor wanted to break up the work groups as they became a threat to her organization. The easiest way to do this was to break up family life. She needed a reform, so she started the Inter-Racial Council. New programs fed on family interventions. A new Republic was here and school was to be its church. Carnegie and Rockefeller became benevolent donors to these schools. Social hereditary clubs started cropping up, some of the older members were blacklisted and blackballed; those without the current proper status and beliefs.

The War prompted the English government, through the Maternity and Child Welfare Act to direct funds towards infant welfare centres, and the Act encouraged local authorities to continue this work by introducing the principle of free ante-natal care and free medical care of under-fives. Most of the work was undertaken by volunteers, who were able to claim support for the resources they used. These measures taken together contributed to an astonishing decline in infant mortality in the first three decades of the 20th century.

In England, The Representation of the People Act gave the vote to women over 30 who occupied premises of a yearly value of not less than 5 Pounds.

In England, Bill to enable women to stand for parliament is rushed through both Houses.

In England, Eleven women stood for parliament. The only one elected was Constance Markievicz, who would not take her seat because she was a Sinn Feinner.

In England, Christabel Pankhurst stood at Smethwick as the Women's Party candidate. She was narrowly beaten.

In England, First woman elected MP is Constance Markievicz, but as a Sinn Feiner she refused to swear the oath and was not allowed to take her seat.

1919

Edgar Allen, a businessman in Elyria, Ohio, founds the Ohio Society for Crippled Children, which becomes the national Easter Seals organization. It serves as a model for many of today's charitable organizations—in its methods and, some activists say, in its exclusion of people from the community being helped.

The National Association of Visiting Teachers is formed. (It later becomes the National Association of School Social Workers, which subsequently merges with other organizations to form NASW in 1955.)

The Association of Training Schools for Professional Social Work (a forerunner of the American Association of Schools of Social Work, now the Council on Social Work Education) is formed by leaders of 15 schools of social work. It is the first organization concerned exclusively with social work education and educational standards in Canada and the United States.

In England, in the aftermath of the Great War social reformer Eglantyne Jebb and her sister Dorothy, who married Labour MP C.R. Buxton, documented the terrible misery in which the children of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe were plunged, and believing there was no such thing as an "enemy" child, founded the Save the children Fund in London to address their needs. The Save the Children International Union (SCIU) was founded in Geneva in 1920 with Save the Children and Swedish Rädda Barnen as leading members.^[43] Jebb went on to draft the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in collaboration with Lady Blomfield.

In 1919, Rusk State Penitentiary in Texas was turned into a hospital for the “Colored insane.” The facility achieved notoriety when, on April 16, 1955, a group of African-American prisoners in the maximum-security unit rebelled and took over the hospital for five hours. The rebellion was led by nineteen-year-old Ben Riley, who articulated inmate demands for better counseling, organized exercise periods, an end to prisoner beatings, and that all inmates have the same rights enjoyed by the white inmates regarding meals, bathing and freedom of movement. The article in the Austin Statesman reflects the power of having control of the media: it stated that the prisoners had “no specific complaints,” and described Ben Riley as the “leader of the gang of criminally insane Negroes” and as someone who “likes to exhibit his muscles.” Readers get the sense that the reporter was barely restraining himself from calling the young leader a “big Black buck.” The Austin Statesman’s article is accompanied by a photo of a shirtless Riley with a caption that notes that the man was pointing to scars on another inmate that were reportedly caused by a beating. Is it possible that Riley was not just taking the opportunity to “exhibit his body” but was showing his own scars? During the siege, the inmates reportedly hooked the hospital superintendent up to the electroshock machine and attempted to deliver maximum voltage to him. The superintendent escaped injury when the inmates pushed the right button but failed to set the spring correctly. In her well researched book on the Texas State Lunatic Asylum, it is notable that author Sarah Sitton fails to note that Rusk State Hospital was established to serve African-American patients. Sitton is very sympathetic to the plight of attendants dealing with threats of violence from African-American prisoners but shows little concern for the violence perpetrated against African-American inmates. An Internet article on the brief history of the lobotomy noted that in 1949, staff at Rusk State Hospital in Texas (where Walter Freeman, the leading American proponent of lobotomies, had visited earlier in the year) were planning 450 ice-pick lobotomies before the year was out.

The Clinical psychology section of the American Psychology Association was formed.

“Confessions of an Agoraphobic Victim.” American Journal of Psychology. 30: 295-299, by Vincent.

“An Autobiography,” by George Fox

Michigan, Oklahoma, and South Dakota join the full suffrage states.

The National American association holds its convention in St. Louis, where Catt rallies to transform the association into the League of Women Voters.

Congress approved the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, and sent it to the states for ratification. Though the Amendment was first introduced in the 1870s, its passage was a decades-long undertaking with intense opposition. For a third time, the House votes to enfranchise women. The Senate finally passes the Nineteenth Amendment, and suffragists begin their ratification campaign. American women win the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. 

Swedish women obtain the right to vote.

John Dewey, using Rockefeller’s money, said, “the bulk of the population is biologically childlike and requires lifelong care, the government will use scientific control in the interest of the people, a new age of collectivism is spreading which will supplant private property, will require experimentation, and a large measure of forced cooperation of citizens, and enlargement of the government, and an increasing state of intervention, rights will be altered and abridged.” The London Times reported on Carnegie and the United States. In the United States men were broadcasting Carnegie’s agenda, first aimed at mobilizing world public opinion and then at controlling the press, the church, the stage and cinema, the education system, the universities. They would have revise histories and textbooks to make them politically correct in order to make these things happen. They would add new books into the schools, particularly in the primary school. Meetings took place secretly; they agreed to take vigorous counter actions to anyone that opposed them. The schools bombarded students with multiculturalism that degraded and insulted other cultures. At the beginning of the twentieth century psychological insights were gathered from past epochs of magic, theology, philosophy, arts, warfare, rumor, and madness, they were collected and codified, and the conclusions sold to the leaders of political states, global corporations, and other powerful interests. Norman Woelfel wrote, “It might be necessary for us to control our press as the Russian press is controlled and as the Nazi press is controlled.” Harold Riggs wrote in his textbooks, “Education must be used to condition the people to accept social change...to plan the future of society.”

At least 43 states have workers compensation laws.

The Russell Sage Foundation published the first professional child-placing manual

U.S. Children's Bureau set minimum standards for child-placing

Jessie Taft authored an early manifesto for therapeutic adoption, “Relation of Personality Study to Child Placing.”

The United States chooses to join the League of Nations.

In England, American-born Nancy, Lady Astor is the first female MP to sit in the House of Commons. She won a by-election in Plymouth, where her husband had been MP until raised to the Lords.

In England, First sportswoman to wear shorts: Elaine Burton, at the English Northern Counties' Athletics Championships.

In England, Sex Disqualification Removal Act.

In England, A woman was appointed vicar's warden at St Mary's Vincent Square, Westminster.

1920

Barbiturate induced deep sleep therapy to treat dementia praecox, which was popularized by the Swiss psychiatrist Jakob Klaesi.

The National Committee for Mental Hygiene (predecessor to the National Mental Health Association, which later became Mental Health America) produced a set of model commitment laws, which were subsequently incorporated into the statutes of several states.

The 18th Amendment, ratified in 1920, prohibits the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.

Despite the political subversion of anti-suffragists, particularly in Tennessee, three quarters of state legislatures ratify the Nineteenth Amendment on 26 August. American women win full voting rights. The right of women to vote is passed on August 18 as the 19th amendment.

John Watson describes the way in which he trained Albert to fear white rats. John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner published the Little Albert experiments, demonstrating that fear could be classically conditioned. Mary Clover Jones in 1924 demonstrated how such fears could be removed through conditioning, ushering in the beginning of behavior therapy. The Little Albert experiment was a case study showing empirical evidence of classical conditioning in humans. This study was also an example of stimulus generalization. It was carried out by John B. Watson and his graduate student, Rosalie Rayner, at Johns Hopkins University. The results were first published in the February 1920 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology. John B. Watson, after observing children in the field, was interested in finding support for his notion that the reaction of children, whenever they heard loud noises, was prompted by fear. Furthermore, he reasoned that this fear was innate or due to an unconditioned response. He felt that following the principles of classical conditioning, he could condition a child to fear another distinctive stimulus which normally would not be feared by a child. The aim of Watson and Rayner was to condition phobias into an emotionally stable child. They chose "Albert" for this study (at the age of about nine months) from a hospital. As the preliminary to the experiment, Little Albert was given a battery of baseline emotional tests: the infant was exposed, briefly and for the first time, to a white rabbit, a rat, a dog, a monkey, masks (with and without hair), cotton, wool, burning newspapers, and other stimuli. During the baseline, Little Albert showed no fear toward any of these items. Albert was then placed on a mattress on a table in the middle of a room. A white laboratory rat was placed near Albert and he was allowed to play with it. At this point, the child showed no fear of the rat. He began to reach out to the rat as it roamed around him. In later trials, Watson and Rayner made a loud sound behind Albert's back by striking a suspended steel bar with a hammer when the baby touched the rat. Little Albert responded to the noise by crying and showing fear. After several such pairings of the two stimuli, Albert was again presented with only the rat. Now, however, he became very distressed as the rat appeared in the room. He cried, turned away from the rat, and tried to move away. Apparently, the baby boy had associated the white rat (originally a neutral stimulus, now a conditioned stimulus) with the loud noise (an unconditioned stimulus) and was producing the fearful or emotional response of crying (originally the unconditioned response to the noise, now the conditioned response to the rat). This experiment led to the following progression of results: First, the introduction of a loud sound (unconditioned stimulus) resulted in fear (unconditioned response)—a natural response. Secondly, the introduction of a rat (neutral stimulus) paired with the loud sound (unconditioned stimulus) eventually resulted in fear (unconditioned response). Finally, the successive introductions of only a rat (conditioned stimulus) resulted in fear (conditioned response). Therefore, learning was demonstrated. The experiment did not have a control subject. Watson used the same kind of classical conditioning as Pavlov had used in his experiments with dogs. The experiment showed that Little Albert seemed to generalize his response to furry objects so that when Watson sent a non-white rabbit into the room seventeen days after the original experiment, Albert also became distressed. He showed similar reactions when presented with a furry dog, a seal-skin coat, and even when Watson appeared in front of him wearing a Santa Claus mask with white cotton balls as his beard. Albert, however, did not fear everything with hair; and there was some confusing results when pairing the noise with the rabbit and dog. Albert exhibited an approach and avoidance conflict with the objects presented to him at the age of 1 year and 21 days, his age at the conclusion of the experiment. Albert was then reportedly removed from the hospital. Watson had discussed (hypothetically) how to desensitize a human, but knew from the beginning of the study the possibility existed that there would not be time to do so with Albert. As Albert left the hospital on the day the last tests were made, no desensitizing ever took place, and it is possible that his fear responses continued post-experimentally. Following the conclusion of the experiment, Watson gave a series of weekend lectures describing the Little Albert study. One of these lectures was attended by Mary Cover Jones, which sparked her interest in pursuing graduate work in psychology. (She became known as the "Mother of Behavior Therapy" following a study she conducted on a three-year-old.)

Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach developed the Rorschach Inkblot Test. Rorschach's Psychodiagnostik described how to use inkblots to diagnose psychiatric conditions. It didn't become popular until 1937, when two manuals and scoring procedures were published.

The Smith-Fess (Civilian) Vocational Rehabilitation Act provided for the promotion of vocational rehabilitation of persons disabled in industry. The Fess-Smith Civilian Vocational Rehabilitation Act is passed, creating a vocational rehabilitation program for disabled civilians. The United States Office of Vocational Rehabilitation was established. National Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1920 - Established state/federal system of rehabilitation services. The Smith-Fess Act of 1920 is considered the beginning of the public rehabilitation program for persons with disabilities. Funds were provided for vocational guidance, training, occupational adjustment, prosthetics, and placement services. This act is also known as the Civilian Vocational Rehabilitation Act (Public Law 236). It established a civilian vocational rehabilitation program under the Federal Board for Vocational Education to be funded on a 50-50 matching basis with the states. Congress provided $750,000 for the first year and $1,000,000 for each of the next two years. The funding could be used for vocational guidance, training, occupational adjustment services, and job placement. The federal vocational rehabilitation program was not permanent at this time, and Congress needed to periodically vote to reauthorize it.

Harry Stack Sullivan's ward for schizophrenic patients at Sheppard-Pratt Hospital demonstrates the impact of a therapeutic milieu when patients are able to be returned to the community.

The National Committee for Mental Hygiene (Clifford Beers) produced a set of model commitment laws which were subsequently incorporated into the statutes of several states. The Committee also conducted influential studies on mental health, mental illness, and treatment, prompting real changes in the mental health care system.

The Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy becomes the Graduate School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago.

The Atlanta School of Social Service (now the Atlanta School of Social Work) opens in September, originating from Institutes of Social Service sponsored by the Neighborhood Union of Morehouse College from 1919 to 1920. Complete professionalization comes under the directorship of E. Franklin Frazier in 1922. The school is incorporated and chartered on March 22, 1924.

The National Conference of Catholic Charities is founded to coordinate a network of sectarian social services.

The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) is founded. (in 1976 CWLA absorbs the Florence Crittendon Association.)

“A Thousand Faces,” by Florence S. Thompson and George W. Galvin.

“The story of Opal – the journal of an understanding heart.” The Atlantic Monthly Press by Opal Whitley.

In the case of Hawk vs. Smith, anti-suffragists file suit against the Ohio legislature, but the Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of Ohio's ratification process.

In the UK, the National Society for Lunacy Law Reform was established in 1920 by angry ex-patients sick of their experiences and complaints being patronisingly discounted by the authorities who were using medical "window dressing" for essentially custodial and punitive practices.

Fitter Family Contests: When one considers the strong contribution of agricultural breeding to the eugenics movement, it is not difficult to see why eugenicists used state fairs as a venue for popular education. A majority of Americans were still living in rural areas during the first several decades of the 20th century, and fairs were major cultural events. Farmers brought their products of selective breeding — fat pigs, speedy horses, and large pumpkins — to the fair to be judged. Why not judge "human stock" to select the most eugenically fit family? This was exactly the concept behind Fitter Families for Future Firesides — known simply as Fitter Families Contests. The contests were founded by Mary T. Watts and Florence Brown Sherbon — two pioneers of the Baby Health Examination movement, which sprang from a "Better Baby" contest at the 1911 Iowa State Fair and spread to 40 states before World War I. The first Fitter Family Contest was held at the Kansas State Free Fair in 1920. With support from the American Eugenics Society's Committee on Popular Education, the contests were held at numerous fairs throughout the United States during the 1920s and up to the 1950’s.

Henry Ford distributed his book, "The International Jew: World’s Foremost Problem." Adolph Hitler had this book read to him. He came up with, "Mein Kampf," His own book about his life and Nazism. Ford was Hitler’s hero, and Ford was in charge of the American “Melting Pot.”

In England, The first six women jurors were sworn in at Bristol Quarter Sessions.

In England, Oxford University admits women to membership and degrees, but the statute limited the numbers of women to 1 for every 6 men.

1921

Psychological Corporation launched the first psychological test development company, not only commercializing psychological testing, but allowing testing to take place at offices and clinics rather than only at universities and research facilities.

The U.S. Veterans Bureau was established (later known as the Department of Veterans Affairs).

The American Foundation for the Blind is founded. The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), a non-profit organization recognized as Helen Keller's cause in the United States, is founded. Helen Keller becomes its principal fund-raiser, (Robert Irwin becomes director of research, 1922 executive director in 1929.) Fundraising for the disabled started, the leader of this was Helen Keller who once had written about her that her teacher had to slap her in the face in order to be able to reach her the very first time so that she could be taught.

Sigmund Freud published Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.

The Krondstadt Commune thought they should rebel against sweat labor. Henry Ford said, “A great business is really too big to be human.”

African American boy selling The Washington Daily News - sign on his hat reads, "Have you read The News? One cent" - headline reads "Millionaire tax rends G.O.P." Date 8 November 1921

The National Social Workers Exchange becomes the American Association of Social Workers (which later merges into NASW), the first national professional association of all social workers.

The Social Work Publicity Council is founded as the primary agency for interpreting social problems and social work. The council served as clearinghouse for ideas and materials on public relations and published Channels periodical and special bulletins.

The Maternity and Infancy Hygiene Act (Sheppard-Towner Act) (ch. 135, 42 Stat. 224), which provides for the first national maternal and child health program, is passed by Congress on November 23. The Commonwealth Fund establishes demonstration clinics for child guidance, initiating the child guidance clinic movement and establishing the essential role of social workers.

The Association of Junior Leagues of America is founded. (it becomes the Association of Junior Leagues in 1971 and the Association of Junior Leagues International in 1990.)

The Child Welfare League of America is formally renamed and re-organized. The League adopted a Constitution that defined standard-setting as one of the organization's core purposes. Founded by C. C. Carstens to act as a federation of 70 child services organizations.

Margaret Sanger founds the American Birth Control League, which evolves into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942.

In Sweden, marriage legislation gives women legal independence and equal rights as parents. 

As portrayed in his Dominie book, A Dominie Abroad (Herbert Jenkins, 1923), A.S.Neill founded what would become known as Summerhill School in Hellerau, a suburb of Dresden. It was part of an International school called the Neue Schule. Neill moved his school to Sonntagsberg in Austria. By 1923 Neill had moved to the town of Lyme Regis in the south of England, to a house called Summerhill where he began with 5 pupils. The school continued there until 1927, when it moved to the present site at Leiston in the county of Suffolk, taking the name of Summerhill with it The Secretary of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child wrote in support of the school when it faced closure from Government inspectors, that it 'surpasses all expectations' in its implementation of children's rights, particularly Article 12. Children's BBC made a four part drama called Summerhill based on its fight for survival against the government.

Marie Stopes opened the UK's first family planning clinic in London, the Mothers' Clinic, offering a free service to married women and gathering scientific data about contraception. The opening of the clinic created a major social impact on the 20th century, marking the start of a new era in fertility control by promising an opportunity for the modern world to break out of the Malthusian Trap. An admirer of Hitler's Nazism and a Eugenicist, Stopes' brand of Feminism sought selective breeding to achieve racial purity, sterilisation of those 'unfit for parenthood' and consigned the Rights of Children to the backwaters of the Pro/Anti Abortion debate.

The Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (AMSAII) becomes the American Psychiatric Association.

Georgia Warm Springs Foundation: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an aristocrat from Hyde Park, N.Y., he had been both assistant secretary of the Navy and a candidate for vice-president by the time he contracted polio in 1921 at his family’s summer home off the coast of Maine (Campobello). Left paralyzed from the waist down at the age of 39, he spent three years searching for any means possible to walk again. Frustrated, with his promising political future all but over, he was desperate when a letter from his friend, George Foster Peabody, arrived and told him of the improvement a young man with polio was showing by swimming in the warm, mineral-rich waters at his Georgia resort, the Meriwether Inn. Despite his family’s objections, Roosevelt immediately left for Georgia. The success he enjoyed in the warm springs, being able to stand on his own and the ability to strengthen his withered leg and hip muscles, attracted local and eventually national publicity, and other downhearted polio survivors, seeking similar results, began arriving from all over the country. When their presence proved incompatible with the other paying customers, Roosevelt purchased the resort and turned it into what became a world-famous polio treatment center -- the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. By regaining his confidence and self-esteem, and through his new found appreciation for the problems of others, Roosevelt re-entered the political arena and successfully ran for Governor of New York in 1928. Four years later, with America in the midst of its worst financial collapse ever, he was a landslide winner for President and went on to be elected three more times before dying in Warm Springs on April 12, 1945.

In England, First two women barristers called to the Irish Bar: Fay Kyle and Miss A.K.S. Deverell.

1922

Narcotic Drug Import and Export Act also called the Jones-Miller Act. Increased penalties and further restricted the import and export of opium and coca.

In Ohio, Hawthornden State Hospital, later known as Western Reserve Psychiatric Habilitation Center, operated as a farm for Cleveland State Hospital from 1922 until 1938. It was established as a separate facility in 1941.

In Ozawa v. U.S., The Supreme Court reaffirmed that Asian immigrants were not eligible for naturalization

“The Experiences of an Asylum Patient,” London, by Rachel Grant-Smith. Ex-patient Rachel Grant-Smith added to calls for reform of the system of neglect and abuse she had suffered by publishing "The Experiences of an Asylum Patient".

In England, First woman called to the English Bar: Dr Ivy Williams.

In England, First female member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, and the first female vet, was Aileen Cust (b1868).

In England, Viscountess Rhondda was refused a seat in the House of Lords for being a woman.

In England, Criminal Law Amendment Act protected both sexes from seduction up to the age of 16

In England, Irene Barclay became the first female chartered surveyor. She ran her own business for 51 years.

1923

The Jewish Welfare Society of Philadelphia establishes the first organized homemaker service.

The first course in group work in a school of social work is introduced at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, by Clara Kaiser.

Education and Training for Social Work is published, detailing the first major study of social work education conducted by James H. Tufts, professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago.

“Daughters of Fire: Sylvia—Emilie—Octavie” (trans. from 1862 French ed.). London, by Gerard Labrunie [Gerard De Nerval].

“From Harrow School to Herrison House Asylum,” London, by Harald Hewitt.

German pharmacologist Otto Loewi and English neuroscientist Sir Henry Dale discovered Acetylcholine, the first neurotransmitter to be described, winning them the 1936 Nobel Prize.

Racism was a truth of science, not just prejudice anymore! There were secret societies to weed out the un-American and the imbeciles. Boys as young as 10 years old called “Yellow-Dogs” would go look for these kinds of people and then tell on them. The American Protective League was one of these secret hunting agencies it had 1,200 units across America, all staffed by business and professional people, every one of them had the power of an official policemen.

As part of the eugenics movement in the country, Oregon mandates sterilization of some citizens.

In England, Eight female MPs elected.

In England, First female Labour MP, Susan Lawrence.

In England, The grounds for divorce became equal.

In England, Ethel Mary Colman became the first woman Lord Mayor in England when appointed in Norwich. Her sister Helen was Lady Mayoress.

1924

The Commonwealth of Virginia passed a state law that allowed for sterilization (without consent) of individuals found to be, “feebleminded, insane, depressed, mentally handicapped, epileptic and other.” Alcoholics, criminals and drug addicts were also sterilized. The State Eugenics Board met and from 1933 to 1973 state action led to the sterilization by choice or coercion of over 7,600 people.

German neuropsychiatrist Hans Berger discovered human Electroencephalography.

Otto Rank published The Trauma of Birth, coining the term "pre-Oedipal", causing Freud to break with him.

The Atlanta School of Social Work is incorporated on March 22 as the first Negro school.

Heroin Act made the manufacture and possession of heroin illegal

The Child Welfare Institute opened.

A French court rules that a husband does not have the right to beat his wife. Prior to this, the Napoleonic Code is dominant, suggesting that "Women, like walnut trees, should be beaten every day." 

Child Labor Amendment of 1924: Congress attempted to pass a constitutional amendment that would authorize a national child labor law; however, this measure was blocked by opposition within Congress and the bill was eventually dropped.

In England, Four female MPs elected.

In England, First woman government minister: Margaret Bondfield became Minister of Labour.

1925

Harry Stack Sullivan (February 21, 1892, Norwich, New York – January 14, 1949, Paris, France) was a U.S. psychiatrist whose work in psychoanalysis was based on direct and verifiable observation (versus the more abstract conceptions of the unconscious mind favored by Sigmund Freud and his disciples). Sullivan was the first to coin the term “problems in living” to describe the difficulties with self and others experienced by those with so-called mental illnesses. This phrase was later picked up and popularized by Thomas Szasz, whose work was a foundational resource for the antipsychiatry movement. “Problems in living” went on to become the movement's preferred way to refer to the manifestations of mental disturbances. Sullivan made his reputation based on his experimental treatment ward for schizophrenics at the Sheppard Pratt Hospital, between 1925-29. He employed specially trained ward attendants to work with the patients to provide them with the peer relationships (peer support!) he believed they'd missed out on during the latency period of development. Doctors, nurses and other authority figures were banned from the ward. He believed there was a homosexual element to latency age peer relationships and that a failure to go through this stage led to self-loathing, a withdrawal from the world in fantasy and psychosis, and a failure to move on to heterosexual adjustment. Thus the patients, who were all young male homosexuals as well as schizophrenics, in their positive interactions with the attendants, also young male homosexuals, would heal the wounds from missing male intimacy as pre-people. One patient, Jimmie, came to the ward at fifteen and later moved in with Sullivan and became his lover for many years. Jimmie was known to Sullivan's associates as his adopted son, a fiction whereby he could keep his sexual identity in the closet.

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Junius Wilson in pajamas, Christmas, 2000

In 1925, Junius Wilson, a seventeen-year-old, deaf and mute black man was accused of rape, castrated and remanded for incarceration at the psychiatric facility in Goldsboro (North Carolina) by a “lunacy jury.” The rape charges were eventually dropped in the 1970s and at some point authorities realized that Mr. Wilson was neither mentally ill nor retarded—simply hearing impaired. In 1994, at the age of 86, Mr. Wilson was moved to a cottage on the grounds of the facility (now known as the Cherry Hospital). The move to the cottage was the state’s effort to make up for Mr. Wilson’s 72-year incarceration. He died there in March of 2001.

Wilson, born in 1908, was apparently wrongfully accused of a criminal act as a teenager, found insane by a jury, and sentenced to a psychiatric hospital in his home state of North Carolina, where he spent the rest of his life. Wilson was a young, deaf, and African American man from a struggling rural town. For many decades, no one learned to communicate with him in his language, including during court proceedings. After the 1928 Supreme Court decision legalizing sterilization of people in institutions, he was castrated. His family traveled to the hospital after World War II to seek his release but were turned away. Despite being deemed sane, he remained institutionalized.

When Wilson was in his 80s, at the instigation of a social worker and lawyers who looked at his file and understood the outrageous miscarriage of justice, Wilson was released from the locked wards and given a settlement from the state. He lived the last few years of his life in a cottage on the hospital grounds. He died in 2001. (Check out the book Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson to learn more about his life.)

Wilson's story is one of the troubling chapters of American ableism (the belief that people with disabilities are inferior to the able-bodied) and racism, to be sure. His is also a deeply moving demonstration of the role of objects—in particular, bicycles—in creating dignity, purpose, and a larger identity. Over the years, Wilson owned bicycles that he purchased with money he saved from digging and selling fishing worms. This museum has had the good fortune to collect his last bike—a yellow Schwinn—that his biographer, Susan Burch, located in a shed on the hospital grounds after he passed away. The bicycle story of Junius Wilson deserves closer, if inferential, attention.

Wilson's bike arrives at the National Museum of American History

When safety bikes first hit the commercial market in the 1880s, the world got a little bigger and more interesting. People formed bicycling clubs and associations. They purchased maps or drew their own, marking land formations, treacherous terrain, and good spots to picnic or view the countryside. With a bike, women, youths, and people who were restricted from public conveyances because of race or poverty had the possibility of going further or doing something different, as long as they had a certain amount of physical mobility.

Wilson's bike, found behind a shed

Wilson must have felt this, too. He owned three bikes in his life while imprisoned in the psychiatric hospital. Perhaps the freedom to ride around the grounds and into town on a special occasion relieved the monotony as well as announced his ownership of something. The objects that we use make public statements about us—about our competency, identity, domain. Wilson's yellow Schwinn with two wire baskets said a lot about him. His bikes were not given to him. He wanted one and went after it. He was a man with aspiration, even if only to get out and ride across the grounds. His bike gave him alone time with a machine that he owned and controlled, even if sporadic and restricted by imposing institutional boundaries. The injustices done to Mr. Wilson no doubt preyed on him throughout his life. Yet he not only managed to get one bike, he got another and another. His keeping on with bikes, his companionship with self-propelled freedom, and his mastery of balance and steady pedaling over the uneven grounds give us a glimpse of his internal life, even though he left no papers and most of the people around him never learned to communicate with him.

Wilson's bike on display in "The Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990-2015" case on the museum's second floor. The display is open July 20, 2015 to December 17, 2015.

Katherine Ott is a curator in the Division of Medicine and Science.

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Clitoridectomies performed in association with women’s mental disorders.

Psychoanalysis develops a myth of female masochism into its conception of the normal female psychology. It is argued that women derive sexual gratification from the violence they experience. 

Wolfgang Kohler published ‘The Mentality of Apes’ which became a major component of Gestalt Psychology.

“Cruelties in an Edinburgh Asylum,” Edinburgh by William Simpson.

Perkins School creates another "first" - the Hayes-Binet test, which reveals that the intelligence of the blind population is no different from the sighted.

“The Confession of a Fool” (trans. Ellie Scheussner), by August Strindberg.

In England, Guardianship of Infants Act. Mothers given equality in custody of children. Mr Justice Lawrence called this 'an insult to God'.

In England, First woman stockbroker: Miss C.V. Baird, Oonagh Keogh, aged 22, Dublin Stock Exchange.

In England, First woman to win an open horse race: Eileen Joel won the Newmarket Town Plate wearing a cloche hat.

1926

Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926) dies. He is seen as being the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics.

The Société Psychanalytique de Paris was founded with the endorsement of Sigmund Freud; the Nazis closed it in 1940.

The American Association of Psychiatric Social Workers, originally a section of the American Association of Hospital Social Workers, is organized. (It later merges into NASW)

“The Traitor—Being the Untampered with, Unrevised Account of the Trial and All that Led to it,” by Harry K. Thaw

Sioux author and activist Zitkala-Ša, who was born on February 22, 1876. Many of her writings, including “American Indian Stories” (1921), explored her position at the intersection of mainstream American culture and Native American heritage. In 1926, Zitkala-Ša founded the National Council of American Indians, which advocated citizenship and suffrage for Native Americans. (Photo: Gertrude Käsebier)

In England, Mrs Foster Welsh became the first female King's Officer (Sheriff) when elected at Southampton.

1927

On May 2, 1927 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell (Carrie Buck, AKA Carrie Buck Detamore), rules that the forced sterilization of people with disabilities is not a violation of their constitutional rights. The Supreme Court rules in Buck v. Bell that the compulsory sterilization of mental defectives such as Carrie S. Buck, a young Virginia woman, is constitutional under "careful" state safeguards. Perhaps unbelievably, this ruling has never been overturned. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes found that the state interest in a “pure” gene pool outweighed the interest of individuals in their bodily integrity. In his opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes writes: "(It) is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind...Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Justice Holmes equated sterilization to vaccination. Nationally, twenty-seven states began wholesale sterilization of “undesirables.” The decision removes the last restraints for eugenicists; advocating that people with disabilities be prohibited from having children. By the 1970s, some 60,000 disabled people are sterilized without consent. This included people identified as having “mental illness.”

Psychiatry, a brand new profession came on the scene to help with school racial indoctrination as a proper governmental tool. Ralph Truit head of Child Guidance Clinics for the Psychiatric Association said that the schools should be the focus (source) for the attack. The idea of peer support gets started, but the U.S. Supreme Court agrees with the Eugenicist in Buck vs. Bell.

Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud, published her first book expanding her father’s ideas in the treatment of children.

The first school of social work is professionally certified by the American Association of Schools of Social Work.

The American Association for Old Age Security is organized to further national interest in legislation for aged people; Abraham Epstein is appointed as the director.

Franklin Roosevelt co-founds the Warm Springs Foundation at Warm Springs, Georgia. The Warm Springs facility for polio survivors becomes a model rehabilitation and peer counseling program.

Physiological Shock Treatments using Insulin Coma and Convulsions began. Manfred Sakel introduced insulin coma therapy as a treatment for schizophrenia. Also used to treat morphine withdrawal. Sakel, a Jewish Austrian (later Austrian-American) neurophysiologist and psychiatrist, credited with developing insulin shock therapy in 1927. Dr. Sakel was the developer of insulin shock therapy from 1927 while a young doctor in Vienna, starting to practice it in 1933. It would become widely used on individuals with schizophrenia and other mental patients. He noted that insulin-induced coma and convulsions, due to the low level of glucose attained in the blood (hypoglycemic crisis), had a short-term appearance of changing the mental state of drug addicts and psychotics, sometimes dramatically so. He reported that up to 88% of his patients improved with insulin shock therapy, but most other people reported more mixed results and it was eventually shown that patient selection had been biased and that it didn't really have any specific benefits and had many risks, adverse effects and fatalities. However, his method became widely applied for many years in mental institutions worldwide. In the USA and other countries it was gradually dropped by the 1970s. It has been noted that patients would have been terrified of the procedure. Most professionals who were involved are now ashamed, recalling it as inhumane and unscientific, although they may have had the impression of efficacy in the narrow confines of isolated insulin shock units with much extra personal attention and support given to the cherry-picked patients.

Insulin shock therapy Patients with mental disorders were often given repeated doses of insulin to induce coma, a common practice in the US from 1933 until the late 1960s.

Julius von Wagner-Jauregg using malaria-induced fever becomes the first psychiatrist to win the Nobel prize. Austrian physician Julius Wagner-Jauregg won the Nobel Prize for his invention of malarial therapy as a treatment for general paralysis of the insane (neurosyphilis). He first initiated the treatment in 1917.

Bureau of Prohibition Created by an act of the same name. Replaced the Bureau of Internal Revenue with a new bureau under the Dept. of Treasury. This is the first organization responsible solely for the enforcement of drug and alcohol laws.

Philip Drinker and Louis Shaw develop the iron lung, a chamber that provides artificial respiration for polio patients being treated for respiratory muscle paralysis.

“Reluctantly Told,” by Jane Hillyer.

“The Locomotive God,” by W. E. Leonard.

1928

“Exposure of the Asylum System,” by M. J. Nolan

Massachusetts Department of Mental Health created.

Indian Association for Mental Hygiene established.

Edward Bernays published two books, "Crystallizing Public Opinion" and "Propaganda." Adolph Hitler had both, along with Carnegie’s money; this led to Nazism and the rationale for the Jewish Holocaust. They used these books to argue that language could create new realities. Bernays promoted the idea of controlling the common people, this should happen from behind the scenes; hence, this demonstrated the need for invisible government. With the technical means invented and then developed which furthered public opinion there was a move towards regimentation. Hence, the idea that people could be governed, have their minds molded, tastes formed, and ideas suggested or implanted, largely by men never heard of or even seen. A small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses should, will, and do control the public. Conscious manipulations of organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power in a country.

The Milford Conference on November 9 and 10 accepts a committee report defining generic social casework and promulgating the principle that process in social casework and the equipment of the social worker should be basically the same for all fields of practice.

The International Conference of Social Work (ICSW) is formed during the first international conference of philanthropists, charity organizers, social workers, government officials, and others in Paris. The organization later became the International Council on Social Welfare.

“Sanity for Sale: The Story of the Rise and Fall of William B. Ellis, by Himself,” by William B. Ellis.

“Sanity for Sale: The Story of American Life Since the Civil War,” by William B. Ellis.

In England, Representation of the People Act is amended and allows everyone over the age of 21 to vote.

In England, Ray Strachey published The Cause.

1929

Wolfgang Kohler criticizes behaviorism in his publication on Gestalt Psychology.

The establishment of two Federal Narcotics farms was authorized within the PHS (Public Health Service). The Lexington Hospital opened in 1935 and the Fort Worth Hospital in 1938. Both facilities participated in pioneering research on drug abuse, carried forward by the Addiction Research Center at Lexington, which later moved to Baltimore.

Seeing Eye establishes the first dog guide school for blind people in the United States.

Early in 1929, Afraid of being killed Al Capone had himself arrested and spent a year in jail to keep it from happening. He was quoted as saying, “I want peace and I will live and let live. I’m tired of gang murders and gang shootings. It’s a tough life to live. You fear death every moment...you have no peace of mind...I am known all over the world as a millionaire gorilla.”

The Social Work Year Book (now the Encyclopedia of Social Work) is initiated under the auspices of the Russell Sage Foundation. (Publication is transferred to AASW in 1951 and to NASW in 1955.)

The International Committee of Schools of Social Work (ICSSW) is formed by 46 schools in 10 countries. The impetus for the new organization came from the 1928 international conference, in which participants called for social work education as a means of professionalizing social work and improving services. (ICSSW later became the International Association of Schools of Social Work, IASSW).

The “wets,” those opposed to prohibition, started to rally in public.

“Pick Up the Pieces,” by Emerson D. Owens. [North 3-1].

“Reminiscences of a Stay in a Mental Hospital.” London, by Mary Riggall.

“The Layman Looks at Doctors,” by S.W. Pierce and J. T. (pseudonym).

“When—A Record of Transition,” by J. L. Pole.

In England, Age of marriage raised from 12 to 16 for girls and from 14 to 16 for boys.

In England, Virginia Woolf published A Room of One's Own.

1930’s

Drugs, electro-convulsive therapy, and surgery are used to treat people with schizophrenia and others with persistent mental illnesses. Some are infected with malaria; others are treated with repeated Metrazol or insulin-induced comas. Others have parts of their brain removed surgically, an operation called a lobotomy, which is performed widely over the next two decades to treat schizophrenia, intractable depression, severe anxiety, and obsessions. Psychiatrists had used a variety of aggressive measures to control mental patients during the three centuries of the [asylum] system, but the 1930s saw a new approach in technology. In previous years assaults on the patients had been largely directed at the whole body rather than the brain. Patients were whipped, strapped into spinning chairs, dunked into cold water, poisoned with toxic agents, bled, placed in straitjackets, and thrown into solitary confinement. But with the third decade of the twentieth century, psychiatrists discovered it was more efficient to attack the brain directly. The major breakthrough took place in 1928, when Sakel, the inventor of insulin coma therapy, first discovered that addicts accidentally overdosed with insulin became more docile and manageable. The widespread acceptance of insulin coma therapy in the 1930s paved the way for a variety of brain-damaging convulsive therapies [including electroshock], and ultimately for direct surgical destruction of the highest centers of the brain (lobotomy).

Most of the interest in lobotomy derives from experiments performed in the 1930’s by Drs. John Fulton and Carlyle Jacobsen at the Yale Primate Laboratory. They trained two female chimps to perform complicated activities in order to obtain food. When the chimps' attempts were repeatedly unrewarded, they became quick-tempered and confused, which the scientists termed "experimental neurosis." Sometimes the chimps kicked their cages, pulled their hair, and threw their feces at the scientists who were experimenting on them. The frontal lobes of each chimp were completely removed and replaced with sterile oil-soaked cotton. After this operation lbe chimps lost much of their problem-solving ability and their attempts to gain food met with little success. Since they now exhibited no emotional responses they were considered "cured" of their "neurosis."

1930

The Mental Treatment Act of 1930 introduced the category of voluntary patients and the notion of rehabilitation.

The U.S. Public Health Service established the Narcotics Division, later named Division of Mental Hygiene. The division brought together for the first time the threads of the mental health movement—from research and treatment programs to combat drug addiction to the study of the causes, prevalence, and means of preventing and treating nervous and mental disease. Dr. Walter Treadway headed the division. He was succeeded by Dr. Lawrence Kolb who retained the post until his retirement in 1944 when Dr. Robert H. Felix took over.

Federal Bureau of Narcotics replaced the Bureau of Prohibition and moved the enforcement of drug laws from the Dept. of Treasury to the Dept. of Justice. Its first commissioner, the infamous Harry Anslinger, began actions to control cannabis in addition to opium and coca.

In 1930, 1,200 experts met at the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection. They were concerned with in schools.

The American Public Welfare Association is founded.

Bad debts, shrunken trade, over stretched budgets, and a return to the Gold standard led to inflation, stabilization, and austerity throughout the 20’s, but now the time had come to pay. America fell into the Great Depression. Many people committed suicide over this particularly noticeable were the deaths of the affluent who lost so much as Wall Street crashed, banks crashed and investments became worthless.

The First International Congress for Mental Hygiene in 1930 was, perhaps, the pinnacle of Clifford Beers’ career. The Congress convened 3,042 officially registered participants from forty-one countries “with many more actually in attendance” for constructive dialogue about fulfilling the mission of the Mental Health Movement. The Movement was well established when Clifford Beers died in 1943.

A 1930 study of almost 10,000 arrestees reported that just 1.5 percent of them were psychotic at the time of arrest.

“Wondering. The Impressions of an Inmate.” Atlantic Monthly. 145: 669. by Anonymous.

“The Shutter of Snow,” by E. H. Coleman.

“Confessions: A Study in Pathology,” by Arthur Symons.

In England, Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly solo to Australia.

1931

The International Foundation for Mental Health Hygiene is founded by Clifford Beers.

“Guilty but Insane: A Broadmoor Autobiography.” London, by Wannack (pseudonym).

“The Recovery of Myself: A Patient’s Experience in a Hospital for Mental Illness,” by Marian King.

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to renowned social worker Jane Addams.

The Temporary Emergency Relief Administration is established in New York State by Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a prototype of federal public relief to unemployed people.

“Sketches in the Life of John Clare” (written by himself, first published with an introduction, notes and additions, by Edmund Blunden). London, by John Clare.

“Sane in Asylum Walls.” London, by James Scott.

On April 2, 1931, 17-year-old Jackie Mitchell struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig during an exhibition game against the Yankees. A few days later, her contract was voided and women were declared unfit to play baseball. (Photo: Library of Congress)

In 1931, Will Rogers said, “What does a prohibition amount to, if your neighbor’s children are not eating? It’s food, not drink, that is our problem now. We were so afraid the poor people might drink-now we fixed it so they can’t eat.”

Repeal of Prohibition did not end the Depression, but it did add jobs and taxes to the economy.

In England, Sylvia Pankhurst published The Suffragette Movement.

In England, Birth rate dropped to 15.8 per 1,000.00 Was 28.6 per 1,000 in 1901 and from 36 per 1,000 in 1876

In England, Amy Johnson flew from London to Australia.

1932

President Herbert Hoover signs the Emergency Relief and Construction Act (ch. 520, 47 Stat. 709) into law on July 21; a provision of the act enables the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend money to states for relief purposes, moving federal government into the field of public relief.

Formal accreditation is initiated by the American Association of Schools of Social Work with development of a minimum curriculum requiring at least one academic year of professional education encompassing both classroom and field instruction.

The Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds is founded. (In 1978 it becomes the Council of Jewish Federations.)

Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the 32nd president of the United States and is re-elected for an unprecedented four terms before dying in office in April 1945. In August 1921, while vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Roosevelt contracted an illness, believed to be polio, which resulted in total and permanent paralysis from the waist down. After becoming President, he helps found the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (now known as the March of Dimes). His leadership in this organization is one reason he is commemorated on the dime.

Jean Piaget published ‘The Moral Judgment of Children’ beginning his popularity as the leading theorist in cognitive development.

Walter B. Cannon coined the term homeostasis and began research on the fight or flight phenomenon.

The Tuskegee syphilis experiment (also known as the Tuskegee syphilis study or Public Health Service syphilis study) was an infamous clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in poor, rural black men who thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S. government. The Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, began the study in 1932. Investigators enrolled in the study a total of 600 impoverished, African-American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama; 399 who had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and 201 without the disease. For participating in the study, the men were given free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance. They were never told they had syphilis, nor were they ever treated for it. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men were told they were being treated for "bad blood," a local term used to describe several illnesses, including syphilis, anemia and fatigue. The 40-year study was controversial for reasons related to ethical standards; primarily because researchers knowingly failed to treat patients appropriately after the 1940s validation of penicillin as an effective cure for the disease they were studying. Revelation of study failures by a whistleblower led to major changes in U.S. law and regulation on the protection of participants in clinical studies. Now studies require informed consent (with exceptions possible for U.S. Federal agencies which can be kept secret by Executive Order), communication of diagnosis, and accurate reporting of test results. By 1947, penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis. Choices available to the doctors involved in the study might have included treating all syphilitic subjects and closing the study, or splitting off a control group for testing with penicillin. Instead, the Tuskegee scientists continued the study without treating any participants and withholding penicillin and information about it from the patients. In addition, scientists prevented participants from accessing syphilis treatment programs available to others in the area. The study continued, under numerous US Public Health Service supervisors, until 1972, when a leak to the press eventually resulted in its termination. The victims of the study included numerous men who died of syphilis, wives who contracted the disease, and children born with congenital syphilis.

The Treaty of London standardizes American and English Braille.

The Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act provided for young offenders, to be sent to an Approved School, put on probation, or put into the care of a "fit person". Courts could, in addition, sentence male juvenile offenders to be whipped with not more than six strokes of a birch rod by a constable".

The Disabled American Veterans was chartered by Congress to represent disabled veterans in their dealings with the federal government.

Uniform State Narcotic Act encouraged states to pass uniform state laws matching the federal Narcotic Drug Import and Export Act. Suggested prohibiting cannabis use at the state level. By 1937 every state had passed laws prohibiting cannabis use.

Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer best known for his novels including Brave New World (1932), set in a dystopian London. Huxley was a humanist, pacifist, and satirist. He became deeply concerned that human beings might become subjugated through the sophisticated use of the mass media or mood-altering drugs, or tragically impacted by misunderstanding or the misapplication of increasingly sophisticated technology.

“Behind the Door of Delusion,” by Inmate Ward Eight [Marion Woodson].

“I Lost My Memory--The Case as the Patient Saw It.” London, by Anonymous.

In England, Dr Nancy Nichols and her husband (of Folkestone) crossed Africa by motor-car, a journey of 10,000 miles. She was the first woman to drive the 1,157 over the Wadai Desert and Dar-Fur mountains.

1933

The 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment, which meant that states once again had the right to enact laws regulating the sale and use of alcoholic beverages.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the first seriously physically disabled person ever to be elected as a head of government, is sworn into office as president of the United States. He continues his “splendid deception,” choosing to minimize his disability in response to the ableism of the electorate.

Manfred Sakel reported his first experimental findings, testing the efficacy of insulin-shock treatment on schizophrenic patients in Berlin, Germany. Insulin was administered to the patient in a dose high enough to induce coma, and although the treatment seemed to be beneficial to individuals in the early stages of schizophrenia, it was not proven to be useful in advanced cases of schizophrenia. Sakel’s vague theoretical rationale for this specific method and the difficult regimen of care this treatment required also led to the abandonment of insulin-shock therapy.

Ladislaus Joseph von Meduna experimented with shock therapy and schizophrenia in Budapest, Hungary, also during the year 1933. Instead of insulin, Meduna injected patients with Metrazol, a less toxic synthetic preparation of camphor. This treatment was soon abandoned as it possessed a period of unpredictable length between injection and convulsions, giving the patient just enough time to become fearful and uncooperative. It also often produced convulsions that were so severe as to cause fractures.

Hungarian psychiatrist Sandor Ferenczi published a paper claiming that patient accounts of childhood sexual abuse are true, providing a psychological explanation, causing Freud to break with him.

The Civilian Conservation Corps Act (ch. 17, 48 Stat. 22) is passed by Congress on March 31. The act is established to meet part of the need caused by the Great Depression by providing work and education programs for unemployed and unmarried young men ages 17 to 23 years.

The Federal Emergency Relief Act (ch. 30, 48 Stat. 55) is passed on May 12. It creates the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which provides 25 percent matching and direct grants to states for public distribution for relief. Social worker Harry Hopkins becomes the director on May 22. (On April 8, 1935, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration is superseded by the Works Progress Administration, which is phased out in 1943.)

In England, The Children and Young Persons Act of 1932 broadened the powers of juvenile courts and introduced supervision orders for children at risk. The Children and Young Persons Act of 1933 provided for young offenders, to be sent to an Approved School, put on probation, or put into the care of a "fit person". Courts could, in addition, sentence male juvenile offenders to be whipped with not more than six strokes of a birch rod by a constable". The Act also introduced Remand Homes for youths temporarily held in custody, to await a court hearing. The Home Office maintained a team of inspectors who visited each institution from time to time. Offenders, as well as receiving academic tuition, were assigned to work groups for such activities as building and bricklaying, metalwork, carpentry and gardening. Many approved schools were known for strict discipline, and were essentially "open" institutions from which it was relatively easy to abscond. This allowed the authorities to claim that they were not "Reformatories", and set them apart from Borstal. The age of criminal responsibility was raised from 7 to 8, and no-one could be hanged for an offence committed under the age of 18. The Act consolidated most existing child protection legislation, enforcing strict punishments for anyone over 16 found to have neglected a child. Guidelines on the employment of school-age children were set, with a minimum age of 14 for full-time employment.

The day after the Reichstag fire, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to sign Article 48, an "emergency" decree authorizing Hitler to suspend civil rights, arrest, imprison, and execute suspicious persons (communists, socialists, and labor union leaders), and outlaw non-Nazi press. Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, opened. Jews were barred from German civil service. Hitler obtained the right to revoke German citizenship for persons considered a threat or "undesirable" to the government.

The Third Reich's policy for euthanizing the mentally and physically disabled – codenamed "Aktion T4" – begins and continues into late 1945. http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/disabilities/

“Mania,” by Lawrence M. Jayson.

“Dreams and Life (trans. from 1855 French ed.).” London, by Gerard Labrunie [Gerard De Nerval].

“Two Lives,” by W. E. Leonard.

In England, London County Council removed its marriage bar.

In England, Women first wore trousers suits in public.

1934

Ladislas J. Meduna, a Hungarian neuropathologist and psychiatrist working in Budapest, introduced cardiazol shock therapy (cardiazol is the tradename of the chemical compound pentylenetetrazol, known by the tradename metrazol in the United States), which was the first convulsive or seizure therapy for a psychiatric disorder. Physiologic Shock Treatments with Metrazol Convulsions began. Psychiatrists began to inject insulin to induce shock and temporary coma as a treatment for schizophrenia. Convulsive therapy introduced by Ladislas J. Meduna, a Hungarian neurologist and neuropathologist noted for his development of shock treatment for persons suffering from schizophrenia using intramuscular injections of camphor. It did not reliably produce seizures, which he believed could ease schizophrenia. Meduna also developed carbon dioxide therapy. The patient had to breathe a mixture of 30% carbon dioxide and 70% oxygen until becoming unconscious, the treatment being repeated several times weekly, although it was not as effective as convulsive therapy, and it was eventually abandoned. Patients were reportedly extremely fearful of these “treatments.” These therapies were initially targeted at curing dementia praecox (increasingly known as schizophrenia from the 1910s, although the two terms were used more or less interchangeably until at least the end of the 1930s). Cardiazol shock therapy, founded on the theoretical notion that there existed a biological antagonism between schizophrenia and epilepsy and that therefore inducing epiletiform fits in schizophrenic patients might effect a cure, was somewhat superseded by electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), invented by the Italian neurologist Ugo Cerletti in 1938.

USDA develops phenothiazines as insecticide. Later, this compound is used in many neuroleptic drugs such as Thorazine, Mellaril, Prolixin, Stelazine and others.

The first licensing law for social workers is passed in Puerto Rico and is a precursor to later state laws.

The National Housing Act (ch. 847,48 Stat. 1246) is enacted by Congress on June 27 It is the first law in U.S. history designed to promote housing construction.

The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis is initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to raise funds for a Warm Springs Foundation, Georgia, treatment center It becomes the successful Annual March of Dimes under Basil O'Connor.

Social Work Today, progressive publication of 1930s depression period, is begun by Social Work Today, Inc. This individual and organizational membership group also published professional pamphlets and conducted educational activities; it was discontinued in 1942.

Elbert Cubberly a psychologist decided that it was not good for children to work; children should be in schools.

Geneticists thought intelligence ran in families, and was passed down from generation to generation.

J.P. Morgan purported the revolution be stopped by infiltrating the underground and subsidizing it, this way the thinking could be known as it developed. They could fatally compromise the opposition in this way. Wirt was exposed for his scheme to prolong the Depression so government could become the source of long-term loans. William Wirt launched an attack upon Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs, charging that the New Deal threatened American individualism by attempting government planning of the economy. He wrote pamphlets, articles, and addresses on the economy, particularly regarding the manipulation of the dollar to solve the economic crisis. Finally, Wirt accused the New Deal of being infiltrated by communists designing the collapse of the American system. However, common people and small businesses shaken enough already allowed the government to dominate business and commerce in the future. Propaganda was becoming a science and a business that could silence labor with contracts.

The state of Iowa began administering mental tests to all children placed for adoption in hopes of preventing the unwitting adoption of retarded children (called “feeble-minded” at the time). This policy inspired nature-nurture studies at the Iowa Child Welfare Station that eventually served to challenge hereditarian orthodoxies and promote policies of early family placement.

John H. Wigmore's "Treatise on Evidence", one of the most famous legal texts ever published in the United States, established females, especially children, as not credible because they were predisposed to bring false accusations against men of good character. He cited reports of 2 girls, age 7 and 9. He omitted the evidence that one had gonorrhea and the other a vagina so inflamed no exam was possible.

“Magpie: The Autobiography of a Nymph Errant,” by Lois Vidal.

In England, Winifred Holtby published Woman and a Changing Civilisation.

In England, Mrs Elizabeth Richardson of Shepherd's Bush became the first woman to win the Gold Medal of the International Exhibition of Inventions for her 'wireless station finder'.

1935

Bill W. and Dr. Bob found the self-help society known as Alcoholics Anonymous on June 10, 1935.

Sigmund Freud states in his “Letter to an American Mother” that, “Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness.”

It was in Portugal, 1935, that Egas Moniz, impressed by the earlier experiments of Fulton and Jacobsen, performed the first lobotomy with the aid of a neurosurgeon, Almeida Lima. Instead of removing lbe frontal lobes (a procedure called lobectomy), they decided to concentrate on destroying lbe neuronal association fibers underlying the frontal lobes (termed a leucotomy). In their first operation, they cut two one-inch holes in a woman's skull and used pure alcohol to destroy the fibers connecting the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain tissues. In subsequent operations a leucotome (modeled after an apple-corer) was used to remove cores of tissue from the brain. Her agitation and paranoia diminished, but successive patients only seemed dull and apathetic. Nine more patients were operated on before the head of lbe institution, who had been supplying the patients, became alarmed, refused to supply more, and publicly spoke out against the operations. It soon became impossible for Moniz to continue his experiments. Still, when he published his work, it was swiftly put into practice.

Ivan Pavlov, famous for his dog who salivated in response to a signal, and Portuguese neurosurgeon Egas Moniz were among those attending a neurological conference in London. Yale University's John Fulton conducted a day-long symposium in which he demonstrated that two chimpanzees, after undergoing frontal lobe removal, were unperturbable. No neurotic behavior could be induced. The question naturally arose about whether similar surgery in humans wouldn't eradicate anxious behavior.

The Indian division of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association was formed due to the efforts of Dr. Banarasi Das.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) was published by Henry Murray. Christiana Morgan and Henry Murray publish the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), which asks a person to use ambiguous pictures to make up stories, describing the actions, thoughts and feelings of the people in the stories. The TAT is a form of projective test, designed to access unconscious beliefs, thoughts and feelings of the patient.

The Works Progress Administration is created by presidential executive order on May 6-and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration is terminated-to shift the federal government from home relief to work relief. The administration is committed to provide work "for able-bodied but destitute workers."

The League for the Physically Handicapped is formed in New York City to protest discrimination against people with disabilities by federal relief programs. The group organizes sit-ins, picket lines, and demonstrations, and it travels to Washington, D.C., to protest and meet with officials of the Roosevelt administration. A group in New York City called the League for the Physically Handicapped formed to protest discrimination by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The league's 300 people -- most disabled by polio and cerebral palsy – all had been turned down for WPA jobs. The Home Relief Bureau of New York City was supposed to forward their job requests to the WPA, but was stamping all their applications 'PH' for physically handicapped, as a signal to the WPA not to give these people jobs. Members of the league sat in at the Home Relief Bureau for nine days; and went to the WPA headquarters and held a weekend sit-in there. These actions eventually lead to the creation of 1500 jobs in New York City and they eventually generated a couple thousand jobs nationwide.

The National Conference on Social Work, in its reorganization, recognizes group work as a major function of social work along with social casework, community organization, and social action.

The National Youth Administration is created by presidential executive order on June 26 as a division of the Works Progress Administration to provide work and school aid under direction of social worker Aubrey Williams.

The Committee for the Study of Sex Variants is formed.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, establishing a program of permanent assistance to adults with disabilities. Social Security of Act of 1935 - Established federal/state system of health services for “crippled” children; permanently authorized civilian rehabilitation program. Congress passes and President Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act. This established federally funded old-age benefits and funds grants to the states for assistance to blind individuals and disabled children. There were protests, picket lines, and sit-ins due to perceived discrimination toward others. The Act also extended existing vocational rehabilitation programs established by earlier legislation. The federal government first provided child welfare services with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935 (49 Stat. 620). Under Title IV-B (Child Welfare Services Program) of the act, the Children's Bureau received funding for grants to states for “the protection and care of homeless, dependent, and neglected children and children in danger of becoming delinquent.” The Health, Education and Welfare Act (Social Security Act; ch. 531, 49 Stat. 620) is passed by Congress on August 14, providing old age assistance benefits, a Social Security Board, grants to states for unemployment compensation administration, aid to dependent children, maternal and child welfare, public health work, and aid to blind people. Social worker Jane M. Hoey is appointed as the first director of the Federal Bureau of Public Assistance, which administers federal-state aid to aged people, blind people, and dependent children under the provisions of the act. As part of the Social Security Act vocational rehabilitation was made a permanent federal program. Congress no longer needed to reauthorize it, but instead would need to vote if it were ever to end it. Federal funding was $2,000,000 at this time. The Social Security Act included provision for aid to dependent children, crippled children's programs, and child welfare, which eventually led to a dramatic expansion of foster care. The American Youth Congress issued “The Declaration of the Rights of American Youth.”

The National Labor Relations Act, NLRA, or Wagner Act (after its sponsor, New York Senator Robert F. Wagner) (Pub.L. 74-198, 49 Stat. 449, codified as amended at 29 U.S.C. § 151–169), is a 1935 United States federal law that limits the means with which employers may react to workers in the private sector who create labor unions (also known as trade unions), engage in collective bargaining, and take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in support of their demands. The Act does not apply to workers who are covered by the Railway Labor Act, agricultural employees, domestic employees, supervisors, federal, state or local government workers, independent contractors and some close relatives of individual employers. Under section 9(a) of the NLRA, federal courts have held that wildcat strikes are illegal, and that workers must formally request that the National Labor Relations Board end their association with their labor union if they feel that the union is not sufficiently supportive of them before they can legally go on strike.

Justine Wise Polier was appointed to head the Domestic Relations Court of Manhattan. She became an important early critic of “matching” in adoption. During much of the twentieth century, adoption relied upon the paradoxical theory that differences are managed best by denying their existence. According to the "matching" paradigm that has governed modern adoption, adults who acquire children born to others must look, feel, and behave as if they had given birth themselves. This included religious and racial "matching." Polier was born in Portland, Oregon to well known parents. Her father was Rabbi Stephen Wise, a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and leader of the liberal American Jewish Congress. Her mother, Louise Waterman Wise, was a gifted artist who started one of the country’s first specialized adoption agencies, the Free Synagogue Child Adoption Committee, in 1916. Her mother’s determination to find homes for Jewish orphans at a time when adoption was still rare among Jews made a deep impression on the young Justine.

The American Youth Congress forms as one of the first youth-led, youth-focused organizations in the U.S. The same year the AYC issued The Declaration of the Rights of American Youth, which they were invited to read before a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

“Man the Unknown,” written by Nobel Prize winning Dr. Alexis Carrel, suggested the removal of criminals and the mentally ill by euthanasia, using institutions equipped with suitable gases. American eugenics may have reached its apotheosis in 1935 when Alexis Carrel, a physician at Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, wrote that the mentally ill “should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanistic institutions supplied with proper gases.” The U.S. psychiatrists who embraced the program of compulsory sterilization directly influenced the doctors of the Third Reich, who would soon begin the “mercy killings” of mental patients.

Congress passed an act making aliens otherwise ineligible for citizenship eligible if (a) they had served in the U.S. armed forces between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918, and been honorably discharged, and (b) they were permanent residents of the United States. A small number of Issei (a Japanese term meaning, first to immigrate) obtained citizenship under this act before the deadline.

Nuremberg Laws ended German citizenship for Jews. Jewish doctors were forced to resign from private hospitals by Nuremberg Laws.

Mary McLeod Bethune organizes the National Council of Negro Women, a coalition of black women's groups that lobbies against job discrimination, racism, and sexism.

“The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

“My First Life; a Biography, by Brenda Dean Paul, Written By Herself.” London, by Brenda Dean Paul.

“Asylum,” by William Seabrook.

“New Armor for Old,” by William O'Sullivan Molony.

1936

Prefrontal Lobotomies were performed by the Portuguese physician and neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz. His method involved drilling holes in patients' heads and destroying the tissue connecting the frontal lobes by injecting alcohol into them. Egas Moniz published an account of the first human frontal lobotomy. Between 1936 and the mid-1950s, an estimated twenty thousand of these surgical procedures were performed on American mental patients. The earliest form of brain surgery was called trepanning. It involved the hand drilling of a 2.5-5cm hole in the skull of a conscious patient. However barbaric this may appear, it did have some limited success as it often led to the alleviation of pressure on the brain. Out of 400 skulls investigated by one researcher, 250 indicated some form of recovery. Psychosurgery continued to be used in one form or another, with varying levels of success until it was completely revolutionised in the twentieth century. In 1936, Dr Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist, introduced the psychosurgical technique of lobotomy (the removal or severing of certain connections in the brain). Moniz’s first 20 patients survived the operation and the technique soon achieved a credible international reputation. Despite being shot in the leg by one of his patients, Moniz argued that the potential benefits of the operation outweighed the costs of the behavioral and personality changes that resulted from a lobotomy. In 1949, he received the Nobel Prize for developing this radical treatment of mental illness. A few years after he received this prize, Moniz was beaten to death by a disgruntled patient.

Psychosurgery Brutality

Egas Moniz published his work on frontal lobotomies as a treatment for mental illness. Two doctors at George Washington University, inspired by Moniz' example, began to perform operations on the human brain. They were Walter Freeman, a professor of neuropathology, and Dr. James Watts, a neurosurgeon. While only Watts was aulborized to perform surgery, he allowed Freeman to perform the operations clandestinely, and Freeman strongly urged olber psychiatrists who had not been trained in surgery to practice lobotomy. Freeman believed that best results were obtained with women, blacks, Jews, and people with simple occupations – the very best were obtained with black women. "The operation is suitable for a woman of whom you expect nothing but that she do a minimal amount of housework ... Women make, better victims, they tend to submit more easily to victimization and they have less power in general." Further extolling the virtues of lobotomy, Freeman wrote, "Society can accommodate itself to the most humble laborer, but justifiably distrusts lbe thinker ... Lobotomized patients make rather good citizens.'' The first victim chosen by Freeman was a 63-year-old woman who came to him complaining of nervousness, insomnia, and depression. Additional symptoms were that she "bitched" at her husband, was overly scrupulous in her housecleaning, and was "unable to adjust to the idea of growing old." He decided to operate the following day. Six cores of tissue were removed from the connecting fibers of the left lobe and six from the right side. The next day the patient was unable to remember why she had been upset before coming to the hospital. Five days later she became completely disoriented and temporarily lost her ability to talk. Of the original 20 patients operated on, five were dead within five years. A new "transorbital lobotomy" technique developed by Italian psychiatrist Amarro Fiamberti was adapted by Freeman in 1946 for use on a mass scale. His instrument was an ice pick that he found in his kitchen drawer. The victim was first rendered' unconscious by the application of three electroshock treatments within two minutes. Freeman would insert the ice pick into the conjunctiva-through the orbital bone of the skull, between the eyeball and tear duct-and then swing it in a 30 degree arc. Freeman was not too concerned about sterilization, which he referred to as "that germ crap." After the introduction of ice pick lobotomy, operations accelerated dramatically in the U.S., from 100 per year to approximately 5000 per year. Between 1936 and 1955 about 50,000 lobotomies were performed in this country. The Veterans Administration's wholehearted acceptance of the technique contributed to its popularity. Lobotomy also received a tremendous boost when Moniz was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1949. It is doubtful, however, that the technique would have achieved wide acceptance if it had not been for Walter Freeman's one-man campaign. Making countless trips to back wards throughout the U.S. he performed thousands of operations, sometimes as many as 25 in one day. (He referred to these as "head-hunting" expeditions and to his lobotomized patients as "trophies.") In recogrtition of his activities, Freeman was appointed head of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia in 1948, and later that year was elected president of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. It was not until the mid 1950s that the ice pick technique began to fall into disrepute, partly because of the irrefutable evidence of thousands of human vegetables living in back wards, and partly due to the introduction of phenothiazines for the treatment of psychiatric inmates, which were hailed by some as a form of chemical lobotomy. The history of lobotomy does not end with the demise of the ice pick methodology. As recently as the late 1970s a number of psychosurgeons were still practicing in the U.S., each with his own method of destroying the brain. Psychosurgeons like to claim that these procedures have nothing in common with the older, more crude lobotomy, and it is true that the amount of destruction is less severe. Stereotaxis, the most common of the new methods, destroys brain tissue using thin electrical wires. From 1965 through 1968 approximately 4000 a year were performed for such conditions as: aggression, depression, fear and anxiety, drug addiction, alcoholism, epilepsy, overweight, homosexuality, and so-called hyperactivity in children. It has also been used on prisoners, children labeled retarded, and psychiatric inmates. Hundreds of these operations were performed on black children in Mississippi during the

1970s to "quiet" them down (the same rationale used by Gustav Burckhardt in 1888). American psychiatrist Walter Freeman (center) developed the frontal lobotomy, a barbarous act which plunged an icepick-like instrument beneath the eyelid and, using a surgical mallet, drove it through the eye socket bone and into the brain. Movement of the instrument severed the fibers of the frontal brain lobes, causing irreversible brain damage. James Watts and Walter Freeman became the first American doctors to perform prefrontal lobotomy (by craniotomy in an operating room). Freeman was president of the American Association of Neuropathologists from 1944 to 1945 and president of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology from 1946 to 1947. Freeman performed nearly 2,500 lobotomies in 23 states, mostly based on scanty and flimsy evidence for its scientific basis, but more significantly he popularized the lobotomy. A neurologist without surgical training, he initially worked with several surgeons. Seeking a faster and less invasive way to perform the procedure, Freeman adopted Amarro Fiamberti's transorbital lobotomy and began to perfect it, initially by using ice picks hammered into each frontal lobe through the back of each eye socket (“ice pick lobotomy”). Freeman was able to perform these very quickly, outside of an operating room, and without a surgeon. For his first transorbital lobotomies, Freeman used an actual icepick from his kitchen. Later, he utilized an instrument created specifically for the operation called a leucotome. In 1948 Freeman developed a new technique which involved wrenching the leucotome in an upstroke after the initial insertion. This procedure placed great strain on the instrument and in one case resulted in the leucotome breaking off in the patient's skull. As a result, Freeman designed a new, stronger instrument, the orbitoclast. Freeman embarked on a national campaign in his van which he called his “lobotomobile” to demonstrate the procedure to doctors working at state-run institutions; Freeman would show off by icepicking both of a patient's eyesockets at one time - one with each hand. According to some, institutional care was hampered by lack of effective treatments and extreme overcrowding, and Freeman saw the transorbital lobotomy as an expedient tool to get large populations out of treatment and back into private life. The “ice pick lobotomy” was, according to Ole Enersen, performed by Freeman “with a recklessness bordering on lunacy, touring the country like a travelling evangelist. In most cases,” Enersen continued, “this procedure was nothing more than a gross and unwarranted mutilation carried out by a self righteous zealot.” Freeman's most notorious operation was on the ill-fated Rosemary Kennedy, who was permanently incapacitated by a lobotomy at age 23. Another of his patients, Howard Dully, has now written a book called My Lobotomy about his experiences with Freeman and his long recovery after the surgery he underwent at 12 years old. To execute this procedure, the patient was first shocked into a coma. The surgeon then hammered an instrument similar to an icepick through the top of each eye socket and severed the nerves connecting the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain. The intended purpose of the lobotomy was to calm uncontrollably violent or emotional patients, and it did--at first--prove to be successful. Because of the preliminary positive results and the facts that it was easy, inexpensive, and the average time it took to complete the procedure was only about ten minutes, lobotomies quickly spread around the world as a popular practice for severely mentally ill patients who were resistant to other treatments. It was only after tens of thousands of patients worldwide had undergone this procedure during the following twenty years that people started to take notice of its undesirable side effects. Lobotomies generally produced personalities that were lethargic and immature. Aside from a twenty-five percent death rate, lobotomies also resulted in patients that were unable to control their impulses, were unnaturally calm and shallow, and/or exhibited a total absence of feeling (Butcher 620). Not surprisingly, this barbaric practice was quickly abandoned with the introduction of psychoactive drugs. One year after the first leucotomy, on September 14, 1936 Walter J. Freeman performed the very first prefrontal lobotomy in the United States on housewife Alice Hood Hammatt of Topeka, Kansas beginning his now infamous career as a neurosurgeon in the United States. Freeman’s lobotomy procedure was assisted by fellow neurosurgeon and research partner, James Watts. By November after only two months performing their first lobotomy surgery, Freeman and Watts had already worked on 20 cases including several second, follow-up operations. By 1942, the duo had performed over 200 lobotomy procedures and had published results claiming sixty three percent improved, 23 percent were reported to be unchanged and fourteen percent were worse after the surgery. After almost ten years of performing lobotomies Freeman heard of a doctor in Italy named Amarro Fiamberti who operated on the brain through his patients’ eye sockets, allowing him to access the brain without drilling through the skull. After experimenting with novel ways of performing these brain surgeries, Freeman formulated a new procedure called the transorbital lobotomy. This new procedure became known as the icepick lobotomy and was performed by inserting a metal pick into the corner of each eye-socket and moving it back and forth, severing the connections to the prefrontal cortex in the frontal lobes of the brain. He performed the transorbital lobotomy surgery for the first time in Washington D.C. on a housewife named Sallie Ellen Ionesco. This transorbital lobotomy method did not require a neurosurgeon and could be performed outside of an operating room without the use of anesthesia by using electroconvulsive therapy to induce seizure. The modifications to his lobotomy allowed Freeman to broaden the use of the surgery, which could be performed in state mental hospitals throughout the United States that were overpopulated and understaffed. In 1950 Walter Freeman’s longtime partner James Watts left their practice and split from Freeman due to his opposition to the cruelty and overuse of the transorbital lobotomy. Following his development of the icepick lobotomy, Freeman began traveling across the country visiting mental institutions in his personal van, which he called the "lobotomobile.” He toured around the nation performing lobotomies and spreading their use by educating and training staff to perform the operation. Freeman’s name gained popularity despite the widespread criticism of his methods following a lobotomy on President John F. Kennedy’s sister Rosemary Kennedy, which left her with severe mental and physical disability. A memoir written by former patient Howard Dully, called My Lobotomy documented his experiences with Freeman and his long recovery after undergoing a lobotomy surgery at 12 years old. Walter Freeman charged just $25 for each procedure that he performed. After four decades Freeman had personally performed as many as 3,400 lobotomy surgeries in 23 states, despite the fact that he had no formal surgical training. In February 1967, Freeman performed his final surgery on Helen Mortensen. Mortensen was a longterm patient and was receiving her third lobotomy from Freeman. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage as did many of his other patients and he was finally banned from performing surgery.

Passage of the Randolph Sheppard Act establishes a federal program for employing blind vendors at stands in the lobbies of federal office buildings. Randolph-Sheppard Act of 1938 - Authorized federal programs to employ people who are blind as vendors on federal property. This act authorized blind individuals to operate vending stands on federal property. It also authorized a study to determine types of work individuals with visual disabilities could perform.

The American Association for the Study of Group Work is organized. (in 1946 it becomes the American Association of Group Workers and merges into NASW in 1955.)

“Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky” (ed. Joan Accocella). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, (orig. pub. 1936). Nijinsky, Vaslav.

The federal law prohibiting the dissemination of contraceptive information through the mail is modified and birth control information is no longer classified as obscene. Throughout the 1940s and 50s, birth control advocates are engaged in numerous legal suits.

In Russia, the reforms established by the Bolsheviks begin to crumble. The concept of marriage as a contract between two free and equal people is challenged and reversed. The Communist Party conducts a vigorous campaign to remind women of their place in the home, and the restoration of the "traditional family." 

“The Exploration of the Inner World,” by Anton T. Boisen.

In England, Midwives' Act.

1937

Karen Horney, a German-born psychiatrist challenges Freud's theory of the castration complex in women and his theory that Oedipal complex and female sexuality influences neurosis. In “The Neurotic Personality of Our Time,” she argues that neurosis largely is determined by the society in which one lives.

Herbert A. Everest and Harry C. Jennings patent a design for a folding wheelchair with an X-frame that can be packed into a car trunk. They found Everest & Jennings (E & J), which eventually becomes the largest manufacturer of wheelchairs in the United States.

J. Edgar Hoover declares “War on the Sex Criminal!”

Marijuana Tax Act made it federally illegal to buy, sell, barter, or give away cannabis without paying a transfer tax. This is the first federal law regulating the possession and sale of cannabis. Declared unconstitutional in 1969 in U.S. vs Timothy Leary.

A state-administered program in North Carolina pioneers the development of family planning as part of maternal and child health services.

The Housing Act (ch. 896, 50 Stat. 885) is passed by Congress on September I to provide subsidies and credit to states and local governments. It is the first attempt to finance residential accommodations for tenants not exclusively federal employees.

Recovery, Inc. is a self-help mental health program based on the ground breaking work of founder and neuropsychiatrist, Abraham A. Low, M.D.

Jews could obtain passports for travel outside of Germany only in special cases.

The First Child Welfare League of America initiative that distinguished minimum standards for permanent (adoptive) and temporary (foster) placements.

The emphasis was on girls as active participants in their abuse. They were depicted as from a lower class, morally defective, and inherently untrustworthy. (Bender and Blau)

“Chronicles of Interdict No. 7807,” by Anne Kirk.

“Searchlight, an Autobiography,” by Augusta Catherine Fischer.

“Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh” (ed. Irving Stone), by Vincent Van Gogh.

“A Patient's Memoirs; The Rocket Buster,” by G. C. Wegefarth.

“A Mind Restored: The Story of Jim Curran,” by Elsa Krauch.

“A Mind Mislaid,” by Henry Collins Brown.

“1935 -1936,” by William Cary Sanger.

1938

Ectonustim 3 ECT machine with scalp electrodes, in use from 1958 to 1965. Cerletti was the first to use electro-convulsive shock therapy on humans - to treat schizophrenia.

Electroshock therapy was first used on a human patient. Physiological Shock Treatments by electric shock therapy (EST), currently known as electroconvulsive treatment (ECT) is first used by Ugo Cerletti. Italian neurologist Ugo Cerletti and Italian psychiatrist Dr. Lucio Bini discovered Electroconvulsive Therapy. Italian doctors Ugo Cerletti (1877-1963) and Lucio Bini (1908-1964) introduced l’elettroshock, Cerletti’s coinage, at the University of Rome in 1938.

After visiting a slaughterhouse and seeing animals knocked out by electric shock, Cerletti and Bini introduced electrically produced seizures. Earlier in Rome, Cerletti had experimented with pigs and later wrote, “Having obtained authorization for experimenting from the director of the slaughterhouse, Professor Torti, I carried out tests, not only subjecting the pigs to the current for ever increasing periods of time, but also applying the current in various ways across the head, across the neck, and across the chest.” In the 1930s, Ugo Cerletti, an Italian psychiatrist was investigating the use of electricity as a technique to induce a seizure.

After experimenting on dogs and observing the use of electricity to slaughter pigs, Cerletti tested ECT on a human patient. In 1938 a Milanese man, who was found mumbling incoherently in the railway station, was chosen to be the first recipient of this new cure. The first experimental subject was identified only as “S.E.” He had been picked up by the police who had found him wandering about in a railway station. The Police Commissioner of Rome sent him to Cerletti’s institute for observation with a note reading that “he does not appear to be in full possession of his mental faculties.” Cerletti described what happened next: “A diagnosis of schizophrenic syndrome was made based on his passive behavior, incoherence, low affective reserves, hallucinations, deliriant ideas of being influenced, neologisms. This subject was chosen for the first experiment of induced electric convulsions in man.

Two large electrodes were applied to the frontoparietal regions, and I decided to start cautiously with a low-intensity current of 80 volts for 0.2 seconds. Electrodes were applied to both temples, a rubber tube was inserted between his teeth to stop him biting his tongue and the electricity was conducted between the electrodes. As soon as the current was introduced, the patient reacted with a jolt and his body muscles stiffened: then he fell back on the bed without loss of consciousness. He started to sing abruptly at the top of his voice, then he quieted down. Naturally, we, who were conducting the experiment, were under great emotional strain and felt that we had already taken quite a risk. Nevertheless, it was quite evident to all of us that we had been using a too low voltage. It was proposed that we should allow the patient to have some rest and repeat the experiment the next day. All at once, the patient, who evidently had been following the conversation, said clearly and solemnly, without his usual gibberish: ‘Not another one! It’s deadly!’" The patient's muscles jolted as he remained conscious throughout the operation, and he pleaded, 'Not again it is murderous'. The next day, despite the subject’s plea, Cerletti administered a stronger shock which caused a seizure. Despite this, after ten treatments he spoke more coherently and Cerletti claimed that the patient was released 'in good condition and well oriented' and a year later had not relapsed.

Thus “the first experiment of induced electric convulsions in man” (Cerletti’s words) was carried out against the will of the subject with no one’s authorization other than that of the person conducting the experiment. Referring to the first electroshock experiment on a human being, Cerletti wrote, “When I saw the patient’s reaction, I thought to myself: ‘This ought to be abolished.’ Ever since I have looked forward to the time when another treatment would replace electroshock.” Yet, when Italian physicians Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini administered the first shock therapy using electricity to a schizophrenic patient, they considered the results to be successful.

“S.E." was a complete stranger to Cerletti, whose help he did not seek (and whose intervention he later rejected). In actuality, S.E. was a prisoner: he had been ‘arrested’ by the police for ‘wandering about,’ and instead of being tried for his offense, he was sent to Cerletti. Although [S.E. was] sent to the hospital expressly ‘for observation,’ Cerletti flagrantly disobeyed the instructions of the Police Commissioner of Rome: instead of observing S.E., he used him as an experimental subject for electroshock. Cerletti does not mention having obtained permission for his experiment from anyone.... Cerletti writes that ‘we, who were conducting the experiment, were under great emotional strain and felt that we had already taken quite a risk’; but he says nothing about the risk to which S.E. had been subjected without his consent. Throughout the experiment, S.E. was treated as a thing or animal. He had no control whatever over his fate. When, after the first shock, he announced ‘clearly and solemnly: “not another one! It’s deadly!”’ his seemingly entirely rational communication had no effect on those who were experimenting on him.... The invention of electroshock is modern therapeutic totalitarianism in statu nascendi [in the process of being born]. Lothar B. Kalinowsky, German-born US electroshock psychiatrist wrote, “Cerletti had been worried that something might go wrong with the first treatment, and it was given in secret…When the first treatment went well, we were allowed to attend the second treatment. We were called together for the treatment with a trumpet!...According to my wife – because I don’t remember it exactly – she claims that when I came home I was very pale and said, I saw something terrible today – I never want to see that again.” Bini in 1942 suggested the repetition of ECT many times a day for certain patients, naming the method “annihilation.”

Inadequate anesthesia sometimes resulted in bone fractures, and patients complained of memory loss, and the process is considered more effective in treating depression than schizophrenia. Electrotherapy (applying electric current to the brain) was first used in American hospitals to treat mental illnesses in the 1940’s. This treatment soon became widespread and was used most often in America and Europe. There is some history of abuse associated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) though that took place in mental institutions. Because the idea of an electrical current being passed through one’s head is undoubtedly frightening, ECT was used to intimidate, control, and punish patients, some of whom were subjected to this treatment over a hundred times. Despite previous instances of abuse, this treatment is still used today, albeit with significant reforms. It is generally reserved only for the mentally ill who suffer from severe depression, especially of the variety accompanied by psychotic symptoms, and only as a last resort after the patient has not responded to any other treatments, including medication. Patients are also administered a general anesthetic and muscle relaxant prior to the treatment so that they do not suffer any discomfort and there is no danger of fractured bones. Electroconvulsive therapy is commonly performed on a patient three times a week until a dozen sessions are reached, although some patients may require more or less sessions to benefit. Although arguments about whether Electro Convulsive Therapy is therapy or cruelty persist, it is still used today, primarily as a last resort in the treatment of severe depression. Some psychiatrists state that it has proved the most effective treatment in many cases. The only negative side effects reported are amnesia limited to the few hours before the session and disorientation; both disappear soon after ECT is stopped. Seldom mentioned is that fact that ECT is unpredictable and it's unknown who will receive more or less memory loss and as many as 1 in 10 die from the "treatment."

The Works Progress Administration Act (ch. 554, 52 Stat. 809) is passed by Congress on June 21.

The National Association of Day Nurseries, formerly the National Federation of Day Nurseries founded in 1898, is established. (The organization becomes the National Association for the Education of Young Children in 1964.)

Lauretta Bender publishes her Bender-Gestalt Scale Test, used as a measure of personality and of brain dysfunction.

Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act revised and expanded the Pure Food and Drug Act to require more extensive labeling and safety testing of food products. Introduced safety standards and required that new drugs be shown to be safe before marketing.

Wagner-O'Day Act of 1938 - Authorized federal purchases from workshops for people who are blind. This act required the federal government to purchase certain products from workshops for the blind, thereby expanding employment opportunities in those workshops.

The Fair Labor Standards Act 1938 (abbreviated as FLSA; also referred to as the Wages and Hours Bill^[) is a federal statute of the United States. The FLSA introduced a maximum 45-hour workweek, established a national minimum wage, guaranteed 'time-and-a-half' for overtime in certain jobs, and prohibited most employment of minors in "oppressive child labor," a term that is defined in the statute. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which includes limits on many forms of child labor. It applies to employees engaged in interstate commerce or employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage. The FLSA was drafted in 1938 by senator Hugo Black. According to the Act, workers must be paid minimum wage and overtime pay must be 1 1/2 times regular pay. Children under the age of 18 cannot do certain dangerous jobs and children under the age of 16 cannot work. 700,000 workers were affected by the FLSA. This also helped combat child labor. Subsequent Amendments created protections against discrimination on the basis of sex, age, and migrant worker status. Passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act leads to an enormous increase in the number of sheltered workshop programs for blind workers. Although intended to provide training and job opportunities for blind and visually disabled workers, it often leads to exploitation of workers at sub-minimum wages in poor conditions. The Fair Labor Standards Act created sheltered workshops or sweatshops for the disabled. These sweatshop programs lead to exploitation and substandard wages working in poor conditions. These programs took advantage of the disabled for cheap labor and often in bad conditions. Sure, some people did get placed out, but many did not.

Children’s Home, 1938 by Edward G. Malindine

Judge August Hand lifted the federal ban on birth control, effectively ending use of the Comstock Law that targeted birth control information and devices.

Effective January 1, 1939 in Germany, all Jews are forced to carry special identification cards. German schools expelled all Jews. In November 1938, England passed Kindertransport. A few days after Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, a delegation of British Jewish leaders appealed in person to the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, on the eve of a major Commons debate on refugees. They requested that the British government permit the temporary admission of Jewish children and teenagers who would later re-emigrate, among other measures. The Jewish community promised to pay guarantees for the refugee children. The Cabinet decided that the nation would accept unaccompanied children ranging from infants up to teenagers under the age of 17.

Congress establishes the House Committee on Un-American Activities to investigate Communist, Fascist, Nazi, and other organizations seen as subversive.

This little concoction was considered a medicinal product invented by Mrs. Charlotte N. Winslow and first marketed by her son-in-law Jeremiah Curtis and Benjamin A. Perkins in Bangor, Maine, USA in 1849. They marketed this product in recipe books, women's magazines, anywhere they could get mothers to see it. It claimed to cure everything. Toothache, stomach ache, colic, you name it and this "soothing syrup" fixed it. Want to know what was in this amazing syrup? Well, one grain (65 mg) of morphine per fluid ounce, cannabis, heroin, powdered opium which are the active ingredients to put your little one to sleep. It also had sodium carbonate, spirits foeniculi, and aqua ammonia in it, because....why not? Removed from the market in 1938 after 89 years of service.

“They Said I was Mad.” The Forum and Century. 100: 231-237, by Anonymous.

“The Witnesses,” London, by Thomas Barcley Hennell.

1939

Amid the outbreak of World War II and a societal acceptance of eugenics, Germany’s Adolph Hitler orders widespread “mercy killing” of the sick and disabled decreeing ‘that patients with incurable medical illnesses be killed because they are 'biologically unfit.' Approximately 270,000 patients with mental illness are killed by physicians and medical personnel complying with the Nazi doctrine of racial purity. The Nazi euthanasia program was code-named Aktion T4 and was instituted to eliminate “life unworthy of life.” In 1940, 908 patients were transferred from an institution for retarded and chronically ill patients in Schoenbrunn, Germany to the euthanasia installation at Eglfing-Haar to be gassed. A monument to the victims stands in the courtyard at Schoenbrunn. From 1939 till 1948 an estimated 400,000 German psychiatric prisoners were systematically murdered. The murders began with the so called "Aktion T4" that lasted from 1939 till 1941. Over all at least 275,000 (according to the Nuremberg Trials) were murdered in the time from 1939 till 1945, the end of the Nazi regime. But the killing in the German psychiatric prisons continued by systematic starvation till 1948/49, so another 25,000 victims have to be added to the number of victims given at the Nuremberg trials. "In view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they (the masses) more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big." Adolph Hitler. Mein Kampf, Vol.1, Ch. 10, 1924 tr. Ralph Manheim, 1943

Nazi Persecution of the Mentally and Physically Disabled

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/disabled.html

FORCED STERILIZATIONS

The "sterilization Law" explained the importance of weeding out so-called genetic defects from the total German gene pool:

Since the National Revolution public opinion has become increasingly preoccupied with questions of demographic policy and the continuing decline in the birthrate. However, it is not only the decline in population which is a cause for serious concern but equally the increasingly evident genetic composition of our people. Whereas the hereditarily healthy families have for the most part adopted a policy of having only one or two children, countless numbers of inferiors and those suffering from hereditary conditions are reproducing unrestrainedly while their sick and asocial offspring burden the community.

Some scientists and physicians opposed the involuntary aspect of the law while others pointed to possible flaws. But the designation of specific conditions as inherited, and the desire to eliminate such illnesses or handicaps from the population, generally reflected the scientific and medical thinking of the day in Germany and elsewhere.

Nazi Germany was not the first or only country to sterilize people considered "abnormal." Before Hitler, the United States led the world in forced sterilizations. Between 1907 and 1939, more than 30,000 people in twenty-nine states were sterilized, many of them unknowingly or against their will, while they were incarcerated in prisons or institutions for the mentally ill. Nearly half the operations were carried out in California. Advocates of sterilization policies in both Germany and the United States were influenced by eugenics. This sociobiological theory took Charles Darwin's principle of natural selection and applied it to society. Eugenicists believed the human race could be improved by controlled breeding.

Still, no nation carried sterilization as far as Hitler's Germany. The forced sterilizations began in January 1934, and altogether an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people were sterilized under the law. A diagnosis of "feeblemindedness" provided the grounds in the majority of cases, followed by schizophrenia and epilepsy. The usual method of sterilization was vasectomy and ligation of ovarian tubes of women. Irradiation (x-rays or radium) was used in a small number of cases. Several thousand people died as a result of the operations, women disproportionately because of the greater risks of tubal ligation.

Most of the persons targeted by the law were patients in mental hospitals and other institutions. The majority of those sterilized were between the ages of twenty and forty, about equally divided between men and women. Most were "Aryan" Germans. The "Sterilization Law" did not target socalled racial groups, such as Jews and Gypsies, although Gypsies were sterilized as deviant "asocials," as were some homosexuals. Also, about 500 teenagers of mixed African and German parentage (the offspring of French colonial troops stationed in the Rhineland in the early 1920s) were sterilized because of their race, by secret order, outside the provisions of the law.

Although the "Sterilization Law" sometimes functioned arbitrarily, the semblance of legality underpinning it was important to the Nazi regime. More than 200 Hereditary Health Courts were set up across Germany and later, annexed territories. Each was made up of two physicians and one district judge. Doctors were required to register with these courts every known case of hereditary illness. Appeals courts were also established, but few decisions were ever reversed. Exemptions were sometimes given artists or other talented persons afflicted with mental illnesses. The "Sterilization Law" was followed by the Marriage Law of 1935, which required for all marriages proof that any offspring from the union would not be afflicted with a disabling hereditary disease.

Only the Roman Catholic Church, for doctrinal reasons, opposed the sterilization program consistently; most German Protestant churches accepted and often cooperated with the policy. Popular films such as Das Erbe ("Inheritance") helped build public support for government policies by stigmatizing the mentally ill and the handicapped and highlighting the costs of care. School mathematics books posed such questions as: "The construction of a lunatic asylum costs 6 million marks. How many houses at 15,000 marks each could have been built for that amount?"

"EUTHANASIA" KILLINGS

Forced sterilization in Germany was the forerunner of the systematic killing of the mentally ill and the handicapped. In October 1939, Hitler himself initiated a decree which empowered physicians to grant a "mercy death" to "patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health." The intent of the socalled "euthanasia" program, however, was not to relieve the suffering of the chronically ill. The Nazi regime used the term as a euphemism: its aim was to exterminate the mentally ill and the handicapped, thus "cleansing" the "Aryan" race of persons considered genetically defective and a financial burden to society.

The idea of killing the incurably ill was posed well before 1939. In the 1920s, debate on this issue centered on a book coauthored by Alfred Hoche, a noted psychiatrist, and Karl Binding, a prominent scholar of criminal law. They argued that economic savings justified the killing of "useless lives" ("idiots" and "congenitally crippled"). Economic deprivation during World War I provided the context for this idea. During the war, patients in asylums had ranked low on the list for rationing of food and medical supplies, and as a result, many died from starvation or disease. More generally, the war undermined the value attached to individual life and, combined with Germany's humiliating defeat, led many nationalists to consider ways to regenerate the nation as a whole at the expense of individual rights.

In 1935 Hitler stated privately that "in the event of war, [he] would take up the question of euthanasia and enforce it" because "such a problem would be more easily solved" during wartime. War would provide both a cover for killing and a pretext--hospital beds and medical personnel would be freed up for the war effort. The upheaval of war and the diminished value of human life during wartime would also, Hitler believed, mute expected opposition. To make the connection to the war explicit, Hitler's decree was backdated to September 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland.

Fearful of public reaction, the Nazi regime never proposed a formal "euthanasia" law. Unlike the forced sterilizations, the killing of patients in mental asylums and other institutions was carried out in secrecy. The code name was "Operation T4," a reference to Tiergartenstrasse 4, the address of the Berlin Chancellery offices where the program was headquartered.

Physicians, the most highly Nazified professional group in Germany, were key to the success of "T-4," since they organized and carried out nearly, all aspects of the operation. One of Hitler's personal physicians, Dr. Karl Brandt, headed the program, along with Hitler's Chancellery chief, Philip Bouhler. T-4 targeted adult patients in all government or church-run sanatoria and nursing homes. These institutions were instructed by the Interior Ministry to collect questionnaires about the state of health and capacity for work of all their patients, ostensibly as part of a statistical survey.

The completed forms were, in turn, sent to expert assessors physicians, usually psychiatrists, who made up "review commissions." They marked each name with a "+," in red pencil, meaning death, or a "" in blue pencil, meaning life, or "?" for cases needing additional assessment. These medical experts rarely examined any of the patients and made their decisions from the questionnaires alone. At every step, the medical authorities involved were usually expected to quickly process large numbers of forms.

The doomed were bused to killing centers in Germany and Austria walled-in fortresses, mostly former psychiatric hospitals, castles, and a former prison — at Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Grafeneck, Bernburg, Hadamar, and Brandenburg. In the beginning, patients were killed by lethal injection. But by 1940, Hitler, on the advice of Dr. Werner Heyde, suggested that carbon monoxide gas be used as the preferred method of killing. Experimental gassings had first been carried out at Brandenburg Prison in 1939. There, gas chambers were disguised as showers complete with fake nozzles in order to deceive victims — prototypes of the killing centers' facilities built in occupied Poland later in the war.

Again, following procedures that would later be instituted in the extermination camps, workers removed the corpses from the chambers, extracted gold teeth, then burned large numbers of bodies together in crematoria. Urns filled with ashes were prepared in the event the family of the deceased requested the remains. Physicians using fake names prepared death certificates falsifying the cause of death, and sent letters of condolences to relatives.

Meticulous records discovered after the war documented 70,273 deaths by gassing at the six "euthanasia" centers between January 1940 and August 1941. (This total included up to 5,000 Jews; all Jewish mental patients were killed regardless of their ability to work or the seriousness of their illness.) A detailed report also recorded the estimated savings from the killing of institutionalized patients.

The secrecy surrounding the T-4 program broke down quickly. Some staff members were indiscreet while drinking in local pubs after work. Despite precautions, errors were made: hairpins turned up in urns sent to relatives of male victims; the cause of death was listed as appendicitis when the patient had the appendix removed years before. The town of Hadamar school pupils called the gray transport buses "killing crates" and threatened each other with the taunt, "You'll end up in the Hadamar ovens!" The thick smoke from the incinerator was said to be visible every day over Hadamar (where, in midsummer 1941, the staff celebrated the cremation of their 10,000th patient with beer and wine served in the crematorium).

A handful of church leaders, notably the Bishop of Münster, Clemens August Count von Galen, local judges, and parents of victims protested the killings. One judge, Lothar Kreyssig, instituted criminal proceedings against Bouhler for murder; Kreyssig was prematurely retired. A few physicians protested. Karl Bonhöffer, a leading psychiatrist, and his son Dietrich, a Protestant minister who actively opposed the regime, urged church groups to pressure church-run institutions not to release their patients to T-4 authorities.

In response to such pressures, Hitler ordered a halt to Operation T-4 on August 24, 1941. Gas chambers from some of the "euthanasia" killing centers were dismantled and shipped to extermination camps in occupied Poland. In late 1941 and 1942, they were rebuilt and used for the "final solution to the Jewish question." Similarly redeployed from T-4 were future extermination camp commandants Christian Wirth, Franz Stangl, Franz Reichleitner, the doctor Irmfried Eberl, as well as about 100 others - doctors, male nurses, and clerks, who applied their skills in Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor.

The "euthanasia" killings continued, however, under a different, decentralized form. Hitler's regime continued to send to physicians and the general public the message that mental patients were "useless eaters" and life unworthy of life." In 1941, the film Ich klage an ("I accuse") in which a professor kills his incurably ill wife, was viewed by 18 million people. Doctors were encouraged to decide on their own who should live or die, Killing became part of hospital routine as infants, children, and adults were put to death by starvation, poisoning, and injections. Killings even continued in some of Germany's mental asylums, such as Kaufbeuren, weeks after Allied troops had occupied surrounding areas.

Between the middle of 1941 and the winter of 1944-45, in a program known under code "14f13," experienced psychiatrists from the T-4 operation were sent to concentration camps to weed out prisoners too ill to work. After superficial medical screenings, designated inmates Jews, Gypsies, Russians, Poles, Germans, and others were sent to those "euthanasia" centers where gas chambers still had not been dismantled, at Bernburg and Hartheim, where they were gassed. At least 20,000 people are believed to have died under the 14f13 program.

Outside of Germany, thousands of mental patients in the occupied territories of Poland, Russia, and East Prussia were also killed by the Einsatzgruppen squads (SS and special police units) that followed in the wake of the invading German army. Between September 29 and November 1, 1939, these units shot about 3,700 mental patients in asylums in the region of Bromberg, Poland. In December 1939 and January 1940, SS units gassed 1,558 patients from Polish asylums in specially adapted gas vans, in order to make room for military and SS barracks. Although regular army units did not officially participate in such "cleansing" actions as general policy, some instances of their involvement have been documented.

In all, between 200,000 and 250,000 mentally and physically handicapped persons were murdered from 1939 to 1945 under the T-4 and other "euthanasia" programs. The magnitude of these crimes and the extent to which they prefigured the "Final Solution" continue to be studied. Further, in an age of genetic engineering and renewed controversy over mercy killings of the incurably ill, ethical and moral issues of concern to physicians, scientists, and lay persons alike remain vital.

Source: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Commemoration of 400,000 people murdered by psychiatrists between 1939 – 1948

http://www.metzelf.info/memorium.html

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today, in different places around the globe the people murdered by psychiatrists in the years 1939 through 1948 are being commemorated.

In the Netherlands some of us are surely sighing: commemorating again? Does every group of murdered people have to be commemorated? The answer is yes, because not remembering is repeating.

But this group, what does it have to do with us? Some people will wonder. The murdered people were mostly Germans. The murderers were mostly Germans. 

Yes, the murdered people were mostly Germans, but they were not murdered because they were Germans. They were murdered because they deviated from norms set by doctors, norms for behavior, belief, intelligence, social skills, physical perfection, and financial functioning. When Jews, Romas, dark-skinned people, or homosexuals were murdered, some people could think, “Fortunately I’m not Jewish, Roma, dark-skinned, homosexual” or whatever. But nobody could think, “Fortunately I’m not feeble,” because feebleness can happen to anybody. Nor did the ideology of the murderer-physicians stop at the borders of German-speaking countries. All of us would have been potential victims of the mass murder program. That is why we, too, are commemorating the murders today. Not remembering is repeating.

Who were the people we are commemorating today? We don’t know the names of most of them. How many were there? According to Fredric Wertham, himself a German psychiatrist who emigrated to the United States in 1922, there were at least 275,000 in Germany alone. I could not find a source telling me how many were murdered in Austria, only that entire psychiatric hospitals were emptied. A different source reveals that also in occupied France 40,000 people in institutions were killed by psychiatrists. In Poland inhabitants of institutions were shot to death by occupying forces. Perhaps in total 400,000 would be a fair estimate. The Roma and Sinti people (incorrectly called Gypsies) and Jews, whose mass murder was also considered a “hygienic measure” by the Nazis, are not included in this figure. We already call the simultaneous murder of four or eight people “mass murder.” Numbers like 400,000 could obscure from us that we are talking about individuals, human beings, robbed of life because the doctors of their day considered that medically necessary. Those individuals we are commemorating today, because not remembering is repeating.

Who were their murderers? Scores of their names are known. They were revered scientists and doctors, professors of universities, managers of psychiatric hospitals, men and women. In their private lives they were considered kind, gentle people. They had the best of intentions. Many had published material that to date is still quoted in text books studied by aspiring young physicians. Not remembering is repeating.

Several misconceptions exist about the murders, often based on what we would like to believe. One such misconception is that the psychiatrists did what they did involuntarily, that they were somehow compelled by Hitler, under threat of penalty. The opposite is true.

Psychiatrists lobbied Hitler for permission to carry out their so-called “euthanasia program”. It was a logical consequence of their sterilization program in which from 1934 400,000 men, women and children in Germany were involuntarily rendered sterile, sometimes because of the most trivial of conditions. The sterilization stopped in 1939. It was only a small step from mass sterilization to mass murder. Incidentally, the activities of the top physician of that sterilization program, Ernst Rüdin, were sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in the United States, not by the Nazis. Most of the sterilized people were later murdered.

Although the idea existed already, notably in England and the United States, the mass murder program was designed in a scientific book written in Leipzig, Germany, in 1920. The authors were the attorney Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, both professors. Binding and Hoche argued that the human race should be purified by removing deviant people from it. All forms of deviance were assumed to be transmittable to future generations through genes. Binding and Hoche recognized that occasionally a non-deviant person might accidentally be included in the procedure, but they felt that that risk was justified considering the benefit of a future society without deviant people in it.

Binding and Hoche’s proposal became immensely popular among supporters of “eugenics” both inside and outside of Germany. Professors and department heads of the medical faculties of Berlin, Heidelberg, Bonn, and Würzburg organized conventions to persuade legislators and judges. The American Psychiatric Association proposed adopting the program in the United States, where involuntary sterilization continued until the 1970s. The British “Eugenics Society” was founded before the German mass murder. Favorable reports were also published in Switzerland and other European countries. Binding and Hoche had not yet heard of Adolph Hitler when they wrote their book. On the contrary, it was Hitler who would be strongly influenced by the beliefs that were the fashion in the psychiatry of his day.

Psychiatrists were not compelled to participate. There are known cases, though very few, of physicians who refused. They were not molested by the Nazis or other physicians, as long as they did not speak out publicly against the program.

A second misconception is that the murderers were exceptions, a minority of medical thugs, and their crimes sporadic or cases of over-zealousness. Impossible. For every murdered person all sorts of formalities were completed, registrations, questionnaires in four copies, this commission and that commission, this decision and that decision, rubber stamp from here and signature from there. Not one of the murdered people was killed casually. To guard against perversion of the process of selection, psychiatrists were not allowed to decide about the dwellers of their own institutions. Today in this country this principle still applies. We call it the “independent psychiatrist” who is “not the own therapist.”

The mass murders were based on ideology, the ideology of "eugenics." The doctors believed that what they were doing was right. In 1941 in a psychiatric hospital called Hadamar staff assembled to celebrate the death of the 10,000st victim. His naked body was ceremoniously shoved into the cremating oven. There was music, a mock religious ritual conducted by a psychiatrist, and each member of staff received a bottle of beer as a memento.

A third misconception is that most psychiatrists themselves did not know about it or participate. In fact, only renowned psychiatrists were invited to join the effort. The architects of the mass murder program were distinguished psychiatrists. The selection of candidates for murder was done by psychiatrists, scores, if not hundreds of them, who manned all those committees. The murders were physically committed by psychiatrists. Psychiatrists conceived and ordered the erection of the gas chambers and crematoria at five major psychiatric hospitals, and at one former jail to be used solely for mass murdering institutionalized people. Psychiatrists themselves opened the gas valves, while other psychiatrists observed the asphyxiating people through a little window in the side of the gas chamber. Psychiatrists of institutions that had no gas chamber willingly cooperated with transporting their dwellers to other institutions, where there were gas chambers. Or they killed their dwellers with psychotropic drugs, either by injection or by mixing them through the food. Other dwellers were intentionally starved to death on so-called scientific diets. Particularly thousands of children were murdered by psychoactive drugs and starvation.

A fourth misconception is that the mass murders were committed in sympathy for the supposed suffering of the victims. This claim was successful at several of the trials that were later brought against some of the mass murderers. Aside from the fact that the murders were far from humane, aside from the fact that the dwellers had not asked to die, it is not true that only severely ill or disabled people were murdered. The criteria were constantly expanded and included: children with malformed ears, children who wet their beds, elderly people who weren’t as fit as they once had been, blind and deaf people, people who occasionally had epileptic seizures, veterans of the first World War who had lost a limb in the line of duty, and people who, not having a demonstrable impairment, were called “schizophrenic.” Some people had no impairments at all, but were incarcerated, if they were adults, because of homelessness, unemployment, or petty crimes. For some people a court order for their release arrived after they had been murdered. Some of the mass murdered children were incarcerated because of problems in the home.

When the population of the institutions began to thin out due to the mass murders, threatening psychiatrists’ jobs, they visited families in their homes and persuaded them to send Grandma or Granddad to an institution where there was expert care. They threatened parents who were reluctant to institutionalize their child that they would have the parents’ custody of the child revoked if they continued to refuse care for their children. That care was murder.

There is controversy whether the psychiatrists’ aims were purely medical. In their books, articles, speeches, and letters, they repeatedly stressed the economic benefits of the mass murder program. The nation would be spared the cost of caring for non-productive people. The murdered people would leave their belongings, homes, clothes, and utensils behind. The bodies themselves had economic value. Gold teeth were collected. Soap could be produced from the fat, bags from skin, mattresses from hair, and of course, the brains were very much coveted by colleague physicians for scientific research. The revenue was monitored by the Central Accounting Bureau in Berlin. I want to remind you, these were psychiatric hospitals. The extermination camps were not erected until 1941. I personally am convinced that the psychiatrists were not motivated by economic benefits, but used this argument for propaganda purposes.

In 1941 some psychiatrists were transferred from their psychiatric hospital to work in the concentration and extermination camps. During the trial of one such psychiatrist, he was asked, “How could you have gone from selecting psychiatric patients to selecting regular people?” Apparently the prosecutor did not understand what the prosecuted did understand. He answered, “There’s no difference.” Psychiatric patients are human beings like the rest of us.

A fifth misconception is that the psychiatric murders stopped in 1941. That year Hitler did speak to the manager of the mass murder program, Karl Brandt. Exactly what was said is not written. The sources that I consulted are divided over whether Hitler entirely withdrew his permission for the program, or whether he only requested Brandt to moderate it. The sources are equally divided about the reason that Hitler made this request. Some suggest that Hitler caved in to pressure from the public, particularly priests, neighbors to the institutions with crematoria, and dissident psychiatrists. Others postulate that Hitler was concerned about morale among the troops. Soldiers returning home for a visit discovered that little sister or Granny had mysteriously disappeared, or they worried that if they were wounded, they might themselves be candidates for the mass murder program. A third possibility is that Hitler wished to designate a different employment for the gas chambers. In 1941 they were dismantled, shipped to the east, and erected anew in the concentration-extermination camps. Teams of doctors and nurses traveled with the equipment to train extermination camp commanders in their use.

But the mass murders of psychiatrized people continued in 1941 and after, also without the gas chambers. Psychotropic drugs and intentional starvation had been widely used already, and after 1941 would become the main instrument of mass murder. Because these mass murders were no longer sanctioned by the government, and because they no longer involved so much bureaucracy, they were dubbed “wild euthanasia.” Most historians agree that even more mass murders of infirm people were committed after 1941 than in the two previous years. In 1945 American soldiers rescued 20 children by liberating a psychiatric hospital called Eglfing-Haar at gun-point. Perhaps some of those 20 children are still alive today.

We recognize the names of many concentration-extermination camps because we commemorate the people who were murdered in them. Without the tools created by psychiatrists for psychiatric inmates, the history of the extermination camps would not have been the same. It is high time that we commemorate the people who were murdered in the psychiatric hospitals, because not remembering is repeating.

What became of the thousands of psychiatrists and others who committed the mass murders? A few, among whom the manager of the mass murder program, Karl Brandt, and his assistant, Paul Nitsche, were executed at Nuremberg. Many other top officials in the program escaped justice by committing suicide. Werner Heyde, inspector of the gas chambers, lived and worked twelve years under an assumed name, although his identity was known to his colleagues. After being discovered, he too committed suicide. Some psychiatrists served relatively short prison terms, such as Valentin Falthauser, who ordered the murder of at least 300 people. He was sentenced to three years, slightly more than 3½ days per known victim. Another psychiatrist, fat Hermann Pfannmüller, who, aside from adults, killed 120 children between the ages of one and five by so-called natural means, namely intentionally starving them to death, served six days per murdered child. Most of the psychiatrists who did not commit suicide were acquitted, if indeed they were tried at all, and continued their careers, be it in Europe or in the United States. Among other activities, they trained a new generation of psychiatrists. One of the most prominent psychiatrists in the mass murder program, Werner Villinger, was decorated by the West German government and in 1950 upon invitation, participated in a White House conference on children and youth in the United States. Another mass murderer, the psychiatrist Fredrich Maurz, was involved in 1948 in the founding of the World Federation for Mental Health. You won’t find that information on their web site. In the 1980s an American writer interviewed scores of physicians who were involved in mass murders. He could do so because they were living and working in freedom. Also the other people involved, nurses, assistants, administrators, students, pharmacists, builders, plumbers, and the suppliers of the gas, went scot-free.

One of the participants in the Nuremberg tribunal was Leo Alexander, psychiatrist from the United States. It was he who persuaded the prosecutors not to consider the involuntary sterilization program a crime, as involuntary sterilizations were being carried out in the US as well. In cases brought later than the Nuremberg tribunal, German judges demonstrated sympathy for the psychiatric mass murder program, leading to mild sentences or acquittals. We must not forget that the German justice system was intrinsically involved in the mass murder program.

While preparing this speech, I wondered whether publications by the mass murderers can still be read in this country. I consulted the library catalogues of the two universities in Amsterdam. And so it is. Karl Brandt, head of the mass murder program, who was executed at Nuremberg, many hits. And yes, I counted only the hits regarding the correct Karl Brandt, because there are indeed multiple authors by that name. Paul Nitsche, also executed, 5 hits. The thesis written by Pfannmüller, the tot torturer, also available. Max de Crini(s), the Berlin professor who inspected the gas chamber at Sonnenstein hospital by watching the deaths through the little window, 6 hits. Werner Catel, the expert child murderer, hits. Berthold Kihn, the administrative mass murderer, hits. Villinger, who I mentioned earlier, a publication from 1958, thirteen years after the demise of the Nazi regime. And I went on to find hits for almost all of the names that I typed. Binding and Hoche’s book that was the basis for the mass murders is also available. Who knows how many publications by psychiatric mass murderers are studied by young trainee physicians in our country, or yours.

Mein Kampf by Hitler is also available. I am not advocating censure. But the difference between Hitler and psychiatric mass murderers is that every child in the country knows that Hitler was a mass murderer. The names of the psychiatric mass murderers who inspired Hitler are unknown. I am advocating that we educate ourselves about the events in the psychiatric hospitals in those years. The French say, l’histoire se répète. History repeats itself only when we don’t learn it. To learn this shameful history, we have to commemorate the victims. Not remembering is repeating.

Why have these murders never been commemorated in this country before? Why are they hushed up? Could it be because we, too, until this day, count on psychiatrists to remove deviant people from our midst?

Today’s psychiatrists do not aim to commit mass murder. But there are parallels. Nowadays we do not speak of “the people” (Volk) but of society. Psychiatrists are still trained to see humans as body and genes. Although the syllable “psych” means soul, the soul has no role in modern biopsychiatry anymore than it had a role in the psychiatry of the Third Reich. Instead of mass murder we now have mass medication. The boundary between “tranquilized” and “dead” has been moved somewhat. By this I am referring to the testimony by one of the psychiatrists at Nuremberg, that it didn’t make much difference whether somebody was dazed or dead. The undemonstrated and unprovable diagnoses are now not on the death certificates but in the medical files. Parents of children are still pressured by psychiatrists. The doors to many institutions are still locked from both sides, keeping the incarcerated people in and reporters out. Dissident psychiatrists who do not succumb to the beliefs and practices of the masses are still discredited by colleagues and denied employment.

The pseudo-medical jargon is also still part of psychiatry. Back then, violence was called “care”, murder was called “euthanasia”, death from drugs was called “natural death”, person was called “patient”, and not understood was called “schizophrenic.” Now we have added terms such as “compliance” and “insight into illness” to express submission to psychiatrists.

The symbiotic relationship between medicine and government is stronger than ever, a marriage à convenance between law and science, between physician and the power of the court, which override the self-determination of the law-abiding individual.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we plan to be here again next year to commemorate, because not remembering is repeating.

We call on psychiatrists and other physicians, psychiatric and other nurses, professors, teachers, and students, all who are directly or indirectly involved in caring for people in institutions, to come and commemorate with us next year, because not remembering is repeating.

We call on politicians, judges, lawyers, civil servants, health insurers, board members of institutions and universities, and everyone else who is directly or indirectly involved in the administration of decisions regarding the fate of people called patients, to come and commemorate with us next year, because not remembering is repeating.

We call on the leaders and practitioners of all religions, the adherents of all philosophies, and citizens of all occupations, to come and commemorate with us next year, because not remembering is repeating.

We call on psychiatrized people, those who still can walk, talk, think, feel, remember, and function independently, to come and commemorate with us next year, because not remembering is repeating.

We call on governments to publish the names of the mass murdered people in psychiatric institutions. And for every name, tell us the age of that person at the time of his or her murder, and tell us the diagnosis that fated that person. Give us the opportunity to form some kind of mental image of these people, so that we can remember that indeed they were human beings like ourselves, because not remembering is repeating.

We are here today to commemorate circa 400,000 men and  women, children and elderly people, with major impairments, minor impairments, and no impairments, victims of the scientific values of their time, victims of those who thought they could engineer the human race, victims who were selected and murdered by the psychiatrists who claimed to treat them in their best interests. May their souls find blessing in this commemoration.

Ladies and gentlemen, we end this commemoration ceremony with a minute of silence.

International Commemoration Committee on Eugenic Mass Murder
in association with
Association for Medical and Therapeutic Self-Determination

Sources:
A Sign for Cain, Fredric Wertham
Mass Murderers in White Coats, Lenny Lapon
The War Against Children, Peter Breggin
Nazi Doctors, Robert J. Lifton
Racial Hygiene, Medicine under the Nazis, Robert Proctor
Cleansing the Fatherland, Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene, Götz Aly et al;
Death and Deliverance, “Euthanasia” in Germany 1900-1945, Michael Burleigh
The Origins of Nazi Genocide, From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, Henry Friedlander
Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
A German child who was allowed to turn back from the gas chamber: 1940 - 1942, Elvira Manthey
Ethics in Nazi Germany, Nicosia & Huener, ed.
IBM and the Holocaust, Edwin Black
Tödliche Wissenschaft, Benno Müller-Hill
http://www.interlog.com/~mighty/essays/nurses.htm
http://www.holocaust-trc.org/hndcp.htm
http://www.gedenkstaettesteinhof.at/index.shtml?lang=en;style=small
http://www.psychiatrie-erfahrene.de/reading_english.htm
http://www.wfmh.com/ http://www.pharmapolitics.com/
http://www.cbc.ca/witness/graymatter/
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/t4.html

Holocaust Q&A

1. When speaking about the "Holocaust," what time period are we referring to?

Answer: The "Holocaust" refers to the period from January 30, 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, to May 8, 1945 (V-E Day), the end of the war in Europe.

2. How many Jews were murdered during the Holocaust?

Answer: While it is impossible to ascertain the exact number of Jewish victims, statistics indicate that the total was over 5,860,000. Six million is the round figure accepted by most authorities.

3. How many non-Jewish civilians were murdered during World War II?

Answer: While it is impossible to ascertain the exact number, the recognized figure is approximately 5,000,000. Among the groups which the Nazis and their collaborators murdered and persecuted were: Gypsies, Serbs, Polish intelligentsia, resistance fighters from all the nations, German opponents of Nazism, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, habitual criminals, and the "anti-social," e.g. beggars, vagrants, and hawkers.

4. Which Jewish communities suffered losses during the Holocaust?

Answer: Every Jewish community in occupied Europe suffered losses during the Holocaust. The Jewish communities in North Africa were persecuted, but the Jews in these countries were neither deported to the death camps, nor were they systematically murdered.

5. How many Jews were murdered in each country and what percentage of the pre-war Jewish population did they constitute?

Answer: (Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust)

Austria 50,000 -- 27.0%

Italy 7,680 -- 17.3%

Belgium 28,900 -- 44.0%

Latvia 71,500 -- 78.1%

Bohemia/Moravia 78,150 -- 66.1%

Lithuania 143,000 -- 85.1%

Bulgaria 0 -- 0.0%

Luxembourg 1,950 -- 55.7%

Denmark 60 -- 0.7%

Netherlands 100,000 -- 71.4%

Estonia 2,000 -- 44.4%

Norway 762 -- 44.8%

Finland 7 -- 0.3%

Poland 3,000,000 -- 90.9%

France 77,320 -- 22.1%

Romania 287,000 -- 47.1%

Germany 141,500 -- 25.0%

Slovakia 71,000 -- 79.8%

Greece 67,000 -- 86.6%

Soviet Union 1,100,000 -- 36.4%

Hungary 569,000 -- 69.0%

Yugoslavia 63,300 -- 81.2%

6. What is a death camp? How many were there? Where were they located?

Answer: A death (or mass murder) camp is a concentration camp with special apparatus specifically designed for systematic murder. Six such camps existed: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka. All were located in Poland.

7. What does the term "Final Solution" mean and what is its origin?

Answer: The term "Final Solution" (Endl"sung) refers to Germany's plan to murder all the Jews of Europe. The term was used at the Wannsee Conference (Berlin; January 20,1942) where German officials discussed its implementation.

8. When did the "Final Solution" actually begin?

Answer: While thousands of Jews were murdered by the Nazis or died as a direct result of discriminatory measures instituted against Jews during the initial years of the Third Reich, the systematic murder of Jews did not begin until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

9. How did the Germans define who was Jewish?

Answer: On November 14, 1935, the Nazis issued the following definition of a Jew: Anyone with three Jewish grandparents; someone with two Jewish grandparents who belonged to the Jewish community on September 15, 1935, or joined thereafter; was married to a Jew or Jewess on September 15, 1935, or married one thereafter; was the offspring of a marriage or extramarital liaison with a Jew on or after September 15, 1935.

10. How did the Germans treat those who had some Jewish blood but were not classified as Jews?

Answer: Those who were not classified as Jews but who had some Jewish blood were categorized as Mischlinge (hybrids)and were divided into two groups:

Mischlinge of the first degree--those with two Jewish grandparents;

Mischlinge of the second degree--those with one Jewish grandparent.

The Mischlinge were officially excluded from membership in the Nazi Party and all Party organizations (e.g. SA, SS, etc.). Although they were drafted into the Germany Army, they could not attain the rank of officers. They were also barred from the civil service and from certain professions. (Individual Mischlinge were, however, granted exemptions under certain circumstances.) Nazi officials considered plans to sterilize Mischlinge, but this was never done. During World War II, first-degree Mischlinge, incarcerated in concentration camps, were deported to death camps.

11. What were the first measures taken by the Nazis against the Jews?

Answer: The first measures against the Jews included:

April 1, 1933: A boycott of Jewish shops and businesses by the Nazis.

April 7, 1933: The law for the Re-establishment of the Civil Service expelled all non-Aryans (defined on April 11, 1933 as anyone with a Jewish parent or grandparent) from the civil service. Initially, exceptions were made for those working since August 1914; German veterans of World War I; and, those who had lost a father or son fighting for Germany or her allies in World War I.

April 7, 1933: The law regarding admission to the legal profession prohibited the admission of lawyers of non-Aryan descent to the Bar. It also denied non-Aryan members of the Bar the right to practice law. (Exceptions were made in the cases noted above in the law regarding the civil service.) Similar laws were passed regarding Jewish law assessors, jurors, and commercial judges.

April 22, 1933: The decree regarding physicians' services with the national health plan denied reimbursement of expenses to those patients who consulted non-Aryan doctors. Jewish doctors who were war veterans or had suffered from the war were excluded.

April 25, 1933: The law against the overcrowding of German schools restricted Jewish enrollment in German high schools to 1.5% of the student body. In communities where they constituted more than 5% of the population, Jews were allowed to constitute up to 5% of the student body. Initially, exceptions were made in the case of children of Jewish war veterans, who were not considered part of the quota. In the framework of this law, a Jewish student was a child with two non-Aryan parents.

12. Did the Nazis plan to murder the Jews from the beginning of their regime?

Answer: This question is one of the most difficult to answer. While Hitler made several references to killing Jews, both in his early writings (Mein Kampf) and in various speeches during the 1930s, it is fairly certain that the Nazis had no operative plan for the systematic annihilation of the Jews before 1941. The decision on the systematic murder of the Jews was apparently made in the late winter or the early spring of 1941 in conjunction with the decision to invade the Soviet Union.

13. When was the first concentration camp established and who were the first inmates?

Answer: The first concentration camp, Dachau, opened on March 22, 1933. The camp's first inmates were primarily political prisoners (e.g. Communists or Social Democrats); habitual criminals; homosexuals; Jehovah's Witnesses; and "anti-socials" (beggars, vagrants, hawkers). Others considered problematic by the Nazis (e.g. Jewish writers and journalists, lawyers, unpopular industrialists, and political officials) were also included.

14. Which groups of people in Germany were considered enemies of the state by the Nazis and were, therefore, persecuted?

Answer: The following groups of individuals were considered enemies of the Third Reich and were, therefore, persecuted by the Nazi authorities: Jews, Gypsies, Social Democrats, other opposing politicians, opponents of Nazism, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, habitual criminals, and "anti-socials" (e.g. beggars, vagrants, hawkers), and the mentally ill. Any individual who was considered a threat to the Nazis was in danger of being persecuted.

15. What was the difference between the persecution of the Jews and the persecution of other groups classified by the Nazis as enemies of the Third Reich?

Answer: The Jews were the only group singled out for total systematic annihilation by the Nazis. To escape the death sentence imposed by the Nazis, the Jews could only leave Nazi-controlled Europe. Every single Jew was to be killed according to the Nazis' plan. In the case of other criminals or enemies of the Third Reich, their families were usually not held accountable. Thus, if a person were executed or sent to a concentration camp, it did not mean that each member of his family would meet the same fate. Moreover, in most situations the Nazis' enemies were classified as such because of their actions or political affiliation (actions and/or opinions which could be revised). In the case of the Jews, it was because of their racial origin, which could never be changed.

16. Why were the Jews singled out for extermination?

Answer: The explanation of the Nazis' implacable hatred of the Jew rests on their distorted world view which saw history as a racial struggle. They considered the Jews a race whose goal was world domination and who, therefore, were an obstruction to Aryan dominance. They believed that all of history was a fight between races which should culminate in the triumph of the superior Aryan race. Therefore, they considered it their duty to eliminate the Jews, whom they regarded as a threat. Moreover, in their eyes, the Jews' racial origin made them habitual criminals who could never be rehabilitated and were, therefore, hopelessly corrupt and inferior.

There is no doubt that other factors contributed toward Nazi hatred of the Jews and their distorted image of the Jewish people. These included the centuries-old tradition of Christian antisemitism which propagated a negative stereotype of the Jew as a Christ-killer, agent of the devil, and practitioner of witchcraft. Also significant was the political antisemitism of the latter half of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries, which singled out the Jew as a threat to the established order of society. These combined to point to the Jew as a target for persecution and ultimate destruction by the Nazis.

17. What did people in Germany know about the persecution of Jews and other enemies of Nazism?

Answer: Certain initial aspects of Nazi persecution of Jews and other opponents were common knowledge in Germany. Thus, for example, everyone knew about the Boycott of April 1, 1933, the Laws of April, and the Nuremberg Laws, because they were fully publicized. Moreover, offenders were often publicly punished and shamed. The same holds true for subsequent anti-Jewish measures. Kristallnacht (The Night of the Broken Glass) was a public pogrom, carried out in full view of the entire population. While information on the concentration camps was not publicized, a great deal of information was available to the German public, and the treatment of the inmates was generally known, although exact details were not easily obtained.

As for the implementation of the "Final Solution" and the murder of other undesirable elements, the situation was different. The Nazis attempted to keep the murders a secret and, therefore, took precautionary measures to ensure that they would not be publicized. Their efforts, however, were only partially successful. Thus, for example, public protests by various clergymen led to the halt of their euthanasia program in August of 1941. These protests were obviously the result of the fact that many persons were aware that the Nazis were killing the mentally ill in special institutions.

As far as the Jews were concerned, it was common knowledge in Germany that they had disappeared after having been sent to the East. It was not exactly clear to large segments of the German population what had happened to them. On the other hand, there were thousands upon thousands of Germans who participated in and/or witnessed the implementation of the "Final Solution" either as members of the SS, the Einsatzgruppen, death camp or concentration camp guards, police in occupied Europe, or with the Wehrmacht.

18. Did all Germans support Hitler's plan for the persecution of the Jews?

Answer: Although the entire German population was not in agreement with Hitler's persecution of the Jews, there is no evidence of any large scale protest regarding their treatment. There were Germans who defied the April 1, 1933 boycott and purposely bought in Jewish stores, and there were those who aided Jews to escape and to hide, but their number was very small. Even some of those who opposed Hitler were in agreement with his anti-Jewish policies. Among the clergy, Dompropst Bernhard Lichtenberg of Berlin publicly prayed for the Jews daily and was, therefore, sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis. Other priests were deported for their failure to cooperate with Nazi antisemitic policies, but the majority of the clergy complied with the directives against German Jewry and did not openly protest.

19. Did the people of occupied Europe know about Nazi plans for the Jews? What was their attitude? Did they cooperate with the Nazis against the Jews?

Answer: The attitude of the local population vis-a-vis the persecution and destruction of the Jews varied from zealous collaboration with the Nazis to active assistance to Jews. Thus, it is difficult to make generalizations. The situation also varied from country to country. In Eastern Europe and especially in Poland, Russia, and the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), there was much more knowledge of the "Final Solution" because it was implemented in those areas. Elsewhere, the local population had less information on the details of the "Final Solution."

In every country they occupied, with the exception of Denmark and Bulgaria, the Nazis found many locals who were willing to cooperate fully in the murder of the Jews. This was particularly true in Eastern Europe, where there was a long standing tradition of virulent antisemitism, and where various national groups, which had been under Soviet domination (Latvians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians), fostered hopes that the Germans would restore their independence. In several countries in Europe, there were local fascist movements which allied themselves with the Nazis and participated in anti-Jewish actions; for example, the Iron Guard in Romania and the Arrow Guard in Slovakia. On the other hand, in every country in Europe, there were courageous individuals who risked their lives to save Jews. In several countries, there were groups which aided Jews, e.g. Joop Westerweel's group in the Netherlands, Zegota in Poland, and the Assisi underground in Italy.

20. Did the Allies and the people in the Free World know about the events going on in Europe?

Answer: The various steps taken by the Nazis prior to the "Final Solution" were all taken publicly and were, therefore, reported in the press. Foreign correspondents commented on all the major anti-Jewish actions taken by the Nazis in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia prior to World War II. Once the war began, obtaining information became more difficult, but reports, nonetheless, were published regarding the fate of the Jews. Thus, although the Nazis did not publicize the "Final Solution," less than one year after the systematic murder of the Jews was initiated, details began to filter out to the West. The first report which spoke of a plan for the mass murder of Jews was smuggled out of Poland by the Bund (a Jewish socialist political organization) and reached England in the spring of 1942. The details of this report reached the Allies from Vatican sources as well as from informants in Switzerland and the Polish underground. (Jan Karski, an emissary of the Polish underground, personally met with Franklin Roosevelt and British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden). Eventually, the American Government confirmed the reports to Jewish leaders in late November 1942. They were publicized immediately thereafter. While the details were neither complete nor wholly accurate, the Allies were aware of most of what the Germans had done to the Jews at a relatively early date.

21. What was the response of the Allies to the persecution of the Jews? Could they have done anything to help?

Answer: The response of the Allies to the persecution and destruction of European Jewry was inadequate. Only in January 1944 was an agency, the War Refugee Board, established for the express purpose of saving the victims of Nazi persecution. Prior to that date, little action was taken. On December 17, 1942, the Allies issued a condemnation of Nazi atrocities against the Jews, but this was the only such declaration made prior to 1944.

Moreover, no attempt was made to call upon the local population in Europe to refrain from assisting the Nazis in their systematic murder of the Jews. Even following the establishment of the War Refugee Board and the initiation of various rescue efforts, the Allies refused to bomb the death camp of Auschwitz and/or the railway lines leading to that camp, despite the fact that Allied bombers were at that time engaged in bombing factories very close to the camp and were well aware of its existence and function.

Other practical measures which were not taken concerned the refugee problem. Tens of thousands of Jews sought to enter the United States, but they were barred from doing so by the stringent American immigration policy. Even the relatively small quotas of visas which existed were often not filled, although the number of applicants was usually many times the number of available places. Conferences held in Evian, France (1938) and Bermuda (1943) to solve the refugee problem did not contribute to a solution. At the former, the countries invited by the United States and Great Britain were told that no country would be asked to change its immigration laws. Moreover, the British agreed to participate only if Palestine were not considered. At Bermuda, the delegates did not deal with the fate of those still in Nazi hands, but rather with those who had already escaped to neutral lands. Practical measures which could have aided in the rescue of Jews included the following:

• Permission for temporary admission of refugees

• Relaxation of stringent entry requirements

• Frequent and unequivocal warnings to Germany and local populations all over Europe that those participating in the annihilation of Jews would be held strictly accountable

• Bombing the death camp at Auschwitz

22. Who are the "Righteous Among the Nations"?

Answer: "Righteous Among the Nations," or "Righteous Gentiles," refers to those non-Jews who aided Jews during the Holocaust. There were "Righteous Among the Nations" in every country overrun or allied with the Nazis, and their deeds often led to the rescue of Jewish lives. Yad Vashem, the Israeli national remembrance authority for the Holocaust, bestows special honors upon these individuals. To date, after carefully evaluating each case, Yad Vashem has recognized approximately 10,000 "Righteous Gentiles" in three different categories of recognition. The country with the most "Righteous Gentiles" is Poland. The country with the highest proportion (per capita) is the Netherlands. The figure of 10,000 is far from complete as many cases were never reported, frequently because those who were helped have died. Moreover, this figure only includes those who actually risked their lives to save Jews, and not those who merely extended aid.

23. Were Jews in the Free World aware of the persecution and destruction of European Jewry and, if so, what was their response?

Answer: The news of the persecution and destruction of European Jewry must be divided into two periods. The measures taken by the Nazis prior to the "Final Solution" were all taken publicly and were, therefore, in all the newspapers. Foreign correspondents reported on all major anti-Jewish actions taken by the Nazis in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia prior to World War II. Once the war began, obtaining information became more difficult, but, nonetheless, reports were published regarding the fate of the Jews.

The "Final Solution" was not openly publicized by the Nazis, and thus it took longer for information to reach the "Free World." Nevertheless, by December 1942, news of the mass murders and the plan to annihilate European Jewry was publicized in the Jewish press.

The response of the Jews in the "Free World" must also be divided into two periods, before and after the publication of information on the "Final Solution." Efforts during the early years of the Nazi regime concentrated on facilitating emigration from Germany (although there were those who initially opposed emigration as a solution) and combatting German antisemitism. Unfortunately, the views on how to best achieve these goals differed and effective action was often hampered by the lack of internal unity. Moreover, very few Jewish leaders actually realized the scope of the danger. Following the publication of the news of the "Final Solution," attempts were made to launch rescue attempts via neutral states and to send aid to Jews under Nazi rule. These attempts, which were far from adequate, were further hampered by the lack of assistance and obstruction from government channels. Additional attempts to achieve internal unity during this period failed.

24. Did the Jews in Europe realize what was going to happen to them?

Answer: Regarding the knowledge of the "Final Solution" by its potential victims, several key points must be kept in mind. First of all, the Nazis did not publicize the "Final Solution," nor did they ever openly speak about it. Every attempt was made to fool the victims and, thereby, prevent or minimize resistance. Thus, deportees were always told that they were going to be "resettled." They were led to believe that conditions "in the East" (where they were being sent) would be better than those in ghettos. Following arrival in certain concentration camps, the inmates were forced to write home about the wonderful conditions in their new place of residence. The Germans made every effort to ensure secrecy. In addition, the notion that human beings--let alone the civilized Germans--could build camps with special apparatus for mass murder seemed unbelievable in those days. Since German troops liberated the Jews from the Czar in World War I, Germans were regarded by many Jews as a liberal, civilized people. Escapees who did return to the ghetto frequently encountered disbelief when they related their experiences. Even Jews who had heard of the camps had difficulty believing reports of what the Germans were doing there. Inasmuch as each of the Jewish communities in Europe was almost completely isolated, there was a limited number of places with available information. Thus, there is no doubt that many European Jews were not aware of the "Final Solution," a fact that has been corroborated by German documents and the testimonies of survivors.

25. How many Jews were able to escape from Europe prior to the Holocaust?

Answer: It is difficult to arrive at an exact figure for the number of Jews who were able to escape from Europe prior to World War II, since the available statistics are incomplete. From 1933-1939, 355,278 German and Austrian Jews left their homes. (Some immigrated to countries later overrun by the Nazis.) In the same period, 80,860 Polish Jews immigrated to Palestine and 51,747 European Jews arrived in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. During the years 1938-1939, approximately 35,000 emigrated from Bohemia and Moravia (Czechoslovakia). Shanghai, the only place in the world for which one did not need an entry visa, received approximately 20,000 European Jews (mostly of German origin) who fled their homelands. Immigration figures for countries of refuge during this period are not available. In addition, many countries did not provide a breakdown of immigration statistics according to ethnic groups. It is impossible, therefore, to ascertain.

26. What efforts were made to save the Jews fleeing from Germany before World War II began?

Answer: Various organizations attempted to facilitate the emigration of the Jews (and non-Jews persecuted as Jews) from Germany. Among the most active were the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, HICEM, the Central British Fund for German Jewry, the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden (Reich Representation of German Jews), which represented German Jewry, and other non-Jewish groups such as the League of Nations High Commission for Refugees (Jewish and other) coming from Germany, and the American Friends Service Committee. Among the programs launched were the "Transfer Agreement" between the Jewish Agency and the German government whereby immigrants to Palestine were allowed to transfer their funds to that country in conjunction with the import of German goods to Palestine. Other efforts focused on retraining prospective emigrants in order to increase the number of those eligible for visas, since some countries barred the entry of members of certain professions. Other groups attempted to help in various phases of refugee work: selection of candidates for emigration, transportation of refugees, aid in immigrant absorption, etc. Some groups attempted to facilitate increased emigration by enlisting the aid of governments and international organizations in seeking refugee havens. The League of Nations established an agency to aid refugees but its success was extremely limited due to a lack of political power and adequate funding.

The United States and Great Britain convened a conference in 1938 at Evian, France, seeking a solution to the refugee problem. With the exception of the Dominican Republic, the nations assembled refused to change their stringent immigration regulations, which were instrumental in preventing large-scale immigration.

In 1939, the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, which had been established at the Evian Conference, initiated negotiations with leading German officials in an attempt to arrange for the relocation of a significant portion of German Jewry. However, these talks failed. Efforts were made for the illegal entry of Jewish immigrants to Palestine as early as July 1934, but were later halted until July 1938. Large-scale efforts were resumed under the Mosad le-Aliya Bet, Revisionist Zionists, and private parties. Attempts were also made, with some success, to facilitate the illegal entry of refugees to various countries in Latin America.

27. Why were so few refugees able to flee Europe prior to the outbreak of World War II?

Answer: The key reason for the relatively low number of refugees leaving Europe prior to World War II was the stringent immigration policies adopted by the prospective host countries. In the United States, for example, the number of immigrants was limited to 153,744 per year, divided by country of origin. Moreover, the entry requirements were so stringent that available quotas were often not filled. Schemes to facilitate immigration outside the quotas never materialized as the majority of the American public consistently opposed the entry of additional refugees. Other countries, particularly those in Latin America, adopted immigration policies that were similar or even more restrictive, thus closing the doors to prospective immigrants from the Third Reich.

Great Britain, while somewhat more liberal than the United States on the entry of immigrants, took measures to severely limit Jewish immigration to Palestine. In May 1939, the British issued a "White Paper" stipulating that only 75,000 Jewish immigrants would be allowed to enter Palestine over the course of the next five years (10,000 a year, plus an additional 25,000). This decision prevented hundreds of thousands of Jews from escaping Europe.

The countries most able to accept large numbers of refugees consistently refused to open their gates. Although a solution to the refugee problem was the agenda of the Evian Conference, only the Dominican Republic was willing to approve large-scale immigration. The United States and Great Britain proposed resettlement havens in under-developed areas (e.g. Guyana, formerly British Guiana, and the Philippines), but these were not suitable alternatives. Two important factors should be noted. During the period prior to the outbreak of World War II, the Germans were in favor of Jewish emigration. At that time, there were no operative plans to kill the Jews. The goal was to induce them to leave, if necessary, by the use of force. It is also important to recognize the attitude of German Jewry. While many German Jews were initially reluctant to emigrate, the majority sought to do so following Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass), November 9-10, 1938. Had havens been available, more people would certainly have emigrated.

28. What was Hitler's ultimate goal in launching World War II?

Answer: Hitler's ultimate goal in launching World War II was the establishment of an Aryan empire from Germany to the Urals. He considered this area the natural territory of the German people, an area to which they were entitled by right, the Lebensraum (living space) that Germany needed so badly for its farmers to have enough soil. Hitler maintained that these areas were needed for the Aryan race to preserve itself and assure its dominance.

There is no question that Hitler knew that, by launching the war in the East, the Nazis would be forced to deal with serious racial problems in view of the composition of the population in the Eastern areas. Thus, the Nazis had detailed plans for the subjugation of the Slavs, who would be reduced to serfdom status and whose primary function would be to serve as a source of cheap labor for Aryan farmers. Those elements of the local population, who were of higher racial stock, would be taken to Germany where they would be raised as Aryans.

In Hitler's mind, the solution of the Jewish problem was also linked to the conquest of the eastern territories. These areas had large Jewish populations and they would have to be dealt with accordingly. While at this point there was still no operative plan for mass annihilation, it was clear to Hitler that some sort of comprehensive solution would have to be found. There was also talk of establishing a Jewish reservation either in Madagascar or near Lublin, Poland. When he made the decisive decision to invade the Soviet Union, Hitler also gave instructions to embark upon the "Final Solution," the systematic murder of European Jewry.

29. Was there any opposition to the Nazis within Germany?

Answer: Throughout the course of the Third Reich, there were different groups who opposed the Nazi regime and certain Nazi policies. They engaged in resistance at different times and with various methods, aims, and scope.

From the beginning, leftist political groups and a number of disappointed conservatives were in opposition; at a later date, church groups, government officials, students and businessmen also joined. After the tide of the war was reversed, elements within the military played an active role in opposing Hitler. At no point, however, was there a unified resistance movement within Germany.

30. Did the Jews try to fight against the Nazis? To what extent were such efforts successful?

Answer: Despite the difficult conditions to which Jews were subjected in Nazi-occupied Europe, many engaged in armed resistance against the Nazis. This resistance can be divided into three basic types of armed activities: ghetto revolts, resistance in concentration and death camps, and partisan warfare.

The Warsaw Ghetto revolt, which lasted for about five weeks beginning on April 19, 1943, is probably the best-known example of armed Jewish resistance, but there were many ghetto revolts in which Jews fought against the Nazis.

Despite the terrible conditions in the death, concentration, and labor camps, Jewish inmates fought against the Nazis at the following sites: Treblinka (August 2, 1943); Babi Yar (September 29, 1943); Sobibór (October 14, 1943); Janówska (November 19, 1943); and Auschwitz (October 7, 1944).

Jewish partisan units were active in many areas, including Baranovichi, Minsk, Naliboki forest, and Vilna. While the sum total of armed resistance efforts by Jews was not militarily overwhelming and did not play a significant role in the defeat of Nazi Germany, these acts of resistance did lead to the rescue of an undetermined number of Jews, Nazi casualties, and untold damage to German property and self-esteem.

31. What was the Judenrat?

Answer: The Judenrat was the council of Jews, appointed by the Nazis in each Jewish community or ghetto. According to the directive from Reinhard Heydrich of the SS on September 21, 1939, a Judenrat was to be established in every concentration of Jews in the occupied areas of Poland. They were led by noted community leaders. Enforcement of Nazi decrees affecting Jews and administration of the affairs of the Jewish community were the responsibilities of the Judenrat. These functions placed the Judenrat in a highly responsible, but controversial position, and many of their actions continue to be the subject of debate among historians. While the intentions of the heads of councils were rarely challenged, their tactics and methods have been questioned. Among the most controversial were Mordechai Rumkowski in Lodz and Jacob Gens in Vilna, both of whom justified the sacrifice of some Jews in order to save others. Leaders and members of the Judenrat were guided, for the most part, by a sense of communal responsibility, but lacked the power and the means to successfully thwart Nazi plans for annihilation of all Jews.

32. Did international organizations, such as the Red Cross, aid victims of Nazi persecution?

Answer: During the course of World War II, the International Red Cross (IRC) did very little to aid the Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. Its activities can basically be divided into three periods:

1. September, 1939 - June 22, 1941:

The IRC confined its activities to sending food packages to those in distress in Nazi-occupied Europe. Packages were distributed in accordance with the directives of the German Red Cross. Throughout this time, the IRC complied with the German contention that those in ghettos and camps constituted a threat to the security of the Reich and, therefore, were not allowed to receive aid from the IRC.

2. June 22, 1941 - Summer 1944:

Despite numerous requests by Jewish organizations, the IRC refused to publicly protest the mass annihilation of Jews and non-Jews in the camps, or to intervene on their behalf. It maintained that any public action on behalf of those under Nazi rule would ultimately prove detrimental to their welfare. At the same time, the IRC attempted to send food parcels to those individuals whose addresses it possessed.

3. Summer 1944 - May 1945:

Following intervention by such prominent figures as President Franklin Roosevelt and the King of Sweden, the IRC appealed to Miklós Horthy, Regent of Hungary, to stop the deportation of Hungarian Jews.

The IRC did insist that it be allowed to visit concentration camps, and a delegation did visit the "model ghetto" of Terezin (Theresienstadt). The IRC request came following the receipt of information about the harsh living conditions in the camp.

The IRC requested permission to investigate the situation, but the Germans only agreed to allow the visit nine months after submission of the request. This delay provided time for the Nazis to complete a "beautification" program, designed to fool the delegation into thinking that conditions at Terezin were quite good and that inmates were allowed to live out their lives in relative tranquility.

The visit, which took place on July 23, 1944, was followed by a favorable report on Terezin to the members of the IRC which Jewish organizations protested vigorously, demanding that another delegation visit the camp. Such a visit was not permitted until shortly before the end of the war. In reality, the majority were subsequently deported to Auschwitz where they were murdered.

33. How did Germany's allies, the Japanese and the Italians, treat the Jews in the lands they occupied?

Answer: Neither the Italians nor the Japanese, both of whom were Germany's allies during World War II, cooperated regarding the "Final Solution." Although the Italians did, upon German urging, institute discriminatory legislation against Italian Jews, Mussolini's government refused to participate in the "Final Solution" and consistently refused to deport its Jewish residents. Moreover, in their occupied areas of France, Greece, and Yugoslavia, the Italians protected the Jews and did not allow them to be deported. However, when the Germans overthrew the Badoglio government in 1943, the Jews of Italy, as well as those under Italian protection in occupied areas, were subject to the "Final Solution."

The Japanese were also relatively tolerant toward the Jews in their country as well as in the areas which they occupied. Despite pressure by their German allies urging them to take stringent measures against Jews, the Japanese refused to do so. Refugees were allowed to enter Japan until the spring of 1941, and Jews in Japanese-occupied China were treated well. In the summer and fall of 1941, refugees in Japan were transferred to Shanghai but no measures were taken against them until early 1943, when they were forced to move into the Hongkew Ghetto. While conditions were hardly satisfactory, they were far superior to those in the ghettos under German control.

34. What was the attitude of the churches vis-a-vis the persecution of the Jews? Did the Pope ever speak out against the Nazis?

Answer: The head of the Catholic Church at the time of the Nazi rise to power was Pope Pius XI. Although he stated that the myths of "race" and "blood" were contrary to Christian teaching (in a papal encyclical, March 1937), he neither mentioned nor criticized antisemitism. His successor, Pius XII (Cardinal Pacelli) was a Germanophile who maintained his neutrality throughout the course of World War II. Although as early as 1942 the Vatican received detailed information on the murder of Jews in concentration camps, the Pope confined his public statements to expressions of sympathy for the victims of injustice and to calls for a more humane conduct of the war.

Despite the lack of response by Pope Pius XII, several papal nuncios played an important role in rescue efforts, particularly the nuncios in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Turkey. It is not clear to what, if any, extent they operated upon instructions from the Vatican. In Germany, the Catholic Church did not oppose the Nazis' antisemitic campaign. Church records were supplied to state authorities which assisted in the detection of people of Jewish origin, and efforts to aid the persecuted were confined to Catholic non-Aryans. While Catholic clergymen protested the Nazi euthanasia program, few, with the exception of Bernhard Lichtenberg, spoke out against the murder of the Jews.

In Western Europe, Catholic clergy spoke out publicly against the persecution of the Jews and actively helped in the rescue of Jews. In Eastern Europe, however, the Catholic clergy was generally more reluctant to help. Dr. Jozef Tiso, the head of state of Slovakia and a Catholic priest, actively cooperated with the Germans as did many other Catholic priests.

The response of Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches varied. In Germany, for example, Nazi supporters within Protestant churches complied with the anti-Jewish legislation and even excluded Christians of Jewish origin from membership. Pastor Martin Niem"ller's Confessing Church defended the rights of Christians of Jewish origin within the church, but did not publicly protest their persecution, nor did it condemn the measures taken against the Jews, with the exception of a memorandum sent to Hitler in May 1936.

In occupied Europe, the position of the Protestant churches varied. In several countries (Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Norway) local churches and/or leading clergymen issued public protests when the Nazis began deporting Jews. In other countries (Bulgaria, Greece, and Yugoslavia), some Orthodox church leaders intervened on behalf of the Jews and took steps which, in certain cases, led to the rescue of many Jews.

35. How many Nazi criminals were there? How many were brought to justice?

Answer: We do not know the exact number of Nazi criminals since the available documentation is incomplete. The Nazis themselves destroyed many incriminating documents and there are still many criminals who are unidentified and/or unindicted.

Those who committed war crimes include those individuals who initiated, planned and directed the killing operations, as well as those with whose knowledge, agreement, and passive participation the murder of European Jewry was carried out.

Those who actually implemented the "Final Solution" include the leaders of Nazi Germany, the heads of the Nazi Party, and the Reich Security Main Office. Also included are hundreds of thousands of members of the Gestapo, the SS, the Einsatzgruppen, the police and the armed forces, as well as those bureaucrats who were involved in the persecution and destruction of European Jewry. In addition, there were thousands of individuals throughout occupied Europe who cooperated with the Nazis in killing Jews and other innocent civilians.

We do not have complete statistics on the number of criminals brought to justice, but the number is certainly far less than the total of those who were involved in the "Final Solution." The leaders of the Third Reich, who were caught by the Allies, were tried by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946. Afterwards, the Allied occupation authorities continued to try Nazis, with the most significant trials held in the American zone (the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings). In total, 5,025 Nazi criminals were convicted between 1945-1949 in the American, British and French zones, in addition to an unspecified number of people who were tried in the Soviet zone. In addition, the United Nations War Crimes Commission prepared lists of war criminals who were later tried by the judicial authorities of Allied countries and those countries under Nazi rule during the war. The latter countries have conducted a large number of trials regarding crimes committed in their lands. The Polish tribunals, for example, tried approximately 40,000 persons, and large numbers of criminals were tried in other countries. In all, about 80,000 Germans have been convicted for committing crimes against humanity, while the number of local collaborators is in the tens of thousands. Special mention should be made of Simon Wiesenthal, whose activities led to the capture of over one thousand Nazi criminals.

Courts in Germany began, in some cases, to function as early as 1945. By 1969, almost 80,000 Germans had been investigated and over 6,000 had been convicted. In 1958, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; West Germany) established a special agency in Ludwigsburg to aid in the investigation of crimes committed by Germans outside Germany, an agency which, since its establishment, has been involved in hundreds of major investigations. One of the major problems regarding the trial of war criminals in the FRG (as well as in Austria) has been the fact that the sentences have been disproportionately lenient for the crimes committed. Some trials were also conducted in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany), yet no statistics exist as to the number of those convicted or the extent of their sentences.

36. What were the Nuremberg trials?

Answer: The term "Nuremberg Trials" refers to two sets of trials of Nazi war criminals conducted after the war. The first trials were held November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946, before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which was made up of representatives of France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States. It consisted of the trials of the political, military and economic leaders of the Third Reich captured by the Allies. Among the defendants were: G"ring, Rosenberg, Streicher, Kaltenbrunner, Seyss-Inquart, Speer, Ribbentrop and Hess (many of the most prominent Nazis -- Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels -- committed suicide and were not brought to trial). The second set of trials, known as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, was conducted before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT), established by the Office of the United States Government for Germany (OMGUS). While the judges on the NMT were American citizens, the tribunal considered itself international. Twelve high-ranking officials were tried, among whom were cabinet ministers, diplomats, doctors involved in medical experiments, and SS officers involved in crimes in concentration camps or in genocide in Nazi-occupied areas.

German Jews were restricted by curfew. The Wagner-Rogers bill (by Massachusetts Republican Congress member Edith Nourse Rogers and New York Democrat Senator Robert F. Wagner) died in Congress. Roosevelt refused to take a position on it. It would have admitted 20,000 additional Jewish refugee children under the age of 14 into the United States from Germany and Austria.

A food stamp plan to dispose of agricultural commodities is begun in Rochester, New York.

Lists of "dangerous" enemy aliens and citizens began to be compiled in various government departments, such as the FBI, special intelligence agencies of the Justice Department, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the army's Military Intelligence Division.

In England, in April the Military Training Act sought to 'call up' boys from age 18 as 'militiamen', to distinguish them from the regular army. The intention was for conscripts to undergo six months basic training before being discharged into an active reserve, for subsequent recall to short training periods and an annual camp. Superseded by the National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939 enacted immediately by Parliament on 3 September 1939 - the date of declaration of war on Germany. Liability to full-time conscription was enforced on all males between 18 and 41. By 1942, all male British subjects resident in Great Britain aged 18–50 were liable to call-up, with only a few categories exempted, and female subjects aged 20–29.Template:National Service (No 2) Act 1941

Claudette Colvin, who was born September 5, 1939, was 15 years old when she was arrested for resisting bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama. Her case preceded Rosa Parks’s arrest by nine months. Colvin was one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the 1956 court case that ordered the desegregation of buses in Alabama.

In 1939 Lionel Penrose, a British psychiatrist and mathematician, published a paper on the relationship between the population of psychiatric hospitals and that of prisons. He postulated that the two populations were inversely correlated: as one decreases, the other increases. It has become known as the balloon theory—push in on one side and the other side bulges out.

“Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Test was published which eventually became the most widely used intellectual assessment.

The Canadian Psychological Associated was founded.

The Insanity Racket: A Story of One of the Worst Hell Holes in This Country,” by Luther Osborne.

“The Capital's Siberia,” by James Duffy.

In England, First female professor at Cambridge University (Dr Dorothy Garrod, Professor of Archaeology).

In England, Miss S.C. Jennings became the first woman to qualify as a gas engineer.

1939-1945

During World War II. U.S. Army developed a better classification system to include disorders suffered by servicemen such as psychophysiological, personality and acute disorders.

1940's

Carney Landis noted the prevalence of sexual abuse when comparing 142 psychiatric patients with 153 people in the general population.

After Mao Tse-Tung's Revolutionary Army has rid the villages of North China of enemy control, political workers call the women to the village square to testify to the crimes that had been committed against them. The women speak of their oppression, of being sold as concubines, of being raped and of being beaten. From these "speak bitterness" meetings, local women's associations are formed. In Women's Fate, Claudia Dreifus calls these meetings "the first consciousness-raising groups, the first known attempts to convert womenkind's private laments into public acts..."

1940

Harry Stack Sullivan, a US psychiatrist says, in referenfce to lobotomy and shock treatment, “These sundry procedures produce “beneficial” results908 patients were transferred from an institution for retarded and chronically ill patients in Schoenbrunn, Germany to the euthanasia installation at Eglfing-Haar to be gassed. A monument to the victims stands in the courtyard at Schoenbrunn.

The National Federation of the Blind is formed in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, by Jacobus tenBroek and other blind advocates. It advocates for “white cane laws” and input by blind people into programs for blind clients, among other reforms. The National Federation of the Blind formed to advocate for better conditions and input from the (blind) workers forced to work in the sweatshops.

It seems very clear that the first documented treatment of ECT in this country [at 27 West 55th Street, New York City] was administered by Dr. David Impastato on January 7, 1940. The first patient was a 29-year-old woman of Italian descent suffering from severe schizophrenia. The apparatus used by Dr. Impastato was made in Italy and brought to the United States in 1939 by Dr. Renato Almansi, who had been associated with Dr. Ugo Cerletti in Rome.

The American Federation of the Physically Handicapped (later The American Federation of Disabilities) is founded by Paul Strachan as the nation's first cross-disability, national political organization. It pushes for an end to job discrimination and lobbies for passage of legislation calling for a “National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week,” among other initiatives.

The concept of a “National Psychiatric Institute” was born, but World War II intervened and the plan was not introduced before the Congress. The war demonstrated the tremendous toll taken by mental illness. More men received medical discharges from the Armed Forces for neuropsychiatric disorders than for any other reason more than 1 million Americans were rejected for military service for that reason.

Newdigate Owensby promotes pharmacological shock treatment for the treatment of homosexuality

Working mothers: 8.6 percent of mothers with children younger than 18 were in the work force.

Selective Service Medical Circular No. 1 recommends that doctors screen out homosexuals from military draftees

Sandor Rado’s “A Critical Examination of the Concept of Bisexuality.”

When the U.S. entered World War II, many attendants at public institutions were drafted, leaving a shortage of workers. Admissions to public institutions, however, continued to increase. Many institutions closed some of their colonies and placed more residents in each building to economize. Some institutions placed two residents to a bed and in hallways.

“Borderland Minds,” by Margaret Isabel Wilson

“They Call Them Camisoles,” by W. Wilson.

“Criminal Complaints with Probable Causes (A True Account).” Bound, circular letter by Percy L. King

“Insulin and I,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 10: 810-814, by Anonymous.

“The Book of Margery Kempe” (edited and introduced by Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen). Oxford, by Margery Kempe.

“Asylum Piece,” by Helen Woods Edmonds.

“The Bridge of Eternity,” by Looney Lee Gary (pseudonym).

“Postscript on a Benign Psychosis,” Psychiatry, 3: 527-34, by Elaine F. Kinder.

1941

Hitler suspended the Aktion T4 program that killed nearly one hundred thousand people. Euthanasia continued through the use of drugs and starvation instead of gassings. On August 3^rd, Hitler suspends Aktion T4, which had accounted for nearly a hundred thousand deaths by this time. However the euthanasia program quietly continued using drugs and starvation instead of gassings.

Rosemary Kennedy Institutionalized after Failed Lobotomy. John F. Kennedy's twenty-three year old sister Rosemary undergoes a prefrontal lobotomy as a "cure" for lifelong mild retardation and aggressive behavior that surfaces in late adolescence. The operation fails, resulting in total incapacity. To avoid scandal, Rosemary is moved permanently to the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children in Wisconsin. Her sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, later founds the Special Olympics in Rosemary's honor. Rose Marie "Rosemary" Kennedy (September 13, 1918 – January 7, 2005) was the third child and first daughter of Rose Elizabeth Kennedy née Fitzgerald and Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., born little more than a year after her brother, future U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Considered as either retarded or psychologically instable, she underwent a prefrontal lobotomy at age 23, which left her permanently incapacitated. Interpretations suggest she may have simply had an average IQ, about 80-90, in a family expecting high standards.

In Nazi Germany a Catholic bishop, Clemens von Galen, delivers a sermon in Munster Cathedral attacking the Nazi euthanasia program calling it "plain murder."

World War II started and with it came a classification system on a national level. In some places, those with low IQ scores could not vote.

A US Public Health Service survey reports that 42% of [305 public and private] institutions have electroshock machines just three years after the first human electroshock trial.

What then of... our vitamin capsules, our electric therapies, our ultra-violet lamps, our shortwave treatments and our shock therapy — in particular our shock therapy, whether it be insulin or metrazol or electric! Do we use these as empirically as our predecessors did their leeches and their bleedings?... I ask the question, are we, in the light of others who come after us, going to be accused of being users of stupid, bizarre or crude methods? Will they think us no better than quacks? Will they read our shock therapy methods with horror and say, “Why, they should have used baseball bats — it would have been just as productive of results”? C. C. BURLINGAME (psychiatrist), 1941, quoted in David Herman and Jim Green, “What Treatment?” Madness: A Study Guide, 1991.

The United Service Organization (USO) is incorporated in February to coordinate services pro-vided to armed forces and defense workers by six voluntary agencies: (1) National Jewish Welfare Board, (2) National Catholic Community Service, (3) National Traveler's Aid Association, (4) Salvation Army, (5) YMCA, and (6) YWCA.

In a letter to President Roosevelt, Representative John Dingell of Michigan suggests incarcerating 10,000 Hawaiian Japanese Americans as hostages to ensure "good behavior" on the part of Japan. Fifteen Japanese American businessmen and community leaders are picked up in an F.B.I. raid. A spokesman for the Central Japanese Association states: "We teach the fundamental principles of America and the high ideals of American democracy. We want to live here in peace and harmony. Our people are 100% loyal to America." Then Pearl Harbor was attacked. Local authorities and the F.B.I. began to round up the leadership of the Japanese American communities. Within 48 hours, 1,291 Issei are in custody. These men are held under no formal charges and family members are forbidden from seeing them. Most would spend the war years in enemy alien internment camps run by the Justice Department.

“Spinner's Lake.” London, by Maude Harrison.

“The Triumph of Personal Thought and How I Became a Mason,” by Jacob Alexson.

“California Justice: Is This Supposed to Be a Democracy?” by Arthur Penn.

“Minds in the Mending.” Atlantic Monthly: 168: 330-34 by Olivia Harlan.

1942

“467 Poisoned at Oregon State Hospital November 18, 1942”

One of the most tragic incidents in Salem’s history was the poisoning of nearly 500 patients and staff at the Oregon State Hospital, on the evening of November 18, 1942. Many who ate the scrambled eggs served for dinner that evening would later claim that they had tasted funny, some saying they’d been salty, others saying they tasted soapy. Within five minutes of consuming them, the diners began to sicken, experiencing violent stomach cramps, vomiting, leg cramps, and respiratory paralysis. Witnesses described patients crawling on the floor, unable to sit or stand. The lips of the stricken turned blue, and some vomited blood. The first death came within an hour; by midnight, there were 32; by 4 a.m., 40. Local doctors rushed to the hospital to help out staff doctors. The hospital morgue, outfitted for two to three bodies, was overwhelmed. Eventually 47 people would die; in all, 467 were sickened. Though five wards had been served the suspect eggs, all the deaths occurred in four; in the fifth, an attendant had tried the eggs, found them odd tasting, and ordered her charges not to eat them.

Officials were baffled, and immediately focused on the frozen egg yolks which all the victims had been served, and which had come from federal surplus commodities. It was thought that the eggs might have spoiled due to improper storage, or even that they might have been deliberately poisoned by a patient who could have gotten a hold of a poison while on furlough. The biggest fear, however, was the fear of sabotage: with the country engaged in World War II, this possibility loomed large. Oregon Governor Charles Sprague ordered all state institutions to stop using the eggs. The federal government issued a similar order, and the Agriculture Department ordered an investigation into the handling of its frozen eggs.

But the eggs were part of a 36,000-pound shipment which had been divided between schools, NYA projects and state institutions in Oregon and Washington, 30,000 pounds of which had already been consumed with no ill effects. State officials confirmed that the eggs had been properly stored, and the president of National Egg Products Inc. pointed out that eggs bad enough to kill would be so obviously spoiled that no one would eat them.

The day after the poisoning, with dozens still ill, pathologists determined that the sickness and death had been caused by sodium flouride, an ingredient in cockroach poison; pathology reports showed large amounts of the compound in the stomachs of the dead victims. Five grams--the size of an aspirin--would have been fatal; some of the dead had eaten more sodium flouride than eggs. Cockroach poison was known to be available at the hospital, kept in a locked cellar room to which only regular kitchen employees had keys. State Police launched an investigation, and began interviewing staff and patients at the hospital.

Finally, several days after the poisonings, two cooks at the hospital, A.B. McKillop and Mary O’Hare, admitted that they knew what had happened, that they had realized soon after the symptoms had struck, but had not come forward for fear of being charged. McKillop took responsibility, saying he had been the one to send a patient trusty, George Nosen, to the cellar to get dry milk powder for the scrambled eggs he was preparing. He had given Nosen his keys to the cellar, and Nosen returned with a tin half-full of powder, an estimated six pounds of which were mixed into the scrambled eggs at McKillop’s direction. When people had begun getting ill, he had questioned Nosen about where he’d found the powder, and discovered he had brought roach poison.

Despite McKillop’s insistence that O’Hare bore no responsibility for the poisoning, and over the objections of the State Police, who had determined that the poisoning was accidental, District Attorney M.B. Hayden ordered both cooks arrested. A grand jury declined to indict them; the patient George Nosen was never charged. Considered by many of his fellow patients to be a mass murderer, he became something of a pariah at the hospital where he spent the rest of his life. Two brief attempts at life outside the institution failed, and he died at the State Hospital 41 years later, after suffering a heart attack during a fight with another patient.

Compiled and written by Kathleen Carlson Clements

Bibliography: Capital Journal, November 19-December 1, 1942

Henry Viscardi begins his work as an American Red Cross volunteer, training 1944 disabled soldiers to use their prosthetic limbs. His work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., draws the attention of Howard Rusk and Eleanor Roosevelt, who protest when Viscardi's program is terminated by the Red Cross and the military.

President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066 that allows military authorities to exclude anyone from anywhere without trial or hearings. This order set the stage for the entire forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. The Navy informed Japanese American residents of Terminal Island near Los Angeles Harbor that they must leave in 48 hours. They are the first to leave in mass. Idaho Governor Chase Clark told a congressional committee that the Japanese are welcome in Idaho only if they were in "concentration camps under military guard." Gen. John L. DeWitt issues Public Proclamation No. 1 which creates Military Areas Nos. 1 and 2. Military Area No. 1 includes the western portion of California, Oregon and Washington, and part of Arizona while Military Area No. 2 includes the rest of the states. The proclamation hints that people might be excluded from Military Area No. 1. The president signs Executive Order 9102 establishing the War Relocation Authority (WRA) with Milton Eisenhower as director. It is allocated $5.5 million. The first advance groups of Japanese American "volunteers" arrive at Manzanar, CA. The WRA would take over on June 1 and transform it into a "relocation center." The first Civilian Exclusion Order issued by the Army is issued for the Bainbridge Island area near Seattle. The forty-five families there are given one week to prepare. By the end of October, 108 exclusion orders were issued, and all Japanese Americans in Military Area No. 1 and the California portion of No. 2 were incarcerated. Minoru Yasui walks into a Portland police station at 11:20 pm to test the curfew regulations in court. Having "voluntarily resettled" in Denver, journalist James Omura writes a letter to a Washington law firm inquiring about retaining their services to seek legal action against the government for violations of civil and constitutional rights and seeking restitution for economic losses. He was unable to afford the $3,500 fee required to begin proceedings. Ichiro Shimoda, a Los Angeles gardener, is shot to death by guards while trying to escape from Fort Still (Oklahoma) internment camp, having already attempted suicide twice since being picked up. Largely organized by Quaker leader Clarence E. two Issei – a California farmer and San Pedro fisherman are shot to death by camp guards at Lourdsburg, New Mexico enemy alien internment camp. The men had allegedly been trying to escape. It would later be reported, however, that upon their arrival to the camp, the men had been too ill to walk from the train station to the camp gate. A routine search for contraband at the Santa Anita "Assembly Center" turns into a "riot." Eager military personnel had become overzealous and abusive which, along with the failure of several attempts to reach the camp's internal security chief, triggers mass unrest, crowd formation, and the harassing of the searchers. Military police with tanks and machine guns quickly end the incident. The "overzealous" military personnel are later replaced. President Roosevelt calls the "relocation centers" "concentration camps" at a press conference. The WRA had consistently denied that the term "concentration camps" accurately described the camps. An attack on a man widely perceived as an informer results in the arrest of two popular inmates at Poston. This incident soon mushrooms into a mass strike.

Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger founded Existential Therapy.

The Controversial Discussions between Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, founder of Object Relations Theory caused the British Psychoanalytical Society to permanently split into three camps.

Institutions addressed their worker shortage by employing conscientious objectors. Records of their observations raised public awareness of the conditions of public institutions. In 1948, Albert Deutsch wrote Shame of the States, a photographic exposé of New York's Letchworth Village. Originally designed to avoid the problems common to larger institutions, Letchworth was considered one of America's better institutions. Deutsch's exposé, and other exposés of this time served to highlight the horrible conditions in all institutions. After decades of invisibility, persons living in public institutions were again the objects of attention.

Carl Rogers published ‘Counseling and Psychotherapy’ suggesting that respect and a non-judgmental approach to therapy is the foundation for effective treatment of mental health issues.

Jean Piaget published ‘Psychology of Intelligence’ discussing his theories of cognitive development.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was developed and fast became the most widely researched and widely accepted psychological assessment device.The first U.S. responsibility to provide day care for children of working mothers is initiated through the Lanham Act (ch. 260, 55 Stat. 361), providing 50 percent matching grants to local communities for use in operation of day care centers and family day care homes.

The United Seaman's Service is established in the National Maritime Union in September to provide medical, social work, and other services to merchant seamen; Bertha C. Reynolds is named the director.

The National Association of Schools of Social Administration (now the Council on Social Work Education) is formed by 34 land grant college undergraduate social work programs.

“The Eclipse of a Mind,” by Alonzo Graves.

“No Hiding Place: An Autobiography,” by William Seabrook.

1943

Clifford Beers dies

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) published by Hathaway.

“Prelude to Sanity,” by S. Greiner.

“Autobiography and A Ray of Darkness,” Oxford, by Margiad Evans.

This memo shows the letterhead of the We Are Not Alone Society (1947), one of the first patients groups in the modern era. It has a green ink note indicating how this patients support and rights group was started in 1943. It says, “This is invaluable for the letterhead. It has 8 names. Mike Obolensky was a former Russian prince. Slava Orleans was his cousin. Mike and I were patients in Rockland State Hospital (now Rockland Psychiatric Center) at the same time. In the Spring or early summer of 1943 there was a meeting in the hospital of the group that formed WANA. Bill Wilson, founder & head of AA, was there and said a few words.” We Are Not Alone (WANA), a mental patients' self-help group, is organized at the Rockland State Hospital in New York City. Their goal was to help others make the difficult transition from hospital to community. By the early 1950s WANA dissolved after it was taken over by mental health professionals who transformed it into Fountain House, a psychosocial rehabilitation service for people leaving state mental institutions. The founders of WANA found themselves pushed aside by professionals with money and influence, who made them "members" of the new organization Their efforts led to the establishment of Fountain House, a psychosocial rehabilitation service for people leaving state mental institutions.

Congress passes the Vocational Rehabilitation Amendments, known as the LaFollette-Barden Act, adding physical rehabilitation to the goals of federally funded vocational rehabilitation programs and providing funding for certain health care services. The LaFollette-Barden Vocational Rehabilitation Act became law in the U.S., and it added physical rehabilitation to the goals of federally funded vocational rehabilitation programs and provided funding for certain health care services. This was an extremely important act in that it expanded eligibility for vocational rehabilitation services to mentally retarded and psychiatrically handicapped individuals. It also expanded the types of physical restoration services that could be provided to individuals with disabilities, and provided maintenance funds, but both required establishment of financial need. The act also expanded vocational rehabilitation services for the blind.

The Kaiser Shipyards on Swan Island in Portland, Oregon opened the first company-owned child care facilities at the entrance to each of their facilities. Hoping to reduce the rate of absenteeism among working mothers, they were the world's largest child care centers and were in operation 24 hours a day. Featuring nurses and child-centered construction, the facilities also provided pre-cooked hot meals for the mothers to take home. Costs were shared by parents and the company. They operated for two years.

The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration is established by 44 nations for postwar relief and refugee settlement.

The American Council of Voluntary Agencies for Foreign Service is established "to promote joint program planning and coordination of national voluntary agency activities on foreign relief and rehabilitation."

The United States Supreme Court rules on the Hirabayashi and Yasui cases, upholding the constitutionality of the curfew and exclusion orders. The realignment of Tule Lake as a camp for "dissenters" begins. After the loyalty questionnaire episode, "loyal" internees begin to depart to other camps. Five days later, "disloyal" internees from other camps begin to arrive at Tule Lake.

1944

Howard Rusk is assigned to the U.S. Army Air Force Convalescent Center in Pawling, New York, where he begins a rehabilitation program for disabled airmen. First dubbed “Rusk's folly” by the medical establishment rehabilitation medicine becomes a new medical specialty.

Frederick A. Fay (September 12, 1944 - August 20, 2011) was an early leader in the disability rights movement in the United States. Through a combination of direct advocacy, grassroots organizing among the various disability rights communities, building cross-disability coalitions between disparate disability organizations, and using technology to connect otherwise isolated disability constituencies, Fay worked diligently to raise awareness and pass legislation advancing civil rights and independent living opportunities for people with disabilities across the United States. He won the 1997 Henry B. Betts Award for outstanding achievement in civil rights for Americans with disabilities. Fay was recognized for "flat-out advocacy" over several decades. He helped lead the nationwide efforts by disability advocates to secure passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Judi Chamberlin born in New York City on October 30^th. Judi became recognized as the “mother of the Mad Movement” with publication of her book, On Our Own.

Irene Morgan was born on April 9, 1917. In 1944, Morgan was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on an interstate bus traveling between Virginia and Maryland. The ensuing case, Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, was taken to the Supreme Court and resulted in a landmark Civil Rights decision: Virginia’s law enforcing segregation on interstate buses was unconstitutional. The Morgan case outlawed segregation on Federal Highways, not city buses. The freedom riders came about because of the Irene Morgan decision. So when the buses would pull into the city they were often attacked. It wasn't until a case called Browder vs Gayle, that was filed in 1956, that contested the legality of the seats on city buses, did segregated seating on city buses became unconstitutional. Thurgood Marshal represented Irene Morgan in her case. This was his first case.

During World War II, it became evident that there were severe shortages of professional mental health personnel and that understanding of the causes, treatment, and prevention of mental illness lagged far behind other fields of medical science and public health. Dr. William Menninger, chief of Army neuropsychiatry and an outstanding leader of the profession, called for Federal action. A national mental health program was proposed, forming the foundation of the National Mental Health Act of 1946.

In 1944, Ted Chabasinski was sent to Bellevue Hospital at the age of six with a diagnosis of childhood schizophrenia and endured an intensive electroconvulsive therapy. Eventually, he spent next ten years in Rockland State Hospital: “I wanted to die but I didn't really know what death was. I knew it was something terrible. Maybe I'll be so tired after the next shock treatment I won't get up, and I'll be dead. But I always got up. Something in me beyond my wishes made me put myself together again. I memorized my name, I taught myself to say my name. Teddy, Teddy, I'm Teddy... I'm here, I'm here, in this room, in the hospital. And my mommy's gone... I would cry and realize how dizzy I was. The world was spinning around and coming back to hurt too much. I want to go down, I want to go where the shock treatment is sending me, I want to stop fighting and die... and something made me live, and to go on living I had to remember never to let anyone near me again. I spent my seventh birthday this way, and my eighth and ninth birthdays locked in a seclusion room at Rockland State Hospital... --The Other Half by Ted Chabasinski, from Madness Network News (June, 1974)

Ritalin (Methylphenidate) was synthesized.

The new director of the Public Health Service Division of Mental Hygiene, Dr. Robert H. Felix, presented a proposal for a national mental health program to the Surgeon General of the U.S. This proposal was to form the basis of the National Mental Health Act of 1946.

The Servicemen's Readjustment Act (ch. 268, 58 Stat. 284), the "G.I. Bill of Rights:' provides education and training through state-administered payments to educational units; subsistence allowance; loans for purchase or construction of homes, farms, or business property; job counseling and employment placement; and 52 weeks of adjustment allowances. It is liberalized by Amendment 12/21A5 (ch. 588, PL 268). It initiated many men into the social work profession.

Prince v. Massachusetts: The U.S. Supreme Court held that the government has broad authority to regulate the actions and treatment of children. Parental authority is not absolute and can be permissibly restricted if doing so is in the interests of a child's welfare. While children share many of the rights of adults, they face different potential harms from similar activities.

Nisei (second generation Japanese immigrants and the first generation born here) eligibility for the draft is restored. A Federal Grand Jury issues indictments against 63 Heart Mountain draft resistors. The 63 are found guilty and sentenced to jail terms on June 26. Forty-three Japanese American soldiers are arrested for refusing to participate in combat training at Fort McClellan, Alabama, as a protest of treatment of their families in U.S. camps. Eventually, 106 are arrested for their refusal. Twenty-one are convicted and serve prison time before being paroled. Shoichi James Okamoto is shot to death at Tule Lake by a guard after stopping a construction truck at the main gate for permission to pass. Private Bernard Goe, the guard, would be acquitted after being fined a dollar for "unauthorized use of government property" a bullet. Seven members of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee are arrested, along with journalist James Omura. Their trial for "unlawful conspiracy to counsel, aid and abet violators of the draft" begins. All but Omura would eventually be found guilty. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team which included the Japanese rescued an American battalion which had been cut off and surrounded by the enemy. Eight hundred casualties are suffered by the 442nd to rescue 211 men. After this rescue, the 442nd is ordered to keep advancing in the forest; they would push ahead without relief or rest. The Supreme Court decides that Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu was indeed guilty of remaining in a military area contrary to the exclusion order. This case challenged the constitutionality of the entire exclusion process. Restrictions preventing resettlement on the West Coast are removed, although many exceptions continued to exist. The shed of the Doi family is burned and dynamited and shots are fired into their home. The family had been the first to return to California from Amache. Although several men are arrested and confess to the acts, all would be acquitted. Some 30 similar incidents would greet other Japanese Americans returning.

In 1939 the English government had considered raising school leaving age to 15, but this was delayed by the onset of World War Two. The Education Act succeeded in extending compulsory education to age 15, which took effect from 1947.

“Brainstorm,” by Carlton Brown.

“The Book of Margery Kempe,” rendered into modern English by W. Butler-Bowdon, by Margery Kempe.

“The Lost Weekend,” by C. Jackson.

In England, Education Act enshrined that women teachers were not to be dismissed upon marriage.

1945

Cambridge State Hospital Ohio

In 1945, an act of the Ohio legislature established a statewide system of receiving hospitals for the treatment of people in the early stages of mental illness who might respond to early and intensive treatment. Woodside Receiving Hospital in Youngstown opened that year, while facilities in Cleveland and Cuyahoga Falls opened a year later. During the next few years, all state hospitals were authorized to perform the receiving function, and an Army hospital in Cambridge was transferred to the state for use as a psychiatric facility.

The state of Connecticut passed licensure legislation for psychologists, becoming the first state to recognize psychology as a protected practice oriented profession.

The Journal of Clinical Psychology was founded.

Karen Horney published her feministic views of psychoanalytic theory, marking the beginning of feminism.

The Blinded Veterans Association (BVA) is formed in Avon, Connecticut.

PL-176 became law in the U.S., and it declared the first week in October each year would be National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week. The Presidents Committee on Employment of the Handicapped was formed. In 1962 the word "physically" was removed to acknowledge the employment needs and contributions of individuals with all types of disabilities. In 1988, Congress expanded the week to a month (October) and changed the name to "National Disability Employment Awareness Month." President Harry Truman signs Public Law 176, a joint congressional resolution calling for the creation of an annual National Employ the Handicapped Week.

Boyce R. Williams is hired by the federal Office of Vocational Rehabilitation as Consultant for the Deaf, the Hard of Hearing, and the Speech Impaired. He begins close to four decades of work at OVR, designing and implementing educational and vocational programs for deaf Americans.

The surrender of Germany ends the war in Europe. The atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later, a second bomb is dropped on Nagasaki. The war in the Pacific would end on August 14.

After the end of WWII, the world needed to be reconstructed with a new infrastructure and businesses. To help construct a new, peaceful global economy, a new international trading system was created and placed under U.S. political leadership, the World Bank.

A California statute states, "Any husband who willfully inflicts upon his wife corporal injury resulting in a traumatic condition, and any person who willfully inflicts upon any child any cruel and inhumane corporal punishments or injury resulting in a traumatic condition, is guilty of a felony, and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than 10 years or in the county jail for not more than 1 year." A San Jose Superior Court Judge, Eugene Premo, dismisses murder charges against a husband accused of murdering his wife. The judge rules that the California wife-abuse law discriminates on the basis of sex by only making mention of husbands, and is unconstitutional. 

Following dissolution of the League of Nations, the United Nations was founded on 24 October, but had already in 1943 begun operating UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), a relief organization to combat famine and disease in liberated Europe. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) was also established with Julian Huxley as the first Director General, standing at the centre of the post-World War II revival of education. Huxley was a prominent member of the British Eugenics Society, and one of the liberal intellectual elite of the time who believed in birth control and 'voluntary' sterilization for the "virtual elimination of the few lowest and most degenerate types.” Huxley's six-year term of office, defined in the Charter, was reduced to two years, and UNESCO's education program became a collaboration with the International Bureau of Education, of which Jean Piaget was Director from 1929 until 1968. Piaget had declared during the second world war in 1940: "The common wealth of all civilizations is the education of the child.”

The United Nations is chartered in April, including the Economic and Social Council, to provide "international machinery for the promotion and social advancement of all peoples" and coordinate agencies dealing with social welfare problems, such as the World Health Organization, United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), International Labor Office, and International Refugee Organization.

The National Social Welfare Assembly formerly the National Social Work Council formed in 1923, is organized. (It is now the National Assembly of National Voluntary Health and Social Welfare Organizations.)

Common Human Needs, by Charlotte Towle and published by the Federal Security Agency reaffirms the principle of public assistance services as a right and the need for public assistance staffs to understand psychological needs and forces and their relationship to social forces and experiences. (Banned by the federal government in 1951, it is then distributed by the American Association of Social Workers.)

The Girls Clubs of America is founded. (The organization becomes Girls, Inc., in 1990.)

”A Man Against Time: An Heroic Dream,” by W. E. Leonard.

In England, First female professor at Oxford University (Dr Ida Mann, Professor of Ophthalmology).

1946

The Hospital Survey and Construction Act (ch. 958, 60 Stat. 1040), or Hill-Burton Act (PL 79725), is passed by Congress, initiating massive construction and expansion of inpatient hospital facilities with significant standards requirements for community participation.

The Association for the Study of Community Organization is formed. (It merges into NASW in 1955.)

The Full Employment Act (ch. 33, 60 Stat. 23) is passed by Congress on February 20. It establishes a policy of federal responsibility for employment and is not yet implemented.

Big Brothers of America is founded. (in 1977 it merges with Big Sisters to form Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America.)

The National Mental Health Act (ch. 538, 60 Stat. 421), passed on July 3, recognizes mental illness as a national public health problem. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Mental Health Act of 1946 on July 3rd, creating for the first time in US history a significant amount of funding for psychiatric education and research and calling for the establishment of a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). National Institute of Mental Health was to conduct research into mind, brain, and behavior and thereby reduce mental illness. As a result of this law, NIMH will be formally established on April 15, 1949. NIMH existed under NIH until 1967 and it’s three-part mission was services, training and research.

President Harry S. Truman establishes the President’s Commission on Civil Rights

The first meeting of the National Advisory Mental Health Council was held on August 15. Since no Federal funds were available, the Greentree Foundation awarded a grant of $15,000 to finance the meeting.

The National Mental Health Foundation is founded by conscientious objectors who served as attendants at state mental institutions rather than serving in the war during World War II. The Foundation exposed the abusive conditions at these facilities and became an impetus toward deinstitutionalization. It works to expose the abusive conditions at these facilities and becomes an early impetus in the push for deinstitutionalization.

Walter Freeman first performs a transorbital lobotomy on a live patient. This new form of psychosurgery was intended for use in State mental hospitals that often did not have the facilities for anesthesia, so Freeman suggested using electroconvulsive therapy to render the patient unconscious. (Jack, 2005)

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The Doctors Trial: The Medical Case of the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings

On December 9, 1946, an American military tribunal opened criminal proceedings against 23 leading German physicians and administrators for their willing participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Brigadier General Telford Taylor was Chief of Counsel, during the Doctors Trial. In Taylor's own words, from the opening statement by the prosecution: "The defendants in this case are charged with murders, tortures, and other atrocities committed in the name of medical science.

The victims of these crimes are numbered in the hundreds of thousands. A handful only are still alive; a few of the survivors will appear in this courtroom. But most of these miserable victims were slaughtered outright or died in the course of the tortures to which they were subjected. For the most part they are nameless dead. To their murderers, these wretched people were not individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were treated worse than animals."

In Nazi Germany, German physicians planned and enacted the "Euthanasia" Program, the systematic killing of those they deemed "unworthy of life." The victims included the institutionalized mentally ill and physically impaired. Further, during World War II, German physicians conducted pseudoscientific medical experiments utilizing thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent. Most died or were permanently impaired as a result. Jews, Poles, Russians, and Roma (Gypsies) were the most common victims of experimentation.

After almost 140 days of proceedings, including the testimony of 85 witnesses and the submission of almost 1,500 documents, the American judges pronounced their verdict on August 20, 1947. Sixteen of the doctors were found guilty. Seven were sentenced to death. They were executed on June 2, 1948.

And, our modern day holocaust: A series of recent studies consistently show that persons with serious mental illnesses in the public mental health system die sooner than other Americans, with an average age of death of 52. (Colton, C.W., Manderscheid, R.W. (2006) Congruencies in Increased Mortality Rates, Years of Potential Life Lost, and Causes of Death Among Public Mental Health Clients in Eight States. Preventing Chronic Disease. Vol. 3(2).)

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Congress enacts the Hospital Survey and Construction Act, also known as the Hill-Burton Act, authorizing federal grants to the states for the construction of hospitals, public health centers, and health facilities for rehabilitation of people with disabilities.

The Cerebral Palsy Society of New York City is established by parents of children with cerebral palsy. This is the first chapter of what will be come the United Cerebral Palsy Associations, Inc.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian known for his stand against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

“First They Came”
First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the sick, the so-called incurables, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't mentally ill.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
Modern translation of poem by Martin Niemoeller, 1946

Anna Freud, the youngest daughter of Sigmund Freud, publishes, “The Psychoanalytic Treatment of Children,” which introduces basic concepts in the theory and practice of child psychoanalysis

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team (including Nisei) is received on the White House lawn by President Truman. "You fought not only the enemy but you fought prejudice -- and you have won," remarks the president.

The first major step on behalf of children taken by the United Nations, was UNICEF's creation in 1946 co-founded by Maurice Pate and Ludwik Rajchman to provide emergency food and healthcare to children in countries devastated by World War II. Two years later, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN General Assembly.

“The Snake Pit,” by Mary Jane Ward. Mary Jane Ward published the novel The Snake Pit, which was filmed in 1948, causing reforms in U.S. state psychiatric hospitals.

“Out of the Dark Ages.” Woman’s Home Companion; 34-35, 91-92; August, by Mary Jane Ward.

“The Abrupt Self,” by David Martens.

“My Way Back to Sanity,” Ladies Home Journal. 63(10): 54-55, 242-250, by Jane Elliot.

“Autobiography of David” (ed. Ernest Raymond). London, by David (pseudonym).

In England, Marriage bar removed from female civil servants; they also became eligible for the foreign service for the first time.

In England, Agnes Arber became the first female botanist to be elected to the Royal Society.

1947

On July 1 the first mental health research grant (MH-1) was awarded to Dr. Winthrop N. Kellogg of Indiana University by the Division of Mental Hygiene. It was titled “Basic Nature of the Learning Process.”

The National Reporting Program on Patients in Mental Institutions was transferred from the U.S. Census Bureau to the Division of Mental Hygiene.

From 1947-51 Governor Luther Youngdahl (Republican; Minnesota) started development of community-based mental health services and humane treatment for people in state institutions.

The Nuremberg Trials convicted a number of psychiatrists who held key positions in Nazi regimes.

Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) is founded at the Birmingham Hospital in Van Nuys, California, by Fred Smead, Randall Updyke, and other delegates from Veterans Administration hospitals across the country.

The first meeting of the Presidents Committee on National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week is held in Washington, D.C. Its publicity campaigns, coordinated by state and local committees, emphasize the competence of people with disabilities and use movie trailers, billboards, and radio and television ads to convince the public that its “good business to hire the handicapped.”

Harold Russell wins two Academy Awards for his role in The Best Year of Our Lives. Harold John Russell (January 14, 1914 - January 29, 2002) was a Canadian-American World War II veteran who became one of only two non-professional actors to win an Academy Award for acting (the other being Haing S. Ngor). Russell also holds the unique honor of being the only person to receive two Academy Awards for the same role. While an Army instructor, and training with the U.S. 13th Airborne Division stateside in 1944, a defective fuse detonated an explosive he was handling while making a training film. As a result, he lost both hands and was given two hooks to serve as hands. After his recovery, and while attending Boston University as a full-time student, Russell was featured in an Army film called Diary of a Sergeant about rehabilitating war veterans. When film director William Wyler saw the film on Russell, he cast him in The Best Years of Our Lives with Fredric March and Dana Andrews. Russell played the role of Homer Parrish, a sailor who lost both hands during the war. For his role as Parrish, Russell won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1947. Earlier in the ceremony, he was awarded an honorary Oscar for “bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans.” The special award had been created because the Board of Governors very much wanted to salute Russell, a non-professional actor, but assumed he had little chance for a competitive win. It was the only time in Oscar history that the Academy has awarded two Oscars for the same performance. Russell authored two autobiographies, Victory in My Hands (1949) and The Best Years of My Life (1981).

Fountain House in NYC begins psychiatric rehabilitation for mentally ill persons.

The Supreme Court rules that states may regulate or outlaw liquor.

In England, after World War II the National Service Act 1947 and subsequent measures ordained peacetime conscription of all males aged 18 for a set period (originally 1 year, later two years) until National Service ceased in 1960, with final Demobilization in 1963. Post-1945 some 1,132,872 men were conscripted to serve the British Army on reaching the age of 18. About 125,000 served in an active theatre of operations, and were expected to fight guerrillas or cope with riots or civil war situations with minimal training in such combat situations as Korea, Malaya, Suez and Aden.

The first “Freedom Rides” were begun. Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States. The Freedom Riders were inspired by the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, led by civil rights activists Bayard Rustin and George Houser. Like the Freedom Rides of 1961, the Journey of Reconciliation was intended to test an earlier Supreme Court ruling that banned racial discrimination in interstate travel. Rustin and a few of the other riders, chiefly members of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), were arrested and sentenced to serve on a chain gang in North Carolina for violating local Jim Crow laws regarding segregated seating on public transportation.

“These are my Sisters: An “Insandectomy,” by Lara Jefferson.

“The Kingdom of the Lost.” London, by John Andrerw Howard Ogdon.

“Between Us and the Dark,” by Lenore McCall.

“If a Man Be Mad,” by H. Maine.

In England, Cambridge University admits women to membership and degrees, but the statute limited the numbers of women to 1 for every 10 men.

In England, All medical schools became co-educational.

Indian Psychiatric Society established.

1948

The National Paraplegia Foundation is founded by members of the Paralyzed Veterans of America, as the civilian arm of their growing movement. Foundation chapters in many cities and states take a leading role in advocating for disability rights.

Using an ice pick and a hammer, neurosurgeon Walter Freeman performed a lobotomy on 34-year-old Frances Farmer, actress and political activist, after all other treatments failed to subdue her communist leanings and aggression. She became mediocre and slow after the surgery, ending her days as a hotel clerk. She died of cancer in 1970.

The disabled students' program at the University of Illinois at Galesburg is officially established. Founded and directed by Timothy Nugent, the program moves to the campus at Urbana-Champaign, where it becomes a prototype for disabled student programs and then independent living centers across the country.

We Are Not Alone (WANA), a mental patients' self-help group, is organized at the Rockland State Hospital in New York City. Their goal was to help others make the difficult transition from hospital to community. Their efforts led to the establishment of Fountain House, a psychosocial rehabilitation service for people leaving state mental institutions. Fountain House opens in New York City. This is the first of the clubhouse model, influenced by WANA. (We are not alone). Members of Fountain House supported one another by creating a community among people struggling with serious mental illness. This initiative laid the groundwork for the “clubhouse” model, which promotes the importance of meaningful work in people's lives, and which would serve as a model for psychiatric rehabilitation programs developed in the 1960s and 1970s.

Lithium carbonate's ability to stabilize mood highs and lows in bipolar mood disorder (manic depression) was claimed by Australian psychiatrist John Cade although its use was banned in the United States until the 1970s.

Congress did not appropriate funds to implement the National Mental Health Act until fiscal year 1948.

The combined specialty of 'neuropsychiatry' was divided into 'neurology,' dealing with organic or physical diseases of the brain, and 'psychiatry' dealing with emotional and behavioral problems.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by UN General Assembly. (article 3, 21, 23, 25)
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 and provides human rights standards accepted by all member states. The UDHR represents the normative basis that led to formulating the standards concerning persons with disabilities that exist today. In Article 25 (1) the UDHR specifically mentions the socio-economic rights of people with disabilities: the right to an adequate standard of living, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age. Article 7 guarantees equality before the law and equal protection by the law for all people, including against discrimination.

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Universal Declaration of Human Rights

United Nations General Assembly res. 217A (III), 10 December 1948

Preamble

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, therefore,

The General Assembly,

Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11

1. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

2. No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.

2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14

1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15

1. Everyone has the right to a nationality.

2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16

1. Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

2. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

3. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17

1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

2. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21

1 . Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

2. Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country.

3. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23

1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25

1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26

1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27

1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29

1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

3. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

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Collectiveness as opposed to individual mental health was a prominent theory. Psychiatry develops its role as “social police.” General G. Brock Chisholm, M.D., a Canadian psychiatrist and the First Secretary General of the United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO), presented a paper in 1946 entitled The Psychiatry of Enduring Peace and Social Progress at a US conference on mental health. This paper laid the blame for war and human conflict squarely at the feet of parents and Sunday schools teachers who -- from the beginning -- fed their children the "poisonous certainties" of the Bible. Two years later (1948), this message was published by the (now prestigious) magazine Psychiatry, and by his Communist friend, Alger Hiss, the Infamous Soviet spy and publisher of the socialist magazine, International Conciliation. Alger Hiss, the presiding Secretary General at the 1945 founding of the United Nations, wrote the Preface to Dr. Chisholm's paper. Hiss, then president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, added his own Preface which showed the involvement of the Rockefeller Foundation in the mental health movement. Earlier, another loyal friend had launched a new journal called Psychiatry, which would gain immense prestige by the end of the century. Its owner, US psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan, also published Chisholm's message. Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Chisholm had been working closely with the British Brigadier-General John Rawlings Rees. Dr. Rees had helped found the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, the birthplace of the infamous Tavistock Institute for Human Relations. As military officers, all three had been involved in psychological research using their respective armies. All wanted to know how conflict, fear and psychological trauma could be used to manage large human populations. The three psychiatrists represented three nations -- the UK, USA and Canada. Together, they mapped the course for the world's mental health management system by the light of their own socialist vision of global conformity. Dr. Rees had envisioned a global NGO (non-governmental organization) that would network with political and civic leaders around the world. His leadership led to the birth of the World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH) in 1948.

Supreme Court rules that no one can be stopped from owning land in the U.S.

Norbert Weiner coined the term cybernetics.

Dr. Howard A. Rusk founds the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in New York City, where he develops techniques to improve the health of injured veterans from World War II. His theory focused on treating the emotional, psychological and social aspects of individuals with disabilities and later became the basis for modern rehabilitation medicine.

In England, the War landed more than a million children, evacuated from town centres, on to local councils with inadequate resources to care for them. Many were placed in foster homes and became emotionally disturbed, reacting by bed-wetting, stealing and running away. After the war, many children who had no families to return to, became 'nobody's children'. The Children Act 1948 finally brought together responsibility for children without adequate parents, formerly dealt with under the Poor Law, and responsibility for delinquent children in Remand Homes+, formerly under the aegis of Local Education Authorities, with the requirement for every County and County Borough to establish a Children's Committee and appoint a Children's Officer. This has been the basis on which social workers have acted on behalf of children ever since. Detention Centres, under the Prison Department of the Home Office, were later introduced for miscreants, designed to administer a "short sharp shock" to older teenagers through drilling, physical jerks, military-style discipline, and cold showers before dawn.

The American Association of Social Workers and School of Applied Social Sciences of Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) sponsors a conference that helps define the identity and function of research in social work as distinguished from social research.

The first Annual Wheelchair Basketball Tournament is held in Galesburg, Illinois. Wheelchair basketball, and other sports, becomes an important part of disability lifestyle and culture over the next several decades.

“Inside the Asylum.” London, by John Vincent.

“The Stubborn Wood,” by Emily Harvin (pseudonym).

“Views of a Nearsighted Cannoneer,” by Seymour Krim.

In England, First woman KC was Margaret Kidd of the Scottish Bar

1949

On April 15 the NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) was established with the abolishment of the Division of Mental Hygiene. NIMH was one of the first four NIH (National Institute of Health) institutes.

Antonio Egas Moniz wins the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work on the lobotomy.

Phenothiazines shown to hinder rope-climbing abilities in rats.

The Australian psychiatrist John F. J. Cade introduces the use of lithium to treat psychosis. He shows that lithium quieted “manic patients”. Prior to this, drugs such as bromides and barbiturates had been used to quiet or sedate patients, but they were ineffective in treating the basic symptoms of those suffering from psychosis. Lithium will gain wide use in the mid-1960s to treat those with manic depression, now known as bipolar disorder. The FDA approved the drug in 1970.

Philip Ash, an American psychologist, published a study in which he had fifty-two mental patients examined by three psychiatrists, two of them, according to Ash, nationally known. All the psychiatrists reached the same diagnosis only twenty per cent of the time, and two were in agreement less than half the time. Ash concluded that there was a severe lack of fit between diagnostic labels and, as he put it, "the complexities of the biodynamics of mental structure"—that is, what actually goes on in people's minds.

The National Mental Health Association in conjunction with the Jaycees, launched “Mental Health Week” (which eventually became “Mental Health Month), to educate Americans about “mental illness” and mental health.

Boulder Conference outlines scientist-practitioner model of clinical psychology, looking at the M.D. versus Ph.D. used by medical providers and researchers, respectively.

The Social Work Research Group is organized. (It merges into NASW in 1955.)

The first Annual Wheelchair Basketball Tournament is held in Galesburg, Illinois. Wheelchair basketball, and other sports, become an important part of disability lifestyle and culture over the next several decades. Very Special Sports for the disabled begins and the parent movement begins.

Timothy Nugent founds the National Wheelchair Basketball Association.

The National Foundation for Cerebral Palsy is chartered by representatives of various groups of parents of children with cerebral palsy. Renamed the United Cerebral Palsy Associations, Inc., in 1950, it becomes, together with the Association for Retarded Children, a major force in the parents' movement of the 1950s and thereafter.

D. O. Cauldwell first describes “psychopathic transsexualism”

The World Health Organization published the sixth revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD) which included a section on mental disorders for the first time.

Max Otto argued that the new economy was to produce wants, called consumption. Great consumers are heroes to the machine. Nature not conspiracy drives business to control education. Contented people are dangerous because they will not jump at every command, they test what is required against principle, they will not sacrifice principle, or their family and they do not bow down to capitalism. For our society to work we must constantly feel like some thing is wrong, or is missing, or be afraid.

The sit-in movement used the strategy of nonviolent resistance. As far back as 1942, the Congress of Racial Equality sponsored sit-ins in Chicago, as they did in St. Louis in 1949 to reverse policies of racial segregation in the Southern United States.

“The World Next Door,” by Fritz Peters.

“A Doctor Regrets, Being the First Part of A Publisher Presents Himself,” London, by Donald McIntosh Johnson.

“The Third Strike,” by Jerry Gray.

In England, First women KCs were appointed: Rose Heildron and Helena Normanton.

1950's

First psychotropic drugs discovered contributing to the beginning of deinstitutionalization. By the mid-1950s, America had reached the peak of public-asylum psychiatry in the United States with more than 500,000 Americans residing in state-supported institutions. The average length of stay was measured in years; many patients expected to spend their entire lifetime in such institutional communities. Many factors led to the movement called deinstitutionalization: journalistic exposés; the introduction of chlorpromazine (Thorazine) into the United States, which initiated the psychopharmacologic revolution; Blue Cross-Blue Shield's decision to cover inpatient psychiatry in general hospitals; and President Eisenhower's major study of the care of the mentally ill population.

In England during the 1950s the tradition of caring for mentally ill people within large institutions came under intense criticism from both inside and outside the system. There was a growing realization that the structure and organization of mental hospitals was essentially pathogenic; innovators in care demonstrated that new therapeutic ideas could be introduced into the system with beneficial effects. Thomas Main at the Cassel Hospital, David Martin at Claybury and David Clark at Fulbourn were among the first to demonstrate that changing the organization of mental hospitals and adopting open-door policies could result in significant improvement in even the most institutionalized patients. David Clark in five years turned Fulbourn from a closed hospital to a completely open-door hospital. “We got workshops going, halfway houses, we had Open Days, brought the public in, took patients out. We changed the place completely and much of what we did was a return to the principles of sound asylum management, known for a century. Fulbourn was much better in 1865 than in 1910.” However these moves only allowed people out into the grounds; doctors still believed that their duty was to keep their patients in custody.

The second half of the 20th century saw the development of 'anti-psychiatry', whose main proponents were Ronald Laing and Thomas Szasz. Laing's professional aim had been to 'complain against the denigration of experience and the dehumanization of the patient, but in doing so I wanted to bring them back into the ordinary human fold.' Laing believed that psychiatric medication could be helpful, and was among those practitioners who used LSD themselves in experiments to explore their own psyches, and also gave it to their patients with the aim of facilitating the psychotherapeutic process. Laing and his followers set up the Philadelphia Association, and also Kingsley Hall, an experimental therapeutic community whose most famous patient was Mary Barnes who was encouraged to regress into babyhood as a means of achieving her recovery from psychosis.

Szasz has described mental illness as a metaphorical illness because, “the mind (whatever that is) is not an organ or part of the body. Hence it cannot be diseased in the same sense as the body can.” He takes the view that any psychiatric diagnosis is a license for coercion and the exercise of psychiatric power. 'If mental illness is not a disease why then treatment or indeed admission?' He also accepts that the corollary of this is that if patients have rights, they also have responsibilities, and should, for example accept responsibility for all their actions whatever their state of mind when they committed them. He has concluded that the only help that can be given to patients is through psychotherapy.

Psychotherapeutic treatment declined in the latter part of this century, partly because of a case brought in 1979 against a private psychiatric clinic in the US by a physician with a psychotic depression. The patient sued successfully on the grounds that he should have been treated with proven effective medication rather than spending seven months undergoing in-depth psychoanalysis, and the case left a strong impression that treating psychiatric illness with psychoanalysis constituted malpractice.

New perceptions of mental illness are beginning to develop, informed partly by people like Szasz and Laing, and partly by the growing perception of a need for sensitivity in dealing with people from other cultures whose mental distress may be expressed as a spiritual crisis in a way that has become almost unknown in Western culture.

At the end of the 20th century, rather than adopting either 'the medical model' or 'the social model' of mental illness, people working in the field of mental ill health are beginning to recognize that mental distress has many different causes, and many different disciplines and approaches have a part to play in treatment. Distress may be explained in terms of responses to circumstances, of brain chemistry, of genetics, and all are increasingly seen not to be mutually exclusive but to interact and play a part in mental health: life events almost certainly change brain chemistry for good as well as for ill, and many different treatments may be successful in different circumstances. But treatments that are experienced by the patient as torturous or punitive, however well-intentioned, are unlikely to be so successful in the long-term as those which are experienced as therapeutic. Current practitioners would do well to bear in mind the precepts of such people as Imhotep, Vives, Pussin, and Laing, alongside the latest neuropharmacological theories.

In the mid-1950’s, the numbers of hospitalized mentally ill people in Europe and America peaks. In England and Wales, there were 7,000 patients in 1850, 120,000 in 1930, and nearly 150,000 in 1954. In the United States, the number peaks at 560,000 in 1955.

A new type of therapy, called behavior therapy, is developed, which holds that people with phobias can be trained to overcome them.

The civil rights, anti-war and black liberation movements challenge the country, laying a foundation for the feminist movement. 

Women being killed by abusive husbands is rarely recognized for what it is. Headlines often read "Husband Goes Berserk and Shoots Estranged Wife." 

Cameron c. 1967

Donald Ewen Cameron (24 December 1901 – 8 September 1967) — known as D. Ewen Cameron or Ewen Cameron — was a Scottish-born psychiatrist involved in the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA's) MKULTRA mind control program. He served as President of the Canadian, American and World Psychiatric Associations, the American Psychopathological Association and the Society of Biological Psychiatry during the 1950s. Notwithstanding his high professional reputation, he has been criticized for his administration, without informed consent, of disproportionately-intense electroshock therapy and experimental drugs, including LSD, which rendered some patients permanently comatose. Cameron next published Nuremberg and Its Significance. In this, Cameron hoped to establish a suitable method to reinstate a form of justice in Germany that could prevent its society from recreating the attitudes that led it from The Great War to World War II. Cameron viewed German society throughout history as continually giving rise to fearsome aggression. He came up with the idea that if he presented the world and confronted the Germans with the atrocities committed during the war, the world and the Germans would refrain from repeated acts of extreme aggression. if the greater population of Germany saw the atrocities of World War II, they would surely submit to a re-organized system of justice. Cameron decided that Germans would be most likely to commit atrocities due to their historical, biological, racial and cultural past and their particular psychological nature. All Germans on trial would be assessed according to the likeliness for committing the crime. Cameron began to develop broader theories of society, new concepts of human relations to replace concepts he deemed dangerous and outdated. These became the basis of a new social and behavioral science that Cameron would later institute through his presidencies of the Canadian, American and World Psychiatric Associations, the American Psychopathological Association and the Society of Biological Psychiatry. With the results of the Manhattan project, Cameron feared that without proper re-organization of society, atomic weapons could fall into the hands of new, fearsome aggressors. Cameron argued that it was necessary for behavioral scientists to act as the social planners of society, and that the United Nations could provide a conduit for implementing his ideas for applying psychiatric elements to global governance and politics. Cameron started to distinguish populations between "the weak" and "the strong". Those with anxieties or insecurities and who had trouble with the state of the world were labeled as "the weak"; in Cameron's analysis, they could not cope with life and had to be isolated from society by "the strong". The mentally ill were thus labeled as not only sick, but also weak. Cameron further argued that "the weak" must not influence children. He promoted a philosophy where chaos could be prevented by removing the weak from society. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Cameron continued his work on memory and its relationship to aging. He published a book called Remembering and extended psychiatric links to human biology. In papers published during this time he linked RNA to memory. He furthered his diagnostic definitions of clinical states such as anxiety, depression and schizophrenia. Cameron's dedication to clinical psychiatry was explored in his pedagogical writings, his new organizations of clinical services, and his papers and manuals contributing to psychotherapeutic practice. He began to develop the discipline of social psychiatry which concentrated on the roles of interpersonal interaction, family, community and culture in the emergence and amelioration of emotional disturbance. Cameron invented the day hospital, where patients could visit a psychiatrist during the day and return home at night. He placed the psychiatric treatment unit inside of the hospital and inspected its success. Here in the hospital Cameron could observe how the psychiatric patient resembled patients with other diseases that were not psychiatric in nature. In this manner, somatic causes could be compared. The behavior of a mental patient could resemble the behavior of a patient with, for example, syphilis, and then a somatic cause could be deduced for a psychological illness. Cameron titled this procedure "intrapsychic" (a term derived from the psycho-somatic relationship of hospital patients). Cameron began to refuse the Freudian unconscious in favor of a social constructivist's view of mental illness. In Cameron's analysis, culture and society played a crucial role in the ability for one to function according to the demands necessary for human survival. Therefore, society should function to select out the weak and unwanted, those apt towards fearsome aggression that threatened society. Psychiatry would play a disciplinary role. Cameron began to explore how industrial conditions could satisfy the population through work and what kind of person or worker is best suited to industrial conditions. A stronger personality would be able to maintain itself in heavy industrial situations, he theorized, while the weaker would not be able to cope with industrial conditions. Cameron would analyze what conditions produced the stronger worker, what would be the necessary conditions to replicate this personality and to reward the stronger while disciplining the weaker. In his 1946 paper entitled Frontiers of Social Psychiatry, he used the case of World War II Germany as an example where society poisoned the minds of citizens by creating a general anxiety or neurosis. Although Cameron rejected the Freudian notion of the unconscious, he shared the Freudian idea in that personal psychology is linked to the nervous nature. He theorized that attitudes and beliefs should reinforce the overall attitudes of the desired society. Like Freud, Cameron maintained that the family was the nucleus of social behavior and anxieties later in life were spawned during childhood. Cameron wanted to build an inventive psychiatric institution to determine rapid ways for societal control while demanding a psychological economy that did not center itself around guilt and guilt complexes. His focus on children included the rights to protection against outmoded, doctrinaire tactics, and the necessity for the implantation of taboos and inhibitions from their parents. Cameron wrote that mental illness was transmitted generationally; thus, the re-occurrence of mental illness could be stopped by remodeling and expanding existing concepts of marriage suitability, as well as the quarantine of mentally ill individuals from the general population. The only cure for mental illness, he theorized, was to eliminate its "carriers" from society altogether. Cameron believed that mental illness was literally contagious - that if one came into contact with someone suffering from mental illness, one would begin to produce the symptoms of a mental disease. For example, something like rock music could be created by mentally ill people and would produce mentally ill people through infection, which in turn would be transmitted to the genes. Thus, this group would have to be studied and controlled as a contagious social disease. Police, hospitals, government, and schools would need to use the correct psychiatric authority to stop mental contagions from spreading. Cameron also hoped to generate families capable of using authority and techniques to take measures against mental illness, which would later be apparent in Cameron's MKULTRA and MKDELTA experiments. “If we can succeed in inventing means of changing their attitudes and beliefs, we shall find ourselves in possession of measures which, if wisely used, may be employed in freeing ourselves from their attitudes and beliefs in other fields which have greatly contributed to the instability of our period by their propensity for holding up progress” —Cameron on the Germans, in Life is For Living. In Cameron's book Life is For Living, published in 1948, he expressed a concern for the German race in general. Just as Sigrid Schultz stated in Germany will try it again, Cameron fostered a fear for Germans and their genetic determination. Those Germans affected by the events that led to World War II were of utmost concern. Cameron's concerns extended to his policies determining who should have children and/or advance to positions of authority. According to Cameron's psychiatric analysis of the German people, they were not suitable to have children or hold positions of authority because of a genetic tendency to organize society in a way that fostered fearsome aggression and would lead to war rather than peace. Cameron would repeatedly use the German as the archetypal character structure on which to ground the most psychologically deviant humans. Although society had established sanctions against the spread of infectious diseases, Cameron wanted to extend the concept of contagion to chronic anxiety. He warned that people with mental illnesses could spread and transmit their diseases. He warned that government institutions should take measures against such potential liabilities. Cameron began to base some of his notions on race, as is seen in his theories regarding the German people. In the late 1940s, Cameron presented his ideas in a lecture entitled Dangerous Men and Women. It describes various personalities that he believed were of marked danger to all members of society. The personality types are as follows: • A passive man who "is afraid to say what he really thinks" and "will stand anything, and stands for nothing". "[H]e was born in Munich, he is the eternal compromiser and his spiritual food is appeasement". • A possessive type, filled with jealousy and demanding utmost loyalty. This personality type poses a danger to those closest to them, especially children. • The insecure man — "They are the driven crowds that makes the army of the authoritarian overlord; they are the stuffing of conservatism ... mediocrity is their god. They fear the stranger, they fear the new idea; they are afraid to live, and scared to die." This third type needs conformity and obeys the dictates of society, adhering to a world of strict standards of right or wrong (which are manipulated by power groups to keep the insecure controlled and dependent). Cameron theorized that this type is dangerous because of its "lust for authority". • The last type is the psychopath, the greatest danger in times of political and societal upheaval; this Cameron labeled "the Gestapo". Cameron believed that a society in which psychiatry built and developed the institutions of government, schools, prisons and hospitals would be one in which science triumphed over the "sick" members of society. He demanded that political systems be watched, and that German people needed to be monitored due to their "personality type", which he claimed results in the conditions that give rise to the dictatorial power of an authoritarian overlord. Cameron stated, "Get it understood how dangerous these damaged, sick personalities are to ourselves - and above all, to our children, whose traits are taking form and we shall find ways to put an end to them." He spoke about Germans, but also to the larger portion of the society that resembled or associated with such traits. For Cameron, the traits were contagions and anyone affected by the societal, cultural or personality forms would themselves be infected. Cameron used his ideas to implement policies on who should govern and/or parent in society. The described types would have to be eliminated from society if there was to be peace and progress. The sick were, for Cameron, the viral infection to its stability and health. The described types were the enemies of society and life. Experts must develop methods of forcefully changing attitudes and beliefs to prevent the authoritarian overlord. Cameron is best known for his MKUltra-related and other behavior modification research for the CIA. Cameron was President of the American Psychiatric Association in 1952–1953. He lived and worked in Albany, New York, and was involved in experiments in Canada for Project MKUltra, a CIA-directed mind control program which eventually led to the publication of the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual. Cameron had been hoping to correct schizophrenia by erasing existing memories and reprogramming the psyche. He commuted from Albany to Montreal every week to work at McGill's Allan Memorial Institute and was paid $69,000 from 1957 to 1964 to carry out MKUltra experiments there. In addition to LSD, Cameron experimented with various paralytic drugs and electroconvulsive therapy at thirty to forty times the normal power.[citation needed] His "driving" experiments consisted of putting a subject into a drug-induced coma for weeks at a time (up to three months in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple statements. Cameron's experiments were typically carried out on patients who had entered the institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and postpartum depression; many suffered permanent debilitation after these treatments. Such consequences included incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents, and thinking their interrogators were their parents. His work was inspired and paralleled by the British psychiatrist William Sargant, who was also involved in the Intelligence Services and who experimented extensively on his patients without their consent, causing similar long-term damage. It was during this era that Cameron became known worldwide as the first chairman of the World Psychiatric Association as well as president of the American and Canadian psychiatric associations. Cameron had also been a member of the Nuremberg medical tribunal in 1946–1947. Naomi Klein states in her book The Shock Doctrine that Cameron's research and his contribution to MKUltra were not about mind control and brainwashing, but "to design a scientifically based system for extracting information from 'resistant sources.' In other words, torture." She then cites Alfred W. McCoy: "Stripped of its bizarre excesses, Cameron's experiments, building upon Donald O. Hebb's earlier breakthrough, laid the scientific foundation for the CIA's two-stage psychological torture method." MKULTRA Subproject 68 was one of Cameron's ongoing "attempts to establish lasting effects in a patient's behaviour" using a combination of particularly intensive electroshock, intensive repetition of prearranged verbal signals, partial sensory isolation, and repression of the driving period carried out by inducing continuous sleep for seven to ten days at the end of the treatment period. During research on sensory deprivation, Cameron used curare to immobilise his patients. After one test he noted: "Although the patient was prepared by both prolonged sensory isolation (35 days) and by repeated depatterning, and although she received 101 days of positive driving, no favourable results were obtained." Patients were regularly treated with hallucinogenic drugs, long periods in the "sleep room", and testing in the Radio Telemetry Laboratory, which was built under Cameron's direction. Here, patients were exposed to a range of RF and electromagnetic signals and monitored for changes in behaviour. It was later stated by staff members who had worked at the Institute during this time that not one patient sent to the Radio Telemetry Lab showed any signs of improvement afterwards.

1950

Mary Switzer was appointed the Director of the U.S. Office of Vocational Rehabilitation where she emphasized independent living as a quality of life issue.

In an historic merger, three organizations, the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, the National Mental Health Foundation, and the Psychiatric Foundation “an offshoot of the American Psychological Organization primarily concerned with fund-raising, banded together on September 13, 1950 to form the National Association of Mental Health (NAMH).

The first antipsychotic drug, chlorpromazine (known under the trade name Largactil in Europe and Thorazine in the United States), was first synthesised in France in 1950. Pierre Deniker, a psychiatrist of the Saint-Anne Psychiatric Centre in Paris, is credited with first recognising the specificity of action of the drug in psychosis in 1952. Deniker travelled with a colleague to the United States and Canada promoting the drug at medical conferences in 1954. The first publication regarding its use in North America was made in the same year by the Canadian psychiatrist Heinz Lehmann, who was based in Montreal.

The World Psychiatric Association was founded.

Erik Erikson published ‘Childhood and Society,’ where he expands Freud’s Theory to include social aspects of personality development across the lifespan.

The Council of Europe is a regional intergovernmental organization consisting of 45 countries. It aims to defend human rights, parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. All members of the European Union also belong to the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe has not adopted any specific human rights treaty on persons with disabilities, but created an important treaty that includes the protection of disabilities rights: European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (article 5). Article 5 of the Convention states that the right to liberty and security can be infringed upon on grounds of mental disability: "No one shall be deprived of his liberty save in the following cases and in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law: [...] the lawful detention of persons for the prevention of the spreading of infectious diseases, of persons of unsound mind, alcoholics or drug addicts or vagrants."

Timothy Nugent founds the National Wheelchair Basketball Association.

Researchers begin to identify psychosomatic diseases such as peptic ulcers, hypertension, bronchial asthma. Illnesses divided into those causes by organic factors and those brought on by psychological factors.

The Association for Retarded Children of the United States (later renamed the Association for Retarded Citizens and then The Arc) is founded in Minneapolis by representatives of various state associations of parents of mentally retarded children. Parents of youth diagnosed with mental retardation found the Association for Retarded Citizens (ARC). The association works to change the public's ideas about mental retardation. Its members educate parents and others, demonstrating that individuals with mental retardation have the ability to succeed in life. The ARC works to ensure that the estimated 7.2 million Americans with mental retardation and related developmental disabilities have the services and supports they need to grow, develop, and live in communities across the nation.

The National Foundation for Cerebral Palsy is chartered by representatives of various groups of parents of children with cerebral palsy. Renamed the United Cerebral Palsy Association, Inc., and in 1950, it becomes, together with the Association for Retarded Children, a major force in the parents' movement of the 1950s and thereafter.

Beginning of National Barrier-Free Standards. In the 1950s, disabled veterans and people with disabilities begin the barrier-free movement. The combined efforts of the Veterans Administration, The President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped, and the National Easter Seals Society, among others, results in the development of national standards for "barrier-free" buildings.

Rhone Poulenc synthesizes chlorpromazine, a phenothiazine, for use as an anesthetic.

Beginning of Senator Joseph Macarthy’s hearings on communists in the government; purges of homosexuals from government.

A White House conference was presented by the National Institute of Mental Health. They said that kids were labeling each other as morons, imbeciles, and idiots and we were seeing the negative results of sustained inbreeding.

In “Childhood and Society,” Erik Erikson restates Freud's concepts of infantile sexuality and develops the concepts of 'adult identity,' and 'identity crisis.'

Social Workers in 1950, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is the first survey of 75,000 social workers, with 50,000 replies,

The Social Security Act Amendments (ch. 809, 64 Stat. 477) are passed on August 28 and signed by President Truman. The amendments establish a program of aid to permanently and totally disabled people and broaden Aid to Dependent Children (later Aid to Families with Dependent Children) to include relatives with whom a child is living. The amendments extend Old-Age and Survivors' Insurance and liberalize other programs. The Social Security Amendments of 1950 establish a federal-state program to aid the permanently and totally disabled (APTD). This is a limited prototype for later federal disability assistance programs such as Social Security Disability Insurance.

The National Council on Aging is founded.

“The Other Side of the Bottle,” by Dwight Anderson (with Page Cooper).

In England, First woman elected as president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (Dame Hilda Lloyd).

1951

The Boggs Act imposed mandatory minimum sentences for those convicted of violating the Narcotic Drug Import and Export Act or the Marihuana Tax Act. These minimums were mostly repealed in 1970.

Howard Rusk opens the Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University Medical Center. Staff at the Institute, including people with disabilities, begin work on such innovations as electric typewriters, mouthsticks, and improved prosthetics, as adaptive aids for people with severe disabilities.

Carl Rogers published Client-Centred Therapy.

Fritz Perls introduces Gestalt therapy, which focuses on becoming aware of the present. The past is important only in how it effects the present. The concept of gestalt was first introduced in contemporary philosophy and psychology by Christian von Ehrenfels (a member of the School of Brentano). The idea of gestalt has its roots in theories by David Hume, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Immanuel Kant, David Hartley, and Ernst Mach. Max Wertheimer's unique contribution was to insist that the "gestalt" is perceptually primary, defining the parts it was composed from, rather than being a secondary quality that emerges from those parts, as von Ehrenfels's earlier Gestalt-Qualität had been. Both von Ehrenfels and Edmund Husserl seem to have been inspired by Mach's work Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen (Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, 1886), in formulating their very similar concepts of gestalt and figural moment, respectively. On the philosophical foundations of these ideas see Foundations of Gestalt Theory (Smith, ed., 1988). Early 20th century theorists, such as Kurt Koffka, Max Wertheimer, and Wolfgang Köhler (students of Carl Stumpf) saw objects as perceived within an environment according to all of their elements taken together as a global construct. This 'gestalt' or 'whole form' approach sought to define principles of perception—seemingly innate mental laws that determined the way objects were perceived. It is based on the here and now, and in the way things are seen. Images can be divided into figure or ground. The question is what is perceived at first glance: the figure in front, or the background. These laws took several forms, such as the grouping of similar, or proximate, objects together, within this global process. Although gestalt has been criticized for being merely descriptive, it has formed the basis of much further research into the perception of patterns and objects (Carlson et al. 2000), and of research into behavior, thinking, problem solving and psychopathology. The founders of Gestalt therapy, Fritz and Laura Perls, had worked with Kurt Goldstein, a neurologist who had applied principles of Gestalt psychology to the functioning of the organism. Laura Perls had been a Gestalt psychologist before she became a psychoanalyst and before she began developing Gestalt therapy together with Fritz Perls. The extent to which Gestalt psychology influenced Gestalt therapy is disputed, however. In any case it is not identical with Gestalt psychology. On the one hand, Laura Perls preferred not to use the term "Gestalt" to name the emerging new therapy, because she thought that the gestalt psychologists would object to it, on the other hand Fritz and Laura Perls clearly adopted some of Goldstein's work. Thus, though recognizing the historical connection and the influence, most gestalt psychologists emphasize that gestalt therapy is not a form of gestalt psychology.

Soviet Union stops lobotomies after seeing that patients became fixed and unchangeable.

Social Work Education in the United States, by Ernest V Hollis and Alice L. Taylor, is published. Generally known as the Hollis-Taylor Report, it is a comprehensive study of social work education "in relation to the responsibility of social work in the broad field of social welfare."

The American Association of Social Workers reissues Common Human Needs after the federal government burns its stock in response to pressure from the American Medical Association.

The American Association of Social Workers publishes the I I th edition of the Social Work Year Book, following 10 editions published by the Russell Sage Foundation.

Mattachine Society, the earliest homophile organization in the United States, founded in Los Angeles.

The current Perkins Brailler is designed and produced by David Abraham at Perkins Howe Press.

“The Homosexual in America,” by Edward Sagarin under the pseudonym Donald Webster Cory.

“Fight against Fears,” by Lucy Freeman.

“Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl” (trans. from 1950 French ed.), edited by Marguerite Sechehaye.

In England, Appointment of the first female coroner (Miss Lilian M. Hollowell, in Norfolk).

1952

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) publishes the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders marking the beginning of modern mental illness classification; it was revised in 1968, 1980/7, 1994, 2000 and 2013. There are 65 pages listing 112 mental disorders in its initial, 1952 edition. The first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) groups the “sexual deviations” (including homosexuality) under the category of Sexual Deviation Personality Disorder (sociopathic personality disorders). World War II saw the large-scale involvement of US psychiatrists in the selection, processing, assessment and treatment of soldiers. This moved the focus away from mental institutions and traditional clinical perspectives. A committee that was headed by psychiatrist Brigadier General William C. Menninger developed a new classification scheme called Medical 203 that was issued in 1943 as a War Department Technical Bulletin under the auspices of the Office of the Surgeon General. The foreword to the DSM-I states the US Navy had itself made some minor revisions but "the Army established a much more sweeping revision, abandoning the basic outline of the Standard and attempting to express present day concepts of mental disturbance. This nomenclature eventually was adopted by all Armed Forces", and "assorted modifications of the Armed Forces nomenclature [were] introduced into many clinics and hospitals by psychiatrists returning from military duty." The Veterans Administration also adopted a slightly modified version of Medical 203. In 1949, the World Health Organization published the sixth revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD) which included a section on mental disorders for the first time. The foreword to DSM-1 states this "categorized mental disorders in rubrics similar to those of the Armed Forces nomenclature." An APA Committee on Nomenclature and Statistics was empowered to develop a version specifically for use in the United States, to standardize the diverse and confused usage of different documents. In 1950 the APA committee undertook a review and consultation. It circulated an adaptation of Medical 203, the VA system and the Standard's Nomenclature, to approximately 10% of APA members. 46% replied, of which 93% approved, and after some further revisions (resulting in it being called DSM-I), the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was approved in 1951 and published in 1952. The structure and conceptual framework were the same as in Medical 203 and many passages of text identical. The manual was 130 pages long and listed 106 mental disorders. This included several categories of 'personality disturbance', generally distinguished from 'neurosis' (nervousness, 'egodystonic). This is a significant increase from the 22 disorders listed in the 1917 Statistical Manual. The DSM was revised in 1968, 1980, 1987, 1994, 2000 and 2013.

The diagnostic label “homosexuality” is listed in the new DSM as one form of “sexual deviation” under the general psychiatric category of “Sociopathic Personality Disturbance.”

Chlorpromazine's chemical structure.

Chlorpromazine (Thorazine) first used in the treatment of schizophrenia. First antipsychotic - The first published clinical trial of chlorpromazine who is the first antipsychotic (has been invent by Henri Laborit, Jean Delay and Pierre Deniker) was conducted at fr:Centre hospitalier Sainte-Anne in Paris. The first conventional antipsychotic drug, Chlorpromazine, discovered in France, was introduced to treat patients with schizophrenia and other major mental disorders. French researchers Pierre Deniker, Henri Leborit and Jean Delay discovered the antipsychotic chlorpromazine, marking the beginning of psychopharmacology. Used to treat psychosis and delusion, in many cases, Thorazine alleviated symptoms of hallucinations, delusions, agitation and thought disorders. The French psychiatrists Jean Delay and Pierre Deniker report that chlorpromazine (Thorazine ®) calms hospitalized chronic schizophrenic patients without causing clinically significant depression. The drug is called 'hibernotherapie' because patients became quiet, like animals in hibernation. The introduction of Neuroleptic drugs, including antipsychotics and major tranquillisers in the 1950s, often meant that there was less need for physical restraint. The world’s first antipsychotic drug – chlorpromazine - used to treat schizophrenics, was, discovered by Laborit. A patient was sedated as well as experiencing a reduction in delusions and hallucinations. Neuroleptics are used mainly to treat schizophrenia but also other severe disorders including mania and amphetamine abuse. The most widely used group is the phenothiazines. They are used in the acute phase of schizophrenia when psychotic experiences are most intense and disturbing. Afterwards they can be used intermittently when the patient is unwell or stressed. One explanation of schizophrenia concerns an excess of the neurotransmitter ‘Dopamine’ and most neuroleptics block the build up of dopamine in the brain. They are reported to be effective with 60% of patients. However, there are many side effects, some irreversible, such as muscular rigidity, uncontrolled fidgeting and uncontrolled spasms. More recent neuroleptics, introduced in 1990, are seen to be more effective and cause fewer side effects. ‘They have revolutionised the treatment of schizophrenia,’ according to Comer, 1998.

First antidepressant - The first monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) antidepressant iproniazid was discovered. Iproniazid (Euphozid, Iprazid, Ipronid, Ipronin, Marsilid, Rivivol) is a hydrazine drug used as an antidepressant. It acts as an irreversible and nonselective monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI). Though it has been widely discontinued in most of the world, it is still used in France. Iproniazid was the first antidepressant ever marketed. Originally intended for the treatment of tuberculosis. In 1952, its antidepressant properties were discovered when researchers noted that the patients given iproniazid became "inappropriately happy". Subsequently N-isopropyl addition lead to development as an antidepressant and was approved for use in 1958. It was later withdrawn in 1961 due to the unacceptable incidence of hepatitis and was replaced by less hepatotoxic drugs like isocarboxazid (Marplan), phenelzine (Nardil), and tranylcypromine (Parnate).

A study on psychotherapy efficacy was published by Hans Eysenck suggesting that therapy is no more effective that no treatment at all. This prompted an onslaught of outcome studies that have since shown psychotherapy to be an effective treatment for mental illness. Hans Eysenck, a behavioral psychologist who coined the term behavior therapy, published a scathing critique of the various forms of psychotherapy. Sets off a flurry of research activity to prove him wrong.

George Jorgensen undergoes sex reassignment surgery in Denmark to become Christine Jorgensen

The U.S. Children's Bureau grants funds for special projects to develop and coordinate statewide programs for medical and social services to unwed mothers.

The Council on Social Work Education is created from temporary study and a coordinating body, the National Council on Social Work Education (in 1946), to unite the school accrediting responsibility of the National Association of Schools of Social Administration and the American Association of Schools of Social Work. The council includes board representatives of schools, faculty, agencies, and the public for educational policy and decisions.

The U.S. Committee of the International Conference on Social Welfare is formed.

The President's Committee on National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week becomes the Presidents' Committee on Employment of the Physically Handicapped, a permanent organization reporting to the President and Congress.

Henry Vicardi takes out a personal loan to found Abilities, Inc., a jobs training and placement program for people with disabilities. Abilities, Inc. operated out of a garage in West Hempstead, and successfully demonstrated that people with disabilities could be productive contributors to society. Staffed primarily by disabled World War II veterans, Abilities, Inc. provided assembly and factory work for many defense contractors in the local area. The reputation of Abilities, Inc. grew to a point where contracts were awarded from industry giants such as Grumman, General Electric, IBM and the Department of Defense. For a time, Abilities was known as National Center for Disability Services (NCDS) but have since changed their name back to honor the original.

“The Cardboard Giants,” by Paul Hackett.

“Recovery from a Long Neurosis,” Psychiatry 15: 161-177, by Anonymous (Mrs. F. H.).

“Bars and Barricades, Being the Second Part of A Publisher Presents Himself.” London, by Donald McIntosh Johnson.

“Wisdom, Madness and Folly: The Philosophy of a Lunatic,” by John Custance (pseudonym).

“How Thin the Veil: A Newspaperman's Story of His Own Mental Crackup and Recovery,” by Jack Kerkoff.

1953

Mentally Impaired Used as Guniea Pigs. Clemens Benda, clinical director at the Fernald School in Waltham, Massachusetts, an institution for boys with mental retardation, invites 100 teenage students to participate in a "science club" in which they will be privy to special outings and extra snacks. In a letter requesting parental consent, Benda mentions an experiment in which "blood samples are taken after a special breakfast meal containing a certain amount of calcium," but makes no mention of the inclusion of radioactive substances that are fed to the boys in their oatmeal.

The (American) President’s Committee on National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week became the President’s Committee on Employment of the Physically Handicapped, a permanent organization reporting to the President and Congress.

BF Skinner publishes “Science and Human Behavior,” describing his theory of operant conditioning, an important concept in the development of behavior therapy. B.F. Skinner outlined behavioral therapy, lending support for behavioral psychology via research in the literature.

Code of Ethics for Psychologists was developed by the American Psychological Association.

Russian-born physiologist Nathaniel Kleitman of the U. of Chicago discovered rapid eye movement Sleep (REM), founding modern sleep research.

French psychiatrist Jacques Lacan broke with the IPA over his variable-length sessions, and founded the Société Française de Psychanalyse.

The U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare is established on April 11.

Victor Frankl introduced logotherapy, which focuses on man's search for meaning.

The last of the “Fitter Family” contest (held at State Fair’s since 1920) results were published in Eugenics magazines.

Ed Roberts, "father of the independent living movement," contracts polio.

Los Angeles County provided at-home attendant care to adults with polio as a cost-saving alternative to hospitalization.

The "Kinsey Report" became common knowledge world-wide. It was based on 4000 interviews with young, white, middle-class, educated women and revealed a large number of incest cases. It stated men frequently permitted themselves sexual liberties with children and went on to assure the public that children should not be upset and, if they were, it was the fault of the prudish parents and teachers, not the abuser. Although 89% of the women experiencing child sexual abuse reported fear and upset, the report advocated greater sexual license for men. It further stated men needed defense against persecution of malicious females. The report held the child responsible because of their interest in sexual activity and stated vaginal bleeding "did not appear to do any appreciable damage".

“Hell's Cauldron,” by Gerald Erasmus Wilcox [Thomas G. E. Wilkes].

“And Lo, the Star,” by Margaret Atkins McGarr.

“To Hell and Back; The Story of an Alcoholic,” by James E. Hummal [James H. Ellis].

1954

In Ohio, because its continued growth had turned the Department of Public Welfare into the largest and most complex of state departments with more than 45,000 employees, the General Assembly established a separate Department of Mental Hygiene and Correction in 1954.

First psychiatric drugs are created contributing to the beginning of deinstitutionalization.

Thorazine receives FDA approval. Chlorpromazine, marketed in the US as Thorazine, found to induce symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Chlorpomazine (Thorazine) receives FDA approval. Psychopharmacology hits the U.S. Thorazine was the biggest selling tranquilizer and manufacturers can't keep up with demand.

Abraham Maslow helped to found Humanistic Psychology and later developed his famous Hierarchy of Needs.

Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1954 - Authorized innovation and expansion grants, and grants to colleges and universities for professional training. Vocational Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1954 Public Law 565 represented a major expansion of the federal government's involvement with vocational rehabilitation. It increased the federal share of funding from 50-50 to 3 federal dollars for every 2 state dollars, and it expanded annual federal funding to $65,000,000 by 1958. Services for mentally retarded and psychiatrically handicapped individuals were greatly expanded. The act authorized research and demonstration grants, extension and improvement grants, and funds for facility development. Grants were also provided to colleges and universities to train rehabilitation counselors to work with individuals with disabilities.

Wagner-Peyser Act Amendments of 1954 - Required federal/state employment security offices to designate staff members to assist people with severe disabilities. Congress passes the Vocational Rehabilitation Amendments, authorizing federal grants to expand programs available to people with physical disabilities. Mary Switzer, Director of the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, uses this authority to fund more than 100 university based rehabilitation related programs.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, rules that separate schools for black and white children are inherently unequal and unconstitutional. This pivotal decision becomes a catalyst for the African-American civil rights movement, which in turn becomes a major inspiration to the disability rights movement. In response, Mississippi and other places approve the creation of “charter” schools; privately funded and fully segregated. Supreme Court ruling on the case of Oliver Brown et al. v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, (347 US. 483) eliminates the 11 separate but equal" doctrine in educational facilities.

Rutland Corner House in Brookline, Massachusetts, is established as the first urban transi-tional residence (halfway house) for mental patients.

B.F. Skinner brought the Skinner box theory of operant conditioning to American schools to condition and control children’s behavior. His own conditioned daughter committed suicide at the age of 21.

James Olds and Peter Milner of McGill University discovered the brain reward system. The pleasure center was discovered in the 1950s by two brain researchers named James Olds and Peter Milner who were investigating whether rats might be made uncomfortable by electrical stimulation of certain areas of their brain, particularly the limbic system. In the experiment, an electrical current was given to rats if they entered a certain corner of a cage, with the hypothesis that they would stay away from that corner if the effect was uncomfortable. Instead, they came back quickly after the first stimulation and even more quickly after the second. In later experiments, they allowed the rats to press the stimulation lever themselves, to the effect that they would press it as much as seven-hundred times per hour. This region soon came to be known as the "pleasure center". Rats in Skinner boxes with metal electrodes implanted into their nucleus accumbens will repeatedly press a lever which activates this region, and will do so in preference over food and water, eventually dying from exhaustion. In rodent physiology, scientists reason that the medial forebrain bundle is the pleasure center of rats. If a rat is given the choice between stimulating the forebrain or eating, it will choose stimulation to the point of exhaustion. Pleasure center is the general term used for the brain regions involved in pleasure. Discoveries made in the 1950s initially suggested that rodents could not stop electrically stimulating parts of their brain, mainly the nucleus accumbens, which was theorized to produce great pleasure. Further investigations revealed that the septum pellucidium and the hypothalamus can also be targets for self-stimulation. More recent research has shown that the so-called pleasure electrodes lead only a form of wanting or motivation to obtain the stimulation, rather than pleasure. The weight of evidence suggests that human pleasure reactions occur across a distributed system of brain regions, of which important nodes include subcortical regions (such as the nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidum) and cortical regions (orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex).

Roger Sperry of Caltech began split-brain research. Split-brain is a lay term to describe the result when the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the brain is severed to some degree. It is an association of symptoms produced by disruption of or interference with the connection between the hemispheres of the brain. The surgical operation to produce this condition results from transection of the corpus callosum, and is usually a last resort to treat refractory epilepsy. Initially, partial callosotomies are performed; if this operation does not succeed, a complete callosotomy is performed to mitigate the risk of accidental physical injury by reducing the severity and violence of epileptic seizures. Before using callosotomies, epilepsy is instead treated through pharmaceutical means. After surgery, neuropsychological assessments are often performed. When split-brain patients are shown an image only in their left visual field (the left half of what both eyes take in), they cannot vocally name what they have seen. This can be explained in three steps: (1) The image seen in the left visual field is sent only to the right side of the brain; (2) For most people, the speech-control center is on the left side of the brain; and (3) Communication between the two sides of the brain is inhibited. Thus, the patient cannot say out loud the name of that which the right side of the brain is seeing. In the case that the speech-control center is on the right side of the brain, the image must now be presented to only the right visual field to achieve the same effect. If a split-brain patient is touching a mysterious object with only the left hand, while also receiving no visual cues in the right visual field, the patient cannot say out loud the name of that which the right side of the brain is touching. This can be explained in three steps: (1) Each cerebral hemisphere of the primary somatosensory cortex only contains a tactile representation of the opposite (contralateral) side of the body; (2) For most humans, the speech-control center is on the left side of the brain; and (3) Communication between the two sides of the brain is inhibited. In the case that the speech-control center is on the right side of the brain, the object must now be touched only with the right hand to achieve the same effect. The same effect occurs for visual pairs and reasoning. For example, a patient with split brain is shown a picture of a chicken and a snowy field in separate visual fields and asked to choose from a list of words the best association with the pictures. The patient would choose a chicken foot to associate with the chicken and a shovel to associate with the snow; however, when asked to reason why the patient chose the shovel, the response would relate to the chicken (e.g. "the shovel is for cleaning out the chicken coop"). "Scientists have often wondered whether split-brain patients, who have had the two hemispheres of their brain surgically disconnected, are 'of two minds'"In the 19th century, research on people with certain brain injuries, made it possible to suspect that the "language center" in the brain was commonly situated in the left hemisphere. One had observed that people with lesions in two specific areas on the left hemisphere lost their ability to talk, for example. Research was pioneered by Roger Sperry and his colleagues. In his early work on animal subjects, Sperry made many noteworthy discoveries. The results of these studies over the next thirty years later led to Roger Sperry being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1981.

On the recommendation of the Bhore Committee in 1946, the All India Institute of Mental Health was founded, becoming the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in 1974 at Bangalore.

Social Security Act of 1935 was amended by PL 83-761 to include a “freeze” provision for workers who were forced by disability to leave the workforce. This protects their benefits when they retire by not counting the years between the time they cease working and their retirement, thus freezing their retirement benefits at their pre-disability level. Congress passed Title II of the Social Security Act, the Disability Income Program, and it was signed by President Eisenhower. The federal government began to become “the great almoner of public charity,” as Title II of the Social Security Act anticipated the important future titles, Title XVIII, Medicare; Title XIX, Medicaid; and Title XVI, the Supplemental Security Income Program. These three acts were passed in the 1960s and 1970s

Mary Switzer, Director of the U.S. Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, authorized funds for more than 100 university-based rehabilitation-related programs.

Congress investigated and found that although large corporations are a clear and dangerous threat to our liberty there is nothing they can do about it.

The 1942 Pledge of Allegiance was amended in 1954 to include the words "under God;". Legislation to add the motto "In God We Trust" to all coins and currency was passed in 1955; and the national motto "E Pluribus Unum" [out of many, one] was changed to "In God We Trust" in 1956.

“I’ll Cry Tomorrow,” by Lillian Roth with Mike Connolly and Gerald Frank.

“This is Norman Brokenshire—An Unvarnished Self-Portrait,” by Norman Brokenshire.

“Long Journey; a Verbatim Report of a Case of Severe Psychosexual Infantilism,” by Harold Kenneth Fink.

“Justice and Justices,” by Basil Hubbard Pollitt.

“Episode—A Record of Five Hundred Lost Days,” by Peter W. Denzer.

“Adventure into the Unconscious.” London, by John Custance (pseudonym).

1955

Congress authorizes the Mental Health Study Act. The Mental Health Study Act of 1955 called for “an objective, thorough, nationwide analysis and reevaluation of the human and economic problems of mental health.” The act furnished the basis for the historic study conducted by the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health. The commission's final report, Action for Mental Health, provided the background for President John F. Kennedy’s special message to Congress on mental health.

Chlorpromazine said to induce symptoms similar to encephalitis lethargica.

The US State Hospital populations top out at around 550,000. Populations in Ohio’s state-operated psychiatric hospitals peaked in 1955 at 28,663 resident patients. In 1955, prior to the beginning of deinstitutionalization of mental patients in the United States, there was approximately 1 public psychiatric hospital bed available for every 300 people in the population (559,000 patients in state and county mental hospitals in a total population of 165,000,000).

More than 55,000 men, women and children in the U.S. undergo lobotomy.

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale published.

Peter Milner and James Olds, recorded brain waves from rats while seeing reinforcement or self-stimulation.

Deinstitutionalization began with the US inpatient census peaking with 550,000 people institutionalized. The number of patients in mental hospitals began to decline reflecting the introduction of psychopharmacology in the treatment of mental illness.

In the year 1903 when young Clifford Beers had just emerged from a mental hospital with a driving urge to tell his story, he found a sympathetic listener in Miss Clara Louise Jepson, friend of his childhood and youth, "I have so much to tell. I must write a book," he said to Miss Jepson "Will you help me?" As he described it later, after his famous book A Mind that Found Itself had swept the country: "That supposedly platonic collaboration lured us on and on, until a few months after my book was published, we discovered that our hearts had found themselves. In this way my wife became the royalty on my book, a reward as great as it was unexpected. But the marriage of these young people had to be postponed still longer, until Clifford Beers could clear away the debts he had incurred in organizing the new National Committee for Mental Hygiene. He was always generous in the credit he gave to Clara Jepson in those early difficult days. "During the past four years given to organizing the National Committee for Mental Hygiene,"; he wrote to Mrs William James on the day before his wedding, sound advice in the many crises which arose was, I think, the determining factor in the successful accomplishment of my purposes. Miss Jepson's unwavering belief in me during the difficult years of my work,"; he wrote to other friends, "gave me the courage to challenge Destiny.... " And so they were married at last, in 1912, the beginning of 31 years of harmonious life together. Mrs Beers, companion and hostess, took on the additional role of French interpreter during their eventful trips to Europe, when in recognition of his remarkable work, her husband was received by scientists, statesmen, and royalty. Today (February 6, 1955) Mrs Clifford Beers lives quietly in the house she and her husband shared together, on a tree-lined street in Englewood, New Jersey, the mental health movement still the dominant interest in her life.

The School name changes from Perkins Institution for the Blind to Perkins School for the Blind.

The Texas hospital for the “Negro insane” achieved notoriety when on April16, 1955, a group of African-American prisoners in the maximum-security unit rebelled and took over the hospital for five hours. The rebellion was led by nineteen-year-old Ben Riley, who articulated inmate demands for better counseling, organized exercise periods, an end to prisoner beatings, and that all inmates have the same rights enjoyed by the white inmates regarding meals, bathing and freedom of movement.

Pearl S. Buck, one of the most popular novelists and adoptive parents in the United States, accused social workers and religious institutions of sustaining a black market for adoptions and preventing the adoption of children in order to preserve their jobs.

At the Child Welfare League of America national conference on adoption in Chicago they announced that the era of special needs adoption had arrived. Congressional inquiry into interstate and black market adoptions, chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver (D-TN), suggested that poor adoption practices created juvenile delinquency. A proposed federal law on black market adoptions was introduced by Senators Kefauver (D-TN) and Edward Thye (R-MN), but it never passed Congress. Bertha and Harry Holt adopted eight Korean War orphans after a special act of Congress allowed them to do so. Pearl S. Buck accused social workers and religious institutions of sustaining the black market and preventing the adoption of children in order to preserve their jobs. Adopt-A-Child was founded by the National Urban League and fourteen New York agencies to promote African-American adoptions.

Harold Wilke becomes the founder and first executive director of the Commission on Religion and Health within the United Church of Christ General Synod in New York. In this capacity he works to open religious life and the ministry to women and people with disabilities.

National Association of Social Workers was founded, consolidating a number of other social work organizations. NASW commences operation on October I through a merger of five professional membership associations-(I) American Association of Group Workers, (2) American Association of Medical Social Workers, (3) American Association of Psychiatric Social Workers, (4) American Association of Social Workers, and (5) National Association of School Social Workers-and two study groups(!) Association for the Study of Community Organization and (2) Social Work Research Group.

The National Association of Puerto Rican Hispanic Social Workers is organized.

Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian rights organization in the United States, founded in San Francisco. Although DOB originated as a social group, it later developed into a political organization to win basic acceptance for lesbians in the United States.

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger for which she was arrested and jailed. Parks' action was not the first of its kind to impact the civil rights issue. Others had taken similar steps, including Lizzie Jennings in 1854, Homer Plessy in 1892, Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, and Claudette Colvin on the same bus system nine months before Parks, but Parks' civil disobedience had the effect of sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement. At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial equality. Nonetheless, she took her action as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years for her action, she suffered for it, losing her job as a seamstress in a local department store.

S. Kirsan Weinberg published "Incest Behavior" documenting 203 cases reported by courts and social agencies in Chicago. There was no public response.

“Voices Calling,” by Lisa Wiley.

“Fear Strikes Out: The Jim Piersall Story,” by James Piersall and Albert Hirshberg.

“The Mind in Chains (Autobiography of a Schizophrenic),” by William L. Moore.

“Ward N-1,” by John White.

Mid-1950’s

The numbers of hospitalized mentally ill people in Europe and America peaks. In England and Wales, there were 7,000 patients in 1850, 120,000 in 1930, and nearly 150,000 in 1954. In the United States, the number peaks at 560,000 in 1955.

1956

Social Security Amendments of 1956 - Established Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund and provided for payments to eligible workers who became disabled. Congress passes the Social Security Amendments of 1956, which creates a Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program for disabled workers aged 50 to 64.

Congress appropriated $12 million for research in the clinical and basic aspects of psychopharmacology and the Psychopharmacology Service Center was established.

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The NMHA Bell Story

”Cast from shackles which bound them, this bell shall ring out hope for the mentally ill and victory over mental illness.” (Inscription on the NMHA Bell)

During the early days of mental health treatment, asylums often restrained people who had mental illnesses with iron chains and shackles around their ankles and wrists. As our understanding of mental illness and treatments grew, this cruel practice eventually stopped.

In the early 1950’s, the National Mental Health Association issued a call to asylums across the country for their discarded chains and shackles.

On April 13, 1953, at the McShane Bell Foundry in Baltimore, Maryland, NMHA melted down these inhumane bindings and recast them into a sign of hope and freedom: the Mental Health Bell.

Now the symbol of NMHA, the 300-pound Bell also serves as a powerful reminder that the invisible chains of misunderstanding and discrimination continue to bind people with mental illnesses.

Today, the Mental Health Bell rings out hope for improving mental health and achieving victory over mental illnesses.

Over the years, national mental health leaders and advocates, and other prominent individuals have rung the Bell to mark the continued progress in our fight for victory over mental illnesses.

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Helen Keller revisits Perkins to dedicate the Keller-Sullivan building in memory of her teacher, Anne Sullivan.

The number of consumers in mental hospitals began to decline reflecting the introduction of psychopharmacology in the treatment of mental illness. Massachusetts Northampton State Hospital population peaks at 2,400.

The Health Amendments Act authorized the support of community services for the mentally ill, such as halfway houses, daycare, and aftercare under Title V.

Evelyn Hooker begins publishing research on the psychology of non-clinical homosexuals, based on work begun in the 1940's.

The American Medical Association formally recognizes alcoholism as a disease and the insurance industry begins to underwrite addiction treatment.

Narcotics Control Act also known as the Daniels Act. Further increased penalties and mandatory minimums for violations of existing drug laws.

“Schizophrenia, 1677: A Psychiatric Study of an Illustrated Autobiographical Record of Demoniacal Possession,” by Christoph Haizmann (eds. Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter).

Bateson, Gregory., Jackson, D. D., Jay Haley & Weakland, J., "Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia", Behavioral Science, vol.1, 1956, 251-264. (Reprinted in Steps to an Ecology of Mind). Bateson, Jackson, Haley, and Weakland publish Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia in which they posit a communication based theory of human behavior and introduce the concept of the double bind. Gregory Bateson, John Weakland, Donald deAvila Jackson, and Jay Haley proposed the double bind rheory of schizophrenia, which regards it as stemming from situations where a person receives different or contradictory messages.

The English translation of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud was published in 24 volumes (1956–74).

The Supreme Court bans segregated buses.

“Accent on Living” begins publication.

“A Tale Told by a Lunatic.” Dumfries, by Isabella Millar Norrison.

1957

The first pharmacologic treatment for depression is reported with the work of Kuhn on the tricyclic antidepressant Imipramine and of Loomer, Saunders and Kline on the monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitor Iproniazid. The first tricyclic antidepressant (TCA), imipramine was discovered from the pineal gland.

Arvid Carlsson demonstrated that dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain.

The term neuropsychology was by now a recognized subfield of the neurosciences.

Leon Festinger proposed his theory of ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ and later became an influence figure in Social Psychology.

At age 15, Elizabeth Eckford joined the others of the “Little Rock Nine,” and attempted to integrate Little Rock Central High School, but Eckford traveled alone the first morning. The dramatic and iconic photos of Eckford being chased by an angry white mob captured the attention of national and international audiences alike. Elizabeth Eckford (born October 4, 1941) is one of the Little Rock Nine, a group of African-American students who, in 1957, were the first black students ever to attend classes at Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The integration came as a result of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Elizabeth's public ordeal was captured by press photographers on the morning of September 4, 1957, after she was prevented from entering the school by the Arkansas National Guard. A dramatic snapshot by Johnny Jenkins (UPI) showed the young girl being followed and threatened by an angry white mob; this and other photos of the day's startling events were circulated around the US and the world by the print press. On September 4, 1957, Eckford and eight other African American students (known as the Little Rock Nine) made an unsuccessful attempt to enter Little Rock Central High School, which had been segregated. With the complicity of the National Guard, an angry mob of about 400 surrounded the school. As fifteen-year-old Eckford tried to enter the school, soldiers of the National Guard, under orders from Arkansas Governor Faubus, would step in her way to prevent her from entering. Eventually, she gave up and tried to flee to a bus stop through the mob of segregationists who surrounded her and threatened to lynch her. Once Eckford got to the bus stop, she couldn't stop crying. A reporter, Benjamin Fine, having in mind his own 15-year-old daughter, sat down next to Eckford. He tried to comfort her and told her, "don't let them see you cry." Soon, she was also protected by a white woman named Grace Lorch who escorted her onto a city bus. The plan was to have the nine children arrive together, but when the meeting place was changed the night before, the Eckford family's lack of a telephone left Elizabeth uninformed of the change. Instructions were given by Daisy Bates, a strong activist for desegregation, for the nine students to wait for her so that they could all walk together to the rear entrance of the school. This last minute change caused Elizabeth to be the first to take a different route to school, walking up to the front entrance completely alone. Even though Elizabeth Eckford would one day be known as a member of the Little Rock Nine, at this point in the school day, she was all alone, making her the first African-American student to integrate a white southern high school.

The Civil Rights Act (PL 85-315, 71 Stat. 634) is passed by Congress on September 9. It is the first such act since 1875; it establishes the Commission on Civil Rights and strengthens federal enforcement powers.

NASW publishes the 13th edition of the Social Work Year Book.

The first National wheelchair Games in the United States are held at Adelphi College in Garden City, New York.

Little People of American is founded in Reno, Nevada, to advocate on behalf of dwarfs or little people.

Gunnar Dybwad is named executive of the Association for Retarded Children.

British Wolfenden Commission recommends decriminalization of homosexuality.

Civil Rights Commission and a Division in Justice for Civil Rights were established.

President Eisenhower sends federal troops to allow “colored” children to go to public schools.

“No Hiding Place,” by Beth Day.

“Too Much, Too Soon,” by Dianna Barrymore.

“The God Within,” by Christina M. Valentine.

“The Plague of Psychiatry,” by D. G. Simpson.

“Selected Writings,” by Gerard de. Nerval. (trans. Geoffrey Wagner).

1958

National Defense Education Act of 1958 - Authorized federal assistance for preparation of teachers of children with disabilities.

C. Henry Kempe (Denver, Colorado) created one of the first Child Protection Teams to identify and treat child abuse.

Congress passes the Social security Amendments of 1958, extending Social Security Disability Insurance benefits to the dependents of disabled workers.

Aaron B. Lerner et al. of Yale University isolated the hormone melatonin, which was found to regulate the circadian rhythm.

Gini Laurie becomes editor of the Toomeyville Gazette at the Toomey Pavilion Polio Rehabilitation Center. Eventually renamed the Rehabilitation Gazette, this grassroots publication becomes an early voice for disability rights, independent living and cross-disability organizing, and it features articles by disabled writers on all aspects of the disability experience.

The American Federation of the Physically Handicapped is dissolved at a convention in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Participants organize the National Association of the Physically Handicapped, Inc. to take its place.

Congress passes PL 85-905, which authorized loan services for captioned films for the deaf, became law in the U.S.

Congress passes PL 85-926, which provided federal support for training teachers for children with mental retardation, became law in the U.S. Financial support was provided to colleges and universities under PL-85-926 for training personnel in leadership positions about teaching children with mental retardation. In 1963, this legislation was expanded to include grants for higher education teachers and researchers in a broader array of disabilities.

Joseph Wolpe describes systematic desensitization.

A Working Definition of Social Work Practice, developed by the National Commission on Practice headed by Harriett Bartlett, is published by NASW It establishes the basic constellation of elements of social work practice: values, purpose, sanction, knowledge, and method.

European Market Exchange system for international trading purposes began.

“The Inside of the Cup.” London, by A. Wingfield.

“Mine Enemy Grows Older,” by Alexander King.

“A Lawyer's Story In and Out of the World of Insanity,” by Basil Hubbard Pollitt.

“Like a Lamb.” London, by Ella Hales (pseudonym).

“Operators and Things: The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic.” London, by Barbara O'Brien (pseudonym).

“The Lost Days of My life. London,” by Jane Simpson.

Population at Oregon State Hospital peaks at 3,545 patients.

Septima Poinsette Clark (May 3, 1898–December 15, 1987) was an American educator and civil rights activist. Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for African Americans in the American Civil Rights Movement." Septima Clark's work was commonly under appreciated by Southern male activists. She became known as the "Queen mother" or "Grandmother of the American Civil Rights Movement" in the United States. Martin Luther King, Jr. commonly referred to Clark as "The Mother of the Movement." Clark's argument for her position in the civil rights movement was one that claimed "knowledge could empower marginalized groups in ways that formal legal equality couldn't." Educator & Civil Rights activist Septima Poinsette Clark was notable for establishing “Citizenship Schools” throughout the South. The schools taught disenfranchised African Americans the skills to pass literacy tests required for voting by Southern states. Clark is most famous for establishing "Citizenship Schools" teaching reading to adults throughout the Deep South, in hopes of carrying on a tradition. The creation of citizenship schools came as a result of Septima Clark's teaching of adult literacy courses throughout the interwar years. While the project served to increase literacy, it also served as a means to empower Black communities. Her teaching approach was very specific in making sure her students felt invested in what they learning, so she connected the politics of the movement to the needs of the people. She was not only teaching literacy, but also citizenship rights. Clark’s goals of the schools were to provide: self-pride, cultural-pride, literacy, and a sense of one’s citizenship rights. She was recruiting the rural communities to get involved with the movement. Citizenship schools were frequently taught in the back room of a shop so as to elude the violence of racist whites. The teachers of citizenship schools were often people who had learned to read as adults as well, as one of the primary goals of the citizenship schools was to develop more local leaders for people's movements. Teaching people how to read helped countless Black Southerners push for the right to vote, but beyond that, it developed leaders across the country that would help push the civil rights movement long after 1964. In 1958, 37 adults were able to pass the voter registration test as a result of the first session of community schools. By 1969, about 700,000 African-Americans became registered voters thanks to Clark's dedication to the movement. The citizenship schools are just one example of the empowerment strategy for developing leaders that was core to the civil rights movement in the South. The citizenship schools are also seen as a form of support to Martin Luther King, Jr. in his non-violent civil rights movement.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) holds a series of panel discussions on homosexuality, largely at the instigation of Charles Socarides, who supports and promotes the disease theory.

In England, Mary Wilson became the first woman sentenced to death for murdering two husbands. She gave them both phosphorus.

1959

First reports of permanent motor dysfunction linked to neuroleptics, later named tardive dyskinesia.

Although Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, insisted that medical training was not necessary to perform psychoanalysis, the medical profession took over the field and locked psychologists out.

The Social Work Curriculum Study, by Werner W Boehm, director and coordinator, is pub-lished by the Council on Social Work Education. The 13-volume study is a "milestone in the development of effective educational programs for professions."

The UN General Assembly issued, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, covering children's rights, maternal protection, health, adequate food, shelter and education, was adopted by the General Assembly in 1959 as a milestone in the commitment of world governments to focus on the needs of children — an issue once considered peripheral to development, but serving as a moral, rather than legally binding framework.

R.D. Laing publishes The Divided Self

“Breakdown,” by Robert G. Dahl.

“Beyond Shadows: A Minister and Mental Health,” by Robert Frederick West.

“My Fight for Sanity.” London, by Judith Kruger.

The 1959 White House Conference on Children and Youth lead the way for UN Assembly to adopt Declaration of the Rights of the Child, endorsed in 1960 by Golden Anniversary White House Conference on Children and Youth.

“The Taste of Ashes—An Autobiography,” by Bill Stern and Oscar Fraley.

“Cynicism and Realism of a Psychotic,” by John L. Schmacher.

“Prodigal Shepherd,” by Father Ralph Pfau.

Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language. She popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term "debugging" for fixing computer glitches (inspired by an actual moth removed from the computer). Owing to the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as "Amazing Grace". The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) is named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC. In the spring of 1959, a two-day conference known as the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL) brought together computer experts from industry and government. Hopper served as the technical consultant to the committee, and many of her former employees served on the short-term committee that defined the new language COBOL (an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language). The new language extended Hopper's FLOW-MATIC language with some ideas from the IBM equivalent, COMTRAN. Hopper's belief that programs should be written in a language that was close to English (rather than in machine code or in languages close to machine code, such as assembly languages) was captured in the new business language, and COBOL went on to be the most ubiquitous business language to date.

1960's

Federal agencies devoted to addiction research are founded. The American Medical Association formally recognizes alcoholism as a disease and the insurance industry begins to underwrite addiction treatment.

In the 1960s, J.O. Andy of University of Mississippi at Jackson conducted psychosurgery on African-American children as young as age five who were diagnosed as aggressive and hyperactive.

Conventional antipsychotic drugs, such as haloperidol, were first used to control outward (“positive”) symptoms of psychosis, bringing a significant measure of calm and order to previously noisy and chaotic psychiatric wards.

Lithium revolutionized the treatment of manic depression.

Aaron T. Beck developed cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy (CT) is a type of psychotherapy developed by American psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck. CT is one of the therapeutic approaches within the larger group of cognitive behavioral therapies (CBT) and was first expounded by Beck in the 1960s. Cognitive therapy is based on the cognitive model, which states that thoughts, feelings and behavior are all connected, and that individuals can move toward overcoming difficulties and meeting their goals by identifying and changing unhelpful or inaccurate thinking, problematic behavior, and distressing emotional responses. This involves the individual working collaboratively with the therapist to develop skills for testing and modifying beliefs, identifying distorted thinking, relating to others in different ways, and changing behaviors. A tailored cognitive case conceptualization is developed by the cognitive therapist as a roadmap to understand the individual's internal reality, select appropriate interventions and identify areas of distress. Therapy may consist of testing the assumptions which one makes and looking for new information that could help shift the assumptions in a way that leads to different emotional or behavioral reactions. Change may begin by targeting thoughts (to change emotion and behavior), behavior (to change feelings and thoughts), or the individual's goals (by identifying thoughts, feelings or behavior that conflict with the goals). Beck initially focused on depression and developed a list of "errors" in thinking that he proposed could maintain depression, including arbitrary inference, selective abstraction, over-generalization, and magnification (of negatives) and minimization (of positives). As an example of how CT works might work: Having made a mistake at work, a man may believe, "I'm useless and can't do anything right at work." He may then focus on the mistake (which he takes as evidence that his belief is true), and his thoughts about being "useless" are likely to lead to negative emotion (frustration, sadness, hopelessness). Given these thoughts and feelings, he may then begin to avoid challenges at work, which is behavior that could provide even more evidence for him that his belief is true. As a result, any adaptive response and further constructive consequences become unlikely, and he may focus even more on any mistakes he may make, which serve to reinforce the original belief of being "useless." In therapy, this example could be identified as a self-fulfilling prophecy or "problem cycle," and the efforts of the therapist and client would be directed at working together to explore and shift this cycle. People who are working with a cognitive therapist often practice the use of more flexible ways to think and respond, learning to ask themselves whether their thoughts are completely true, and whether those thoughts are helping them to meet their goals. Thoughts that do not meet this description may then be shifted to something more accurate or helpful, leading to more positive emotion, more desirable behavior, and movement toward the person's goals. Cognitive therapy takes a skill-building approach, where the therapist helps the person to learn and practice these skills independently, eventually "becoming his or her own therapist." Becoming disillusioned with long-term psychodynamic approaches based on gaining insight into unconscious emotions and drives, Beck came to the conclusion that the way in which his clients perceived, interpreted and attributed meaning in their daily lives—a process scientifically known as cognition—was a key to therapy. Albert Ellis was working on similar ideas from a different perspective, in developing his Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). Beck outlined his approach in Depression: Causes and Treatment in 1967. He later expanded his focus to include anxiety disorders, in Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders in 1976, and other disorders and problems. He also introduced a focus on the underlying "schema"—the fundamental underlying ways in which people process information—about the self, the world or the future. The new cognitive approach came into conflict with the behaviorism ascendant at the time, which denied that talk of mental causes was scientific or meaningful, rather than simply assessing stimuli and behavioral responses. However, the 1970s saw a general "cognitive revolution" in psychology. Behavioral modification techniques and cognitive therapy techniques became joined together, giving rise to cognitive behavioral therapy. Although cognitive therapy has always included some behavioral components, advocates of Beck's particular approach seek to maintain and establish its integrity as a distinct, clearly standardized form of cognitive behavioral therapy in which the cognitive shift is the key mechanism of change. Precursors of certain fundamental aspects of cognitive therapy have been identified in various ancient philosophical traditions, particularly Stoicism. For example, Beck's original treatment manual for depression states, "The philosophical origins of cognitive therapy can be traced back to the Stoic philosophers". As cognitive therapy continued to grow in popularity, the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, a non-profit organization, was created to credential cognitive therapists, create a forum for members to share emerging research and interventions, and to educate consumer regarding cognitive therapy and related mental health issues. According to Beck's theory of the etiology of depression, depressed people acquire a negative schema of the world in childhood and adolescence; children and adolescents who experience depression acquire this negative schema earlier. Depressed people acquire such schemas through a loss of a parent, rejection by peers, bullying, criticism from teachers or parents, the depressive attitude of a parent and other negative events. When the person with such schemas encounters a situation that resembles the original conditions of the learned schema in some way, the negative schemas of the person are activated. Beck's negative triad holds that depressed people have negative thoughts about themselves, their experiences in the world, and the future. For instance, a depressed person might think, "I didn't get the job because I'm terrible at interviews. Interviewers never like me, and no one will ever want to hire me." In the same situation, a person who is not depressed might think, "The interviewer wasn't paying much attention to me. Maybe she already had someone else in mind for the job. Next time I'll have better luck, and I'll get a job soon." Beck also identified a number of other cognitive distortions, which can contribute to depression, including the following: arbitrary inference, selective abstraction, overgeneralization, magnification and minimization. In 2008 Beck proposed an integrative developmental model of depression that aims to incorporate research in genetics and neuroscience of depression.

By making a coalition with Al-Anon programs, Rainbow Retreat (Phoenix, AZ) and Haven House (Pasadena, CA founded in 1964) are treating battered women married to alcoholic men. Between 1964 and 1972, Haven House shelters over 1,000 women and children.

The criminal justice system conceives of crisis intervention as a human program to aid police, courts, and victims. Arrest is inappropriate for solving the complex social and psychological problems demonstrated in these "family squabbles." Police officers become counselor and mediators trained in the skills of crisis intervention. Couples can then be referred to the appropriate social or psychiatric agency. By the time the battered women's movement develops, family courts and psychiatric and social work approaches reduce these criminal assaults to problems of individual or social pathology. The same would later apply to the growing mental patients movement.

In the mid-1960’s, many seriously mentally ill people are removed from institutions. In the United States they are directed toward local mental health homes and facilities. The number of institutionalized mentally ill people in the United States will drop from a peak of 560,000 to just over 130,000 in 1980. Some of this deinstitutionalization is possible because of anti-psychotic drugs, which allow many psychotic patients to live more successfully and independently. However, many people suffering from mental illness become homeless because of inadequate housing and follow-up care.

1960

Congress passes the Social Security Amendments of 1960, eliminating the restriction that disabled workers receiving Social Security Disability Insurance benefits must be aged 50 or older.

French physicians describe a potentially fatal toxic reaction to neuroleptics, later named neuroleptic malignant syndrome.

The (American) National Association for Down Syndrome (originally incorporated as the Mongoloid Development Council), the oldest Down Syndrome parent organization in the United States, was founded by Kathryn McGee, whose daughter Tricia had Down Syndrome.

Inclusion International founded and fights world-wide for human rights and social justice for people with intellectual disability and their families and is a close partner of the United Nations and its agencies.

A study by E. Morton Jellinek proposed the earliest version of the modern disease theory of alcoholism.

The first benzodiazepine, chlordiazepoxide, under the trade name Librium was introduced. Scientists at the American pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-LaRoche develop the benzodiazepines chlordiazepoxide (Librium ®)

The Food and Drug Administration approves birth control pills. Women now earn only 60 cents for every dollar earned by men, a decline since 1955. Women of color earn only 42 cents.

Kurt Freund uses pharmacological aversion therapy to 'cure' homosexuality.

The National Committee for Day Care is established to promote day care as an essential part of child welfare services and to develop standards of care.

Newburgh, New York, legislates 13 restrictive work requirements for welfare recipients, precipitating a nationwide retrogression in public welfare.

The first Paralympic Games, under the auspices of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) are held in Rome, Italy.

Psychiatrist Marshall Schechter published a study claiming that adopted children were 100 times more likely than their non-adopted counterparts to show up in clinical populations. This sparked a vigorous debate about whether adoptive kinship was itself a risk factor for mental disturbance and illness and inspired a new round of studies into the psychopathology of adoption.

Freedom Riders violate white only rules for drinking fountains, waiting rooms, and restrooms.

“Out of the Depths,” by Anton T. Boisen.

“I Can't Forget,” by Eloise Davenport.

“Living with Schizophrenia.” Canadian Medical Association Journal, 82, 218-222, by Norma McDonald.

“To Bedlam & Part Way Back,” by Anne Sexton.

“In a Forest Dark,” by Harry Feldman.

“The Harvard Psylocibin Project,” conducted by Leary, T. and Alpert, R. concludes in 1962.

In England, Wendy Lewis (19) became the first woman to walk the 891 miles from John O'Groats to Land's End. She did it in 17 days and 7 hours.

1961

The Council of Europe is a regional intergovernmental organization consisting of 45 countries. It aims to defend human rights, parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. All members of the European Union also belong to the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe has not adopted any specific human rights treaty on persons with disabilities, but created an important treaty that includes the protection of disabilities rights: European Social Charter (article 15). The Charter works as the counterpart to the Convention addressing social and economic rights, such as the right to work, or the right to social security. The Charter was the first human rights treaty to explicitly mention disability.

Biographer Jeffrey Meyers notes that Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway was at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and confirms he was treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as many as 15 times in December 1960, then in January 1961 he was "released in ruins." Three months later in April 1961 his wife Mary and a local doctor, George Saviers returned Hemingway to the Mayo Clinic for more electro shock treatments. He was released in late June and arrived home in Ketchum, Idaho on June 30. Two days later, in the early morning hours of July 2, 1961, Hemingway "quite deliberately" shot himself with his favorite shotgun. He unlocked the basement storeroom where his guns were kept, went upstairs to the front entrance foyer of their Ketchum home, and "pushed two shells into the twelve-gauge Boss shotgun ...put the end of the barrel into his mouth, pulled the trigger and blew out his brains." Hemingway had said, "What these shock doctors don't know is about writers...and what they do to them...What is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient."

“The Myth of Mental Illness,” by Thomas Szasz. Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz's book, The Myth of Mental Illness, argues that there is no such disease as schizophrenia. Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz's book, The Myth of Mental Illness, amplifies earlier assertions such as those by Erving Goffman that mental 'disease' is a metaphor, argues that psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia do not exist.

John Berry introduced the importance of cross-cultural research bringing diversity into the forefront of psychological research and application.

Carl Rogers published ‘On Becoming a Person,’ marking a powerful change in how treatment for mental health issues is conducted.The American Council of the Blind is formally organized.

President Kennedy appoints a special President's Panel on Mental Retardation, to investigate the status of people with mental issues and develop programs and reforms for its improvement.

President John Kennedy establishes the President's Commission on the Status of Women and appoints Eleanor Roosevelt as chairwoman. Fifty parallel state commissions are eventually established. The report issued by the Commission in 1963 documents substantial discrimination against women in the workplace and makes specific recommendations for improvement, including fair hiring practices, paid maternity leave, and affordable child care. Birth control pills are approved for marketing in the United States.

The 17-year-old Fred Fay, less than a year after his devastating spinal cord injury, launches his disability advocacy career by co-founding "Opening Doors," a counseling and information center.

Stevie Wonder discovered. Ronnie White (of The Miracles) discovers 11-year-old Steveland Judkins and arranges an audition with Motown CEO, Berry Gordy, who immediately signs the boy as "Little Stevie Wonder."

Constitutional Rights of the Mentally Ill, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 87th Cong., 1st Sess., March 28-30, 1961. Absent any consumer/patient rights movement, hearings included as witnesses only mental health and legal professionals, and no consumers/patients (although Dr. Thomas Szasz testified with a consumer-oriented approach).

The Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health’s 1961 Action for Mental Health study was a result of the Mental Health Study Act (1955). National Association of Mental Health in 1961, five years of participation on Congress’ Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Mental Health culminated in the release of the landmark report Action for Mental Health, an influential program for improving government mental health services. Through television programs, literature distribution, and other media, NAMH continued to educate the American public on mental health issues and promote mental health awareness.

First Accessibility Standard Published. The American Standards Association, later known as the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), publishes the first accessibility standard titled, Making Buildings Accessible to and Usable by the Physically Handicapped. Forty-nine states adapt accessibility legislation by 1973.The American National Standards Institute, Inc. (ANSI) publishes American Standard Specifications for Making Buildings Accessible to, and Usable by, the Physically Handicapped (the A117.1 Barrier Free Standard). This landmark document, produced by the University of Illinois, becomes the basis for all subsequent architectural access codes.

The Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health’s 1961 Action for Mental Health study was a result of the Mental Health Study Act of 1955.The Action for Mental Health, the final report of the Joint Commission on Mental Health and Illness, was transmitted to Congress. A 10-volume series, it assessed mental health conditions and resources throughout the U.S. “to arrive at a national program that would approach adequacy in meeting the individual needs of the mentally ill people of America.”

In England, in 1961 Enoch Powell made his 'water tower' speech at a meeting of the National Association for Mental Health (not yet called Mind), announcing the proposed closure of the large psychiatric institutions with the development of care in the community. Edith Morgan (then a member of the Association's staff) commented, 'We all sat up, looked at each other and wondered what had happened. Because we'd been struggling for years to get the idea of community care and the eventual closure of mental hospitals on the map and here it was offered to us on a plate'.

“Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates.” New York: Anchor Books. Goffman, E. Another critic of the mental health establishment's approach, Goffman claims that most people in mental hospitals exhibit their psychotic symptoms and behavior as a direct result of being hospitalized.

“Madness and Civilization,” by Michel Foucault

“Self and Others,” Pelican Books. Laing, R.D.

Eric Berne introduced transactional analysis in Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy.

The Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Control Act (PL 87-274, 75 Stat. 572), which recognizes economic and social factors leading to crime, is passed by Congress. The act authorizes grant funds for demonstration projects for comprehensive delinquency programs in ghettos.

The Academy of Certified Social Workers is incorporated by NASW to promote standards for professional social work practice and the protection of social welfare clients. It requires a master of social work degree and two years of supervised practice by an Academy of Certified Social Workers member.

“Sweetheart, I Have Been to School,” by Mary Noone (pseudonym).

“The Ha-Ha,” by Jennifer Dawson.

“Shock Treatment,” by Winfred Van Atta.

“Faces in the Water,” by Janet Frame.

“In the Forests of the Night.” London. by S. Martel.

“Pencil Shavings—Memoirs.” Cambridge, by Olive Higgins Prouty.

Dammasch State Hospital opens and Oregon establishes a state Mental Health Division.

1962

422,000 individuals were hospitalized for psychiatric care in the United States.

The President's Committee on Employment of the Physically Handicapped is renamed the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped, reflecting its increased interest in employment issues affecting people with cognitive disabilities and mental illness.

Judge Bazelon, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, wrote for the majority that psychologists who are appropriately qualified can testify in court as experts in mental disorder. Forensic psychology begins.

The National Mental Health Association convened the National Leadership Conference on Action for Mental Health, in which 100 national voluntary organizations participated.  

The first child abuse reporting statutes were explored at a national conference sponsored by the federal Department of Health, federal Department of Education, and the Children's Bureau.

The 1962 Social Security Amendments (Public Law 87-543) required each state to make child welfare services available to all children. It further required states to provide coordination between child welfare services (under Title IV-B) and social services (under Title IV-A, or the Social Services program), which served families on welfare. The law also revised the definition of “child welfare services” to include the prevention and remedy of child abuse.

Ed Roberts sued to gain admission to the University of California. Ed Roberts Fights for Admission to University. Ed Roberts, a young man with polio, enrolls at the University of California, Berkeley. After his admission is rejected, he fights to get the decision overturned. Edward V. Roberts becomes the first severely disabled student at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1970, he formed a group on campus called the Rolling Quads and one year after that, Ed and his associates established the nation’s first Center for Independent Living (CIL). 15 years after being told he was “too disabled to work”, Ed was appointed as the head of Vocational Rehabilitation for California, and established 9 CILs in the state in 1975. Today there are over 300 CILs nationwide. Ed is known as the father of the independent living movement.

California Mental Hygiene Department determines that chlorpromazine and other neuroleptics prolong hospitalization.

NIMH says education does not mean teaching students to know; it means teaching them to behave. There was a Governors conference call where funding of this was proposed, and they concluded that if parents resisted they should be forced into it.

James Meredith sued to become the first black person to attend the University of Mississippi.

President Kennedy orders an end to discrimination in public housing.

“The Other America,” by Michael Harrington, is published, awakening the United States to the problem of poverty.

The Manpower Development and Training Act (PL 87-415) is passed by Congress to provide government financing of training to move unemployed and displaced workers into new fields.

A Special Conference on child abuse, led by Katherine Oettinger, chief of the Children's Bureau of the Social Security Administration, generated proposals for new laws requiring doctors to notify law enforcement and most states adopted such legislation.

In New York, domestic violence cases are transferred from Criminal Court to Family Court where only civil procedures apply. The husband never faces the harsher penalties he would suffer if found guilty in Criminal Court for assaulting a stranger. 

Battered Child Syndrome not recognized by middle class, but recognized in lower class so poor children were rescued from bad, incompetent parents. “There is no indication that the ancient ritual of child beating has been mitigated by modern theories of child raising. Parents continue to kick and punch their children, twist their arms, beat them with hammers or the buckle end of belts, burn them with cigarettes or electric irons, and scald them with whatever happens to be on the stove.” Gathering documentation from 71 hospitals, a University of Colorado team headed by Pediatrician C. Henry Kempe found 302 battered-child cases in a single year; 33 of the children died, 85 suffered permanent brain damage. An accompanying Journal editorial predicts that when statistics on the battered-child syndrome are complete, “It is likely that it will be found to be a more frequent cause of death than such well-recognized and thoroughly studied diseases as leukemia, cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy.” In 1961 Dr. C. Henry Kempe, a pediatric radiologist, and his associates proposed the term “battered child syndrome” at a symposium on the problem of child abuse held under the auspices of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The term refers to the collection of injuries sustained by a child as a result of repeated mistreatment or beatings. The following year The Journal of the American Medical Association published the landmark article “The Battered Child Syndrome” (C. Henry Kempe et al., vol. 181, no. 17, July 7, 1962). The term “battered child syndrome” developed into “maltreatment,” encompassing not only physical assault but other forms of abuse, such as malnourishment, failure to thrive, medical neglect, and sexual and emotional abuse. Dr. Kempe had also proposed that physicians be required to report child abuse. According to the National Association of Counsel for Children, by 1967, after Dr. Kempe's findings had gained general acceptance among health and welfare workers and the public, forty-four states had passed legislation that required the reporting of child abuse to official agencies, and the remaining six states had voluntary reporting laws. This was one of the most rapidly accepted pieces of legislation in American history. Initially only doctors were required to report and then only in cases of “serious physical injury” or “non-accidental injury.” Today all the states have laws that require most professionals who serve children to report all forms of suspected abuse and either require or permit any citizen to report child abuse. One of the reasons for the lack of prosecution of early child abuse cases was the difficulty in determining whether a physical injury was a case of deliberate assault or an accident. In recent years, however, doctors of pediatric radiology have been able to determine the incidence of repeated child abuse through sophisticated developments in X-ray technology. These advances have allowed radiologists to see more clearly such things as subdural hematomas (blood clots around the brain resulting from blows to the head) and abnormal fractures. This brought about more recognition in the medical community of the widespread incidence of child abuse, along with growing public condemnation of abuse.

Albert Ellis introduces rational-emotive therapy, which uncovers irrational beliefs that lead to emotional distress and reformulates those beliefs through a technique called "disputing."

On the basis of a study using 100 gay male “patients,” American psychiatrist Irving Bieber and his associates conclude that heterosexuality is the biological norm and homosexuality is a pathological deviation. They consider only male homosexuality, which they attribute to a pathologically close relationship with one’s mother. They see the “condition” as curable.

“Mental Hospital,” by Morton M. Hunt.

“The World is a Wedding,” by Bernard Kops.

“Nothing to Lose.” London, by Clare Marc Wallace.

1963

South Carolina passes the first statewide architectural access code.

Ed Roberts Initially Rejected by U.C. Berkeley. Ed Roberts, a young man with polio, enrolls at the University of California, Berkeley. After his admission is rejected, he fights to get the decision overturned, ultimately succeeding. Instead of a dormitory room, he lives in a converted wing of the Cowell Hospital, which can accommodate his 800 pound iron lung. medical clinic. John Hessler joins Ed Roberts at the University of California at Berkeley, other disabled students follow. Together they form the Rolling Quads to advocate for greater access on campus and in the surrounding community.

President John Kennedy, in a special address to Congress, calls for a reduction, “over a number of years and by hundreds of thousands, (in the number) of persons confined” to residential institutions, and he asks that methods be found “to retain in and return to the community the mentally ill and mentally retarded, and there to restore and revitalize their lives through better health programs and strengthened educational and rehabilitation services.” Passage of the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act, an outgrowth of President Kennedy’s message, began a new era in Federal support for mental health services. Though not labeled such at the time, this is a call for deinstitutionalization and increased community services to substitute for custodial institutional care. Congress passes the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Health Centers Construction Act of 1963, authorizing federal grants for the construction of public and private nonprofit community mental health centers. The act sets aside money for developing State Developmental Disabilities Councils, Protection and Advocacy Systems, and University Centers. In 1984 it is renamed the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act. Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act Amendments of 1965 - Established grant program to cover initial staffing costs for community mental health centers. Passage of the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act provides the first federal money for developing a network of community-based mental health services. Advocates for deinstitutionalization believe that people with mental illness will voluntarily seek out treatment at these facilities if they need it, although in practice this will not always be the case. The Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act (PL 88-164, 77 Stat. 282) is passed on October 31, authorizing appropriations to states that started significant development of community health and retardation services with single state agency administration arid advisory committees with consumer representation. Three weeks before his death, President Kennedy signs Public Law 88-164, the Community Mental Health Centers Act to substitute comprehensive community care for custodial institutional care and it authorized funding for developmental research centers in university affiliated facilities and community facilities for people with mental retardation; it was the first federal law directed to help people with developmental disabilites. Though not labeled such at the time, this is a call for deinstitutionalization and increased community services. The federal CMHC program was based on a seed-money concept. Local communities applied for federal funds that declined over several years (initially five years and then eight). Alternative funds, especially third-party payments, were expected to replace the declining federal grant. These programs were intended to serve catchment areas of between 75,000 and 200,000 individuals and provide five essential services: inpatient services, outpatient services, day treatment, emergency services, and consultation and education services. The country was divided into 3,000 catchment areas, and the hope in the 1960s was that the entire country would be covered by the mid-1970s. That did not come to pass. The Community Mental Health Centers Act (PL 88-164) passed by the U.S. Congress, creating a federally funded community mental health system nationwide. Services are facilities based and paid on a fee-for-service basis.

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Psychiatric Beds 1920 – 1960

"By the 1930s nearly 80 percent of its mental hospital beds were occupied by chronic patients. Chronicity, however, is a somewhat misleading term for the heterogeneous group that it described. The aged (over age sixty or sixty-five) constituted by far the single largest component. By 1920, for example, 18 percent of all first admissions to New York State mental hospitals were diagnosed as psychotic because of senility or arteriosclerosis; twenty years later the figure had risen to 31 percent. A decade later 40 percent of all first admissions were age sixty and over, compared with only 13.2 percent of the state population. The increase in the absolute number also reflected a change in age-specific admission rates. In their classic study of institutionalization rates over more than a century, Herbert Goldhamer and Andrew Marshall found that the greatest increase occurred in the older category. As late as 1958 nearly a third of all resident state hospital patients in the nation were over age sixty-five. The rising age distribution mirrored a different but related characteristic of the institutionalized–namely, the presence of large numbers of patients whose abnormal behavior reflected underlying physical causes. Even allowing for imprecise diagnoses and an imperfect statistical reporting system, it was quite evident that a significant proportion of the hospitalized population suffered from severe organic disorders for which there were no effective treatments. Of 49,116 first admissions in 1922 admitted because of various psychoses, 16,407 suffered from a variety of identifiable somatic conditions (senility, cerebral arteriosclerosis, paresis, Huntington’s chorea, brain tumors, and so on). Between 1922 and 1940 the proportion of such patients increased from 33.4 percent to 42.4 percent. Various forms of senility and paresis accounted for about half of all first admissions in 1946." http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/11/3/7.full.pdf+html?sid=d5cfb7b4-38f7-4e07-a544-df293670009

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Counterculture author Ken Kesey's best-selling novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is based on his experiences working in the psychiatric ward of a Veterans' Administration hospital. Kesey is motivated by the premise that the patients he sees don't really have mental illnesses; they simply behave in ways a rigid society is unwilling to accept. In the winter of 1963, Kirk Douglas returned to theater in the first stage production of Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Douglas starred as McMurphy, with a supporting cast that included Gene Wilder as Billy Bibbit, and Ed Ames as Chief Bromden. What should have been a triumphant return for Douglas and a theatrical success for Kesey’s novel proved to be a disaster, which was savaged by critics and closed after 11-weeks. In 1975, Kesey's book will be made into an influential movie starring Jack Nicholson as anti-authoritarian anti-hero Randle McMurphy.

The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) has grown to 134 pages listing 168 mental disorders in the DSM-II from the 112 mental disorders in its initial, 1952 edition.

Aaron T. Beck, one of the founders of cognitive behavioral therapy, published a paper on psychiatric diagnostic reliability. His review of nine different studies found rates of agreement between thirty-two and forty-two percent. These were not encouraging numbers, given that diagnostic reliability isn’t merely an academic issue: if psychiatrists can’t agree on a patient’s condition, then they can’t agree on the treatment of that condition, and, essentially, there’s no relationship between diagnosis and cure. In addition, research depends on the doctors’ ability to form homogeneous subject groups. How can you test the effectiveness of a new drug to treat depression if you can’t be sure that the person you’re testing is suffering from that disorder?

Six-week NIMH collaborative study concludes that neuroleptics are safe and effective “antischizophrenic” drugs.

Scientists at the American pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-LaRoche develop the benzodiazepines diazepam (Valium ®)

Alfred Bandura introduced the idea of Observational Learning on the development of personality.

Lawrence Kolberg introduced his ideas for the sequencing of morality development.

May 28, 1963. Woolworth sit-in, Jackson, MS. "This was the most violently attacked sit-in during the 1960s. A huge mob gathered, with open police support while the three of us sat there for three hours. I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and the broken portions of glass sugar containers, and was burned with cigarettes." -- John Salter (Hunter Bear) seated in photo with Joan Trumpauer (now Mulholland), and Anne Moody (Coming of Age in Mississippi). More on sit-ins: http://zinnedproject.org/tag/sit-in/ Learn more about the Jackson sit-in the "We Shall Not Be Moved" book and website here: http://www.notbemoved.com/ and the CRM-Vets website: http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960sitins, and from the book Coming of Age in Mississippi. Photo: by Fred Blackwell, Image ID #2381, Wisconsin Historical Society. — with sit in jackson.

In January, Ola Mae Quarterman-Clemons, an African-American woman, at the age of eighteen refused to sit on the back of the bus and spent the next thirty days in jail. She sat in the front seat of an Albany, Georgia bus, refused to move on the command of the driver, was arrested by a policeman and convicted in city court for using “obscene” language. She is known as the “Rosa Parks of Albany.” The driver testified that she had told him: “I paid my damn twenty cents, and I can sit where I want.” Subsequently Miss Quarterman told a federal court, to which her case had gone on appeal, that she had used the word “damn” in relation to her twenty cents, not in relation to the driver. (Anywhere but in the Deep South a judge might have thought it incredible that she should be forced to defend her words by making such a distinction.) The city's counsel insisted her race had nothing to do with her arrest, and in cross-examination asked if it were not true that the cause of her arrest was her “vulgar language.” She replied softly, “That's what they said.” Ola Mae Clemons is a quiet, dignified woman who lives in an apartment on a quiet street in Albany, Georgia. In 1963 at the age of nineteen, Ola Mae Quarterman refused to sit on the back of the bus in that same town, and spent the next thirty days in jail. As she says, “I paid my damn dime…. I can sit where I want.” She is known as the “Rosa Parks ofAlbany.” A dedicated civil rights activist, she spent the next two years involved in civil rights organizing. She was expelled from Albany State University for her participation in civil rights activism. In 1965, following a troubled marriage and the birth of her child, she experienced what she described as a “nervous breakdown.” At the age of twenty-one, Ms. Clemons ended up in Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she remained for thirty-five years. It is notable that her extended stay occurred during a period of massive deinstitutionalization, yet this quiet, nonviolent woman remained at the facility. She missed out on raising her child, enjoying the changes that her activism created and the opportunity to maintain connections with her activist friends. Ms. Clemons reports that she had nearly one hundred shock treatments during her stay at the hospital. When asked about her time at Central State Hospital, Ms. Clemons described her time there as “exciting times” since she was a “volunteer” [voluntary] patient and had ground priviledges. Since her release from the hospital in 1998, she participates in day treatment and case management services and is frequently interviewed by the press regarding her civil rights history.

Letter From A Birmingham Jail April 16, 1963 “All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation … ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful.”

The Civil Rights March on Washington is held at the peak of the civil rights coalition movement. Martin Luther King "I Have A Dream" speech, Washington

Annie Dodge Wauneka, born on April 11, 1910. She was an influential member of the Navajo nation, most notably as a public health proponent. As a member of the Navajo Nation Council, she led the Health and Welfare Committee in fighting the spread of tuberculosis in the 1950s. Throughout her career, Wauneka tirelessly worked to improve healthcare, sanitation, and welfare among the Navajo through education & outreach. (Photo: President Lyndon B. Johnson speaks from podium as Annie Dodge Wauneka is presented with the Medal of Freedom, 1963. LBJ Presidential Library.)

Betty Friedan publishes her highly influential book The Feminine Mystique, which describes the dissatisfaction felt by middle-class American housewives with the narrow role imposed on them by society. It captures the discontent of a whole generation of middle class women who are struggling between aspirations for fulfillment and an ideology that assigns them to the home. The book becomes a best-seller and a seminal work of the women’s liberation movement and galvanizes the modern women's rights movement.

The report issued by the President's Commission on the Status of Women documents discrimination against women in virtually every area of American life. It makes 24 specific recommendations, some surprisingly far-sighted (example: community property in marriages). 64,000 copies are sold in less than a year and talk of women's rights is again respectable.

Congress passes the Equal Pay Act, enacting the first federal law prohibiting sexual discrimination, making it illegal for employers to pay a woman less than what a man would receive for the same job.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development established as part of the National Institutes of Health.

Medard Boss founded Daseinsanalysis. Daseinsanalysis (German: Daseinsanalyse) is an existentialist approach to psychoanalysis. It was developed by Ludwig Binswanger who heavily borrowed from Heidegger and applied his concepts such as Being-in-the-world to psychotherapy. Daseinsanalysis was furthered by Medard Boss who was inspired by Husserl and thus applied existential and phenomenological frameworks to finding meaning, especially in dream analysis.

U.S. Children's Bureau moved from Social Security Administration to Welfare Administration.

“No Man Stands Alone—The True Story of Barney Ross,” by Barney Ross.

“And Always Tomorrow,” by Sarah E. Lorenz.

“I Was a Mental Statistic,” by Edward X. Lane

“The Bell Jar,” by Sylvia Plath.

In England, Peeresses admitted to the House of Lords.

1964

Lyndon B. Johnson' State of the Union Address included: "Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined" - many Americans live on the outskirts of hope - some because of their poverty, and some because of their colour, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity. This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America." Making poverty a national concern set in motion a series of bills and acts, creating programs such as Head Start, food stamps, work study, Medicare and Medicaid, which still exist today. Lyndon B. Johnson's Special Message to Congress: "Because it is right, because it is wise, and because, for the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty, I submit, for the consideration of the Congress and the country, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964." The Economic Opportunity Act (PL 88452, 78 Stat. 5088) is passed by Congress on August 20, establishing the Office of Economic Opportunity and calling for the creation of Volunteers in Service to America, Job Corps, Upward Bound, Neighborhood Youth Corps, Operation Head Start, and Community Action programs.

The Civil Rights Act is passed prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin and creed. Later, gender was added as a protected class. While this act helps end discrimination against African Americans and women in the workplace, it does not make any provision for people with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities still lack opportunities to participate in and be contributing members of society, are denied access to employment, and are discriminated against based on disability. Congress passes and President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, and creed -- later, gender was added as a protected class. The Civil Rights Act outlaws discrimination on the basis of race in public accommodations and employment, as well as in federally assisted programs. It will become a model for subsequent disability rights legislation. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act bars discrimination in employment on the basis of race and sex. At the same time it establishes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate complaints and impose penalties. The Civil Rights Act (PL 88-352, 78 Stat. 241) is passed by Congress on July 2 and results in significant changes for racial and ethnic groups in institutional health care programs and proce-dures to ensure equal treatment, in policies to eliminate discrimination in employment and pre-employment, and in policies to open entry opportunities in particular occupations.

Photo: Photo (inset): Courtesy of Zellie Rainey Orr

In the summer of 1964—Freedom Summer—more than 1,000 Northern white students traveled for the first time into the Deep South. It was nearly a year since Martin Luther King’s now iconic “I Have A Dream,” speech but back then much of the nation was still either unaware of or uninterested in the ongoing campaign of legal terrorism visited by whites on southern blacks. Freedom Summer, mainly a voter registration project, aimed to change that by waging nonviolence and using young, white bodies to prick the nation’s conscience.

The Food Stamp Act (PL 88-525, 785 Stat. 703) is passed on August 31 to provide cooperative federal-state food assistance programs for improved levels of nutrition in low-income households.

Patsy Mink (D-HI) is the first Asian-American female elected to the U.S. Congress.

Neuroleptics found to impair learning in animals and humans.

Neurotics Anonymous created in Washington, D.C. by Grover Boydston, on the model of Alcoholics Anonymous

M. P. Feldman and M. K. MacCulloch report on the use of electric shock aversion therapy in the treatment of homosexuality.

An article in the Archives of General Psychiatry written by Snell, Rosenwald, and Robey suggests that battered wives are like the wives of alcoholics, and that these wives have a masochistic need that their husbands' aggression fulfills. 

The Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health was issued and it documented that smoking cigarettes caused cancer and other serious diseases.

23 unmarried mothers per 1000 in mental hospitals. reason: pregnant.

“I never promised you a rose garden.” New York: Signet. Greenberg, J.

Ronald David Laing published Sanity, Madness and the Family, claiming that the roots of schizophrenia lie in the "family nexus", where people play dark games with each other. “Sanity, Madness and the Family,” by R.D. Laing & Aaron Esterson

Stanley Milgram publishes Obedience to Authority

Emergence of humanistic psychology as "third force" in psychology

Baudot Merged with TTY Communication. In California, deaf orthodontist Dr. James C. Marsters of Pasadena sends a teletype machine (TTY) to deaf scientist Robert Weitbrecht, asking him to find a way to attach the TTY to the telephone system. Weitbrecht modifies an acoustic coupler, giving birth to "Baudot," a code that is still used in TTY communication. Robert H. Weitbrecht invents the “acoustic coupler,” forerunner of the telephone modem, enabling teletypewriter messages to be sent via standard telephone lines. This invention makes possible the widespread use of teletypewriters for the deaf (TDD's, now called TTY's), offering deaf and hard-of-hearing people access to the telephone system.

Oral Deaf Education Labeled 'Failure‘. Congress issues the Babbidge Report on oral deaf education and concludes that it has been a "dismal failure." Many in the deaf community applaud this report, and look at it as a long-over due acknowledgment of the superiority of manual communication and education.

H. David Kirk published "Shared Fate: A Theory of Adoption and Mental Health", the first book to make adoption a serious issue in the sociological literature on family life and mental health.

While the U.S. worked with Japan to create the World Trade Organization, the Germans remained cut off.

“Chastise Me with Scorpions,” by Laura Rhodes and Lucy Freeman.

“Diary of a Paranoiac,” by Edwin Mumford.

“The Divided Self: The Healing of a Nervous Disorder.” London, by Walter Steward Spencer [W. S. Stewart].

“God Gets in the Way of a Sailor,” by H. G. Thach.

“Truth Forever on the Scaffold: I Tried to Help My Country,” by James Ross.

“Episode: Report on the Accident Inside My Skull,” by E. Hodgins.

“Beyond All Reason.” London, by Morag Coate.

“The White Shirts,” by E. Field.

1965

Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 - Authorized federal aid to states and localities for educating deprived children, including children with disabilities. Federal Funds were authorized to do “interventions” and social workers, social agencies, and specialists all got involved. All could use the schoolhouse for anything they wanted to try and do and schools became non-consentual experimental hot beds. The Elementary and Secondary Education t (PL 89-10, 79 Stat. 27) is passed on April 11, initiating the first major infusion of federal funds into the US educational system. The act provides aid to economically disadvantaged children, counseling and guidance services, community education, and planning.

The Older Americans Act (PL 89-73, 79 Stat. 218) is passed by Congress on July 14, creating the Administration on Aging, the first central body within the federal government dealing with aging.

The Social Security Amendments ("Medicare Act"; FL. 89-97,79 Stat. 286) are enacted on July 30 as Title XVIII of the Security Act. The amendments provide federal health insurance benefits for aged (older than 65 years) and entitled people to benefits under Title 11. The amendments establish a compulsory hospital-based program for aged people; a voluntary supplemental plan to provide physicians and other health services; and an expanded medical assistance program (Medicaid) for needy and medically needy aged, blind, and disabled people and their families. Social Security Act Amendments of 1965 - Established Medicaid program for elderly people and for blind persons and other persons with disabilities. Medicare and Medicaid were established through passage of the Social Security Amendments of 1965, providing federally subsidized health care to disabled and elderly Americans covered by the Social Security program. These amendments changed the definition of disability under Social Security Disability Insurance program from “of long continued and indefinite duration” to “expected to last for not less than 12 months.” Medicaid Help for Low-Income and Disabled. Title XIX (19) of the Social Security Act creates a cooperative federal/state entitlement program, known as Medicaid, that pays medical costs for certain individuals with disabilities and families with low incomes. Medicaid, enacted on July 30 as Title XIX of the Social Security Act, provides federal grants to match state programs of hospital and medical services for welfare recipients and medically indigent populations.

During the mid-1960’s NIMH launched an extensive attack on special mental health problems. Established were centers for child and family mental health, crime and delinquency, minority group mental health problems, schizophrenia, urban problems, and later, rape, aging, and technical assistance to victims of natural disasters.

The CMHC (Community Mental Health Center) Act Amendments of 1965, (P.L. 91-211), were enacted and included the following major provisions: Construction and staffing grants to centers were extended and facilities that served those with alcohol and substance abuse disorders were made eligible to receive these grants. Grants were provided to support the initiation and development of mental health services in poverty-stricken areas. A new program of grants was established to support further development of children’s services. The mental health centers staffing amendments authorized grants to help pay the salaries of professional and technical personnel in Community Mental Health Centers.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law in the U.S., and in addition to providing sweeping protections for minority voting rights (triggering riots), it allowed those with various disabilities to receive assistance "by a person of the voter's choice", as long as that person was not the disabled voter's boss or union agent.

Executive Order 11375 expands President Lyndon Johnson's affirmative action policy of 1965 to cover discrimination based on gender. As a result, federal agencies and contractors must take active measures to ensure that women as well as minorities enjoy the same educational and employment opportunities as white males.

Congress passes laws prohibiting discrimination against women in employment and requiring equal pay for equal work. The traditional marriage contract, however, remains legally intact in America. 

The Joint Commission on Mental Health of Children was established by Congress to recommend national action for child mental health.

One-year follow-up of NIMH collaborative study finds drug-treated patients more likely than placebo patients to be rehospitalized.

Vocational Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1965 This act expanded the federal-state funding ratio to 75-25. It provided for 6 and 18 month extended evaluations to determine if more severely handicapped individuals might benefit from vocational rehabilitation services, thereby making it possible to provide many services prior to formal acceptance into a program. The act eliminated economic need for any vocational rehabilitation service (states still had the option of employing economic need tests for training and physical restoration). The act also extended eligibility to a new category called behavior disorder if so diagnosed by a psychologist or psychiatrist. This made it possible to serve public offenders, those with drug and alcohol problems, and to set up model cities programs to work with the socially disadvantaged. This proved to be problematic in that the limited resources of the state-federal rehabilitation program were significantly directed toward these groups at the apparent expense of more traditional clientele. Vocational Rehabilitation Amendments of 1965 are passed, authorizing federal governments for the construction of rehabilitation centers, expanding existing vocational rehabilitation programs, and creating the National Commission on Architectural Barriers to Rehabilitation of the Handicapped.

The National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, was established by the U.S. Congress.

Bernard Bragg, a deaf actor and mime, stars in “The Silent Man", a TV program in California. Bragg, a graduate of the Fanwood School for the Deaf in White Plains, New York was a co-founder of the National Theater of the Deaf and has toured America with his one-man show.

William C. Stokoe, Carl Croneberg, and Dorothy Casterline publish A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles, establishing the legitimacy of American Sign Language and beginning the move away from oralism.

The Autism Society of America is founded by parents of children with autism in response to the lack of services, discrimination against children with autism, and the prevailing view of medical “experts” that autism is a result of poor parenting, as opposed to neurological disability.

Abe Fortas, a longtime proponent of children's and student rights, is appointed to the Supreme Court. Among many statements on behalf of children's rights, he wrote the majority opinion in Tinker v. Des Moines on behalf of children's right to free expression, along with In re Gault in support of children's right to due process. The Supreme Court took a distinctly different stance towards children's rights after he left in 1970.

Washington Mattachine Society adopts a resolution declaring that, “homosexuality is not a sickness.”

Edmund Bergler, a New York psychoanalytic psychiatrist, reverses the psychoanalytic position and declares homosexuality a disease. He maintains that there is no such think as a healthy homosexual; that every self-proclaimed bisexual is really a homosexual trying to establish an alibi; that homosexuals obliterate the personalities of their love objects; and that homosexuals suffer from deep inner depression. “Scratch a homosexual,” writes Bergler, “and you find a depressed neurotic.”

Bureau of Drug Abuse Control formed under the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Responsible for enforcing the Drug Abuse Control Amendment. Drug Abuse Control Amendment regulated, for the first time, the sale and possession of stimulants, depressants, and hallucinogens. It restricted research into psychoactives such as LSD by requiring FDA approval.

In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court strikes down the one remaining state law prohibiting the use of contraceptives by married couples. Griswold v. Connecticut Supreme Court decision strikes down a state law that prohibited giving married people information, instruction, or medical advice on contraception. Griswold v. State of Connecticut (381 US. 479) holds against state fine of Planned Parenthood for providing contraceptive information to married people. It initiates a constitutional concept of privacy formulated by Thomas I. Emerson, which later leads to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

Abstracts for Social Workers is initiated by NASW under contract with the National Institute for Mental Health. (The journal is subsequently titled Social Work Research & Abstracts when a primary research journal is added in 1977 and retitled Social Work Abstracts when the two journals are separated in 1994.)

Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke Amendments (PL 89-239, 79 Stat. 926), or Regional Medical Programs, provide grants for planning to establish regular cooperative arrangements among medical schools, research institutions, and hospitals to meet local health needs. The amendments require broadly representative advisory committees and involve key social worker leadership.

The Academy of Certified Social Workers is promoted by NASW as a national standard-setting body for social work practice.

Closing the Gap in Social Work Manpower is published by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare in November; it projects escalating demands for social workers and delineates the master of social work and bachelor of social work classifications. It also plays an exceptional role in focusing labor force problems and advocating for the bachelor of social work as an entry professional classification.

NASW publishes the 15th edition of the Encyclopedia of Social Work, as a follow-on to the 14 editions of the Social Work Year Book.

Weeks v. Southern Bell marks a major triumph in the fight against restrictive labor laws and company regulations on the hours and conditions of women's work, opening many previously male-only jobs to females.

“Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason.” New York, NY: Vintage Books, by Foucault, M.

President Lyndon Johnson declares war on poverty and moves to provide training, housing, education, health care, and social benefits for the poor.

“Portrait of a Schizophrenic Nurse.” London, by Clare Marc Wallace.

The Los Angeles County Bureau of Adoptions launched the first organized program of single parent adoptions in order to locate homes for hard-to-place children with special needs.

“Memoirs of an Amnesiac,” by Oscar Levant.

“In Search of Sanity: The Journal of a Schizophrenic,” by Gregory Stefan.

“All the Hairs on My Head Hurt,” by Dressler La Marr [Jinxy R. Howell].

“Spy Wife,” by B. W. Powers and W. Diehl.

“Ward Seven: An Autobiographical Novel,” by Valeriy Tarsis. (trans. from 1965 Russian ed.).

1966

Dr. Robert Morgan: “In summary, even one or two ECT treatments risk limbic damage in the brain leading to retarded speed, coordination, handwriting, concentration, attention span, memory, response flexibility, retention, and re-education. On the psychological side, fear of ECT has produced stress ulcers, renal disease, confusion, amnesic withdrawal, and resistance to re-educative or psychological therapy. The research thus indicated that ECT was a slower-acting lobotomy with the added complications of shock-induced terror.”

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (article 26). This treaty lists several rights that are relevant to disability. Article 26 states that all people are equal before the law and have the right to equal protection of the law.

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (article 2) The Covenant does not explicit refer to disability. However, disability can be included under "other status" in article 2 (2), which calls for non-discrimination on any grounds such as race and color, and "other status".

The National Mental Health Association successfully advocated for inclusion of mandated mental heath services in Medicare.

The Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act (PL 89-793,80 Stat. 1438), passed by Congress on November 8, emphasizes total treatment and aftercare rather than criminal prosecution and fragmented efforts, providing pretrial civil commitment in the custody of the Surgeon General for treatment.

The Comprehensive Health Planning and Public Health Services Amendments of 1966 (PL 89749,80 Stat. 1180), passed by Congress on November 3, authorizes grants to support comprehensive state planning for health services, labor, and facilities. The Veteran's Readjustment Benefits Act (FL. 89-358, 80 Stat. 12) enhances service in the armed forces, extending higher education and providing vocational readjustment. It also emphasizes programs requiring veterans to make contributions to their own educational programs.

The Society for Hospital Social Work Directors is formed under the auspices of the American Hospital Association. (In 1993 the society changes its name to the Society for Social Work Administrators in Health Care to reflect changes in health care.)

Elementary and Secondary Education Act Amendments of 1966 - Created National Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children; created Bureau of Education for the Handicapped in U.S. Office of Education.

Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1966 - Established standards for employment of workers with disabilities, allowing for sub-minimum wages.

The National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded by a group of feminists including Betty Friedan. The largest women's rights group in the U.S., NOW seeks to end sexual discrimination, especially in the workplace, by means of legislative lobbying, litigation, and public demonstrations. Fifty state Commissions on the Status of Women convene in Washington, D.C., to report on their findings.

Beating, as cruel and inhumane treatment, becomes grounds for divorce in New York, but the plaintiff must establish that a "sufficient" number of beatings have taken place.

"The term 'gender identity' was used in a press release, November 21, 1966, to announce the new clinic for transsexuals at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was disseminated in the media worldwide, and soon entered the vernacular. “... gender identity is your own sense or conviction of maleness or femaleness," according to John Money.

A study in Chicago reveals that from September 1965 to March 1966, 46.1% of the major crimes perpetrated against women took place in the home. It also found that police response to domestic disturbance calls exceeded total response for murder, rape, aggravated assault, and other serious crimes.

Every state except Hawaii has passed child abuse report laws.

Despite the large population directly affected, alcohol abuse and alcoholism did not receive full recognition as a major public health problem until the mid-1960’s. The National Center for Prevention and Control of Alcoholism was established as part of NIMH. Four years later it became a division on its way to institute status.

Frederick C. Schreiber becomes the executive secretary of the National Association of the Deaf.

President Johnson establishes the President's Committee on Mental Retardation.

“Christmas in Purgatory” by Burton Blatt and Fred Kaplan, is published, documenting the appalling conditions at state institutions for people with developmental disabilities.

A research program on drug abuse was inaugurated with the establishment of the Center for Studies of Narcotic and Drug Abuse within NIMH. Division status followed in 1968, with institute status in 1972.

In 1966, Malcolm X is assassinated. Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little, but changed his name in a symbolic attempt to remove a last name which was inherited from the system of slavery. Malcolm X was a pivotal African American leader for black rights. He argued for black pride through voluntary black separatism, because he believed that African Americans had received enough injustices from white society, and needed to separate to gain strength and solidarity. He converted to the Nation of Islam, and later talked about the need to unite across races. However, there came to be much dissension among the Nation of Islam, and many believe that Malcolm X was assassinated by men in the dissenting group. Other people argue that the FBI was behind his death.

“Mishaps, Perhaps,” by C. Solomon.

“Woman in Two Worlds; a Personal Story of Psychological Experience,” by Wanda Martin.

Thomas Scheff's Being Mentally Ill

“Crazy,” by Jane Doe (pseudonym).

1967

NIMH was separated from NIH and raised to bureau status in Public Health Services by a reorganization that became effective January 1. NIMH’s Division of Clinical, Behavioral and Biological Research, within the Mental Health Intramural Research Program, comprising activities conducted in the Clinical Center and other NIH facilities, continued at NIH under an agreement for joint administration between NIH and NIMH.

Aaron Beck published a psychological model of depression suggesting that thoughts play a significant role in the development and maintenance of depression.

In 1967, Kathrine Switzer registered for the Boston Marathon as “K.V. Switzer” and became the first woman to run with a race number (in 1966 Roberta Gibb hid in a bush at the start line and ran the race unregistered). Two miles in, Marathon officials attempted to remove her from the race, however her running mates pushed the official off her and she finished the race in 4 hours and 20 minutes. Women were finally allowed to participate in 1972. (Photo: AP)

Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the American Psychological Association convention in Washington, D.C, proposing the creation of The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment.

Loving v. Virginia: The United States Supreme Court declares all U.S. state laws prohibiting interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.

The Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, often abbreviated LPS, (Cal. Welf & Inst. Code, sec. 5000 et seq.) was signed into law by then-governor of California Ronald Reagan (although it only went into full effect on July 1, 1972.) The Act in effect ended all hospital commitments by the judiciary system in California, except in the case of criminal sentencing, e.g., convicted sexual offenders, and those who are "gravely disabled", defined as unable to obtain food, clothing, or housing [Conservatorship of Susan T., 8 Cal. 4th 1005 (1994)]. It did not, however, impede the right of voluntary commitment. It also expanded the evaluative power of psychiatrists and created provisions and criteria for holds. This Act set the precedent for modern mental health commitment procedures in the United States

On August 13, DHEW Secretary John W. Gardner transferred St. Elizabeths Hospital, the Federal Government’s only civilian psychiatric hospital, to NIMH.

Elementary and Secondary Education Amendments of 1967 - Authorized regional resource centers; authorized centers and services for deaf-blind children.

Colorado becomes the first state to liberalize abortion laws.

In England, at the Court Lees Approved School, the Gibbens report into allegations of excessive punishment at the school prompted Home Secretary Roy Jenkins to announce its immediate closure, and the need to phase out corporal punishment in all Approved Schools. Under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 responsibility for Approved Schools was devolved from the Home Office to local social services authorities, and they were renamed "Community Homes with Education".

The National Theatre of the Deaf is founded with a grant from the federal Office of Vocational Rehabilitation.

Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice. Before becoming a judge, Marshall was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education. He argued more cases before the United States Supreme Court than anyone else in history.

In May, the US. Supreme Court in the In re Gault decision rules that timely notice of all charges against a juvenile must be given and that a child has the right to be represented by legal counsel, to confront and cross-examine complainants, and to be protected against self-incrimination in juvenile delinquency proceedings. In re Gault was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision which established that juveniles accused of crimes in a delinquency proceeding must be accorded many of the same due process rights as adults such as the right to timely notification of charges, the right to confront witnesses, the right against self-incrimination, and the right to counsel.

The Child Health Act (PL 90-248, 81 Stat. 821), passed by Congress on January 2, adds three new types of medical care project grants(1) infant care, (2) family planning, and (3) dental care to social security.

“The Politics of Experience & The Bird of Paradise.” Penguin Books, by Laing, R.D.

Rollo May publishes Psychology and the Human Dilemma

“The American Woman and Alcohol,” by P. Kent.

Chicago Women's Liberation Group organizes, considered the first to use the term "liberation."

New York Radical Women is founded. The following year they begin a process of sharing life stories, which becomes known as "consciousness raising." Groups immediately take root coast-to-coast.

The state of Maine opens one of the first battered womens shelters in the United States.

California becomes the first state to re-legalize abortion.

Executive Order 11375 expands Executive Order 11246's non-discrimination measure to include women. Enforcement is not won until 1973, however.

“Five Years in Mental Hospitals: An Autobiographical Essay,” by Arthur Wellon.

“By Reason of Insanity,” by John Balt.

1968

Psychiatrist Charles Socarides publishes his influential work, “The Overt Homosexual,” stating that homosexuality is a form of “mental illness,” and declaring psychoanalysis the “treatment of choice” for homosexuals. Homophile activists protest against Dr. Charles Socarides at the American Medical Association meeting in San Francisco. Much of Socarides' career was devoted to studying how homosexuality develops and how it might be altered. He postulated that homosexuality was a neurotic adaptation, and that it could be “treated.”

NIMH became a component of Public Health Service’s Health Services and Mental Health Administration (HSMHA).

In a drug withdrawal study, the NIMH finds that relapse rates rise in direct relation to dosage. The higher the dosage that patients are on before withdrawal, the higher the relapse rate.

Handicapped Children's Early Education Assistance Act of 1968 - Established grant program for preschool and early education of children with disabilities.

Vocational Education Act Amendments of 1968 - Required participating states to earmark 10 percent of basic vocational education allotment for youth with disabilities.

First Doctorate in Psychology (Psy.D.) awarded (from The University of Illinois – Urbana/Champaign). A new degree, Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) is authorized. In 1973 the practitioner-scholar model and the associated Psy.D. degree were recognized by the American Psychological Association at the Conference on Levels and Patterns of Professional Training in Psychology (The Vail Conference). The Practitioner-Scholar model followed the earlier scientist-practitioner model of doctoral training in psychology, which was created at the Boulder Conference on Graduate Education in Clinical Psychology in 1949. The Vail Model or practitioner-scholar model emphasizes clinical practice in training, while the Boulder Model emphasises research and scientific practice. Graduates of both training models are eligible for licensure in all states (licensing exams and renewal requirements are the same for both degrees).

The California legislature guaranteed that the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) would be the first rapid transit system in the U.S. to accommodate wheelchair users.

Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 - The Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 mandates the removal of what is perceived to be the most significant obstacle to employment for people with disabilities—the physical design of the buildings and facilities on the job. The act requires that all buildings designed, constructed, altered, or leased with federal funds to be made accessible. Required most buildings and facilities built, constructed, or altered with federal funds after 1969 to be accessible. The Architectural Barriers Act is passed, mandating that federally constructed buildings and facilities be accessible to people with physical disabilities. This act is generally considered to be the first ever federal disability rights legislation. Architectural Barriers Act: prohibits architectural barriers in all federally owned or leased buildings.

DSM-II, Although the APA was closely involved in the next significant revision of the mental disorder section of the ICD (version 8 in 1968), it decided to go ahead with a revision of the DSM. It was published in 1968, listed 182 disorders (increased from 106 in 1952), and was 134 pages long. It was quite similar to the DSM-I. The term “reaction” was dropped, but the term “neurosis” was retained. Both the DSM-I and the DSM-II reflected the predominant psychodynamic psychiatry, although they also included biological perspectives and concepts from Kraepelin's system of classification. Symptoms were not specified in detail for specific disorders. Many were seen as reflections of broad underlying conflicts or maladaptive reactions to life problems, rooted in a distinction between neurosis and psychosis (roughly, anxiety/depression broadly in touch with reality, or hallucinations/delusions appearing disconnected from reality). Sociological and biological knowledge was incorporated, in a model that did not emphasize a clear boundary between normality and abnormality. The idea that personality disorders did not involve emotional distress was discarded.

The new DSM recognizes homosexuality as a full-fledged personality disorder.

First International Special Olympics. Eunice Kennedy Shriver founds the Special Olympics in 1962 to provide athletic training and competition for persons with intellectual disabilities. The organization grows into an international program enabling more than one million young people and adults to participate in 23 Olympic-type sports events each year. The first International Special Olympics Games are held July 20th in Chicago, Illinois in 1968.

Social Club of New Haven, Connecticut: Su Budd "helped start a social club on a psychiatric ward. The club was very anti-psychiatry in tone. There was some help from professionals at first, but basically Su ran the club. Su's husband, Dennis, tells it this way: [The social club] was loosely supervised by a social worker, who saw Su and me every week, and Su ran the club. It was most successful. It had a membership of ten to twelve. We shunned the help from the mental health association that was offered to us. A lot of people who were sent to our club were dismissed as hopeless by the staff. A lot of them improved while they were with us."

Bureau of Narcotics & Dangerous Drugs is created by executive order, under the Department of Justice, by merging the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control.

James Koener wrote, “Who Controls American Education,” after the Detroit Civil Riots. Koener said, “It is not at all clear that fundamental decisions are better made by people with post graduate degrees, than by those with undergraduate degrees, or with no degrees at all”

C. Henry Kempe and Ray E. Helfer, editors: The Battered Child. 1st edition, 1968. 2nd edition, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1974. 3rd edition, 1980. 5th edition by M. E. Helfer, R. Kempe, and R. Krugman, 1997. Publication of this book caused people to begin to become aware that parents and caregivers truly could and did physically abuse their children.

New York Radical Women garner media attention to the women's movement when they protest the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City.

The first national women's liberation conference is held in Chicago.

The Harris poll interviews 1,176 American adults in October. They find that 1/5 approve of slapping one's spouse on "appropriate occasions."

The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) is founded.

Federally Employed Woman is founded to end gender-based discrimination in civil service jobs. Within two decades, FEW has 200 chapters nationwide.

The Voice of the Women's Liberation Movement appears in Chicago, edited by Jo Freeman and others. By 1971, over 100 women's movement newsletters and newspapers are being published across the country.

National Welfare Rights organization if formed by activists such as Johnnie Tillmon and Etta Horm. They have 22,000 members by 1969, but are unable to survive as an organization past 1975.

The National Association of Black Social Workers, the National Association of Puerto Rican Social Service Workers, and the Asian American Social Workers are established.

The Southwest Council of La Raza is organized. (in 1973 it becomes the National Council of La Raza, a major national coalition.)

May 12, 1968. Poor People's Campaign began (one month after King's assassination). Martin Luther King announced the Poor People’s Campaign at a staff retreat for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in November 1967. Seeking a ‘‘middle ground between riots on the one hand and timid supplications for justice on the other,’’ King planned for an initial group of 2,000 poor people to descend on Washington, D.C., southern states and northern cities to meet with government officials to demand jobs, unemployment insurance, a fair minimum wage, and education for poor adults and children designed to improve their self-image and self-esteem (King, 29 November 1967). Suggested to King by Marion Wright, director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Legal Defense and Education Fund in Jackson, Mississippi, the Poor People’s Campaign was seen by King as the next chapter in the struggle for genuine equality. Desegregation and the right to vote were essential, but King believed that African Americans and other minorities would never enter full citizenship until they had economic security. Through nonviolent direct action, King and SCLC hoped to focus the nation’s attention on economic inequality and poverty. ‘‘This is a highly significant event,’’ King told delegates at an early planning meeting, describing the campaign as ‘‘the beginning of a new co-operation, understanding, and a determination by poor people of all colors and backgrounds to assert and win their right to a decent life and respect for their culture and dignity’’ (SCLC, 15 March 1968). Many leaders of American Indian, Puerto Rican, Mexican American, and poor white communities pledged themselves to the Poor People’s Campaign. Some in SCLC thought King’s campaign too ambitious, and the demands too amorphous. Although King praised the simplicity of the campaign’s goals, saying, ‘‘it’s as pure as a man needing an income to support his family,’’ he knew that the campaign was inherently different from others SCLC had attempted (King, 29 November 1967). ‘‘We have an ultimate goal of freedom, independence, self-determination, whatever we want to call it, but we aren’t going to get all of that now, and we aren’t going to get all of that next year,’’ he commented at a staff meeting on 17 January 1968. ‘‘Let’s find something that is so possible, so achievable, so pure, so simple that even the backlash can’t do much to deny it. And yet something so non-token and so basic to life that even the black nationalists can’t disagree with it that much’’ (King, 17 January 1968). After King’s assassination in April 1968, SCLC decided to go on with the campaign under the leadership of Ralph Abernathy, SCLC’s new president. On Mother’s Day, 12 May 1968, thousands of women, led by Coretta Scott King, formed the first wave of demonstrators. The following day, Resurrection City, a temporary settlement of tents and shacks, was built on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Braving rain, mud, and summer heat, protesters stayed for over a month. Demonstrators made daily pilgrimages to various federal agencies to protest and demand economic justice. Mid-way through the campaign, Robert Kennedy, whose wife had attended the Mother’s Day opening of Resurrection City, was assassinated. Out of respect for the campaign, his funeral procession passed through Resurrection City. The Department of the Interior forced Resurrection City to close on 24 June 1968, after the permit to use park land expired. Although the campaign succeeded in small ways, such as qualifying 200 counties for free surplus food distribution, and securing promises from several federal agencies to hire poor people to help run programs for the poor, Abernathy felt these concessions were insufficient.

Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) is first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

The EEOC rules that sex-segregated help wanted ads in newspapers are illegal. EEOC rules that unless employers can show a bona fide occupational qualification exists, sex-segregated help wanted newspaper ads are illegal. This ruling is upheld in 1973 by the Supreme Court, opening the way for women to apply for higher-paying jobs hitherto open only to men.

In Scotland, following publication of the Kilbrandon report in 1964, the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 set up the Scottish Children’s Hearings system and revolutionised juvenile justice in Scotland by removing children in trouble from the criminal courts. The institutional framework for supporting children and families established on the basis of the key recommendations of the report has been largely unchanged since it was introduced in 1971. Changes from the latest review, currently under way in 2008, are planned for implementation from 2010.

We Shall Overcome (WSO) founded and is a Norwegian NGO (non-governmental organization), run by and for users and survivors of psychiatry. WSO advocates for the human rights of users and survivors of psychiatry. The organisation is a member of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (WNUSP).

Jacobus tenBroek, a national and international leader of the blind civil rights movement and founder of the National Federation of the Blind in 1940 died from cancer.

Abraham Maslow publishes Toward a Psychology of Being

Maria Anne Hirschmann's I Changed Gods published in California. (A "Destiny Book") "Maria Anne Hirschmann, or "Hansi," was orphaned as a baby in Czechoslovakia during World War II. Brainwashed to be a Nazi youth leader, she was imprisoned in a communist labor camp before escaping into West Germany. There she became a Christian and immigrated with her family to the United States where she learned to love freedom." In 1973 (USA) and 1974 (London) she published Hansi; the girl who loved the swastika which formed the basis for a comic of the same name in 1976. The comic includes the line "It's alright to love what God has blessed"

The American Association of Suicidology (AAS) founded by clinical psychologist Edwin S. Shneidman, Ph.D.

A father's assault was considered benign, triggered by a child's need for affection. (Burton)

Martin Luther King, Jr. announces plans for a Poor Peoples Commission for employment for all.

“Born To Trouble: Portrait of a Psychopath,” by R. Lloyd.

“Tornado: My Experience with Mental Illness,” by Hellen Moeller.

“Half a Lifetime,” by Alton Brea.

“The Unimportance of Being Oscar,” by Oscar Levant,

“Never Come Early,” by Joseph J. Partyka

“More Mishaps,” by C. Solomon.

1969

National Institute of Mental Health Task Force on Homosexuality, headed by Evelyn Hooker, completes its Final Report; publication delayed until 1972.

The Stonewall Inn Riots in New York’s Greenwich Village ignites a radical gay rights movement and is often considered the birth of the gay liberation movement. The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. They are widely considered to constitute the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for gay and lesbian rights in the United States. American gays and lesbians in the 1950s and 1960s faced a legal system more anti-homosexual than those of some Warsaw Pact countries. Early homophile groups in the U.S. sought to prove that gay people could be assimilated into society, and they favored non-confrontational education for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. The last years of the 1960s, however, were very contentious, as many social movements were active, including the African American Civil Rights Movement, the Counterculture of the 1960s, and antiwar demonstrations. These influences, along with the liberal environment of Greenwich Village, served as catalysts for the Stonewall riots. Very few establishments welcomed openly gay people in the 1950s and 1960s. Those that did were often bars, although bar owners and managers were rarely gay. The Stonewall Inn, at the time, was owned by the Mafia. It catered to an assortment of patrons, but it was known to be popular with the poorest and most marginalized people in the gay community: drag queens, representatives of a newly self-aware transgender community, effeminate young men, hustlers, and homeless youth. Police raids on gay bars were routine in the 1960s, but officers quickly lost control of the situation at the Stonewall Inn, and attracted a crowd that was incited to riot. Tensions between New York City police and gay residents of Greenwich Village erupted into more protests the next evening, and again several nights later. Within weeks, Village residents quickly organized into activist groups to concentrate efforts on establishing places for gays and lesbians to be open about their sexual orientation without fear of being arrested. After the Stonewall riots, gays and lesbians in New York City faced gender, class, and generational obstacles to becoming a cohesive community. Within six months, two gay activist organizations were formed in New York, concentrating on confrontational tactics, and three newspapers were established to promote rights for gays and lesbians. Within a few years, gay rights organizations were founded across the U.S. and the world. On June 28, 1970, the first Gay Pride marches took place in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York commemorating the anniversary of the riots. Similar marches were organized in other cities. Today, Gay Pride events are held annually throughout the world toward the end of June to mark the Stonewall riots.

The National Mental Health Association advocated for renewal of the CMHC Act and for increased appropriations.  

The Organization of American States (OAS) adopts the American Convention on Human Rights (article 24). The Convention does not explicitly address the subject of disability, but contains the classical human rights guarantees. For example, Article 24 states the right to equal protection.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

American Convention on Human Rights, O.A.S.Treaty Series No. 36, 1144 U.N.T.S. 123, entered into force July 18, 1978, reprinted in Basic Documents Pertaining to Human Rights in the Inter-American System, OEA/Ser.L.V/II.82 doc.6 rev.1 at 25 (1992).

Preamble

The American states signatory to the present Convention,

Reaffirming their intention to consolidate in this hemisphere, within the framework of democratic institutions, a system of personal liberty and social justice based on respect for the essential rights of man;

Recognizing that the essential rights of man are not derived from one's being a national of a certain state, but are based upon attributes of the human personality, and that they therefore justify international protection in the form of a convention reinforcing or complementing the protection provided by the domestic law of the American states;

Considering that these principles have been set forth in the Charter of the Organization of American States, in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and that they have been reaffirmed and refined in other international instruments, worldwide as well as regional in scope;

Reiterating that, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ideal of free men enjoying freedom from fear and want can be achieved only if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his economic, social, and cultural rights, as well as his civil and political rights; and

Considering that the Third Special Inter-American Conference (Buenos Aires, 1967) approved the incorporation into the Charter of the Organization itself of broader standards with respect to economic, social, and educational rights and resolved that an inter-American convention on human rights should determine the structure, competence, and procedure of the organs responsible for these matters,

Have agreed upon the following: PART I - STATE OBLIGATIONS AND RIGHTS PROTECTED

CHAPTER I - GENERAL OBLIGATIONS

Article 1. Obligation to Respect Rights

1. The States Parties to this Convention undertake to respect the rights and freedoms recognized herein and to ensure to all persons subject to their jurisdiction the free and full exercise of those rights and freedoms, without any discrimination for reasons of race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, economic status, birth, or any other social condition.

2. For the purposes of this Convention, "person" means every human being.

Article 2. Domestic Legal Effects

Where the exercise of any of the rights or freedoms referred to in Article 1 is not already ensured by legislative or other provisions, the States Parties undertake to adopt, in accordance with their constitutional processes and the provisions of this Convention, such legislative or other measures as may be necessary to give effect to those rights or freedoms.

CHAPTER II - CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS

Article 3. Right to Juridical Personality

Every person has the right to recognition as a person before the law.

Article 4. Right to Life

1. Every person has the right to have his life respected. This right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.

2. In countries that have not abolished the death penalty, it may be imposed only for the most serious crimes and pursuant to a final judgment rendered by a competent court and in accordance with a law establishing such punishment, enacted prior to the commission of the crime. The application of such punishment shall not be extended to crimes to which it does not presently apply. 3. The death penalty shall not be reestablished in states that have abolished it.

4. In no case shall capital punishment be inflicted for political offenses or related common crimes.

5. Capital punishment shall not be imposed upon persons who, at the time the crime was committed, were under 18 years of age or over 70 years of age; nor shall it be applied to pregnant women.

6. Every person condemned to death shall have the right to apply for amnesty, pardon, or commutation of sentence, which may be granted in all cases. Capital punishment shall not be imposed while such a petition is pending decision by the competent authority.

Article 5. Right to Humane Treatment

1. Every person has the right to have his physical, mental, and moral integrity respected.

2. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment or treatment. All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.

3. Punishment shall not be extended to any person other than the criminal.

4. Accused persons shall, save in exceptional circumstances, be segregated from convicted persons, and shall be subject to separate treatment appropriate to their status as unconvicted persons.

5. Minors while subject to criminal proceedings shall be separated from adults and brought before specialized tribunals, as speedily as possible, so that they may be treated in accordance with their status as minors.

6. Punishments consisting of deprivation of liberty shall have as an essential aim the reform and social readaptation of the prisoners.

Article 6. Freedom from Slavery

1. No one shall be subject to slavery or to involuntary servitude, which are prohibited in all their forms, as are the slave trade and traffic in women.

2. No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labor. This provision shall not be interpreted to mean that, in those countries in which the penalty established for certain crimes is deprivation of liberty at forced labor, the carrying out of such a sentence imposed by a competent court is prohibited. Forced labor shall not adversely affect the dignity or the physical or intellectual capacity of the prisoner.

3. For the purposes of this article, the following do not constitute forced or compulsory labor:

a. work or service normally required of a person imprisoned in execution of a sentence or formal decision passed by the competent judicial authority. Such work or service shall be carried out under the supervision and control of public authorities, and any persons performing such work or service shall not be placed at the disposal of any private party, company, or juridical person;

b. military service and, in countries in which conscientious objectors are recognized, national service that the law may provide for in lieu of military service;

c. service exacted in time of danger or calamity that threatens the existence or the well-being of the community; or

d. work or service that forms part of normal civic obligations.

Article 7. Right to Personal Liberty

1. Every person has the right to personal liberty and security.

2. No one shall be deprived of his physical liberty except for the reasons and under the conditions established beforehand by the constitution of the State Party concerned or by a law established pursuant thereto.

3. No one shall be subject to arbitrary arrest or imprisonment.

4. Anyone who is detained shall be informed of the reasons for his detention and shall be promptly notified of the charge or charges against him.

5. Any person detained shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to be released without prejudice to the continuation of the proceedings. His release may be subject to guarantees to assure his appearance for trial.

6. Anyone who is deprived of his liberty shall be entitled to recourse to a competent court, in order that the court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his arrest or detention and order his release if the arrest or detention is unlawful. In States Parties whose laws provide that anyone who believes himself to be threatened with deprivation of his liberty is entitled to recourse to a competent court in order that it may decide on the lawfulness of such threat, this remedy may not be restricted or abolished. The interested party or another person in his behalf is entitled to seek these remedies.

7. No one shall be detained for debt. This principle shall not limit the orders of a competent judicial authority issued for nonfulfillment of duties of support.

Article 8. Right to a Fair Trial

1. Every person has the right to a hearing, with due guarantees and within a reasonable time, by a competent, independent, and impartial tribunal, previously established by law, in the substantiation of any accusation of a criminal nature made against him or for the determination of his rights and obligations of a civil, labor, fiscal, or any other nature.

2. Every person accused of a criminal offense has the right to be presumed innocent so long as his guilt has not been proven according to law. During the proceedings, every person is entitled, with full equality, to the following minimum guarantees:

a. the right of the accused to be assisted without charge by a translator or interpreter, if he does not understand or does not speak the language of the tribunal or court;

b. prior notification in detail to the accused of the charges against him;

c. adequate time and means for the preparation of his defense;

d. the right of the accused to defend himself personally or to be assisted by legal counsel of his own choosing, and to communicate freely and privately with his counsel;

e. the inalienable right to be assisted by counsel provided by the state, paid or not as the domestic law provides, if the accused does not defend himself personally or engage his own counsel within the time period established by law;

f. the right of the defense to examine witnesses present in the court and to obtain the appearance, as witnesses, of experts or other persons who may throw light on the facts;

g. the right not to be compelled to be a witness against himself or to plead guilty; and

h. the right to appeal the judgment to a higher court.

3. A confession of guilt by the accused shall be valid only if it is made without coercion of any kind.

4. An accused person acquitted by a nonappealable judgment shall not be subjected to a new trial for the same cause.

5. Criminal proceedings shall be public, except insofar as may be necessary to protect the interests of justice.

Article 9. Freedom from Ex Post Facto Laws

No one shall be convicted of any act or omission that did not constitute a criminal offense, under the applicable law, at the time it was committed. A heavier penalty shall not be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the criminal offense was committed. If subsequent to the commission of the offense the law provides for the imposition of a lighter punishment, the guilty person shall benefit therefrom.

Article 10. Right to Compensation

Every person has the right to be compensated in accordance with the law in the event he has been sentenced by a final judgment through a miscarriage of justice.

Article 11. Right to Privacy

1. Everyone has the right to have his honor respected and his dignity recognized.

2. No one may be the object of arbitrary or abusive interference with his private life, his family, his home, or his correspondence, or of unlawful attacks on his honor or reputation.

3. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 12. Freedom of Conscience and Religion

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of conscience and of religion. This right includes freedom to maintain or to change one's religion or beliefs, and freedom to profess or disseminate one's religion or beliefs, either individually or together with others, in public or in private.

2. No one shall be subject to restrictions that might impair his freedom to maintain or to change his religion or beliefs.

3. Freedom to manifest one's religion and beliefs may be subject only to the limitations prescribed by law that are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals, or the rights or freedoms of others.

4. Parents or guardians, as the case may be, have the right to provide for the religious and moral education of their children or wards that is in accord with their own convictions.

Article 13. Freedom of Thought and Expression

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought and expression. This right includes freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing, in print, in the form of art, or through any other medium of one's choice.

2. The exercise of the right provided for in the foregoing paragraph shall not be subject to prior censorship but shall be subject to subsequent imposition of liability, which shall be expressly established by law to the extent necessary to ensure:

a. respect for the rights or reputations of others; or

b. the protection of national security, public order, or public health or morals.

3. The right of expression may not be restricted by indirect methods or means, such as the abuse of government or private controls over newsprint, radio broadcasting frequencies, or equipment used in the dissemination of information, or by any other means tending to impede the communication and circulation of ideas and opinions.

4. Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph 2 above, public entertainments may be subject by law to prior censorship for the sole purpose of regulating access to them for the moral protection of childhood and adolescence.

5. Any propaganda for war and any advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitute incitements to lawless violence or to any other similar action against any person or group of persons on any grounds including those of race, color, religion, language, or national origin shall be considered as offenses punishable by law.

Article 14. Right of Reply

1. Anyone injured by inaccurate or offensive statements or ideas disseminated to the public in general by a legally regulated medium of communication has the right to reply or to make a correction using the same communications outlet, under such conditions as the law may establish.

2. The correction or reply shall not in any case remit other legal liabilities that may have been incurred.

3. For the effective protection of honor and reputation, every publisher, and every newspaper, motion picture, radio, and television company, shall have a person responsible who is not protected by immunities or special privileges.

Article 15. Right of Assembly

The right of peaceful assembly, without arms, is recognized. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right other than those imposed in conformity with the law and necessary in a democratic society in the interest of national security, public safety or public order, or to protect public health or morals or the rights or freedom of others.

Article 16. Freedom of Association

1. Everyone has the right to associate freely for ideological, religious, political, economic, labor, social, cultural, sports, or other purposes.

2. The exercise of this right shall be subject only to such restrictions established by law as may be necessary in a democratic society, in the interest of national security, public safety or public order, or to protect public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others.

3. The provisions of this article do not bar the imposition of legal restrictions, including even deprivation of the exercise of the right of association, on members of the armed forces and the police.

Article 17. Rights of the Family

1. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state.

2. The right of men and women of marriageable age to marry and to raise a family shall be recognized, if they meet the conditions required by domestic laws, insofar as such conditions do not affect the principle of nondiscrimination established in this Convention.

3. No marriage shall be entered into without the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

4. The States Parties shall take appropriate steps to ensure the equality of rights and the adequate balancing of responsibilities of the spouses as to marriage, during marriage, and in the event of its dissolution. In case of dissolution, provision shall be made for the necessary protection of any children solely on the basis of their own best interests.

5. The law shall recognize equal rights for children born out of wedlock and those born in wedlock.

Article 18. Right to a Name

Every person has the right to a given name and to the surnames of his parents or that of one of them. The law shall regulate the manner in which this right shall be ensured for all, by the use of assumed names if necessary.

Article 19. Rights of the Child

Every minor child has the right to the measures of protection required by his condition as a minor on the part of his family, society, and the state.

Article 20. Right to Nationality

1. Every person has the right to a nationality.

2. Every person has the right to the nationality of the state in whose territory he was born if he does not have the right to any other nationality.

3. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality or of the right to change it.

Article 21. Right to Property

1. Everyone has the right to the use and enjoyment of his property. The law may subordinate such use and enjoyment to the interest of society.

2. No one shall be deprived of his property except upon payment of just compensation, for reasons of public utility or social interest, and in the cases and according to the forms established by law.

3. Usury and any other form of exploitation of man by man shall be prohibited by law.

Article 22. Freedom of Movement and Residence

1. Every person lawfully in the territory of a State Party has the right to move about in it, and to reside in it subject to the provisions of the law.

2. Every person has the right to leave any country freely, including his own.

3. The exercise of the foregoing rights may be restricted only pursuant to a law to the extent necessary in a democratic society to prevent crime or to protect national security, public safety, public order, public morals, public health, or the rights or freedoms of others.

4. The exercise of the rights recognized in paragraph 1 may also be restricted by law in designated zones for reasons of public interest.

5. No one can be expelled from the territory of the state of which he is a national or be deprived of the right to enter it.

6. An alien lawfully in the territory of a State Party to this Convention may be expelled from it only pursuant to a decision reached in accordance with law.

7. Every person has the right to seek and be granted asylum in a foreign territory, in accordance with the legislation of the state and international conventions, in the event he is being pursued for political offenses or related common crimes.

8. In no case may an alien be deported or returned to a country, regardless of whether or not it is his country of origin, if in that country his right to life or personal freedom is in danger of being violated because of his race, nationality, religion, social status, or political opinions.

9. The collective expulsion of aliens is prohibited.

Article 23. Right to Participate in Government

1. Every citizen shall enjoy the following rights and opportunities:

a. to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives;

b. to vote and to be elected in genuine periodic elections, which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and by secret ballot that guarantees the free expression of the will of the voters; and

c. to have access, under general conditions of equality, to the public service of his country.

2. The law may regulate the exercise of the rights and opportunities referred to in the preceding paragraph only on the basis of age, nationality, residence, language, education, civil and mental capacity, or sentencing by a competent court in criminal proceedings.

Article 24. Right to Equal Protection

All persons are equal before the law. Consequently, they are entitled, without discrimination, to equal protection of the law.

Article 25. Right to Judicial Protection

1. Everyone has the right to simple and prompt recourse, or any other effective recourse, to a competent court or tribunal for protection against acts that violate his fundamental rights recognized by the constitution or laws of the state concerned or by this Convention, even though such violation may have been committed by persons acting in the course of their official duties.

2. The States Parties undertake:

a. to ensure that any person claiming such remedy shall have his rights determined by the competent authority provided for by the legal system of the state;

b. to develop the possibilities of judicial remedy; and

c. to ensure that the competent authorities shall enforce such remedies when granted.

CHAPTER III - ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL RIGHTS

Article 26. Progressive Development

The States Parties undertake to adopt measures, both internally and through international cooperation, especially those of an economic and technical nature, with a view to achieving progressively, by legislation or other appropriate means, the full realization of the rights implicit in the economic, social, educational, scientific, and cultural standards set forth in the Charter of the Organization of American States as amended by the Protocol of Buenos Aires. CHAPTER IV - SUSPENSION OF GUARANTEES, INTERPRETATION, AND APPLICATION

Article 27. Suspension of Guarantees

1. In time of war, public danger, or other emergency that threatens the independence or security of a State Party, it may take measures derogating from its obligations under the present Convention to the extent and for the period of time strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with its other obligations under international law and do not involve discrimination on the ground of race, color, sex, language, religion, or social origin.

2. The foregoing provision does not authorize any suspension of the following articles: Article 3 (Right to Juridical Personality), Article 4 (Right to Life), Article 5 (Right to Humane Treatment), Article 6 (Freedom from Slavery), Article 9 (Freedom from Ex Post Facto Laws), Article 12 (Freedom of Conscience and Religion), Article 17 (Rights of the Family), Article 18 (Right to a Name), Article 19 (Rights of the Child), Article 20 (Right to Nationality), and Article 23 (Right to Participate in Government), or of the judicial guarantees essential for the protection of such rights.

3. Any State Party availing itself of the right of suspension shall immediately inform the other States Parties, through the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, of the provisions the application of which it has suspended, the reasons that gave rise to the suspension, and the date set for the termination of such suspension.

Article 28. Federal Clause

1. Where a State Party is constituted as a federal state, the national government of such State Party shall implement all the provisions of the Convention over whose subject matter it exercises legislative and judicial jurisdiction.

2. With respect to the provisions over whose subject matter the constituent units of the federal state have jurisdiction, the national government shall immediately take suitable measures, in accordance with its constitution and its laws, to the end that the competent authorities of the constituent units may adopt appropriate provisions for the fulfillment of this Convention.

3. Whenever two or more States Parties agree to form a federation or other type of association, they shall take care that the resulting federal or other compact contains the provisions necessary for continuing and rendering effective the standards of this Convention in the new state that is organized. Article 29. Restrictions Regarding Interpretation

No provision of this Convention shall be interpreted as:

a. permitting any State Party, group, or person to suppress the enjoyment or exercise of the rights and freedoms recognized in this Convention or to restrict them to a greater extent than is provided for herein;

b. restricting the enjoyment or exercise of any right or freedom recognized by virtue of the laws of any State Party or by virtue of another convention to which one of the said states is a party;

c. precluding other rights or guarantees that are inherent in the human personality or derived from representative democracy as a form of government; or

d. excluding or limiting the effect that the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and other international acts of the same nature may have.

Article 30. Scope of Restrictions

The restrictions that, pursuant to this Convention, may be placed on the enjoyment or exercise of the rights or freedoms recognized herein may not be applied except in accordance with laws enacted for reasons of general interest and in accordance with the purpose for which such restrictions have been established.

Article 31. Recognition of Other Rights

Other rights and freedoms recognized in accordance with the procedures established in Articles 76 and 77 may be included in the system of protection of this Convention.

CHAPTER V - PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITIES

Article 32. Relationship between Duties and Rights

1. Every person has reponsibilities to his family, his community, and mankind.

2. The rights of each person are limited by the rights of others, by the security of all, and by the just demands of the general welfare, in a democratic society.

PART II - MEANS OF PROTECTION

CHAPTER VI - COMPETENT ORGANS

Article 33

The following organs shall have competence with respect to matters relating to the fulfillment of the commitments made by the States Parties to this Convention:

a. the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, referred to as "The Commission;" and

b. the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, referred to as "The Court."

CHAPTER VII - INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Section 1. Organization

Article 34

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights shall be composed of seven members, who shall be persons of high moral character and recognized competence in the field of human rights.

Article 35

The Commission shall represent all the member countries of the Organization of American States.

Article 36

1. The members of the Commission shall be elected in a personal capacity by the General Assembly of the Organization from a list of candidates proposed by the governments of the member states.

2. Each of those governments may propose up to three candidates, who may be nationals of the states proposing them or of any other member state of the Organization of American States. When a slate of three is proposed, at least one of the candidates shall be a national of a state other than the one proposing the slate. Article 37

1. The members of the Commission shall be elected for a term of four years and may be reelected only once, but the terms of three of the members chosen in the first election shall expire at the end of two years. Immediately following that election the General Assembly shall determine the names of those three members by lot.

2. No two nationals of the same state may be members of the Commission.

Article 38

Vacancies that may occur on the Commission for reasons other than the normal expiration of a term shall be filled by the Permanent Council of the Organization in accordance with the provisions of the Statute of the Commission.

Article 39

The Commission shall prepare its Statute, which it shall submit to the General Assembly for approval. It shall establish its own Regulations.

Article 40

Secretariat services for the Commission shall be furnished by the appropriate specialized unit of the General Secretariat of the Organization. This unit shall be provided with the resources required to accomplish the tasks assigned to it by the Commission.

Section 2. Functions

Article 41

The main function of the Commission shall be to promote respect for and defense of human rights. In the exercise of its mandate, it shall have the following functions and powers:

a. to develop an awareness of human rights among the peoples of America;

b. to make recommendations to the governments of the member states, when it considers such action advisable, for the adoption of progressive measures in favor of human rights within the framework of their domestic law and constitutional provisions as well as appropriate measures to further the observance of those rights;

c. to prepare such studies or reports as it considers advisable in the performance of its duties;

d. to request the governments of the member states to supply it with information on the measures adopted by them in matters of human rights;

e. to respond, through the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States, to inquiries made by the member states on matters related to human rights and, within the limits of its possibilities, to provide those states with the advisory services they request;

f. to take action on petitions and other communications pursuant to its authority under the provisions of Articles 44 through 51 of this Convention; and

g. to submit an annual report to the General Assembly of the Organization of American States.

Article 42

The States Parties shall transmit to the Commission a copy of each of the reports and studies that they submit annually to the Executive Committees of the Inter-American Economic and Social Council and the Inter-American Council for Education, Science, and Culture, in their respective fields, so that the Commission may watch over the promotion of the rights implicit in the economic, social, educational, scientific, and cultural standards set forth in the Charter of the Organization of American States as amended by the Protocol of Buenos Aires.

Article 43

The States Parties undertake to provide the Commission with such information as it may request of them as to the manner in which their domestic law ensures the effective application of any provisions of this Convention.

Section 3. Competence

Article 44

Any person or group of persons, or any nongovernmental entity legally recognized in one or more member states of the Organization, may lodge petitions with the Commission containing denunciations or complaints of violation of this Convention by a State Party. Article 45

1. Any State Party may, when it deposits its instrument of ratification of or adherence to this Convention, or at any later time, declare that it recognizes the competence of the Commission to receive and examine communications in which a State Party alleges that another State Party has committed a violation of a human right set forth in this Convention.

2. Communications presented by virtue of this article may be admitted and examined only if they are presented by a State Party that has made a declaration recognizing the aforementioned competence of the Commission. The Commission shall not admit any communication against a State Party that has not made such a declaration.

3. A declaration concerning recognition of competence may be made to be valid for an indefinite time, for a specified period, or for a specific case.

4. Declarations shall be deposited with the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States, which shall transmit copies thereof to the member states of that Organization.

Article 46

1. Admission by the Commission of a petition or communication lodged in accordance with Articles 44 or 45 shall be subject to the following requirements:

a. that the remedies under domestic law have been pursued and exhausted in accordance with generally recognized principles of international law;

b. that the petition or communication is lodged within a period of six months from the date on which the party alleging violation of his rights was notified of the final judgment;

c. that the subject of the petition or communication is not pending in another international proceeding for settlement; and

d. that, in the case of Article 44, the petition contains the name, nationality, profession, domicile, and signature of the person or persons or of the legal representative of the entity lodging the petition.

2. The provisions of paragraphs 1.a and 1.b of this article shall not be applicable when:

a. the domestic legislation of the state concerned does not afford due process of law for the protection of the right or rights that have allegedly been violated;

b. the party alleging violation of his rights has been denied access to the remedies under domestic law or has been prevented from exhausting them; or

c. there has been unwarranted delay in rendering a final judgment under the aforementioned remedies.

Article 47

The Commission shall consider inadmissible any petition or communication submitted under Articles 44 or 45 if:

a. any of the requirements indicated in Article 46 has not been met;

b. the petition or communication does not state facts that tend to establish a violation of the rights guaranteed by this Convention;

c. the statements of the petitioner or of the state indicate that the petition or communication is manifestly groundless or obviously out of order; or

d. the petition or communication is substantially the same as one previously studied by the Commission or by another international organization.

Section 4. Procedure

Article 48

1. When the Commission receives a petition or communication alleging violation of any of the rights protected by this Convention, it shall proceed as follows:

a. If it considers the petition or communication admissible, it shall request information from the government of the state indicated as being responsible for the alleged violations and shall furnish that government a transcript of the pertinent portions of the petition or communication. This information shall be submitted within a reasonable period to be determined by the Commission in accordance with the circumstances of each case.

b. After the information has been received, or after the period established has elapsed and the information has not been received, the Commission shall ascertain whether the grounds for the petition or communication still exist. If they do not, the Commission shall order the record to be closed.

c. The Commision may also declare the petition or communication inadmissible or out of order on the basis of information or evidence subsequently received.

d. If the record has not been closed, the Commission shall, with the knowledge of the parties, examine the matter set forth in the petition or communication in order to verify the facts. If necessary and advisable, the Commission shall carry out an investigation, for the effective conduct of which it shall request, and the states concerned shall furnish to it, all necessary facilities.

e. The Commission may request the states concerned to furnish any pertinent information and, if so requested, shall hear oral statements or receive written statements from the parties concerned.

f. The Commission shall place itself at the disposal of the parties concerned with a view to reaching a friendly settlement of the matter on the basis of respect for the human rights recognized in this Convention.

2. However, in serious and urgent cases, only the presentation of a petition or communication that fulfills all the formal requirements of admissibility shall be necessary in order for the Commission to conduct an investigation with the prior consent of the state in whose territory a violation has allegedly been committed.

Article 49

If a friendly settlement has been reached in accordance with paragraph 1.f of Article 48, the Commission shall draw up a report, which shall be transmitted to the petitioner and to the States Parties to this Convention, and shall then be communicated to the Secretary General of the Organization of American States for publication. This report shall contain a brief statement of the facts and of the solution reached. If any party in the case so requests, the fullest possible information shall be provided to it.

Article 50

1. If a settlement is not reached, the Commission shall, within the time limit established by its Statute, draw up a report setting forth the facts and stating its conclusions. If the report, in whole or in part, does not represent the unanimous agreement of the members of the Commission, any member may attach to it a separate opinion. The written and oral statements made by the parties in accordance with paragraph 1.e of Article 48 shall also be attached to the report.

2. The report shall be transmitted to the states concerned, which shall not be at liberty to publish it.

3. In transmitting the report, the Commission may make such proposals and recommendations as it sees fit. Article 51

1. If, within a period of three months from the date of the transmittal of the report of the Commission to the states concerned, the matter has not either been settled or submitted by the Commission or by the state concerned to the Court and its jurisdiction accepted, the Commission may, by the vote of an absolute majority of its members, set forth its opinion and conclusions concerning the question submitted for its consideration.

2. Where appropriate, the Commission shall make pertinent recommendations and shall prescribe a period within which the state is to take the measures that are incumbent upon it to remedy the situation examined.

3. When the prescribed period has expired, the Commission shall decide by the vote of an absolute majority of its members whether the state has taken adequate measures and whether to publish its report.

CHAPTER VIII - INTER-AMERICAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Section 1. Organization

Article 52

1. The Court shall consist of seven judges, nationals of the member states of the Organization, elected in an individual capacity from among jurists of the highest moral authority and of recognized competence in the field of human rights, who possess the qualifications required for the exercise of the highest judicial functions in conformity with the law of the state of which they are nationals or of the state that proposes them as candidates.

2. No two judges may be nationals of the same state.

Article 53

1. The judges of the Court shall be elected by secret ballot by an absolute majority vote of the States Parties to the Convention, in the General Assembly of the Organization, from a panel of candidates proposed by those states.

2. Each of the States Parties may propose up to three candidates, nationals of the state that proposes them or of any other member state of the Organization of American States. When a slate of three is proposed, at least one of the candidates shall be a national of a state other than the one proposing the slate.

Article 54

1. The judges of the Court shall be elected for a term of six years and may be reelected only once. The term of three of the judges chosen in the first election shall expire at the end of three years. Immediately after the election, the names of the three judges shall be determined by lot in the General Assembly.

2. A judge elected to replace a judge whose term has not expired shall complete the term of the latter.

3. The judges shall continue in office until the expiration of their term. However, they shall continue to serve with regard to cases that they have begun to hear and that are still pending, for which purposes they shall not be replaced by the newly elected judges.

Article 55

1. If a judge is a national of any of the States Parties to a case submitted to the Court, he shall retain his right to hear that case.

2. If one of the judges called upon to hear a case should be a national of one of the States Parties to the case, any other State Party in the case may appoint a person of its choice to serve on the Court as an ad hoc judge.

3. If among the judges called upon to hear a case none is a national of any of the States Parties to the case, each of the latter may appoint an ad hoc judge.

4. An ad hoc judge shall possess the qualifications indicated in Article 52.

5. If several States Parties to the Convention should have the same interest in a case, they shall be considered as a single party for purposes of the above provisions. In case of doubt, the Court shall decide.

Article 56

Five judges shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business by the Court.

Article 57

The Commission shall appear in all cases before the Court. Article 58

1. The Court shall have its seat at the place determined by the States Parties to the Convention in the General Assembly of the Organization; however, it may convene in the territory of any member state of the Organization of American States when a majority of the Court considers it desirable, and with the prior consent of the state concerned. The seat of the Court may be changed by the States Parties to the Convention in the General Assembly by a two-thirds vote.

2. The Court shall appoint its own Secretary.

3. The Secretary shall have his office at the place where the Court has its seat and shall attend the meetings that the Court may hold away from its seat.

Article 59

The Court shall establish its Secretariat, which shall function under the direction of the Secretary of the Court, in accordance with the administrative standards of the General Secretariat of the Organization in all respects not incompatible with the independence of the Court. The staff of the Court's Secretariat shall be appointed by the Secretary General of the Organization, in consultation with the Secretary of the Court.

Article 60

The Court shall draw up its Statute which it shall submit to the General Assembly for approval. It shall adopt its own Rules of Procedure.

Section 2. Jurisdiction and Functions

Article 61

1. Only the States Parties and the Commission shall have the right to submit a case to the Court.

2. In order for the Court to hear a case, it is necessary that the procedures set forth in Articles 48 and 50 shall have been completed.

Article 62

1. A State Party may, upon depositing its instrument of ratification or adherence to this Convention, or at any subsequent time, declare that it recognizes as binding, ipso facto, and not requiring special agreement, the jurisdiction of the Court on all matters relating to the interpretation or application of this Convention.

2. Such declaration may be made unconditionally, on the condition of reciprocity, for a specified period, or for specific cases. It shall be presented to the Secretary General of the Organization, who shall transmit copies thereof to the other member states of the Organization and to the Secretary of the Court.

3. The jurisdiction of the Court shall comprise all cases concerning the interpretation and application of the provisions of this Convention that are submitted to it, provided that the States Parties to the case recognize or have recognized such jurisdiction, whether by special declaration pursuant to the preceding paragraphs, or by a special agreement.

Article 63

1. If the Court finds that there has been a violation of a right or freedom protected by this Convention, the Court shall rule that the injured party be ensured the enjoyment of his right or freedom that was violated. It shall also rule, if appropriate, that the consequences of the measure or situation that constituted the breach of such right or freedom be remedied and that fair compensation be paid to the injured party.

2. In cases of extreme gravity and urgency, and when necessary to avoid irreparable damage to persons, the Court shall adopt such provisional measures as it deems pertinent in matters it has under consideration. With respect to a case not yet submitted to the Court, it may act at the request of the Commission.

Article 64

1. The member states of the Organization may consult the Court regarding the interpretation of this Convention or of other treaties concerning the protection of human rights in the American states. Within their spheres of competence, the organs listed in Chapter X of the Charter of the Organization of American States, as amended by the Protocol of Buenos Aires, may in like manner consult the Court.

2. The Court, at the request of a member state of the Organization, may provide that state with opinions regarding the compatibility of any of its domestic laws with the aforesaid international instruments.

Article 65

To each regular session of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States the Court shall submit, for the Assembly's consideration, a report on its work during the previous year. It shall specify, in particular, the cases in which a state has not complied with its judgments, making any pertinent recommendations.

Section 3. Procedure

Article 66

1. Reasons shall be given for the judgment of the Court.

2. If the judgment does not represent in whole or in part the unanimous opinion of the judges, any judge shall be entitled to have his dissenting or separate opinion attached to the judgment.

Article 67

The judgment of the Court shall be final and not subject to appeal. In case of disagreement as to the meaning or scope of the judgment, the Court shall interpret it at the request of any of the parties, provided the request is made within ninety days from the date of notification of the judgment.

Article 68

1. The States Parties to the Convention undertake to comply with the judgment of the Court in any case to which they are parties.

2. That part of a judgment that stipulates compensatory damages may be executed in the country concerned in accordance with domestic procedure governing the execution of judgments against the state.

Article 69

The parties to the case shall be notified of the judgment of the Court and it shall be transmitted to the States Parties to the Convention.

CHAPTER IX - COMMON PROVISIONS

Article 70

1. The judges of the Court and the members of the Commission shall enjoy, from the moment of their election and throughout their term of office, the immunities extended to diplomatic agents in accordance with international law. During the exercise of their official function they shall, in addition, enjoy the diplomatic privileges necessary for the performance of their duties.

2. At no time shall the judges of the Court or the members of the Commission be held liable for any decisions or opinions issued in the excercise of their functions.

Article 71

The position of judge of the Court or member of the Commission is incompatible with any other activity that might affect the independence or impartiality of such judge or member, as determined in the respective statutes.

Article 72

The judges of the Court and the members of the Commission shall receive emoluments and travel allowances in the form and under the conditions set forth in their statutes, with due regard for the importance and independence of their office. Such emoluments and travel allowances shall be determined in the budget of the Organization of American States, which shall also include the expenses of the Court and its Secretariat. To this end, the Court shall draw up its own budget and submit it for approval to the General Assembly through the General Secretariat. The latter may not introduce any changes in it.

Article 73

The General Assembly may, only at the request of the Commission or the Court, as the case may be, determine sanctions to be applied against members of the Commission or judges of the Court when there are justifiable grounds for such action as set forth in the respective statutes. A vote of a two-thirds majority of the member states of the Organization shall be required for a decision in the case of members of the Commission and, in the case of judges of the Court, a two-thirds majority vote of the States Parties to the Convention shall also be required.

PART III - GENERAL AND TRANSITORY PROVISIONS

CHAPTER X - SIGNATURE, RATIFICATION, RESERVATIONS, AMENDMENTS, PROTOCOLS, AND DENUNCIATION

Article 74

1. This Convention shall be open for signature and ratification by or adherence of any member state of the Organization of American States.

2. Ratification of or adherence to this Convention shall be made by the deposit of an instrument of ratification or adherence with the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States. As soon as eleven states have deposited their instruments of ratification or adherence, the Convention shall enter into force. With respect to any state that ratifies or adheres thereafter, the Convention shall enter into force on the date of the deposit of its instrument of ratification or adherence.

3. The Secretary General shall inform all member states of the Organization of the entry into force of the Convention.

Article 75

This Convention shall be subject to reservations only in conformity with the provisions of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties signed on May 23, 1969.

Article 76

1. Proposals to amend this Convention may be submitted to the General Assembly for the action it deems appropriate by any State Party directly, and by the Commission or the Court through the Secretary General.

2. Amendments shall enter into force for the States ratifying them on the date when two-thirds of the States Parties to this Convention have deposited their respective instruments of ratification. With respect to the other States Parties, the amendments shall enter into force on the dates on which they deposit their respective instruments of ratification.

Article 77

1. In accordance with Article 31, any State Party and the Commission may submit proposed protocols to this Convention for consideration by the States Parties at the General Assembly with a view to gradually including other rights and freedoms within its system of protection.

2. Each protocol shall determine the manner of its entry into force and shall be applied only among the States Parties to it.

Article 78

1. The States Parties may denounce this Convention at the expiration of a five-year period from the date of its entry into force and by means of notice given one year in advance. Notice of the denunciation shall be addressed to the Secretary General of the Organization, who shall inform the other States Parties.

2. Such a denunciation shall not have the effect of releasing the State Party concerned from the obligations contained in this Convention with respect to any act that may constitute a violation of those obligations and that has been taken by that state prior to the effective date of denunciation.

CHAPTER XI - TRANSITORY PROVISIONS

Section 1. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

Article 79

Upon the entry into force of this Convention, the Secretary General shall, in writing, request each member state of the Organization to present, within ninety days, its candidates for membership on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The Secretary General shall prepare a list in alphabetical order of the candidates presented, and transmit it to the member states of the Organization at least thirty days prior to the next session of the General Assembly.

Article 80

The members of the Commission shall be elected by secret ballot of the General Assembly from the list of candidates referred to in Article 79. The candidates who obtain the largest number of votes and an absolute majority of the votes of the representatives of the member states shall be declared elected. Should it become necessary to have several ballots in order to elect all the members of the Commission, the candidates who receive the smallest number of votes shall be eliminated successively, in the manner determined by the General Assembly.

Section 2. Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Article 81

Upon the entry into force of this Convention, the Secretary General shall, in writing, request each State Party to present, within ninety days, its candidates for membership on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The Secretary General shall prepare a list in alphabetical order of the candidates presented and transmit it to the States Parties at least thirty days prior to the next session of the General Assembly.

Article 82

The judges of the Court shall be elected from the list of candidates referred to in Article 81, by secret ballot of the States Parties to the Convention in the General Assembly. The candidates who obtain the largest number of votes and an absolute majority of the votes of the representatives of the States Parties shall be declared elected. Should it become necessary to have several ballots in order to elect all the judges of the Court, the candidates who receive the smallest number of votes shall be eliminated successively, in the manner determined by the States Parties.

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Niels Erk Bank-Mikkelsen from Denmark and Bengt Nirje from Sweden introduce the concept of normalization to an American audience at a conference sponsored by the President's Committee on Mental Retardation, helping to provide the conceptual framework for deinstitutionalization. Their remarks, and those of others, are published in Changing Patterns in Services for the Mentally Retarded.

President Nixon created the Office of Child Development under the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) to coordinate and administer Head Start and U.S. Children's Bureau functions.

Richard M. Nixon proposes the Family Assistance Plan in a historic message to Congress. He asserts the welfare system has failed and recommends a federal welfare system with a virtually guaranteed annual income. The House, but not the Senate, passes the plan, which is subsequently reintroduced in 1971. After two years of negotiation with welfare groups, the plan is withdrawn.

The bachelor of social work degree is recognized for NASW membership as a result of a national membership referendum and is implemented in 1970.

The Social Worker's Professional Liability Insurance program is started by the NASW administration; it is transferred to the NASW Insurance Trust in 1985.

The Association of American Indian Social Workers is founded. (in 1981 it becomes the Association of Indian and Alaskan Native Social Workers, and in 1984, the National Indian Social Workers Association.)

Insane Liberation Front (ILF) may have been the first mental patients rights group run for and by mental patients is organized by Howie The Harp (age 17, homeless advocate), Dorothy Weiner (union organizer) Tom Wittick (political activist/organizer) and about ten others in Portland, Oregon. The name, Insane Liberation Front was chosen by Tom Wittick. It is the first known, modern, organized, self-help, advocacy, ex-patient group that was dedicated to liberation from psychiatry. This marks the birth of the modern mental patients’ movement. Though the group only lasted for six or seven months before it folded, many other groups were to follow. These groups were few in size and number and took a decidedly militant viewpoint against psychiatry and the established mental health system. Groups with names like the "Alliance for the Liberation of Mental Patients" and "Project Release" met in homes and churches and first drew their membership from the ranks of those with first-hand knowledge of negative experiences with the mental health system. However, they sustained their membership by providing: peer support; education about services in the community and about the problems consumers/survivors were facing; and advocacy to help members access services as well as to change an often oppressive system. Some of these groups published their own, often impressive, newspapers and magazines (e.g., Madness Network News, Phoenix Rising) to provide education and information to their members. Others conducted advocacy through such direct actions as protests and pickets both at hospitals accused of being abusive and at conventions of the American Psychiatric Association.

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In 1969, in Portland, Oregon, our modern human rights movement was founded. Dorothy Weiner, a union activist and labor organizer put an ad in a local underground newspaper. Tom Wittick, a socialist political activist and organizer answered the ad. A shy young man who had just gotten out of Western State Hospital in Washington and was living in a half-way house was driven down to the meeting by his sister, Helen. That was Howie The Harp (Howard Geld), a homeless organizer. These three laid the groundwork for all that was to become our modern movement.

Howie The Harp

Howie The Harp is the name to which Howard Geld had his name legally changed so that he’d have the same middle name as “Winnie the Pooh” and “Ivan the Terrible.” He learned to play harmonica from a fellow inmate once while locked up and found it to be a useful organizing tool and at times used it to support himself on the streets. In 1965, Howard Geld was a 13-year old patient in a psychiatric hospital. Often he could not sleep, and a night attendant taught him to play the harmonica. "When you cry out loud in a mental hospital you get medicated" - "When I was sad, I could cry through the harmonica." He was given the name Howie the Harp on the streets of Greenwich Village, New York.

They met regularly on Friday nights with a business meeting followed by social time. Sometimes they met in each others’ living rooms and sometimes they’d meet at a pizza house, the library or other gathering places. They’d have anywhere from 8 to 80 people show up for the meetings. They named themselves the “Insane Liberation Front.” At one point they were offered support by “Radical Therapists” who were a group of psychologists from the Air Force who had served in Viet Nam. The “Radical Therapists” published a collection of papers from the time and this is the chapter written by the Insane Liberation Front in 1971. The Manifesto is modeled after the “Ten Point Program” of the Black Panther party written in 1966.

Insane Liberation Front

We, of Insane Liberation Front, are former mental patients and people whom society labels as insane. We are beginning to get together – beginning to see that our problems are not individual, not due to personal inadequacies but are a result of living in an oppressive society. And we’re beginning to see that our so-called “sickness” is a personal rebellion or an internal revolt against this inhumane system. Insane Liberation will actively fight mental institutions and the brutalization they represent (e.g., involuntary confinement, electric shock, use of drugs, forced labor, beatings, and the constant affronts to our self-identity). Even in so-called “progressive hospitals” where many of the physical abuses do not occur, we’re still made to feel so low that our concepts of who we are, and our beliefs, are pushed down so far that we often end up accepting our jailer’s society. We will fight to free all people imprisoned in mental institutions.

Insane Liberation plans to establish neighborhood freak-out centers where people can get help from people who are undergoing or have undergone similar experiences. We believe that the only way people can be helped is through people helping each other – people with hang-ups being totally open and sincere to each other. The majority of shrinks, on the other hand, set themselves up as all-knowing authorities and from their positions of power automatically assume that the so-called patient is sick and not the society.

We demand, with other liberation groups, an end to the capitalistic system with its racist, sexist oppression and with its competitive, antihuman standards. We believe in a socialist society based on cooperation.

Demands from Insane Manifesto

1. We demand an end to the existence of mental institutions and all the oppression they represent (e.g., involuntary servitude, electroshock, use of drugs, and restrictions on freedom to communicate with the outside).

2. We demand that all people imprisoned in mental hospitals be immediately freed.

3. We demand the establishment of neighborhood freak-out centers, entirely controlled by the people who use them. A freak-out center is a place where people, if they feel they need help, can get it in a totally open atmosphere from people who are undergoing or have undergone similar experiences.

“I see the freak-out center as a place where there will be people who know where people freaking out are at because they have been there and they won’t cut them off because they know how devastating that can be. The people that live and work there see themselves as no more sane than anyone that will come there. Everyone is insane and everyone freaks out.” (Insane Liberation, Portland, Oregon.)

Insane Liberation plans to form freak-out centers immediately.

4. We demand an end to mental commitments.

5. We want an end to the practice of psychiatry. The whole “science” of psychiatry is based on the assumption that there is something wrong with the individual rather than with society. We see psychiatry as a tool to maintain the present system. Rebelling often means being immediately sent to a shrink because of “emotional disturbance.” We see that the majority of shrinks a) make money off our problems; b) see us as categories and objects. To them we are an “anxiety neurosis” or a “paranoid reaction” instead of a human being; c) foster dependency instead of independency by making us distrust ourselves and consequently look for answers in the all-knowing God, the psychiatrist.

Many psychiatrists have already used their influences to discredit the revolutionary movement by calling it sick. We see that this will continue and get worse.

6. We demand an end to economic discrimination against people who have undergone psychiatric treatment and we demand that all their records be destroyed.

7. We want an end to sane chauvinism (intolerance toward people who appear strange and act differently) and that people be educated to fight against it.

8. We demand with other liberation groups an end to the capitalistic system with its racist, sexist oppression and with its competitive, antihuman standards. We believe in a socialist society based on cooperation.

9. “We demand the right to the integrity of our bodies in all their functions, including the extremist of situations, suicide. We demand that all antisuicide laws be wiped

From “The Radical Therapist; therapy means CHANGE not adjustment”, The Radical Therapist Collective Produced by Jerome Agel, Ballantine Books, Inc., NY, September 1971, SBN# 345-02383-8-125

“Silent News” is founded by Julius and Harriet Wiggins as a newspaper for deaf people.

Chicago women set up "Jane," an abortion referral service. During four years of existence, it provides more than 11,000 women with safe and affordable abortions.

The Boston Women's Health Book Collective publishes the self-help manual Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book by and for Women, incorporating medical information with personal experiences. Nearly 4 million copies sold as of 1997.

March 1969 Date on an essay by Carol Hanisch called "The Personal is Political" in the Redstockings collection Feminist Revolution The essay defends consciousness-raising against the charge that it is "therapy." Hanisch states, "One of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time."

California adopts the nation's first "no fault" divorce law, allowing couples to divorce by mutual consent. California adopts a no-fault divorce law by which either partner can request and obtain a divorce without fear of being contested by the other party. Other states follow rapidly. By 1985 every state has adopted a similar law. Laws are also passed regarding the equal division of common property.

The killing of a wife, sister, or mother by a man upholding his "male honor" is made a serious offense in Italy.

In Bowe v. Colgate-Palmolive, the Supreme Court rules that women meeting the physical requirements can work in many jobs that had been for men only.

Crisis in Child Mental Health, the report of the Joint Commission on Mental Health of Children, was made public.

Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases describes how they attempted to reduce the aggressive behavior of a thirty-one year old schizophrenic woman by shocking her with a cattle prod whenever she made accusation of being persecuted and abused; made verbal threats, or committed aggressive acts.

Dr. Herbert Modlin, “managed” a group of paranoid women back to feminine health; he helped them re-establish their relationships with their husbands. He decided that his paranoid ‘patients needed strong male control, both within their marriages and within the hospital.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Thomas Szasz.

Travis Hirschi's Causes of Delinquency - Social bond theory - "Delinquent acts result when an individual's bond to society is weak or broken"

Gregory Bateson publishes Schizophrenia and Family

Albert Bandura publishes Principles of Modification of the Behavior

Joseph Wolpe publishes The Practice of Behavior Therapy.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross publishes On the Death and Dying

“Aftershock,” by Ellen Wolfe.

“My Testimony,” by Anatoly Marchenko

“Fear No Evil,” by John E. Leach.

“The Prison of My Mind,” by Barbara Fields Benziger.

Early 1970's

For the first time, Gaynor Lacey, a Welsh psychiatrist, and C. Janet Newman, a child psychiatrist, looked at children of traumatic events.

The first rape crisis center was established.

Feminism develops into two major branches, a women's rights feminism like NOW, and a women's liberation movement exemplified by socialist feminist and radical feminist groups. The women's liberation movement, by claiming that what goes on in the privacy of people's homes is deeply political, sets the stage for the battered women's movement. The emerging movement details the conditions of daily life that allow women to call themselves battered. Women's hotlines and crisis centers provide a context for battered women to speak out and seek help. The feminist movement emphasizes egalitarianism and participatory organizational models. In feminist shelters, women create a new morality that is in direct contrast to the competitive, male-dominated organizations and bureaucracies surrounding them. Women are inspired and sustained by their relationships with others, by knowing that their work is crucial and by the feminist process within the shelters. As shelters grow, structural questions arise. Some choose to work collectively, others organize around a hierarchial structure, while still others adopt modified collectives or hierarchies. As more and more shelters and programs receive welfare or Title XX monies, staff workers slowly start to call battered women "clients." Greater attention is given to individual counseling for women and less on group sharing, peer support and teaching battered women to advocate for one another. Social change is discouraged, and Title XX funding can be used only for services, not community education. Clashes between the movement and funding agencies which want programs to respond like other service organizations, sap much energy for serveral years.

References to male violence in the family are made in several women's liberation anthologies, such as Sisterhood is Powerful (1970) and Voices from Women's Liberation. Neither of these two anthologies contains articles on rape. The anti-rape movement emerges a couple of years later. 

Scotland and Iran make wife-beating illegal.

In Chicago, like many other cities, married battered women who leave their husbands are denied welfare due to their husbands' income.

Chicago Women Against Rape forms.

NOW organizes more than 300 local and state rape task forces.

1970's

The final report of President Carter’s Commission on Mental Health calls for attention to basic community supports for mental health consumers. The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act consolidated drug laws and strengthened law enforcement; it also authorized the Controlled Substances Act classifying drugs based on medical value, harmfulness, and potential for abuse or addiction. President Nixon identified drug abuse as “public enemy number one in the United States” and launched the war on drugs and crime. The initial National Household Survey on Drug Abuse is completed in 1971. By 1970 the woman’s movement, gay rights movement and the disabilities rights movement emerged. Throughout the 1970s, the CMHC program competed with many urgent domestic programs, both health-related and non-health-related. Richard Nixon tried to discontinue the program but was rebuffed by the Democratic Congress. Congress passed amendments that added more requirements for the mental health centers but did not appropriate the funds necessary either to pay for the newly required services or to cover even half of the country in the time frame initially envisioned. Required services included those for children, the elderly population, and chemically dependent persons as well as rehabilitation, housing, and preventive services.

The National Organization for Women (NOW) initiated rape reform legislation. Within ten years, all fifty states changed laws.

The National Institute of Mental Health was pressured to create a center for research on rape. Long and personal interviews were initiated for the first time since Freud and Janet, 100 years earlier. The interviews showed pervasive and epidemic sexual assaults on women and children.

For the first time, rape was established as a crime of violence. It was the first time for countering the view that rape fulfilled a woman's deepest desires.

"We will not be beaten" becomes the mantra of women across the country organizing to end domestic violence. A grassroots organizing effort begins, transforming public consciousness and women's lives. The common belief within the movement is that women face brutality from their husbands and indifference from social institutions.

The Richmond, CA police department is the first in the nation to make domestic crisis intervention training part of its in-service training, and the first to train all of its police officers. This program operates without federal or state funding. In contrast, Oakland police department has only four officers who are trained to "man family crisis cars" and become more psychologically sensitive to domestic violence. 

The family crisis intervention unit of Hayward, CA Police Department hires mental health professionals to accompany them on family crisis calls and to provide ongoing family counseling. The program, Project Outreach, uses unmarked police cars and operates from 5:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. Fridays through Sundays. By 1976 all officers have been trained in domestic violence. Repeat calls decreased by 27% and total calls by 22%. 

In Tokyo, Japan a group of feminists is on the alert for situations where women are victimized by men. They march into the offices of the perpetrators wearing pink helmets, carrying placards that read "We will not condone the tyranny of the husband." If the man is there, they will shout at him through bullhorns for all to hear. If he is not there, they will demand that the company executives justify why they hired such a "heel." The group believes that the tactics work because the men loose face.

A pamphlet published by the American Humane Association stated, "The mother is the only possible agent of incest control within the family group".

The Women's Liberation Movement brought incest issues into awareness through discussions.

Early research on survivors of captivity & war

Vietnam Vets form “rap groups” on war trauma

Feminist and domestic violence movements begin

Normalization is introduced to the United States. Decentralization and deinstitutionalization begin. Lawsuits against institutions are filed. Federal funds are available for residential care (ICF—Intermediate Care Facilities). The law and services recognize concepts such as: least restrictive environment, the developmental model, and behavior modification. The Self-Advocacy and Independent Living Movements are born.

In a review of the five largest studies of parent/child incest, a total of 424 cases, fathers were found to be the abusers 97% of the time.

1970

Developmental Disabilities Services and Facilities Construction Amendments of 1970 - These Amendments contained the first legal definition of developmental disabilities. They also authorized grants for services and facilities for the rehabilitation of people with developmental disabilities and state DD Councils. Expanded services to individuals with epilepsy and cerebral palsy; authorized new state formula grant program; defined “developmental disability” in categorical terms; established state-level planning council. The Developmental Disabilities Services and Facilities Construction Amendments are passed. They contain the first legal definition of developmental disabilities and authorize grants for services and facilities for the rehabilitation of people with developmental disabilities and state “DD Councils.”

Mass deinstitutionalization began. Patients and their families were left to their own resources due to lack of outpatient programs for rehabilitation and reintegration back into society.

Nursing home resident Max Starkloff founds Paraquad in St Louis.

In 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire during an anti-war protest at Kent State University, killing these four students. Clockwise from top left, Allison Krause, William Schroeder, Sandy Scheuer and Jeffry Miller. The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre) occurred at Kent State University in the US city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.

Disabled in Action is founded in New York City by Judith Heumann, after her successful employment discrimination suit against the city's public school system. With chapters in several other cities, it organizes demonstrations and files litigation on behalf of disability rights.

Urban Mass Transportation Act Amendment of 1970 - Authorized grants to states and localities for accessible mass transportation. Congress passes the Urban Mass Transportation Assistance Act, declaring it a “national policy that elderly and handicapped persons have the same right as other persons to utilize mass transportation facilities and services.” Passage of the act has little impact, however, as the law contains no provision for enforcement. The Urban Mass Transportation Act became law, and it required all new American mass transit vehicles be equipped with wheelchair lifts. APTA delayed implementation for 20 years. Regulations were finally issued in 1990. It was twenty years, primarily because of machinations of the American Public Transit Association (APTA), before the part of the law requiring wheelchair lifts was implemented.

Educator and Disability Activist. Judy Heumann sues the New York City Board of Education when her application for a teaching license is denied. The stated reason is the same originally used to bar her from kindergarten—that her wheelchair is a fire hazard. The suit, settled out of court, launches Heumann's activism. Disabled in Action is founded in New York City by Judith Heumann, after her successful employment discrimination suit against the city's public school system. With chapters in several other cities, it organizes demonstrations and files litigation on behalf of disability rights.

In Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co., a U.S. Court of Appeals rules that jobs held by men and women need to be "substantially equal" but not "identical" to fall under the protection of the Equal Pay Act. An employer cannot, for example, change the job titles of women workers in order to pay them less than men.

Betty Friedan organizes first Women's Equality Day, August 26, to mark the 50th anniversary of women's right to vote.

Sexual Politics, by Kate Millett, is published.

A study shows that police in Oakland, CA responded to more than 16,000 family disturbance calls during a six-month period.

The index of the Journal of Marriage and the Family includes a reference to "violence," claiming none existed from 1939 to present.

The Comision Feminil Mexicana Nacion is organized to promote Latina rights. Founders include Graciella Olivares, Gracia Molina Pick, Francisco Flores, and Yolanda Nava.

The North American Indian Women's Association is founded.

San Diego State College in California establishes the first official, integrated women's studies program.

Women's wages fall to 59 cents for every dollar earned by men. Although nonwhite women earn even less, the gap is closing between white women and women of color.

The Equal Rights Amendment is reintroduced into Congress.

Lutheran Church in America and the American Lutheran Church agree to ordain women; the Lutheran Church: Missouri Synod does not. Barbara Andrews becomes first woman ordained.

Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act consolidated drug laws and strengthened law enforcement it also authorized the Controlled Substance Act classifying drugs based on medical value, harmfulness, and potential for abuse and addiction. The Controlled Substance Act replaced the Drug Abuse Control Amendment and organized federally regulated drugs (including opiates, coca, cannabis, stimulants, depressants, and hallucinogens) into five schedules with varying restrictions and penalties. The United States U.S. Controlled Substances Act was passed, putting LSD, DMT, Psilocybin, Mescaline, and Marijuana on Schedule I (no accepted medical use).

President Nixon creates the Office of Minority Business Enterprise.

Formulated in the early 1960's by a mother dissatisfied with oral-based attempts to teach her deaf daughter, the Total Communication system gains grassroots support and becomes the foundation for a new approach to deaf education within public school systems.

The Comprehensive Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Prevention, Treatment, and Rehabilitation Act established the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism within NIMH.

Dr. Julius Axelrod, an NIMH researcher, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for research into the chemistry of nerve transmission for “discoveries concerning the humoral transmitters in the nerve terminals and the mechanisms for their storage, release and inactivation.” He found an enzyme that terminates the action of the nerve transmitter, noradrenaline.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved lithium for acute mania. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves lithium to treat people diagnosed with manic-depression based upon NIMH research. The Australian psychiatrist John Cade had shown 20 years earlier (1949) that lithium quieted “manic patients”. This allegedly led to a savings of approximately $40 billion over the next couple of decades and a sharp drop of inpatient days and suicides.

Gay rights activists storm panels on homosexuality at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) annual convention in San Francisco. The gay liberation movement begins to fight back against psychiatry. On May 14, gay activists disrupted the annual meeting of the APA. They appear unexpectedly at a session on “aversion therapy,” interrupt all speakers, list and denounce psychiatric crimes against lesbians and gay men, and call Socarides, Bieber, and their supporters “pigs.” Similar confrontations are staged at meetings of the American Medical Association, at an East coast nurses’ seminar, and at the national conference of American psychologists held in Los Angeles. Psychiatrists begin to consider removing homosexuality from the DSM. Socarides objects to the trend towards liberalism, and calls te defenders of homosexuality tragically misguided.

In re Winship was a U.S. Supreme Court decision that held when a juvenile is charged with an act which would be a crime if committed by an adult, every element of the offense must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Adoptions reached their century-long statistical peak at approximately 175,000 per year. Almost 80 percent of the total were arranged by agencies.

The Ford Foundation works with the federal government to develop the National Commission on Resources for Youth, which produces reports, holds conferences and conducts an array of activities focused on promoting youth participation, youth voice, youth empowerment and community youth development across the United States.

Signed English, Seeing Essential English and SEE II methods are developed in order to create a manual code for English that can be used to supplement the Oral method. These sign systems are to be used simultaneously with speech to promote the development of English skills.

A few states make abortion available upon request of a woman and her doctor.

In the United Kingdom, having concluded that the historical causes for fixing 21 years as the age of majority were no longer relevant to contemporary society, the Latey Committee's recommendation was accepted, that the Age of majority, including voting age, should be reduced to 18 years.

First Christopher Street Liberation Day March in New York City commemorating the Stonewall riots.

Ed Roberts, "father of the independent living movement," contracts polio in 1953. In 1970, he and and his peers at Cowell (UC Berkeley Health Center) formed a group called the Rolling Quads. The Rolling Quads form the Disabled Students' Program on the U.C. Berkeley campus. He says "I'm tired of well meaning noncripples with their stereotypes of what I can and cannot do directing my life and my future. I want cripples to direct their own programs and to be able to train other cripples to direct new programs. This is the start of something big -- cripple power. "Ed Roberts formed a group on campus called the Rolling Quads and one year after that, Ed and his associates established the nation’s first Center for Independent Living (CIL). 15 years after being told he was “too disabled to work”, Ed was appointed as the head of Vocational Rehabilitation for California in, and established 9 CILs in the state in 1975. Today there are over 300 CILs nationwide. Ed is known as the father of the independent living movement. The Physically Disabled Students Program (PDSP) is founded by Ed Roberts, John Hessler, Hale Zukas, and others at the University of California at Berkeley. With its provisions for community living, political advocacy, and personal assistance services, it becomes the nucleus for the first Center for Independent Living, founded two years later in 1972. Ed Roberts Day is celebrated on his birthday, January 23^rd.

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Edward Verne Roberts (January 23, 1939 – March 14, 1995) was an American activist. He was the first student with severe disabilities to attend the University of California, Berkeley. He was a pioneering leader of the disability rights movement. Roberts contracted polio at the age of fourteen in 1953, two years before the Salk vaccine put an end to the epidemics. He spent eighteen months in hospitals and returned home paralyzed from the neck down except for two fingers on one hand and several toes. He slept in an iron lung at night and often rested there during the day. When out of the lung he survived by "frog breathing," a technique for swallowing air using facial and neck muscles. He attended school by telephone hook-up until his mother Zona insisted that he go to school once a week for a few hours. At school he faced his deep fear of being stared at and transformed his sense of personal identity. He gave up thinking of himself as a "helpless cripple," and decided to think of himself as a "star." He credited his mother with teaching him by example how to fight for what he needed. Ed Roberts is often called the father of the disability rights movement. His career as an advocate began when a high school administrator threatened to deny his diploma because he had not completed driver's education and physical education. After attending the College of San Mateo he was admitted to the University of California, Berkeley. He had to fight for the support he needed from the California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation to attend college because his rehabilitation counselor thought he was too severely disabled to ever get a job. On learning that Roberts had a severe disability, one of the UC Berkeley deans famously commented, "We've tried cripples before and it didn't work." Other Berkeley administrators supported his admission, and expressed the opinion that the University should be doing more. Roberts matriculated in 1962, two years before the Free Speech Movement transformed Berkeley into a hotbed of student protest. When his search for housing met resistance in part because of the 800 pound iron lung that he slept in at night, the director of the campus health service offered him a room in an empty wing of the Cowell Hospital. Roberts accepted on the condition that the area where he lived be treated as dormitory space, not a medical facility. His admission broke the ice for other students with severe disabilities who joined him over the next few years at what evolved into the Cowell Residence Program. The group developed a sense of identity and elan, and began to formulate a political analysis of disability. They began calling themselves the "Rolling Quads" to the surprise of some non-disabled observers who had never before heard a positive expression of disability identity. In 1968 when two of the Rolling Quads were threatened with eviction from the Cowell Residence Program by a Rehabilitation Counselor, the Rolling Quads organized a successful 'revolt' that led to the counselor's transfer. Their success on campus inspired the group to begin advocating for curb cuts, opening access to the wider community, and to create the Physically Disabled Student's Program (PDSP) - the first student led disability services program in the country. Ed Roberts flew 3000 miles from California to Washington DC with no respiratory support in order to attend a conference at the start-up of the federal TRIO program through which the PDSP later secured funding. The PDSP provided services including attendant referral and wheelchair repair to students at the University, but it was soon taking calls from people with disabilities with the same concerns who were not students. He earned B.A. (1964) and M.A. (1966) degrees from UC Berkeley in Political Science. He became an official Ph.D. candidate (C.Phil.) in political science at Berkeley in 1969, but did not complete his Ph.D. The need to serve the wider community led to the creation of the Berkeley Center for Independent Living (CIL), the first independent living service and advocacy program run by and for people with disabilities. Contrary to common belief, he was not the founder of the Berkeley CIL, nor the CIL's first executive director. He was teaching political science at an "alternative college," but returned to Berkeley to assume leadership of the fledgling organization. He guided the CIL's rapid growth during a decisive time for the emerging disability rights movement. The CIL provided a model for a new kind of community organization designed to address the needs and concerns of people with a wide range of disabilities. In 1976, newly elected Governor Jerry Brown appointed Ed Roberts Director of the California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation - the same agency that had once labelled him too severely disabled to work. He served in that post until 1983. When California politics again shifted to the right, he returned again to Berkeley where he co-founded the World Institute on Disability with Judy Heumann and Joan Leon. Roberts died on March 14, 1995, at the age of 56. There are hundreds of centers for independent living around the world based on his original model. There is a National Council on Independent Living, a national advocacy organization established by all the centers. They hold an annual meeting every spring in Washington. At the one that was held after his passing, on May 15, 1995, Ed's empty wheelchair was towed by a volunteer as it symbolically led more than 500 advocates from around the country for the last time, on a memorial march from Upper Senate Park to a vigil in his honor in a Senate office building. Speakers at this vigil included Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, Representative Steny Hoyer, Judith Heumann, and Paul Hearne. Ed's wheelchair was then donated to the Smithsonian Institution.

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Beginning in the 1970s, The Mental Patients Union (MPU) and Community Organization for Psychiatric Emergencies (COPE) established, evolving eventually into the Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression (CAPO) in England.

“Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977.” Ed. C. Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M.

First issue of The Radical Therapist "Therapy means change, not adjustment." Name changed to Rough Times in April 1972. It changed again to State and Mind about 1975.

“Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” by Paulo Friere

“Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry,” David Cooper

“Sojourn in a Palace for Peculiars,” by Marty Roberts.

“The Other Caroline,” by Mary Jane Ward.

“Mental.” UK, by Robert Quentin Nelson.

1971

The National Center for Law and the Handicapped is founded at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, becoming the first legal advocacy center for people with disabilities in the United States.

Center for Independent Living founded. Ed Roberts and his associates establish a Center for Independent Living (CIL) in Berkeley, CA for the community at large. The center was originally in a roach-infested two-bedroom apartment until the Rehabilitation Administration gave them a $50,000 grant in 1972.

First Doctorate in Psychology (Psy.D.) awarded (from The University of Illinois – Urbana/Champaign).

UN Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons. This declaration was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly and states that: "The mentally retarded person has, to the maximum degree of feasibility, the same rights as other human beings."

The Fair Labor Standard Act of 1938 is amended to bring people with disabilities other than blindness into the sheltered workshop system. This measure leads to the establishment, in coming years, of an enormous sheltered workshop system for people with cognitive and developmental disabilities.

The ACTION agency is formed through President Nixon's reorganization plan, centralizing direction of volunteer agencies, including Volunteers in Service to America, Peace Corps, and others, and beginning a pattern of reductions.

Congress passes the Comprehensive Child Development Act to provide comprehensive high quality day care and support services to all children. President Nixon vetoes the act.

The Educational Legislative Action Network (ELAN) is initiated by NASW as a national congressional district legislative structure; ELAN commits the social work profession to legislative advocacy as a professional responsibility.

NASW initiates the objective examination, the first national testing of social work knowledge and practice, for the Academy of Certified Social Workers.

The National Federation of Clinical Social Workers is established. (in 1976 it becomes the National Federation of Societies for Clinical Social Work.)

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. Originally drafted by Alice Paul in 1923, the amendment reads: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." The amendment died in 1982 when it failed to achieve ratification by a minimum of 38 states.

Triformation Systems, which would later become Enabling Technologies, releases their first embosser, the BD 3. In the late seventies they came out with their popular LED 120 embosser.

People Not Psychiatry, People Need People, (PNP) A Loose pamphlet produced in Manchester, GB for Psychiatric Survivors movement "We believe that every human being is a unique individual whose experience and life-style is valid. We reject the assumption that because a person's behavior varies from what is expected or demanded of him/her they are robbed of their full status as human beings by a process of psychiatric labeling. Further, we recognize that no human being can develop fully in isolation from others. The full potential of a human being can only be attained through the relationship of self to other, the meeting of Thou and I.

Burton Blatt creates Center on Human Policy at Syracuse University.

The American National Standard Institute, Inc. (ANSI) published American Standard Specifications for Making Buildings Accessible to, and Usable by, the Physically Handicapped (the A117.1 Barrier Free Standard). This landmark document, produced by the University of Illinois, became the basis for subsequent architectural access codes.

The Caption Center is founded at WGBH Public Television in Boston, and it begins providing captioned programming for deaf viewers.

Javits-Wagner-O'Day Act of 1971 - Extended purchase authority to workshops for people with severe disabilities in addition to blindness; retained through 1976 preference for workshops for people who are blind. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 is amended to bring people with disabilities other than blindness into the sheltered workshop system. This measure leads to the establishment, in coming years, of an enormous sheltered workshop system for people with cognitive and developmental disabilities.

In Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Citizens (PARC) v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 334 F. Supp. 1257 (E.D. Pa. 1971) the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, ruled that it was the obligation of the state of Pennsylvania to provide free public education to mentally retarded children, which it was not doing at that time. This decision struck down various state laws used to exclude disabled children from the public schools. Advocates cited this decision during public hearings that led to the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975.

A group of 17 national health and mental health organizations sponsored a 2-day conference honoring the 25th anniversary of the enactment of the National Mental Health Act.

Leonard Frank

Leonard Roy Frank, David Richman, Sherry Hirsch and others form the Network Against Psychiatric Assault (NAPA) in the San Francisco Bay Area of California.

Mental Patients Liberation Project (MPLP) founded by Howie The Harp (nee Howard Geld) and his sister Helen, a storefront crisis center for present and former mental patients in New York City.

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The Mental Patients’ Bill of Rights (1971)

1. You are a human being and are entitled to be treated as such with as much decency and respect as is accorded to any other human being.

2. You are an American citizen and are entitled to every right established by the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America.

3. You have the right to the integrity of your own mind and the integrity of your own body.

4. Treatment and medication can be administered only with your consent and, in the event you give your consent, you have the right to know all relevant information regarding said treatment and/or medication.

5. You have the right to access your own legal and medical counsel.

6. You have the right to refuse to work in a mental hospital and/or to choose what work you will do; and you have the right to receive the usual wage for such work as is set by the state labor laws.

7. You have the right to decent medical attention when you feel you need it, just as any other human being has that right.

8. You have the right to uncensored communication by phone, letter, and in person with whomever you wish and at any time you wish.

9. You have the right not to be treated as a criminal; not to be locked up against your will; not to be committed involuntarily; not to be fingerprinted or “mugged” (photographed).

10. You have the right to decent living conditions. You’re paying for it and the taxpayers are paying for it.

11. You have the right to retain your own personal property. No one has the right to confiscate what is legally yours, no matter what reason is given. That is commonly known as theft.

12. You have the right to bring grievance against those who have mistreated you and the right to counsel and a court hearing. You are entitled to protection by the law against retaliation.

13. You have the right to refuse to be a guinea pig for experimental drugs and treatments and to refuse to be used as learning material for students. You have the right to reimbursement if you are used.

14. You have the right to request an alternative to legal commitment or incarceration in a mental hospital.

This document was written by the Mental Patients’ Liberation Project in New York City and widely circulated thereafter. Chamberlin, On Our Own, 86-87.

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Mental Patients Liberation Front (MPLF) founded by two ex-patients in Boston (still in existence until around 2005 and sponsors the Ruby Rogers Advocacy and Drop-In Center). Printed at the New England Free Press, a 56-page document entitled “Your Rights as a Mental Patient in Massachusetts.”

Mental Patients' Association in Vancouver, Canada begins operating drop-in centers and residences within months of it's founding

Center for the Study of Legal Authority and Mental Patient Status (also known as LAMP) begun in Berkeley by David Richman

Founding of Bonita House a halfway house in Berkeley, CA for persons who have been in psychiatric hospitals with c/s/x activist Sherry Hirsch as Executive Director.

Ms. Magazine is first published as a sample insert in New York magazine; 300,000 copies are sold out in 8 days. The first regular issue is published in July 1972. The magazine becomes the major forum for feminist voices, and cofounder and editor Gloria Steinem is launched as an icon of the modern feminist movement and becomes a leading journalist and media personality for the Second Wave.

Women's Advocates in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN is among the first groups to develop from a woman's consciousness raising group. The organization is built on a collective, rather than a hierarchical model - all the way to the Board of Directors which includes staff and ex-shelter residents. The group's first project is a legal information service in the County Legal Aid office started in March 1972.

The first battered women's shelter opens in the U.S., in Urbana, Illinois, founded by Cheryl Frank and Jacqueline Flenner. By 1979, more than 250 shelters are operating.

In Philadelphia, one of the first feminist self-help groups, Women in Transition, forms. They provide services for divorced or separated women, battered wives and single mothers. 

The Bay Area Women Against Rape forms in California to provide support to rape victims and combat their "criminal" treatment in the legal system. 

Approximately 1/3 of female homicide victims in California are killed by their husbands.

In Kansas City, MO, 40% of all homicides are cases of spouse killing. In almost 50% of the cases, police had been summoned five or more times within a two-year period before the homicide took place.

New York Radical Feminists holds a series of speakouts and a conference on rape and women's treatment by the criminal justice system. Susan Brownmiller's book, Against Our Will, is one result. Another: the establishment of rape crisis centers across the country.

Susan Griffin authors Rape - The All-American Crime. It breaks the silence of terror and shame, and articulates a theory that rape is an act of aggression. 

Erin Prizzey establishes an "advice center" in London where women and their children come together and meet their peers, escape loneliness and discuss mutual issues. This center develops into Chiswick Women's Aid, also known as the Battered Wives' center.

Copenhagen's first shelter, Kvindehuset (The Women's House), is opened by the Red Stockings, the Danish Women's Liberation organization.

For the first time in its 130 yrs, attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg successfully uses the Fourteenth Amendment to overturn a sex-biased law in the Supreme Court case Reed v. Reed.

The non-partisan National Women's Political Caucus is founded to encourage women to run for public office.

Ricky Wyatt

The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama hands down its first decision in Wyatt v. Stickney, ruling that people in residential state schools and institutions have a constitutional right “to receive such individual treatment as (would) give them a realistic opportunity to be cured or to improve his or her mental condition.” Disabled people can no longer simply be locked away in “custodial institutions” without treatment or education. This decision is a crucial victory in the struggle for deinstitutionalization.

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Wyatt v. Stickney, filed in the federal United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama on October 23, 1970, was a landmark ruling that established baseline care and treatment requirements for the institutionalized mentally disabled. The suit was filed on behalf of the patients at Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa, with 16-year-old Ricky Wyatt as the main plaintiff. Wyatt had been incarcerated for "delinquency" but had never received any other diagnosis of mental disability or condition. The defendants in the case were the Alabama Department of Mental Health (DMH) and its commissioner, Stonewall Stickney.

The suit initially was prompted by layoffs at Bryce Hospital, with attorneys alleging that insufficient staff at the hospital would prevent involuntarily committed mentally ill patients from receiving adequate treatment, a violation of their civil rights under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Federal District Court judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, concluding from evidence submitted during litigation that standards for adequate treatment did not exist. Johnson, assisted by Stickney (whom Johnson considered a progressive administrator and a party to the suit only as a matter of form), wrote two sets of detailed constitutionally mandated minimum standards for adequate treatment, one for the mentally ill and another for the mentally retarded. The DMH appealed the case to no avail. In 1975, Johnson placed the DMH under court rule, where it remained until 2003, for its inability to comply with the minimum standards.

The origins of the case lie in Act 881, passed by the state legislature in 1965 at the urging of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama. The law created the Alabama Mental Health Board, which in turn created an office of commissioner to oversee the DMH and its three residential hospitals. The three facilities—Partlow State School and Hospital in Tuscaloosa for the mentally retarded, Searcy Hospital in Mount Vernon, and Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa for the mentally ill—housed more than 10,000 involuntarily committed patients.

In the summer of 1970, the state legislature reduced the state’s appropriation to the DMH, forcing Commissioner Stickney to cut the DMH budget by one percent and to lay off 99 employees at Bryce Hospital. On October 23, 1970, attorneys George Dean and Jack Drake filed a class action suit against the DMH, naming two classes as plaintiffs: one designating Ricky Wyatt and the Bryce patients and the other consisting of the dismissed employees. Judge Johnson stated that DMH had the legal right to discharge its employees when faced with budget shortfalls and dismissed the latter case. Johnson was concerned, however, about patients' rights to adequate treatment and heard the former case. With less staffing at Bryce, he reasoned, existing and future patients would receive inadequate treatment and would suffer incarceration without the benefit of due process of law.

On January 4, 1971, George Dean amended the original complaint requesting that DMH operate Bryce in accordance with constitutionally guaranteed rights to due process and adequate treatment. Accompanying this request, Dean provided evidence that patients received inadequate treatment and that the hospital was understaffed and underfunded. Of its 5,000 patients, 1,600 were geriatric patients and more than 1,000 were mentally retarded, both groups receiving custodial care but no psychiatric treatment. In terms of staffing, the hospital employed 17 physicians, 12 psychologists with varying academic qualifications and levels of experience, 21 registered nurses, 13 social service workers, 12 patient-activity workers, and approximately 900 psychiatric aides to treat the 5,000 patients. The employees whose duties involved direct patient care in the therapeutic programs, however, included only one clinical psychologist, three medical doctors with some psychiatric training, and two social workers. Alabama’s daily expenditure per patient was $6.00, with a daily food allowance of less than $0.50, compared to the national average of $15.00 a day.

On March 12, 1971, the District Court ruled on the motion of plaintiffs for preliminary injunction. Johnson stated that committed patients have a constitutional right to receive individual treatment designed to provide them a realistic opportunity to be cured or to improve their mental condition. Depriving citizens of their liberty upon the theory that the confinement is humane and therapeutic and then failing to provide adequate treatment violates the fundamentals of due process, he reasoned. After his ruling, Johnson became very active in directing the case. He allowed the patients at Searcy Hospital and Partlow State School and Hospital to join the suit as additional plaintiffs. He invited several groups to testify or otherwise participate in the case as amicus curiae, or friends of the court, including the American Psychological Association, the American Ortho-Psychiatric Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Association on Mental Retardation, and the U.S. Departments of Justice and U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The American Psychiatric Association, the National Association for Retarded Citizens, and the National Association for Mental Health joined later. Johnson also ordered Stickney, the Alabama Mental Health Board, and the state to prepare and implement an acceptable plan providing adequate treatment at the three hospitals; the plan never came to fruition, however, owing to lack of funds, staff, and time.

The court heard testimony from various organizations, committees, and individuals concerning both the appalling conditions at the three hospitals and recommendations to improve treatment. Johnson in response composed a set of minimum standards outlining adequate treatment using Stickney’s "Philosophy and Goals of a Mental Health Department," the guidelines that Stickney and Deputy Superintendent Dr. James Folsom had previously proposed, and recommendations from the amicus curiae. On April 13, 1972, Judge Johnson issued his historic order containing the minimal constitutional treatment standards for the mentally ill and the mentally retarded. These standards, later referred to as the Wyatt Standards, rested on three principles: individualized treatment plans, qualified staff in numbers sufficient to administer adequate treatment, and humane psychological and least restrictive environments.

In May 1972, Gov. George C. Wallace Jr. and the Alabama Mental Health Board appealed Johnson’s ruling, but on November 8, 1974, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled in favor of Johnson’s decision, sealing the standards as national guidelines for both the medical and legal professionals. DMH was unable to comply, however, because it could neither attract enough professionals to meet the new patient-to-physician ratio nor allocate sufficient funds to upgrade the hospital facilities and the patients' treatment procedures. As a result, the court released more than half of the hospitals' patients by 1975. Compounding DMH problems was the fact that many hospital employees did not adhere to the Wyatt Standards when treating the patients. In June 1977, based on information received from in-house human rights committees and journalist Paul Davis concerning physical abuse to the patients by the employees, Johnson placed the DMH under court rule and provided the Partlow facility with a federal court officer to monitor its compliance with the standards and to report any discrepancies to the court.

On January 15, 1980, the Middle District court placed the newly named Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation (DMH/MR) in receivership under Gov. Forrest "Fob" James. Although DMH/MR failed to comply with the standards on James's watch, the agency did make some progress. In the following years, Alabama built smaller, more modern and code-compliant community centers to reduce the overcrowding at the three hospitals.

In 1986, the DMH/MR entered into a new consent decree with the plaintiffs that required all facilities to achieve accreditation from the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and comply with the healthcare facility requirements of Title XIX, the Social Security Act. The decree focused on the guidelines of the Wyatt Standards, calling for the development of quality care, an internal advocacy system, and the placement of patients in community centers. The decree also replaced court monitors with the Wyatt Consultant Committee, consisting of a director of Internal Advocacy and four outside experts to advise the DMH/MR on ways to achieve compliance.

Although the DMH/MR had worked diligently with the plaintiffs to secure compliance, District Court judge Myron Thompson ruled in 1995 that the state still lacked compliance with approximately 30 percent of the Wyatt Standards. Nevertheless, Thompson did release several mental health centers from supervision. Over the next three years, the DMH/MR made significant progress in developing community services, a supporting infrastructure, and an internal advocacy program. In 1999, the court dissolved the 1986 consent decree and approved a new settlement agreement, allotting the DMH/MR three years to implement the agreement’s specific requirements.

On October 1, 2000, Commissioner Kathy Sawyer established 12 work groups to develop compliance plans. Sawyer also incorporated the Wyatt Standards into the DMH/MR’s policies and procedures manual, requiring all facilities to implement and adhere to these policies. A court-ordered evaluation concluded that the state had significantly transformed the attitude and performance of the DMH/MR. On December 5, 2003, Judge Thompson held a fairness hearing to consider whether the state had complied with the 1999 settlement agreement. Satisfied with DMH/MR’s performance of ensuring the constitutional right of civilly committed mental patients to receive adequate treatment, Thompson terminated the lawsuit. In attendance at the hearing was 49-year-old Ricky Wyatt. Spanning more than 33 years and costing the state more than $15 million in litigation fees, the Wyatt case came to a close.

This case ruling gave us new rules about the rights of civilly committed patients with mental illnesses in state hospitals. The court stated that such patients do have certain treatment rights, which include the following:

* Treatment must give some realistic opportunity for improvement or cure.

* Custodial care is insufficient to meet treatment requirements.

* A lack of funding does not excuse the state from treatment responsibilities.

* Commitment without treatment violates the due process rights of patients.

The most important holding in this case concerns the 3 determinants for the adequacy of treatment: (1) a humane environment, (2) a qualified staff in adequate numbers, and (3) individualized treatment plans. The Supreme Court decision in O'Connor v. Donaldson (1975) stated, however, that no state can confine a person with mental illness who is not a threat to self or others in a state hospital if he/she can survive safely in the community alone or with the help of willing, responsible family members or friends. O’Conner v Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975)

It is also a patient's right to have his/her care delivered in the least restrictive environment possible. As early as 1969, in Covington v. Harris, the court held that a person treated involuntarily should receive this treatment in a setting that is least restrictive to liberty but will still meet treatment needs. Least restrictive environments can be community resources instead of hospitalization, open units instead of locked units, or outpatient or home care instead of inpatient care.

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Loren Mosher

The original Soteria House opened in 1971. Created by Loren Mosher, M.D. who was Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCSD School of Medicine, Founder of the Schizophrenia Bulletin at the National Institute of Mental Health and a Board Member of the Alliance for Human Research Protection. A replication facility opened in 1974 in another suburban San Francisco Bay Area City. Despite the publication of consistently positive results the Soteria Project ended in 1983. Dr. Mosher went on to found the Soteria Institute of Health and oversee the opening of replicate facilities around the world.

Annual APA meeting in Washington DC features first-ever panel of gay people speaking about “Lifestyles of Non-Patient Homosexuals.” As a result of confrontations, five gay activists – two lesbians and three gay men – are invited to participate in a panel on “Life-Styles of Nonpatient Homosexuals” at the annual APA meeting in Washington, D.C. All five speak out against the pathologization of lesbians and gay men. A gay activist in the audience seizes the podium, outlines the implications of the disease theory for lesbians and gay men, and denounces the company marketing “aversion therapy” technology.

President Nixon identified drug abuse as “public enemy number one in the United States” and launched the war on drugs and crime.

Emotions Anonymous (Self-help, peer support organization), founded in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Supreme Court rules against school segregation, striking down the doctrine of separate but equal.

The initial National Household Survey on Drug Abuse is completed.

“The Radical Therapist,” a journal begun in 1971 in North Dakota by Michael Glenn, David Bryan, Linda Bryan, Michael Galan and Sara Glenn, challenged the psychotherapy establishment in a number of ways, raising the slogan “Therapy means change, not adjustment.”

“The Manufacture of Madness.” New York: Dell Publishing Co./Delta, Szasz, Thomas S.

B. F. Skinner publishes Beyond Freedom and Dignity

Swiss psychiatrist Medard Boss founds the Zurich Institute for Daseinsanalytic Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics

Florence Fisher founded the Adoptees Liberty Movement Association, “to abolish the existing practice of sealed records” and to advocate for, “opening of records to any adopted person over eighteen who wants, for any reason, to see them.”

The National Mental Health Association produced and distributed the film “Only Human,” which aired on more than 150 television stations, “to improve public understanding of mental illness and public acceptance of persons with mental illnesses.”

“Bird's Nest Soup,” by Hanna Greally.

“Beneath the Underdog, His World as Composed by Mingus,” by C. Mingus (editor N. King).

“A Question of Madness” (trans. from 1971 Russian ed.), by Zhores Medvedev.

“Bellevue Is a State of Mind,” by Anne Barry.

“A Time and a Time.” London. by S. Davys.

“Life on a Psychiatric Ward.” Mind, by Anonympous.

“Secrets of the Trade: Notes on Madness, Creativity and Ideology,” by J. K. Adams.

“Confessions from the Malaga Madhouse: A Christmas Diary,” by Charlotte Painter.

“A Leaf of Spring,” by A. Yesenin-Volpin.

“Out of the Depths,” by William J. Collins.

1972

In 1972, Dr. Thomas Hertzberg of Northville State Hospital in Detroit, Michigan went to a radical caucus of the American Psychological Association, where psychologists were talking about why it was that psychologists could hold national conferences to talk about Consumer/Survivors yet Consumer/Survivors were not going to national conferences to talk about psychiatric professionals. That radical caucus knew that there were many abuses in the mental health system to be talked about. They also had heard that there were a few Consumer/Survivor groups organizing on the local level. So, Tom set about to find these groups and to invite them to a planning meeting to be held in Detroit to develop a national Consumer/Survivor conference. Tom located Su Budd, Howard Geld (Howie the Harp) of New York, New York, Dr. Louis Frydman of Lawrence, Kansas, and others. We had a meeting in Detroit at a very nice hotel to plan what was to become the first Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression that was held a year later (1973) at the University of Detroit. According to Su Budd, Tom was fired for bringing us together. It was a long time before he could get another job in his field. In the interim, he sold gliders for a living. Psychiatric oppression was alive and well, even for the professionals who believed in us - especially for the professionals who believed in us. The conference that Tom Hertzberg started evolved into the Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression and was held yearly for 13 years between 1972 and 1985. During that time, it went through four name changes ending as the International Conference for Human Rights and Against Psychiatric Oppression. This conference attracted people from Canada, the Netherlands, and Britain. Throughout its history, this conference held yearly demonstrations at hospitals. Some of these demonstrations held vigils for our friends and neighbors who died in such places.

Madness Network News by David Richman and Sherry Hirsch begins publication in San Francisco (Oakland) and are soon joined by Leonard Roy Frank, Sally Zinman, Jenny Miller, Ted Chabasinski and others. Madness Network News, out of the Bay Area of California, helped network thousands of psychiatric survivors and allies internatioanlly. Their logo was a woman breaking free from a strait jacket. Volume 2 no.1 is dated 1973 and Volume 2 no.2 is dated February 1974.

The Houston Cooperative Living Residential Project is established in Houston, Texas, becoming a model, along with the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley, for subsequent independent living programs.

Paralyzed Veterans of America, the National Paraplegia Foundation, and Richard Heddinger file suit to force the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to incorporate access into their design for a new, multibillion-dollar subway system in Washington, D.C. Their eventual victory becomes a landmark in the struggle for accessible public mass transit.

Wolf Wolfensberger et al. publish “The Principle of Normalization in Human Services,” expanding the theory of normalization and bringing it to a wider American audience.

Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama is paralyzed after being shot during a presidential campaign rally in Laurel, Maryland.

Program Captioning Introduced. The Caption Center at WGBH in Boston open captions "The French Chef" the country's first nationally broadcast captioned program. It airs on PBS. By 1980 Close Captioning is developed and the first show broadcast. Close Captioning hides the text from view unless the user has a decoding device. By 1993, the FCC requires that all newly manufactured televisions have the decoding chip. 

The parents of the 5,000 residents at the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York, file suit (New York ARC v. Rockefeller) to end the appalling, inhumane living conditions at that institution where residents were abused and neglected. A television broadcast from the facility titled, "Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace," outrages the general public, which sees the inhumane treatment endured by people with developmental disabilities. This press exposure, together with the lawsuit and other advocacy, eventually moves thousands of people from the institution into community-based living arrangements. However, it took 3 years from the time the lawsuit documents were filed before the consent judgment was signed. In 1975, the consent judgment was signed, and it committed New York State to improve community placement for the now designated "Willowbrook Class." The Willowbrook State School was closed in 1987, and all but about 150 of the former Willowbrook residents were moved to group homes by 1992.

Social Security Amendments of 1972 - Extended Medicare coverage to individuals with disabilities; established Supplemental Security Income program for elderly people and for blind persons and other persons with disabilities. Supplemental Security Income (PL 92-603, 86 Stat. 1328) establishes a separate program administration for aged, blind, and disabled populations in the Social Security Amendments of 1972, (PL 92-603, 86 Stat. 1329), which are passed on October 30 and become effective on January 1, 1974. Passage of the Social Security Amendments of 1972 creates the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. The law relieves families of the financial responsibility of caring for their adult disabled children. It consolidates existing federal programs for people who are disabled but not eligible for Social Security Disability Insurance.

Community-based work and education programs for juvenile delinquents are established by the Massachusetts Youth Services Department to replace juvenile reformatories.

The State and Local Fiscal Act (PL 92-512, 86 Stat. 919), "Revenue Sharing:' becomes a landmark in the federal-state-local relationship, providing states and localities with specified portions of federal individual income tax collections to be used for nine specific priority expenditures.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Act (FL. 92-261, 86 Stat. 103) is passed to grant the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission authority to issue judicially enforceable cease-and-desist orders. The act establishes a quasijudicial agency to implement national policy of employment opportunity without discrimination of race, color, religion, national origin, or gender.

The landmark legal principle of "right to treatment" is established in Wyatt v. Stickney (344 F Supp. 387, M.D. Ala., N.D. 1972) by Frank M. Johnson, Jr., chief judge of the U.S. Middle District Court in Montgomery, Alabama. The ruling sets forth minimal constitutional standards of care, treatment, and habilitation for patients involuntarily confined to public mental hospitals in Alabama.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in Mills v. Board of Education, rules that the District of Columbia cannot exclude disabled children from the public schools; that every child, regardless of the type and severity of their disability, was entitled to a free public education. Similarly, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in PARC v. Pennsylvania, strikes down various state laws used to exclude disabled children from the public schools. These decisions will be cited by advocates during the public hearings leading to passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. PARC in particular sparks numerous other right-to-education lawsuits and inspires advocates to look to the courts for the expansion of disability rights.

The Drug Abuse Office and Treatment Act established a National Institute on Drug Abuse within NIMH. The National Institute on Drug Abuse is established on March 21 by the Drug Abuse Office and Treatment Act (PL 92-255, 86 Stat. 65) to provide leadership, policies, and goals for the total federal effort to prevent, control, and treat narcotic addiction and drug abuse.

President Nixon impounded funds appropriated for the National Institute of Mental Health. The National Mental Health Association was instrumental in reversing the decision.

Professional Standards Review Organizations are initiated on October 30 as part of the Social Security Amendments. This national program of local and state organizations establishes service standards and reviews quality and costs of health services provided to beneficiaries of Medicare, Medicaid, and maternal and child health programs. Through NASW intervention, the program includes social workers in all phases.

Small Business Investment Act Amendments of 1972 - Established the “Handicapped Assistance Loan Program” to provide loans to nonprofit sheltered workshops and individuals with disabilities.

The Rehabilitation Act was passed by Congress and vetoed by President Richard Nixon.

Demonstrations are held by disabled activists in Washington, D.C., to protest the veto of what will become the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 by President Richard M. Nixon. Among those organizing demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere are Disabled in Action, Paralyzed Veterans of America, the National Paraplegia Foundation, and other groups. Disabled in Action demonstrated in New York City, protesting Nixon’s veto of the Rehabilitation Act. Led by Judy Heumann, eighty activists staged a sit-in on Madison Avenue, stopping traffic. A flood of letters and protest calls were made.

In Canada, the Mental Patients Association, started to publish In A Nutshell.

Judi Chamberlin, Howie the Harp, Sally Zinman, Su and Dennis Budd, and many others—staged acts of civil disobedience, such as chaining themselves to the gates of mental hospitals; forming a human chain at an early-1970's meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (30,000 members strong), preventing conference attendees from entering.

First Center for Independent Living (CIL) founded in Berkeley, California by Ed Roberts. The particulars were hammered out for more than a year. The group was officially formed in 1972. A roach-infested two- bedroom apartment was found. Dollars were dug out of personal pockets, some benefit poker games were arranged, but not until July 1972 was the financial squeeze settled. The Rehabilitation Administration produced a grant for $50,000, enough to tide them over while other funds were secured. Generally recognized as the world's first independent living center, the CIL sparks the worldwide independent living movement.

Tardive dyskinesia is said to resemble Huntington’s disease, or “postencephalitic brain damage”.

The Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is founded in Washington, D.C, to provide legal representation and to advocate for the rights of people with mental illness.

APA annual meeting sponsors panel – ”Psychiatry: Friend or Foe to Homosexuals: A Dialogue” — that includes gay activists, gay sympathetic psychiatrists, and a disguised gay psychiatrist, Dr. H Anonymous (John Fryer, MD). A gay psychiatrist, wearing a mask to conceal his identify, speaks out at a session on homosexuality.

At a meeting of the Social Concerns Committee of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society, Dr. Richard Pillard urges the Committee to adopt a resolution stating that “homosexuality per se should not be considered an illness and APA nomenclature on this subject should therefore be altered.”

The Legal Action Center, with offices in Washington, D.C., and New York City, is founded to advocate for the interests of people who are alcohol or drug dependent. Today, it also works on behalf of people with HIV/AIDS.

The Network Against Psychiatric Assault (NAPA) is organized in San Francisco.

Mental Patients Alliance of Central New York is established. Carol Hayes-Collier is instrumental to the effort.

The Commonwealth of Virginia ceased its sterilization program (begun in 1924). 8,300 individuals never received justice regarding their non-consentual sterilizations.

In Jackson v. Indiana, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a person adjudicated incompetent could not be indefinitely committed.

In England, the Children Act of 1972 set the minimum school leaving age at 16. After the 1972 Act schools were provided with temporary buildings to house their new final year, known as ROSLA (Raising School Leaving Age) buildings and were delivered to schools as self assembly packs. Although not designed for long-term use, many schools continued using them.

The first emergency rape crisis hotline opens in June in Washington, D.C. By 1976 400 independent rape crisis centers operate nationwide offering counseling, self-defense classes, and support groups. Rape crisis workers established crisis lines, conducted education and training programs, created thousands of brochures, offered self defense classes, organized and marched in “Take Back the Night” events. These workers began their long journey to change the society. Coalition members advocated for legislative reform, insisted that police increase their arrest rates, demanded privacy for rape victims in emergency rooms and urged prosecutors to change plea negotiation procedures. This changed the fundamental ways in which men related to women. They had few resources. There was no formal education or professional training on anti-rape work. However, once survivors broke the silence, women devoted their minds, hearts, time and money to construct and sustain organizations that created the field of anti-rape work. These organizations changed practices in hospitals, police departments, the courts and within the field of psychiatry and others pitched in with funds, space and staff time. Several state‚s attorneys and legal aid lawyers helped advocates sharpen their advocacy skills. Victims and their advocates created rape crisis centers with a definition and purpose different from traditional mental health or social services. With the goals of social change, equality between men and women, and the fundamental principle of victim-centered services, the anti-rape movement offered a new model for institutional change and individual healing.

The ERA finally passes in the US Senate, due in large part to the lobbying power of NOW. By the end of the year, however, only 22 of the 38 required states ratify it.

The Center for Women Policy Studies is founded to identify, analyze and propose solutions to problems related to the status of women.

Joyce N. Ruiz files suit against the police in Sacramento, CA charging that they had refused to enforce a court order against her estranged husband. The suit is designed to require the police to enforce the law, but the case was dismissed.

The San Jose Police Department is sued on behalf of Ruth Bunnell for wrongful death due to police negligence. Ruth called the police requesting assistance but was refused. Ruth's husband killed her. In the year prior to her death, she called the police 29 times complaining about the violent acts her ex-husband committed against her and her daughters.

In Kansas City, MO, police receive 46,137 domestic disturbance calls, 82% of the total calls for that year.

James Bannon, Commander of the Detroit police department, describes how 4,600 battered women's cases "disappeared" as they moved through the criminal justice system in Detroit. Only 300 cases went to trial.

Haven House, a shelter in Pasadena, CA, is the first to receive a government contract.

Rainbow Retreat, one of the earliest battered women's shelters, opens in Phoenix, AZ.

In February, Women's Advocates (Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN) moves to a 1 bedroom apartment to offer minimal shelter services. In 1974, they expand and purchase a house.

Informal networks between women convey information, strategies, and support. Friendships among women from Carbondale, IL and Pittsburgh influence the founding of the Pittsburgh women's center. Pittsburgh's Women's Center South begins in the home of Ellen Berliner. A shelter opens in April 1974.

The July issue of Ms. Magazine reports in the "No Comment" section an ad for a bowling alley in Michigan, which reads, "Have some fun. Beat your wife tonight. Then celebrate with some good food and drink with your friends."

From 1968 to 1973, the crime of rape increased 62% nationwide.

Interval House, Toronto's first refuge house, opens.

Congress extends the Equal Pay Act to include executives, administrative and professional personnel.

Congress passes the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, giving the EEOC power to take legal action to enforce its rulings.

Ms. magazine begins regular publication, reaching a circulation of 350,000 within a year.

Barbara Jordan (D-TX) becomes first Black woman elected to Congress from a Southern state.

Sally Priesand becomes first U.S. woman ordained as a rabbi in Reform Judaism.

In Eisenstadt v. Baird the Supreme Court rules that the right to privacy includes an unmarried person's right to use contraceptives.

Title IX of the Education Amendments bans sex discrimination in schools. It states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance." As a result of Title IX, the enrollment of women in athletics programs and professional schools increases dramatically.

National Association of Black Social Workers opposed transracial adoptions

Stanley v. Illinois substantially increased the rights of unwed fathers in adoption by requiring informed consent and proof of parental unfitness prior to termination of parental rights.

“Will There Really Be a Morning?” by Frances Farmer.

Peter Buxtun (sometimes referred to as Peter Buxton) is a former employee of the United States Public Health Service who became known as the whistleblower responsible for ending the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. Buxtun, then a 27-year-old social worker and epidemiologist in San Francisco, was hired by the Public Health Service in December 1965 to interview patients with sexually transmitted diseases; in the course of his duties, he learned of the Tuskegee Experiment from co-workers. He later said—"I didn't want to believe it. This was the Public Health Service. We didn't do things like that.” In November 1966, he filed an official protest on ethical grounds with the Service's Division of Venereal Diseases; this was rejected on the grounds that the Experiment was not yet complete. He filed another protest in November 1968; again, his concerns were ruled irrelevant. In 1972, Buxtun leaked information on the Tuskegee Experiment to Jean Heller of the Washington Star. Heller's story exposing the Experiment was published on July 25, 1972; It became front-page news in the New York Times the following day. Senator Edward Kennedy called Congressional hearings, at which Buxtun and HEW officials testified and the Experiment was terminated shortly thereafter. Buxtun subsequently testified at the ensuing Congressional hearing.

“A Mingled Yarn,” by Beulah Parker.

“Red Square at Noon.” London, by N. Gorbanevskaya.

“Saints and Strait Jackets: An Intimate View of Life in an Australian Psychiatric Hospital, By an Ex-Patient,” by Barbara Heaslip.

“Women and Madness,” by Phyllis Chesler.

“Twice Through the Lines: The Autobiography of Otto John,” by John Otto.

“Memoirs of a Mental Case,” by Howard J. Etten.

“Bound for Broadmoor.” London, by Peter Thompson.

“Fragments from the Diary of a Madman.” London, by Pawel Cienin.

In England, First Ladies Race under Jockey Club rules. One mile at Kempton Park. Won by Meriel Tufnell of Bishop's Waltham, Hants on her mother's horse, at 50 to 1

1973

American psychologist David Rosenhan published the Rosenhan experiment, a study challenging the validity of psychiatric diagnoses. Science published "On Being Sane in Insane Places" in January by David Rosenhan. The abstract says: It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals. The hospital itself imposes a special environment in which the meanings of behavior can easily be misunderstood. The consequences to patients hospitalized in such an environment-the powerlessness, depersonalization, segregation, mortification, and self- labeling-seem undoubtedly countertherapeutic. I do not, even now, understand this problem well enough to perceive solutions. But two matters seem to have some promise. The first concerns the proliferation of community mental health facilities, of crisis intervention centers, of the human potential movement, and of behavior therapies that, for all of their own problems, tend to avoid psychiatric labels, to focus on specific problems and behaviors, and to retain the individual in a relatively non-pejorative environment. Clearly, to the extent that we refrain from sending the distressed to insane places, our impressions of them are less likely to be distorted. (The risk of distorted perceptions, it seems to me, is always present, since we are much more sensitive to an individual's behaviors and verbalizations than we are to the subtle contextual stimuli that often promote them. At issue here is a matter of magnitude. And, as I have shown, the magnitude of distortion is exceedingly high in the extreme context that is a psychiatric hospital.) The second matter that might prove promising speaks to the need to increase the sensitivity of mental health workers and researchers to the Catch 22 position of psychiatric patients. Simply reading materials in this area will be of help to some such workers and researchers. For others, directly experiencing the impact of psychiatric hospitalization will be of enormous use. Clearly, further research into the social psychology of such total institutions will both facilitate treatment and deepen understanding. I and the other pseudopatients in the psychiatric setting had distinctly negative reactions. We do not pretend to describe the subjective experiences of true patients. Theirs may be different from ours, particularly with the passage of time and the necessary process of adaptation to one's environment. But we can and do speak to the relatively more objective indices of treatment within the hospital. It could be a mistake, and a very unfortunate one, to consider that what happened to us derived from malice or stupidity on the part of the staff. Quite the contrary, our overwhelming impression of them was of people who really cared, who were committed and who were uncommonly intelligent. Where they failed, as they sometimes did painfully, it would be more accurate to attribute those failures to the environment in which they, too, found themselves than to personal callousness. Their perceptions and behavior were controlled by the situation, rather than being motivated by a malicious disposition. In a more benign environment, one that was less attached to global diagnosis, their behaviors and judgments might have been more benign and effective.

"Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison", report of an experiment with humans at Stanford University, California, by Craig Haney, Curtis Banks and Philip Zimbardo, International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1, 1973, pp 69-97

NIMH temporarily rejoined NIH on July 1 with the abolishment of HSMHA.

On September 25 the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration (ADAMHA)--composed of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and NIMH--was established administratively by the DHEW Secretary as the successor organization to HSMHA. Each retained their three-part mission of services, training and research. They funded services through direct grants (categorical programs) to treatment providers.

APA endorsed the Psy.D. degree for professional practice in psychology.

A task force consisting of over 300 consultants, was established to review and analyze the 25-year history of federally sponsored research programs in mental health. Their report, Research in the Service of Mental Health, was issued in 1975.

The first Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression is held at the University of Detroit. (held annually until 1985). This conference became an annual event and was held yearly for 13 years between 1973 and 1985. During that time, the Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression went through several name changes as the movement grew in scope, ending as the International Conference for Human Rights and Against Psychiatric Oppression. This conference attracted people from Canada, the Netherlands, and Britain. Throughout its history, this conference held yearly demonstrations at hospitals. Some of these demonstrations held vigils friends and neighbors who died in such places. During the life of the Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression, ex-patients and psychiatric inmates had no money to organize nationally, yet the drive for companionship and the support of peers drove people to hitchhike and otherwise to beg, borrow, and pool resources to get to the national conferences. The conferences were held in campgrounds and in university dormitories. They drew from 50 to 100 people a year. The expense of the conference itself was often funded by donations from those few ex-patients and psychiatric inmates who had a little money to spare. Many of the early conferences ran in the red. Professionals who supported ex-patients and psychiatric inmates' efforts to organize reported that they experienced negative consequences. Thomas Hertzberg, Ph.D. of Northville State Hospital in Detroit, Michigan went to a radical caucus of the American Psychological Association, where psychologists were talking about why it was that psychologists could hold national conferences to talk about consumers yet consumers were not going to conferences to talk about psychologists. That radical caucus knew that there were many abuses in the mental health system to be talked about. They also had heard that there were a few consumer groups organizing on a local level. So, Tom set about to find these groups and to invite them to a planning meeting to be held in Detroit, Michigan to develop a national consumer conference. Tom located Su and Dennis Budd, Howie The Harp, Louis Frydman, Ph.D. of Lawrence, Kansas and others. They met in a very nice hotel to plan what was to become known as the first Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression held in 1973. Many of the professionals that debated the ethics of assisting ex-patients and psychiatric inmates to organize and were punished severely for aiding the conference. For instance, it was reported that Dr. Tom Hertzberg was fired for bringing people together. Dr. Louis Frydman experienced negative consequences (he was sued for interfering with the doctor-patient relationship and threatened with loss of his tenure at the university where he worked), and later, many brave professionals who helped ex-patients and psychiatric inmates make contact with supportive persons or to independently manage ex-patient organizations simply disappeared from provider agencies. The ex-patient and psychiatric inmate movement was considered dangerous for mental health clients because of perceived misinformation in the movement publications and perceived unskilled techniques used in self-help and mutual support ex-patient and psychiatric inmate-run organizations. Professionals believed they knew what was best and that mental patients should not question their authority.

The Caucus of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Members of the American Psychiatric Association was officially founded. A primary function of the organization was to advocate to the APA on LGBT mental health issues. The caucus changed its name to the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists in 1985.

The Social Concerns Committee of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society passes their 1972 resolution and psychiatrist Robert Spitzer – a member of the APA Committee on Nomenclature – begins a series of meetings with gay activists. The Committee on Nomenclature subsequently agrees to a presentation by members of the Gay Activist Alliance (GAA). Psychologist and GAA representative Charles Silverstein methodically demonstrate the flaws in each and every psychiatric theory on homosexuality. The Committee on Nomenclature subsequently passes a resolution that homosexuality per se should not be considered a psychiatric disorder. At the same time, it invents a new homophobic diagnosis – “sexual orientation disturbance” – intended for people who experience discomfort regarding their sexual orientation. (And how many lesbians and gay men do not experience such discomfort – given a homophobic society?) Gay activists seem unaware of the implications of the new category, and they hail the outcome as an unqualified victory. The APA Board of Trustees accepts the resolution. Socarides and Bieber respond with a petition demanding that the metter be put to a referendum of the APA as a whole. The Board agrees. The referendum passes. Gay activists rejoice, thinking that all is well. Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz attempts to point out their naiveté, maintaining that the gay community has been co-opted. He suggests that the change is nothing but an attempt to get gay activists off psychiatrists’ backs – a successful attempt at that. He points out that homosexuality is still being pathologized, albeit under a new name. No one, however, seems to be listening. Gay men and lesbians continue to be locked up, shocked, drugged, and subjected to behavior modification because of their sexual orientation. Psychiatry, nonetheless, is considered progressive and non-homophobic, due to the APA resolution; psychiatric backup becomes a standard feature of lesbian and gay counseling organizations.

Homosexuality per se was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and replaced by the category Sexual Orientation Disturbance. "This represented a compromise between the view that preferential homosexuality is invariably a mental disorder and the view that it is merely a normal sexual variant." The American Psychiatric Association (APA), spearheaded by Robert Spitzer, votes to remove homosexuality from the DSM, its list of mental illnesses in part due to the efforts of protests from the movements. Due to new clinical information and political pressure from the National Gay Task Force, the American Psychiatric Association changes the diagnosis of homosexuality from a disease to a condition that can be considered a disease only when subjectively disturbing to the individual. The Board of Trustees (BOT) of the APA approves the deletion of homosexuality from the DSM-II and substitutes a diagnosis of “Sexual Orientation Disturbance” In 1980, however, when the APA published a new Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (DSM III) (Taskforce chaired by Robert Spitzer, M.D.), in place of homosexuality was a new diagnosis, “Gender Identity Disorder in Childhood,” also known as “Sissy Boy Syndrome.”

Rehabilitation Act of 1973 - Prohibited disability discrimination in federally assisted programs and activities and federal agencies; required affirmative action programs for people with disabilities by federal agencies and some federal contractors; established the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board to enforce the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968. Passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 marks the greatest achievement of the disability rights movement. Of particular interest, Title V, Sections 501, 503 and 504 prohibited discrimination in federal programs and services and all other programs or services receiving federal funds. Key language in the Rehabilitation Act, found in Section 504, states “No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States, shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” The act -- particularly Title V and, especially, Section 504 for the first time, confronts discrimination against people with disabilities. Section 504 prohibits programs receiving federal funds from discriminating against “otherwise qualified handicapped” individuals and sparks the formation of “504 workshops” and numerous grassroots organizations. Disability rights activists seize on the act as a powerful tool and make the signing of regulations to implement Section 504 a top priority. Litigation arising out of Section 504 will generate such central disability rights concepts as “reasonable modification,” “reasonable accommodation,” and “undue burden,” which will form the framework for subsequent federal law, especially the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. This act redirected the vocational rehabilitation program making its first priority to serve severely disabled individuals. The behavior disorder category was discontinued. Consumer involvement was stressed by requiring their involvement in the development of their Individualized Written Rehabilitation Program (IWRP). The consumer had to sign the plan to indicate they understood it and approved. At this time there was political debate about turning the program into a comprehensive rather than strictly vocational rehabilitation program. The act authorized funding for demonstration independent living centers that could work with individuals regardless of vocational potential, but a vocational objective and feasibility of reaching it was maintained as an eligibility requirement for the state-federal program. The act also stressed program evaluation and supported rehabilitation research. Title V This was the section of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that advanced civil rights for individuals with disabilities. Section 501: Required nondiscrimination in hiring handicapped individuals in the federal government. All executive branches of the federal government were required to develop affirmative action plans for hiring, placing and advancing handicapped individuals. Section 502: Established the Architectural and Transportation Barriers and Compliance Board to oversee compliance to the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968. Section 503: This section prohibited discrimination against handicapped individuals in employment by any federal contractor or subcontractor receiving $2,500 or more. A written affirmative action plan was required of all employers contracting with the government and having 50 or more employees or a federal contract of $50,000 or more. Section 504: This section prohibits discrimination against qualified handicapped individuals in any federally supported program or activity. It applied to any organization receiving federal funds such as hospitals, school districts, and state public welfare offices, and colleges and universities. Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1974, 1976 and 1978 These amendments further strengthened the emphasis on services to individuals with the most severe disabilities. Most significantly the 1978 amendments provided grant funds to support a separate independent living program.

The (American) Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board, established under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, enforced the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968.

Handicapped parking stickers were introduced in Washington, D.C.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is created by executive order under the Dept. of Justice. Combined the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and several other law enforcement organizations.

Marian Wright Edelman founds the Children's Defense Fund, a leading national organization that lobbies for children's rights and welfare.

In a report examining the status of children's rights in the United States, Hillary Clinton, then a lawyer, wrote that "children's rights" was a "slogan in need of a definition."

The first joint custody statute in the U.S. goes into effect in Indiana, allowing children the right to both parents after a divorce.

Psychosurgery (lobotomy) experiments to reduce crime and politically motivated riots by African-American men are conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston State Hospital.

Peter Breggin, M.D. founds the Center for the Study of Psychiatry

Acting on a lawsuit in which the National Mental Health Association participated, a federal judge ordered the release of $52 million in impounded funds voted by Congress for community mental health centers.

Passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act authorizes federal funds to provide for construction of curb cuts.

The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities is organized to advocate for passage of what will become the Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act of 1975 and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975.

Pierce, Chester, M.D. “Offensive Mechanisms” in The Black Seventies, F.Barbour, ed., (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1970), 265-282 wrote about discrimination, commonly expressed in the multiple, small insults and indignities a labeled person suffers every day. Dr. Pierce, an African-American psychiatrist and author writing about racism, termed these small attacks "micro-aggressions." He also wrote that, “Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to home, family, culture, and religion...It is up to you to make all these sick children well by creating the International child of the future.”

Mason, B. J. “New Threat to Blacks: Brain Surgery to Control Behavior—Controversial Operations Are Coming Back As Violence Curbs.” Ebony 1973, February, p. 63–72. Mason writes: In the late 1960s, Vernon Mark, William Sweet and Frank Ervin suggested that urban violence, which most African-Americans perceived as a reaction to oppression, poverty and state-sponsored economic and physical violence against us, was actually due to “brain dysfunction,” and recommended the use of psychosurgery to prevent outbreaks of violence. Drs. Alvin Poussaint and Peter Breggin were two outspoken opponents of the updated “Drapetomania” theory, along with hundreds of psychiatric survivors who took to the streets to protest psychosurgery abuses. The issue of brain dysfunction as a cause of poor social conditions in African-American and Latino communities continues to crop up in the federally funded Violence Initiatives of the 1990s.

The Health Maintenance Organization Act (PL 93-222, 87 Stat. 914) is enacted on December 29, authorizing federal aid to support and stimulate group medical practice. Through NASW intervention, the act includes social services components and standards.

The Children's Defense Fund is founded by Marian Wright Edelman to "provide long-range advocacy on behalf of nation's children."

Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 179) determines that a Texas statute prohibiting abortion violates the due process clause of the 14th amendment. The decision establishes that trimester stages of pregnancy determine state's limits on regulation of abortions. It also affirms the right of privacy. The Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision strikes down state laws that made abortion illegal. As a result of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court establishes a woman's right to safe and legal abortion, overriding the anti-abortion laws of many states.

On this day in 1973, in a highly publicized "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match, top women's player Billie Jean King, 29, beats Bobby Riggs, 55, a former No. 1 ranked men's player. Riggs, a self-proclaimed male chauvinist, had boasted that women were inferior, that they couldn't handle the pressure of the game and that even at his age he could beat any female player. The match was a huge media even

t, witnessed in person by over 30,000 spectators at the Houston Astrodome and by another 50 million TV viewers worldwide. King made a Cleopatra-style entrance on a gold litter carried by men dressed as ancient slaves, while Riggs arrived in a rickshaw pulled by female models. Legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell called the match, in which King beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. King's achievement not only helped legitimize women's professional tennis and female athletes, but it was seen as a victory for women's rights in general.

Between 1961 and 1979, Billie Jean King won a record 20 Wimbledon titles, 13 US titles, four French titles, and two Australian titles.

Off the court, Billie Jean King fought for equal prize money for men and women and in 1971 became the first female athlete to win over $100,000.

In 1974, Billie Jean King became the first president of the Women's Tennis Association. She headed up the first professional women’s tour, the Virginia Slims, in the 1970s. She was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987 and served as captain of the United States Fed Cup team in the 1990s.

Billie Jean King was married to Lawrence King from 1965 to 1987. During the 1970s, she had an intimate relationship with her secretary, Marilyn Barnett, and became one of the first prominent American athletes to openly admit to having a gay relationship when it became public some 10 years later. With that admission, Billie Jean King lost almost all her commercial sponsors. In 2000 she was the coach of the US Women’s tennis team. She was the first open lesbian to coach an Olympic team.

Billie Jean King started the Women’s Sports Foundation and Womensports magazine. The Women’s Sports Foundation has been instrumental in gaining access to sports for women and girls. The Women’s Sports Foundation also is dedicated to fighting homophobia and discrimination in sports.

At 64, this lesbian icon is still at it and this week went to the conservative Muslim sheikdom of Qatar to promote gender equality in sport during the women’s tennis tour”s year-end championships won Sunday by Venus Williams.

Billie Jean told the Associated Press that a shift toward gender parity in sport is a gradual process that requires respect for all cultures and religions: "Human rights is very important. But it is going to take generations to have a shift. Things do not happen quickly, but we have to start someplace."

Women have fewer opportunities than men in sports and other fields in Qatar, which sent an all-male team to the Beijing Olympics this year.

Venus has been one the few top players in recent years to take on some of the reponsibility and leadership in speaking out for equality in sports and has always given credit to King for leading the way.

Some Billie Jean King Facts & Trivia:

1 - In 1972, King became the first woman and the first tennis player to be named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of The Year.

2 - In 1990, Life magazine named her one of the "100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century."

3 - In 2000, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) awarded Billie Jean King the Capitol Award for service to the LGBT community.

4 - The Elton John song Philadelphia Freedom is a said to be a tribute to Billie Jean King

On August 12, 2009, King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama for her work advocating for the rights of women and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community. "This is a chance for me — and for the United States of America — to say thank you to some of the finest citizens of this country and of all countries," President Obama said.

King currently resides in New York and Chicago with her partner, Ilana Kloss.

The National Black Feminist Organization is established.

9to5: National Association of Working Women, is founded by Karen Nussbaum in Boston. Nussbaum later becomes Director of the Women's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor.

The Civil Service Commission eliminates height and weight requirements that have discriminated against women applying for police, park service, and fire fighting jobs.

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance issues guidelines prohibiting sex discrimination in employment by any federal contractor and requiring affirmative action to correct existing imbalances.

The U.S. military is integrated when the women-only branches are eliminated.

Of the several thousand domestic violence cases proceeding through the Bureau of Family Relations of the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, only 8 lead to a formal complaint and prosecution. 

Al-Anon members who are battered women organize a shelter in Harrisburg, PA.

In a suit brought by NOW, Pittsburgh Press v Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations, the Supreme Court affirms the EEOC ruling against sex-segregated help wanted ads in newspapers. This opens the way for women to apply for jobs previously limited to men and offering better pay and advancement opportunities.

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibits discrimination in consumer credit practices on the basis of sex, race, marital status, religion, national origin, age, or receipt of public assistance. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act forbids sex discrimination in all consumer credit practices; extended to commercial credit in 1988.

“Journey Out of Nowhere,” by Nancy Covert Smith.

“I Couldn't Catch the Bus Today: The True Story of a Nervous Breakdown That Became a Pilgrimage,” by David Lazell.

“Back to Earth,” by Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. (with Wayne Warga).

“Recovery,” by John Berryman.

“The Journal of Judith Beck Stein,” by Judith Beck Stein.

“A Guard Within.” London, by Sarah Ferguson.

“Madhouse,” by Robert Goulet.

“Someone With Me: The Autobiography of William Kurelek,” by William Kurelek (editor J. Maas).

“Lesbian Nation,” by Jill Johnston.

“I Came to My Island: A Journey Through the Experience of Change,” by Hanna Bauer.

In England, Ten women admitted to the London Stock Exchange.

1974

ADAMHA was officially established on May 4 when President Nixon signed P.L. 93-282.

The U.S. Civil Service Commission acceded to the National Mental Health Association’s demand that a “Have you ever been mentally Ill?” question be removed from federal government employment forms.

Boston researchers report that relapse rates were lower in pre-neuroleptic era, and that drug treated patients are more likely to be socially dependent.

The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (PL 93-247, 88 Stat. 4), passed by Congress on January 31, initiates financial assistance for demonstration programs for prevention, identification, and treatment of child abuse and neglect and establishes the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect. In 1974 Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA; Public Law 93-247). The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act is passed by the U.S. Congress, creating the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect and other steps designed to increase children's rights and reduce child neglect and abuse. The law stated: [Child abuse and neglect refer to] the physical or mental injury, sexual abuse, negligent treatment or maltreatment of a child under age eighteen, or the age specified by the child protection law of the state in question, by a person who is responsible for the child's welfare under circumstances which indicate the child's health or welfare is harmed or threatened thereby, as determined in accordance with regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. This law created the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN), which developed standards for handling reports of child maltreatment. NCCAN also established a nationwide network of child protective services and served as a clearinghouse for information and research on child abuse and neglect. Since 1974 CAPTA has been amended a number of times.

The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA; PL 92-603) initiates extensive job education and experience opportunities for unemployed people.

In re Fisher, 39 Ohio St. 2d 71 (1974), held that the loss of liberty that resulted from civil commitment requires the appointment of counsel

In Corning Glass Works v. Brennan, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that employers cannot justify paying women lower wages because that is what they traditionally received under the "going market rate." A wage differential occurring "simply because men would not work at the low rates paid women" is unacceptable.

Alliance of Displaced Homemakers is founded by Tish Sommers and Laurie Shields to address issues of divorced and widowed homemakers seeking employment.

The Council on Social Work Education offers accreditation to bachelor of social work programs.

Little League agrees to include girls "in deference to a change in social climate," but creates a softball branch specifically for girls to draw them from baseball.

MANA, the Mexican-American Women's National Association, organizes as feminist activist organization. By 1990, MANA chapters operate 16 states with members in 36.

Out of a recognition of the lack of services for Latina Women and the absence of Latina controlled organizations, a multi-racial group of women in Boston's South End funds Casa Myrna Vazquez shelter. Later, after becoming a technical assistance center, Cassa Myrna Vazquez produces Doing Community Outreach to Third World Women.

Hundreds of colleges are offering women's studies courses; there are over 80 full programs in place. Additionally, 230 women's centers on college campuses provide support services for female students.

The term "battered women" is still not a part of the public's vocabulary. Writings on battered women are becoming less overtly hostile, but are still riddled with sexism.

Transition House in Boston is founded by two ex-battered women, Chris Womendez and Cherie Jimenez and two former members of Cell 16 (one of Boston's earliest radical feminist groups), Betsy Warrior and Lisa Leghorn. Womendez and Jimenez simply declare their home a shelter. With their foundation in the women's movement, the founders believe that battering is an integral part of women's oppression; women's liberation its solution. It continued to operate as a collective structure and maintain its grassroots principles. However, it gained little funding and eventually closed.

In San Francisco, 25% of all murders involve legally married or cohabitating mates.

In California, battered women are able to legally claim compensation for their injuries.

Haven House provides the country's first Children's Program.

Rainbow Retreat establishes an outpatient program to offer counseling to women not ready to leave.

Columbus, Ohio has a Night Prosecutor Program funded by the LEAA. The program offers 24-hour service focusing on pre-arrest diversion tactics. The purpose is to avoid costly arrest and persecution procedures. In the first year, only 2% of the 3,626 complaints result in criminal charges. The emphasis is on mediation to avoid prosecuting cases.

In Boston, police respond to 11,081 family disturbance calls, most involving physical violence. At the end of the first quarter of 1975, 5,589 such calls were received, half of the previous year's figure for that period. Boston City Hospital reports that 70% of the assault victims received in the ER were known to be women attacked in homes by husbands and lovers.

In Fairfax County, VA, considered one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, police report 4,073 family disturbance calls, and that approximately 30 assault warrants are sought each week. Domestic violence is not just a ghetto or lower-class issue.

According to the FBI, 132 police officers are killed in the nation. Twenty-nine of them, one out of five officers, is killed while responding to domestic disturbance calls.

As a result of women's groups' efforts, New York no longer requires a rape victim to give independent corroboration of the crime.

Through their newsletter, the Feminist Alliance Against Rape begins to fight for legal and institutional changes to help rape victims. It is the movement's sounding board and brings inspiration to hundreds of women working in isolated groups.

Eisaku Sato, former prime minister of Japan, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Prior to his nomination, Sato's wife accused him publicly of beating her. Sato's popularity soars after his wife reveals that "Yes, he's a good husband, he only beats me once a week." Apparently, the committee did not consider wife-beating a breach of peace.

An Italian man is sentenced to two years in jail for raping his wife at gun point.

Britain holds Parliamentary Select Committee hearings on Violence in Marriage. Much of the testimony describes the roots of domestic violence as lying in individual inadequacy. This is the popular contemporary theory.

Interval House, a 3 bedroom flat in an old tenement property is established in Glasgow, Scotland. Edinburgh establishes 2 refuges. These organizations operate with feminist principles of self-help and non-hierarchical model.

Erin Prizzey authors the groundbreaking Scream Quietly or the Neighbors Will Hear, the first on the subject of battered wives. The British movement started four years before the U.S. movement and is known through Prizzey's work.

Time Magazine prints an article on Erin Prizzey's Chiswick Center. However, it is carried only in the European edition, suggesting that spousal battering is not of interest to Americans.

Rotterdam opens its first refuge with funds from the General Aid Office of the Netherlands. In 1975, 2 additional houses are obtained.

Elsie, a battered women's shelter in Australia, is formed when members of the women's Liberation squatted in 2 abandoned houses in the Glebe section of Sydney and refused to move out.

The Women's Educational Equity Act, drafted by Arlene Horowitz and introduced by Rep. Patsy Mink (D-HI), funds the development of nonsexist teaching materials and model programs that encourage full educational opportunities for females.

The Coalition for Labor Union Women is founded, uniting blue-collar women across occupational lines.

Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur determines it is illegal to force pregnant women to take maternity leave on the assumption they are incapable of working in their physical condition.

Ella Grasso becomes the first woman to win election as governor in her own right, in Connecticut.

The number of women in public office begins to rise. Women now hold 8% of state legislative seats and 16 seats in Congress. By 1986: 14.8% of legislative seats, and 24 seats in Congress. In 1997: 21% of legislative seats, 62 seats in Congress.

Transition House, Vancouver's first refuge house, opens in January 1974.

Through a series of Mujeres Pro-Raza Unida conferences, Texas Chicanas have organized a statewide network to promote Chicana awareness, political campaign strategies and organizing techniques.

The Disabled Women's Coalition was founded at the University of California, Berkeley, by Susan Sygall, Deborah Kaplan, Kitty Cone, Corbett O'Toole, and Susan Shapiro. The coalition ran support groups, held disabled women's retreats, wrote for feminist publications, and lectured on women and disability.

Education Amendments of 1974 - Required states to establish plans and timetables for providing full educational opportunities for all children with disabilities as condition of receiving federal funds.

Headstart, Economic Opportunity, and Community Partnership Act of 1974 - Required that at least 10 percent of children enrolled in Head Start be children with disabilities. Congress enacts the Community Services Act, creating the Head Start program, with the stipulation that at least 10 percent of program openings be reserved for disabled children.

Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 - Established Section 8 housing program for low-income families, including individuals with disabilities and/or their families. The Housing and Community Development Act established the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. Block grants were a major source of federal aid to urban areas. Funds could be used for architectural barrier removal and the construction of accessible public facilities. Each urban area was required to prepare a Housing Assistance Plan that reflected the needs of people with disabilities within that area.

Referendum organized by antigay psychoanalysts to overturn APA BOT (Board of Trustees) decision is defeated. APA members support BOT decision to remove homosexuality by significant majority.

National Association of the Deaf did census of Deaf Americans; counted 13.4 million hearing and 1.8 million deaf Americans.

Wade Blank founded the Atlantis Community in Denver, Colorado, a model for community-based, consumer-controlled, independent living. The Atlantis Community provided personal assistance services primarily under the control of the consumer within a community setting. They successfully relocated adults with severe disabilities from nursing homes to apartments.

Barrier Free Environments, founded by Ronald Mace, advocated for accessibility in buildings and products.

Second Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression held in Topeka, Kansas. It was the first time it was run by psychiatric survivors.

“Madness Network News Reader,” San Francisco, CA: Glide Publications.

The first U.S. National Wheelchair Basketball Tournament is held, as well as the first National Wheelchair Marathon.

The last "Ugly Law" is repealed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1974. These laws allowed police to arrest and jail people with "apparent" disabilities for no reason other than being disfigured or demonstrating some type of disability.

The Boston Center for Independent Living is founded.

Halderman v. Pennhurst is filed in Pennsylvania on behalf of the residents of the Pennhurst State School & Hospital. The case, highlighting the horrific conditions at state “schools” for people with mental retardation, becomes an important precedent in the battle for deinstitutionalization, establishing a right to community services for people with developmental disabilities.

The first convention of “People First” is held in Salem, Oregon. People First becomes the largest U.S. organization composed of and led by people with cognitive disabilities. People First is a national organization of people with developmental disabilities learning to speak for themselves and supporting each other in doing so. Organized by supported mentally handicapped people who had been discharged from Fairview Hospital and Training Centre and others who were living there. The name was voted on at a planning session. The proposer said: "We are tired of being seen first as handicapped or retarded or disabled. We want to be seen as people first". Williams and Shoultz 1982 page 54

The first Client Assistant Projects (CAPs) are established to act as advocates for clients of state vocational rehabilitation agencies.

North Carolina passes a statewide building code with stringent access requirement drafted by access advocate Ronald Mace. This code becomes a model for effective architectural access legislation on other states. Mace founds Barrier Free Environments to advocate for accessibility in buildings and products.

Second edition of the DSM-II, 1974: It provided cursory descriptions of about a hundred mental disorders, and was sold primarily to large state mental institutions, for three dollars and fifty cents. The term “hysterical psychoses” was being used to describe the behavior of two kinds of patients that had been observed: those who suffered from extremely short episodes of delusion and hallucination after a major traumatic event, and those who felt compelled to show up in an emergency room even though they had no genuine physical or psychological problems. Spitzer decided that “hysterical psychoses” should really be divided into two disorders. Short episodes of delusion and hallucination would be labeled “brief reactive psychosis,” and the tendency to show up in an emergency room without authentic cause would be called “factitious disorder.” Eventually they would need to find some way to bring about more reliability for the “diseases.” By far the most radical innovation in the new DSM was a checklist of symptoms that should be present in order to justify a diagnosis. For example, a person with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is someone who: is preoccupied with details, rules, lists, order, organization, or schedules to the extent that the major point of the activity is lost; is unable to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value; adopts a miserly spending style towards both self and others. Five other criteria are listed in a box beneath the description of the disorder, and clinicians are cautioned that at least four of the eight must be present in order for the label to be applied. There seemed to be two reasons that doctors could not agree on a diagnosis. The first was informational variance: because of rapport or interview style, different doctors get different information from the same patient. The second was interpretive variance: each doctor carries in his mind his own definition of what a specific disease looks like. One goal of the newly proposed DSM-III was to reduce interpretive variance by standardizing definitions. Spitzer reasoned that if a clear set of criteria were provided, diagnostic reliability would inevitably improve. This new criteria would enable mental-health professionals to communicate, and greatly facilitate psychiatric research.

Regarding the DSM-II, as described by Ronald Bayer, a psychiatrist and gay rights activist, specific protests by gay rights activists against the APA began in 1970 when the organization held its convention in San Francisco. The activists disrupted the conference by interrupting speakers and shouting down and ridiculing psychiatrists who viewed homosexuality as a mental disorder. In 1971, gay rights activist Frank Kameny worked with the Gay Liberation Front collective to demonstrate against the APA's convention. At the 1971 conference, Kameny grabbed the microphone and yelled, "Psychiatry is the enemy incarnate. Psychiatry has waged a relentless war of extermination against us. You may take this as a declaration of war against you.” This activism occurred in the context of a broader antipsychiatry movement that had come to the fore in the 1960s and was challenging the legitimacy of psychiatric diagnosis. Antipsychiatry activists protested at the same APA conventions, with some shared slogans and intellectual foundations. Presented with data from researchers such as Alfred Kinsey and Evelyn Hooker, the seventh printing of the DSM-II, in 1974, no longer listed homosexuality as a category of disorder. After a vote by the APA trustees in 1973, and confirmed by the wider APA membership in 1974, the diagnosis was replaced with the category of "sexual orientation disturbance."

The American Association for Affirmative Action (AAAA) is founded as an association of professionals managing affirmative action, equal opportunity, diversity and other human resource programs. AAAA Goals: Foster effective affirmative action/equal opportunity programs nationwide; Establish and maintain ethical standards for the profession; Liaison with federal, state and local agencies involved with equal opportunity compliance in employment and education; Promote the professional growth and development of our members; Sponsor education and training programs; Sponsor and conduct research.

Civil Law of Social Disapproval was written. Man's deliberate sexual aggressions against their own child and the child's participation began to be questioned. With the discovery in the 1960's of the "battered child syndrome" and the 1974 codification in US civil law of social disapproval, overt avowals of the harmlessness of a man's deliberate sexual aggressions against his own child, and the willingness to see children as the architects of their abuse at the hands of adults, began to fall out of fashion. However, and here was the dilemma, as it began to be strongly suspected that rape of one's own child was not entirely rare, how could you suddenly start making open charges against thousands of upstanding male citizens; charges of something that overnight and by fiat was being labeled "abuse"? So, those early professionals who addressed the issue of incest were increasingly driven to find an alternative focus, one that would continue to avoid spotlighting respectable male citizens (who until this minute had believed incest to be within their rights).

“Every Day Gets a Little Closer: A Twice-Told Therapy,” by I. Yalon and Ginny Elkin.

“W-3,” by Bette Howland.

“Retreat From Sanity,” by M. B. Bowers.

“Visions of a Madman,” Madness Network News Reader. by P.G. Harrison. (eds. S. Hirsh, J. K. Adams, & L.R. Frank).

“These Are My Sisters: An Insandectomy.” Tulsa, OK: Vickers, 1947 (reprint) by Lara Jefferson (pseudonym).

“Hurry Tomorrow” a documentary on involuntary treatment at metropolitan state hospital filmed by Richard Cohen and Kevin Rafferty premiered as a benefit for NAPA, Network Against Psychiatric Assault to overflow audiences at the Clay Theatre in San Francisco. Additional screenings continue at other theaters.

“What It’s Like—From the Receiving End.” Special Issue of Mind Out, by Anonymous.

“Sketchbook From Hell,” by Edward Dixon Garner.

“A Quest for Justice: My Confinement in Two Institutions,” by Bertrand Wilson.

“Being Different: The Autobiography of Jane Fry,” by Jane Fry.

“Ordeal in a Mental Hospital: The Radical Therapist,” by Anonymous.

In England, Contraception now free on the NHS.

1975

Congress held a hearings on "Interstate Placement and Traffic in Children and Their Drugging," and "The Improper Drugging of Mentally Ill and Mentally Handicapped Persons," the several-volume report, thousands of pages long, was titled: The Abuse and Misuse of Controlled Drugs in Institutions. Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 94th cong., 1st Sess., July 31 and August 18, 1975. Senator Birch Bayh opened the sessions with this comment: Our investigation is predicated on the view that 'drug abuse' is not limited to unauthorized use of medication by inmates or patients, but also includes forced administration of drugs on unwilling, competent patients and unnecessary use of powerful medications on those institutionalized. It is a measure of the impact which NARPA, and the mental health consumer/patient rights movement, had nationally that several active early leaders testified to the Congress at that time (Among those testifying were Judi Chamberlain, Janet Gotkin and David Ferleger).

The National Health Planning and Resources Development Act of 1974 (PL 93-641, 88 Stat. 2225) is enacted on January 4, combining regional medical programs, comprehensive health planning, and Hill Burton programs to establish an integrated system of national, state, and area planning agencies with consumer majorities on policy bodies.

UN Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons. This declaration adopted by the UN General Assembly is the first international document that tried to define the term "disability." The Declaration includes a number of social and economic rights as well as civil and political rights.

The Social Service Amendments of 1974 (PL 93-647, 88 Stat. 2337), Title XX of the Social Security Act, are enacted on January 3, initiating comprehensive social services programs directed toward achieving economic self-support and preventing dependence. Five levels of services, meeting federal standards, are implemented by states with 75 percent federal subsidy The amendments were initiated and planned as a result of NASW opposition and coalition-building against the Nixon administration's attempt to misuse regulations to reduce social services expenditures.

Coverage of Ambulatory mental health services (outpatient) by private health plans – The CMCH Act Amendments of 1975 (P.L. 94-63) mandated a more detailed community mental health center definition emphasizing comprehensiveness and accessibility to all persons regardless of ability to pay, through the creation of a community governing board and quality assurance. Required core services expanded from the 1963 levels from 5 to 12, which included the following: Children Services Elderly Services Screening Services Follow-up Care Transitional Services Alcohol abuse Services Drug abuse Services.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled (in O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975)) that a state cannot constitutionally confine, without more, a non-dangerous individual who is capable of surviving safely in freedom by themselves or with the help of willing and responsible family members or friends, and since the previous jury found, upon ample evidence, that petitioner did so confine respondent, it properly concluded that petitioner had violated respondent's right to liberty. The U.S. Supreme Court, in O'Connor v. Donaldson, rules that people cannot be institutionalized against their will in a psychiatric hospital unless they are determined to be a threat to themselves or to others. It is a violation of civil rights to medicate, treat, or hospitalize a person against their will. Also, Rogers v. Macht (Rogers v. Okin or Rogers v. Commissioner of Mental Health) filed and finally adjudicated in 1982 establishing a limited right to refuse treatment (psychiatric drugs) in Massachusetts. Seven patients at Boston State Hospital sue the state of Massachusetts. The class-action suit is sponsored by the Mental Patients' Liberation Front. Ruby Rogers is the lead plaintiff. The Rogers Decision of the First Circuit Court establishes the Right-to-Refuse Treatment.

Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act of 1975 - described congressional findings regarding rights of persons with developmental disabilities; established funding for protection and advocacy systems; added requirement that state plan include deinstitutuionalization plan; required states to develop and annually review rehabilitation plans for all clients. Congress passes the Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, providing federal funds to programs serving people with developmental disabilities and outlining a series of rights for those who are institutionalized. The lack of an enforcement mechanism within the bill and subsequent court decisions, will, however, render this portion of the act virtually useless to disability rights advocates. Among other things, it establishes the National Protection and Advocacy (P&A) system. The Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act became law in the U.S., and it provided federal funds to programs serving people with developmental disabilities and outlined a series of rights for those who are institutionalized.

The community mental health centers program was given added impetus with the passage of the CMHC amendments of 1975.

The Community Services Act became law in the U.S., and it created the Head Start Program. It stipulated that at least 10% of program openings were to be reserved for disabled children.

Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 - The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-142, 89 Stat. 773), enacted on November 29, extends national public education policy to mandate free public education for all handicapped people. The provision for social work services in the public schools by 1978 is included through NASW intervention. Required states to establish policy assuring free appropriate public education for children with disabilities as condition for receiving Part B funds; established procedural safeguards, procedures for mainstreaming children with disabilities to the maximum extent possible, and procedures for nondiscriminatory testing and evaluation practices. Education of All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-142): requires free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment possible for children with disabilities. This law is now (1990) called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Pub. Law 94-142) established the right of children with disabilities to a public school education in an integrated environment. The act is a cornerstone of federal disability rights legislation. In the next two decades, millions of disabled children will be educated under its provisions, radically changing the lives of people in the disability community. It declared that handicapped children could not be excluded from public school because of their disability, and that school districts were required to provide special services to meet the needs of handicapped children. The law also required that handicapped children be taught in a setting that resembles as closely as possible the regular school program, while also meeting their special needs. Martha Ziegler created Federation for Children with Special Needs and led a kitchen cabinet of mothers to advocate for the passage of The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Pub. Law 94-142) that made the Parent Training Institute

Howie the Harp helped found "Project Release" in New York City. This client-run community "drop-in" center and client run residence was completely patient ex/patient controlled.

National Network for Youth is founded as the only national membership organization focused solely on the needs of homeless, runaway and disconnected youth.

NAPA (Network Against Psychiatric Assault) in Los Angeles is formed after theatrical screenings of “Hurry Tomorrow.” The film is reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, “...a crucifying indictment of ward conditions, drug companies and the violations of present laws. The film is an act of courage and a warning about mind control told with compassion and rage.”

“Hurry Tomorrow” is screened at international film festivals including Edinburgh, London, Rotterdam, Los Angeles Filmex and wins the Grand Prize at Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Hospital staff and state employees union asks the governor to ban “Hurry Tomorrow” as reported in the Los Angeles Times.

The first convention of American Association of the Deaf-Blind is held in Cleveland.

FCC Institutes Closed Captioning. The Federal Communications Commission authorizes reserving Line 21 on television sets for closed captions.

The American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities is founded. It became the leading national cross-disability rights organization of the 1970s. The American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities (ACCD) was, in the mid-1970s to early 1980s, a national consumer-led disability rights organization called, by nationally syndicated columnist Jack Anderson and others, “the handicapped lobby”. Created, governed, and administered by individuals with disabilities – which made it a novelty at the time—ACCD rose to prominence in 1977 when it mounted a successful 10-city “sit in” to force the federal government to issue long-overdue rules to carry out Section 504, the world’s first disability civil rights provisions. ACCD also earned a place of honor in the disability rights movement when it helped to secure federal funding for what is now a national network of 600 independent living centers and helped to pave the way for accessible Public Transit in the U.S. After a brief and often tumultuous history, ACCD closed its doors in 1983. It becomes the preeminent national cross-disability rights organization of the 1970s, pulling together disability rights groups representing blind, deaf, physically disabled, and developmentally disabled people. It hires Frank Bowe as its first executive director, begins a major study of the current status of Americans with disabilities.

The Association of Persons with Severe Handicaps (TASH) is founded by special education professionals responding to PARC v. Pennsylvania (1972) and subsequent right-to-education cases. The organization will eventually call for the end of aversive behavior modification and the closing of all residential institution for people with disabilities.

The Atlantis Community is founded in Denver as a group housing program for severely disabled adults who, until that time, had been forced to live in nursing homes.

“Mainstream: Magazine of the Able-Disabled” begins publication in San Diego.

The first Parent and Training Information Centers are founded to help parents of disabled children to exercise their rights under the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975.

Fifteen years after being told he was “too disabled to work,” Edward Roberts becomes the Director of the California Department of Rehabilitation. He moves to establish nine independent living centers across that state, based on the model of the original Center for Independent Living in Berkeley. The success of these centers demonstrates that independent living can be replicated and eventually results in the founding of hundreds of independent living centers all over the world.

The Western Center on Law and the Handicapped is founded in Los Angeles.

Women Against Psychiatric Assault, begun in 1975 in San Francisco.

With a unanimous vote at its national conference, NOW declares marital violence a major issue and establishes a National Task Force on Battered Women/Household Violence.

The December issue of Vogue magazine carries a fashion layout depicting a couple alternately fighting and caressing each other. One photograph shows the female with her face twisted in pain after the male model hit her. The caption merely notes that her jumpsuit could "really take the heat."

Most U.S. states allow wives to bring criminal action against a husband who inflicts injury upon her.

The Oakland, CA police department outlines their policy of non-arrest in domestic violence cases in its Training Bulletin on Techniques of Dispute Intervention. They state that they see their role as more of a "mediator and peacemaker" rather than an enforcer of the law.

The California Senate Subcommittee on Nutrition and Human Needs holds hearings on domestic violence.

In New York, Abused Women's Aid in Crisis is formed after a domestic violence conference held in January. The AWAIC offers referral service and group counseling sessions to wives who need help breaking out of the victim syndrome.

In April, the Ann Arbor MI NOW Wife Assault Task Force is formed. They develop a "how to" technical manual (Wife Beating: How to Develop a Wife Assault Task Force and Project) to assist women's groups in challenging their community to offer needed services for battered women.

Susan Brownmiller authors her book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape.

Diana E. Russell authors her book The Polictics of Rape: the Victim's Perspective.

Women in Transition publishes the Women's Survival Manual: A Feminist Handbook on Separation and Divorce.

In England, the feminist oriented National Women's Aid federation is established by women from England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.5 The women attending the first national gathering of Chiswick's Women's Aid groups split from that group to form a democratic, egalitarian organization. Erin Prizzey responds by sending the following letter to social work departments: "We are particularly worried and unhappy that there are groups who seem to be trying to use Women's Aid as a platform for Women's Liberation and Gay Women's Liberation. We would strongly advise Social Services and Housing Departments to look very carefully at the groups in their areas who are offering to set up refuge before giving them your support."

After seven years of debate, a new family law goes into effect in Italy. It explicitly does away with the ancient Rome concept of patris potestas, which vested sole authority in the father. Wife-beating is also abolished.

In Kinghorn, Scotland, the Magistrate George MacKay, fines a husband $11.50 for hitting his wife in the face. The magistrate told the husband, "it is a well known fact that you can strike your wife's bottom if you wish, but you must not strike her on the face." 

Brazil passes a penal code that prohibits husbands from selling, renting, or gambling away their wives.

In South Africa, Queen Sibongile Winnifred of the Zulus is granted interim custody of her two children after alleging in affidavits to the Durban Supreme Court that her husband, the Zulu King, had whipped her while she was pregnant.

Taylor v. Louisiana denied states the right to exclude women from juries.

The Rape Victims Emergency Treatment Act passed in the Illinois General Assembly and was signed into law.

An American Psychiatry textbook estimated incest occurred for 1 in one-million children.

The Stanford Law Review advocated treating incest as non-criminal because of the questionable harm to the child and likelihood of prosecution against the parent.

“Too Much Anger, Too Many Tears: A Personal Triumph Over Psychiatry.” New York: Quadrangle/ The New York Times Book Co. Gotkin, J. & Gotkin, P.

“Reality Police: The Experience of Insanity in America,” by Anthony Brandt.

“Time and the Human Robot,” by Hope Rogers.

“Road to Love: An Autobiography,” by John Harrison Farmer.

“The Far Side of Despair—A Personal Account of Depression,” by Russell K. Hampton.

“The Eden Express” (reprinted in 2002), by Mark Vonnegut.

“Living with Depression—and Winning,” by Sarah Fraser.

“How I Conquered Claustrophobia.” Mind Out, by Brigit Barlow.

“Addicted to Suicide—A Woman Struggling to Live,” by Mary Savage.

“Whom the Gods Destroy,” by John Neary.

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” by Ken Kesey made into an award winning movie starring Jack Nicholson.

In England, Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to lead a political party (Conservative).

In England, Sex Discrimination Act became law.

In England, Employment Protection Act made it illegal to dismiss someone on the grounds of pregnancy and established maternity leave.

1976

In his election campaign, candidate Jimmy Carter promised that his administration would sign regulations that had received extensive input from affected agencies and the disability community nationwide, and which had taken years to finalize.

Federal court ruled in Lessard v. Schmidt that involuntary commitment is permissible only when “there is an extreme likelihood that if the person is not confined he will do immediate harm to himself or others.” The court required that in civil commitment proceedings people with mental illness receive all the protections accorded to criminal suspects — including the right to counsel, the right to remain silent, exclusion of hearsay evidence and a standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Lessard v. Schmidt, 3549 F. Supp. 1078 (E.D. Wis. 1972)

First ECT (Electro-Convulsive Therapy) informed consent lawsuit

Passage of an amendment to Higher Education Act of 1972 in the USA provides services to physically disabled students entering college.

Fourth Annual Conference for Human Rights and Against Psychiatric Oppression unites 50 radical consumer groups at Tufts University in Medford, MA. These conferences take place every year from 1973-1985.

The label "consumer" appears for the first time in the APA journal Psychiatric Services.

NAPA (Network Against Psychiatric Assault) conducts a one-day protest against involuntary treatment and slave wages paid to people locked up in state hospitals. The demonstrators spontaneously decide to occupy the outer office of then Governor Jerry Brown -- they remain there for a month. There is extensive media coverage and stories throughout California about this extraordinary protest. The plight of African-American males in the psychiatric system is vividly captured in “HurryTomorrow,” a shocking documentary of conditions at Metropolitan Hospital in Norwalk, California. (Cohen and Rafferty, 1975) In one scene, an assertive, young African-American male is trying to explain to an all-white clinical team his reality as a poor, Black man. He is mocked by the psychiatrist and lined up forThorazine injections. Later in the film we see him shuffling through the cafeteria line barely able to hold his tray due to over-medication. It is a chilling scene of the suppression of the activist voice and it is done away from public view and protected by confidentiality laws that serve to protect mental health providers more than it ever protected survivors. On July 4th, some NAPA members and the filmmaker attend a midnight screening of “Hurry Tomorrow” for Governor Brown, future Governor Gray Davis and Director of Health Jerome Lachner, in Lackner's home -- a few miles from the protest. After screening the film Governor Brown commits to investigate conditions in California state hospitals -- once the demonstrators depart his office. Protesters continue an educational campaign for legislative analysts and lawmakers during their month long stay. The Governor talks to the press about the protest, involuntary treatment and the film.

Governor Jerry Brown of California follows through on his word to NAPA by launching an investigation into the state hospitals that results in uncovering more than a thousand patient deaths in a three-year period. The story makes headlines both in Los Angeles and California, and nationally. “Hurry Tomorrow” is credited with triggering the biggest and most continuous news story of that year and is featured on CBS and ABC Evening News.

“Hurry Tomorrow” is screened at international film festivals including Edinburgh, London, Rotterdam, Los Angeles Filmex and wins the Grand Prize at Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Luisah Teish is an African-American activist, priestess, psychiatric survivor and author who co-edited the 1976 Third World Issue of Madness Network News. The special issue included Teish’s article, “That Nigger’s Crazy,” which highlighted scientific racism from Samuel Cartwright to Shockley and Jenson. She notes, “We know that if sanity is defined by white upper-middle class standards then we are in grave danger. It is very easy at this time, when Third World people are seeking our own identities, to say, ‘That Nigger’s Crazy…LOCK HIM UP!’”. “That Nigger’s Crazy.” Madness Network News, Vol 3:5, March 1976.

Celestine Tate Harrington, a street musician with quadriplegia, won the right to parent her daughter Nia, having proved to a judge that she could take care of Nia and therefore should not have to give her to the Philadelphia Department of Public Welfare because of her quadriplegia.

“Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry.” New York: Basic Books, Szasz, Thomas S.

“Insanity Inside Out,” by Kenneth Donaldson.

Passage of an amendment to Higher Education Act of 1972 provides services to physically disabled students entering college.

Centers for independent living were established in Houston and Chicago.

The Transbus group, made up of Disabled in Action of Pennsylvania, the American Coalition of Cerebral Palsy Associations, and others, and represented by the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, successfully files suit (Disabled in Action of Pennsylvania, Inc. v. Coleman) to require that all buses purchased by public transit authorities receiving federal funds meet Transbus specifications, making them wheelchair accessible.

Disabled in Action pickets the United Cerebral Palsy telethon in New York City, calling telethons “demeaning and paternalistic shows which celebrate and encourage pity.”

The Coalition of Provincial Organizations of the Handicapped is founded in Winnipeg, Canada, later becoming the Council in Canadians with Disabilities.

The Disability Rights Center is founded in Washington, D.C. Sponsored by Ralph Nader's Center for the Study of Responsive Law, it specializes in consumer protection for people with disabilities, joining the Justice department in anti-trust action against the Everest & Jennings Company.

The Westside Center for Independent Living founded in Los Angeles as one of the first nine independent living centers established by Ed Roberts and the California Department of Rehabilitation.

James L. Cherry and several members of the Action League for Physically Handicapped Adults (ALPHA) filed a lawsuit, known as Cherry v. Mathews, which was decided in their favor on July 19, 1976. U. S. District Court Judge John Lewis Smith ruled for them and ordered DHEW (the U.S. Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare) to develop the Section 504 regulation to prohibit discrimination against "handicapped persons" in any federally funded program. In January, 1977, Mathews (then the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare) refused to sign the prepared regulation, and James Cherry and his co-plaintiffs went back to the U. S. District Court, where Mathews was held in contempt of court for refusing to follow the Cherry court order. Mathews was soon replaced by Joseph Califano due to Jimmy Carter being sworn in as President

Congress adopts the first Hyde Amendment barring the use of federal Medicaid funds to provide abortions to low-income women. The Hyde Amendment is a legislative provision barring the use of certain federal funds to pay for abortions. It is not a permanent law, rather it is a "rider" that, in various forms, has been routinely attached to annual appropriations bills since 1976. The Hyde Amendment applies only to funds allocated by the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services. It primarily affects Medicaid. The original Hyde Amendment was passed on September 30, 1976 by the House of Representatives, by a 207-167 vote. It was named for its chief sponsor, Republican Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois. The measure was introduced in response to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, and represented the first major legislative success by the anti-abortion movement. Opponents of the amendment, such as the National Abortion Federation and the American Civil Liberties Union, assert that it unfairly targets low-income women, stating the amendment effectively ended the provision of abortions for low-income women across the United States through Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income Americans. As a rider attached to the yearly appropriations bill for Medicaid, it occasioned intense debate in Congress each time that it came up for renewal. The original measure made no exceptions for cases of pregnancies that were the result of rape or incest or that threatened the lives of pregnant woman, provoking an outcry from women's rights advocates. As a result, beginning in 1977 language was added to provide for such circumstances; however, the exact wording has varied from one year to the next, subject to the outcome of Congressional bargaining on the issue.

The first marital rape law is enacted in Nebraska, making it illegal for a husband to rape his wife.

The International Women's Year Conference is held in Houston, TX. Meetings such as this on the local, state and national level allow women to form coalitions with one another and create a national battered women's movement.

The Sounthern California Coalition on Battered Women forms.

In January, La Casa de las Madres in San Francisco is founded by Marta Segovia Ashley and six other women, feminists and violence survivors.

Ken Nealy, a state legislative aide in Pennsylvania, invites several women from around the state to attend hearings so that grassroots groups might have an impact on pending state legislation. Out of this meeting, the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence is formed.

In October, the Wisconsin Conference on Battered Women is held. Women from around the country establish the national newsletter, The National Communication Network for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Lawsuits are filed against recalcitrant police departments. In October, battered women file a class action suit, Scott v. Hart against the Oakland police department. The police department settles in 1979. It agrees to stop training officers to avoid arrest in domestic violence cases, to treat each case on its own merits, to allow the plaintiff's attorneys to do weekly squad trainings with the officers, to hand out resource cards to victims, and to donate money to local battered women's shelters. In December, battered women file a suit, Bruno v. Codd against the New York City police department, department of probation and the clerks of the Family court. The police settle the case before it goes to trial. These two lawsuits inspire New Haven, CT, Chicago, IL and Atlanta, GA to threaten their police departments. Los Angeles, CA women file suit in 1979. The era of crisis intervention, family court diversion and policy inaction seemed to be coming to an end.

In November, the New York City Council passes resolution 491 (Freidlander), urging city agencies to make concrete plans for providing specialized assistance to battered women.

Del Martin publishes Battered Wives, a major source of information and validation for the movement. It legitimates the view that violence against women is caused by sexism.

Betsy Warrior's directory of individuals and groups working on domestic violence is published, Working on Wife Abuse.

A bill in the Florida State legislature is introduced "authorizing a peace officer to arrest a person without a warrant if the officer reasonably believes the person has committed an assault or battery upon the person's spouse."

To date, Birch Bayh (D-IN) is the only U.S. Senator to express interest in introducing federal legislation on family violence through the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Center for Women Policy Studies begins publishing Response thanks to a grant from the LEAA. The newsletter, mailed free to a national audience, centers on the criminal justice, hospital, social service and federal responses to rape and domestic violence.

Women of the Loop Center YMCA hold a meeting of women's organizations and individuals to discuss services for battered women. A conference is held in the fall and the Chicago Abused Women's Coalition is founded. Shelter and legal task forces are established.

The Chicago Abused Women's Coalition newsletter is published in December.

The first Chicago Abused Women's Coalition reveals housing alternatives for women who have no family or friends.

The first Legal Center for Battered Women in the U.S. is funded by a grant from the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago.

The anti-rape movement is at its peak. There are approximately 1,500 separate projects related to the issue of rape.

There are 400 independent rape crisis centers for women that provide self-defense courses, support groups, and counseling.

An old town ordinance is still on the books in Pennsylvania stating that no husband shall beat his wife after ten o'clock at night or on Sundays.

The District of Columbia police have the authority to make a valid warrant-less arrest on probable cause if they believe the person has committed an assault and may cause injury to others. Yet, they continue to adhere to a non-arrest policy in domestic violence cases. 

In England and Wales, The Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act gives women the right to occupy the matrimonial home and provides access to exclusion orders.

On March 4, 8,200 women from 33 countries meet in Brussels for the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women. The issues of the conference include rape, battering, forced sterilization, mutilation and economic and legal crimes against women. A resolution on domestic violence is sent to the government of all countries.5 Similar tribunals occur in New York and San Francisco.

Russian husbands are answerable under the rape laws, receiving a sentence of 3-7 years for rape based on their wife's complaint with no witness needed. They can also get 2 weeks in jail for "gross behavior" towards their wife based on her word. In Sweden, Denmark and countries in the Communist bloc, the criminal codes proscribe rape in marriage.

Dr. Benjamin Spock eliminates sex-bias in his revised Baby and Child Care.

Organization of Pan Asian American Women is founded to impact public policy.

The United Nations "Decade for Women" begins.

Title IX goes into effect (see 1972 entry). Opening the way for women's increased participation in athletics programs and professional schools, enrollments leap in both categories. Title IX withstands repeated court challenges over time (see 1997 entry).

Alliance for Displaced Homemakers founded by Tish Sommers and Laurie Shields, moving the issues of divorced and widowed homemakers seeking employment into the public discussion.

U.S. military academies open admissions to females.

Working Woman: The National Association for Office Workers is formed. In four years it has over 10,000 members.

Women Against Violence Against Women, stages the first major demonstration against pornography, in Los Angeles. Women Against Violence Against Women, a Los Angeles organization demonstrates against the port film Snuff which depicts the killing and dismemberment of women.

A New York Times survey shows that women's enrollment in theological seminaries has risen from 3% to 35% of all students within the previous decade. The Episcopal Church votes to allow the ordination of women as bishops and priests, and recognizes the earlier "irregular" ordination of Jacqueline Means and ten other women.

Dr. Carroll Quigley of Georgetown said, “The fundamental, all pervasive cause of world instability is the destruction of communities by the commercialization of all human relationships and the result of this is neurosis and psychoses. Another cause of instability is a world dominated by elements of sovereignty outside the structure of the state. Bankers and corporations are free of political controls and social responsibility, and they have largely monopolized power in Western civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labor, entrepreneurial managerial skills and every thing else, economists once told us were the chief elements of production. The only item they are concerned with is the one that they can control; Capitol. One form of Capital is human capital, or the slaves to the masters.

Deaf Actress Signs On with Sesame Street - Deaf actress Linda Bove, graduate of Gallaudet College and veteran of the National Theater for the Deaf, signs a long-term contract to play Linda the librarian on public television's Sesame Street. James Earl Jones, a well-known actor who has a speech-related disability, also gets his start on Sesame Street.

The Political Action for Candidate Election in initiated as a political action committee of NASW, committing the social work profession to political action as a professional responsibility.

In a class action suit, Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. of the US. Middle District Court in Montgomery Alabama, rules on January 13 that conditions of confinement in the Alabama penal system constitute cruel and unusual punishment where they bear no reasonable relationship to legitimate institutional goals.

The Health Professional Educational Assistance Act (PL 94-484, 90 Stat. 2243), enacted on October 12, applies to all health professions and authorizes funding to train social workers in health care, including administration, policy analysis, and social work. This is the first mention of schools of social work in national health legislation.

The International Code of Ethics for Professional Social Workers, written by Chauncey A. Alexander, is adopted at the Puerto Rico Assembly by the International Federation of Social Workers, which consists of 52 national professional social worker organizations.

NASW endorses Carter and Mondale, the Democratic Party candidates for president and vice president, initiating the NASW Political Action for Candidate Election program to raise funds for political action, the first such political effort for a professional social work organization.

The Rural Social Work Caucus is initiated to aid rural social workers.

Health & Social Work, the first health specialty journal, is published by NASW.

“Anna.” London, by David Reed.

“Josh: My Up and Down, In and Out Life,” by Joshua Logan.

“Breakdown,” by Stuart Sutherland.

“Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry,” a book by David Cooper appears to be the first usage of the term anti-psychiatry.

“The Grigorenko Papers,” by P. G. Grigorenko.

“Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry.” New York: Basic Books, Szasz, Thomas S.

“Midnight Baby-Autobiography,” by Basil Hubbard Pollitt.

“The Case of Leonid Plyushch” (trans. Marie Sapiets), by Leonid Plyushch.

“Horrors of the Half-Known Life.” Barker-Benfield, G.J. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

"The Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill: A Critical View", article by Andrew Scull in Politics and Society 6 (Summer 1976)

In England, Domestic Violence Protection Act. Gave police more powers to arrest and increased courts' protection of battered wives.

1977

Neal Brown of CSP

NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) initiates a unique but modestly funded demonstration program, the Community Support Program (CSP) to stimulate and assist states and localities in improving opportunities and services in the community for people with a serious mental illness. The C.S.P.'s goal was to shift the focus from psychiatric institutions and the services they offer to networks of support for individual clients. In 1977, congressional hearings had made clear that the Community Mental Health Centers (CMHC) program under NIMH was failing badly to provide care for patients being discharged from state mental hospitals. To correct this, NIMH started the Community Support Program (CSP) with $3.5 million. The money was to be given to the states specifically to help coordinate services “for one particularly vulnerable population—adult psychiatric patients whose disabilities are severe and persistent (SPMI).” By 1987, the CSP program had grown to $15 million.

In 1977 and 1979, Congress considered what were then S. 1393 and H.R. 10, eventually enacted into law as the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. CRIPA authorized the United States Attorney General to initiate lawsuits on behalf of people in institutions. 42 U.S.C. §1997 et seq. The United States Justice Department provided the Congress with examples of life-threatening situations in institutions, including "physical abuse of residents and gross neglect of basic medical needs – conditions under which no person in the United States should be forced to exist." The National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors opposed the law as "superfluous" and serving "no purpose" other than clogging the courts. The National Association of Attorneys General also opposed the law. Even then, more than 25 years ago, there were many laws on the books protecting the rights of people with disabilities; the names of many of those laws are still familiar today: Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, the Education of All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, for example. In the 1990s, the Americans with Disabilities Act joined the list.

President Jimmy Carter established the President’s Commission on Mental Health on February 17 by Executive Order No. 11973, the first comprehensive survey of mental healthcare since the 1950’s. The commission was to review the mental health needs of the Nation and to make recommendations to the President as to how the Nation might best meet these needs. Membership included Priscilla Allen, 47, is a former patient from San Francisco, who has been effectively involved in the passage of legislation to benefit the mentally ill in California. She serves on the National Patients Rights Committee of the Mental Health Association. She served on a panel at the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law on "The Role of Consumer in Mental Health Service Advocacy" in 1976, and is the author of an important article published in Psychiatry Quarterly called "Consumer's View of California Mental Health Care System."

An NIMH study that randomizes schizophrenia patients into drug and non-drug arms reports that only 35% of the non-medicated patients relapsed within a year after discharge, compared to 45% of those treated with medication.

The ICD-9 was published by the WHO.

Andrey Lichko published Psychopathies and Accentuations of Character of Teenagers.

U.S. Congress created a National Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research to investigate allegations that psychosurgery — including lobotomy techniques — was used to control minorities and restrain individual rights.

A study demonstrates that the male model of mental health involves a man’s ability to “own” or be “serviced by” a woman. Men who will not or cannot do this (male homosexuals, “schizophrenics”, alcoholics or drug addicts) will be labeled neurotic or psychotic and often hospitalized. The absence of a woman to take care of them despite their lack of masculinity will be associated with longer psychiatric hospital stays.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopts: Recommendation (818) on the Situation of the Mentally Ill. This document outlines recommendations regarding the protection of mentally ill persons in court, and the legislation rules on the confinement of mentally ill persons.

In his 1976 election campaign, candidate Jimmy Carter promised that his administration would sign regulations that had received extensive input from affected agencies and the disability community nationwide, and which had taken years to finalize. When Carter's administration took office, the Health, Education, and Welfare Department immediately began revising and watering down the regulations, with no input from the disability community.

President Jimmy Carter appoints Max Cleland to head the U.S. Veterans Administration, making Cleland the first severely disabled (as well as the youngest) person to fill that position.

Section 504 Sit-In. Apr 5, 1977.

In April, 1977, after years of waiting for federal guidelines, disability activists lost patience with the government’s delaying tactics and staged protests around the country. The 504 Sit-In demanded enforcement of the first major law to bar discrimination against the disabled. A dramatic twenty-five-day occupation of the federal office building in San Francisco galvanized people and created a strong sense of purpose and pride. The protests drew national attention, and on April 28, 1977, the government finally released the regulations. Section 504 requires federal grantees to make their programs and jobs accessible to qualified people with disabilities. Disability Demonstrators Occupy Federal Office. Demonstrators led by Judy Heumann take over the Health Education and Welfare (HEW) office in UN Plaza, San Francisco, California, in protest of HEW Secretary Califano's refusal to complete regulations for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which made it illegal for federal agencies, public universities, and other public institutions receiving any federal funds to discriminate on the basis of disability. After 25 days, Califano relents and signs the regulations into effect, making this take-over event the longest occupation of a federal office by protestors in U.S. history. Initially Joseph Califano, U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, refused to sign meaningful regulations for Section 504. After an ultimatum and deadline, demonstrations took place in ten U.S. cities on April 5, 1977. The sit-in at the San Francisco Office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, led by Judith Heumann, lasted until May 1, 1977. More than 150 demonstrators refused to disband. No one expected to live there for almost a month, but they did. This action became the longest sit-in at a federal building to date. Joseph Califano signed the regulations on April 28, 1977. Disability rights activists in ten cities stage demonstrations and occupations of the offices of the federal department of Health Education and Welfare (HEW) to force the Carter Administration to issue regulations implementation Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The demonstrations galvanize the disability community nationwide, particularly the San Francisco action, which lasts nearly a month. On 28 April, HEW Secretary Joseph Califano signs the regulations that were issued on May 4.

The White House Conference on Handicapped Individuals brings together 3,000 disabled people to discuss federal policy toward people with disabilities. This first ever gathering of its kind results in numerous recommendations and acts as a catalyst for grassroots disability rights organizing.

Passage of the Legal Services Corporation Act Amendments adds financially needy people with disabilities to the list of those eligible for publicly funded legal services.

The U.S. Court of appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Lloyd V. Regional Transportation Authority, rules that individuals have a right to sue under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and that public transit authorities must provide accessible service. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in Snowden v. Birmingham Jefferson County Transit Authority, undermines this decision by ruling that authorities need provide access only to “handicapped persons other than those confined to wheelchairs.”

Howe Press produces the 100,000th Perkins Brailler less than 30 years after the first model was produced.

MHCC (Mental Health Consumer Concerns, Inc.) founded by Jay Mahler, Contra Costa County, California

Mental Patients Rights Association (MPRA), (Sally Zinman, West Palm Beach, Florida)

Project Acceptance (Su Budd, Kansas)

Mental Patients Liberation Alliance (MPLA) of Central New York is incorporated. (George Ebert, Syracuse, NY)

Vermont Liberation Organization (Paul Dorfner)

Women activists form rape crisis centers in Illinois. They gathered to form a mutual support group and to add strength to issues such as legislative action, and to give strength to each other. Searching for a name that reflected the profound social struggle necessary to end the degradation and rape of women, the activists named the group the Illinois Coalition of Women Against Rape (ICWAR).

The First National Women's Conference is held in Houston, Texas, chaired by Bella Abzug. 130,000 women attended preparatory meetings held in every state to draft recommendations for a national Plan of Action and to elect 2,000 delegates to the conference - the most diverse group ever elected in the U.S. The delegates publish a 25-point Plan of Action.

The National Women's Studies Association is formed to promote the field's development. By 1978 there are over 15,000 courses and more than 275 programs; by 1992 there are 670 programs.

Activities of the women’s movement have moved the phrase "battered women" into the public consciousness.

The New Jersey Coalition for Battered Women is founded.

Francine Hughes is acquitted on the grounds of "temporary insanity" for the murder of her husband. She suffered abuse since 1963, but received no help from police or social workers. Even when she divorced him, he refused to move out. Her story is told in 1980 by Faith McNulty in The Burning Bed: the True Story of an Abused Wife.

Washington State Supreme Court makes a landmark decision in State v. Wanrow declaring that a woman defendant's right to equal protection under the law in a murder trial was violated by instructions that require a woman's conduct be measured against that of a reasonable man finding himself in the same circumstances. The use of commensurate force and the perception of an imminent danger might be different for a woman, who is entitled to have the jury consider her actions in that light. Thus the reasonable woman standard. This is the beginning of the battered women's syndrome defense.

Jan Peterson, formerly on the staff of Brooklyn's National Congress of Neighborhood Women and co-founder of the Brooklyn shelter, is appointed Associate Director of Public Liaison at the White House. On July 20, the first White House meeting opens with testimony of battered women and statements presented by activists.

In Minnesota, the first state funding bill for domestic violence services is drafted jointly by a state Senator and a Consortium of Battered Women. The first award of $50,000 is for community education.

In July, the first battered women's refuge using apartments is available in New York City. In October, the City opens a shelter in a hotel that accepts per diem welfare payments. Unfortunately, the shelter is located near Times Square, the pornography center of the city. In 1981, the shelter moves from Times Square to another welfare hotel. New York shelters are unavailable to working women.

In March, Brooklyn's first shelter, Women's Survival Space, is opened by the Center for the Elimination of Violence in the Family. This is the only autonomous women's shelter in the city. It fails when it is unable to resolve growing internal strife.

American Friends Service Committee sponsors New York City's first conference on battered women. Out of the conference, the New York Coalition for Battered Women is formed. By 1979, the Coalition dies due to internal political differences and distrust.

The National Communication Network for the Elimination of Violence Against Women publishes its first issue in April. The headline of the third issue reads "Do We Have a Right to Self-Defense?" The NCN continues to carry stories of women murdered by their husbands and women who killed in self-defense.

Women around the country march annually to "Take Back the Night." They walk with confidence because of the collective presence of women. Women feel strength and temporary psychological liberation through turning individual fear into mass anger. 

In California, the Domestic Violence Center Act (SB 91, Presley) passes which will provide safe houses for battered women at the local level with funds from marriage license fees.

In California, AB 1019 (Fazio) is enacted, giving courts the authority to grant temporary restraining orders in domestic violence situations.

In England, the Homeless Person's Act is passed which gives a battered woman priority in obtaining housing. Many women live in refuges for up to 9 months due to housing shortages.

Between 1969 and 1977, the Supreme Court issues full opinions on 21 women's rights cases. Michelle Barnes wins the first sexual harassment suit, before the US. Court of Appeals for the Disrict of Columbia.

The last state (Indiana) ratifies the ERA, but three more are needed.

Congress passes the Hyde Amendment, eliminating federal funding for poor women's abortions. A revised Hyde Amendment is passed allowing states to deny Medicaid funding except in cases of rape, incest, or “severe and long-lasting” damage to the mother. By 1995, only thirteen states still provide public funding for abortions.

NASWs journal Abstracts for Social Workers is expanded to Social Work Research & Abstracts.

“Clouds of Fear.” London, by Roger Hall.

“Wander, Wander: A Woman's Journey into Herself,” by Dix Never.

“Midnight Express,” by B. Hayes (with W. Hoffer).

“My Ambition is to be Dead,” Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 4(3), 66-83, by A. Hurry.

“The Cracker Factory,” by Joyce Rebeta-Burditt.

“A Case Between Mentally Sound and Mentally Unsound,” by Lai Quek Seng.

“I’m Eve,” by Chris Costner Sizemore and Elen Sain Pittillo.

“No Longer Lonely,” by Pat Ansite.

“The Joy of Gay Sex,” by Charles Silverstein and Edmund White

“Maniac: Anatomy of a Mental Illness,” by Charles F. Hellmuth.

Patient population at Oregon State Hospital bottoms out at 525.

In England, Margaret Thatcher became the first female prime minister in Britain.

1978

“On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System” a seminal work and is published by McGraw-Hill. Written by Judi Chamberlin, it becomes a standard text of the psychiatric survivor movement.

Brooklyn native, Judi Chamberlin was born in 1944 as Judith K. Ross. As anyone grew up in the 50's, she married young; everything seemed to went well, got out of high school, got married, got pregnant. Happy family days were well ahead of her.

When she's sixteen!!

When she experienced a miscarriage at the age of 21, she became severely depressed. She cried for days, staying bed, thinking about her loss. Negative thoughts gripped her, didn't let her go. Nothing helped easing her sadness. Worried and concerned, her obstetrician refereed her to a psychiatrist. Judi trusted her obstetrician, so she didn't doubt psychiatry would provide a solution to her sadness. She visited a psychiatrist and cried, talked about her miserable feeling, a thought about killing herself. After 10 minutes or so passed, he opened a drawer and gave her a bunch of pills.
"Take these. These will make you feel better."
Her life as a psychiatric survivor started here in 1966. Those pills were anti-psychotic drugs, Thorazine and Stelazine. Judi later learned if she had taken these drugs for a high dose or for a long term, she would develop tardive dyskinesia, an often irreversible neurological disorder marked by involuntary body movements that people often associate with the stereotypical image of people with schizophrenia.
She didn't notice any changes in her mood, just those drugs made her feel lethargic.
After a few months passed, the psychiatrist suggested that she be hospitalized. She naively thought hospitalization would provide all the care and treatment. She imagined a hospital was the solution... she wanted to get better. Next seven months, she went back and forth between half a dozen hospitals.
The first hospital was Mt. Sinai Hospital. More drugs; they took Thorazine off and added Mellaril and Elavil. And therapy by a resident, thirty minutes, twice a week. Her life was spiraling down rapidly, uncontrollably. After Mt Sinai, she was sent to Bellevue, Gracie Square, Hillside Hospital, Montefiore, and finally Rockland State Hospital where she would later recall the involuntary experience as a "nightmare." (Interview with Darby Penney, 2002)
In those hospitals, she experienced drug withdrawal with no explanation by staff, seclusion that made her feel like a "caged animal," (Judi Chamberlin, On Our Own (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1978), 37.) and undiluted liquid Thorazine that burnt her mouth and throat.
After she was released from Rockland, she did her best to stay away from the psychiatric system. Until she saw a confident, competent, and experienced psychologist, Dr. Jonas, her spirit was rock bottom. Labeled as as a chronic schizophrenic with suicidal and homicidal tendencies, she told Dr. Jonas that he wouldn't be able to do anything with her because a staff at a psychiatric hospital told her what she needed was custodial care, not a talking therapy.
After seeing her record, Dr. Jonas told her: "Everything here... was written by young doctors just out of medical school. They like to use these big words but don't know what they mean. Who would you rather believe-- them, or me, a doctor who's been  in practice for years?" (Judi Chamberlin, On Our Own (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1978), 37.)
She believed the guy. Beginning from joining New York based Mental Patient Liberation Project in 1971, she rebuilt her confidence through her active involvement with survivor groups. After living in Vancouver, BC and Bellingham, WA, she settled in Boston in the end of 1975 where she became a key member of the Mental Patient Liberation Front.
She published a book On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System in 1978 where she explains her experience in hospitals and how ex-patients can build autonomous self-help groups without oversight of mental health professionals.

*****************************************************************************

“History of Shock Treatment” by Leonard Roy Frank

California investigator Maurice Rappaport reports markedly superior three-year outcomes for patients treated without neuroleptics. Only 27% of the drug-free patients relapsed in the three years following discharge, compared to 62% of the medicated patients.

Canadian researchers describe drug-induced changes in the brain that make a patient more vulnerable to relapse, which they dub “neuroleptic induced supersensitive psychosis”.

Neuroleptics found to cause 10% cellular loss in brains of rats.

Brewster v Dukakis, a class-action lawsuit results in Northampton State Hospital in western Massachusetts being shut down. Northampton was once a "Moral Treatment" hospital.

In Rennie v. Klein, the Federal District Court of New Jersey ruled that an involuntarily committed individual has a constitutional right to refuse psychotropic medication without a court order.

Italy passes legislation closing the doors of all psychiatric institutions to new admissions. Diagnoses of schizophrenia virtually disappear: in the following four years, one case is diagnosed in the region of Verona, pop. 90,000.

The final report submitted to the President of President Carter's Commission on Mental Health chaired by First Lady Rosalyn Carter calls for attention to basic community supports for mental health consumers. The report reassessed the CMHC program concept. The decision was made to reinvigorate the program with additional dollars and redirect the program toward the tens of thousands of individuals who had been dehospitalized during the 1970s. The Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 (Public Law 96–398) was an effort to find new meaning in the original Kennedy legislation, and it was signed just one month before the election of 1980. Medical Assistance (MA) added for community MH services (outpatient and day treatment).

Title VII of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1978 became law in the U.S., and it established the first federal funding for consumer-controlled independent living centers and created the National Council of the Handicapped under the U.S. Department of Education.

National Council on Disability Established. The National Council on Disability (NCD) is established as an advisory board within the Department of Education. Its purpose is to promote policies, programs, practices, and procedures that guarantee equal opportunity for all people with disabilities, regardless of the nature or severity of the disability, and to empower them to achieve economic self-sufficiency, independent living, and inclusion and integration into all aspects of society

Dr. Solomon H. Snyder, an NIMH grantee, was awarded the Albert Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research for his pioneering work in identifying the opiate receptors, and the demonstration of their relation to the enkephalins, natural chemicals released by the brain which have the effect of relieving pain and influencing emotional behavior.

Disability Activists Protest Inaccessibility of Denver Buses

In Denver, Colorado, nineteen members of the Atlantis Community block buses with their wheelchairs—chanting "We will ride!"—to demonstrate against the inaccessibility of public transportation. On July 5-6, 1978, Wade Blank, founder of ADAPT (1983) and nineteen disabled activists held a public transit bus “hostage” on the corner of Broadway and Colfax in Denver, Colorado. Disability rights activism in Denver stage a sit-in demonstration, blocking several Denver Regional Transit Authority buses, to protest the complete inaccessibility of that city's mass transit system. The demonstration is organized by the Atlantis Community and is the first action in what will be a year-long civil disobedience campaign to force the Denver Transit Authority to purchase wheelchair lift-equipped buses. ADAPT (originally American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit and later in 1990, American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today) eventually mushroomed into the nation's first grassroots, disability rights, activist organization. They used sledge hammers to create the first curb cuts for wheelchairs in the country. American Disabled for Public Transit (ADAPT) was founded. It held a transit bus hostage in Denver, Colorado. A yearlong civil disobedience campaign followed to force the Denver Transit Authority to purchase wheelchair lift-equipped buses because the transit system was inaccessible to people who used wheelchairs.

ATLANTIS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

When the people of Atlantis left the nursing home in 1975, we entered a society that was inaccessible and unprepared to accommodate our special needs. Using the tactics of direct action community organizing, we set out to create the access we had to have.

Disabled people in the community need to ride the public bus to school, work, and shopping. This outrageous concept got a big laugh at RTD (Regional Transit District) but the Atlantis staff and clients began an organizing effort to win access to the buses. Disabled activists trained extensively in assertiveness, strategy, issue identification, and other aspects of community organizing.

For several years we met with RTD testifying to the need for access, doing research and working “within the system”, to no avail. As our frustration grew, so did our determination and anger. We decided to carry our effort to its ultimate limit-civil disobedience. We lay down in the streets of Denver blocking the buses we couldn't ride. We blockaded RTD meetings, forcing them to listen and realize the importance of our issue.

These actions resulted in extensive media coverage; educating the public about our rights and creating pressure on RTD to address us. After an eight-year struggle, in 1983, RTD committed to 1000 lb. lifts on all its buses and routes, integrating public transit. More than 30,000 disabled residents in the Denver area had never before had access to affordable, self-determined transportation. RTD riders who use wheelchairs now number over 6000 per month. RTD officials are supporting lift-equipped buses as efficient and cost-effective, and the general public in Denver recognizes and honors our civil rights of access.

The successes of the disabled activists of Atlantis extend far beyond access to public transit. When petitions and meetings failed to produce badly-needed curb cuts, we swung sledgehammers from our wheelchairs to create our own cuts. These actions produced a solid city commitment to cut new curbs and a petition system to cut older ones.

Meetings, then picketing and protests, have resulted in 100% access to all polling places in 1990. McDonald's Restaurants used to refer mobility-impaired customers to the drive-up window until the people of Atlantis demanded rights of access to all their stores. Ten Atlantis staff and volunteers were arrested for trespassing when a Taco House owner told them to take their food into the parking lot to eat. They refused and were taken to jail. A Denver judge dismissed all charges and Taco House will be charged with illegal discrimination! Numerous other public accommodations - stores and restaurants - have been pressed to eliminate barriers and welcome ALL the public.

Airlines refused to fly wheelchairs equipped with batteries, saying they were safety hazards, until Atlantis activists blockaded their ticket counters. Officials quickly decided that a well-sealed battery was not such a hazard after all, and the FAA has recently guaranteed the right of disabled passengers to fly without discrimination.

These are only a few of the issues brought to the Atlantis activists by the Denver disabled community. We have won hundreds of victories, eliminated thousands of barriers, and successfully pressed the officials and public of Denver to consider our rights and needs for access in ANY project that is undertaken. Many barriers remain to be addressed, and the work continues. The President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped named Denver the MOST ACCESSIBLE CITY IN THE NATION! This is the work of Atlantis!!

From: http://www.atlantiscommunity.net/

In 1978 the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act (CAPTA) (Public Law 95-266) promoted the passage of state laws providing comprehensive adoption assistance. The act provided grants to encourage the adoption of children with special needs and broadened the definition of abuse, adding a specific reference to sexual abuse and exploitation to the basic definition. That year the Indian Child Welfare Act (Public Law 95-608) was also enacted to reestablish tribal jurisdiction over the adoption of Native American children. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act (PL 95-266, 92 Stat. 205) is passed on April 24, extending the 1974 act and initiating new programs to encourage and improve adoptions.

The Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act (PL 95-523, 68 Stat. 590) is passed on October 27 by Congress through the tenacity of Congressman Augustus Hawkins (D-CA). The act reaffirms the right of all Americans to employment and asserts the federal government responsibility to promote full employment, production and real income, balanced growth, and better economic policy planning and coordination.

Social Work in Education, a journal for school social workers, is published by NASW

The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed by the U.S. Congress and gives tribal governments a strong voice concerning child custody proceedings which involve Indian children, by allocating tribes exclusive jurisdiction over the case when the child resides on, or is domiciled on, the reservation, or when the child is a ward of the tribe; and concurrent, but presumptive, jurisdiction over non-reservation Native Americans’ foster care placement proceedings.

TRY House opens in Washington state, based on the belief that young adults with mental illnesses should transition from the hospital into independent housing in the community

Washington Advocates for the Mentally Ill (WAMI) founded to provide education, support and advocacy for consumers, family members and other advocates. Italian law 180 prevented the admission of any new cases to long-stay hospitals.

Fiesta Educativa, Inc., is founded in Los Angeles by Hispanic parents of children with disabilities. Fiesta Educativa (Education Fest) is formed to address the lack of Spanish-speaking support services to families with disabled children in southern California.

Adaptive Environments Center is founded in Boston.

Rehabilitation, Comprehensive Services, and Developmental Disabilities Amendments of 1978 - Established National Institute of Handicapped Research; established National Council on the Handicapped; authorized grant program for independent living services; replaced categorical definition of developmental disability with functional definition; established minimum funding level for protection and advocacy services. Title VII of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1978 establishes the first federal funding for independent living and creates the National Council of the Handicapped under the U.S. Department of Education.

Civil Rights Commission Act of 1978 - Expanded jurisdiction of Civil Rights Commission to disability discrimination.

The National Center for Law and the Deaf is founded in Washington, D.C.

Handicapping America, by Frank Bowe, is published. The book is a comprehensive review of the policies and attitudes denying equal citizenship to people with disabilities, and it becomes a standard text of the general disability rights movement. Frank Bowe, published Handicapping America, about the policies and prejudices that further disable Americans with disabilities. The book quickly becomes the handbook of the disability rights movement. In it he says "America handicaps disabled people. And because that is true, we are handicapping America itself".

The Rape Shield Act becomes law for sexual assault victims in Illinois.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act bans employment discrimination against pregnant women. Under the Act, a woman cannot be fired or denied a job or a promotion because she is or may become pregnant, nor can she be forced to take a pregnancy leave if she is willing and able to work. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act becomes law, defining pregnancy as a "disability," Congress requires employers to extend those benefits offered to "other" disabled employees.

100,000 march in support of the Equal Rights Amendment in Washington, D.C.

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence forms bringing shelters and other groups together to publicize the issue.

In January, the United States Commission on Civil Rights sponsors a Consultation on Battered Women: Issues of Public Policy attended by activists, academics and representatives from legal, medical and social service agencies. Since the object is to identify issues and possible solutions, testimony is presented encouraging debate between presenters and formal respondents. Del Martin chairs the meeting and sets the focus on the roots of domestic violence in marriage, male domination, and women's subordinate status. The hearings legitimize the needs of battered women as a matter of national concern.

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, born from the USCCR consultation, is the result of extensive organizing efforts by feminists nationwide. The initial goals of the NCADV emphasize gaining financial aid for shelters and grassroots services, sharing information and supporting research beneficial to the movement. 

The Florida State Legislature places a $5 tax on marriage license to raise money for shelters.

The National Communication Network and the Feminist Alliance Against Rape merge and publish their first issue in August. By November, the new publication is calling itself Aegis, the Magazine on Ending Violence Against Women. It is the only journal dedicated to preserving and building a feminist analyst and grassroots movement.

On May 23, the House of Representatives by a vote of 205 to 201 fails to pass the domestic Violence Act of 1978. The Senate passes H.R. 12299, the Domestic Violence Act of 1978. 

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) includes specific language into its funding guidelines reaffirming shelters as an eligible funding category. In 1982, HUD is reorganized and The Office of Women's Policy and Program staff is eliminated. Community Development Block Grants are moved to local control and thereby subject to less federal regulation. 

The California Attorney General holds conferences on domestic violence.

In June, the Massachusetts Coalition of Battered Women's Service Groups is formed. By 1981, it has 18 members.

Violence in the home has become a priority for the LEAA when it pioneers a federal response to battered women and recognizes the existence of family violence and women's right to safety. Eleven grants are made to agencies providing services. In 1979, 16 projects are funded under its Family Violence program, an outgrowth of the Victim/Witness Assistance Program. Nine more projects are added in 1980. The program closed in 1981.

Capt. Nancy Raiha and co-workers in Social Work Services start the first domestic violence program and shelter at Ft. Campbell, KY. Military police write a protocol for domestic violence calls and the batterer's Commander can send him to counseling and/or the barracks.

In Berkeley, CA, Laura X establishes the National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape to lobby for state laws against marital rape.

A study in England finds that for the prior 1-year period, 11,400 women and 20,850 children had been sheltered. Activists pressure the government for this research.

On April 14-15, 128 women from 13 western nations gather at the International Conference on Battered Women in Amsterdam. By 1979 there are more than 250 battered women's shelters in the United States.

Rape crisis centers in 20 states join to form the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

"Battered spouse" and "battered woman" are new categories added to the International Classification of Diseases: Clinical Modification Scheme.

Thomas v. City of Los Angeles (settled in 1985) results in a city-wide protocol for law enforcement, including taking restraining order violations seriously and providing money for shelters.

In California AB 546 (Mori) makes spousal rape a crime, punishable as a felony or misdemeanor.

LEAA grants money to a Santa Barbara, CA program which operates shelters, collects data on the extent of violence, prosecutes cases, refers appropriate cases to diversion and treatment programs and trains law enforcement personnel. The project has an umbrella organization to programs and trains law enforcement personnel. The project has an umbrella organization to introduce, implement and monitor itself. Evaluators later conclude "virtually all the gains in reporting made during the first year of the Family Violence Project were lost during the second year." The experiences of Santa Barbara illustrate the importance of support from key individuals in the criminal justice system and the extreme difficulties associated with introducing innovation in the face of persistent, often virulent, opposition.

A survey in Minnesota finds that 70% of the women requesting shelter had been turned away due to lack of space.

The Domestic Violence Act (1976) allows for temporary exclusion from the house of the violent partner using a civil injunction with the possibility of attaching powers of arrest for subsequent violation.

Lenore Walker authors The Battered Woman.

As late as 1979, less than 15 state legislatures have enacted laws providing funds for shelters. Less than half of all shelters receive any state or federal funding. 

The Navy's Family Advocacy Program is the only service-wide program that treats wife battering and child abuse.

The National Center for Women and Family Law is organized to offer legal resources to low-income women. The National Battered Women's Law Project provides information on domestic violence.

The Older Women's League is founded to address age-and-gender discrimination issues including health insurance and retirement benefits.

For the first time in history, more women than men enter college.

OFCC establishes quotas for federally funded construction projects: 6.9% women on work sites and 20-25% women in apprentiship programs. Still, by 1983 women were only 2% of the construction labor force.

Publicity about the Oregon v. Rideout decision leads many other states to also allow prosecution for marital and cohabitation rape. John Rideout of Oregon is the first man indicted for marital rape, but is acquitted. Later he was jailed for harassing his wife after they broke up.

The first national feminist conference on pornography is held in San Francisco, with a large "Take Back the Night" march. There is a large "Take Back the Night" march to draw attention to a women's right to walk the streets at night without fear. Soon thousands of women across the country stage similar marches.

David Findelhor interviewed 2000 college students. He found 1/5 to 1/3 of the women had been sexually abused as children.

Sandra Butler's book, Conspiracy of Silence, brought credibility to the issues of incest. Louise Armstrong wrote about her incest experience in, Kiss Daddy Goodnight. Until these appeared, most high status mental health professionals were unwilling to question old assumptions that incest was rare and seductive children were the problem.

“On Margate Sands.” London, by Bernard Kops.

“Love Comes in Buckets.” London, by Katharina Havecamp.

“I’m Depressed---Are You Listening Lord?” by Peggy Buck.

“Mindrape: A Diary of Endogenous Depression,” by Frank Emery Sugar.

“Nine and a Half Weeks,” by Elizabeth McNeill.

“To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter.” London. by V. Bukovskii.

“How Not to Kill a Cockroach,” by Raya Eksola Tew.

“Another World,” by Irene Drory.

“Shrinking,” by Alan Lelchuk.

“Brando for Breakfast,” by A. K. Brando.

1979

Prevalence of tardive dyskinesia in drug-treated patients is reported to range from 24% to 56%. Tardive dyskinesia found to be associated with cognitive impairment.

Loren Mosher, chief of schizophrenia studies at the NIMH, reports superior one-year and two-year outcomes for Soteria patients treated without neuroleptics.

Department of Education Organization Act of 1979 - Established Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in new cabinet-level Department of Education.

Part B funds created ten new centers for independent living across the U.S. Vermont Center for Independent Living, the first statewide independent living center in the U.S., was founded by representatives of Vermont disability groups. Vermont Center for Independent Living, the first statewide independent living center in the U.S. was founded by representatives of Vermont disability groups.

In 1977 and 1979, Congress considered what were then S. 1393 and H.R. 10, eventually enacted into law as the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. CRIPA authorized the United States Attorney General to initiate lawsuits on behalf of people in institutions. 42 U.S.C. §1997 et seq. The United States Justice Department provided the Congress with examples of life-threatening situations in institutions, including "physical abuse of residents and gross neglect of basic medical needs – conditions under which no person in the United States should be forced to exist." The National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors opposed the law as "superfluous" and serving "no purpose" other than clogging the courts. The National Association of Attorneys General also opposed the law. Even then, more than 25 years ago, there were many laws on the books protecting the rights of people with disabilities; the names of many of those laws are still familiar today: Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, the Education of All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, for example. In the 1990s, the Americans with Disabilities Act joined the list.

The U.S. Olympic Committee organizes its Handicapped in Sports Committee.

UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (article 3). The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, usually abbreviated as CEDAW, does not include any specific article on disability rights, but aims to protect the rights of all women, whether disabled or not. Disabled women face double discrimination based on their gender and secondly, on their disability. In General Recommendation 18 the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, the monitoring body of the CEDAW convention, stresses that disabled women suffer from double discrimination and are a particularly vulnerable group. It recommends that governments provide information on disabled women in their period reports and on special measures that governments have taken to ensure that women with disabilities "have equal access to education and employment, health services and social security, and to ensure that they can participate in all areas of social and cultural life."

UN Declaration on the Rights of Deaf-Blind Persons. Article 1 of the Declaration states that "…every deaf-blind person is entitled to enjoy the universal rights that are guaranteed to all people by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the rights provided for all disabled persons by the Declaration of the Rights of Disabled Persons."

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Southeastern Community College v. Davis, rules that, under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, programs receiving federal funds must make “reasonable modifications” to enable the participation of otherwise qualified disabled individuals. This decision is the Court's first ruling on Section 504, and it establishes reasonable modification as an important principle in disability rights law.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Addington v. Texas raised the burden of proof required to commit persons for psychiatric treatment from the usual civil burden of proof of "preponderance of the evidence" to the higher standard of "clear and convincing" evidence. Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418 (1979) held that a state must prove by clear and convincing evidence that a person was in need of treatment. “ * * * [I]t is indisputable that involuntary commitment to a mental hospital after a finding of probable dangerousness to self or others can engender adverse social consequences to the individual. Whether we label this phenomen[on] ‘stigma’ or choose to call it something else is less important than that we recognize that it can occur and that it can have a very significant impact on the individual.” Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418, 425-26 (1979).

In Rogers v. Okin, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that a competent patient committed to a psychiatric hospital has the right to refuse treatment in non-emergency situations

Marilyn Hamilton, Jim Okamoto, and Don Helman produce their “Quickie” lightweight, folding wheelchair revolutionizing manual wheelchair design.

The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) is founded in Berkeley, California, becoming the nation's preeminent disability rights legal advocacy center and participating in much of the landmark litigation and lobbying of the 1980s and 1990s.

Self Help for Hard of Hearing People, Inc., is founded in Bethesda, Maryland, by Howard “Rocky” Stone.

The Signs of Language by Klima and Bellugi. First Linguistic research on ASL.

The National Committee for Mental Hygiene (National Association of Mental Health) changes their name to the National Mental Health Association.

The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) is founded in Madison, Wisconsin, by parents of people labeled with “mental illness.” In the summer of 1979, 54 people representing mental illness self-help support groups (these were the first support groups for family members of persons with mental illness in the United States) from around the country met in Madison, Wisconsin. During that first meeting, which was sponsored by the Agricultural Extension Service of the University of Wisconsin, a hat was passed and twenty thousand dollars was collected to fund the “”front end of a dream.” As a result, the Alliance for the Mentally Ill (AMI) was formed.

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NAMI Origins

Someone at the Congregational Church in Madison, Wisconsin put Harriet Shetler (August 1, 1917 -- March 30, 2010) and Beverly Young in touch with each other because Harriet's son Charles and Beverly's son both had a diagnosis of schizophrenia. In 1977, the two women met for lunch at the Cuba Club in Madison to discuss the challenges they shared in raising a child with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. At a second lunch, tired of feeling blamed for their children’s "illness" (or, according to another version, tired of their sons being blamed for their "mental illness") the two decided to assemble people with similar concerns. Another co-founder of AMI in Dane County, Wisconsin is Nancy Young. In April 1977, about 13 people met at a nightclub in Madison. Harriet Shetler suggested the name, Alliance for the Mentally Ill because the acronym "AMI" means friend in French. Along with 12 founding members, Shetler and Young founded AMI Dane County. Within six months, 75 people had joined. Members of the fledgling organization came across a newsletter from a similar organization in California. Bev Young, Harriet Shetler, Nancy Young and professor Roger Williams hit upon the bold idea of holding a national conference. The conference met onin Madison, Wisconsin. They expected maybe 35 people but it's claimed that over 284 (266 listed below) people from 29 states and Canada, representing over 50 family member groups showed up. Included among those in attendance were Herbert Pardes, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Mental Health and several others from NIMH and Judi Chamberlin, C/S/X activist, advocate and a small group of former patients. By the end of the conference, a national group had been formed, named and financed. In January 1980, a small national office with one volunteer worker, Shirley Starr, was opened in Washington, D.C. By June of 1980, NAMI had received financial support through a large grant from a major foundation. In 1983, E. Fuller Torrey, a psychiatrist, wrote a book, "Surviving Schizophrenia" that was popular and claimed to eliminate blame of family members by emphasizing the connection of "mental illness" to brain dysfunction. This work helped to secure NAMI's future by his donating all of the proceedings from the book to NAMI. By 1989 NAMI claims to have over 65,000 members and by 1993, over 140,000 with over 1,000 local affiliates and an annual budget of over $2 million. Another "founding member" was Agnes Hatfield, an associate professor in the Institute for Child Study at the University of Maryland and a "founding member" of Threshold, a family advocacy group formed in Maryland in 1978. Hatfield was on the NAMI Board and one if it's first Presidents. Hatfield summarized the four key ideas behind the founding of NAMI as: 1) mental illness is a disease of the brain; 2) the concept of self-help is the most appropriate approach to organizational action; 3) consumer responsibility is basic to better service; and, 4) change will be achieved only through vigorous advocacy. In 2009, NAMI's advocacy came into question. Congressional investigators found that from 2006 to 2008 drug makers had contributed nearly $23 million to the alliance, about three-quarters of its donations, according to The New York Times. The disclosure followed criticism of the group for tailoring its legislative agenda to help the pharmaceutical industry, The Times reported.

Founding Members (266) of NAMI in Madison, Wisconsin in 1979

http://histpubmh.semel.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/archival/377b6d98_NAMI_s_Founding_Members.pdf

Nancy Abraham

Alfred & Jane Amorosi

Doris Anderson

Mary Anderson

Marcella Anthone

Barbara Armstrong

Elliott & Mildred Badanes

La Verne Baker

Dorothy Baldwin

Hubert, Evelyn, & Harriet Bambenek

Nancy Bard

Ruth Beck

Irving & Irene Berkowitz

Judy Blakeslee

Irving Blumberg

Patricia Bocci

Fran Boyce

Ed & Vivian Brazill

William & Dorothy Breisch

Marjorie Bridgman

Joan Brogdan

Laurie Brown

Robert & Frances Brunkan

Stanley & Doris Bryan

Ardell Burress

Ann Campbell

Nancy Carter

Bess Center

Josh & Flo Chover

Judi Chamberlin

Agatha Church

Bernice Clapp

Madeline Cobb

Jeff Coberly

Ellen Colom

Phebe Cooke

Virginia Cox

Harley & Georgia Crow

Barbara Cummings

Bunny De Noble

Al & Dorothy DeRungs

Ron Diamond

Jerry Dincin

Irene Donovan

Woodrow & Joyce Dooley

Miriam Drake

Helen Duffy

Russ Ellenbass

Margaret Enriquez

Sue Estroff

Jim & Pat Evey

Nancy Fernandez

Barbara Finesmith

Lila Fox

Nicholas & Ann Franchot

Rollo Fults

Nina Gagnon

William & Margaret Gamble

Clarice Gammon

Tom & Joy Girvan

Allen & Lorelei Glaser

Art & Jeannette Goloff

Noella Goodell

Mortimer Goodman

Arlyn Gordon

Susan Grossman

Sheila Groth

Jean Gump

Beverly Gustafson

Helen Harris

Agnes Hatfield

Eugene Hebert, Jr.

George Hecker

Charlotte Helstad

Dorothy Hendrickson

Dorothy Hengesbach

Holly Hewett

Ronnie Hochberg

Tony & Fran Hoffman

Marie Hibler

Doris Holman

Dorothy Holmes

Esther Howard

James & Carol Howe

Sue Jacobs

Mr. & Mrs. J.L. Jeffers

Joyce Jones

Leroy Juve

Jeanne Kellogg

Samuel Keith

Wilma Kirlin

Rosette Kleiman

Marjorie Kocher

Patti Koerber

Rose Krausa

Donald & Catherine Kreul

Ellen Krueger

Oscar & Ginny Krumdieck

Rose Kurland

Cornelia Ladd

Richard Lang

Erselene Lasecki

Edgar & Catherine LeBlanc

Hazel Lentz

Barbara Ledbury

Irving & Verona Levine

Hortense Levkovitz

Rhonda Levye

Richard Lewine

Robert Lieberman

Fred & Helen Lockwood

Jean Lough

Marie Lynch

Roger Lynn

Elizabeth MacDowell

Beverly Magida

Josephine Maillard

Charles Manaster

Michael Markotic

Millicent Markson

Arthur Marsilio

Harold Martin, Jr.

Mary Maslin

Nancy McCarroll

Nancy McCullough

Eileen McGuire

Paul & Annabelle McGuire

Donald & Marilyn Meisel

Julia Miles

Elaine Miller

Ron Morgan

Mary Nason

Bruce Newman

Harriet Newton

John & Stella O'Connor

Lois O'Dea

Jane Ohmans

Eve Oliphant

Betty Oliver

Helen Ondrusek

Vi Orr

Liz Overton

Eleanor Owen

Herbert Pardes

Lynn Parker

Ruth Paynter

Nancy Paschali

JoAnn Pedrick

Edith Peilen

Margaret Peterson

Fred Platte

Maxine Polnasek

Jeanne Porter

Kelli Quinn

Evelyn Rager

Lorraine Reese

Harriet Richards

Mickey Rogers

Thomas Rogers

Ethel Rosenfeld

Jean Ross

Susan Rourke

Dottie Rutland

Valeria Rykowski

Linda Sanders

E. Woody & Sarah Sanford

Hilary Sandall

Dotty Sayer

Leslie Scallet

Steve Schnabl

Max Schneier

John Sharp

Jack & Ann Sheehan

Sylvia Sherman

Harriet Shetler

Harry & Theda Shifs

June Siegerist

Marcis Silverman

Steve Simon

Shirley Sims

Jo Singer

Martee Singleterry

Walter Sloan

Barbara Smith

Frances Smith

Jim & Joan Smith

Sandy Smolinsky

Don & Lois Solawetz

Carmel Spadola

James Sparks

Henry & Ansie Lee Sperry

Bennett Stark

Shirley Starr

John Stegmaier

Leonard Stein

Connie Stevens

Patricia Stevson

Carl Stukey

Patricia Taecker

Lisa Tallar

Sidney & Marge Tepperman

Irene Tesitor

Mary Ann Test

Sally Thomas

William Thomas

Jim Tracy

Judith Turner

Sara Turner

Daniel & Cecile Tushner

Isaiah Uliss

LaVerne Ussery

Philip Vinick

Gloria Waity

Mona Wasow

Robert Weingarten

Marilyn Weiss

Frances White

Mary Jean Willis

Roger Williams

Eloise Winheim

John Winkel

Beverly Wolfgram

Norma Wright

James & Joan Yanny

Mary Yanny

G. Will York

Beverly Young

Sharon Zahradka

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From stigma to identity politics: Political activism among the physically disabled and former mental patients. Social Science & Medicine, 13, 65-773. Anspach, R.

Owanah Anderson founds and directs the Ohoyo Resource Center to advance the status of American Indian/Alaska Native females.

The National Association for Black Women Entrepreneurs is formed by Marilyn French-Hubbard to offer advice, training, and networking for black businesswomen.

Rape crisis centers in 20 states join forces in the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

Judy Chicago's art exhibit honoring notable women in history, "The Dinner Party," opens in San Francisco with record-setting attendance and vitriolic reviews.

Diana Russell interviewed 900 random San Francisco women and found 38% had been sexually abused as children.

Peter Breggin's Electroshock: Its Brain-Disabling Effects New York: Springer, 1979.

The American Association of State Social Work Boards is initiated by NASW; the association consists of state boards and authorities empowered to regulate the practice of social work within their own jurisdictions.

“Birdy,” by William Wharton.

“I’m Dancing As Fast As I Can,” by Barbara Gordon.

“The Anti-Psychiatry Bibliography and Resource Guide,” by Frank K. Portland.

“Coping with Schizophrenia.” Mind Out, by Anne.

“Strangers No More—Diary of a Schizo,” by Joy Larkin.

“Life-Time,” by Jane Rittmaye.

“History’s Carnival,” by Leonid Plyushch.

“Schizophrenia—the Hell Within.” Community Care, by Martha Robinson.

Robert Spitzer, psychiatrist fell in love with Janet Williams, an attractive, outspoken social worker he had hired to help edit the DSM manual, several years later Spitzer and Williams were married. The DSM was scheduled to be published in 1980, which meant Spitzer had to have a draft prepared in the spring. Like any major American Psychiatric Association initiative, the DSM had to be ratified by the assembly of the A.P.A., a decision-making body composed of elected officials from all over the country. Spitzer’s anti-Freudian ideas had caused resentment, and, the opposition gathered strength and narrowed its focus to a single, crucial word, “neurosis” which Spitzer wanted stricken from the DSM. The term “neurosis” has a very long history, but over the course of the twentieth century it became inseparable from Freudian psychoanalytic philosophy. A neurosis, Freud believed, emerged from unconscious conflict. Spitzer reasoned that, because a wide range of mental-health professionals were going to use the manual in everyday practice, the DSM could not be aligned with any single theory. They decided to restrict themselves simply to describing behaviors that were visible to the human eye: they couldn’t tell you why someone developed obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, but they were happy to observe that such a person is often “over-conscientious, scrupulous, and inflexible about matters of morality.” Roger Peele, of St. Elizabeth’s, was sympathetic to Spitzer’s work, but, as a representative of the Washington branch of the A.P.A., he felt a need to challenge Spitzer on behalf of his constituency. “The most common diagnosis in private practices in Washington D.C. in the nineteen-seventies was something called depressive neurosis,” Peele says. “That was what they were doing day after day.” Psychoanalysts bitterly denounced the early drafts. Without the support of the psychoanalysts, it was possible that the DSM-III wouldn’t pass the assembly and the entire project would come to nothing. After months of acrimonious debate, Spitzer and the psychoanalysts were able to reach a compromise: the word “neurosis” was retained in discreet parentheses in three or four key categories. With this issue resolved, Spitzer presented the final draft to the A.P.A. assembly in May of 1979. Roughly three hundred and fifty psychiatrists gathered in a large auditorium in Chicago. Spitzer got up onstage and reviewed the DSM process and what they were trying to accomplish, and there was a motion to pass it. Once the first million copies were sold the book became accepted as science.

1980's

The Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 authorizes expansion of community mental health centers. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 moves this support into State block grants. The State Mental Health Planning Act of 1986 requires stakeholder involvement in the State block grant program. Congress passed the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act that persuaded states to raise the minimum age from 18 to 21 for the purchase and possession of alcohol. In 1986, Nancy Reagan announced the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign and the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention (OSAP) was created. President George H. Bush created the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to determine policies and priorities for the Nation’s drug control programs. Parents began organizing community coalitions, focusing on alcohol and drug issues at the local, State, and national levels. The American Medical Society on Alcoholism and Other Drug Dependence is formed. Its creation is the result of efforts to combine several professional medical organizations under the auspices of a single entity for physicians interested in chemical dependency.

The Home and Community Based Waiver is included in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. Family support and other cash subsidies emerge. Early intervention programs are mandated. The U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of group homes in neighborhoods, and institutional closures and downsizing are on the increase. By 1986, there are fewer than 100,000 people with developmental disabilities in public institutions. Major strides are made in employment programs. Apartment living becomes more common. The goals of inclusion, choice, and self-advocacy are pursued with vigor.

An estimated one-third of all homeless people are considered seriously mentally ill, the vast majority of them suffering from schizophrenia.

Native Americans begin to introduce culturally specific elements in to mainstream 12-step groups.

Courts ignored women's efforts to protect their children from abusive family members.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) appeared in the psychiatric "Diagnostic and Statistic Manual".

PTSD diagnosis and treatment pioneered as the Veteran’s Administration establishes a national center

The mental health consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement gains momentum, calling for an end to seclusion and restraint and other oppressive practices.

VOCA (Victims of Crime Act) is passed by Congress

International Society for the Study of Traumatic Stress Disorders is founded.

Serious studies of child sexual abuse first appeared. Survivors began telling their stories.

Judith Herman's book labeled incest a crime, challenging social belief that incest was harmless.

Child pornography became a criminal offense.

The Family Protection Act was introduced to Congress by Jesse Helms. It proposed repealing all federal laws protecting battered wives, banning legal aid for women seeking divorce, and giving tax breaks to men whose wives stayed home and had babies.

1980

The National Disabled Women's Educational Equity Project, Berkeley, California, was established by Corbett O'Toole. Based at DREDF (the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund), the Project administered the first national survey on disability and gender, wrote No More Stares, and conducted regional training programs for younger disabled women in Pocatello, Eugene and Minneapolis, and conducted the first national Conference on Disabled Women's Educational Equity held in Bethesda, Maryland.

Citizens May Not be Institutionalized Against Their Will. The Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA) gives the Department of Justice power to sue state or local institutions that violate the rights of people held against their will, including those residing for care or treatment of mental illness. Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980 - Empowered Department of Justice to bring suit against states for allegedly violating rights of institutionalized persons with disabilities. Congress passes the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA), authorizing the U.S. Justice Department to file civil suits on behalf of residents of institutions whose rights are being violated.

Rise of managed care–short-stay hospitalization with community treatment became the standard of care for mental illness.

Carol Anderson and Gerald Hogarty publish treatment model of family psychoeducation in schizophrenia - reduces relapse by over 50%.

NIMH researchers find an increase in “blunted effect” and “emotional withdrawal” in drug treated patients who don’t relapse, and that neuroleptics do not improve “social and role performance” in non-relapsers.

Social Security Amendments, Section 1619 was passed. Designed to address work disincentives within the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs, other provisions mandated a review of Social Security recipients. This led to the termination of benefits of hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities.

The Mental Patients Alliance of Central New York (the Mental Patients Liberation Alliance), led by George Ebert, initiates the annual remembrance of Bastille Day (July 14) as a celebration of the human spirit and vigil and demonstration to stop psychiatric oppression.

The Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) study, a unique and massive research effort in which more than 20,000 persons were interviewed, began. The field interviews and first wave analysis were completed in 1985. Data from the ECA provide an accurate picture of rates of mental and addictive disorders and services usage.

The Mental Health Systems Act, (P.L. 96-398), restructured the federal community mental health center program by strengthening the linkages between the federal, state, and local governments. The Act was the final result of a series of recommendations made by President Jimmy Carter’s Mental Health Commission. The Act fostered the continued growth of America’s Community Mental Health Centers which allow individuals with mental illnesses to remain in their home communities with minimal hospitalization. Per the Mental Health Systems Act, a litany of grant programs were mandated for the CMHCs to assist in expanding services to meet an array of priority populations. They included the following:

• An expansion grant for a wide range of services for the severely mentally ill (SMI) population;

• Grants for the severely emotionally disturbed (SED) population;

• Non-revenue producing services were also funded via a grant aimed at expanding education and consulting needs;

• Additionally, the commission sought to include consumer input and involvement in service and treatment. The Mental Health Systems Act, which was based on the Report to the President from the President's Commission on Mental Health and was designed to provide improved services for the mentally ill, was passed. The Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 authorizes expansion of community mental health centers.

The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual has grown to 394 pages listing 224 mental disorders in the DSM-III from the 106 mental disorders in its initial, 1952 edition and 182 in the 1968, DSM-II. In 1974, the decision to create a new revision of the DSM was made, and Robert Spitzer, psychiatrist was selected as chairman of the task force. The initial impetus was to make the DSM nomenclature consistent with the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), published by the World Health Organization. The revision took on a far wider mandate under the influence and control of Spitzer and his chosen committee members. One goal was to improve the uniformity and validity of psychiatric diagnosis in the wake of a number of critiques, including the famous Rosenhan experiment. There was also a need to standardize diagnostic practices within the US and with other countries after research showed that psychiatric diagnoses differed markedly between Europe and the USA.^. The establishment of these criteria was an attempt to facilitate the pharmaceutical regulatory process. The criteria adopted for many of the mental disorders were taken from the Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) and Feighner Criteria, which had just been developed by a group of research-orientated psychiatrists based primarily at Washington University in St. Louis and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Other criteria, and potential new categories of disorder, were established by consensus during meetings of the committee, as chaired by Spitzer. A key aim was to base categorization on colloquial English descriptive language (which would be easier to use by federal administrative offices), rather than assumptions of etiology, although its categorical approach assumed each particular pattern of symptoms in a category reflected a particular underlying pathology (an approach described as "neo-Kraepelinian”). The psychodynamic or physiologic view was abandoned, in favor of a regulatory or legislative model. A new "multiaxial" system attempted to yield a picture more amenable to a statistical population census, rather than just a simple diagnosis. Spitzer argued, “mental disorders are a subset of medical disorders” but the task force decided on the DSM statement: “Each of the mental disorders is conceptualized as a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome.” The personality disorders were placed on axis II along with mental retardation. The first draft of the DSM-III was prepared within a year. Many new categories of disorder were introduced, while some were deleted or changed. A number of the unpublished documents discussing and justifying the changes have recently come to light. Field trials sponsored by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) were conducted between 1977 and 1979 to test the reliability of the new diagnoses. A controversy emerged regarding deletion of the concept of neurosis, a mainstream of psychoanalytic theory and therapy but seen as vague and unscientific by the DSM task force. Faced with enormous political opposition, so the DSM-III was in serious danger of not being approved by the APA Board of Trustees unless “neurosis” was included in some capacity, a political compromise reinserted the term in parentheses after the word “disorder” in some cases. Additionally, the diagnosis of ego-dystonic homosexuality replaced the DSM-II category of "sexual orientation disturbance." Finally published in 1980, the DSM-III was 494 pages and listed 265 diagnostic categories. It rapidly came into widespread international use by multiple stakeholders and has been termed a revolution or transformation in psychiatry. However Robert Spitzer later criticized his own work on it in an interview with Adam Curtis saying it led to the medicalization of 20-30 percent of the population who may not have had any serious mental problems.

DSM-III creates a new class, the “psychosexual disorders,” including psychosexual dysfunction, paraphilia (fetishism), gender identity disorder (transsexualism), and “ego-dystonic homosexuality.” In place of homosexuality was a new diagnosis, “Gender Identity Disorder in Childhood,” also known as “Sissy Boy Syndrome.” Sexual orientation disturbance is renamed “homosexual conflict disorder.”

Diagnostic Criteria for Attention Deficit Disorder. The term Attention Deficit Disorder is included for the first time in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (PL 96-272) restructures child welfare services, mandating reasonable efforts to prevent out-of-home placement. In response to the public outcry about the placement of an increasing number of children in foster care, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (Public Law 96-272), with the goal of promoting family reunification and which offered significant funding to states that supported subsidy programs for special needs adoptions and devoted resources to family preservation, reunification, and the prevention of abuse, neglect, and child removal. Congressional Social Security Amendments in 1980 created a separate Foster Care program under Title IV-E. Title IV-A became Title XX (Social Services Block Grant) in 1981, giving states more options regarding the types of social services to fund. Today child abuse prevention and treatment services have remained an eligible category of service. Under Title IV-B Child Welfare Services (Subpart 1) and Promoting Safe and Stable Families (Subpart 2) programs, families in crisis receive preventive intervention so that children will not have to be removed from their homes. If this cannot be achieved, children are placed in foster care temporarily until they can be reunited with their families. If reunification is not possible, parents' rights are terminated and the children are made available for adoption. States use the Foster Care (Title IV-E) program funds for the care of foster children and for the training of foster parents, program personnel, and private-agency staff. Title XX funds provide such services as child daycare, child protective services, information and referral, counseling, and employment.

The Federal Preventive Health and Health Services Block Grants are signed into law.

Illinois Department of Public Health receives allocation with designation for Rape Crisis and Rape Prevention.

The American National Standard Institute, Inc. (ANSI) published American Standard Specifications for Making Buildings Accessible to, and Usable by, the Physically Handicapped (the A117.1 Barrier Free Standard). This landmark document, produced by the University of Illinois, became the basis for subsequent architectural access codes Uniform Federal Accessibility Standard 1984 and the Amercians with Disabilities Act 1990.

Leah Sharp

National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA) is formed by Rae Unzicker and others. One of the earliest internal advocacy programs was founded in Minnesota, where Bill Johnson – a disgruntled and disheartened social worker at Fergus Falls State Hospital -- convinced the administration to allow him to open an "advocacy" office." In Pennsylvania, lawyer David Ferleger sued the state on behalf of all the residents of one state hospital – and won. Ohio had also established a "patients rights" service. Additionally, the Mental Health Law Project, now called the Bazelon Center, in Washington, D.C., was attempting to impact mental health services by taking on individual cases and class action suits which would impact the system. A group of these advocates, many of them lawyers, met and, in 1980, formed the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy.

"Phoenix Rising: The Voice of the Psychiatrized" was published by ex-inmates (of psychiatric hospitals) in Toronto from 1980 to 1990, known across Canada for its antipsychiatry stance.

In 1980, George Ebert and Myra Kovary co-founded the Mental Patients Alliance in Ithaca, NY - a support and advocacy group opposed to forced psychiatry. They initiated what has become a world-wide day of demonstrations against psychiatric oppression and a celebration of MadPride on Bastille Day.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. began selling decoders for closed captioning for television.

First sign language books by deaf authors - Padden, Humphries and O'Rourke's "ABC's of ASL"

Disabled Peoples’ International was founded in Singapore with participation of advocates from Canada and the United States. Disabled People International formed to promote the human rights of disabled people through full participation, equalization of opportunity and development. DPI assists organizations in over 120 nations with the day to day issues of helping disabled people.

The first issue of the Disability Rag & Resource (now Ragged Edge) is published in Louisville, Kentucky.

Disabled Peoples' International is founded in Singapore, with the participation of advocates from Canada and the United States.

The Womyn's Braille Press is founded in Minneapolis to make women's and feminist literature available in Braille and on tape.

Harilyn Rousso sets up the Networking Project on Disabled Women and Girls at the YWCA in New York City. She produces a book and film titled, "Loud, Proud and Female."

“The Politics of Ecstasy.” Ronin Publishing by Timothy Leary.

Jewell Jackson-McCabe founds the National Coalition of 100 Black Women.

New EEOC guidelines list sexual harassment as a form of prohibited sexual discrimination.

The "gender gap" first shows up at the election polls as women report different political priorities than men.

The Reverend Marjorie S. Matthew is elected as a bishop of the United Methodist Church, becoming the nation's first woman to sit on the governing body of a major religious denomination.

The California Alliance Against Domestic Violence is founded by Northern California Support Services, Southern California Coalition on Battered Women, Central California Coalition on Domestic Violence, California Women of Color Against Domestic Violence and Western States Shelter Network. This is considered "bottom up" organizing. The California Alliance sets its own goals as do each members coalition.

Abused Women's Aid in Austin, TX completes a multi-million dollar shelter. In order to obtain the cooperation of local funders and influential members of the community, the original group goes through a purge of activists whose personal politics or sexual preference do not "fit."

The Los Angels County Domestic Violence Council forms.

The April, May and June issues of Response has material on programs for men who batter.

The Air Force establishes an Office on Family Matters to deal with domestic Violence.

Although the Senate passes H.R. 2977 (Domestic Violence and Services Act) by a vote of 46 to 41, the House - Senate compromise version of the bill is filibustered by a Republican critic and then withdrawn by the sponsors before another Senate vote.

By 1980, the National Women's Aid Federation has established organizations in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

“Bog-Trotter,” by Dory Previn.

“The Shoe Leather Treatment: The Inspiring Story of Bill Thomas' Triumphant Nine-Year Fight for Survival in a State Hospital for the Criminally Insane as Told to S. T. Stebel,” by S. T. Stebel.

“Three essays on patients’ experiences of ECT.” British Journal of Psychiatry, 137, 8-16; 17-25; 26-37. by C. P. L. Freeman, et al.

“Dr. Caligari's Psychiatric Drugs,” published by the Network Against Psychiatric Assault in California.

“Institute of Fools,” by Viktor Nekipelov.

“Save Me! A Young Woman's Journey Through Schizophrenia to Health,” by Judy Lee.

“The Long Journey Home,” by Carol Ferland.

“Three Meetings with Madness,” Mind Out, by David Brandon.

1981

UN General Assembly proclaims 1981 International Year of Disabled Persons. A major outcome of the International Year of Disabled Persons was the formulation of the World Programme of Action Concerning Disabled Persons (WPA) (1982). The WPA is a global strategy to enhance disability prevention, rehabilitation and equalization of opportunities, which pertains to full participation of persons with disabilities in social life and national development. The WPA also emphasizes the need to approach disability from a human rights perspective.

The African Union (Formerly Organization of African Unity, OAU) passes the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (article 18). The Charter contains article 18 (4) which states that disabled persons have the right to special measures of protection and article 16 (1) provides that every individual shall have the right to enjoy the best attainable state of physical and mental health.

In 1981, after Ronald Reagan became president, his administration terminated the federal CMHC program altogether. The federal funds that had been going to CMHCs were then block granted to the states by the 1981 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. The CSP program and mental health block grant both remained as part of NIMH until 1992, at which time a decision was made to return NIMH, along with NIDA and NIAAA, to NIH, where they once had resided. Because NIH consists of purely research institutes, the parts of NIMH, NIDA and NIAAA that supported services did not belong there. Therefore, the NIMH CSP program and mental health block grant as well as the services parts of NIDA and NIAAA (including their block grant) were all put together into a new DHHS agency: the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). President Reagan signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981. This act repealed the Mental Health Systems Act and consolidated ADAMHA’s treatment and rehabilitation service programs into a single block grant that enabled each State to administer its allocated funds. Federal Mental Health Systems Act repealed and replaced by the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health (ADMS) Block Grant, and in 1982, ADMS block grant decreased by 30% resulting in dramatic service reductions. Despite passage of block grants, the federal share of funding decreased to 11% of the total while state and local funding share increased. With the repeal of the community mental health legislation and the establishment of block grants the Federal role in services to the mentally ill became one of providing technical assistance to increase the capacity of State and local providers of mental health services. P.L. 97-35 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act created Mental Health Block Grants. Since 1981, all federal expenditures to the states have been in the form of block grants. The object of the block grant was to reduce the role of the federal government and increase the autonomy of the states. Instead of directly funding treatment providers to deliver services, ADAMHA would give a block of money to each state. In the process, the total amount of money ADAMHA expended on services was reduced. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (PL 97-35, 95 Stat. 357), passed by Congress on August 13, initiates a federal policy reversal of 11 general welfare" responsibility for human services, reducing federal programs (including food stamps, child nutrition, comprehensive employment and training, mental health, and community development) by means of block grants under the guise of decentralization to states. The Social Service Block Grant Act (PL 97-35, 95 Stat. 357), passed by Congress on August 13, and part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, amends Title XX of the Social Security Act to consolidate social services programs and to decentralize responsibility to the states.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) are first identified in the United States and soon are defined as an epidemic. New requirements of social workers are initiated: They must further their knowledge of transmission and prevention of the virus, adapt practice techniques, and act on civil rights and service policies. The epidemic of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and HIV virus infections presents mental health professionals with a series of challenges including: treating patients' symptoms of anxiety and depression and differentiating organic symptoms from symptoms of HIV brain infection.

Dr. Louis Sokoloff, an NIMH researcher, was given the Albert Lasker Award in Clinical Medical Research for developing a new method of measuring brain function that contributes to basic understanding and diagnosis of brain diseases. His technique involving measuring the brain’s utilization of glucose led to the development of the PET scanner, which produces color images showing glucose utilization in the living, functional brain.

Dr. Roger W. Sperry, an NIMH grantee, shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Drs. David Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel. It was awarded for his discoveries concerning functional specialization of the cerebral hemispheres.

The National Mental Health Association (NMHA), the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) and the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association (NDMDA) joined to form the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) (now the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation), a foundation formed with the purpose of raising private sector funds to support research on mental illnesses. The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation focuses its research primarily on eight of the most common “mental illnesses” in the United States and other developed countries—schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, autism, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). NARSAD Grants are awarded to researchers in these fields according to three different categories: Basic Research, New Technologies, and Next Generation Therapies.

The International Year of Disabled Persons began. The International Year of Disabled Persons begins with speeches before the United Nations General Assembly. During the year, governments are encouraged to sponsor programs bringing people with disabilities into the mainstream of their societies.

The parents of “Baby Doe” in Bloomington, Indiana were advised by their doctors to decline surgery to unblock their newborn’s esophagus because the baby had Down's syndrome. Although disability rights activists tried to intervene, “Baby Doe” starved to death before legal action was taken. 

At the request of women's organizations, President Carter proclaims the first "National Women's History Week," incorporating March 8, International Women's Day.

The National Black Women's Health Project founded to establish community-based self-help groups.

In San Jose, California, a strike of city workers wins salaries based on comparable worth for nearly 1500 women, a national first.

On October 17, The National Coalition declares a national day of unity on behalf of battered women across the country.

The first annual Domestic Violence Awareness Week is celebrated.

There are nearly 500 battered women's shelters in the United States.

In March, the first national conference on "Domestic Violence in the Military Community" is held.

Nilda Rimonte, a Filipino victim of abuse, establishes Everywomens Shelter in Los Angels, CA. It is the first shelter in the U.S. for Asian Women.

A study by Stark e al. reveals that 73% of the battered women seeking emergency medical attention for injuries do so after leaving the batterer.

The Office on Domestic Violence is dismantled after the election of President Reagan. Their few remaining grants are monitored by the Natonal Center on Child Abuse and Neglect. By November, NCCAN could site no other federally funded programs for battered women.

Subcommittees of the Navajo Nation Council, in cooperation with the Navajo Nation Judicial Branch, hold hearings on the scope and impact of domestic violence. The Courts of Navajo Nations issue rules for criminal and civil proceedings to provide remedies.

Massachusetts Coalition of Battered Women's Service Groups publishes For Shelter And Beyond. It details the philosophy, tasks, skills and information needed to effectively help battered women in shelters.

The Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence begins holding regional retreats and meetings in addition to statewide meetings to build support, involve more women and strengthen commitment to Coalition activities.

As of September, it is estimated that 25 states allocate federal Title XX or Emergency Assistance funds for domestic violence services.

The Women of Color Task Force of the National Coalition receives an 8 month planning grant from the Ford Foundation to address issues unique to women of color.

Restraining orders are granted only for divorce, separation or custody proceedings in 12 states.

Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin author Pornography: Men Possessing Women. They draft an anti-pornography law that was passed by the Minneapolis City Council in 1983 but vetoed by the mayor.

In California, AB 1246 (Presley) takes effect, funding shelters from marriage licenses.

In New York City, 5 shelters for battered women turn away 85 out of 100 women due to capacity limits.

In England, there are approximately 135 refuges, 70 of which are not government funded. Ninety-seven of the refuges in England are affiliated with the National Women's Aid Federation. There are 37 refuges in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also associated with the Federation.

Kirchberg v. Feenstra overturns state laws designating a husband "head and master," having unilateral control of property owned jointly with his wife.

Sandra Day O'Connor is the first woman ever appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1993, she is joined by Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Sharon Parker and Veronica Collazo found the National Institute for Women of Color. First project: replacing phrase "minority women" with "women of color" in common usage.

The Telecommunications for the Disabled Act mandated telephone access for deaf and hard-of-hearing people at public places like hospitals and police stations. All coin-operated telephones had to be hearing aid-compatible by January 1985. The Act called for state subsidies for production and distribution of TDD’s.

Silent Network - A Deaf Cable Channel. Broadcasting in 1981 with only 2 million homes, and by 1990, many as 14 million homes has access to the program. The network went 24-hours a day, seven days a week.

In an editorial in the New York Times, Evan Kemp Jr. attacks the Jerry Lewis National Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon, writing that, "the very human desire for cures can never justify a television show that reinforces a stigma against disabled people."

Portland Coalition for the Psychiatrically Labeled (PCPL) organized by Sally Clay in Portland, Maine

The United Nations established this year as the International Year of Disabled Persons. At the conclusion of the year the UN called on member nations to establish in their own countries organizations for and about people with disabilities. Alan Reich, who headed the U.S. committee for the International Year, established the National Organization on Disability in response to this call. The International Year of Disabled Persons begins with speeches before the United Nations General Assembly. During the year, governments are encouraged to sponsor programs bringing people with disabilities into the mainstream of their societies.

In an editorial in the New York Timer, Evan Kemp Jr. attacks the Jerry Lewis National Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon, writing that, “the very human desire for cures can never justify a television show that reinforces a stigma against disabled people.”

Publication of Images of Ourselves: Women with Disabilities Talking by Jo Campling and All Things Are Possible by Yvonne Duffy highlights the concerns of women with disabilities.

In Tokarcik v. Forest Hills School District, 655 F.2d 443 (3rd Cir. 1981), the United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, ruled that denying a disabled child access to a regular public school classroom without a compelling education justification constituted discrimination.

Gini Laurie organized the first international conference on post-polio problems.

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski, Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981 wrote, “it will soon be possible to assert almost continuous control over every citizen and to maintain up to date files containing even the most personal details about health and personal behaviors of every citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by authorities. Power will gravitate into the hands of those who control this information.

National Black Deaf Advocates is founded.

In England, the Brixton Riot, one of the most serious riots in the 20th century fuelled by racial and social discord, brought black and white youth into violent confrontation with thousands of police. Further riots ensued that year throughout Britain. The Scarman Report detailed a loss of confidence and mistrust in the police and their methods of policing after liaison arrangements between police, community and local authority had collapsed. Recommendations for policing reforms were introduced in 1984. However, the 1999 MacPherson Inquiry into teenager Stephen Lawrence's murder, found that Scarman's recommendations had been ignored, and concluded that the Metropolitan Police Service was institutionally racist.

The Telecommunications for the Disabled Act mandates telephone access for deaf and hard-of-hearing people at important public places, such as hospitals and police stations, and that all coin-operated phones be hearing aid-compatible by January 1985. It also calls for state subsidies for production and distribution of TDDs (telecommunications devices for the deaf), more commonly referred to as TTYs.

The National Council on Independent Living is formed to advocate on behalf of independent living centers and the independent living movement.

“I Can’t Imagine Life Without Mental Illness.” Mind Out, by George.

1981-1983

The newly elected Reagan Administration threatens to amend or revoke regulations implementing Section 504 1983 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. Disability rights advocates, led by Patrisha Wright at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) and Evan Kemp, Jr. at the Disability Rights Center, respond with an intensive lobbying effort and a grassroots campaign that generates more than 40,000 cards and letters. After three years, the Reagan Administration abandons its attempts to revoke or amend the regulations.

1981-1984

The Reagan Administration terminates the Social Security benefits of hundreds of thousands of disabled recipients. Advocates charge that these terminations are an effort to reduce the federal budget and often do not reflect any improvement in the condition of those being terminated. A variety of groups, including the Alliance of Social Security Disability Recipients and the Ad Hoc Committee on Social Security Disability, spring up to fight these terminations. Several disabled people, in despair over the loss of their benefits, commit suicide.

1982

Anticholinergic medications used to treat Parkinsonian symptoms induced by neuroleptics are reported to cause cognitive impairment.

Rogers v. Macht (Rogers v. Okin or Rogers v. Commissioner of Mental Health) filed and finally adjudicated in 1982 establishing a limited right to refuse treatment (psychiatric drugs) in Massachusetts.

The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (PL 97-248, 96 Stat. 324), passed by Congress on September 3, initiates severe reductions in service provisions of Medicare, Medicaid, Utilization and Quality Control Peer Review, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, child support enforcement, supplemental security income, and unemployment compensation. The legislation provides the "largest tax increase ever recommended in a single piece of legislation" It gives Medicare beneficiaries the option to enroll in health maintenance organizations.

Ted Chabasinski

In November, Berkeley, California votes to ban shock treatment after a ballot campaign run by psychiatric survivors. (Court later reverses); Ted Chabasinski organized this. In Berkeley, California in protest over the massive electroshocking of patients in Herrick Hospital and other psychiatric facilities, the Coalition to Stop Electroshock succeeds in putting a shock ban referendum (Measure T) on the city ballot — 61% vote to ban electroshock in Berkeley, after the Coalition collects 2,452 names on a petition. This referendum marks the first time US citizens were allowed to vote on electroshock in a city election. The California State Supreme Court overturns the shock ban 41days later, Herrick immediately resumes shocking patients.

The National Mental Health Association sponsored the National Commission on the Insanity Defense public hearings, co-chaired by former Sen. Birch Bayh and National Mental Health Association President-Elect Thomas H. Brinkley.

The Telecommunications for the Disabled Act became law in the U.S., and it mandated that public phones be accessible to the hearing impaired by Jan 1, 1985.

In Board of Education v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176 (2nd Circuit Court 1982), the 2nd Circuit Court in the U.S. found that individualized decisions based on the unique needs of each child were essential under federal law. Schools who let one criterion, such as a specific disability, automatically determine the placement are likely to be held in violation of federal law.

APA establishes a Caucus of Homosexual-Identified Psychiatrists that later becomes the Caucus of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Psychiatrists.

Judi Chamberlin at Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression, Toronto, 1982

Declaration of Principles adopted at the Tenth Annual International Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression.

The Tenth Annual International Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression, held in Toronto, Canada on 14 to 18 May 1982 adopted the following principles:

1. We oppose involuntary psychiatric intervention including civil commitment and the administration of psychiatric procedures ("treatments") by force or coercion or without informed consent.

2. We oppose involuntary psychiatric intervention because it is an unethical and unconstitutional denial of freedom, due process and the right to he left alone.

3. We oppose involuntary psychiatric intervention because it is a violation of the individual's right to control his or her own soul, mind and body.

4. We oppose forced psychiatric procedures such as drugging electroshock, psychosurgery, restraints, solitary confinement, and "aversive behaviour modification."


5 We oppose forced psychiatric procedures because they humiliate, debilitate, injure, incapacitate and kill people.

6. We oppose forced psychiatric procedures because they are at best quackery and at worst tortures, which can and do cause severe and permanent harm to the total being of people subjected to them.

7. We oppose the psychiatric system because it is inherently tyrannical.

8. We oppose the psychiatric system because it is an extra legal parallel police force which suppresses cultural and political dissent.

9. We oppose the psychiatric system 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."


10. We oppose the psychiatric system because it uses the trappings of medicine and science to mask the social-control function it serves.

11. We oppose the psychiatric system because it invalidates the real needs of poor people by offering social welfare under the guise of psychiatric "care and treatment."


12. We oppose the psychiatric system because it feeds on the poor and powerless, the elderly, women, children, sexual minorities, people of color and ethnic groups.


13. We oppose the psychiatric system because it creates a stigmatized class of society which is easily oppressed and controlled.

14. We oppose the psychiatric system 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 impose "treatment" and those who have or are likely to have it imposed on them.

15. We oppose the psychiatric system because it is frighteningly similar to the Inquisition, chattel slavery and the Nazi concentration camps.

16. We oppose the medical model of "mental illness" because it justifies involuntary psychiatric intervention including forced drugging.

17. We oppose the medical model of "mental illness" be cause it dupes the public into seeking or accepting "voluntary" treatment by fostering the notion that fundamental human problems, whether personal or social, can be solved by psychiatric/medical means.

18. We oppose the use of psychiatric terms because they substitute argon for plain English and are fundamentally stigmatizing, demeaning, unscientific, mystifying and superstitious. Examples:

Plain English ………… Psychiatric Jargon

Psychiatric inmate ………… Mental patient


Psychiatric institution ………… Mental hospital/mental health center


Psychiatric system ………… Mental health system


Psychiatric procedure ………… Treatment/therapy


Personal or social difficulties in living …… Mental illness


Socially undesirable characteristic or trait .. Symptom


Drugs ………… Medication


Drugging ………… Chemotherapy


Electroshock ………… Electroconvulsive therapy


Anger ………… Hostility


Enthusiasm ………… Mania


Joy ………… Euphoria


Fear ………… Paranoia


Sadness/unhappiness ………… Depression


Vision/spiritual experience ………… Hallucination


Non-conformity ………… Schizophrenia


Unpopular belief ………… Delusion

19. We believe that people should have the right to live in any manner or lifestyle they choose.

20. We believe that suicidal thoughts and/or attempts should not be dealt with as a psychiatric or legal issue.

21. We believe that alleged dangerousness, whether to one self or others, should not be considered grounds for denying personal liberty, and that only proven criminal acts should be the basis for such denial.

22. We believe that persons charged with crimes should be tried for their alleged criminal acts with due process of law, and that psychiatric professionals should not be given expert-witness status in criminal proceedings or courts of law.

23. We believe that there should be no involuntary psychiatric interventions in prisons and that the prison system should be reformed and humanized.

24. We believe that so long as one individual's freedom is unjustly restricted no one is truly free.

25. We believe that the psychiatric system is, in fact, a pacification programme controlled by psychiatrists and supported by other mental health professionals, whose chief function is to persuade, threaten or force people into conforming to established norms and values.

26. We believe that the psychiatric system cannot be reformed but must be abolished.

27. We believe that voluntary networks of community alter natives to the psychiatric system should be widely encouraged and supported. Alternatives such as self-help or mutual support groups, advocacy/rights groups, co-op houses, crisis centers and drop-ins should be controlled by the users themselves to serve their needs, while ensuring their freedom, dignity and self-respect.

28. We demand an end to involuntary psychiatric intervention.

29. We demand individual liberty and social justice for everyone.

30. We intend to make these words real and will not rest until we do.

Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) of 1982 - Authorized training and placement services for “economically disadvantaged” individuals, including persons with disabilities.

UN Adopts Global Disability Program. The United Nations General Assembly adopts "The World Program of Action Concerning the Disabled" in 1982 to encourage full participation and equality for people with disabilities around the world.

“Mary Barnes: Two accounts of a journey through madness.” Second edition. New York: Penguin Books. Barnes, M. and Berke, J.

Down's Infant Allowed To Die. On April 9, "Baby Doe" is born with Down's syndrome and an under-developed esophagus. Doctors advise the parents not to opt for surgery and to allow him to die. On April 15, the child dies in an incubator. The parents of “Baby Doe” in Bloomington, Indiana, are advised by their doctors to deny a surgical procedure to unblock their newborn's esophagus, because the baby has Down Syndrome. Although disability rights activists try to intervene, Baby Doe starves to death before legal action can be taken. The case prompts the Reagan Administration to issue regulations calling for the creation of “Baby Doe squads” to safeguard the civil rights of disabled newborns.

Vocational schools were being started in order to give those who had formerly worked at certain jobs a certificate for it so they could control the vocation, and then to start making those who had not had that job yet train for that certificate. Some people were grandfathered in or given their certificates without needing to pass the tests or receive the training.

Reich Founds National Organization on Disability. Alan A. Reich founds the National Organization on Disability (NOD) in 1982. NOD's mission is to expand the participation and contribution of Americans with disabilities in all aspects of life and to close the participation gap by raising disability awareness through programs and information. As president of NOD, Reich builds the coalition of disability groups that successfully fight for the inclusion of a statue of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his wheelchair at the FDR Memorial. Reich is an international leader in the disability community until his death in 2005.

The first funding for sexual assault crisis centers, $148,889, was distributed. Subsequent funds enabled centers to hire advocates, counselors and educators. Since then centers have developed specialized services to meet the needs of children, adult survivors of child sexual abuse, teens and male victims. They have standardized volunteer training and developed curricula for conducting education and training programs. They have implemented protocols with hospitals and law enforcement agencies. ICWAR (Illinois Coalition of Women Against Rape) receives first Preventive Health and Health Services Block Grant allocation of $148,889 it creates its first Contracts Review Committee and allocates funds.

The second National Coalition Against Domestic Violence features the first national Women of Color conference. Race, class and homophobia are central themes of this conference.

The words "battered women's movement" has come to symbolize the groups of organizations serving battered women and their children.

There are an estimated 300 to 700 shelters and safe home projects in the United States.

A study in the Midwest by Oppenlander concludes "mediation appears to be a way to avoid arrest in the majority of domestic assault cases in which it is used," and is related to "an avoidance of the law enforcement function of the police." Although officers claimed to routinely make referrals, observations of police action reveal that only 4% make referrals and rarely mention shelters to women.

In New York, only one shelter in the city belongs to an autonomous woman's organization. The other three are administered by social service organizations.

The Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence administers $2 million a year in state Title XX monies, trains police and district judges, and administers a five-state coalition building grant. It also gathers the membership continuously for support, skills sharing and political discussion.

After a decade of fighting for ratification, the ERA fails. In the end, only 35 of the 38 required states ratify the amendment. Over 900 women hold positions as state legislators, compared with 344 a decade earlier.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. §§ 1973–1973aa-6) has key provisions renewed in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006.

The National Mental Health Programme (NMHP) was launched in India.

“Starving for Attention,” by Cherry Boone O'Neill.

“Holiday of Darkness,” by Norman S. Endler. (revised ed., Toronto: Wall & Thompson, 1990).

1983-1992

UN Declares Decade for Disabled Persons

1983

UN Convention (No. 159) concerning Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (Disabled Persons). This treaty of the International Labour Organization (ILO), a UN specialized agency, obligates states to "formulate, implement and periodically review a national policy on vocational rehabilitation and employment of disabled persons" (article 2). This treaty also emphasizes the principle of equal opportunity: "positive measures aimed at effective equality of opportunity and treatment between disabled workers and other workers shall not be regarded as discriminating against other workers" (article 4).

Amendments to the (American) Rehabilitation Act of 1973 provided for the Client Assistance Program (CAP), an advocacy program for consumers of rehabilitation and independent living services.

The Social Security Amendments (PL 9881, 97 Stat. 65), passed on April 20, secure the program, providing mandatory coverage of federal employees and employees of nonprofit organizations, withdrawing and reducing benefits such as cost of living delay to calendar year, increasing retirement age, and reducing initial benefits.

The Hospital Prospective Payment System replaces Medicare cost reimbursement systems with predetermined payment rates for 468 diagnosis related groups, initiating significant role changes for social workers in discharge planning and increased service coordination requirements.

Howard Gardner (professor at Harvard University) introduced his theory of multiple intelligence, arguing that intelligence is something to be used to improve lives not to measure and quantify human beings.

Education of the Handicapped Act Amendments of 1983 - Authorized grants for training parents of children with disabilities.

A national monthly teleconference of people with psychiatric histories is established by Judi Chamberlin. It ran for over two years with hundreds of people and 28 locations. Participants include movement leaders from around the U.S.

EEOC chief Patricia Roberts Harris chaired The Mental Health Association’s National Commission on Unemployment and Mental Health.

In Hawaii Department of Education v. Katherine D., the U.S. federal appeals court found "intermittent" nursing services, including care of a child's tracheostomy tube, to be not too burdensome for a school to provide to a student.

National Black Deaf Advocates is founded.

The Telecommunications for the Disabled Act mandates telephone access for deaf and hard-of-hearing people at important public places, such as hospitals and police stations, and that all coin-operated phones be hearing aid-compatible by January 1985. It also calls for state subsidies for production and distribution of TDDs (telecommunications devices for the deaf), more commonly referred to as TTYs.

The American Medical Society on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence is formed. Its creation is the result of efforts to combine several professional medical organizations under the auspices of a single entity for physicians interested in chemical dependency.

The Disabled Children's Computer Group (DCCG) is founded in Berkeley, California.

At the Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in May in New York City, former US Attorney General and human rights advocate Ramsey Clark tells the psychiatrists, “Electroshock is violence”.

During the 11th Annual International Conference for Human Rights and Against Psychiatric Oppression in Syracuse, NewYork, 9 psychiatric survivors block the front doors of Benjamin Rush Psychiatric Center as an act of nonviolent civil disobedience. Five years later, Benjamin Rush stopped electroshocking patients.

Ed Roberts, Judy Heumann, and Joan Leon found the World Institute on Disability in Oakland, California.

American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) is organized at the Atlantis Community Headquarters in Denver, Colorado. Americans with Disabilities for Accessible Public Transportation, now known as ADAPT, began its national campaign for lifts on buses and access to public transit for people with disabilities. For seven years ADAPT—under the leadership of Bob Kafka, Stephanie Thomas, and Mike Auberger—blocked buses in cities across the U.S. to demonstrate the need for access to public transit. After the passage of the ADA (and transit measures gained by ADAPT's hard work), ADAPT began to focus on attendant and community based services, becoming American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today. For the next seven years ADAPT conducts a civil disobedience campaign against the American Public Transit Association (APTA) and various local public transit authorities to protest the lack of accessible public transportation. ADAPT Campaigns for Transportation Access. Americans with Disabilities for Accessible Public Transportation, now known as ADAPT, began its national campaign for lifts on buses and access to public transit for people with disabilities. For seven years ADAPT—under the leadership of Bob Kafka, Stephanie Thomas, and Mike Auberger—blocked buses in cities across the U.S. to demonstrate the need for access to public transit. After the passage of the ADA (and transit measures gained by ADAPT's hard work), ADAPT began to focus on attendant and community based services, becoming American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today.

Image from the National Museum of American History shows a chunk of concrete, all that remained of a Denver, CO street corner when a group of disability rights activists literally took hammers to the streets and made a "do it yourself curb cut" in 1978. Denver had discontinued its curb-reduction program and people trying to get up impassable curbs had been hit by cars. The activists were from the Atlantis Community, an independent living center in Denver and the protest launched the disability rights group that eventually became ADAPT on this day, April 4, in 1984.

A national ADAPT action was held for accessible transportation in Denver, Colorado at the American Public Transit Association (APTA) Convention.

The National Council on the Handicapped issues a call for Congress to “act forthwith to include persons with disabilities in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other civil and voting rights legislation and regulations.”

The (American) National Council on Independent Living (NCIL) was founded by Max Starkloff, Charlie Carr, and Marca Bristo to advocate on behalf of independent living centers and the independent living movement.

The United Nations expands the International Year of Disabled Persons into the International Decade of Disabled Persons, to last from 1983 to 1992.

The World Institute on Disability (WID) was established in Berkeley, California, by Edward Roberts, Judy Heumann, and Joan Leon.

The Disabled Children’s Computer Group (DCCG) was founded in Berkeley, California.

"Interview by Alan Markman with Leonard Roy Frank and Anne Boldt. Boldt and Frank refer to themselves as "ex-psychiatric inmates" and are members of an organisation/ movement called "Psychiatric Inmates Liberation Movement." The organisation's members offer each other support and they believe they will gain strength by gathering together in numbers. At the time of the interview, Frank and Boldt had been part of a demonstration to protest electroshock treatment for psychiatric inmates at Grace Square Hospital. Frank was himself the recipient of shock therapy and believes it is "brutal and dehumanizing" which results in brain damage. The interview includes discussion about other demonstrations and goals for the future". - Broadcast May 5, 1983 on WBAI (Broadcasting around New York) - See Pacific Radio archives PRA Archive #: IZ0373

Sharon Kowalski is disabled by a drunk driver near Onamia, Minnesota. Her parents, discovering that she is a lesbian, refuse to allow her to return home to her lover Karen Thompson, instead keeping her in a nursing home. Thompson's eight-year struggle to free Kowalski becomes a focus of disability rights advocates and leads to links between the lesbian and disability rights communities.

The Job Accommodation Network (JAN) is founded by the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped to provide information to businesses with disabled employees.

Dr. Eric R. Kandel, an NIMH grantee, was awarded the Albert Lasker Award in Medical Research for application of cell biology techniques to the study of behavior, revealing the mechanisms underlying learning and memory.

The Community Support Program (CSP) of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) declares self-help programs as essential components of a model mental health system.

On Our Own

Mike Finkle founds On Our Own in Baltimore, Maryland (grows into the first statewide consumer/survivor network)

Sally Zinman

California Network of Mental Health Clients (CNMHC) is founded. Sally Zinman, among the 21 member founding Steering Committee, was its part time Coordinator for the first year of its existence and then later Executive Director from 1997-2007.

Mental Patients Alliance of Central New York is incorporated doing business as the Mental Patients Liberation Alliance.

Psychiatric Drugs: Hazardous to the Brain. Peter Breggin, M.D.

“The manufacture of madness: An interview with Samuel Delany.” Phoenix Rising: The voice of the psychiatrized. Fall 1983. Volume 4, Number 2. Markman, A.

Under the 1983 Mental Health Act in England and Wales, individuals can be forced into treatment if they have a mental disorder. Patients are examined by a licensed psychiatrist and a doctor, including one who has known the patient previously. If they agree that the person should be detained in the interest of his health, his safety or the protection of others, an order is presented to a social worker trained to determine whether commitment is warranted. Patients are held for up to 28 days before their cases are reviewed by a mental health tribunal composed of a doctor, lawyer and layman.

Over 700 shelters are in operation nationwide serving 91,000 women and 131,000 children per year.

The U.S. Department of Justice states that 3/4 of domestic assaults reported to law enforcement agencies may have happened after the couple separates.

National attention is focused on male violence after a gang rape of a woman in a bar in Bedford, MA. Four men are convicted of aggravated assault and given prison sentences. The attack on the woman's character is subject of the film The Accused, starring Jodie Foster.

“Leaves from Many Seasons: Selected papers,” by O. H. Mowrer.

“Schizophrenia: Exploding the Myth,” Phoenix Rising 3:3, 1983. Weitz, Don.

“Life in an Insane Asylum.” Overland Monthly. 13:161-171, by Charles Coyle.

“The Words to Say It,” by Marie Cardinal.

The Illinois Criminal Sexual Assault Act is signed into law, revising Illinois rape and incest statutes. The Confidentiality of Statements Made to Rape Crisis Personnel granted absolute privilege to sexual assault victims. This act was important because it meant that anything a rape victim said to a Rape Crisis Counselor or Legal advocate was absolutely confidential. This meant that no court could subpoena records of victims.

“Am I Still Visible? A Woman’s Triumph over Anorexia Nervosa,” by Sandra Harvey Heater.

The European Psychiatric Association was founded.

Oregon abolishes it’s Board of Social Protection.

1984

The 12th International Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression was held in Pueblo, Colorado, June 1-5, 1984 and was organized by the Women's Psychiatric Inmate Liberation Front (WPILF) in Denver. In most ways the conference was successful. We struggled together to look at political issues within our movement-racism, sexism, violence against women-which strengthens our movement's efforts to end psychiatric oppression wherever it occurs: psychiatric institutions, juvenile homes, schools, prisons, and in the family. Continuing to gather as (ex) psychiatric inmates is important in communicating about our common oppression. We had an exciting speak-out in one of Pueblo's city parks and then marched to Colorado State Hospital to hold a successful demonstration. Earlier in the day some of us picketed at Colorado's Maximum Security Prison. However, we are now financially in a hole to the tune of $2,500. We are writing this letter both to make an appeal for financial support and to talk about what our experience was like organizing the conference and our concerns about changing how the conference gets organized for the better. Talking with people who have organized this conference in the past, we seem to have a shared experience that it has been personally painful, hard, and a disruptive thing to do. We hope this letter will increase dialogue about how to change this experience. WPILF has been working in Denver for about 9 months. The group was formed by 4 lesbian women initially to organize a demonstration in Denver for the International Day of Protest Against Phoenix Rising 51 Electroshock held Oct. 22, 1983. Soon after we had formed. we were contacted by Judi Chamberlin and Anne Boldt who said that other people who had expressed interest in taking on the organizing of the conference no longer felt able or "ready" to do so; we were asked if we would consider doing so. Although WPILF did not have a sense of the traditions and logistics of planning for this conference, we were willing to give it a try.

Reagan's War on the Rehab Act of 1973. The Reagan administration threatened to amend or revoke regulations implementing Section 504 of the (American) Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. Disability rights advocates Patrisha Wright, (DREDF), and Evan Kemp, Jr. (Disability Rights Center) led an intense lobbying and grassroots campaign that generated more than 40,000 cards and letters. After three years, the Reagan Administration abandoned its attempts to revoke or amend the regulations. However, the Reagan Administration terminated the Social Security benefits of hundreds of thousands of disabled recipients. Distressed by this action, several disabled people committed suicide. A variety of groups including the Alliance of Social Security Disability Recipients and the Ad Hoc Committee on Social Security Disability fought these terminations. Justin Dart, a wealthy, influential, and disabled personal friend of Reagan's fought hard against the plan.

Ted Kennedy, Jr., spoke from the platform of the Democratic National Convention on disability rights.

Child Abuse Prevention Treatment Act Amendments of 1984 - Required states' child protection agencies to develop procedures for responding to reports that newborns with disabling conditions were being denied treatment; established conditions for requiring such treatment.

Developmental Disabilities Act of 1984 - Shifted emphasis to employment in priority services; required Individual Habilitation Plan for consumers; increased minimum funding for protection and advocacy services.

Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1984 - Established Client Assistance Programs (CAP) as formula grant programs; made National Council on the Handicapped an independent agency. The National Council of the Handicapped becomes an independent federal agency.

Congress appropriated funds in 1984 for the Child and Adolescent Service System Program (CASSP), envisioned as a comprehensive mental health system designed for children, adolescents and their families. These are known as the CASSP Principles: 1. Child-centered; 2. Family-focused; 3. Community-based; 4. Multi-system; 5. Culturally competent; 6. Least restrictive/least intrusive

The “Baby Jane Doe” case, like the 1982 Bloomington Baby Doe case, involves an infant being denied needed medical care because of her disability. The case results in litigation argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Bowen v. American Hospital Association, and in passage of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act Amendments of 1984.

In the United Kingdom, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 Part IV 37(15). A child is defined as under 17 years old. The Act provides for an Appropriate adult to be called to the police station whenever a child has been detained in police custody.

George Murray becomes the first wheelchair athlete to be featured on the Wheaties cereal box.

The U.S. Supreme Court rules, in Irving Independent School District v. Tatro, that school districts are required under the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 to provide intermittent catheterization, performed by the school nurse or a nurse's aide, as a “related service” to a disabled student. School districts can no longer refuse to educate a disabled child because they might need such a service.

Congress passes the Social Security Disability Reform Act in response to the complaints of hundreds of thousands of people whose Social Security disability benefits have been terminated. The law requires that payment of benefits and health insurance coverage continue for terminated recipients until they have exhausted their appeals and that decisions by the Social Security Administration to terminate benefits be made only on the basis of “the weight of the evidence” in a particular recipient's case.

The Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act became law in the U.S., and it mandated "handicapped and elderly" access to polling places or that ways be found to enable elderly and disabled people to exercise their right to vote, and provided for the creation of permanent disabled access voter registration sites. Advocates find that the act is difficult, if not impossible, to enforce.

The National Association of Psychiatric Survivors (NAPS) is organized (originally under the name The

National Alliance of Mental Patients (NAMP). (Possibly 1985)

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N A M P

National Alliance of Mental Patients

c/o P.O. Box 618, Sioux Falls, SD 57101

Goals & Philosophy Statement

for the

National Alliance of Mental Patients

- To promote the human and civil rights of people in and out of psychiatric treatment situations, with special attention to their absolute right to freedom of choice. To work towards the end of involuntary psychosurgery, forced drugging, restraint and seclusion, holding that such intervention against one’s will is not a form of treatment, but a violation of liberty and the right to control one’s own body and mind. We emphasize freedom of choice for people wanting to receive psychiatric services through true informed consent to treatment which includes the right to refuse any unwanted treatments. We will also work to assure the rights of all people who have been psychiatrically labeled including but not limited to people in halfway houses, day treatment, residential facilities, vocational rehabilitation, nursing homes, psycho-social rehabilitation clubs as well as psychiatric institutions.

- To further the development of user-controlled alternatives to the “mental health” system and link these groups by having a national network. These alternatives can include, but are not limited to, self-help, peer support groups, drop-in centers, independent housing, cooperatively run businesses, advocacy and rights protection groups, and holistic healing centers. What they share is that they are structured and defined by the needs of the people creating and using the services, promoting empowerment, self-esteem, independence, and self-determination.

- To challenge the negative attitudes and lack of sensitivity of the public towards people who are psychiatrically labeled. These attitudes often lead to policies that stigmatize us and limit our exercise of basic legal, civil, and constitutional rights. We will work to educate and influence the public, especially the media, as to the importance of positive portrayals of people labeled “mentally ill,” and work to promote public understanding and sensitivity.

- To improve the quality of life for psychiatrically labeled people by addressing housing, employment, legal and educational needs, and combatting discrimination in these areas. To address the needs of homeless and poor people, working to assure that all persons have a livable income. To advocate for fundamental changes in the public benefits system.

- To recognize that there is a diversity of viewpoints regarding the causes and the existence of “mental illness.” We respect that all people are entitled to their own opinions on whether or not “mental illness” exists. No belief should be imposed on other people in defining themselves, their lifestyles, treatment or civil rights. None of these beliefs should be accorded the level and weight of established fact. The medical model is only one such viewpoint. Another viewpoint is that people who are experiencing distress are responding to real economic, social, familial, spiritual, and cultural pressures in their lives, and that labeling their real-life problems as “mental illness” does nothing but invalidate their feelings and experience. Therefore, when this organization uses terminology that reflects the medical model we will use quotation marks.

- To become recognized as a viable and representative national voice of, by, and for psychiatrically labeled people. To demand representation on any body which affects “mental health” and related issues including national commissions, committees, and mental health boards. We believe the mental health system must become more responsive to our needs and goals and be more accountable to the users of the system. Whereas we believe that all persons who identify themselves as users of the psychiatric system should be represented on forums that affect their lives, we will strongly advocate that those people who agree with our organization’s goals and principles be adequately represented.

- To be an open and democratic organization representing the diversity of our constituency (race, class, gender, sexual orientation, physically disabled, and age). We recognize our obligation to reach out to groups that are underrepresented in our organization.

NAMP was co-founded by Judi Chamberlin and Rae Unzicker. NAMP clearly stated that they’d been hurt and dehumanized by a system that claimed to “help” and that most actually claimed they found true help when they reached out to one another. (Chamberlin, 1987)

The NAMP credo differs from that of the NMHCA (below) in that NAMP is unequivocally opposed to forced treatment. NAMP credo:

1. We are individuals, not labels or diagnoses.

2. We oppose all forms of forced treatment, including inpatient and outpatient commitment, forced drugging, compulsory “aftercare,” and all other means of coercive involvement in the mental health system.

3. We believe in the necessity for voluntary, user-controlled, non-medical alternatives, recognizing that emotional pain is real and that many people are unwilling to return to a system they have found unhelpful in the past.

NMHCA, the National Mental Health Consumers' Association states its purpose as being for consumers' "rights, responsibility, and respect" and adopted the following goals:

1. To protect and advocate for the rights of mental health consumers.

2. To further the development of local, user-controlled alternatives, linked by a national clearinghouse.

3. To improve the quality of life for mental health consumers by ending discrimination in housing and employment, addressing the needs of homeless people and poor people, and advocating for increased public benefits.

4. To ensure the mental health system's responsiveness and accountability to mental health consumers by gaining consumer representation on mental health decision making bodies.

5. To educate and influence the media concerning the importance of a positive portrayal of mental health consumers and sensitivity to our issues and concerns, thereby fighting stigma in the community.

(From "Your Choice" 1987)

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Linda Andre

Committee for Truth in Psychiatry (CTIP), based in New York, a national organization of survivors of electroconvulsive treatment (ECT) organized by shock survivors Marilyn Rice (founder) and Linda Andre (director) to advocate for a true informed consent process for people contemplating this controversial procedure. Subsequently, “[f]or the first time, product liability suit against a shock machine manufacturer...the plaintiffs. The suit was brought by Imogene Rohovit of Iowa City, Iowa, and her daughters, that Mrs. Rohovit, a single mother and former nurse, work by shocks inflicted by the MECTA Model D machine in 1989.” http://www.ect.org/news/suit.html

Joe Rogers

National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearing House, founded by Joseph Rogers as a division of Project SHARE (Self-Help and Advocacy Resource Exchange), a consumer organization based at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Early efforts to involve consumers in research were the People First study in California (1984) and the Hill House Project in Ohio (published 1990).

Congress passed the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act that persuaded states to raise the minimum age from 18 to 21 for the purchase and possession of alcohol.

The (American) National Council of the Handicapped became an independent federal agency.

Jeffrey Mason, former psychoanalyst and respected director of the Sigmund Freud Archives wrote, "Freud: the Assault on Truth". He found letters confirming Freud originally perceived women as often suffering from the effects of child sexual abuse. More letters showed Freud's about-face i.e. little girl's had sexual fantasies about men and even seduced them. Mason proved the basis of modern therapy was built on false pretense. He was fired from his directorship, misquoted, and unable to find teaching positions when he took the side of the incest survivor by providing information.

The movie Something About Amelia created a 900% increase in reporting incest.

Sex discrimination in the admission policies of organizations such as the Jaycees is forbidden by the Supreme Court in Roberts v. United States Jaycees, opening many previously all-male organizations to females.

The U.S. Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence holds national hearings and issues a report.

The California Governors Conference on Victims of Crime is held.

People v. Liberta, New York. An ex-husband convicted of (non-marital) rape asserts a violation of his right to Equal Protection, i.e. if his wife had not obtained a restraining order, thereby causing a separation, his rape of her would not have been a crime. The appellate court agreed with him and struck down the marital rape exemption in the state statute.

The Victims of Crime Act is passed. In 1988, Congress amends the Act, requiring state victim compensation programs to make awards to victims of domestic violence.

Lenore Walker writes The Battered Women's Syndrome. This book discusses the "learned helplessness" theory of battered women and the "cycle of violence."

By order of Chief Justice, Nevada closes its courts for one day to send the judges to domestic violence training.

In California, SB 1472 (Watson) makes police intervention more effective by requiring police response, written policies, statewide officer training, and domestic violence calls record keeping.

In Weishaupt v. Commonwealth, the court minimizes Lord Hale's theory (1500's), asserting that it was not a law. The court asserts the existence of implied consent to sexual intercourse in marriage, but states that the consent was revocable.

EMILY's List (Early Money is Like Yeast: It Makes the Dough Rise) is founded to raise funds for feminist candidates. EMILY's List (Early Money Is Like Yeast) is established as a financial network for pro-choice Democratic women running for national political office. The organization makes a significant impact on the increasing numbers of women elected to Congress.

Geraldine Ferraro is the first female vice-presidential candidate of a major political party (Democratic Party).

The non-partisan National Political Congress of Black Women is founded by Shirley Chisholm to address women's rights issues and encourage participation in the electoral process at every level.

“An Angel at My Table: An Autobiography,” by Janet Frame.

“Afraid of Everything: A Personal History of Agoraphobia,” by D. M. Woods.

“To be a Mental Patient,” written by Rae Unzicker.

“I Speak for the Silent.” UK, by Alexandra [Messenger].

“A Private Practice,” by Patrick Reilly.

Dr Caligari's Psychiatric Drugs appears in California, by David L. Richman M.D. (Dr Caligari)

“Mollie Fancher: The Brooklyn Enigma. An Authentic Statement of Facts in the Life of Mary J. Fancher. The Psychological Marvel of the Nineteenth Century,” by Abram H. Dailey.

“Home From Seven North,” by M. Thomas.

ICWAR (Illinois Coalition of Women Against Rape) changed its name to the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault (ICASA). On the federal level, the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) passed Congress, promising future funding for victim services.

1985

By 1985, federal funds through the ADM (Alcohol, Drug Abuse, Mental Health) block grant dropped to 11 percent of agency budgets. State funding grew substantially to 42 percent and local government sources increased to 13 percent Medicaid decreased slightly to 8 percent, Medicare remained at 2 percent, and patient fees had grown to 8 percent — double the amount from a decade earlier.

Drug-induced akathisia is linked to suicide.

Case reports link drug-induced akathisia to violent homicides.

Final legal hearings on eugenics were held in the Commonwealth of Virginia. No financial settlement was granted.

The Mental Illness Bill of Rights Act became law in the U.S., under the leadership of Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut and Rep. Henry Waxman of California, and it required states to provide protection and advocacy (P&A) services to protect and advocate for people with psychological disabilities. In 1985, Congress, under the leadership of Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut and Rep. Henry Waxman of California, held hearings about conditions in state mental hospitals and other treatment programs. In the first and only piece of social legislation put forth during the Reagan years, a bill was passed to create a formal advocacy program in each state and territory to serve people with psychiatric disabilities. Most of the programs (called PAIMI – Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness) became part of the already-existing advocacy programs for people with developmental disabilities, which had been established in the mid-70's. However, some became part of state agencies, and a few became independent, freestanding agencies. Funding was minimal, and services were limited to those who were currently hospitalized, or who had been hospitalized within the past 90 days. Nonetheless, perhaps the most important impact this legislation had was that it required that at least 50% of the membership of the Advisory Councils to each PAIMI program be current or former recipients of mental health services, or their family members. (Some states initially tried to circumvent dealing with "mental patients" and only recruited family members, so regulations were later developed to require participation from consumers, psychiatric survivors, and ex-patients.) Community organizing and work in the 1960s, 1970s, 80s and 90s brought both an outpouring of activism by patients, survivors, consumers and others, hundreds of legal proceedings seeking and generally winning such things as an end for forced labor in institutions, restrictions on the use of seclusion and restraint, parameters regarding forced medication, and remedies for abuse and neglect. Also, courts found a right to a judicial hearing before commitment, and a short litany of commitment hearing rights, such as the right to counsel, was established.

Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 - Expanded the definition of “habilitation” for Home and Community-Based Waiver recipients with developmental disabilities to cover certain pre-vocational services and supported employment for previously institutionalized individuals; authorized states to cover ventilator-dependent children under the waiver program if they would otherwise require continued inpatient care. The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) encourages states to provide case management as an optional Medicaid service.

The National Network for Social Work Managers is formed as a professional society by Robert Maslyn to advance knowledge, theory, and practice of management and administration in social services and the social work profession and to obtain recognition of social work managers.

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) issues a Request for proposals for consumer-run national technical assistance centers.

NIMH undergoes a major reorganization to align the extramural structure to emphasize the institute’s primary mission of research was accomplished. This provided for an increased focus on understanding the biological and behavioral underpinnings of mental illness and mental health and for improving the treatment/prevention of mental and emotional disorders.

The 13^th and final International Conference on Human Rights and Against Psychiatric Oppression is held in Burlington, Vermont. Survivor-run conference is replaced by NIMH funded “Alternatives” conference as “An alternative to an independent movement.”

Closing ceremony Alternatives 1985

First Annual 'Alternatives' Conference in Baltimore in June funded by registration fees and a small grant from NIMH-CSP (National Institute of Mental Health-Community Support Programs). Alternatives '85 - organized by On Our Own of Maryland and named ‘Alternatives’ by Mike Finkle to acknowledge that the conference wasn't looking to replace traditional treatment approaches, but instead to offer legitimate, humane, and useful alternatives to those approaches – mostly self-help and peer-led efforts. Despite low expectations, over 300 attended this first historic conference.

At Alternatives ’85, the National Mental Health Consumers’ Association (NMHCA) – the first national c/s/x organization – is founded under the leadership of Joseph Rogers. At a meeting of the organization in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in 1986, five steering committee members left to form the National Alliance of Mental Patients (later the National Association of Psychiatric Survivors). The schism proved fatal to both organizations, and both are now defunct. Two national organizations are born in Pottstown, PA at a meeting to organize the first national organization of people with psychiatric histories. Two national organizations are born: The National Mental Health Consumers' Association and the National Alliance of Mental Patients, later renamed the National Association of Psychiatric Survivors. Both groups are now defunct. Fellowship Farm, Pottstown, PA

Cochlear Implants Approved. The cochlear implant is approved for clinical trials in people 18 and older. The device is a mechanical prosthesis of sorts for the inner ear. It bypasses the bones of the inner ear, placing electrodes directly into the cochlea, where sound waves are absorbed and interpreted by the auditory nerve. Some Deaf leaders view it as a conspiracy to destroy Deaf Culture.

Working mothers: 50 percent of women with children younger than three years of age were working.

The (American) National Association of Psychiatric Survivors (NAPS) was founded.

Berkeley Drop-In Center founded in Berkeley, CA

Ruby Rogers Drop-In Center founded in Cambridge, MA. Ruby Roger's Advocacy & Drop in Center is founded by the Mental Patients' Liberation Front as a peer-run alternative to traditional psychiatry.

Wry Crips, a radical disability theatre group, is founded in and, California.

Tracey Thurman of Connecticut is first woman to win a civil suit as a battered wife. Tracey Thurman wins her suit against a Connecticut police department for negligence and violation of her civil rights. Her husband receives a 15-year sentence for attacking her, stabbing her and repeatedly kicking her in the head during 1983.

New York Asian Women's Center is formed. It sponsors programs to combat violence against Asian women.

The National Assault Prevention Center is formed by Sally Cooper, which helps children deal with different forms of abuse.

In Seattle, the first support group for battered lesbians is started.

In California, AB 573 (Klehs) passes. It requires law enforcement officers responding to domestic violence calls to give the survivor a written notice with the telephone number of the local shelters, community services and information on criminal and civil legal options.

In California, SB 1058 (Lockyer) is passed creating mandatory jail time of at least 48 hours for persons who violate domestic violence restraining orders.

Wilma Mankiller becomes first woman installed as principal chief of a major Native American tribe, the Cherokee in Oklahoma. Wilma Mankiller became the first woman to hold the position of Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. During her tenure, Mankiller focused on community development projects and improved negotiations with the U.S. federal government.

In England, the Children’s Society, the first refuge is opened for runaways. After 20+ years of campaigning, the government in 2008 set out plans to improve work with the estimated 100,000 under-16s who run away from home or care each year.

The U.S. Supreme Court rules, in Burlington School Committee v. Department of Education, that schools must pay the expenses of disabled children enrolled in private programs during litigation under the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, if the courts rule such placement is needed to provide the child with an appropriate education in the least restrictive environment.

New Jersey v. T.L.O. (U.S. Supreme Court case on the privacy rights of public school students).

In England’s House of Lords, Gillick competence ruling in the case Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech Area Health Authority, which sought to decide in medical law whether a child is able to consent to his or her own medical treatment, without the need for parental permission or knowledge. A child is defined as 16 years or younger. The ruling, which applies in England and Wales (but not in Scotland), is significant in that it is broader in scope than merely medical consent. It lays down that the authority of parents to make decisions for their minor children is not absolute, but diminishes with the child's evolving maturity; except in situations that are regulated otherwise by statute, the right to make a decision on any particular matter concerning the child shifts from the parent to the child when the child reaches sufficient maturity to be capable of making up his or her own mind on the matter requiring decision.

The U.S. Supreme Court rules, City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, that localities cannot use zoning laws to prohibit group homes for people with developmental disabilities from opening in a residential area solely because its residents are disabled.

Gini Laurie founds the International Polio Network, based in St. Louis, Missouri, and begins advocating for recognition of post-polio syndrome.

Second Step Players began. It is the oldest peer run theater group in the United States. Second Step Players is a theater troupe that writes and performs original comedy and drama about the experience of being labeled with a mental health problem. Seeking to promote recovery and community change through creativity and art, the troupe performs 20 shows per year.

Rappaport in a keynote address to the third annual meeting of the New York City Self-Help Clearinghouse defined empowerment.

Establishment of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists

Mind/World Federation for Mental Health Congress in Brighton – the first time UK survivors met groups of activists from other countries.

Jack Bucher

Collaborative Support Programs of New Jersey (CSPNJ), directed by Jack Bucher, began providing peer delivered and managed services.

CSPNJ received funding from the NJ Division of Mental Health and Hospitals to fund three Consumer-run Drop-In Centers.

Protest at the Philadelphia Housing Authority to get them to change discriminatory policy related to CSX folks having to have a note from their psychiatrist to be granted housing. Joe Rogers, Susan Rogers, Glenda Fine, Alicia Christian and Lauren Tenney “chained ourselves to their front door and driveway gate.”

“Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals.” San Francisco: Harper and Row, Teish, Luisah

“Snowblind.” London. by Cherry Smith.

“Born a Number.” London. by Len Harding.

“Thinking in Pictures, and Other Reports from My Life with Autism,” by Temple Grandin.

ICASA (Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault) receives one-time grant from the Illinois Department of Public Aid for counseling services, and was granted its first allocation of state General Revenue Funds.

1986

The Immigration Reform and Control Act (PL 99-603) provides temporary resident status for undocumented workers who have continuously resided in the United States since before January 1, 1982. The act allows them to become permanent residents after an additional 18-month period. Provisions make it unlawful for any person to knowingly employ undocumented workers. The objectives of the act are to decrease the number of illegal aliens as current residents, regain control of U.S. borders, and increase the number of legal migrant workers.

The State Mental Health Planning Act of 1986, Public Law 99-660 (The Healthcare Quality Improvement Act of 1986), and continuing through Public Law 101-639 (1990), Public Law 102-321 (1992), and Public Law 106-310 (2000), where the federal government mandated mental health planning as a condition for receipt of federal mental health block grant funds and mandated participation by stakeholder groups, including people living with mental illness and their families, in the planning process. P.L. 99-660 also mandated, “the provision of case management services to each chronically mentally ill individual in the states who receives substantial amounts of public funds or services.” This established case management as a distinct benefit under Medicaid. Medicaid amendments improved mental health coverage of community mental health services, added rehabilitative services, and expanded clinical services to the homeless. The State Mental Health Planning Act of 1986 also requires stakeholder involvement in the State Block Grant program.

The Tax Reform Act (PL 99-514) reduces and consolidates tax brackets into two basic rates: (1) 15 percent and (2) 28 percent. The law increases the standard deduction for all taxpayers, with the largest increases for heads of households, single parents, and others who maintain households for dependent children. The Earned Income Tax Credit provision significantly increases the credit and raises the income levels at which the credit begins to be reduced and eliminated.

NASW establishes the National Center for Social Policy and Practice to analyze practice data and make recommendations on social policy, including information, policy, and education services.

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act (PL 99-570) creates the Office for Substance Abuse Prevention in the

Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration. It also includes funding for a White House Conference for a Drug-Free America in fiscal year 1988 and authorizes funding of $450 million over three years to develop drug education and prevention programs through a new Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act.

Education of the Handicapped Act Amendments of 1986 - Authorized a new grant program for states to develop an early intervention system for infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families, and provide greater incentives for states to provide preschool programs for children with disabilities between the ages of three and five. The Education of the Handicapped Act Amendments (PL 99-457) establish a new federal discretionary program to assist states to develop and implement early intervention services for handicapped infants and toddlers (birth through age two) and their families. Seven criteria for 11 early intervention services" include provisions for qualified personnel, including social workers, and individualized family service plans; the states must serve all children.

Handicapped Children's Protection Act of 1986 - Authorizes courts to award reasonable attorneys fees to parents who prevail in due process proceedings and court actions under Part B of the Education of the Handicapped Act.

Employment Opportunities for Disabled Americans Act of 1986 - Made the Section 1619(a) and 1619(b) work incentives a permanent feature of the Social Security Act; added provisions to enable individuals to move back and forth among regular SSI, Section 1619(a) and Section 1619(b) eligibility status. The Employment Opportunities for Disabled Americans Act is passed, allowing recipients of Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance to retain benefits, particularly medical coverage, even after they obtain work. The act is intended to remove the disincentives that keep disabled people unemployed. A major feature of this act was that it authorized the state rehabilitation agencies to provide supported employment services to individuals with severe disabilities who could not traditionally be placed in competitive employment. It accordingly deemphasized the traditional model of long-term placement in extended sheltered workshops. The act also mandated increased use of rehabilitation engineering services and client assistance programs. Like the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, it increased the focus on services to the most severely disabled consumers.

Education of the Deaf Act of 1986 - Updated statute establishing Gallaudet College and changed name to Gallaudet University; authorized Gallaudet University to operate demonstration elementary and secondary schools for deaf children; established Commission on Education of the Deaf.

Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1986 - “Severe disability” definition expanded to include functional (as well as categorical) criteria; defined “employability” for first time; added formula grant program for supported employment; renamed research branch the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1986 defined supported employment as a “legitimate rehabilitation outcome.”

Air Carrier Access Act of 1986 - Prohibited disability discrimination in provision of air transportation. The Air Carrier Access Act is passed, prohibiting airlines from refusing to serve people simply because they are disabled, and from charging them more for airfare than non-disabled travelers.

Madness Network News ceases publication

Protection and Advocacy for Mentally Ill Individuals Act of 1986 - Authorized formula grant program for statewide advocacy services for person with mental illness, provided directly by, or under contract with, the protection and advocacy system for persons with developmental disabilities. Following numerous reports of abuse and neglect in state psychiatric hospitals and inadequate safeguards of patient rights, Congress passed the Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness (PAIMI) Act of 1986 (P.L. 99-319; 42 U.S.C. 10801 et seq). This Act was modeled after the DD (Developmentally Disabled) Act and extended similar protections to persons with mental illness who reside in facilities. The Act was designed to set up protection and advocacy agencies for people who were in-patients or residents of mental health facilities.

The National Council on the Handicapped issues “Toward Independence”, a report outlining the legal status of Americans with disabilities, documenting the existence of discrimination and citing the need for federal civil rights legislation (what will eventually be passed as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990).

Concrete Change, a grassroots organization advocating for accessible housing, is organized in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Society for Disability Studies is founded.

Advocacy groups band together to form the (NARSAD) National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression. In pursuit of improved treatments and cures for schizophrenia and depression, it will become the largest non-government, donor-supported organization that distributes funds for brain disorder research.

Pat Risser

The first group of psychiatric survivor/consumers trained to work for the mental health system as professionals helping their peers were trained in Denver, Colorado as Consumer Case Manager Aides (CCMA's)(Pat Risser). These “peer providers” were the first to provide services that were billable to Medicaid under the Medicaid Rehabilitation Option Waiver in effect for Colorado.

Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, the Supreme Court finds that sexual harassment is a form of illegal job discrimination. The Supreme Court rules that sexual harassment in the workplace is tantamount to sexual discrimination and, thus, illegal.

The San Francisco Asian Women's Shelter Project conducts a survey of 33 Bay Area social service agencies. They find that 800 battered Asian women sought help that year, representing 0.2% of the 400,000 Asian women living in the Bay Area.

The New York Times is the last among major dailies to allow use of "Ms." as a title.

Amy Eilberg is the first woman ordained as a rabbi by the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly.

About 25% of scientists are now female, but they are still less likely than men to be full professors or on a tenure track in teaching. Only 3.5% of the National Academy of Sciences members are female (51 members); since the academy's 1863 founding, only 60 women have been elected.

Federal Analogue Act created a new legal definition of “analog” and placed analogs of a controlled substance into the same schedule as that substance.

The American Medical Society on Alcoholism and Other Drug Dependence is formed. Its creation is the result of efforts to combine several professional medical organizations under the auspices of a single entity for physicians interested in chemical dependency.

ADAMHA adds the Office for Substance Abuse Prevention.

Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 increased sentences and re-imposed mandatory minimums. Judges are required to impose minimum sentences based on the type and quantity of drug involved.

Nancy Reagan introduces her “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign and the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention (OSAP) was created.

The Children's Justice and Assistance Act of 1986 (CJA; Public Law 99-401) offers grants to states to improve the investigation and prosecution of cases of child abuse and neglect, especially sexual abuse and exploitation. The program aims to reduce additional trauma to the child by training persons who are involved in child maltreatment cases, such as law enforcement, mental health personnel, prosecutors, and judges. CJA also supports legislation that would allow indirect testimony from children, shorten the time spent in court, and make their courtroom experience less intimidating.

36,000 teens admitted in psychiatric hospitals many as a reaction to report of child sexual abuse for treatment - on an involuntary status.

A 2-day scientific seminar, which was held to honor the 40th anniversary of the National Mental Health Act, took place in Washington, D.C. It was sponsored by the organizing committee for the 40th anniversary commemoration and the MacArthur Foundation.

Second Annual “Alternatives” conference in Cincinnati, Ohio sponsored by W.E. C.A.R.E. Network. Theme: Unlocking Our Future.

Incorporation of the originating nonprofit project Support Coalition International, that evolved into MindFreedom with start-up funding from Levinson Foundation. The goal is to publish a newsletter, Dendron, and provide a “Clearinghouse on Human Rights and Psychiatry,” to help network mental health consumers, psychiatric survivors, and supporters. Founded by David Oaks and Janet Foner.

A 1986 report on developments in the United States noted that "there are now three national organizations ... The ‘conservatives’ have created the National Mental Health Consumers' Association ... The ‘moderates’ have formed the National Alliance of Mental Patients ... The ‘radical’ group is called the Network to Abolish Psychiatry". Many, however, felt that they had survived the psychiatric system and its "treatments" and resented being called consumers. The National Association of Mental Patients in the United States became the National Association of Psychiatric Survivors.

Dan Fisher, NEC

National Empowerment Center and National Mental Health Consumers' Clearinghouse receive funding from National Institute of Mental Health Community Support Program (CSP).

CONTAC, in West Virginia, third consumer run technical assistance center by NIMH, headed by Larry Belcher and Kathy Muscari.

Howie The Harp

Howie The Harp founds the Oakland Independence Support Center (OISC) on July 4th. OISC is a client-run tenant support team at a single room occupancy hotel for psychiatrically labeled people in Oakland. (580 - 18th Street, Oakland, California 94612). Howie told a friend that this was the culmination of his dream to create a client-run, multi-purpose center that would serve both the mentally disabled and homeless. Described in 2006 as "a self-help, client run organization for the mentally disabled homeless to assist themselves and support each other in the pursuit of autonomy and independence."

CSPNJ supported the development of the coalition of Mental Health Consumers Organizations (COMHCO), which advocates on behalf of mental health consumers to enhance and strengthen services provided by the Division of Mental Health Services. After considerable deliberations the Board decided in the end of 1986 to restructure the organization and give control to consumers. The newly consumer controlled board altered the bylaws and CSPNJ became a statewide consumer run provider agency that would act as an umbrella for consumer service initiatives throughout New Jersey. CSPNJ currently operates 22 Self-help Centers, Supportive Housing Services, a R & W Training Institute, financial support services, property management and partnerships with the NJ Division of Mental Health Services in providing a growing # of peer delivered services within state psychiatric hospitals.

Survivors Speak Out formed - the first national UK networking & campaigning group.

National Voices Forum established.

Virginia enacts “Virginians with Disabilities Act”

Women plus Duane French win Election at NCIL

In England, the Child Migrants Scandal was where social worker Margaret Humphreys' received a letter from a woman in Australia who had been sent on a boat from the UK to a children's home in Australia, age four, and wanted help in tracing her parents in Britain. Humphrey’s subsequent research exposed the abuses of private emigration societies operating under the 1891 Custody of Children Act - a key subtext of which was the aim of supplying Commonwealth countries with sufficient "white stock" particularly in relation to Australia. A Department of Health Report shows that at least 150,000 children aged between 3 and 14 were sent to Commonwealth countries, in a programme that did not end until 1967. The children – the majority of whom were already in some form of social or charitable care – were cut off from their families and even falsely informed that they were orphans. Most were sent with the promise of a better life – but the reality was often very different, with many facing abuse and a regime of unpaid labour. A number of organisations, including Fairbridge, Barnardo's, the Salvation Army, the Children's Society and some Catholic groups, were involved in sending children abroad.

Nottingham Patients Council Support Group, which became Nottingham Advocacy Group (NAG).

In England, in Wales at Bryn Estyn, although Care workers in Clwyd had been convicted of sex abuse as long ago as 1976, with allegations and investigations in Gwynedd in the 1980s, the scandal was only exposed after Alison Taylor, a children's home head in Gwynedd, pressed her concerns at the highest levels. During police investigations into Ms Taylor's concerns in 1986-87, the authorities constructed a "wall of disbelief" from the outset. An inquiry ordered by the Home Secretary in 1996 into quality of care and standards of education, found both to be below acceptable levels in all the homes investigated.

“Plaintext: Essays,” by Nancy Mairs.

“The Life of a Real Girl,” by Johanna Garfield.

Showing on national TV of “We're Not Mad, We're Angry,” a program made by survivors.

Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault ICASA received its first allocation of federal VOCA funds from the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. Rape crisis centers hired full-time advocates and established specialized counseling services for children.

1987

Developmental Disabilities and Bill of Rights Act Amendments of 1987 - Raised minimum allotment levels for basic state grant program and protection and advocacy systems; increased minimum allotment for university-affiliated programs, basic state grant program, and protection and advocacy systems.

The Social Work Dictionary (1st edition), the first compilation of terms related to social work, is published by NASW.

The Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act (PL 100-77) establishes the Interagency Council on Homeless to use public resources and programs in a more coordinated manner and to provide funds to assist homeless people, especially elderly people, people with disabilities, families with children, Native Americans, and veterans.

The Alliance for Technology Access is founded in California by the Disabled Children's Computer Group and the Apple Computer Office of Special Education.

Marlee Matlin wins an Oscar for her performance in Children of a Lesser God. She is the youngest woman and the only deaf actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, which she won at age 21.

Responding to the National Women's History Project, the U.S. Congress declares March to be National Women's History Month.

The Feminist Majority Foundation is founded by Ellie Smeal to help female candidates win public offices.

Medicare adds to outpatient mental health benefit but retains large patient copayments and cost sharing.

The AXIS Dance Troupe is founded in Oakland, California.

The DisAbled Women's Network (DAWN) is founded in Winnipeg, Canada.

The US. Supreme Court, in School Board of Nassau County, Fla. v. Arline, outlines the rights of people with contagious disease under Title V of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. It establishes that people with infectious; diseases cannot be fired from their jobs “because of prejudiced attitude or ignorance of others.” This ruling is a landmark precedent for people with tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and other infectious diseases or disabilities, and for people, such as individuals with cancer or epilepsy, who are discriminated against because others fear they may be contagious.

Gini Laurie founded the International Ventilator Users Network (IVUN).

The Association of Late Deafened Adults (ALDA) is founded in Chicago.

On October 1 administrative control of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital was transferred from the NIMH to the District of Columbia. NIMH retained research facilities on the grounds of the hospital.

Justin Dart, Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration, was forced to resign after he testified to Congress that, “an inflexible federal system, like the society it represents, still contains a significant portion of individuals who have not yet overcome obsolete, paternalistic attitudes toward disability…”

Courtenay Harding

The Vermont longitudinal study of persons with severe mental illness, II: Long-term outcome of subjects who retrospectively met DSM- III criteria for schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 144, 727-735. by Harding, C., Brooks, G., Ashikaga, T., Strauss, J., and Breier, A.

Tardive dyskinesia is linked to worsening of negative symptoms, gait difficulties, speech impairment, psychosocial deterioration, and memory deficits. They conclude it may be both a “motor and dementing disorder”.

In 1987 the DSM-III-R was published as a revision of DSM-III, under the direction of Robert Spitzer. Categories were renamed, reorganized, and significant changes in criteria were made. Six categories were deleted while others were added. Controversial diagnoses such as pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder and masochistic personality disorder were considered and discarded. "Sexual orientation disturbance" was also removed and was largely subsumed under "sexual disorder not otherwise specified" which can include "persistent and marked distress about one’s sexual orientation.” Altogether, DSM-III-R contained 292 diagnoses and was 567 pages long. Further efforts were made for the diagnoses to be purely descriptive, although the introductory text stated that for at least some disorders, "particularly the Personality Disorders, the criteria require much more inference on the part of the observer" (p. xxiii). Hundreds of thousands of copies were sold at eighty-three dollars each.

DSM-III-Revised deletes the diagnosis of homosexuality entirely, leaving the paraphilias and sexual dysfunctions as the two main classes of “sexual disorders.” With the release of the DSM-III-R the game of hiding psychiatric homophobia behind new names continues. Discomfort about one’s sexual orientation now appears under the general category of “Other Sexual Disorders.” Such discomfort also figures as a symptom of “borderline personality disorder,” as does engaging in casual sex – even though casual sex is a widely accepted practice in the gay community. "Sexual orientation disturbance" was also removed and was largely subsumed under "sexual disorder not otherwise specified" which can include "persistent and marked distress about one’s sexual orientation.”

Eli Lilly introduces Prozac. Within 20 years antidepressants become the most commonly prescribed class of drug in the U.S. Fluoxetine (trade name Prozac), the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant was released, quickly becoming the most prescribed.

The serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) fluoxetine (Prozac ®), paroxetine (Paxil ®), and sertraline (Zoloft ®) are developed by several American pharmaceutical companies to treat depression.

A movement began to include the parents of children diagnosed as Seriously Emotionally Disturbed (SED) in policy and program planning in an effort to add a family prospective to children’s mental health services. Studies were initiated and mental health professionals began to explore the role of families in the care of their children with emotional or behavioral disorders.

Sue Osthoff and Barbara Hart, in Philadelphia, establish the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women.

In California, AB 1599 (Speier) allows emergency protective orders to be issued when a court is not in session. AB 224 (Speier) of 1993 extends the duration of the emergency protective orders from 2 to 5 court days.

Third Annual “Alternatives” conference in Huntington, West Virginia hosted by the WV Mental Health Consumers’ Association Supporting the Grass Roots Self-Help Movement.

On December 7, 1987, a press conference was held to announce the closure of the Philadelphia State Hospital. The hospital officially closed in June of 1990. Joseph Rogers was a key member of the Coalition for the Responsible Closing of Philadelphia State Hospital, which worked successfully to get the state hospital dollars to follow the patients into the community, establishing a model system of community-based services.

First lawsuit against a shock machine manufacturer.

SCCORE (Statewide Consumers of Colorado On the Rise for Empowerment) founded by Pat Risser.

Dendron News by Support Coalition International first published (David Oaks, ed.) in January.

Texas Network of Mental Health Consumers (now Texas Mental Health Consumers (TMHC)) was created.

Pennsylvania Mental Health Consumers' Association (PMHCA) was established.

The Edale Conference, organized by Survivors Speak Out, which produced a charter of needs and demands that became a campaigning tool.

INTERVOICE is formed and has grown into an international network with 14 participating countries.

“The Charlston Morbidity Scale” is published. Charlson ME, Pompei P, Ales KL, McKenzie CR (1987). A new method of classifying prognostic comorbidity in longitudinal studies: development and validation. J Chron Dis, 40(5): 373-383.

“Dr. Caligari's Psychiatric Drugs,” Berkeley, CA: Network Against Psychiatric Assault. Richman, D., Frank, L., & Mandler, A

“Saying ‘No’ to Psychiatry.” Progressive, 51, 17-17. Schultz, M.

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May 28, 1987 | News & Features | Our Town | Chicago

Saying No To Psychiatry

By Robert McClory

The American Psychiatric Association's 140th annual meeting May 9-14 was an impressive event and it came off without a hitch -- almost. Here were thousands of the nation's most successful psychiatrists and psychologists milling around in the great halls at McCormick Place, checking their schedules so as not to miss the best lectures, symposia, workshops, and discussion groups. In scores of meeting rooms the dedicated professional could learn the answer to questions like "Do Insanity Defendants Malinger?" or "Why Do Women Use More Services?" and "Can We Avoid Tardive Dyskinesia With Novel Neuroleptic Agents?"

For a break they could watch a movie like The Haight-Ashbury Cocaine Film or Janis Joplin: The Portrait of a Ripoff. Or they could wander through the endless expanse of exhibits featuring the offerings of everyone from Abbott Laboratories and the American Desk Manufacturing Company to the United States Air Force.

But this year the meeting was affected a bit by a band of mischievous agitators who made their presence known in embarrassing ways. On the third day of the meeting, some 40 picketers marched outside McCormick Place with banners that read, "Hey, Hey, APA! How Many People Did You Drug Today?" and "We'd Rather Be Mad With the Truth Than Sane With Lies!" Meanwhile a plane cruised overhead trailing the simple, straightforward message, "Psychiatry Kills."

A similar idea was driven home by the dissidents who attended the meeting itself and even participated in panel discussions and workshops. At one session a barefoot young woman, who was clearly not a psychiatrist, wore a sweatshirt on the back of which was written, "Psychiatry Sucks!"

Psychiatry, of course, has always had its critics. In recent years some of these have joined together in patient support, advocacy, and self-help groups. The largest of these is the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, which has more than 30,000 members in 600 chapters across the country. There is also the National Mental Health Consumers Association, a smaller group composed entirely of former psychiatric patients.

However, the high jinks at McCormick Place were produced and directed by neither of these respectable, fairly soft-spoken organizations. They were the work of a newer, louder, and far more aggressive aggregation of activists called the National Alliance of Mental Patients (NAMP), which exists on the far left wing of patient advocacy and claims fewer than 2,000 members. "But we're growing fast," said the founder, Judi Chamberlin, "and we are going to be heard!"

NAMP describes itself as "a grass-roots organization devoted to promoting the human and civil rights of people who have been psychiatrically labeled, with special attention to the right to refuse any unwanted psychiatric intervention." In other words, if a mental patient doesn't want help, it should not be forced on him.

It isn't that NAMP members are contrary as well as crazy, said Chamberlin. Rather, it is their contention that psychiatry's infatuation with drugs, its routine reliance on forced confinement, and its pretensions of omniscience are dangerous and destructive.

Chamberlin, a bright, outgoing woman from Massachusetts, has written a book called On Our Own about her experience in recovering from a psychiatric episode. At the APA meeting she sat at a table outside the room where a debate between psychiatrists and expatients was about to begin and handed out leaflets. "We're not saying we have the answer," she explained. "We're only saying psychiatry doesn't either. The medical model -- the treatment of symptoms with strong drugs -- is one way of handling people's problems. But at what a price!"

Long-term use of antipsychotic medicines, she argued, creates side effects more alarming than the original condition for which they were prescribed. Patients are coming to realize this, she said, and they are beginning to demand their rights not to be forcibly transformed into zombies.

Indeed, the use of so-called psychotropic drugs such as Thorazine (discovered only 35 years ago) has caused the population of U.S. mental hospitals to plummet -- from 550,000 in the mid-1950s to 138,000 today. By calming patients, the drugs made possible the great deinstitutionalization movement --quick treatment and early release of hordes of mental patients to their families or into the halfway houses of big cities, where they exist in various states of drugged numbness.

It is true that no one really understands what these drugs do to people over the long haul. For that matter, psychiatrists admit they don't understand how or why they do what they do over the short haul. Some of the papers presented at the APA meeting dealt with the ambiguities of drug use. In fact, the above-mentioned (and much discussed) "tardive dyskinesia" is a highfalutin name for the debilitating effects of antipsychotic medication. And a new, ominous, sometimes fatal illness called "neuroleptic malignant syndrome" -- apparently a result of prolonged drug treatment -- is just beginning to arouse the attention of the psychiatric community.

Another NAMP leader, Wendy Kapp, a former Chicagoan, said the organization regards all forms of forced treatment, drug or otherwise, as unjust "social control." Every year, she said, thousands are confined to mental institutions and subjected to involuntary treatment. "They are held in isolation and restraint, and given electroshock. We believe that such intervention against one's will is not a form of treatment, but a violation of liberty and the right to control one's own body and mind."

The psychiatrist-patient debate, attended by only about 60 interested professionals, shed more heat than light. Jeanne Matoulis, an NAMP advocate who was confined as a teenager in the Elgin State Mental Hospital, described her treatment by a psychiatrist after she refused to mop the floor. "He threw me down on the floor in my hospital gown, put his foot on my stomach, and mopped the floor with me!"

Since the combination of drugs and confinement is so intolerable, she said, she could understand why some disturbed persons would commit crimes -- in hopes of being sent to prison rather than to a mental institution.

NAMP says the reasonable alternative to today's all-pervasive medical model of treatment is the development of community-based self-help approaches that do not rely on drugs or compulsion. "What we need," said Matoulis, "are real services -- benefits counseling, assistance in housing, jobs, and education. If the services are good, people will take advantage of them. . . . We may be crazy but we're not stupid!"

Entirely too simplistic and naive an approach, countered her debate opponent, Dr. Lee Beecher, president of the Minnesota Psychiatric Association. The best possible services may be offered the mentally ill, he said, and the patients still won't come. They need more than an invitation, he said; they need drugs and compulsory treatment.

At that point the niceties of the debate were momentarily suspended when a young man with shoulder-length blond hair rose from his seat in the back of the room. Like Beowulf confronting Grendel, he looked the monster straight in the face.

"I will never take your medicines again, doctors, never!" he shouted. "I was on 1,800 milligrams of Thorazine a day for a year and a half. I got so depressed I couldn't walk or talk. Well, I broke away and I have never felt better in my life!"

His voice was rising and he was moving somewhat menacingly toward the front. "You'll have to leave," said a man, twitching nervously in his chair.

"No, don't leave. Stay!" said another man who later identified himself as a patients' advocate.

"All right," said the young man, suddenly calm, "I'll leave but I will not take your drugs -- ever!" He went to the back of the room but he did not leave. He sat in a chair and seethed.

With a measure of order restored, another psychiatrist and another ex-patient faced off at the microphone, but they could have been speaking in unknown tongues; their arguments did not come within a mile of one another. At the end the listeners filed out, looking somewhat frustrated. The outburst had not been a NAMP caper; it had unquestionably been spontaneous and sincere. And so, on the one hand, it provided evidence of how easily unstable people can get out of control -- especially when they quit their medicine. On the other hand, it was impossible to ignore the man's agonized testimony, almost a primal scream: please stop -- your drugs are killing us!

The point was reiterated in a long poem, copies of which NAMP members were handing out after the debate to the few passersby who seemed interested. "To be a mental patient," it read in part, "is to live on $82 a month in food stamps, which won't let you buy Kleenex to dry your tears. And to watch your shrink come back to his office from lunch, driving a Mercedes-Benz.

"To be a mental patient is to take drugs that dull your mind, deaden your senses, make you jitter and drool, and then you take more drugs to lessen the 'side effects.' . . .

"To be a mental patient is not to die -- even if you want to -- and not to cry, and not hurt, and not be seared, and not be angry, and not be vulnerable, and not laugh too loud -- because, if you do, you only prove that you are a mental patient. . . . And so you become a no-thing, in a no-world, and you are not."

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“Reaching Across: Mental health clients helping each other” (2nd ed.). California: California Network of Mental Health Clients. Sally Zinman, Howie the Harp, Su Budd, eds., 1987

“When Rabbit Howls: The Troops for Trudi Chase,” by Trudi Chase (introduction and epilogue by R. A. Phillips).

“Welcome Silence: My Triumph over Schizophrenia,” by Carol S. North.

“Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke,” by Patty Duke (with K. Turan).

The American Neuropsychiatric Association was founded.

The Indian Mental Health Act was drafted by the parliament, but it came into effect in all the states and union territories of India in April 1993. This act replaced the Indian Lunacy Act of 1912, which had earlier replaced the Indian Lunatic Asylum act of 1858.

AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is an international direct action advocacy group working to impact the lives of people with AIDS (PWAs) and the AIDS pandemic to bring about legislation, medical research and treatment and policies to ultimately bring an end to the disease by mitigating loss of health and lives. ACT UP was effectively formed in March 1987 at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York. Larry Kramer was asked to speak as part of a rotating speaker series, and his well-attended speech focused on action to fight AIDS. Kramer spoke out against the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), which he perceived as politically impotent. Kramer had co-founded the GMHC but had resigned from its board of directors in 1983. According to Douglas Crimp, Kramer posed a question to the audience: "Do we want to start a new organization devoted to political action?" The answer was "a resounding yes." Approximately 300 people met two days later to form ACT UP.

On Oct. 11, 1987, half a million people participated in the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. It was the second such demonstration in our nation’s capital and resulted in the founding of a number of LGBT organizations, including the National Latino/a Gay & Lesbian Organization (LLEGÓ) and AT&T’s LGBT employee group, LEAGUE. The momentum continued four months after this extraordinary march as more than 100 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists from around the country gathered in Manassas, Va., about 25 miles outside Washington, D.C. Recognizing that the LGBT community often reacted defensively to anti-gay actions, they came up with the idea of a national day to celebrate coming out and chose the anniversary of that second march on Washington to mark it. The originators of the idea were Rob Eichberg, a founder of the personal growth workshop, The Experience, and Jean O'Leary, then head of National Gay Rights Advocates. From this idea the National Coming Out Day was born.

1988

The concept of behavioral health managed care evolved from theory to practice. Massachusetts was the first state that utilized a managed care platform regarding service of its behavioral healthcare needs. The state “carved out” mental health from physical healthcare and awarded the contract for management of the mental health benefits to a private company whose responsibilities included service authorization, utilization, quality management, a provider network, claims processing and interagency coordination. The managed care platform was based on efficiency and effectiveness, and sought to take advantage of emerging technologies. However, capturing the cost savings proved to be a difficult task as managed care programs spread throughout different states. Population disparities in the rural and urban areas, unfulfilled technological promises, decreasing social service budgets in the states, and erosion in the areas of access and quality had a lasting effect on managed care systems

Students at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., organize a week-long shut-down and occupation of their campus to demand selection of a deaf president after the Gallaudet Board of Trustees appoints a non-deaf person as president of the university. On March 13, the Gallaudet administration announces that Dr. I. King Jordan will be the university's first deaf president.

Toward Equality: Education of the Deaf - Congressional Report published - "Toward Equality: Education of the Deaf." Report recommends that ASL be used as a primary medium of language instruction with English as a second language. Also recommends that ASL be included in the Bilingual Education Act. Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) investigates the possibility of adding ASL and Deaf children to the Bilingual Education Act, but again it is not approved because of the status of hearing parents and questions regarding ASL as a foreign language.

ASL and Deaf Education Signing Naturally Curriculum published, written and produced by Deaf authors Ella Mae Lentz and Ken Mikos.

"Unlocking the Curriculum" published by the Gallaudet University Linguistics Department. This proposes a return to ASL as the first method of instruction for Deaf children. It refutes the Manually Coded English approaches, using speech and sign.

Deaf Life begins monthly publication in Rochester, New York.

The Organization of American States (OAS) adopts the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the area of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (Protocol of San Salvador) (article 18). This treaty specifically says that persons with disabilities are entitled to receive special attention in order to achieve the greatest possible development of his or her personality. It also obliges governments to implement special measures to facilitate the full integration of persons with disabilities.

Rev. Barbara Harris, an African-American, becomes the first female bishop of the Episcopal Church.

Technology-Related Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities Act of 1988 - Provided grants to states to develop statewide assistive technology programs. The Technology-Related Assistance Act for Individuals with Disabilities (the “Tech Act”) is passed, authorizing federal funding to state projects designed to facilitate access to assistive technology. The Act authorized federal funds to states to plan and develop consumer-responsive assistance for individuals with functional deficits or disabilities.

The National Council on the Handicapped issues On the Threshold of Independence and a first draft of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which is introduced into Congress by Rep. Tony Coelho and into the Senate by Sen. Lowell Weicker. The Congressional Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities is created by Rep. Major R. Owens and co-chaired by Justin Dart Jr. and Elizabeth Boggs. The task force begins building grassroots; support for passage of the ADA.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Honig v. Doe, affirms the “stay put rule” established under the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, under which school authorities cannot expel or suspend or otherwise move disabled children from the setting agreed upon under the child's Individualized Education Program (IEP) without a due process hearing.

The National Parent Network on Disabilities is established as an umbrella organization for the Parent Training and Information Centers.

Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) protested inaccessible Greyhound buses.

American Psychological Society established.

The original version of the American's with Disabilities Act (ADA) is introduced to Congress. After that, the bill went through numerous drafts, revisions, negotiations, and amendments. All over the U.S., disability advocates began working to educate and organize the disability community, and to collect evidence demonstrating the need for a strong anti-discrimination law. A national campaign encouraged disabled people to write "discrimination diaries," to describe their daily encounters with biases and barriers. The diaries testified to the widespread discrimination experienced by people with all kinds of disabilities, in all spheres of life. It was redrafted and reintroduced in Congress later. Disability organizations and activists across the country advocated on its behalf (Patrisha Wright, Marilyn Golden, Liz Savage, Justin Dart, and Elizabeth Monroe Boggs, among others).

The Congressional Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities was created by Rep. Major R. Owens, with Justin Dart and Elizabeth Monroe Boggs as co-chairs. The Task Force began building grassroots support for passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The Task Force held public hearings in every state in the nation. Thousands of disabled people and their friends and family members gave testimony, providing a massive amount of evidence showing injustice and discrimination impacting their lives.

Civil Rights Restoration Act: counteracts bad case law by clarifying Congress' original intention that under the Rehabilitation Act, discrimination in ANY program or service that is a part of an entity receiving federal funding -- not just the part which actually and directly receives the funding -- is illegal. Congress overturns President Ronald Reagan's veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987. The act undoes the Supreme Court decision in Grove City College v. Bell and other decisions limiting the scope of federal civil rights law, including Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

The (American) Air Carrier Access Act was passed prohibiting airlines from refusing to serve people with disabilities and from charging people with disabilities more for airfare than non-disabled travelers. Air Carrier Access Act: prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in air travel and provides for equal access to air transportation services.

The U.S. Congress overturned President Ronald Reagan’s veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987.

President George H. Bush creates the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy to determine policies and priorities for the Nation's drug control programs.

Office of National Drug Control Policy created by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. The head of the ONDCP is the “drug czar”, a cabinet level position.

By 1988, Congress had added further stipulations and requirements to the block grant, to the point that the ADAMHA staff informally referred to it as a “blockagorical” grant, a combination of the block and categorical concepts. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 established the block grant set-aside, which could be used for technical assistance, data collection, and program evaluation. Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 replaced the term “recreational use” with “abuse” in the federal vocabulary. Strengthened ability to confiscate property in drug-related crimes. Re-instated the death penalty for traffickers.

Dietary Supplements Act broadened the definition of “dietary supplements” (as distinguished from “foods” and “drugs”) and significantly lessened FDA control over them.

Community Support Program (CSP) of the National Institute of Mental Health funds 13 local consumer-operated Services Demonstration Projects from 1988 - 1991.

Fourth Annual “Alternatives” conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah, sponsored by U-CAN-DU. The theme: Working Together. A national conference will consist of the largest group of mental health "consumers" to ever gather in Utah . . . voluntarily, according to Larry McCleery with a wry smile. McCleery is vice president of U-CAN-DU, a statewide umbrella organization of Utah mental health consumer groups.Utah will be host next week for Alternatives '88, a national conference designed to give impetus to the mental health self-help concept. More than 600 mental health "consumers" from around the country will attend. The message of the five-day conference, which will be held at the University of Utah Union Building, is that "on our own we can improve our quality of life," says McCleery. The conference will begin with a candlelight vigil Wednesday at 7 p.m. on the steps of the State Capitol "to protest the stigma" of mental illness. Thursday's agenda will include talks by representatives of national groups such as the National Mental Health Consumers Association and the National Alliance of Mental Patients. An improv-theater group from Los Angeles, Project Return Players - made up of mental health consumers - will perform Thursday evening. On Friday and Saturday, the conference will feature 10 workshops offering technical assistance for consumers who run their own self-help programs. Saturday's events will also include a keynote speech by Howard Geld, sometimes known as "Howie the Harp," who will talk about his experiences in the mental health system. There will also be a debate on "the right to refuse/-force treatment," and a barbecue and dance later in the evening.

At the NARPA conference in 1988, feminist author and scholar Kate Millett was the keynote speaker and, for the first time, publicly spoke of her incarcerations in mental hospitals in the U.S. and Ireland, and spoke poignantly and passionately of her own philosophical struggles with the current "medical model" of mental health treatment. Few knew then that Kate was at that time withdrawing from her dependence on lithium. She went on to write and publish "The Loony-Bin Trip,"(Simon and Schuster, 1990) and credited meeting others at the NARPA conference for helping in her recovery.

Coalescing around the ex-patient newsletter Dendron in late 1988 leaders from several of the main national and grassroots psychiatric survivor groups felt that an independent, human rights coalition focused on problems in the mental health system was needed. The Support Coalition International (SCI) was formed.

San Francisco historian and disability rights scholar Paul K. Longmore burned his first book, "The Invention of George Washington", on the steps of a federal building in 1988 to protest policies that discriminated against disabled Americans. He burned the book in protest of work disincentives, which stopped him from receiving payment as an author to keep his medical benefits. The Social Security Administration eventually revised its rules to allow disabled authors to count publishing royalties as earned income. The change became known as the "Longmore Amendment."

Approaching the 21st Century: Opportunities for NIMH Neuroscience Research, a report to Congress from the National Advisory Mental Health Council (NAMHC), was issued. The second of NAMHC’s reports to Congress, National Plan for Schizophrenia Research, was published.

The Family Support Act (PL 100-485) alters welfare provisions in critical ways. The act

includes provisions for improved child support enforcement; state-run education, training, and employment programs for recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children; and supportive services for families during and after participation in employment and training. The act also establishes the Job Opportunities in the Business Sector program. Other provisions include guaranteed child care, transitional benefits, and reimbursement for work-related expenses.

The Hunger Prevention Act (PL 100-435) expands the federal food stamp program and initiates state outreach, employment, and training programs.

The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (PL 96-272) requires states to offer prevention services before removing a child from a home.

The NASW Communications Network is established by Suzanne Dworak-Peck as an affiliate group to encourage socially conscious media programming and accurate portrayal of social issues and professional social work. The network uses a computerized network of several hundred social workers for technical medial assistance.

The Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act (PL 100-360) limits yearly out-of-pocket expenses for beneficiaries; adds a prescription drug benefit; extends hospice, respite, and home health benefits; adds a Medicaid buy-in provision; and offers some protection of a couple's assets for nursing home care. The act later is rescinded by Congress as a result of senior citizen protests about added premium requirements.

The Augustus F Hawkins/Robert T Stafford Elementary and Secondary School Improvement Amendments (PL 100-297) authorize funding for elementary and secondary education, including Chapter I - Financial Assistance; Chapter II - Federal; State & Local Partnership for Educational Improvement; dropout prevention; suicide prevention; and other programs. For the first time, use of pupil service personnel (including social workers and other professionals) is promoted and, in some cases, required.

The Civil Rights Restoration Act (PL 100-259) overturns the 1984 Supreme Court Grove City College a Bell decision and clarifies that four major civil rights laws pertaining to gender, disability age, and race must be interpreted to prohibit discrimination throughout entire organizations if any program received federal funds.

The (American) Fair Housing Act was amended to protect people with disabilities from housing discrimination in the areas of rentals, sales, and financing, as outlined in the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The amendment also provided that reasonable modifications had to be made to existing buildings and accessibility had to be constructed into new multi-family housing units. Fair Housing Act Amendments of 1988 - Added persons with disabilities as a group protected from discrimination in housing and ensures that persons with disabilities are allowed to adapt their dwelling place to meet their needs. Fair Housing Amendments Act: prohibits discrimination in housing against people with disabilities and families with children. Also provides for architectural accessibility of certain new housing units, renovation of existing units, and accessibility modifications at the renter's expense. The Fair Housing Amendments Act adds people with disabilities to those groups protected by federal fair housing legislation, and it establishes minimum standards of “adaptability” for newly constructed multiple-dwelling housing. The Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 expands on the Civil Rights Act of 1968 to require that a certain number of accessible housing units be created in all new multi-family housing. The act covers both public and private homes and not only those in receipt of federal funding.

NAMI forms a subgroup called the NAMI Client Council. Today it is called the NAMI Consumer Council. Same year Tom Posey of Montana was elected the first “consumer” to the NAMI board of directors at their annual conference in Boulder, Colorado.

In 1988 the Child Abuse Prevention, Adoption and Family Services Act (Public Law 100-294) replaced the original 1974 CAPTA, mandating, among other things, the establishment of a system to collect national data on child maltreatment.

The world started to pay attention to the issue of sexual abuse/assault of children and adults. A law is passed prohibiting polygraph examination of sexual assault victims and the Hearsay Exception is granted to child sexual assault victims under the age of 13.

First Office of Consumer Affairs in a state mental health agency, directed by David Hilton in New Hampshire.

The Mental Health Empowerment Project started doing business as Mental Health Recipient's Empowerment Project and later to the current name, Mental Health Empowerment Project.

CSPNJ developed the agency’s first supported housing plan and leased our first supportive house in Asbury Park on January 1, 1989.

Feminist author (Sexual Politics, 1970 and The Loony-Bin Trip, 1990) and scholar Kate Millett was a keynote speaker at Alternatives and, for the first time, publicly spoke of her incarcerations in mental hospitals in the U.S. and Ireland, and spoke poignantly and passionately of her own philosophical struggles with the current "medical model" of mental health treatment.

A study of 111 battered womens shelters in the U.S. finds that they rank funding issues as a "highest possible priority."

“Seaview Times of South Beach Psychiatric Center; Adolescent Unit.” Edited by the “Patients”.

“A Social History of Madness: The World through the Eyes of the Insane,” by Roy Porter.

“Recovery; The lived experience or rehabilitation.” Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal 11(4), p.11-19. Pat Deegan. "The person credited with starting the 'recovery' movement was Patricia Deegan, a mental health system survivor in the USA. Her article ... does not cite any previous work on recovery. She is arguing that existing models of rehabilitation do not allow for the complexity of the recovery process"

“Manufacturing Madness: How Psychiatric Institutions Drive You Insane.” Canadian Dimension, June 1988, 16-21. Weitz, Don.

“100 Years Of ‘Just Say No' Versus ‘Just Say Know',” Evaluation Review. 1988; 22(1):15-45 Beck, J.

“Getting Better: Inside Alcoholics Anonymous,” by N. Robertson.

“When the Spirits Come Back.” Toronto, by Janet O. Dallett.

The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis was published. It was "A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse".

“Keeping Secrets,” by S. Somers.

“Father Have I Kept My Promise? Madness as Seen from Within,” E. Weisskopf-Joelson (editor).

“Not Always on a Level. Cambridge,” by Moran E. J. Campbell,.

“Nervous Conditions.” London. Tsitsi Dangarembga.

Malcolm Forbes said schools are the way they are because of Russia and China. They use brainwashing techniques, emotional shock and desensitization, isolation from sources of support, stripping away of defenses, manipulation and cross-examination, These are not isolated by courses. It can be done on any assignment or when a child is asked to keep a diary or journal. China believed that if thinking were possible the few could think for the many.

1989

Appropriations legislation for fiscal year 1990 for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (PL 101-166) include requirements that the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) distribute clinical training funds equitably among five core mental health professions, increasing social work's share. Other provisions include encouraging scholarships for people with master of social work degrees to provide case management to people with AIDS, commending the NIMH Task Force on Social Work Research and Support for "services research:' and providing appropriations for research on rural mental health.

The federal appeals court, in ADAPT v. Skinner, rules that federal regulations requiring that transit authorities spend only 3 percent of their budgets on access are arbitrary and discriminatory.

The original version of the American with Disabilities Act, introduced into Congress the previous year, is redrafted and reintroduced. Disability organizations across the country advocate on its behalf with Patrisha Wright as “general” and Marilyn Golden, Liz Savage, Justin Dart Jr., and Elizabeth Boggs as principal coordinators of this effort.

The Center for Universal Design (originally the Center for Accessible Housing) is founded by Ronald Mace in Raleigh, North Carolina.

In Daniel R.R. v State Board of Education, 874 F.2d 1036 (5th Circuit Court 1989), the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that regular education placement is appropriate if a child with a disability can receive a satisfactory education, even if it is not the best academic setting for the child; non-academic benefits must also be considered. The Court stated that, "academic achievement is not the only purpose of mainstreaming. Integrating a handicapped child into a nonhandicapped environment may be beneficial in and of itself...even if the child cannot flourish academically." The Circuit Court developed a two-pronged test to determine if the district's actions were in compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): 1) Can education in the regular classroom with the use of supplemental aids and services be achieved satisfactorily? 2) If it cannot, has the school mainstreamed the child to the maximum extent appropriate?

Celia Brown

New York begins to employ significant numbers of Peer Specialists (Celia Brown)

The President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped is renamed the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities.

A new version of the Americans with Disabilities Act was introduced in 1989. From then on, the disability-rights movement mobilized to get the bill passed. This required the movement to convince members of Congress of two things: - that a disability-rights law was right and necessary in order to give equal protection to citizens with disabilities; and - that the disability community was an important, politically strong, and unified constituency, whose votes those members of Congress would have to earn. All kinds of disability groups joined in a "coalition" (a temporary alliance of different people or groups united for a common cause). Advocates for deaf people, blind people, mentally disabled people, disabled veterans, and people with AIDS were just a few of the diverse groups involved in campaigning for the ADA. They were joined by other civil rights, religious, labor and civic organizations. Unity was a very important aspect of this campaign. At one point, a senator proposed an amendment which would have allowed employers to discriminate against food handlers with HIV. AIDS advocacy groups warned that this would be a dangerous amendment, giving legitimacy to unfair prejudices against people with HIV. The other disability organizations joined with the AIDS groups in opposing this exemption -- even if it meant that the ADA would be defeated without that amendment. Similarly, amendments that would have weakened the requirements for transportation accessibility met firm opposition from all the groups, even those those members would not be directly affected by such a compromise. The coalition held firm against these challenges, and as it turned out, the Senate passed the ADA by a spectacular majority vote of 76 to 8.

The first serotonin dopamine antagonist was introduced for patients with treatment resistant/intolerant schizophrenia.

Resident patients in state and county hospitals in the U.S. drops below 100,000

Mouth: The Voice of Disability Rights began publication in Rochester, New York.

McAfee Chooses Life, Becomes Advocate. Larry McAfee is granted the right, by a Georgia court, to be given a sedative and be taken off a ventilator in order to end his life. He changes his mind and becomes a disability-rights advocate.

John Kane, an American psychiatrist, demonstrates that clozapine is efficacious in schizophrenic patients who are refractory to treatment with other antipsychotic drugs; the FDA approves the drug in 1989.

Psychiatrists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, give electroshock to people with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus, the virus commonly associated with AIDS), and publish an article in the June issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, recommending electroshock as a treatment for depression “caused by the virus,” seemingly unaware that it is natural for people facing a life-threatening illness to be depressed. For some unknown reason, the article mentions the sexual orientation of the “patients” so treated. Thomas Szasz responds in the December issue of Reason, pointing out that the psychiatric establishment is using AIDS to continue its assault on the lesbian and gay community.

Fifth Annual “Alternatives” conference in Columbia, South Carolina sponsored by SC SHARE. More than a thousand attendees passed a resolution demanding a ban on forced electroconvulsive treatment and calling for truly informed consent on ECT and creation of alternatives to ECT.

Congress passed a resolution and President Bush signed a proclamation establishing the 1990’s as the “Decade of the Brain.” NIMH continued its strong emphasis on its research into the basic functions of the brain and their relationship to mental illness.

Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1989 - Included major expansion in required services under Medicaid's Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment Program (EPSDT).

The NIMH Neuroscience Center and the NIMH Neuropsychiatric Research Hospital, located on the grounds of St. Elizabeths Hospital, were dedicated on September 25.

Both the federal and state governments offered funding and the Mental Health Association in New York State received a grant to hire a parent of a child with behavioral and emotional difficulties for the purpose of connecting parents of these special needs children to others across the state and to develop a newsletter to access the needs of these families. The Parent Support Network was formed in New York.

The Well-Being Scale (Jean Campbell and Ron Schraiber).

“The Well-Being Project” (Campbell & Schraiber, 1989, Campbell, 1992) added to understanding the concept of quality of life from the perspectives of consumers. This early research by Jean Campbell and Ron Schraiber, demonstrated that rather than helping, the use of force and coercion drive people away from the system.

In the United Kingdom, the Children Act 1989 was intended as the main piece of legislation setting out the legal framework for child protection procedures e.g. enquiries and conferences and introduced the notion of parental responsibility. Provisions apply to all children under 18. It was very wide-ranging and covered all paid childcarers outside the parental home for under-8's, adoption and fostering, and many aspects of family law including divorce. Although the Act aimed to enshrine consistency with the UNCRC approach that 'the best interests of the child are pre-eminent', UN monitoring committee reports issued in 1995 and 2002 noted that the principle of primary consideration for the best interests of the child was not consistently reflected in legislation and policies affecting children.

Opening of a memorial museum for the victims of "euthanasia" and "Special Treatment 14 f 13" at a psychiatric hospital in Bernburg, Germany.

“Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking black.” Boston: South End Press. Hooks, B.

300,000 marchers demonstrate for women's reproductive rights in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. has 1,200 battered women programs which shelter 300,000 women and children per year.

England has approximately 100 shelter programs. Wales has 32 refuges serving nearly 5,000 women and about an equal number of children. Scotland has 37 groups with 32 refuges serving 12,000 women and children.

Brooklyn Supreme Court justice Edward Pincus sentences Chinese immigrant Dong Lu Chen to 5 years probation for using a claw hammer to smash the skull of his wife. Pincus concludes, that traditional Chinese values about adultery and loss of manhood drove Chen to kill his wife. Pincus justifies Chen's probationary sentence by stating that Chen was just as much a victim as his wife due to extenuating circumstances. The Chen decision sent a message to battered immigrant women that they had no recourse against domestic violence.

The "battered women's syndrome" is first used as a defense for a lesbian killing her partner. Annette Green is convicted of first-degree murder of her partner Ivonne Julio in Palm Beach, Florida. The judge allows the "battered women's syndrome" defense changing it to "battered person defense." The defense attributes the verdict to homophobia.

In Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the Supreme Court affirms the right of states to deny public funding for abortions and to prohibit public hospitals from performing abortions.

“On my own: A personal journey through madness and re-emergence.” Psychological Rehabilitation Journal 13, p.70-77 by Rae Unzicker.

Joseph Campbell publishes The Power of Myth

R.D. Laing died (b. 1927)

"How I perceive and manage my illness" by Esso Leete, Director and founder of the Denver Social Support Group and Program Director of Consumer- Centered Services of Colorado. "Specific carefully planned coping strategies which are seen as critical to the recovery process are presented." Schizophrenia Bulletin volume 8 pages 605-609. Issue Theme: Subjective Experiences of Schizophrenia and Related Disorders

The UN Convention on Children's Rights was adopted into international law. Convention on the Rights of the Child (article 2, 6, 12, 23, 28). This treaty lists disability as one of the grounds discrimination is prohibited on (article 2). In addition, article 23 directly addresses the rights of children with disabilities stating that disabled children are entitled to a "full and decent life" of dignity and participation in the community.

“Understanding Race, Ethnicity and Power: The Key to Efficacy in Clinical Practice.” New York: The Free Press. Pinderhughes, Elaine.

“Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness,” by Mary Barnes and Joseph Berke. (reprinted, 2002).

“Katherine, It’s Time: An Incredible Journey into the World of a Multiple Personality,” by Kit Castle and S. Bechtel.

“Emergency Messages: An Autobiographical Miscellany,” by C. Solomon (editor J. Tytell).

“Mental health consumer participation on boards and committees: Barriers and strategies.” Canada’s Mental Health, June, 8-11. by M. B. Valentine and P. Capponi.

“A Mind of My Own,” by Chris Costner Sizemore and Elen Sain Pittillo.

“Something Sacred: Conversations, Writings, Paintings.” London. by Mary Barnes (with Ann Scott).

Germany’s Berlin Wall came down, so did the division between communism and the so-called free world.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, or CRC, codifies a range of children's rights into international law, with 189 countries eventually ratifying it. Before the 1930s children were routinely exploited in a variety of settings throughout American society. Frequently beginning their working lives before their tenth birthday, children worked in hazardous jobs at mines, mills, factories, sweatshops, and on farms, with little or no wages. Labor laws did not exist, and the common perception of the ease with which children were manipulated made them targets for a variety of rights violations. In the 1980s the United States provided global leadership by acting as the "Tip of The Spear" among nations in crafting the Convention on the Rights of the Child, or CRC. After the United Nations adopted the CRC in 1989, the United States became a signatory nation in 1994. However, to date the country has refused to ratify the Convention, joining only one other nation in the world with that status. Among the reasons the United States has failed to ratify the Convention is the fact that the Convention clearly states that anyone under the age of 18 is a child. The U.S. government has reservations about how that would affect matters when a 16- or 17-year old commits a crime; currently, in certain instances that child can be tried as an adult in the U.S. courts. Several politicians have said that many of the declarations included in the document are not issues for which the federal government is in charge. There is currently no apparent effort within the federal government to adopt the CRC.

1990’s

Women in their twenties, calling themselves "the third wave," form myriad on- and off-campus organizations to tackle their generation's particular concerns and vulnerabilities.

District Attorney's Offices begin to adopt a "no-drop" policy, in which the prosecutor clarifies to the victim and the defendant that the prosecutor, not the victim, is in charge of the case, and that the victim is unable to get the charges dropped.

States begin to clarify statutorily that Battered Women's Syndrome (BWS) can be the basis for a recommendation for parole or agrant of clemency, and mandate training on domestic violence and BWS for the parole board. Prosecutors begin to use BWS to obtain convictions of batterers. It is also used as a defense when women kill their batterers.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) begins to recognize domestic violence as grounds for asylum in the U.S. A judge rules that the wife and children of a prominent Jordanian may be given asylum in the U.S. and that the batterer be excluded from entering the U.S. The judge's belief that the batter would carry out his threats to kill them, his influence in Jordan and the threats of abuse justified the asylum.

LaDonna Harris, Native American activist, estimates that women make up one-quarter of most tribal councils, and fill half the seats on many.

The number of Black women in elective office has increased from 131 in 1970 to 1,950 in 1990.

Early 1990s

Medicine Wheel and 12 Steps for Men co-created by White Bison, Inc. and a group of male Indian inmates in an Idaho prison.

Late 1990s

Medicine Wheel and 12 Steps for Women created through collaboration with Indian women inmates in another Idaho prison.

1990

The Wheels of Justice campaign in Washington, D.C., organized by American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT), brings hundreds of disabled people to the nation's capital in March in support of the Americans with Disabilities Act ADAPT activists occupy the Capitol rotunda, and are arrested when they refuse to leave.

President George Bush signing the ADA (seated in center). Justin Dart (R).

American With Disabilities Act (ADA) – The Americans with Disabilities Act (42 U.S.C. 1210) is signed into law July 26 and becomes effective in 1992. This comprehensive civil rights law for people with disabilities prohibits employment discrimination (Title 1); discrimination in state and local government services (Title II); and discrimination in public accommodations and commercial facilities (Title III). The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed by President George H.W. Bush alongside its “founding father,” Justin Dart. The Act provided comprehensive civil rights protection for people with disabilities. Closely modeled after the Civil Rights Act and Section 504, the law was the most sweeping disability rights legislation in history. It mandated that local, state and federal governments and programs be accessible, that businesses with more than 15 employees make “reasonable accommodations” for disabled workers and that public accommodations such as restaurants and stores make “reasonable modifications” to ensure access for disabled members of the public. The act also mandated access in public transportation, communication, and in other areas of public life. Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 - Prohibited disability discrimination in employment, public services and public accommodations operated by private entities; requires that telecommunication services be made accessible. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is signed by President George Bush on 26 July in a ceremony on the White House lawn witnessed by thousands of disability rights activists. The law is the most sweeping disability rights legislation in history, for the first time bringing full legal citizenship to Americans with disabilities. It mandates that local, state, and federal governments and programs be accessible, that businesses with more than 15 employees make “reasonable accommodations” for disabled workers, that public accommodations such as restaurants and stores make “reasonable modifications” to ensure access for disabled members of the public. The act also mandates access in public transportation, communication, and in other areas of public life. It protects the civil rights of people with disabilities, and gives some protection to people with mental illness by stating, “services and supports must be provided in the most integrated setting appropriate to the individual” thus advocating for community placement for people. Closely modeled after the Civil Rights Act and Section 504, the law was the most sweeping disability rights legislation in history. It mandated that local, state and federal governments and programs be accessible, that businesses with more than 15 employees make “reasonable accommodations” for disabled workers and that public accommodations such as restaurants and stores make “reasonable modifications” to ensure access for disabled members of the public. The act also mandated access in public transportation, communication, and in other areas of public life. There are five (5) titles within the Act: Title I of the ADA prohibits discrimination and ensures equal opportunity for persons with disabilities in employment; Title II prohibits discrimination that involves state and local government programs and services which includes all public mass transportation; Title III prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in “places of public accommodation” (businesses and non-profit agencies that serve the public) which includes restaurants, hotels, theaters, pharmacies, retail stores, health clubs, museums, libraries, parks, private schools and daycare center. The exemptions are private clubs and religious organizations. All new construction in public accommodations and commercial facilities must be accessible; Title IV deals with accessibility of telecommunications for people who are deaf or have speech disorders to make available to TTY users access to the relay system to be able to communicate with non-TTY users. It also requires federally funded television programs to be close captioned; Title V deals with various miscellaneous provisions including the people who are excluded such as transsexuals, drug addicts, gamblers and others. Joseph Rogers served on the Congressional Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities, which worked on getting the ADA passed. In her article, "The History of the ADA: a Movement Perspective," advocate Arlene Mayerson recalls the dramatic movement of the bill through the House of Representatives: "The Bill went to the House where it was considered by an unprecedented four Committees. Each Committee had at least one subcommittee hearing, and more amendments to be explained, lobbied and defeated. Grassroots organizing became even more important because by this time many business associations had rallied their members to write members of Congress to oppose or weaken the bill. The perseverance and commitment of the disability movement never wavered. Through many moments of high stress and tension, the community stayed unified. For every hearing the hearing room was full and for every proposed amendment to weaken the bill letters poured in and the halls of Congress were canvassed.... "House members... heard from witnesses who told their stories of discrimination. With each story, the level of consciousness was raised and the level of tolerance to this kind of injustice was lowered. The stories did not end in the hearing room. People with disabilities came from around the country to talk to members of Congress, to advocate for the Bill, to explain why each provision was necessary, to address a very real barrier or form of discrimination. Individuals came in at their own expense, slept on floors by night and visited Congressional offices by day. People who couldn't come to Washington told their stories in letters, attended town meetings and made endless phone calls." Despite the convincing arguments and moving testimony presented by advocates and citizens, the ADA became stalled in the House. Faced with the opposition of powerful business interests, some Congress members preferred to leave the bill languishing in committees, so that they would not have to vote either way. The disability community realized that it would take one more final, dramatic action to get House members to bring the ADA to the floor for a vote. In a historic moment, disability rights advocates came to Capitol Hill in March to push for passage of the ADA. After a large march and rally in front of the steps of the U.S. Capitol, a small group of people got out of their wheelchairs and climbed the steps. This striking image was broadcast on the national news that evening. The next day, after sending letters to both the House Majority and Minority Whips to ask for a meeting, the advocates gathered in the Capitol Rotunda and sent word to the Whips that the group had arrived for the meeting. Both Whips came down and spoke to the group, but advocates were frustrated and angered by their empty words. After chants echoed in the rotunda, police arrested 107 people with disabilities. The House got the message, and the ADA was finally passed in May.

With passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) changes its focus to advocating for personal assistance services and changes its name to American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today.

The social work profession is legally regulated in 50 states and jurisdictions as of January 1, 1990.

In Washington v. Harper the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the involuntary medication of correctional facility inmates only under certain conditions as determined by established policy and procedures.

Ruta Mazelis

Ruta Mazelis begins publication of “The Cutting Edge,” a newsletter for people who self-injure.

The Autism National Committee is founded.

Brain imaging is used to learn more about the development of major mental illnesses.

Use of the "blood-oxygen-level dependent” (BOLD) in MRI first discovered by Dr. Seiji Ogawa. Kenneth Kwong successfully applied BOLD to image human brain activities with MRI, and published the findings in 1992.

The Committee of Ten Thousand is founded to advocate for people with hemophilia, and their family members, who have been infected with HIV/AIDS through tainted blood products.

The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act is passed to help localities cope with the burgeoning HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The Education for All Handicapped Children Act is amended and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities; Education Act (IDEA). This Act contains a permanently authorized grant program that provides federal funding to the states; all states that receive these federal funds are required to provide a "free, appropriate public education" to all children with disabilities in the "least restrictive environment." The Education of the Handicapped Act Amendments (PL 101-476) increase access for students and their families to needed social work services.

The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act (PL 101-381) authorizes $880 million annually to provide emergency relief to metropolitan areas hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic. Other provisions address comprehensive planning, early intervention, treatment of children, and AIDS in rural areas.

The emergence of managed care prompts the APA to become more political, leading to the idea of Prescribing Psychologists and equity in mental health coverage.

The NASW School Social Work Specialist Credential is created to provide objective testing and certification of school social workers.

NASW transforms its publications department into the NASW Press.

Since the 1960’s 44 state psychiatric hospitals were closed.

Across America, more than 74,000 people with developmental disabilities were employed in communities with the help of supported employment.

Residential deaf schools are struck a blow as they become labeled the "most restrictive environment."

The Autism National Committee is founded.

Terry Schiavo Suffers Severe Brain Damage. Terry Schiavo is severely brain damaged after her heart stops because of a chemical imbalance that is believed to have been brought on by an eating disorder. Court-appointed doctors rule she is in a "persistent vegetative state" with no real consciousness or chance of recovery. Over a decade later, her case will spark much controversy and receive national media attention.

APA issues a position statement opposing discrimination against gay people in the military

David Oaks

Support Coalition International (SCI) (now called MindFreedom) founded in May. (David Oaks and Janet Foner). Publication Dendron sponsors a several-day international counter-conference in May and protest of American Psychiatric Association in New York City called a “Support-In.” At end of counter-conference, 13 initial sponsoring groups form a new coalition. Mental Patients Liberation Alliance in Syracuse, New York provides organizational and fiscal sponsorship.

Seventh Annual “Alternatives” conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania sponsored by the National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse (Clearinghouse). Theme: Together, Tearing Down the Walls. Several hundred people mark Bastille Day with a march and rally organized by the National Mental Health Consumers' Clearing House at Alternatives '90 in Pittsburgh, PA.

Gayle Bluebird

Altered States of the Arts founded at Alternatives '90 in Pittsburgh by Gayle Bluebird, Howie the Harp, Dianne Cote, Sally Clay and other movement leaders. Altered States of the Arts is a nationwide network of mental health consumers and survivors whose mission is to promote the arts as a vehicle for social change, personal empowerment and employment.

Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 - Required new television sets to have capability for close-captioned television transmission on all televisions with screens 13 inches and larger.

Sam Skinner, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, issues regulations mandating lifts on buses.

With passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) changes its focus to advocating for personal assistance services and changes its name to American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today.

The third NAMHC report to Congress, National Plan for Research on Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders, was submitted.

ADAMHA establishes the Office for Treatment Improvement with an expanded Block Grant office at it’s core. President George Herbert Walker Bush appointed as the first OTI Director Dr. Beny Prim, director of several methadone treatment programs in New York. Beny used to recount how the President had personally told him he wanted Beny to follow every dollar of the block grant, to know how it had been spent and that it had been spent wisely.

The first of three hearings on Mental Health in America, sponsored by NAMHC, was held on April 12. It explored mental illness and mental health services in rural America.

A hearing on child and adolescent mental disorders, the second of the Mental Health in America series, was held on October 9.

CSPNJ supported the development of GROW Self-Help Mutual Aid Groups for mental health consumers in New Jersey.

Philadelphia State Hospital officially closed in June of 1990.

The Hearing Voices Network established.

Allan Levy QC inquired into a method of discipline used in Staffordshire, England children's homes in the 1980s. This investigation was called the Pindown Enquiry. Pindown was named after the notion that it would "pin down the problem" relating to a particular "difficult" child, and involved locking children in "pindown rooms", sometimes for periods of weeks or months. The 2000 Kilgallon report into Northumberland housing for children with special needs revealed that Pindown tactics were employed between 1972 and 1984.

In England, Philip Knight, a 17-year-old died in custody at HM Prison Swansea as a result of self-inflicted injuries. An inquest yielded an open verdict. Knight was the first of 30 children to die in custody since 1990. The inquest into 16 year old Joseph Scholes' death in custody in March 2002, led the coroner to support the call for a public inquiry.

“Crazy Women: Madness, Myth, and Metaphor,” video available through NARPA.

A survey of several hundred therapists regarding domestic violence cases reveals that 41% failed to identify obvious evidence of violence. None of the therapists identified the lethality of the situation. Those who did identify conflict minimized the severity and 55% said they would not intervene. Fourteen percent said they would work on the couples "communication style."

Forty-eight states have enacted or revamped injunctions that enable courts to refrain men from abusing, harassing and assaulting the women with whom they live. Emergency protection orders outside of normal court hours can be obtained in 23 states.

Studies show that 1 out of 7 wives report being raped by their husband; 2/3 of the rapes occurred more than once.

In 23 states, police officers may arrest on "probable cause" in cases of simple or minor assault within the home. A few states and cities go further by imposing a mandatory duty to arrest the violent offender.

In California, SB 2184 (Royce) and SB 1342 (Royce) of 1992 pass. These establish the crime of stalking. California is the first state in the nation to do so.

In California, AB 2700 (Roybal-Allard) requires judges to consider any history of spousal abuse before determining child custody and visitation rights.

In California, AB 1753 (T. Friedman) passes. It prohibits people under a domestic violence restraining order from obtaining a gun. SB 1278 (Hart) of 1995 gives judges the authority to disallow batterers subject to a restraining order to own or possess a firearm while the restraining order is in effect.

Angela West, deputy city attorney in Los Angeles city Attorney's Office tries the first lesbian battering case in which evidence regarding Battered Women's Syndrome is successfully used. The case is significant because the police described the dispute as battery between two roommates, rather than between lovers.

“Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness,” by William Styron.

“As for the Sky, Falling: A Critical Look at Psychiatry and Suffering.” Toronto. by Lynne Shelagh Supeene.

“Now You Know,” by Kitty Dukakis (with J. Srovell).

“My Experiences With Clinical Depression,” by G. F. Mundfrom.

“The ex-patients’ movement: Where we’ve been and where we are going.” The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 11:323-336. Chamberlin, J.

“The Loony-Bin Trip.” New York: Simon & Schuster. Millett, Kate.

“Spirit breaking: When the helping professions hurt.” The Humanistic Psychologist, 18, 301-313. by Pat Deegan

1991

Community Mental Health Centers authorized to provide partial hospitalization services under Medicare.

UN Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illnesses and the Improvement of Mental Health Care. This document adopted by the UN General Assembly sets detailed standards for the protection of persons with mental disabilities. It emphasizes that all persons have the right to the best available mental health care and that persons with a mental illness shall be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person. Individuals with mental disabilities also have the right to protection from economic, sexual and other forms of exploitation, physical or other abuse and degrading treatment. The Principles stipulate that there shall be no discrimination on the grounds of mental illness and that persons with a mental illness shall have the right to exercise all civil, political. In case a person lacks legal capacity due to his or her mental illness any decisions related to the well-being of this person shall be made only after a fair hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal established by domestic law.

Berkeley Fruit and Nut Bar

The seventh annual “Alternatives '91” conference in Berkeley draws over 2,000 participants for the largest consumer/survivor conference ever. Howie The Harp calls this the largest voluntary gathering of mental patients in the known galaxy. It was also the last time the Alternatives conference was held on a college campus. Prior Alternatives were “sponsored” by a single entity but this conference was sponsored by the “West Coast Coalition” chaired by Kevin Fitts and consisting of Washington, Oregon and California. The theme was “Unifying through Diversity, Empowering with Dignity.” This conference was the first consumer/survivor “Alternatives” conference where one of the attendees was placed on an involuntary mental health hold. Nancy Donigan from Washington was the Conference Coordinator and she called the police on one of the attendees as “dangerous to self” for allegedly jaywalking in Berkeley. The conference was also famous for it’s activist activities that coincided with the infamous Berkeley “People’s Park” protests. At Alternatives '91 the first juried Talent Showcase was produced by Altered States of the Arts and emceed by Howie the Harp. At Alternatives '91 in Berkeley, The Fruits and Nuts were conceived and their mission established in '92's Alternatives in Philly.

PEOPLe: Projects to Empower and Organize the Psychiatrically Labeled (Sally Clay, Poughkeepsie, NY)

The NASW Academy of Certified Baccalaureate Social Workers is established to provide objective testing and certification of social workers with a bachelor of social work degree.

The Civil Rights Act (S. 1745, PL 102-166) amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to reverse a set of Supreme Court decisions that eroded protection of women and people of color in the workplace. Victims of intentional discrimination based on gender, disability, or religion, but not age, can obtain monetary damages.

American Psychoanalytic Association issues position statement opposing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the selection of psychoanalytic candidates

The World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (WNUSP), originally founded as the World Federation of Psychiatric Users (WFPU), The World Federation of Psychiatric Users at the biennial World Federation for Mental Health conference in Mexico, the network's name was changed to WNUSP in 1997. In 2000, the WNUSP Secretariat was established in Odense, Denmark. In 2001, the network held its First General Assembly in Vancouver, British Columbia, with 34 groups from twelve countries represented, and adopted its governing statutes.

Jerry's Orphans stages its first annual picket of the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon.

In New York State The Office of Mental Health received a grant to develop an individualized care approach to serving children and families. Five parents were hired as regional parent advisors. Ginny Wood, as Director of the Parent Support Network, assembled a steering committee of 10 parents, including the five Office of Mental Health Regional parent advisors, to develop a Statewide parent support organization. A mission statement and by-laws were developed for the newly named organization – Families Together in New York State.

Youth Empowerment Association (YEA!) is founded by Heather Huckaba and Matthew Brown in New York State.

The fourth NAMHC report to Congress, Caring for People with Severe Mental Disorders: A National Plan of Research to Improve Services, was presented.

The last of the Mental Health in America hearings was held on September 5. It addressed issues concerning severe mental illness and homelessness.

The report, Mental Health in America: A Series of Public Hearings, was submitted to Congress by NAMHC in December.

Kenneth Kwong successfully applied BOLD (blood-oxygen-level dependent) to image human brain activities with MRI, and published the findings in 1992.

Survivors Poetry set up in London to run workshops and performances, which spread to many other cities.

“Racism and Psychiatry.” New York: Carol Publishing Group. Thomas, Alexander and Samuel Sillen.

“Black Psychology” (3rd Edition). Berkeley, CA: Cobb and Henry Publishers. Jones, Reginald L, ed.

“Nobody’s Child,” by M.Balter and R. Katz.

In California, AB 785 (Eaves) passes, permitting the admission of "battered woman syndrome" as evidence in a criminal trial.

The women students at Brown University begin a graffiti campaign to publicize the names of male students who commit date rape. The university sponsors a forum to discuss the issue, and a woman stands up every three minutes to indicate the frequency of attacks on women throughout the country. The university implements procedures for handling complaints and a mandatory date rape seminar.

The Navajo Nation Department of Law Enforcement reports that 0.6 to 1 % of Navajos over age 18 are victims of domestic violence. The report projects that by 1995, 1.5 to 1.8 % of the Navajo Nation population will be affected. With a projected population of 198,000, there will be 3,564 cases of domestic violence.

On November 1, The Navajo Nation Judicial Conference adopts domestic violence court rules based on Navajo common law, the Equal Rights provision of the Navajo Nation Bill of Rights, principles of the law of equity and English-American common law.

The U.S. Surgeon General ranks abuse by husbands to be the leading cause of injuries to women aged 15 to 44.

The FBI reports that 1,431 women were killed by husbands or boyfriends.

The American Medical Association releases guidelines suggesting that doctors screen women for signs of domestic violence.

Nineteen states require arrest for violation of an order of protection.

Swarthmore college begins date rape prevention programs.

In California, SB 804 (Boatwright) is passed amending the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act to say that California courts cannot deny jurisdiction in a custody dispute when the taking or retention of the child from one state to another was the result of domestic violence against person seeking custody.

In Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, by Susan Faludi documents the attacks on women's progress during the last decade, "set off not by women's achievement of full equality but by the increased possibility that they might win it. "

“Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality,” by Joan F. Casey and Lynn Wilson.

“The Myth of Psychology,” by Fred Newman.

“Posttranssexual Manifesto,” by Sandy Stone

“Toxic Psychiatry.” New York: St. Martin’s Press. Peter Breggin.

UK ratification of United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, with a number of reservations. UNCRC defines a child as under 18 years old, unless an earlier age of majority is recognized by a country's law.

“The Breathless Orgasm,” by John Money, Gordon Wainwright, and David Hingsburger.

A Civil Statute of Limitations for Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse became law.

Rust v. Sullivan upholds the constitutionality of the “gag rule” which prohibits doctors and counselors at clinics that receive federal funding, from providing their patients with information about and referrals for abortion.

Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey reaffirms the core holdings of Roe v Wade, that women have a right to abortion before fetal viability, but allows states to restrict abortion access so long as these restrictions do not impose an “undue burden” on women seeking abortions.

1992

UN General Assembly proclaims that 3 December every year be observed as the International Day of Disabled Persons.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) established by Congress under the ADAMHA (Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration) Reorganization Act, Public Law 102-321 on October 1, 1992. SAMHSA includes CMHS (Center for Mental Health Services). President George H. Bush signs the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration Reauthorization Act creating the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). On October 1, ADAMHA was abolished and the research components of NIAAA, NIDA, NIMH rejoined NIH. The services components of the institutes became part of a new PHS agency, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The establishment of the Center for Mental Health Services within SAMHSA provided opportunities for improved advocacy for and linkage of research and services. Congress enacts separate mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment block grants. Within SAMHSA the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention became the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention and the Office for Treatment Improvement became the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. The Act established two separate Block Grants, one for substance abuse prevention and treatment and one for community mental health services. The Act included several components of the State Systems Development Programs (SSDP) such as state needs assessments, technical reviews, and block grant applications. The Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration (ADAMHA) Reorganization Act (PL 102-321) transfers the research function in mental health, alcohol, and other substance abuse to the National Institutes of Health and establishes separate state block grants for mental health and substance abuse services. The National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Drug Abuse, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism are moved from ADAMHA to the National Institutes of Health. ADAMHA, renamed the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, includes the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, and the Center for Mental Health Services.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopts: Recommendation (1185) on Rehabilitation Policies for the Disabled. This recommendation urges member states to ensure active participation in society and equal opportunities for disabled persons.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopts: Recommendation No. R(92)6 on a Coherent Policy for the Rehabilitation of People with Disabilities. This instrument recognizes the rights of disabled persons to be different and focuses on the right to independent living and full integration into society.

Federal Interagency Taskforce on Homelessness and Severe Mental Illness

On June 9, Senator Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI) introduces the NASW National Health Care Proposal as S. 2817, the National Health Care Act. Based on NASW universal health care policies, it is the only bill to price out the costs of a new health care system.

The Preventive Health Amendments (PL 102-531) include a new Office of Adolescent Health in the Department of Health and Human Services. Among the responsibilities of the new office is the coordination of training for health providers, including social workers, who work with adolescents.

The Older Americans Act Amendments (PL 102-375) reauthorizes Older American Act programs for four years and include provisions for long-term care ombudsmen, legal assistance, outreach, counseling, and abuse and neglect prevention programs. The amendments authorize a White House Conference on Aging by the end of 1994; grants for training in gerontology in schools of social work; and counseling, training, and support services for caregivers.

The Higher Education Amendments (PL 102-325) create new opportunities for reduction and cancellation of federal Perkins loan indebtedness for social work students who seek employment in child welfare, mental health, juvenile justice, or other agencies serving high-risk children and families from low-income communities, as well as those who provide early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities.

The NASW Press publishes the Social Work Almanac, the first stand-alone compilation of statistics related to social work content.

The return to NIH and the loss of services functions to SAMHSA brought about a realignment of NIMH headquarters. New offices were created for research on AIDS, Prevention, Special Populations, and Rural Mental Health.

Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1992 - Changed eligibility requirements and procedures for determining eligibility; strengthened requirements for interagency cooperation; strengthened consumer involvement requirements. Reauthorization of the Rehabilitation Act: provides for greater consumer control through the development of Statewide Independent Living Councils (SILC's). Title I presumption of eligibility and 60-day eligibility determination period. Amendments to the Rehabilitation Act were infused with the philosophy of independent living. This legislation strongly emphasized consumer involvement in the policies and procedures of state rehabilitation agencies and in the development of their IWRPs. It mandated that state rehabilitation agencies establish Rehabilitation Advisory Councils with the majority of members being individuals with disabilities. The amendments emphasized the importance of empowering people with disabilities, involving them fully in both the construction of their IWRP and annual review of their IWRP. It also specified areas that must be included in every consumers IWRP. The amendments further required state agencies to respond with an eligibility decision within 60 days of receiving an application for services, and mandated greater interagency collaboration through formal cooperative agreements.

Liz Savage was appointed as a special assistant attorney general for civil rights, specializing in ADA policy and enforcement. She is the first person with a disability to hold so high a position with the United States Department of Justice. Savage worked in the Carter White House from 1977 to 1979 and as a deputy scheduler in the Mondale-Ferraro presidential campaign in 1984. In 1985 she joined the Epilepsy Foundation of America where she supervised its national grassroots advocacy and legislative efforts. In 1991, she became the national training director for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF).

Women are now paid 71 cents for every dollar paid to men. The range is from 64 cents for working-class women to 77cents for professional women with doctorates. Black women earned 65 cents, Latinas 54 cents.

Women owned businesses employ more workers in the United States than the Fortune 500 companies do worldwide.

"The Year of the Woman."

The U.S. Surgeon General ranks abuse by husbands to be the leading cause of injuries to women aged 15 to 44.

The FBI reports that 1,431 women were killed by husbands or boyfriends.

The American Medical Association releases guidelines suggesting that doctors screen women for signs of domestic violence.

Nineteen states require arrest for violation of an order of protection.

Swarthmore college begins date rape prevention programs.

In California, SB 804 (Boatwright) is passed amending the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act to say that California courts cannot deny jurisdiction in a custody dispute when the taking or retention of the child from one state to another was the result of domestic violence against person seeking custody.

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court reaffirms the validity of a woman's right to abortion under Roe v. Wade. The case successfully challenges Pennsylvania's 1989 Abortion Control Act, which sought to reinstate restrictions previously ruled unconstitutional.

A record number of women run for public office, and win. Twenty-four are newly-elected to the House of Representatives (total: and six to the Senate. They include: the first Mexican-American woman and first Puerto Rican woman in the House, Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) and Nydia Velazquez (D-NY); the first black woman Senator, Carole Moseley Braun, D-IL; and both Senators for California, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, who are both Democrats.

Women win all five of the gold medals won by Americans during the Winter Olympics.

Senator Tom Harkin first proposed the Child Labor Deterrence Act in Congress, with subsequent propositions in 1993, 1995, 1997 and 1999. "This bill would prohibit the importation of products that have been produced by child labor, and included civil and criminal penalties for violators."

World Health Organization reports that schizophrenia outcomes are much superior in poor countries, where only 16% of patients are kept continuously on neuroleptics. The WHO concludes that living in a developed nation is a “strong predictor” that a patient will never fully recover.

Researchers acknowledge that neuroleptics cause a recognizable pathology, which they name neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome. In addition to Parkinson’s, akathisia, blunted emotions and tardive dyskinesia, patients treated with neuroleptics suffer from an increased incidence of blindness, fatal blood clots, arrhythmia, heat stroke, swollen breasts, leaking breasts, impotence, obesity, sexual dysfunction, blood disorders, skin rashes, seizures, and early death.

People of Color Caucus, Celia Brown

The eighth annual “Alternatives” conference was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and sponsored by the National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse. The theme was “Power Through Sharing and Knowledge.” The first meeting of the People of Color Caucus was held, at Alternative '92 in Philadelphia. The organization is now known as the American Association of People of Color Mental Health Consumers. “Miss Altered States” (the alter ego of Mark Davis in drag) debuted at Alternatives '92 at the talent show at the Adams Mark Hotel in Philadelphia, PA.

CMHS had an annual CSP conference and probably 50-60 consumer reps walked out of the 2nd day of the conference, marched to the CMHS office and demanded a meeting with Bernie Arons about lack of consumer/survivor input into the conference... and were granted a meeting.

Consumer/Survivor Mental Health Research and Policy Work Group Task Force Reports, (June, July, September) identify recovery, personhood, well-being and liberty as valued outcomes that are not usually measured or operationalized in traditional mental health research or program evaluations. The Consumer/Survivor Mental Health Research and Policy Work Group Task Force, Focus groups on outcome measures/client outcomes met in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

American Psychoanalytic Association modifies position statement opposing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation to include faculty, supervising and training analysts.

A survey of American jails reports that 7.2 percent of inmates are overtly and seriously mentally ill, meaning that 100,000 seriously mentally ill people have been incarcerated. Over a quarter of them are held without charges, often awaiting a bed in a psychiatric hospital.

A report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Britain on ECT states, 21% of surveyed psychiatrists reported “long term side-effects and risks of brain damage, memory loss [and] intellectual impairment.”

Judi Chamberlin was awarded the Distinguished Service Award of the President of the United States by the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities

Judi Chamberlin, Pat Deegan and Dan Fisher found the National Empowerment Center (NEC), a consumer-run Research, Training, and Information Center, in Lawrence, MA, with assistance from a TA grant by CSP, NIMH. Co-Directors are Dan Fisher and Laurie Ahern who develop the Empowerment Model of Recovery.

CSPNJ developed Supportive Services program, to augment our support services program for our residents, with assistance from the National Institute for Mental Health’s Service System Improvement Grant. CSPNJ partnered with Monarch Housing Association in order to purchase consumer supportive housing throughout New Jersey.

New York State OMH appoints first Office of Consumer Affairs (Darby Penney)

In Greer vs. Rome City School District (11th Circuit Court, 1992), the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court stated "Before the school district may conclude that a handicapped child should be educated outside of the regular classroom it must consider whether supplemental aids and services would permit satisfactory education in the regular classroom." The court also said that the district cannot refuse to serve a child because of added cost, and that school officials must share placement considerations with the child's parents at the IEP meeting before a placement is determined.

In Foucha v. Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the continued commitment of an insanity acquittee who was not suffering from a mental illness was unconstitutional.

In Riggins v. Nevada, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a defendant has the right to refuse psychiatric medication which is given to mitigate their psychiatric symptoms while they are on trial.

Larry Fricks, NAC/SMHA

National Assoc. of Consumer/Survivor Mental Health Administrators (NAC/SMHA) is founded.

NAMH: National Artists for Mental Health (Frank Marquit, Hudson, New York)

PEER Center (formed by a coalition of peer advocates), Fort Lauderdale, FL.

California Hosts First Youth Leadership Forum. The first Youth Leadership Forum for youth with disabilities is developed in California by the Governor's Committee for Employment of Disabled Persons. The U.S. Department of Labor funds other states to develop similar forums. By 2007, youth leadership forums are taking place in 23 states.

A legal case of four men convicted of sexual assault and conspiracy for raping a 17-year old mentally disabled woman in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, highlighted the widespread sexual abuse of people with developmental disabilities.

Holland v. Sacramento City Unified School District affirmed the right of disabled children to attend public school classes with non-disabled children. The ruling was a major victory in the ongoing effort to ensure enforcement of IDEA.

James Hillman & Michael Ventura publish We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse.

A survey of American jails reports that 7.2 percent of inmates are overtly and seriously mentally ill, meaning that 100,000 seriously mentally ill people have been incarcerated. Over a quarter of them are held without charges, often awaiting a bed in a psychiatric hospital.

Westchester Youth Forum in New York State opens its doors.

The UK Advocacy Network (UKAN) established to bring together survivor groups engaged in advocacy.

The US network established, a national survivor network in Wales.

“The Independent Living Movement and people with psychiatric disabilities: Taking back control over our own lives.” Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal, 15, 3-19. Deegan, P.

“Client/Practitioners offer both insights,” by Darby Penney OMH News

“Humanizing the recovery process.” Resources, 4(1). 7-8 by Dan Fisher

“Upstairs in the Crazy House: The Life of a Psychiatric Survivor.” Toronto. by Pat Capponi.

“A Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic-Depressive Illness,” by Patty Duke (with Gloria Hochman).

“Murdered Heiress, Living Witness,” by P. Wagner.

“Nobody Nowhere: The Extraordinary Autobiography of an Autistic,” by Donna Williams.

“You Must Be Dreaming,” by Barbara Noel.

“Beyond Therapy, beyond science: a new model for healing the whole person,” by Anne Wilson. San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco,

1993-2002

UN declares Asian and Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons

1993

Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 - The Family and Medical Leave Act (PL 103-3, 107 Stat. 6), passed on February 5, balances demands of workplace and family needs by requiring that employers of 50 or more employees allow up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually for a child's birth or adoption, the care of a spouse or immediate family member, or the employee's "serious health condition"-one requiring either inpatient care or ongoing treatment by a health provider. Allowed workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for newborn and adopted children and family members with serious health conditions or to recover from serious health conditions.

UN General Assembly adopts the UN Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities. Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities (1993)
Adopted by the General Assembly in 1993 in the aftermath of the Decade of Disabled Persons, the Standard Rules do not constitute a legally binding document for member states. However the Standard Rules are the most comprehensive set of human rights standards regarding disability police to date and represent "a strong moral and political commitment of Governments to take action to attain equalization of opportunities for persons with disabilities." The document addresses preconditions for equal participation, target areas of equal participation, implementation measures and monitoring mechanisms. Implementation of the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities are monitored by the UN Special Rapporteur on Disability. The first Special Rapporteur, Bengt Lindqvist (Sweden), was appointed in 1994, and his mandate was renewed twice, in 1997 and 2000. In 2003, Sheikha Hessa Khalifa bin al-Thani (Qatar) was appointed as the Special Rapporteur.

The National and Community Service Trust Act (PL 103-82) provides funds for community services, further institutionalizing the federal responsibility for meeting unmet social needs, including educational awards and living allowances for full-time community service.

The Family Preservation and Support Services Provisions (PL 103-66), part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, provide $1 billion for a comprehensive approach to improving the child welfare system, emphasizing prevention and early intervention to maintain a natural care system.

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act PL 103-159) is signed by President Clinton on November 24. The bill institutes a five-day waiting period for handgun purchase, to be replaced in five years by a nationwide "instant check" system to ensure that guns are not being sold to criminals.

National Voter Registration Act of 1993 - Required states to liberalize their voter registration rules to allow people to register to vote by mail, when they apply for driver's licenses or at offices that provide public assistance and programs for individuals with disabilities such as vocational rehabilitation programs. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 became law in the U.S., and it required states with disabled service agencies to have them act as disabled voter registration agencies as well. Also known as the "Motor Voter Act” One of the basic purposes of the act is to increase the historically low registration rates of people with disabilities that have resulted from discrimination. The act requires all offices of state-funded programs that are primarily engaged in providing services to people with disabilities to provide all program applicants with voter registration forms, to assist them in completing the forms, and to transmit completed forms to the appropriate state official.

The U.S Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Helen L. v. Snider, rules that the continued publicly funded institutionalization of a disabled Pennsylvania woman in a nursing home, when not medically necessary, and where the state of Pennsylvania could offer her the option of home care, is a violation of her rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Disability rights advocates hail this ruling as a landmark decision regarding the rights of people in nursing homes to personal assistance services, allowing them to live at home.

The National Home of Your Own Alliance was created to help states develop home ownership initiatives targeted to the needs of people with developmental disabilities.

Dr. Hans-Joachim Sewering, in an undated photo, did not dispute his involvement with the Nazis when the controversy surrounding his past came up in 1993.

Hans-Joachim Sewering, an SS-member and lung specialist in Germany who had sent a 14-year old girl with TB to Elfing-Haar to be gassed, becomes president-elect of the World Physicians Association. A storm of protest forces him to resign.

The American Indian Disability Legislation Project is established to collect data on Native American disability rights laws and regulations.

The National Council for Community Mental Healthcare Centers changed its name to the National Community Mental Healthcare Council. The change was viewed as necessary since it excised the term “centers” and put more emphasis on the word “community” as the primary focus for providing a continuum of care.

In Holland v. Sacramento City Unified School District, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court affirmed the right of disabled children to attend public school classes with non-disabled children. The ruling was a major victory in the ongoing effort to ensure enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Communication Unbound, by Douglas Biklen, is published, leading to a great increase in the use of Facilitated Communication. The method becomes controversial when it results in accusations of physical and sexual abuse by teachers, caretakers, and family members of people with communication disabilities.

The Glen Ridge case comes to trial in New Jersey, and three men are convicted of sexual assault and conspiracy, and a fourth of conspiracy, for raping a 17-year-old mentally disabled woman. The case highlights the widespread sexual abuse of people with developmental disabilities. Three men were convicted of sexually assaulting a mentally retarded woman in New Jersey, despite attempts by the prosecution to depict the young woman as an aggressive "Lolita".

Robert Williams becomes commissioner of the Administration on Developmental Disabilities, the first developmentally disabled person to hold that post.

In Roncker v. Walter, 700 F2d. 1058 (6th Circuit Court 1993), the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court addressed the issue of "bringing educational services to the child" versus "bringing the child to the services". The case was resolved in favor of integrated versus segregated placement and established a principle of portability; that is, "if a desirable service currently provided in a segregated setting can feasiblely be delivered in an integrated setting, it would be inappropriate under PL 94-142 to provide the service in a segregated environment." The Roncker Court found that placement decisions must be individually made. School districts that automatically place children in a predetermined type of school solely on the basis of their disability (e.g., mentally retardation) rather than on the basis of the IEP, violate federal laws.

In Oberti vs. Board of Education of the Borough of Clementon School District (3rd Circuit Court, 1993), the U.S. Third Circuit Court upheld the right of Rafeal Oberti, a boy with Down syndrome, to receive his education in his regular neighborhood school with adequate and necessary supports, placing the burden of proof for compliance with IDEA's mainstreaming requirements on the school district and the state rather than on the family. The federal judge who decided the case endorsed full inclusion, writing "Inclusion is a right, not a special privilege for a select few."

In the case Mavis v. Sobol, a New York court found school efforts for placement in a regular classroom were inadequate because the school had not provided a behavior management plan or training for staff to help modify the regular curriculum to meet the student's needs.

In England, the murder of two-year old James Bulger, by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, both aged 10, prompted national debate about the relationship between Childhood and criminality, which led to abolition in 1998 of the distinction with regard to criminal responsibility between young persons aged at least 14 and children aged between 10 and 14.

New York: Community Access hires Howie The Harp as Director of Advocacy. New York City Recipients' Coalition, Peer Specialist Training Center.

Wade Blank dies on February 15, 1993. A leader in the disability rights movement, Wade Blank died while unsuccessfully attempting to rescue his son from drowning in the ocean.

President Bill Clinton's unsuccessful effort to end discrimination against gays in the military leads to the compromise: Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Movement leaders met with President Bill Clinton as part of an historic White House dialogue with 28 leaders of major disability constituencies. Among participants were Joseph Rogers and Judi Chamberlin.

Putting their money where their mouths are: SMHA support of consumer and family-run programs. Arlington, VA, National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors.

46 State mental health departments funded 567 self-help groups and agencies (NASHMPD)

Work on creating Nation's first civil service Peer Specialist position begins in New York State. Celia Brown is named Director of Peer Specialist Services.

Ninth Annual “Alternatives” conference held in Columbus, Ohio sponsored by the National Empowerment Center (NEC). Theme: A Celebration of Our Spirit.

A family and medical leave bill providing time off for pregnancy or family illness is signed into law by President Clinton; a similar bill had been twice vetoed by former President Bush.

The United Nations recognizes domestic violence as an international human rights issue and issues a Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. A similar resolution is issued by the Organization of American States.

In California, SB 5 (Presley) raises marriage license fees by $4 to provide funding to domestic violence shelters.

In California, AB 187 (Solis) makes all forms of rape, including spousal rape, essentially the same crime.

In California, AB 1850 Nolan) passes allowing police to arrest people who violate protective orders, even if the officer is not present to witness the violation.

In California, AB 242 (Alpert) bans a person convicted of spousal abuse, stalking or violating a domestic violence restraining order from owning or possessing a firearm for ten years.

A study conducted by the Family Violence Prevention Fund finds that most battered patients are not identified as such by emergency staff and that emergency staff are not trained in identification or referral procedures. As a result, in California, AB 890 (B. Friendman) is passed. It requires health care providers to get training in the detection of domestic violence. Hospitals and clinics are also required to adopt written policy on how to treat battered people.

In California, AB 1652 (Speier) requires health practitioners to report domestic violence to law enforcement.

Take Our Daughters to Work Day debuts, designed to build girls’ self-esteem and open their eyes to a variety of career possibilities for women.

Fifty states have revised their laws so that, depending on the degree of additional violence used, husbancs can be prosecuted for sexually assaulting their wives.

With the increased number of female members, the 103rd Congress passes into law thirty bills on women's issues during its first year, 33 during its second. The previous record for any year: five. Women hold a record number of positions in state as well as federal government. 20.4% are state legislators; 3 governors, 11 lieutenant governors, 8 attorneys general, 13 secretaries of state, 19 state treasurers. 6 women in the Senate, 48 in the House of Representatives.

Lakeshore Hospital, Manchester, NH, a psychiatric hospital, was closed and the last patients left Northampton State Hospital, Massachusetts.

CSPNJ opened our Southern Regional Office in collaboration with the Mental Health Association (MHA) in New Jersey in Pleasantville to develop Supportive Services Program to address the ramifications of the New Jersey Division of Mental Health and Hospitals’ 450 Program taking persons out of Ancora Psychiatric Hospital into the community. CSPNJ initiated Butterfly Property Management (BPM) to serve as the not-for-profit to serve as CSPNJ’s property management organization for our multiple supportive housing properties, offices, and self-help centers.

The National Self-Harm Network established (UK).

The Patient Build Wall, some of which still stands, on the grounds of Centre for Addiction and Mental Health has been a part of Psychiatric Survivor and Mad Pride annual activities in the City of Toronto since 1993 when Toronto's first Psychiatric Survivor Pride Day hosted by West End Survivors.

“Consumer-practitioners and psychiatrists share insights about recovery and coping.” Disability Studies Quarterly 13(2), p, 17-20. Blanch, A., Fisher, D., Tucker, W., Walsh, D. and J. Chassman

“Reaching across II: Maintaining our roots: The challenge of growth.” California: California Network of Mental Health Clients. by Harp, H. and Zinman, S.

“From lab rat to researcher: The history, models, and policy implications of consumer/survivor involvement in research.” Paper presented at the fourth annual national conference of state mental health agency services research and program evaluation, Annapolis, MD. by Campbell, J., Ralph, R., and Glover, R.

“Consumers/survivors reform the system, bringing a ‘human face’ to research.” Resources, 5, 3-6. Scott, A.

“Touched with fire: Manic-depressive illness and the artistic temperament.” New York: Free Press Paperbacks. Jamison, K. R.

“Madness, heresy and the rumor of angels: The revolt against the mental health system.” Chicago: Open Court Press. Farber, S.

“Recovering our sense of value after being labeled.” Journal of Psychosocial Nursing, 31, 7-11. by Pat Deegan

“Girl Interrupted.” New York, NY: Vintage Books. by Kaysen, S.

“Picking Up the Pieces: Two Accounts of a Psychoanalytic Journey,” by Fayek Nakhla and Grace Jackson.

"Sex, Lies & Co-Counseling" by Matthew Lyons published in the Activist Men's Journal. Argues that Re-evaluation Counselling is not a cult, but that the organisation headed by Carl Harvey Jackins is authoritarian and that Jackins is guilty of the systematic sexual abuse of women he counsels.

“The Stepladder to the Impossible: A First Hand Phenomenological Account of a Schizoaffective Psychotic Crisis.” Journal of Mental Health. 2: 239-250. by Peter K. Chadwick.

“And They Call it Help; the psychiatric policing of our children,” by Louise Armstrong US: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

“Stopovers on My Way Home from Mars.” London. Mary O'Hagan.

“The Letter of a Victorian Madwoman,” by J. S. Hughes (editor).

The Atlantic Monthly has an article about how the school budget has turned to therapeutic remediation; courses in self-esteem, conflict resolution, aggression management and more are now being given. Schools are becoming emergency rooms for the emotions. Over two hundred years, the ideas of wealth and poverty came about and brought with it a technological and scientific so-called revolution which contributed to gaps between the rich and the poor that weren’t possible before this. Yet, so did the idea of social programs, services, and justice based on capitalistic ideas, Globalization is popular once again, the world has a little of every kind of rule one can find. The United States is a mix of the countries it is mixed with. There is vast wealth in the country, but it is controlled by a few powerful hands and they say how things go.

Victim rights continued to receive a boost when the Violence Against Women Act was passed by Congress and signed into law. Two years later, ICASA received its first VAWA funding from the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Illinois Criminal Justice Authority. ICASA receives allocation for the SACY Project from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act is passed by Congress with a large majority in response to the murder of Dr. David Gunn. The FACE Act forbids the use of “force, threat of force or physical obstruction” to prevent someone from providing or receiving reproductive health services. The law also provides for both criminal and civil penalties for those who break the law.

A review of neuroimaging studies indicated that three brain regions are involved in schizophrenia: the frontal, the temporolimbic and the basal ganglia, while Gur and Pearlson noted that the same abnormalities show up with other conditions such as mood disorders, though not to such an extreme degree.

1994

In 1925, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Wilson, a seventeen-year-old, deaf and mute black man was accused of rape, castrated and remanded for incarceration at the psychiatric facility in Goldsboro (North Carolina) by a “lunacy jury.” The rape charges were eventually dropped in the 1970s and at some point authorities realized that Mr. Wilson was neither mentally ill nor retarded—simply hearing impaired. In 1994, at the age of 86, Mr. Wilson was moved to a cottage on the grounds of the facility (now known as the Cherry Hospital). The move to the cottage was the state’s effort to make up for Mr. Wilson’s 72-year incarceration. He died there in March of 2001.

Neuroleptics found to cause an increase in the volume of the caudate region in the brain.

UN First Special Rapporteur on Disability, Bengt Lindqvist appointed.

The FDA approves Risperidone.

American Psychiatric Association publishes the DSM-IV-TR, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision. The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual has grown to 374 mental disorders in the DSM-IV from the 106 mental disorders in its initial, 1952 edition. DSM-IV groups sexual dysfunction, the paraphilias, and gender identity disorder under the heading “sexual and gender identity disorders”. In 1994, DSM-IV was published, listing 297 disorders in 886 pages. The task force was chaired by Allen Frances who had worked under Robert Spitzer on the DSM-III. Frances would say, “Without reliability the system is completely random, and the diagnoses mean almost nothing, maybe worse than nothing, because they’re falsely labeling. You’re better off not having a diagnostic system.” A steering committee of 27 people was introduced, including four psychologists. The steering committee created 13 work groups of 5–16 members. Each work group had approximately 20 advisers. The work groups conducted a three-step process. First, each group conducted an extensive literature review of their diagnoses. Then they requested data from researchers, conducting analyses to determine which criteria required change, with instructions to be conservative. Finally, they conducted multicenter field trials relating diagnoses to clinical practice. A major change from previous versions was the inclusion of a clinical significance criterion to almost half of all the categories, which required symptoms cause “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning” Some personality disorder diagnoses were deleted or moved to the appendix. Despite its conservative intent and careful methodology, DSM-IV was not able to prevent diagnostic inflation. Rates of Attention Deficit Disorder tripled as a result of heavy drug company marketing starting in 1997—instigated by the introduction of new on-patent drugs and facilitated by the removal of federal prohibitions against direct-to-consumer advertising. Rates of Autism increased by more than twenty fold largely because the loose diagnosis followed its becoming a prerequisite for extra school services. Rates of Bipolar Disorder doubled largely because of drug company marketing. And rates of Bipolar disorder in children increased by forty fold when thought leaders and drug companies convinced practitioners that temperamental kids had Bipolar Disorder even if they didn't have mood swings—a concept that had been rejected by DSM-IV. Dr. Frances later felt that DSM-IV should have fought more vigorously against the risks of diagnostic inflation by tightening diagnostic criteria and providing more specific warnings against over-diagnosis.

To more fully elaborate on the strategies for implementation of the rights set forth in the UN International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (1966, Article 2), the Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights – the monitoring body of the Covenant – issued: General Comment 5. This General Comment by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights formulates obligations of states to eliminate discrimination of persons with disabilities in the areas of equal rights for men and women ("double discrimination") (article 3 of the ICESCR), work (ICESCR articles 6-8), social security (article 9), protection of the family (article 10), adequate standard of living (article 11), right to physical and mental health (article 12), right to education (articles 13 and 14) and the right to take part in cultural life and enjoy the benefits of scientific progress (article 15).

Harvard investigators report that schizophrenia outcomes in the US appear to have worsened over past 20 years, and are now no better than in first decades of 20th century.

MADNESS email list first messages sent

Goals 2000: Educate America Act of 1994 - Provided framework for meeting national educational goals and carrying out systemic school reform for all children with disabilities.

The United States becomes a signatory country to the CRC (Convention on the Rights of the Child) after then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeline Albright signs on behalf of the country. However, the United States Congress does not ratify the agreement, joining the U.S. with Somalia as the two countries in the world that have not done so. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont made one of the last attempts to pass the CRC through to the Senate. In a speech to the Senate in 1994, he explained that "The administration’s resistance to ratifying the CRC is due to misunderstandings about the Convention. Opponents claim that it is anti-family or infringes upon states’ rights. The CRC does none of these things."

Tenth Annual “Alternatives” conference is held in Anaheim, sponsored by the Clearinghouse. Theme: Celebrating Ten Years of Alternatives: A Decade of Dignity, Wellness and Unity.

Dare to Vision. In 1994, SAMHSA convened a conference focusing on the very high rate of women with physical and sexual abuse histories in the public mental health system. Dare to Vision provided a forum for survivors and consumers to discuss their trauma histories; to stress the importance of and value in addressing trauma in treatment services; and to highlight the re-victimization experienced in residential or in-patient settings through such practices as seclusion and restraint.

Local ad hoc criminal justice task force formed in Broward County, Florida to identify points in the criminal justice system which could be streamlined to improve the administration of justice for defendants with mental health and related disabilities, after a high-profile criminal case involving a young mental health client, a grand jury report relating severe shortfalls in the community mental health system and tragic deaths in the county jail. Participants included the Broward Public Defender's Office, State Attorney's Office, Sheriff’s Office, County staff, local members of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), and community mental health and substance abuse providers. (Note the absence of participation by those who would be most directly affected.) This task force led to the creation of the nations first mental health court in 1997.

In April 1994, the first class of the Consumer Service Provider Training graduates in Contra Costa County, California. This is the first training for Community Support Workers where the curriculum, class design and training were all implemented and taught by other consumer/survivors (Pat Risser, Jay Mahler, Mary Carley, etc.) with a recovery orientation. In May, 1995, during the 4th class, being taught in Solano County, the notion of an individual personalized crisis plan was developed. This was the immediate predecessor (creation) of WRAP (see 1997).

Support Coalition is incorporated on its own as two nonprofits: Support Coalition Northwest (based in Oregon) & Support Coalition International, later merged.

Peter Stastny

Darby Penney, Celia Brown, Peter Stastny, and Neil Covatta were successful in creating the first civil service Peer Specialist Title in the United States in New York State.

NY State OMH hires five regional recipient affairs persons. Mary Auslander is hired for the New York City field office.

C/S/X (Consumers/Clients/Survivors/Ex-Patients/Ex-Inmates) in New York State negotiate official policy change: OMH adopts goal of eliminating restraint and seclusion.

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Deaf Man, 96, Freed After 68 Years in Hospital

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/06/us/deaf-man-96-freed-after-68-years-in-hospital.html

Published: February 6, 1994

Black and deaf, Junius Wilson was 28 years old when he was jailed, charged with assault with intent to rape. He was declared insane and sent to North Carolina's mental hospital for blacks. Then he was castrated.

That was in 1925. Decades later, the charges were dropped, but Mr. Wilson remained in a locked ward.

Now 96, Mr. Wilson was finally moved on Friday into his first real home in 68 years.

After the move, Mr. Wilson's guardian, John Wasson, an assistant director at the New Hanover County Department of Social Services, expressed relief. "My biggest fear was that he was going to die before getting into that cottage," Mr. Wasson said of Mr. Wilson.

Nonetheless, Mr. Wilson's health seems to belie his age. In recent years he was given special privileges by the hospital, and he kept in shape by riding his bicycle everywhere, fishing in a nearby river and keeping dogs in a barn on the hospital's farm.

Mr. Wasson would not allow Mr. Wilson to be interviewed. But he said Mr. Wilson was excited about the move to his new three-bedroom cottage, even though it is in the shadow of the hospital where the deaf man spent most of his life, unable to communicate except through crude signs, grunts and gestures.

One historian said Mr. Wilson's plight is a vestige of a bygone era.

"In the segregated South, it was not unknown for black men to be charged with rape and dealt with in illegal and extralegal ways," said Daryl Scott, an assistant professor of American history at Columbia University. "This case differs from many miscarriages of justice of that era in that Mr. Wilson was dealt with by the system as opposed to the lynch mob."

Mr. Wilson's situation came to light in 1991, when Mr. Wasson reviewed records and determined that Mr. Wilson was deaf, not mentally ill. It took Mr. Wasson and a team of lawyers from Carolina Legal Assistance three years to obtain Mr. Wilson's release.

One lawyer, Paul Pooley, tried to cut through the state's bureaucracy in November with a scathing letter to the Attorney General's office.

"He lacks the opportunity to express himself and be understood," Mr. Pooley wrote of Mr. Wilson. "He deserves better, and he deserves it now."

It took almost three more months, but Mr. Wilson now has the most freedom he has had since he was taken from his home in the coastal town of Castle Hayne.

He also has a car and driver.

"If he wants to go uptown and get a hamburger, they get in the car and go there," said the hospital's director, Phil Montgomery. "We have funds he can use. Money isn't an issue."

The charge against Mr. Wilson was dropped in the 1970's, but hospital officials decided to keep him because his family could not be found, Mr. Montgomery said.

Mr. Wilson was in touch with his father and a sister until the 1940's or 1950's, but that link has been lost, according to records and Mr. Pooley. The hospital tried to send a letter to the sister in 1970, but could not locate her.

"We don't think he got lost," Mr. Montgomery said. "I feel like he was cared for. We don't know whether he knew whether he could or couldn't leave. He never tried to escape."

Now, Mr. Montgomery said, Mr. Wilson is a voluntary patient. Mr. Wasson has decided the hospital is the best place for him. Aides are assigned to him around the clock, seven days a week, and a nurse will check on him three times a day.

"He wants to go out where there are people around, where he can see things going on," Mr. Pooley said.

An elderly deaf man visits Mr. Wilson and communicates in the old "Raleigh Sign," a form of sign language that once was taught to blacks.

Mr. Wilson is being taught American Sign Language. Twice a month, he visits volunteer families nearby. Every day, he works with arts and crafts to maintain his mobility.

Mr. Pooley said the move was a beginning, "an important step, but it's not that big of a step."

"A lot of people seem to see it as an end point," he said. "I see it as a beginning point. He'll be part of the larger community."

Junius Wilson was born in 1908 to Sidney and Mary Wilson. He was born deaf in and so his literacy level was extremely low. At the age of eight he was sent away to a residential North Carolina School for the deaf and blind in Raleigh. This was America’s first school created to care for the special needs black children (Burch, p. 20). He was never taught proper sign language and so his family members often would misunderstand him or misinterpret gestures that he made, and he also did not understand the things that his family members were telling him, as his mother could not teach him how to read and write. Because of the confusing communication, some of his family members suspected that he had assaulted one of his own family members sexually. In this community he was somewhat safer from his family however he was sent here not for deafness per se but for his perceived mental deficiencies and sexual deviations. Here in this institution Wilson became a member of a community that was equally misunderstood and equally ostracized by the greater community. They were all people of color and they were all unable to communicate by normal conventions. They were never officially taught ASL (American Sign Language) as they were all people of color and at the time no one saw fit to use their teaching resources on Blacks. They instead developed their own gestures and signs to communicate with one another and to the staff members in the institution. This form of sign language was entirely unique to these people. As a result, the deaf Blacks from Raleigh could not communicate with other signing deaf people, and far less could they be understood by their hearing peers.

Southern states had a strong history of segregation. This mentality of separation and White superiority bled the special education programs of even the most progressive places south of the Mason Dixon, like North Carolina. Gustavus Ernest Lineberry became the superintendent for the North Carolina School for the Colored Blind and Deaf in 1918, after this the quality of education changed dramatically. Lineberry was a firm believer in the teaching of the blind and deaf, even Blacks, but he was not so kind as to consider the needs of his White and Black students to be the same. He completely redistributed the resources of the school so that the best teachers and alumni were teaching at the White schools. He then made sure to provide a far less academic curriculum for the Blacks, as he felt there was a dire need to keep Blacks “in their place”. The Black students with physical disabilities were given an education that would prepare them for rudimentary, vocational labor so that they could prove their worth to society ‘boys were taught shoe repairing, carpentry and cabinetmaking along with dairy work”. It was also clear that this vocational form of training, towards fields that required little interaction, lowered the cost that their programs would incur and made the need for sufficient literacy nearly unimportant.

This, however, created a great deal of socialized problems for the students participating in the programs. Everyone sent to the school for the Colored Deaf and Blind was sent there to become better functioning and well prepared to rejoin society. But the students were not exposed to role models that were not fluent in sign and who did not know how to supply the needs of the deaf and blind. And because of the segregation that was taking place students could not even be taught by their White peers secretly, because they were transferred to Morganton.

Junius Wilson was becoming too much of a burden for his family as he became older, and his communication with them had not really improved either which was greatly to his detriment. His family decided that the best thing they could do in their situation was to have Wilson committed to a mental asylum. He was given up to the police by his family under the charge of attempted rape. However, it is clear that not everyone was on board with this idea. Although, his mother allowed them to take him away it was said that she didn’t approve of the decision and would not speak with André, his father, because he was the one that supported removing his son permanently.

Wilson was moved to Goldsboro Asylum in a farming colony. North Carolina was experiencing the debilitation of the Great Depression just like everyone else at the time and so holding whole mental institutions was more of a juggling act than those that ran the institutions could bear alone. Goldsboro opened up farming colonies in order to defer some of the costs involved in feeding inmates by having the inmates work for the food that they ate. The institution even went so far as to send inmates to other farms so that they could make money for the asylum. One could look at this as a sad combination of economic desperation seasoned with racism in the South and a disregard for the mentally and physically disabled.

After a great deal of mistreatment however, Junius Wilson’s case was taken up by John Wasson, who noted that Wilson was being held in the Asylum for “phase of life adjustment disorder” something he felt didn’t warrant a seventy year stay in a mental institution. In a major State court case Junius Wilson v. the State of North Carolina Wilson was finally granted his freedom and a cottage to call his own on the outskirts of the Hospital property at Goldsboro.

Wilson’s story continued to have a significant impact after his death. His case which he brought through the North Carolina judiciary as a result of his poor treatment and wrongful sterilization was a model that others used in order to seek compensation for the trauma caused. The state of North Carolina has made great efforts to own up to its involvement in the eugenics movement. In 2003 North Carolina was one of the first states to repeal the eugenic sterilization laws. Unfortunately it has taken until very recently for any party afflicted by the eugenics laws to be officially recognized and monetarily compensated. Until the 2009-2010 session of the State Legislature of North Carolina, there had been one promise after another with only symbolic acknowledgement being offered.

Junius Wilson in pajamas, Christmas, 2000

Wilson, born in 1908, was apparently wrongfully accused of a criminal act as a teenager, found insane by a jury, and sentenced to a psychiatric hospital in his home state of North Carolina, where he spent the rest of his life. Wilson was a young, deaf, and African American man from a struggling rural town. For many decades, no one learned to communicate with him in his language, including during court proceedings. After the 1928 Supreme Court decision legalizing sterilization of people in institutions, he was castrated. His family traveled to the hospital after World War II to seek his release but were turned away. Despite being deemed sane, he remained institutionalized.

When Wilson was in his 80s, at the instigation of a social worker and lawyers who looked at his file and understood the outrageous miscarriage of justice, Wilson was released from the locked wards and given a settlement from the state. He lived the last few years of his life in a cottage on the hospital grounds. He died in 2001. (Check out the book Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson to learn more about his life.)

Wilson's story is one of the troubling chapters of American ableism (the belief that people with disabilities are inferior to the able-bodied) and racism, to be sure. His is also a deeply moving demonstration of the role of objects—in particular, bicycles—in creating dignity, purpose, and a larger identity. Over the years, Wilson owned bicycles that he purchased with money he saved from digging and selling fishing worms. This museum has had the good fortune to collect his last bike—a yellow Schwinn—that his biographer, Susan Burch, located in a shed on the hospital grounds after he passed away. The bicycle story of Junius Wilson deserves closer, if inferential, attention.

Wilson's bike arrives at the National Museum of American History

When safety bikes first hit the commercial market in the 1880s, the world got a little bigger and more interesting. People formed bicycling clubs and associations. They purchased maps or drew their own, marking land formations, treacherous terrain, and good spots to picnic or view the countryside. With a bike, women, youths, and people who were restricted from public conveyances because of race or poverty had the possibility of going further or doing something different, as long as they had a certain amount of physical mobility.

Wilson's bike, found behind a shed

Wilson must have felt this, too. He owned three bikes in his life while imprisoned in the psychiatric hospital. Perhaps the freedom to ride around the grounds and into town on a special occasion relieved the monotony as well as announced his ownership of something. The objects that we use make public statements about us—about our competency, identity, domain. Wilson's yellow Schwinn with two wire baskets said a lot about him. His bikes were not given to him. He wanted one and went after it. He was a man with aspiration, even if only to get out and ride across the grounds. His bike gave him alone time with a machine that he owned and controlled, even if sporadic and restricted by imposing institutional boundaries. The injustices done to Mr. Wilson no doubt preyed on him throughout his life. Yet he not only managed to get one bike, he got another and another. His keeping on with bikes, his companionship with self-propelled freedom, and his mastery of balance and steady pedaling over the uneven grounds give us a glimpse of his internal life, even though he left no papers and most of the people around him never learned to communicate with him.

Wilson's bike on display in "The Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990-2015" case on the museum's second floor. The display is open July 20, 2015 to December 17, 2015.

Katherine Ott is a curator in the Division of Medicine and Science.

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In 1994 Congress passed the Multiethnic Placement Act (Public Law 103-382), directing states to actively recruit adoptive and foster families, especially for minority children waiting a long time for placement in a home.

The first People of Color Conference was held at the Seventh Annual Mental Health Cultural Diversity Conference in Cleveland, Ohio, sponsored by the Ohio Department of Mental Health and co-sponsored by the People of Color Caucus, now known as the American Association of People of Color Mental Health Consumers. The conference was facilitated by the National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse.

In Italy, from 1994-1995, laws aimed to accelerate closure of mental hospitals. Laws fined hospitals and local health units if they did not close before the end of 1999.

The 1st first-line of the atypical antipsychotic drugs, is introduced. It is the 1st new first-line antipsychotic drug in almost 20 years.

“Empirical Correction of Seven Myths about Schizophrenia with Implications for Treatment.” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. 90(suppl. 384): 140-146. Harding, C. M. and Zahniser, J.M.

“Empowering the Disempowered,” by Ike Powell & Ed Knight.

In England, after their children alerted authorities to the West's rape of their daughter, investigations revealed that between 1967 and 1987, Fred and his wife Rosemary tortured, raped and murdered at least 12 girls and young women, whose disappearance had previously gone unnoticed. The case highlighted the inadequacies of the National Missing Persons Bureau and eventually gave rise to the National Policing Improvement Agency established in 2007.

“The mad among us: A history of the care of America’s mentally ill.” New York, NY: The Free Press. by Grob, G.

“Why the medical model won’t work.” Unpublished manuscript. by Sally Clay.

“Something is happening: The contemporary consumer and psychiatric survivor movement in historical context.” The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 15, 55-70. by Everett, B.

“The writing on the wall: Women’s autobiography and the asylum.” Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Wood, M. E.

“Women of the Asylum: Voices from behind the walls, 1840-1945.” New York: Anchor Books. by Jeffery Geller and Maxine Harris

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (PL 103-322) is signed by President Clinton on September 13. In addition to authorizing new prisons and other punishment provisions, the law includes 16 prevention programs, among them grants to combat violence against women, drug treatment programs, and a local crime prevention block grant program. The Violence Against Women Act of 1993, which increases penalties for offenders, authorizes funding for prevention and training, and provides protection for victims, is incorporated into PL 103-322. As part of the Anticrime Bill, the Violence Against Women Act is passed by Congress. The Violence Against Women Act tightens federal penalties for sex offenders, funds services for victims of rape and domestic violence, and provides for special training of police officers. Every couple applying for a marriage license in California is given information about domestic violence. Congress passes the Violence Against Women Act, part of the federal Crime Victims Act, which funds services for victims of rape and domestic violence, allows women to seek civil rights remedies for gender-related crimes, and provides training to increase police and court officials' sensitivity. It creates for the first time a federal right to sue the assailant for gender-based violence and provides that states and American Indian nations give full faith and credit to each other's restraining orders.

The Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 (PL 103-382) reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act for five years. Provisions include the Elementary School Counseling Demonstration Act; Title 1, Helping Disadvantaged Children Meet High Standards; Title 11, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professional Development Program; Title IV, Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities; Families of Children with Disabilities Support Act; Urban and Rural Education Assistance; MultiEthnic Placement Act; and many others.

The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (PL 103-259) is enacted on May 26 to combat violence against "abortion clinics." The act makes it a federal offense to restrict access to reproductive health services or to destroy the property of reproductive health services facilities.

The NASW Press separates Social Work Research & Abstracts and creates Social Work Abstracts, which publishes abstracts of previously published materials, and Social Work Research, which publishes primary research articles.

Person-in-Environment (PIE) System is published by the NASW Press to enable social workers to describe, classify, and code the problems of adult clients.

New York follows Florida in recognizing that rapists cannot claim that the victim's dress provoked their crime. New Jersey and Pennsylvania add stalking to definitions of abuse.

California begins distributing information on domestic violence to any couple applying for a marriage license.

The California Department of Justice reports that 251,233 incidents of domestic violence were reported by local law enforcement agencies.

The CA Justice Department reports that 123 homicides were committed by current or former husbands or boyfriends while 35 were attributed to a current or former wife or girlfriend.

O.J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ron Goldman.

In California AB 167 (B. Friedman) the Friedman-Alpert-Solis Battered Women's Protection Act, and AB 801 (B. Friedman) pass, providing $11.5 million for shelters and $3.5 million to improve domestic violence prosecutions. This marks the first time that substantial state general fund dollars are committed to domestic violence protection.

In California, AB 3034 (Solis) passes. It provides a system for the immediate entry of domestic violence restraining orders by the issuing court in a statewide computerized registry maintained by the Department of Justice.

Congress adopts the Gender Equity in Education Act to train teachers, promote math and science learning by girls, counsel pregnant teens, and prevent sexual harassment.

The appetite-suppressing hormone leptin was discovered.

“Murderous Memories: One Woman’s Hellish Battle to Save Herself,” by Jean Small Brinson.

“The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness,” by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett.

“Somebody Somewhere: Breaking Free from the World of Autism,” by Donna Williams.

“Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America,” by Elizabeth Wurtzel.

“Rocking the Cradle of Sexual Politics,” by Louise Armstrong. US: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

“The writing on the wall: Women’s autobiography and the asylum.” Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Wood, M. E.

“Undercurrents: A Therapist’s Reckoning with Her Own Depression,” by Martha Manninf.

“Soon Will Come the Light: A View From Inside the Autism Puzzle,” by T. A. McKean.

“A Drinking Life: A Memoir,” by Pete Hamill.

1995

Howie the Harp (1953-1995) died February 5 at age 42. Known for his peacemaking and mediating with words and music, his harmonica never far away from him. One of the original founders of the modern movement for mental patient rights, he was founder of the Oakland Support Center and also of Altered States of the Arts, a national network of artists, writers and performers. Howie learned to play harmonica from a fellow prisoner and he used it to calm groups. Howie is famous for his passion about “Housing First” as a means to helping people. Howie chose his middle name, “the” because it gave him the same middle name as other famous people like Attilla the Hun, Alexander the Great, and Winnie the Pooh. A memorial was held in New York City for Howie the Harp followed by a march and protest of Involuntary Outpatient Commitment. Hundreds attend. Howard Geld, known as Howie the Harp to the mentally ill and homeless to whom he committed his life after spending time in institutions for the emotionally disturbed while a teen-ager, died on Feb. 5 at his home on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The cause was apparently a heart attack, said Steve Coe, executive director of Community Access, a nonprofit housing and advocacy agency for the mentally ill. Mr. Geld was widely credited with being a pioneer in advocacy for mental patients, founding or co-founding many organizations that are now part of national and international movements. At his death, Mr. Geld was director of advocacy for Community Access. Since taking the job in 1993, Mr. Coe said, he began the New York City Recipients Coalition, a group dedicated to making former mental patients a political force. And he wrote proposals that led to $150,000 in financing from the state and other organizations for the Peer Specialists Training Center to train former patients to help others like them.

Ed Roberts died March 14, 1995 from complications from a stroke. Ed Roberts was often referred to as the “father” of the disability rights movement.

Robert Faltens died October 12, 1995. He was part of the first class of trained peer supporters in Contra Costa County, California. He worked for the system and it drove him to despair and he plunged from the Golden Gate Bridge.

First Psychologists prescribe medication through the U.S. military’s psychopharmacology program.

Maria Rantho, South African Federation of Disabled People’s Vice-Chair, was elected to Nelson Mandela’s Parliament in South Africa. Ronah Moyo, head of the women’s wing of the Zimbabwe Federation of Disabled People, was elected to Robert Mugabe’s Parliament in Zimbabwe. Both women felt they faced an uphill struggle with legislators who were ignorant of the needs of people with disabilities.

The European Parliament of the European Union adopts the Resolution on the human rights of disabled people that urges the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, to take steps to ensure equal opportunities for disabled persons.

The First International Symposium on Issues of Women with Disabilities was held in Beijing, China, in conjunction with the Fourth World Conference on Women.

ACLIFM, an organization of people with disabilities in Cuba, held its first international conference on disability rights in Havana, Cuba.

The struggle for the rights of people with disabilities in Southern Africa took a giant leap forward with the election and appointment to parliament, for the first time in the history of the region, of two women disability leaders in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The election of Maria Rantho early in 1995 to the government of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and of Ronah Moyo in April to the Robert Mugabe government of Zimbabwe marked the beginning of an epoch in the history of people with disabilities. Both the new parliamentarians admit they are faced with an uphill struggle with legislators who are mostly ignorant of the needs of people with disabilities. As for South African Federation of Disabled People, this was a landmark victory. Rantho is SAFOD's vice-chairperson and Moyo heads the women's wing of the Zimbabwe Federation of Disabled People. Both women have proven to be tough fighters for human rights, having tested their mettle in the forefront of the struggle. Ms. Rantho was sworn into Parliament in February as part of ANC national list of candidates. She said her first responsibility was to "ensure that human rights issues are debated and upheld." Speaking for nearly six million people with disabilities, who form 12 per cent of South Africa's entire population, she added, "All along there has not been much said or done to protect the rights of people with disabilities, and we needed to be represented by our own people."

The Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 (CAA) became law in the U.S., and it required all offices in the legislative branch to make their public services, programs, activities, and places of public accommodation accessible to members of the public who have disabilities, as well as declaring that employees of Congress cannot be discriminated against in personnel actions because of a disability.

“Real world” relapse rates for schizophrenia patients treated with neuroleptics said to be above 80% in the two years following hospital discharge, which is much higher than in pre-neuroleptic era.

“Quality of life” in drug-treated patients reported to be “very poor”.

St. Paul, Minnesota hosted the 11^th Annual “Alternatives” conference sponsored by the National Empowerment Center Theme: Returning to Our Roots: Rights and Renewal.

Justice for All was organized by Justin Dart, Fred Fay, Becky Ogle and others in Washington, D.C., in order to advocate against calls to amend or repeal the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

The American Association of People with Disabilities is founded in Washington, D.C. Paul Hearne, a longtime leader in the disability community, achieves his dream of creating a national association to give people with disabilities more consumer power and a stronger public voice, with the creation of the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Helen L. v. Snider, rules that the continued publicly funded institutionalization of a disabled Pennsylvania woman in a nursing home, when not medically necessary, and where the state of Pennsylvania could offer her the option of home care, is a violation of her rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Disability rights advocates hail this ruling as a landmark decision regarding the rights of people in nursing homes to personal assistance services, allowing them to live at home.

Sandra Jensen, a member of People First, is denied a heart-lung transplant by the Stanford University School of Medicine because she has Down syndrome. After pressure from disability rights activists, administrators there reverse their decision, and, in January 1996, Jensen becomes the first person with Down syndrome to receive a heart-lung transplant.

When Billy Broke His Head... and Other Tales of Wonder by Billy Golfus premiers on PBS. The film is, for many, a first time introduction to the concept of disability rights and the disability rights movement. It highlighted the disability rights movement. The film won recognition at several national film festivals including a Freedom of Expression award from the Sundance Film Festival.

Christopher Reeve Paralyzed. Christopher Reeve's horse fails to complete a rail jump at an annual riding competition in Virginia. Reeve is thrown and sustains a severe C1-C2 vertebrae fracture that paralyzes him from the neck down. Best known for his Superman role, after the injury Reeve begins his own battle, searching for a cure to spinal cord injury. Though he dies in 2004 without seeing a cure, he receives both admiration and criticism for his attempts at finding one, leaving a legacy of ongoing research around spinal cord injuries.

First Deaf Miss America Crowned. Heather Whitestone, an orally educated deaf woman from Birmingham, Alabama, wins the coveted crown. She states, "[Speech] worked for me, but it does not work for all deaf children." Speech vs. sign clouds her reign. Her attempt to calm the storm by stressing individual differences and "it (speech) worked for me, but it does not work for all deaf children" does not entirely end the controversy. The question is often asked, "Is she an appropriate deaf role model for deaf children and for the general public?"

Use of cochlear Implants increases. 12,000 candidates have been implanted at a cost of approximately $40,000. Adults and Children severely to profoundly Deaf, age two and above are considered candidates. Many parents opt for cochlear implants and mainstreamed education as an educational plan for their Deaf children

National Federation of the Blind established dial-up synthetic-speech talking newspaper, making a daily newspaper available to blind people by 6:30 a.m. on day of issue for the first time.

As part of a national grassroots effort to pass federal legislation to expand personal assistance services, Lucy Gwin, founder and editor of Mouth Magazine, produced a call to action titled You Choose.

Nationally, more people with developmental disabilities participated in home and community-based Medicaid waiver programs (more than 142,000) than resided in Intermediate Care Facilities (134,384).

CMHS Director

SAMHSA Administrator

The Managed Care Consortium (MCC) formed in 1955 to create educational opportunities for a host of advocacy organization across the United States. The MCC, with funding from CMHS, encouraged teams to form in each state to impact the development of managed care programs.

Until 1995 none of the federal child abuse legislation dealt specifically with punishing sex offenders. In December of that year, with growing acknowledgment of and concern about sex crimes against minors, Congress passed the Sex Crimes Against Children Prevention Act of 1995 (Public Law 104-71). The act increased penalties for those who sexually exploit children by engaging in illegal conduct, or for exploitation conducted via the Internet, as well as for those who transport children with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.

A 1995 survey of ECT patients by the UK Advocacy Network revealed that one-third of 300 patients surveyed believed ECT had damaged them and an astounding 80% claimed it had irreparably destroyed their memory.

Ed Knight

Mental Health Confidence Scale (Carpinello et. al.) (republished in 2000).

Paolo Delvecchio

CMHS (Federal Center for Mental Health Services) hires first Consumer Affairs Specialist (Paolo DelVecchio).

In 1995 President Clinton appoints Rae Unzicker to the National Council on Disability.

The National Mental Health Consumer and Ex-Patient Organizations and Resources (SC SHARE, 1995), all 50 states and the District of Columbia are represented with 235 different consumer organizations. There are also 19 national sources from which to obtain self-help information and referral.

The Managed Care Consortium was formed in 1995 to create educational opportunities for a host of advocacy organizations across the United States. With funding support from the federal Center for Mental Health Services, this consortium encouraged teams to form in each state to influence the design of managed care programs.

Families Together became an official state organization of the Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, a national, parent-run organization focused on the needs of children and youth with emotional, behavioral or mental health disorders and their families.

Youth Empowerment Association! (YEA!) becomes Stage 2! Youth Empowerment in New York City and is awarded contract to create peer support in children’s psychiatric centers. Enter Stage Left. Stage 2! Youth Empowerment. (editors Kim Baez and Lauren Tenney).

“Madness in America: Cultural and Medical Perceptions of Mental Illness before 1914.” Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, Gamwell, Lynn, and Tomes,Nancy.

“1995/1996 Campaigns Against Racist Federal Programs by the Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology,”. Retrieved 7/8/2000 from http://www.breggin.com/racistfedpol.html Journal of African American Men 1:No. 3, 3-22. Winter 1995/96 Breggin, Peter R

“Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism, 1890-1950.” Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Smith, Susan L.

“Beyond bedlam: Contemporary women psychiatric survivors speak out.” Chicago: Third Side Press. Grobe, Jeannie, ed.

O.J. Simpson is acquitted in the murders of Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ron Goldman.

In California, SB 591 (Solis) is passed which encourages the arrest of the abuser in domestic violence cases, requires arrest for restraining order violations, and discourages dual arrests.

In California, SB (O/Connell) passes establishing domestic violence training for court-appointed child custody evaluators.

In California, SB 169 (Hayden) eliminates the option of diversion for domestic violence defendants in criminal cases.

In California, SB 132 (Watson) requires law enforcement officers below the rank of supervisor who normally respond to domestic violence calls to complete an updated course on domestic violence every two years.

In California, AB 878 (Rogan) is passed. The courts are allowed to issue a domestic violence restraining order to stop stalking, annoying phone calls and the destruction of property.

In California, AB 935 (Speier) passes allowing municipal court judges to issue restraining orders when superior court judges cannot respond in a timely manner.

In California, SB 591 (Solis) tightens up restrictions on granting mutual restraining orders against the abuser and the survivor except under limited circumstances.

In California, AB 1973 (Figueroa) prohibits health insurers and disability insurers from denying or restricting coverage to domestic violence survivors.

In California, SB 924 (Petris) passes. The statute of limitations for personal injury actions involving domestic violence is extended to three years from the date of the last incident.

“How to Become a Schizophrenic: The Case Against Biological Psychiatry” (2nd ed). Everett, Washington: Apollyon Press. Modrow, J.

Richard Webster publishes the definitive analysis: Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis

“Identity Politics, close to home.” American Psychologist. 50, 49-5 by Andrea Blanch and Darby Penney.

“When the Music’s Over: My Journey into Schizophrenia,” by R. Burke. (editors R. Gates & R. Hammond).

“Restraint and Seclusion: The Model for elimination of their use in healthcare,” by Maggie Bennington-Davis, MD and Tim Murphy, MS. HCPro.

“Folie à Deux: An Experience of One-to-One Therapy.” London. by Rosie Alexander.

“The Beast: A Reckoning with Depression,” by Tracy Thompson.

“Diary of a Fat Housewife: A True Story of Humor, Heartbreak and Hope,” by Rosemary Green.

“They Say You’re Crazy,” by Paula Caplan. Addison Wesley Publishing Co.

“The Liar’s Club: A Memoir,” by Mary Karr.

“Recovery: The only way to go,” The Voice: The Newsletter of the Coalition of Consumer Self-Advocates & Oasis Drop-In Center, Providence. RI. by Emmel, W.

“The Day Room: A Memoir of Madness and Mending,” by Kathleen Crowley.

“The Cradle will Fall,” by Michele G. Remington and Carl S. Burak.

“The Magic Daughter: A Memoir of Living with Multiple Personality Disorder,” by J. Phillips.

“In Other Words,” by Marie Cardinal.

“Phone at Nine Just to Say You’re Alive.” London. by Linda Hart.

“Prairie Reunion,” by B. J. Scot.

“Peaking Out: How My Mind Broke Free from the Delusions in Psychiatry,” by Al Siebert.

“A Shining Affliction: A Story of Harm and Healing in Psychotherapy,” by Annie Rogers.

“An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness,” by Kay Redfield Jamison.

“Secret Life: An Autobiography,” by Michael Ryan.

“Quivers,” by Robin Quivers.

Dammasch State Hospital in Oregon (founded 1961) closes.

1996

Telecommunications Act of 1996 - The Telecommunications Act passes and requires that computers, telephones, closed captioning, and many other telecommunication devices and equipment be made accessible. Required telecommunications manufacturers and service providers to ensure that equipment is designed, developed and fabricated to be accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities, if readily achievable.

The European Parliament of the European Union adopts the Resolution on threats to the right to life of disabled persons that seeks to protect the right to life and states that the European Parliament is "opposed to the practice of the active killing by doctors of patients in a persistent vegetative state and disabled new-born children."

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA, P.L. 104-191) was enacted. HIPAA’s intent was to protect health insurance coverage for workers and their families when they change or lose their jobs. It was recognized that this new protection would impose additional administrative burdens on both public and private healthcare providers, payers, and clearinghouses. An additional purpose of HIPPA was to devise a strategy that would regulate administrative functions including claim forms, privacy, and security. To achieve these goals, the law includes a section called Administrative Simplification. This section of HIPAA is specifically designed to reduce the administrative burden associated with the transfer of health information between organizations, and more generally to increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the United States healthcare system. An additional purpose of HIPAA was to accelerate the move from certain paper-based administrative and financial transactions to electronic transactions through the establishment of nationwide standards. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) of 1996 - Improved access to health care for some Americans by guaranteeing that private health insurance is available, portable and renewable; limiting pre-existing condition exclusions and increasing the purchasing clout of individuals and small employers through incentives to form private, voluntary coalitions to negotiate with providers and health plans.

Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 - U.S. President William Clinton signed the Mental Health Parity Act, requiring psychiatric conditions to be considered equal to any other medical or surgical illness by health insurance providers; in 2008 President George W. Bush signed an amended version. Included a provision that prohibits insurance companies from having lower lifetime caps for treatment of mental illness compared with treatment of other medical conditions. The Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 passes, barring insurance companies and large self-insured employers from placing annual or lifetime dollar limits on mental health coverage. This is the first Federal law establishing limited parity for mental health and health care insurance coverage. The law prohibited insurers or plans serving 50 or more employees from setting lower annual or lifetime dollar caps on mental health benefits than for other health benefits. However, the legislation did not address many of the limits insurance plans frequently apply to the coverage of behavioral healthcare services. These restrictions include limits on the number of treatment visits, days of treatment, co-pays, and deductibles.

On June 28, 1996, three inspectors from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) gave the Commission’s highest rating for patient rights and care to Central State Hospital in Petersburg, Virginia. The next day, Gloria Huntley, a 31 year old woman who was hospitalized at Central State, died of cardiac arrest. During the last two months of her life, Ms. Huntley had been held in mechanical restraints for 558 hours, the equivalent of 23 full days. In the days immediately prior to her death, Ms. Huntley had pleaded to be freed from restraints, saying that she feared she was dying. Her pleas were not heeded. Gloria Huntley’s death triggered a nationwide advocacy campaign to reform the use of restraints and seclusion in psychiatric treatment facilities.

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Act was created as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104 –193). The law contains strong work requirements, a performance bonus to reward states for moving welfare recipients into jobs, state maintenance of effort requirements, comprehensive child support, and supports for families moving from welfare to work, which includes increased funding for child care and guaranteed medical coverage. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 - Required work in exchange for time-limited assistance; Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) replaced the former welfare programs, ending the federal entitlement to assistance; states, territories, and tribes receive a block grant allocation with a requirement on states to maintain a historical level of state spending known as maintenance of effort.

Congress passes legislation eliminating more than 150,000 disabled children from the Social Security rolls, as well as individuals who are alcohol or drug dependent. The Social Security Administration terminated payments for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) for persons listed as having a substance abuse disorder that is primary to their finding of disability. Additionally, functional assessment procedures were created that provided for stricter medical listings imposed on children receiving SSI benefits.

Not Dead Yet is formed by disabled advocates to oppose Jack Kevorkian and the proponents of assisted suicide for people with disabilities. It focuses on opposing rationing health care to people with severe disabilities and opposing the imposition of “do not resuscitate” (DNR) orders for disabled people in hospitals, schools, and nursing homes. The Supreme Court agrees to hear several right-to-die cases, and disability rights advocates redouble their efforts to prevent a resurgence of “euthanasia” and “mercy killing” as practiced by the Nazis against disabled people during World War II. Of particular concern are calls for the “rationing” of health care to people with severe disabilities and the imposition of “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) orders for disabled people in hospitals, schools, and nursing homes.

Sen. Robert Dole becomes the first person with a visible disability since Franklin Roosevelt to run for president of the United States. Unlike Roosevelt, he publicly acknowledges the extent of his disability. He is defeated by incumbent Bill Clinton.

Sandra Jensen, a member of People First, is denied a heart-lung transplant by the Stanford University School of Medicine because she has Down Syndrome. After pressure from disability rights activists, administrators there reverse their decision, and in January 1996, Jensen becomes the first person with Down Syndrome to receive a heart-lung transplant.

Movie "Mr. Holland's Opus" is released starring Richard Dryfus as a music teacher who must learn to understand his Deaf son

Fred Pelka’s book “Compendium of the Disability Rights Movement” is published

In Bragdon v. Abbott, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the definition of disability includes asymptomatic HIV.

In Pennsylvania Department of Corrections v. Yeskey, the Supreme Court decided that the Americans with Disabilities Act includes state prisons.

In Vacco v. Quill and Washington v. Glucksberg, the U.S. Supreme Court validated the state prohibition on physician-assisted suicide, deciding that the issue is within the jurisdiction of the states.

Georgia voters elect disabled candidate Max Cleland to the U.S. Senate.

First time a shock machine manufacturer pays money to a survivor.

Recovery items developed in Canton, Ohio (Ralph, Lambric and Steele)

CSP-NJ opened the Northern Regional Office in collaboration with the MHA in Passaic County to provide support services to consumers being discharged from Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. CSPNJ expanded the number of Self-help Centers to 22. These centers are located across New Jersey in 18 counties.

12^th Annual Alternatives in Orlando, Florida sponsored by the Clearinghouse. Theme: Creating Healing Alternatives for Real Health Care Reform.

The National Consumer, Family, and Advocate Leadership Conference on State Mental Health Care Reform and Managed Care was held in Philadelphia. The conference was organized by the National Managed Care Consortium – a group comprising consumer, family, and other advocacy organizations: the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the Consumer Managed Care Network, the Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the National Association for Children of Alcoholics, the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association, the National Mental Health Association and the National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse. The conference generated a policy paper entitled “Core Values and Principles,” which reflected a consensus among its member organizations that public sector values should be applied to private sector systems of care, including managed care organizations.

According to a report in The Philadelphia Inquirer (“Mentally ill’s safety net found strong,” 5/13/96), the overwhelming majority of those released from Byberry when it closed were subsequently found to be living successfully in the community.

Pursuant to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act Amendments of 1996 (Public Law 104-235), the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) created by the first CAPTA was abolished. Its functions have subsequently been consolidated within the Children's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Hearing Voices: Resistance Among Psychiatric Survivors and Consumers.” Maria Duerr presented this thesis about the history of the psychiatric survivor movement for her Masters Degree in Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in June.

“Recovery as a journey of the heart.” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal 19 (3) p. 91-97. by Pat Deegan. Describes the inner experience of the despair and demoralisation that came to her along with a diagnosis of schizophrenia - particularly as that diagnosis was given with a prognosis of lifelong limitation.

“Mental health services recipients: Their role in Shaping organizational policy.” Administration and Policy in Mental Health, 23, 547-553. by Fisher, W., Penney, D., and Earle, K.

U.S. women's spectacular success in the Summer Olympics (19 gold medals, 10 silver, 9 bronze) is the result of large numbers of females active in sports since the passage of Title IX.

There are over 1,200 battered women's shelters across the United States sponsored by approximately 1,800 domestic violence agencies.

There are an estimated 120 to 125 shelters in California.

The California Legislature targeted $1,25 million in the 1996-1997 budget for community grants for domestic violence prevention programs.

To date, only 11 states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Wisconsin) and the District of Columbia have completely repudiated the marital rape exemption. Seven states (Lousiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah) recognize marital rape exemption unless the parties are separated. Illinois and Mississippi retain total exemptions for marital rape. In California, a husband can be prosecuted for aggravated or first degree rape, but still retains immunity from prosectuion for "lesser" attacks.

In California, AB 2116 (Alby) passes allowing a reasonable cause arrest in domestic violence cases when the officer does not witness the incident.

In California, SB 1876 (Solis) allows prosecutors to introduce evidence of prior acts of domestic violence against other victims as long as it occured in the last ten years and is not hearsay evidence.

In California, SB 1983 (Haynes) passes. It allows local governments to notify crime victims, upon request, when a suspect/defendant is released from local jail, including bail release.

In California, AB 2819 (Caldera) establishes judicial training programs for court personnel involved in domestic violence matters such as judges, commissioners and mediators.

In California, AB 2170 (Knox) passes requiring suspects who violate a temporary restraining order to appear before a magistrate rather than have police cite and release the suspect.

In California, AB 508 (Napolitano) fails. It would have provided for domestic violence education in schools.

In California, AB 2474 (Kuehl) passes requiring judges making custody decisions to consider abuse not only against the other parent, but abuse against the current intimate partner, and abuse by a parent against any child with whom the parent has a caretaking relationship.

In California, AB 2647 (Kuehl) is passed. This bill protects children from the effects of domestic violence, including giving the court the authority to remove the battering parent or guardian from the home and prohibiting visitation if it would jeopardize the safety of the child. It allows the non-offending parent to create a safety plan to protect the child from the offending parent before the child can be removed from the non-offending parent's home. Domestic violence training is required for personnel involved in such juvenile court cases.

In California, AB 2155 (Kuehl) passes allowing teen victims of dating violence to seek domestic violence protective order without parental consent.

United States v. Virginia affirms that the male-only admissions policy of the state-supported Virginia Military Institute violates the Fourteenth Amendment. In United States v. Virginia, the Supreme Court rules that the all-male Virginia Military School has to admit women in order to continue to receive public funding. It holds that creating a separate, all-female school will not suffice.

Total number of female bishops, priests, ministers, and rabbis: Baptist: 2,313 ministers; Episcopal: 6 bishops, 1,452 priests; Evangelical Lutheran: 1,838 pastors; Judaic, Reform: 259 rabbis; Judaic, conservative: 72 rabbis; Judaic, Orthodox: 0 rabbis; Latter-day Saints: 0 priests; Methodists: 10 bishops, 4,995 ministers; Presbyterian: 3,026 ministers; Roman Catholic: 0 priests; Seventy-day Adventist: 0 priests; Unitarian Universalist Association: 4,443 ministers; United Church of Christ (Congregationalist): 2,080 ministers.

In England, concerns about children in residential care led to the commissioning of 10 public enquiries between 1990 and 1996, including the Utting report (1991) and the Warner report (1992), which exposed large-scale institutional abuse of children and young people. Sir William Utting CBE was Chief Inspector of Social Services during the period when some of the worst cases of abuse happened. Asked why safeguarding steps were not taken when he was directly responsible for overseeing Social Services, he replied: "...the crude answer to that question would be ignorance. There were tremendous pressures, I think, on everybody in the system at that time to deny that those of us working in the system and accepted by the community as being 'devoted to the interests of children' were in fact exploiting them and abusing them. So there was a period of ignorance and...denial and then the ...process of the revelation of these awful things that had gone on for a long time."

“Talking to Angels: A Life Spent at High Latitudes,” by Robert Perkins.

“Phantom Illness: Shattering the Myth of Hypochondria,” by Carla Cantor (with Brian Fallon).

“The Scent of Dried Roses.” London. by Tim Lott.

“Moonlight,Magnolias and Madness: Insanity in South Carolina from the Colonial Period to the Progressive Era” Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. McCandless,Peter.

“God Head,” by Scott Zwiren.

“Surfing the Blues.” Sydney, Australia, by Catherine Rzecki.

“Drinking: A Love Story,” by Caroline Knapp.

“A Message from God in the Atomic Age” (trans. Gregory Rabassa), by Irene Vilar.

“Sunnybrook: A True Story with Lies.” Vancouver, by Persimmon Blackbridge.

“In the Jaws of the Black Dogs: A Memoir of Depression.” Toronto, by Jon Bentley Mays.

“Welcome to my Country: A Therapist’s Memoir of Madness,” by Lauren Slater.

Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault (ICASA) is funded at $6 Million.

1997

Balanced Budget Act of 1997 - Section 4733 provided a new Medicaid buy-in option for people with disabilities. This provision gives states the option to allow individuals with disabilities who return to work the ability to purchase Medicaid coverage as their earnings increase up to 250% poverty, based on an individual's net rather than gross income. Congress passed the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 which achieved substantial reductions in federal spending by decreasing funds allotted to both Medicaid and Medicare through a five year restructuring that saved $130 billion over five years. The federal Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) was created in 1975 and provides assistance to states that enables them to furnish services directed at self-sufficiency, abuse prevention, abuse remediation, delivery of community based care, and securing institutional based care when it is deemed appropriate. The SSBG was cut under the Balanced Budget Act (BBA), from over $2 billion to $1.7 billion in FY 2002. Medicaid also encountered decreases in funding given the BBA. Ten billion dollars were slashed from the program as a result of the cutbacks. In addition, the Medicaid Disproportionate Share (DSH) payments were also affected. DSH payments were created in 1982 and used as a vehicle to adjust payments to hospitals for the higher operating costs they incur in treating a large share of low-income patients. The BBA reduced DSH payments by 5 percent, with the reduction to be implemented in one percentage point increments between fiscal years 1998 and 2002. The BBA cut DSH payments by $10 billion (a figure which is included in the overall $13 billion decrease in the Medicaid program) and set a large restriction on the amount of DSH dollars that states could transfer to their inpatient facilities. Furthermore, the BBA mandated that states enroll beneficiaries into managed care programs through HCFA’s 1915(b) waiver program. 1915(b) waivers seek to utilize cost savings to provide additional services within the Medicaid program. If the state saves money using the managed care option under the 1915(b) waiver, then it can provide an enhanced package of additional services for Medicaid beneficiaries

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997 (IDEA) Reauthorization - Formally called P.L. 94-142 or the Education of All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, IDEA required public schools to make available to all eligible children with disabilities a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment appropriate to their individual needs. Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997 which completely overhauled the nation's special education system. To strengthen and improve education programs and services for children with disabilities.

The European Parliament of the European Union adopts the Resolution on the Commission's communication on equality of opportunity for people with disabilities that recognizes that "there are 37 million disabled people in the European Union who do not enjoy full civil and human rights" and reminds member states of their responsibility to implement disability protection laws on the national level.

Participatory research and stakeholder involvement in community mental health evaluation and research. Workshop in participatory research, seventh annual conference on state mental health agency services research, program evaluation, and policy, University of Southern Maine. Ralph, R. O.

81- year-old Lucille Austwick, “the Rosa Parks of electroshock” and patient in an Illinois nursing home, refuses electroshock after a psychiatrist pressures her to consent. The state’s Office of Advocacy and Guardianship and Support Coalition International support her case. An Illinois appellate court judge rules in favor of Austwick’s right to refuse, a precedent-setting judgment.

Camarillo State Mental Hospital, Camarillo, CA closed. In use from 1936-1997.

Civil Rights Of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA): Authorizes the U.S. Attorney General to investigate conditions of confinement at state and local government institutions such as prisons, jails, pretrial detention centers, juvenile correctional facilities, publicly operated nursing homes, and institutions for people with psychiatric or developmental disabilities.

American Psychoanalytic Association becomes first mainstream mental health organization to support marriage equality (same-sex marriage).

Broward County, Florida establishes the nation’s first mental health court with a mission to “better address the unique and complex needs of the mentally disabled misdemeanant defendant arrested for nonviolent offenses.”

By 1997 the federal government had realized that reuniting abused children with their families did not always work in the best interests of the children. Congress revisited the “reasonable efforts” for family reunification originally mandated by the 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act. Under the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (Public Law 105-89), “reasonable efforts” was clarified to mean the safety of the child comes first. States were directed to indicate circumstances under which an abused child should not be returned to the parents or caretakers.

Immigration and Naturalization Service: 2,375 unaccompanied children were detained by the INS. Flores, et al. v. Janet Reno was a class action lawsuit filed in 1985 that challenged federal policy dealing with unaccompanied children held in detention by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. The Flores agreement, which became effective in 1997, set out a national policy for the detention, release and treatment of children in immigration custody based on the premise that authorities must treat children in their custody with "dignity, respect and special concern for their vulnerability as minors."

In Eldridge v. British Columbia (Attorney General) [1997] 2 S.C.R. 624, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that sign language interpreters must be provided in the delivery of medical services where doing so is necessary to ensure effective communication.

The federal government expanded health coverage through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which seeks to provide healthcare for uninsured minors. SCHIP marked the first time that mental health services were mandated by a federal entity and administered by the states.

Consumers and Survivors begin restoring state hospital cemeteries in Georgia and Colorado with many states to follow.

National Community Mental Healthcare Council changed its name once again to reflect their evolving membership base. The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare was chosen to recognize the efforts of many members who provide services aimed at treating addictive disorders

“A consumer-constructed scale to measure empowerment (Empowerment Scale) among users of mental health services.” Psychiatric Services, 48, 1042-1047. Rogers, E., Chamberlin, Judi., et al.

“A working definition of empowerment.” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 20, 43-46. Chamberlin, J

“Recovery and empowerment for people with psychiatric disabilities.” Journal of Social Work and Health Care, 25, 11–24. Deegan, P. (1997).

Mary Ellen Copeland

“WRAP” (Wellness Recovery Action Plan) published by Mary Ellen Copeland.

Deep Blue, the supercomputer at the time, beats the World’s best chess player, Kasparov, marking a milestone in the development of artificial intelligence.

Elaborating on Title IX, the Supreme Court rules that college athletics programs must actively involve roughly equal numbers of men and women to qualify for federal support.

O.J. Simpson is found liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ron Goldman in a civil lawsuit and is ordered to pay $33 million to the families.

In California, AB 200 (Kuehl) passes. First statement in statute that domestic violence perpetrated against a parent is detrimental to a child. All child custody statutes expressing a reference for "frequent and continuing contact with both parents" are made subject to consideration of domestic violence and child's safety.

In California, SCR 20 (Solis) passes. October proclaimed Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

“Memory Slips: A Memoir of Music and Healing,” by Linda Katherine Cutting.

“Skating to Antarctica.” London. by Jenny Diski.

“Call me crazy: Stories from the mad movement.” Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers. Shimrat, I.

“Creating Sanctuary: The Evolution of Sane Societies,” by Sandra Bloom, MD. Harcourt.

“Prozac Highway.” Vancouver. by Persimmon Blackbridge.

“Women and Madness,” by Phyllis Chesler. NY, NY: Four Walls Eight Windows.

“Making Us Crazy, DSM-The Psychiatric Bible & Creation of Mental Disorders.” Kutchins, Herb & Kirk, Stuart A., NY, NY: The Free Press.

Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault (ICASA) celebrates it’s 20^th Anniversary.

The Offender Management Board was created by the Illinois General Assembly. A law is passed allowing a defendant‚s previous victims to testify about defendant‚s “prior bad acts,” whether reported or not

The Adoption and Safe Families Act stressed permanency planning for children and represented a policy shift away from family reunification and toward adoption.

1998

Workforce Investment Act of 1998 - Required consolidation of several federal education, training, and employment programs; reauthorized Rehabilitation Act programs through fiscal year 2003 and linked those programs to state and local workforce development systems. Workforce Investment Act / Reauthorization of the Rehabilitation Act: The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) passed combining all previous labor training and education acts, such as JPTA into one Act. The act established “one-stop” shop to assist displaced workers in finding employment. The Rehabilitation Act was included in full as Title IV of WIA. This act combined rehabilitation legislation with other federally supported job training programs in block grants to the states. The purpose was to provide a "one-stop delivery system" for individuals needing help in securing employment and to facilitate the sharing of employment resources (such as job leads) by the involved agencies. The act meant that individuals with disabilities would be served by a variety of programs and would not be strictly dependent upon vocational rehabilitation. The act further increased the emphasis on consumer control over their vocational rehabilitation program (now called Individual Plan for Employment rather than IWRP), emphasized supported employment and client assistance projects, and called for services to consumers by "qualified personnel."

Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998 - The Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998, affecting HUD-funded public and assisted housing, eliminated previously required Federal preferences shown to people with disabilities and some other groups but left any such previous preferences intact or optional at the local level. Public housing agencies, which provide HUD-funded public and assisted housing, must also develop Annual Plans and 5-Year Plans reflecting their preferences and other matters such as changes in the “disability-related tenant composition” of the housing those agencies offer and accessibility issues. Public housing agencies must also certify that their plans and implementation comply with all Federal civil rights and fair housing laws including those which cover persons with disabilities in addition to cove ring other protected classes.

Psychology advances to the technological age with the emergence of e-therapy.

Assistive Technology Act of 1998 - President Clinton signed the Assistive Technology Act into law. The Act was a renewal and expansion of the Technology-Related Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities Act of 1989. Authorized State grant programs and protection and advocacy systems to address the assistive technology needs of people with disabilities; authorized the development of alternative financing mechanisms to assist people with disabilities in purchasing assistive technology.

Congress enacted the Protection of Children from Sexual Predators Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-314) that, among other things, established the Morgan P. Hardiman Child Abduction and Serial Murder Investigative Resources Center (CASMIRC). The purpose of CASMIRC, as stated in the text of the act, is “to provide investigative support through the coordination and provision of federal law enforcement resources, training, and application of other multidisciplinary expertise, to assist federal, state, and local authorities in matters involving child abductions, mysterious disappearance of children, child homicide, and serial murder across the country.”

The Veterans Programs Enhancement Act became law in the U.S., and it required a cost-of-living adjustment in rates of compensation paid to veterans with service-connected disabilities, as well as various improvements in education, housing, and cemetery programs of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Persian Gulf War Veterans Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-277) became law in the U.S., and it required the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to determine, based on National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports, whether particular illnesses warrant a presumption of service connection and, if so, to set compensation regulations establishing such a connection for each illness.

Building a Multicultural Research Agenda. The Mental Health Empowerment Project in Albany, the Center for the Study of Issues in Public Mental Health, and the Hispanic Research Center at Fordham College, in conjunction with members of the New York State Office of Mental Health Multicultural Advisory Committee, have been actively working together to generate a research agenda relevant to Native American, African American, Hispanic and Asian recipient issues.

Memphis Police Department joined in partnership with the Memphis Chapter of the Alliance on Mental Illness (AMI), mental health providers, and two local universities (the University of Memphis and the University of Tennessee) in organizing, training, and implementing a specialized unit. This unique and creative alliance was established for the purpose of developing a more intelligent, understandable, and safe approach to mental crisis events. This community effort was the genesis of the Memphis Police Department’s Crisis Intervention Team (CIT). Note that none of those who would be most impacted by CIT were involved in the planning, development and evolution of CIT.

In Bragdon v. Abbott, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the definition of disability includes asymptomatic HIV. Dentist Must Treat HIV-Positive Patient. The Supreme Court, in Bragdon v. Abbott, extends ADA benefits to a woman with HIV who sued a dentist who refused to fill a cavity for fear of getting the disease himself. Persons with HIV/AIDS are considered disabled under the ADA.

States designated more than $735 million of primarily state funds for family support programs. This represented 3 percent of the total spending on developmental disabilities programs, but was an increase over the past.

Disabled Golfer Has Right To Use Cart in PGA. A federal judge rules that golfer Casey Martin—the first pro athlete to utilize the ADA to play a competitive sport—does have the right to use a golf cart in the PGA Tour tournaments due to a rare circulatory disorder that severely limits his ability to walk an entire course.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released new captioning rules for the broadcast and cable television industry.. These new rules now require 100% of cable television to be captioned with eight years - 2006, and require real-time captioning for many local news programs. The FCC will also be revising its rule to require that 100% of new programming must be captioned, beginning Jan. 1, 2006

In Pennsylvania Department of Corrections v. Yeskey, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Americans with Disabilities Act includes state prisons.

PACE survivor led report on gay/lesbian/bisexual experience of mental health services. (UK)

13^th Annual “Alternatives” conference is held in Long Beach, California by the National Empowerment Center.

Hartford Courant publishes Pulitzer Prize Winning article on Restraint and Seclusion.

U.S. General Accounting Office initiates investigations on the use of Seclusion and Restraint. Congressional Hearings are held.

American Psychiatric Association president, Rodrigo Munoz, summed up the association's position: "There is no scientific evidence that reparative or conversion therapy is effective in changing a person's sexual orientation. There is, however, evidence that this type of therapy can be destructive."

The Center for Mental Health Services funded a cooperative agreement with 8 sites and a coordinating center to study the effects of consumer operated services added to traditional services (GFA 98-04).

Women, Co-Occurring Disorders, and Violence Study. In 1998, SAMHSA launched a 5-year study to explore the interrelation between violence, trauma, and co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders among women. Known as the Women, Co-occurring Disorders, and Violence Study (WCDVS), the study was co-sponsored by all three SAMHSA Centers (the Center for Mental Health Services, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, and the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment). WCDVS provided recommendations for "trauma-integrated services counseling" for these women. WCDVS also sparked the development of guiding principles for positive change, including the principle that providers should be mindful of the ways in which their own practices and policies might put women in danger, physically and emotionally, or bring about re-traumatization.

Centers for Consumer Research & Training instituted, Kentucky Department of Mental Health & Missouri Institute of Mental Health.

MRI studies show that neuroleptics cause hypertrophy of the caudate, putamen and thalamus, with the increase “associated with greater severity of both negative and positive symptoms”.

Neuroleptic use is found to be associated with atrophy of cerebral cortex.

Harvard researchers conclude that “oxidative stress” may be the process by which neuroleptics cause neuronal damage in the brain.

Treatment with two or more neuroleptics is found to increase risk of early death.

APA officially criticizes efforts to change sexual orientation.

Westchester Youth Forum becomes part of SAMHSA System of Care grant.

Recovery Scale (Young and Ensing)

Crisis Hostel Healing Scale (Dumont)

Nothing About Us Without Us, written by James Charlton is published

“Re-Envisioning Family Therapy: Race, Culture and Gender in Clinical Practice.” New York: The Guilford Press. McGoldrick, Monica, ed

“Empowerment and women’s mental health services.” In B.L. Levin, A. K. Blanch, and A. Jennings (Eds.), Women’s mental health services: A public health perspective (pp. 127-154). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. by Kalinowski, C. and Penney, D.

In California, SB 165 (Solis) passes providing unemployment compensation for victims of domestic violence who are forced to leave work to protect themselves or their children.

Proposition 10 - The California Children and Families First Initiative. The Act provides sustainable funding for social service programs for children ages 0-5 and their caretakers and a significant domestic violence component. The funding is provided by the tobacco tax.

In California, SCR 63 (Solis) passes. October again proclaimed Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Purple ribbons are worn by people around the state to raise awareness around issues of domestic violence.

Department of Health Services, Maternal and Child Health, Domestic Violence Section, conducted statewide Teen Needs Assessment in recognition of the problem of violence among youth, especially teen relationship violence.

“Confessions of a noncompliant patient.” Journal of Psychosocial Nursing, 36, 49-52. by Judi Chamberlin.

“Trauma and abuse histories: Connections to diagnosis of mental illness, implications for policy and service delivery.” (National Association of Consumer/Survivor Mental Health Administrators, Position Paper, 1-6). by Mary Auslander.

“The War Against Children of Color: Psychiatry Targets Inner City Youth.” Monroe,ME: Common Courage Press. Breggin,P.R.& Breggin,G.R.

In the UK, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 abolished the distinction in England and Wales with regard to criminal responsibility between young persons aged at least 14 and children aged between 10 and 14. Hitherto, a child over 10 but under 14 was deemed in law to be doli incapax, i.e. incapable of crime, unless the prosecution could satisfy the court that a particular child was in fact of such maturity, education and social development as to rebut that presumption. (Children under 10 in England and Wales remain doli incapax, as they have been since the minimum age for criminal responsibility was raised from 8 to 10 under the Children and Young Persons Act 1963; power under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 to raise the minimum age from 10 to 14 has never been implemented. In Scotland the mimimum age remains at 8, but the presumption of doli incapax also remains). Describing Youth Courts as the 'secret garden' of the legal system, Home Secretary Jack Straw established the Youth Justice system, with Restorative Justice premised as the key underlying principle for resolving youth crime.

In the United Kingdom, the Human Rights Act 1998 received Royal Assent, mostly coming into force in 2002.

In the UK, the Public Interest Disclosure Act received Royal Assent, paving the way for whistleblowers of child abuse and other illegal corporate activities to receive support and protection via the industrial tribunal system. Some employees are excluded e.g. those in the army.

“Recovery: the behavioral healthcare guideline of tomorrow.” Behavioral Healthcare Tomorrow, June, 1998. Fisher, D.

A law is passed which makes giving a person a “date rape drug” or ecstasy before sexually assaulting her/him an aggravating factor to the crime. Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault (ICASA) and DHS, using VAWA funds, develop a media campaign that includes television and radio spots directed at male responsibility for rape.

1999

The Organization of American States (OAS) adopts the Inter-American Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Persons With Disabilities. This Convention aims to prevent and eliminate all forms of discrimination against disabled persons and to promote their full integration into society.

Olmstead concerned a pair of women, Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson, with mental illnesses institutionalized at a state psychiatric hospital. These women asked State officials to allow them to move into their own homes in the community. State medical employees agreed that both women could be treated in a community-based program. However, the state refused to grant their requests for placement in such a program. The two women filed suit, asserting a protected interest in receiving state-provided treatment services in an integrated setting rather than an institutional one. Finding in their favor, the Supreme Court held that unnecessary segregation of individuals with disabilities constitutes discrimination under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities. After the State refused, Atlanta Legal Aid attorney Susan Jamieson filed a lawsuit on their behalf. After appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case and issued the Olmstead L.C. decision in July 1999. In Olmstead, the Court ruled that Title II Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits the unnecessary institutionalization of persons with disabilities. In the words of the Supreme Court, services to persons with disabilities must be provided "in the most integrated setting possible." The Court ruled that there should be community options for Curtis and Wilson. Supreme Court rules in Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581, that under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), undue institutionalization qualifies as discrimination by reason of disability including people with a mental disability. People have a right to services in the community outside of institutions. The Supreme Court issues its opinion on Olmstead v. L.C which held that it is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act to keep individuals in restrictive inpatient settings when more appropriate community services are available. Unnecessary Institutionalization is Discriminatory. In Olmstead v. L.C. the U.S. Supreme Court rules that unnecessary institutionalization of people with disabilities constitutes discrimination and violates the ADA, that individuals have a right to receive benefits in the "most integrated setting appropriate to their needs," and that failure to find community-based placements for qualifying people with disabilities is illegal discrimination.

The first National Summit of Mental Health Consumers and Survivors, in August, in Portland, Oregon, was organized by the National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse with the help of the Oregon Office of Consumer Technical Assistance (OCTA), and co-sponsored by consumer/survivor groups from around the country. Its goal was to develop consensus around the issues of greatest concern to consumers and survivors and create action plans for future work. The unifying principle was the construction of a platform from which the movement could influence national policy.

The landmark U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, Mental Health: A report of the Surgeon General is released and a White House Conference on Mental Health is convened.

Hillary Clinton, first lady, makes remarks at White House Conference in June on Mental Health. Many people from the Consumer, Survivor, and Ex-Patient Movements attend. The Conference focused on dispelling the myths about mental illness and decrying prejudices against behavioral health consumers, one of which was insurance coverage that excludes behavioral health services. The conference also brought together the mental health community in anticipation of the Surgeon General’s Report Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General was published in late 1999 and sought to eradicate the stigma surrounding mental health and simultaneously encourage the use of innovative pharmaceutical and psychotherapy treatments.

Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999 (TWWIIA, P.L. 106-170) - Allowed for Medicaid and/or Medicare benefits for many people with disabilities who go to work; provided for a “ticket to work and self-sufficiency” which allows Social Security beneficiaries with disabilities choice and expanded options in pursuing employment and employment supports. Ticket to Work and Work Incentive Improvement Act: Removes barriers that have required people with disabilities to choose between health care coverage and work. The law also increases consumer choice in obtaining rehabilitation and vocational services through the establishment of a Ticket to Work and Self-Sufficiency program. TWWIIA removed many of the disincentives that faced people with disabilities receiving SSI or SSDI benefits but wished to return to full-time employment. In the event of a reoccurrence of an acute episode, the law includes presumed eligibility for immediate continuation of SSI or SSDI cash payments. The Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvements Act of 1999 (TWWIIA) expands the availability of Medicare and Medicaid so that certain disabled beneficiaries who return to work will not lose their medical benefits—the same issue Paul Longmore protests against back in 1988.

Psychologists in Guam gain prescription privileges for psychotropic medication.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to help make web content, including text, images, forms, and sounds, accessible to people with disabilities.

Soccer League Ordered To Allow Disabled Player In November, a U.S. District Court judge issues an emergency court order telling the Lawton, Oklahoma, Evening Optimist Soccer League to allow Ryan Taylor, a nine-year-old with cerebral palsy, to play in the league. His walker, referred to as a safety hazard by the defendants, is padded during games.

Georgia voters elect disabled candidate Max Cleland to the U.S. Senate.

In three employment cases (Sutton et. al. v. United Air Lines, Inc., Murphy v. United Parcel Service, Inc. and Albertsons, Inc. v. Kirkingburg) the Supreme Court decided that individuals whose conditions do not substantially limit any life activity and are easily correctable are not disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Jack Kevorkian is sentenced for murder. He has been a proponent for and a practitioner of what is called "physician-assisted suicide."

About 50 disability advocates gathered in Louisville, KY, to discuss methods to bring disability issues more effectively to the media at the 1999 May Media Meeting.

Very Special Arts changes its name to VSA Arts.

Groups from all over the United States are planning Spirit of ADA, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the signing of the ADA, 25th anniversary of IDEA, 25th anniversary of the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities (ACCD) and the 50th anniversary of Arc. 

Telecommunications Act: An amendment to the Communications Act of 1934 requiring manufacturers of telecommunications equipment and providers of telecommunications services to ensure equipments and services are accessible for people with disabilities. This includes television shows to have close caption and cell phones compatible with hearing aids.

The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), currently called the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) publishes an Interim Final Rule on the uses of Seclusion and Restraint in an effort to protect patient's rights - and lives. The rule states that a doctor or licensed practitioner must, within one hour, do a face-to-face assessment of the person in restraint or seclusion.

The New York State Office of Mental Health prohibits use of the straightjacket.

14^th Annual “Alternatives” in Houston, Texas sponsored by CONTAC. Theme: The New Millenium: Looking Back-Moving Forward.

In Carolyn C. Cleveland v. Policy Management Systems Corporation, et. al., the U.S. Supreme Court decided that people receiving Social Security disability benefits are protected against discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act if and when they are able to return to work.

In Cedar Rapids Community School District v. Garret F., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that taxpayer-supported schools are responsible for the costs of providing continual care for disabled students under a federal law that says all children must receive "free, appropriate public education." Under the Court's reading of the IDEA's relevant provisions, medical treatments such as suctioning, ventilator checks, catheterization, and others which can be administered by non-physician personnel come within the parameters of the special education law's related services.

National Council on Disability’s decision to establish a Youth Advisory group was finalized.

New York State Office of Mental Health creates position: Children's Recipient Affairs Specialist and establishes the Nation’s first known Statewide Youth Advisory Council (YAC). The YAC is comprised of young people who had first-hand experiences of the children’s mental health system.

The Prime Directive Initiative, later to be called the Choice thru Voice Project (2002) Laura Cisco & Lauren Tenney. Edited by the Statewide Youth Advisory Council to the New York State Office of Mental Health. The Prime Directive Initiative is listed as a best practice in the Roadmap to Seclusion and Restraint Free Mental Health Services. DHHS Pub. No. (SMA) 05-4055. Rockville, MD: Center for Mental Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and other publications.

Reclaim Bedlam campaign, protesting at the celebration of the 750 year anniversary of the UK's first mental hospital, (the original 'Bedlam', now the Maudsley Hospital in London), which led to the formation of Mad Pride.

“PACE: Ensuring that people with psychiatric disabilities are the leaders of self-determination and consumer controlled initiatives.” Prepared for the National Leadership Summit on Self-Determination and Consumer Direction and Control, Bethesda, MD, October 21-23, 1999. Fisher, D. & Ahern, L.

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act is focused on the online collection of personal information by persons or entities under U.S. jurisdiction from children under 13 years of age. It details what a website operator must include in a privacy policy, when and how to seek verifiable consent from a parent or guardian, and what responsibilities an operator has to protect children's privacy and safety online including restrictions on marketing to those under 13.

“Your Drug May Be Your Problem.” New York: Perseus Publishing. Breggin, P. & Cohen, D.

“The Labeling Theory of Mental Disorder (II): The Consequences of Labeling.” Pp. 361-376 in A Handbook for the Study of Mental Health, edited by Allan V Teresa L. Scheid. NY, NY: Cambridge University Press. Link, Bruce G. and Jo C. Phelan.

UN Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999: The U.S. ratified this convention on December 2, 1999.

Cal WORKS - Cal WORKS Family Violence Option takes effect through county implementation plans. This option provides a legal safety net for people who are victims of relationship violence and would be eligible for Welfare. In recognition of the special needs of these survivors, this option exempts them from the timelines imposed in the Welfare-To-Work legislation and includes provision to provide supportive services such as shelter, legal, transitional living and counseling.

In California, AB 840 (Kueh) makes it to the Governor's desk. First introduced as AB 800 in 1995, and again as AB 200 in 1997, this bill would enact a rebutttable presumption against granting custody of a child to a batterer.

October is again Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Activities recognizing victims of domestic violence and the movement to stop domestic and family violence including The Silent Witness Project, a national demonstration using mannequins in public places to represent the many who have died at the hands of abusive partners; Take Back The Night demonstrations; the popular project for children "Hands Are Not For Hitting"; and The Clothes Line Project, a public arts demonstration in which t-shirts are hung out on clothes lines and decorated with statements about relationship abuse.

In the 1999/2000 sessions of the California State Legislature, 14 bills were introduced on a wide variety of domestic violence related issues.

“Life at the Texas State Lunatic Asylum 1857–1997.” College Station: Texas A&M University Press, Sitton, Sarah C 1999.

The Supreme Court rules in Kolstad v. American Dental Association that a woman can sue for punitive damages for sex discrimination if the anti-discrimination law was violated with malice or indifference to the law, even if that conduct was not especially severe.

“Drink: A Social History of America.” Carroll & Graf, 1999. p 321. Barr A.

“Soteria and Other Alternatives to Acute Psychiatric Hospitalization: A Personal and Professional Review.” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 187:142- 149. Mosher, L.

Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault (ICASA) with DHS, begins evaluation of its crisis intervention services. Law is passed to extend the criminal statue of limitations in sexual assault cases of an adult victim to ten years past the time of the rape and ten years past the age of 18 for minor victims. ICASA moves into a newly constructed administrative office building. Law is passed creating pilot Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner programs in four hospitals. ICASA, with VAWA funding, begins a two-year evaluation of its prevention education programs in schools. A law is passed that allows a victim of sexual assault or sexual abuse to request that the State’s Attorney file a petition to have the court records of the case sealed.

In the UK, Protection of Children Act 1999 required a list to be kept of persons considered unsuitable to work with children.

In the UK, in the trial of Sally Clark for allegedly murdering her two babies at age 11 weeks and 8 weeks, Professor Sir Roy Meadow's testimony as expert witness postulated Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, or MSbP, convinced that many apparent cot deaths were in fact the result of child abuse brought on by MSbP. Clark's conviction was overturned in 2003, after 3 years of wrongful imprisonment. Throughout the 1990s Meadow had contributed to a number of convictions of (mostly) women whose children had suffered apparent cot deaths and a greater number of parents, whom Meadow suspected of MSbP, had their children forcibly removed and taken into care. Meadow was struck off the medical register, but reinstated in 2006 after an appeal. The Society of Expert Witnesses had commented that the severity of his punishment would cause many professionals to reconsider whether to stand as expert witnesses.

In the UK, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced the historic aim to end child poverty in a generation. At that time, the UK had the worst child poverty rate in the European Union. The Government set ambitious targets to cut child poverty by a half by 2010, en route to eradicating it by 2020.

2000's

The Access to Recovery initiative is established to enable individuals seeking drug and alcohol treatment with vouchers to pay for a range of appropriate community-based services. SAMHSA’s Report on Congress on co-occurring mental and substance use disorders identifies barriers to appropriate treatment and support services and proposes a system in which co-occurring disorders are addressed and treated as primary illnesses.

Modern children's rights issues in the United States include child labor laws, including many agricultural settings where young people between the ages of 14 and 18 routinely work full time jobs and receive half of the minimum wage. Another common issue are child custody laws that make it extremely difficult for non-custodial parents to spend quality time with their children. After two hearings in Congress, children's rights during treatment became a focus.

The number of people with developmental disabilities living in public residential facilities or nursing homes continues to drop; more people are living in their own homes or smaller group homes (six or fewer people). However, the ideas of deinstitutionalization and inclusion remain controversial in some states; approximately 30,000 people with developmental disabilities remain in institutions; some facilities change their names (“supported living centers”). The work to close institutions is still unfinished.

Person-centered planning is becoming more common. For some people with disabilities, it’s an addition to traditional “individual service plans” (ISP) or “individual habilitation plans” (IHP). Some state legislatures have mandated that person-centered plans replace the traditional ISPs, IHPs, etc. This seems like a move in the right direction. However, caution is in order, for some people have reported that these mandated person-centered planning processes are actually no different than what they were supposed to replace; in some instances, the person with a disability isn’t present at the meeting, and that is not a true person-centered plan!

2000-2009

UN African Decade of Disabled Persons

2000

By the dawn of the 21st Century, behavioral health providers’ revenue streams were of a much different nature than when they began nearly 40 years before. A key example of this has been the funding provided under the Medicaid program, which currently accounts for 80 percent of the average revenue stream. This is in sharp contrast to the levels seen in the late 1980s, where Medicaid funding accounted for only 16 percent of the average revenue stream

A "text revision" of the DSM-IV, known as the DSM-IV-TR, was published in 2000. The diagnostic categories and the vast majority of the specific criteria for diagnosis were unchanging. The text sections giving extra information on each diagnosis were updated, as were some of the diagnostic codes to maintain consistency with the ICD. A "text revision" of the DSM-IV, known as the DSM-IV-TR, was published in 2000. The diagnostic categories and the vast majority of the specific criteria for diagnosis were unchanged. The text sections giving extra information on each diagnosis were updated, as were some of the diagnostic codes to maintain consistency with the ICD. Categorization: The DSM-IV is a categorical classification system. The categories are prototypes, and a patient with a close approximation to the prototype is said to have that disorder. DSM-IV states, “there is no assumption each category of mental disorder is a completely discrete entity with absolute boundaries...” but isolated, low-grade and noncriterion (unlisted for a given disorder) symptoms are not given importance. Qualifiers are sometimes used, for example mild, moderate or severe forms of a disorder. For nearly half the disorders, symptoms must be sufficient to cause “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning", although DSM-IV-TR removed the distress criterion from tic disorders and several of the paraphilias. Each category of disorder has a numeric code taken from the ICD coding system, used for health service (including insurance) administrative purposes. Multi-axial system: The DSM-IV organizes each psychiatric diagnosis into five dimensions (axes) relating to different aspects of disorder or disability: • Axis I: Clinical disorders, including major mental disorders, learning disorders and substance use disorders; • Axis II: Personality disorders and intellectual disabilities (although developmental disorders, such as Autism, were coded on Axis II in the previous edition, these disorders are now included on Axis I); • Axis III: Acute medical conditions and physical disorders; • Axis IV: Psychosocial and environmental factors contributing to the disorder; • Axis V: Global Assessment of Functioning or Children's Global Assessment Scale for children and teens under the age of 18. Common Axis I disorders include depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and schizophrenia. Common Axis II disorders include personality disorders: paranoid personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder; and intellectual disabilities. Common Axis III disorders include brain injuries and other medical/physical disorders which may aggravate existing diseases or present symptoms similar to other disorders. Cautions: The DSM-IV-TR states, because it is produced for the completion of federal legislative mandates, its use by people without clinical training can lead to inappropriate application of its contents. Appropriate use of the diagnostic criteria is said to require extensive clinical training, and its contents “cannot simply be applied in a cookbook fashion.” The APA notes diagnostic labels are primarily for use as a “convenient shorthand” among professionals. The DSM advises laypersons should consult the DSM only to obtain information, not to make diagnoses, and people who may have a mental disorder should be referred to psychological counseling or treatment. Further, a shared diagnosis or label may have different causes or require different treatments; for this reason the DSM contains no information regarding treatment or cause. The range of the DSM represents an extensive scope of psychiatric and psychological issues or conditions, and it is not exclusive to what may be considered “illnesses.” Sourcebooks: The DSM-IV does not specifically cite its sources, but there are four volumes of "sourcebooks" intended to be APA's documentation of the guideline development process and supporting evidence, including literature reviews, data analyses and field trials. The Sourcebooks have been said to provide important insights into the character and quality of the decisions that led to the production of DSM-IV, and hence the scientific credibility of contemporary psychiatric classification. Criticism, Validity and Reliability: The most fundamental scientific criticism of the DSM concerns the validity and reliability of its diagnoses. This refers, roughly, to whether the disorders it defines are actually real conditions in people in the real world, that can be consistently identified by its criteria. These are long-standing criticisms of the DSM, originally highlighted by the Rosenhan experiment in the 1970s, and continuing despite some improved reliability since the introduction of more specific rule-based criteria for each condition, Proponents argue that the inter-rater reliability of DSM diagnoses (via a specialized Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) rather than usual psychiatric assessment) is reasonable, and that there is good evidence of distinct patterns of mental, behavioral or neurological dysfunction to which the DSM disorders correspond well. It is accepted, however, that there is an "enormous" range of reliability findings in studies, and that validity is unclear because, given the lack of diagnostic laboratory or neuroimaging tests, standard clinical interviews are "inherently limited" and only a ("flawed") "best estimate diagnosis" is possible even with full assessment of all data over time. Critics, such as psychiatrist Niall McLaren, argue that the DSM lacks validity because it has no relation to an agreed scientific model of mental disorder and therefore the decisions taken about its categories (or even the question of categories versus dimensions) were not scientific ones; and that it lacks reliability partly because different diagnoses share many criteria, and what appear to be different criteria are often just rewordings of the same idea, meaning that the decision to allocate one diagnosis or another to a patient is to some extent a matter of personal prejudice. Superficial symptoms criticism: By design, the DSM is primarily concerned with the signs and symptoms of mental disorders, rather than the underlying causes. It claims to collect them together based on statistical or clinical patterns. As such, it has been compared to a naturalist’s field guide to birds, with similar advantages and disadvantages. The lack of a causative or explanatory basis, however, is not specific to the DSM, but rather reflects a general lack of pathophysiological understanding of psychiatric disorders. As DSM-III chief architect Robert Spitzer and DSM-IV editor Michael First outlined in 2005, "little progress has been made toward understanding the pathophysiological processes and etiology of mental disorders. If anything, the research has shown the situation is even more complex than initially imagined, and we believe not enough is known to structure the classification of psychiatric disorders according to etiology.” However, the DSM is based on an underlying structure that assumes discrete medical disorders that can be separated from each other by symptom patterns. Its claim to be “atheoretical” is held to be unconvincing because it makes sense if and only if all mental disorder is categorical by nature, which only a biological model of mental disorder can satisfy. However, the Manual recognizes psychological causes of mental disorder, for example, PTSD, so that it negates its only possible justification. The DSM's focus on superficial symptoms is claimed to be largely a result of necessity (assuming such a manual is nevertheless produced), since there is no agreement on a more explanatory classification system. Reviewers note, however, that this approach is undermining research, including in genetics, because it results in the grouping of individuals who have very little in common except superficial criteria as per DSM or ICD diagnosis. Despite the lack of consensus on underlying causation, advocates for specific psychopathological paradigms have nonetheless faulted the current diagnostic scheme for not incorporating evidence-based models or findings from other areas of science. A recent example is evolutionary psychologists' criticism that the DSM does not differentiate between genuine cognitive malfunctions and those induced by psychological adaptations, a key distinction within evolutionary psychology, but one widely challenged within general psychology. Another example is a strong operationalist viewpoint, which contends that reliance on operational definitions, as purported by the DSM, necessitates that intuitive concepts such as depression be replaced by specific measurable concepts before they are scientifically meaningful. One critic states of psychologists that "Instead of replacing 'metaphysical' terms such as 'desire' and 'purpose', they used it to legitimize them by giving them operational definitions...the initial, quite radical operationalist ideas eventually came to serve as little more than a 'reassurance fetish' (Koch 1992) for mainstream methodological practice.”

Judi Chamberlin

The National Council on Disability (NCD) publishes, “From Privileges to Rights: People Labeled with Psychiatric Disabilities Speak for Themselves.”

Neuroleptics linked to fatal blood clots.

UN adopts Beijing Declaration on the Rights of People with Disabilities. This declaration was adopted at the World NGO Summit on Disability and calls for a higher standard of living, equal participation and the elimination of discriminatory attitudes and practices.

In December 2000, the Council of Ministers of the European Union adopted a (binding) general Framework Directive on equal treatment in employment prohibiting direct and indirect discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief, age, disability or sexual orientation. The Framework Directive is binding upon the current member states, while candidate member states are required to have completed national implementation of the Directive before joining the EU.

Genome Project Maps Human DNA Sequence The Human Genome Project nears completion. President Clinton and leading scientists announce the completion of a "rough draft" of the DNA sequence (linked strands of protein, the "building blocks" of life) for human life. While some advocates are encouraged with the hope of finding cures and medical breakthroughs, others fear an end of "disability" altogether.

Congress passes America’s Law Enforcement and Mental Health Project Act, which makes federal funds available to local jurisdictions seeking to establish or expand mental health specialty courts and diversion programs.

SAMHSA funds Children's Welfare League of America 3-year Seclusion/Restraint project for children's residential programs.

The Highlander Statement of Concern and Call to Action

APA issues two position statements, one in support of same sex civil unions and the other asking ethical psychiatrists to refrain from practicing conversion or “reparative therapies”

In October 2000, President Clinton signed the Children’s Health Act (P. L.106-310) into law. The law establishes national standards that restrict the use of seclusion and restraint in all psychiatric facilities that receive federal funds and in “non-medical community-based facilities for children and youth.” The act also mandated that a report be submitted to Congress on cooccurring disorders

The Drug Addiction Treatment Act allows qualified physicians to dispense and prescribe schedule III, IV or V narcotic drugs or combinations of such drugs approved by the FDA for the treatment of heroin addiction.

15^th Annual “Alternatives” 2000 is held in Nashville, Tennessee sponsored by the National Empowerment Center. Theme: A New Vision of Recovery. Vanessa Jackson first shares “In Our Own Voice” at a national c/s/x conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

Regional Bill N. 561 states that in the Piedmont Region, in accordance with the deliberations of the United Nations, of the European Council and of the Italian Republic in matters of human rights, it is [hereby] forbidden to use ECT on children, the elderly and pregnant women, and if ECT is to be used at all, the psychiatrist in charge must adhere to strict guidelines including supplying both in writing and verbally the possible harmful side effects of the treatment.

SOCSI (Subcommittee on Consumer/Survivor Issues) is created as a federally supported body to advise the CMHS (Center for Mental Health Services) National Advisory Council on consumer/survivor perspectives and issues.

The Youth Advisory Committee obtained its charter under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

Ten plaintiffs have filed a class action lawsuit in U. S. District Court seeking access to community-based long-term care services to avoid unnecessary institutionalization in nursing facilities. (Davis et al. v. Department of Health and Human Services et al. U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. _____) The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, July 12, 2000, alleges that the City of County of San Francisco, as well as several State agencies, are violating several federal statutes in failing to provide long-term care for individuals who would prefer to live at home in their communities rather than be institutionalized. The lawsuit cites several federal laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Nursing Home Reform Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act if 1973. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that institutionalizing individuals with disabilities, when home and community based care would meet their needs constitutes a violation of the ADA. (Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581 (1999). The plaintiffs reside at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco, or are at risk of institutionalization there, and represent a class of people in the same situation. Laguna Honda is a 1200-bed nursing institution. The Independent Living Resource Center, a non-profit service and advocacy organization that assists people to secure the services they need to live independently in the community. The mission of ILRC, which assists San Franciscans with disabilities, is thwarted by a striking lack of community-based long-term care services in San Francisco. The City and County of San Francisco, as well as the California Health and Human Services Agency, the Department of Health Services, the Department of Social Services, the Department of Developmental Services, the Department of Mental Health, and the Department of Aging all of which play a role in failing to provide home and community based care are the defendants. Plaintiffs allege that, to end the discrimination against them and provide adequate community-based care, defendants must conduct adequate assessments, identify the long-term care needs of those they serve, and determine whether their needs can be met in an integrated, community-based setting. They allege that defendants often do not even inform eligible persons of the availability of alternatives to institutional care and certainly do not allow them to choose home and community-based alternatives. Plaintiffs ask the court to order the defendants to develop new and make use of existing community-based, non-institutional alternatives for long-term care. Plaintiffs are represented by a coalition of disability rights organizations includeing Protection and Advocacy, Inc. in Oakland, California, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Inc. in Berkeley, California, the National Senior Citizens Law Center in Los Angeles, California, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington, D.C. and the Law Offices of Andrew Thomas Sinclair. The case was approved for settlement in 2007.

In the UK, the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000 changed the age of consent for male homosexual sexual activities and defined the offence of Abuse of Trust, generally to protect 16 and 17 year olds from sexual advances, both homosexual and heterosexual, from those in positions of trust.

Sir Ronald Waterhouse: The report of an inquiry about abuse in Bryn Estyn and other children's homes in North Wales between 1974 and 1990 was released, which included a recommendation for creation of the post of Children's Commissioner to prevent such scandals in the future.

In the UK, Research into the backgrounds of four teenagers accused of murdering Damilola Taylor found that some had been excluded from school, all had substantial histories of serious offending and antisocial behaviour, and had come to police attention before they were 10.

In the UK, Summerhill School Wins Court Case: Defended by the international human rights barrister, Sir Geoffrey Robertson QC, after three days at the Royal Courts of Justice, Summerhill won its right to continue to be based on children's rights. The DfES accepted its demands, expressed in a joint agreement. The agreement was voted on by the children from the school in the court room. This agreement accepted the right of children at Summerhill to control their own learning, and has been used by Home Educators as part of their legal fights with the government. Summerhill is now the most legally protected school in the country with a unique inspection process that is the first to include the voices of children, preceding the newly announced OFSTED plans to take account of students' views. Summerhill is the only school that has direct input into its inspections through legally appointed experts. Its children have continued to lobby for all children to have the rights they have, attending and lobbying at the UN Special Session on the Child (2002) and the UNESCO conference of Education Ministers when a student spoke during the closing ceremony.

A poster at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, New York, USA, showing the Millennium Development Goals.

The Millennium Development Declaration of the UN was signed by 189 countries, setting the Millennium Development Goals as targets for monitoring progress.

Mental Health Confidence Scale (Carpinello et. al.) (or 1995?)

“Lay My Burden Down: Unraveling Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis Among African-Americans.” Boston: Beacon Press,2000. Poussaint, M.D., Alvin, and Alexander, Amy

The official record ignores the activism of Goldie Marks an African-American of Toccoa, Georgia, past president of the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network, who continues to advocate for herself and other mental health consumers. In her oral history interview, Ms. Marks recounts her attempt to elude her counselor and the police to avoid involuntary hospitalization following a statement of despair that was misinterpreted as a suicidal threat. She shared her story of surviving nine months in Central State Hospital and her continuing fight to secure her medical records related to that hospitalization. (G.Marks, personal communication, 8/23/2000) Ms. Marks worked with other Georgia consumer/survivors to secure restoration of the patient cemetery in Milledgeville, Georgia, and was present when a representative from Georgia’s Division of Mental Health/Mental Retardation/Substance Abuse made a public apology to consumer/survivors for the desecration of patient graves and the abuse and neglect of patients by the state system.

“Committing social change for psychiatric patients: The consumer/ survivor movement.” Humanity & Society, 24, 389-404. Morrison, L.

“What recovery means to us: Consumers’ perspectives.” Community Mental Health Journal, 36, 315-328. Mead, S. & Copeland, M.

“Native Perspectives on the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians,” by Pemina Yellow Bird.

“Agents, not Objects.” Journal of Clinical Psychology. Ronald Bassman

“Psychology Practitioners and Schizophrenia: A view from both sides.” Journal of Clinical Psychology. Frederick L. Frese III.

“The long road back.” Journal of Clinical Psychology. Kathleen Lynch.

“It has to be about Choice.” Journal of Clinical Psychology. Lauren Tenney

“Personal Accounts of Consumers/Survivors: Insights and Implications,” by Diane T. Marsh

“Out of her mind.” The modern library. Edited by Rebecca Shannonhouse.

“Talking Points: Why Forcing Psychiatric Drugs into Your Home is a Bad Idea.” Dendron, 43:20-23. Oaks, David.

“Review of recovery literature: A synthesis of a sample of recovery literature.” Alexandria, VA: National Technical Assistance Center, Ruth Ralph.

“Recovery.” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Skills Ruth Ralph

Robert Whitaker publishes Mad In America, a thoroughly-researched indictment of treatment of the mentally ill in America. “Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill.” Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Publishing. Whitaker, R.

The No Free Lunch Organization was founded by Dr. Bob Goodman, an internist from New York. No Free Lunch is a US-based advocacy organization that holds that marketing methods employed by drug companies influence the way doctors and other healthcare providers prescribe medications. The group does outreach to convince physicians to refuse to accept gifts, money, or hospitality from pharmaceutical companies because it claims that these gifts create a conflict of interest for providers. The group also advocates for less involvement of drug companies in medical education and practice in a variety of other ways. The organization was founded in 2000 by Bob Goodman, an internist from New York. Most of the group's approximately 500 members are doctors, though some are physician assistants, nurses and other practitioners. The group made news in 2005 when the American Academy of Family Physicians refused to rent exhibition space to No Free Lunch for its annual scientific assembly. A spokesperson for the academy argued that the dialog between physicians and exhibitors is "important and healthy" and that No Free Lunch seeks to eliminate that dialog. Less than a week after the initial refusal, the academy reversed its decision and allowed No Free Lunch to rent a booth, citing discussion within the group and comments from members. The American College of Physicians also refused to rent exhibit space to No Free Lunch at its Annual Session, citing an event in 2001, in which a person claiming to represent No Free Lunch escorted investigative journalists with a hidden camera onto the exhibit floor. In collaboration with the American Medical Student Association, No Free Lunch organized a "pharmfree campaign," in which medical students and others discuss issues of pharmaceutical company involvement in the medical community. The group tries to get healthcare providers to sign the No Free Lunch pledge. Health care professionals who take the pledge agree to: accept no money, gifts, or hospitality from the pharmaceutical industry; to seek unbiased sources of information and not rely on information disseminated by drug companies; and to avoid conflicts of interest in [their] practice, teaching, and/or research. As of 2004, the pledge had about 300 signers. Patients can use a directory provided by the group to find doctors who have taken the pledge. The group claims that doctors preferentially prescribe drugs that are marketed to them over better or cheaper options because they are beholden to drug companies from which they accept gifts. Some doctors argue that they are not influenced by drug company marketing and that it is thus not necessary to refuse gifts from pharmaceutical companies. No Free Lunch also argues that doctors should not accept drug samples from drug companies to give to patients because the group believes that the samples will cause the doctors to prescribe those drugs over others. Drug company representatives argue that the free samples can be given to indigent patients. The group also seeks to convince physicians not to rely on research provided by drug companies for their information about drugs but to base their decisions only on impartial scientific evidence. No free lunch works with an Australian group called Healthy Skepticism to urge doctors to rely on independent educational materials rather than materials paid for by drug companies for their drug information. The group also calls for less involvement of drug companies in the funding of medical education. No Free Lunch does not blame drug companies for trying to market their products; the group feels that that is the companies' job. Rather, it believes that physicians are allowing themselves to be courted and swayed by advertisers. No Free Lunch argues that educational meetings that take place during meals paid for by drug companies constitute an advertising method known as direct-to-physician marketing, in which a drug company representative interacts with doctors and provides them with promotional information. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a group that represents all major drug companies in the US, argues that meetings between drug representatives and doctors are an important way to educate doctors about their products, and that purchasing meals for doctors may be the only opportunity to fit such meetings into the physicians' busy schedules.

Fairview Training Center closes in Oregon. Fairview was a state-run facility established in 1907 as the state institution for the Feeble-Minded. It opened in 1908 with 39 patients transferred from the Oregon State Insane Asylum.

2001

Rae Unzicker, one of the founders of NARPA (National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy) died March 22 at age 52. Later that year, NARPA held it's 20th Annual Rights Conference in Niagra Falls, New York. Rae Unzicker’s exposure to the psychiatric system began at a young age. Growing up in an abusive home, her parents sent her to psychiatrists off and on for years before she was involuntarily committed. While there, she was quickly introduced to the chaotic and damaging atmosphere of a psychiatric institution, exposing her to mandatory drugs, seclusion rooms, forced feeding, and work “therapy” that required her to wash dishes six hours a day. Once she was release, Unzicker’s road to recovery was long, but after several suicide attempts and stays at other treatment facilities, she ultimately counted herself–along with her friend Judi Chamberlin, an early leader in the movement–a psychiatric survivor. Like Chamberlin, Unzicker embraced her role as an advocate of patient’s rights and for the radical transformation of the mental-health system. In 1995, President Clinton appointed her to the National Council on Disability; two years later she was elected president of the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA). Unzicker was widely known for her public appearances, conferences and speeches, and her writings, including numerous articles and contributions to the book Beyond Bedlam: Contemporary Women Psychiatric Survivors Speak Out. A survivor of cancer of the jaw and breast, Rae Unzicker died at her home in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on March 22, 2001 at the age of 52. Although a small collection, Rae Unzicker’s papers document her activities as a leading advocate for the rights of mental health patients, including transcripts of speeches and videotaped appearances, correspondence and feedback related to workshops and conferences, press kits, and newspaper clippings. The most important materials, however, are her writings. It is through her poems and her full-length memoir, You Never Gave Me M & M’s, that Unzicker’s story and voice are preserved.

In 1925, Junius Wilson, a seventeen-year-old, deaf and mute black man was accused of rape, castrated and remanded for incarceration at the psychiatric facility in Goldsboro (North Carolina) by a “lunacy jury.” The rape charges were eventually dropped in the 1970s and at some point authorities realized that Mr. Wilson was neither mentally ill nor retarded—simply hearing impaired. In 1994, at the age of 86, Mr. Wilson was moved to a cottage on the grounds of the facility (now known as the Cherry Hospital). The move to the cottage was the state’s effort to make up for Mr. Wilson’s 72-year incarceration. He died there in March of 2001.

In 2001, The Journal of the American Medical Association reported that more than 160,000 students skip school every day because they are anxious and fearful of being bullied by other students. School is suppose to be a safe haven where learning takes place not where a student has to defend themselves from peers becasue of differences.

In August 2001, the Department of Health and Human Services provided guidance to states on Medicaid 1115 demonstration waivers that allowed them to expand the program to include uninsured individuals by incorporating unspent SCHIP block grant funds through a new demonstration initiative: The Health Insurance Flexibility and Accountability (HIFA) Waiver. There are concerns about the role that behavioral health consumers play as the waivers are comprised in each state. There is concern that these stakeholders are being removed from the process, and as a result, optional benefits and the populations receiving them could be eliminated. Furthermore, HIFA waivers could facilitate an increase in cost sharing among beneficiaries

Tardive Dyskinesia/Tardive Dystonia National Association: A Beginner's Guide to Tardive Dyskinesia. Prepared for the 2001 National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA) Conference, November 1-4, Niagara Falls, NY.

The Promoting Safe and Stable Families Amendments of 2001 (Public Law 107-133) was enacted partly to address the rising number of children with incarcerated parents. The law provided a grant program for creating mentoring services for these children. The law also created a new program to assist youth aging out of foster care, helping them pursue an education or vocational training.

16^th Annual “Alternatives” conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania sponsored by the Clearinghouse. Theme: Freedom to Remember, Freedom to Choose, Freedom to Dream.

The National People of Color of Consumer/Survivors Network, co-founded by Jacki Mckinney and Celia Brown.

Film A Beautiful Mind loosely based on the life of John Forbes Nash: "The story begins in the early years (1947) of a young prodigy named John Nash who attends Princeton University. Early in the film, Nash begins developing paranoid schizophrenia and endures delusional episodes where he believes he works for the Government/War. It shows his life struggle through it and how he relapses.” Nash won a Nobel Prize and serves as Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton. Praised by NAMI and BigPharma, the film inaccurately shows Nash recovering with the aid of medication which he never took. Nash says, ″I spent times of the order of five to eight months in hospitals in New Jersey, always on an involuntary basis and always attempting a legal argument for release. And it did happen that when I had been long enough hospitalized that I would finally renounce my delusional hypotheses and revert to thinking of myself as a human of more conventional circumstances and return to mathematical research. In these interludes of, as it were, enforced rationality, I did succeed in doing some respectable mathematical research. Thus there came about the research for "Le problème de Cauchy pour les équations différentielles d'un fluide général"; the idea that Prof. Hironaka called "the Nash blowing-up transformation"; and those of "Arc Structure of Singularities" and "Analyticity of Solutions of Implicit Function Problems with Analytic Data". But after my return to the dream-like delusional hypotheses in the later 60's I became a person of delusionally influenced thinking but of relatively moderate behavior and thus tended to avoid hospitalization and the direct attention of psychiatrists. Thus further time passed. Then gradually I began to intellectually reject some of the delusionally influenced lines of thinking which had been characteristic of my orientation. This began, most recognizably, with the rejection of politically oriented thinking as essentially a hopeless waste of intellectual effort. So at the present time I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists.″

Terrorist attack of the World Trade Center Towers in New York on September 11, 2001 left many feeling hopelessly traumatized.

In PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin (00-24) 532 U.S. 661, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, by its plain terms, prohibited the PGA from denying Casey Martin equal access to its tours on the basis of his disability (a degenerative circulatory disorder preventing him from walking golf courses) and that allowing Martin to use a golf cart, despite the walking rule, was not a modification that would "fundamentally alter the nature" of the game.

In R. v. Latimer [2001] 1 S.C.R. 3, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Robert Latimer's crime of murdering his disabled daughter Tracy Latimer could not be justified through the defence of necessity. Furthermore, the Supreme Court of Canada found that despite the special circumstances of the case, the lengthy prison sentence given to Mr. Latimer was not cruel and unusual, and therefore not a breach of section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

During the year 2000, the Family Region Family Support Coalition made the decision to formalize its purpose and mission by becoming a non-profit organization, the Children’s Mental Health Coalition of Western New York.

Immigration and Naturalization Service: 5,385 unaccompanied children were detained by the INS.

Freedom Center is established in Massachusetts

Charles Curie begins term as SAMHSA administrator.

Toronto Psychiatric Survivors align with Mad movement via Mindfreedom and hold yearly celebration on July 14, Bastille Day.

Larry Fricks leads Georgia to be the first state to make peer specialist services Medicaid-reimbursable statewide. As the result of an effort led by Larry Fricks, then head of the Georgia Division of Mental Health Office of Consumer Relations, Georgia’s first class of certified peer specialists graduated in December 2001

The Commonwealth of Virginia House of Delegates approved a resolution expressing regret for its eugenics practices between 1924 and 1979. Virginia's eugenics legislation resulted in the involuntary sterilization of more than 8,000 people with disabilities between 1924 and 1979.

Children’s Health Act. Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, a sweeping reform of the nation's education system focused on accountability.

President George H.W. Bush created the New Freedom Initiative, a multi-agency effort sponsored by the federal government to remove barriers to community living for people with disabilities and long-term illnesses.

Congress appropriated funding for the creation of the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) within the Department of Labor. ODEP funded the Customized Employment Initiative to improve workforce development system services for people with disabilities.40

CSPNJ initiated a Boarding Home Outreach (BHO) project in select counties throughout New Jersey.

The first Survivor Worker's conference in Manchester. (UK).

Community Enterprises Corporation (CEC) initiated matched savings and asset building programs. Consumers Savings Club (CSC) enables residents to save for short-term financial goals and the Individual Development Account (IDA) program., which is a federal program that enables participants to save for goals such as obtaining a post-secondary education, starting a business, or buying a house.

“There is marked variability in the nature of ECT practices in community settings. The extent to which this variability impacts on the benefits and risks of ECT needs to be examined.” PRUDIC c1 a1, M. OLFSON a1 and H. A. SACKEIM. Electro-convulsive therapy practices in the community.

National Empowerment Center (NEC) (1999). “Consumer/Survivor History Project.” http://www.power2u.org/how.html (December 4, 2001) about Cemetery restoration with dignity and respect.

“Lunatic Literature: New York State’s The Opal (1851-1860).” UMI. by Mary Rose Eannace.

“Reaching Across with the Arts, a self-help arts manual” (2001) edited by Gayle Bluebird funded by SAMHSA.

“U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Mental Health: Race, Culture and Ethnicity: A Supplement to Mental Health: Report of the Surgeon General.” Rockville, Maryland: U.S. Department of Health and Human Service, Office of the Surgeon General.

“Restorying psychiatric disability: Learning from first person recovery narratives.” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 24, 335-343. Ridgway, P. 2001

“In Our Own Voice: African American Stories of Oppression, Survival and Recovery in Mental Health Systems.” Monograph Series, by Vanessa Jackson.

“Salvation: Black People and Love.” New York: William Morrow. Bell hooks.

“Beyond Prozac,” by Dr. Terry Lynch.

Wales appoints a Children’s Commissioner.

“Sarah’s Law” in the UK, following the abduction and murder of eight year old Sarah Payne, the News of the World newspaper spearheaded a controversial campaign for the government to allow controlled access to the Sex Offenders Register, so that parents with young children could know if a child sex-offender was living in their area. The campaign derived from the USA's so-called Megan's Law, operating in honour of murder victim Megan Kanka and allowing publication of a sex offender's photograph and address.

2002

President Bush increased funding for Community Health Centers that provided appropriations for the construction of additional centers and offered more services, including behavioral healthcare benefits.

The push for mental health parity gets the attention of the White House as President George W. Bush promotes legislation that would guarantee comprehensive mental health coverage.

President Bush forms the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, which will seek “to conduct a comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system, including both private and public sector providers.” The Commission is charged with a set of objectives that includes reviewing the current quality and effectiveness of private and public providers, identifying innovative services, treatments, technologies, and issuing a report on its subsequent recommendations.

“...quality of life depends on a job, a decent place to live, and a date on Saturday night.” Charles G. Curie, M.A., A.C.S.W., SAMHSA Administrator

Justin Dart died, June 22, 2002

SAMHSA's report to Congress on co-occurring mental and substance use disorders identifies barriers to appropriate treatment and support services and proposes a system in which co-occurring disorders are addressed and treated as primary illnesses.

New Mexico becomes the first state to pass legislation allowing licensed psychologists to prescribe psychotropic medication.

The European Brain Council was founded in Brussels.

The term for schizophrenia in Japan was changed from Seishin-Bunretsu-Byō 精神分裂病 (mind-split-disease) to Tōgō-shitchō-shō 統合失調症 (integration disorder) to reduce stigma. The new name was inspired by the biopsychosocial model; it increased the percentage of patients who were informed of the diagnosis from 37% to 70% over three years.

In 2002, a report released by the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Education concluded that bullying played a significant role in many school shootings. In fact, one key finding was that in 37 incidents involving 41 school shooters, many of the attackers felt bullied, persecuted, or injured by others prior to the attack.

In Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), the U. S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that executing the mentally retarded violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) became law in the U.S., and it required voting "systems" to be accessible for all those with disabilities, including special assistance for blind or otherwise visually impaired voters. States must meet new federal requirements, including provisional ballots, statewide computerized voter lists, "second chance" voting, and disability access. States will receive federal funds for these purposes and to improve the administration of elections.

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) was incorporated as an Alaska non-profit on November 6, 2002, to undertake a coordinated, strategic, legal effort seeking to end the abuses against people diagnosed with mental illness through individual legal representation.

American Academy of Pediatrics issues position statement in support of second parent adoptions for same-sex couples; APA follows suit with a similar position statement that same year.

In September, over 200 disabled activists march 144 miles from the Liberty Bell in Pennsylvania to Capitol Hill in Washington, DC to demand passage of the Medicaid Community-based Attendants Services and Supports Act (MICASSA) and “no more stolen lives.”

Icarus Project is established in New York City.

17^th Alternatives in Atlanta, Georgia sponsored by CONTAC. Theme: Building Partnerships: Strengthening Networks & Taking Action Together.

Forty-one states have laws requiring outpatients to follow treatment; involuntary outpatient commitment laws.

An in-depth study on co-occurring disorders, mandated under the Children’s Health Act of 2000, was delivered to Congress.

The U.S. Senate unanimously consents to ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography and the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. Both Protocols, separate treaties from the CRC, were enacted by the U.N. in 2000.

Community Enterprise Corporation CEC, initiated a social enterprise strategy for the purpose of providing permanent, meaningful employment for low-income people with and without disabilities that would provide extensive training and career-development opportunities as well as the ability to progress towards economic self-sufficiency,

No Force campaign set up to oppose plans to extend forced treatment to the community.

Study shows antidepressant pills don’t work much better than placebos. More than half of the patients on antidepressants improved no more than those on placebos, Kirsch says. “They should have told the American public about this. The drugs have been touted as much more effective than what they are.” (USA Today, July 8, 2002).

In May a Florida judge orders a developmentally disabled woman to be sterilized following the abortion of her pregnancy which was the result of a rape that occurred in her group home. Is this the beginning of a modern revival of eugenics?

Sudden Hearing Loss - Rush Limbaugh Talk Show Host Deaf, Due to autoimmune inner ear disease. Used a Teleprompter and staff assistance to answer callers. A cochlear implant was the solution for Limbaugh. He needed one because one ear was totally deaf, and the other one was nearly so. As someone who had already experienced hearing, he was a good implant candidate. The implant in his left ear restored some hearing, but the right ear is still deaf.

Farm Security and Investment Act: The new law authorizes the AgrAbility program until 2007. This is a program funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help farmers with disabilities remain in farming

Nationally, approximately 118,000 group homes for six or fewer people with developmental disabilities were available, almost three times the number of group homes available in 1992.

“Infusing recovery based principles into mental health services,” a white paper by people who are NYS consumers, survivors, patients and ex-patients.

“Liberation by Oppression A comparative study of slavery and psychiatry,” by Thomas Szasz

“A Personal History of the Consumer Movement,” by Sally Clay.

In the UK, the Care Standards Act reformed the law relating to the inspection and regulation of various care institutions including children's homes, and created the new post of Director of Children's Rights [11] with the power to investigate individual cases.

The UK committee responsible for monitoring the implementation of the UNCRC in the UK issued its second concluding observations on the UK's progress.

“Working Cures: Healing, Health and Power on Southern Slave Plantations.” Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Fett, C.

“Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice.” British Columbia: New Society Publisher. Paul Kivel.

Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon issues a formal apology for the forced sterilization of institutionalized patients.

2003-2012

UN Arab Decade of Disabled Persons

2003

UN European Year of People with Disabilities

Mike Hogan

President George Bush's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health’s report. The Commission included Dan Fisher and they declared, “that America's mental health service delivery system is in shambles and that the mental health delivery system is fragmented and in disarray lead[ing] to unnecessary and costly disability, homelessness, school failure and incarceration.” The Commission recommended fundamentally transforming how mental health care is delivered in America with a primary goal of “recovery” for everyone. The Commission further stated that the transformed system must be consumer and family driven. President Bush’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health issued final report, “to conduct a comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system, including both private and public sector providers.” Objectives include reviewing the quality and effectiveness of private and public providers, identifying innovative services, treatments, technologies, and report on its subsequent recommendations.

Pearl Johnson, African-American activist passed away July 29, 2003.

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From the superb, In Our Own Voice: African-American Stories of Oppression, Survival and Recovery in Mental Health Systems by Vanessa Jackson.

At age 70, Pearl Johnson is a leading African-American psychiatric survivor activist. She was born in Hollywood, Louisiana, a small town outside of Shreveport. Ms. Johnson described her childhood as being wealthy because there was a garden with plenty of food but oil stoves and no running water. She described her early experience with sexual molestation, physical violence and emotional harshness. It is with a different tone that she describes her “jack rabbit” spirit that made her an excellent athlete and potential Olympic runner. She described the culmination of parental pain and confusion that landed her in state custody at the age of sixteen labeled an out of control child. The irony of the situation was that this was a child who was focused on sports and athletic success. Once she found herself incarcerated in a juvenile facility in California, Pearl used those athletic skills to liberate herself and make her way to New York State. She was eventually arrested on “white slavery” charges because a thirteen-year-old girl joined her in the breakout and they had moved across the country together. At sixteen, Ms. Johnson had her first encounter with the mental health system. Due to her constant crying she was labeled with depression. She eventually returned home to California and the maternal violence resumed. This excerpt of the interview picks up where Ms. Johnson makes her decision to leave home for good at age seventeen.

Ms. Johnson: I came back to California and started going through all of the same stuff. You look just like your no good daddy and this and that. Getting beat….

Interviewer: By your mother…? Or by…?

Ms. Johnson: By my mother. And the last time she hit me she had grabbed me like this…by my nose…and had a double-barrel shotgun and I hadn’t done nothing.

Interviewer: How old were you, Pearl?

Ms. Johnson: Seventeen…. So I ran…I really ran that time. I ran ’til I wound up in jails, hospitals, and institutions. I ran ’til I started sleeping with a man and got pregnant…. I ran ’til I started drinking wine. I ran ’til I got to become a thief. I just ran. And I didn’t stop running for fifty-one years. Until here lately. My life has been real, real, real, real, real rough. I don’t know if I had shock treatments or not ’cause I went into a state of shock. In nineteen and fifty-three, I was arrested…I didn’t know what for. They gave me twelve years in the state penitentiary. I…I…I still don’t know…. Why so much time and I didn’t have nothing on me? …Oh, lord…. [tearful]

Interviewer: It’s okay…just take your time…take your time, Pearl.

Ms. Johnson: A lot of that stuff that I seen today brought a lot of that back. [reference to c/s/x consumer history slide presentation viewed prior to interview] One time I woke up and I did not have top teeth. I had top teeth but they were all broke up. I don’t know if it was from shock treatments or from me gritting or whatever. But anyway, they had to pull all of my teeth out. Uhm… I’ve been a dope fiend….

Interviewer: What did you use?

Ms. Johnson: I used heroin…uhm…morphine….Morphine was the real deal in those days. I had sense enough to not use it with my children…when I was pregnant…. But all of the rest of the time…. My children were taken from me.

Interviewer: How many children do you have?

Ms. Johnson: I had three. My oldest son was… My daughter just told me…. I blocked all of that out. He got beat to death. Uh…he had things with his mind…. He had suicidal tendencies. Uh, he got beat to death…he got beat with a lead pipe…and I watched him die for twenty-eight days. Let’s say it that way.

Ms. Johnson recounted several near death experiences and the suicide of several friends when she was incarcerated. She was homeless during much of the fifty-one years she spent running. The most painful part of Ms. Johnson’s story is that in all of her mental health treatment, the issue of sexual and physical trauma has never been addressed. She has been labeled with clinical depression and most recently with Schizophrenia, Paranoid Type. Ms. Johnson’s story is ultimately a story of survival and commitment to supporting recovery that is hard to match. At the age of seventy, Ms. Johnson described herself as “just finding myself.”

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Atypical antipsychotics linked to an increased risk of obesity, hyperglycemia, diabetes, and pancreatitis.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision Sell v. United States imposed stringent limits on the right of a lower court to order the forcible administration of antipsychotic medication to a criminal defendant who had been determined to be incompetent to stand trial for the sole purpose of making them competent and able to be tried.

In Hornstine v. Township of Moorestown Blair Hornstine, then a high school senior, successfully sued her school district, which had said she was able to get a higher grade point average because she had been home-schooled at times because of an immune-system illness and, as a result, had taken more advanced placement courses and fewer low-rated physical education courses. Arguing that she had the highest grades and should not have to share the top honors in her class, Blair won the right to be sole valedictorian.

In Starson v. Swayze, 2003 SCC 32, [2003] 1 S.C.R. 722, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Mr. Starson had the right to refuse psychiatric medication because the Consent and Capacity board did not have enough evidence to support its finding that Mr. Starson was incapable of deciding on treatment.

In May a Florida judge orders a developmentally disabled woman to be sterilized following the abortion of her pregnancy which was the result of a rape that occurred in her group home. Is this the beginning of a modern revival of eugenics?

Ryan Halligan was bullied so relentlessly at school, he finally learned kickboxing to defend himself from the physical assaults. But when the attacks moved online, he had no way to fight back, and no refuge. October 2003, Ryan hanged himself in his family's bathroom. He was 13 years old. Now, Ryan's father travels to schools around the country to share the events that led up to his son's suicide and to warn educators and students about the dangers of cyberbullying.

Hunger Strikers Challenge American Psychiatric Association, US Surgeon General, and National Alliance for the Mentally Ill

WHAT: Six MindFreedom International members from throughout the USA have gathered in Pasadena, California and started a fast on August 16, 2003 while awaiting three leading advocates of psychiatry to provide evidence for claims.

Hunger strikers are refusing all solid food while they await responses to seven challenges they have made to leading national advocates of mainstream psychiatry. Hunger strikers seek reliable and valid scientific evidence backing claims about psychiatry, or a public admission by the American Psychiatric Association, the Surgeon General, and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill that the claims do not meet the standards of orthodox science. Responses to the challenge are being reviewed and analyzed for scientific credibility by a panel of mental health academics and practitioners.

WHEN: Began Saturday, August 16, 2003 

WHERE: Ahiah Building; 277 N. El Molino Ave., Pasadena, CA 91101 USA. Parking available in front of the building.

WHO: Hunger Strikers -- Vince Boehm (Wilmington, DE), Krista Erickson (Chicago, IL), David Gonzalez (New York, NY), David Oaks (Eugene, OR), Romi Sayama (CA), Mickey Weinberg (Pasadena, CA). [Plus solidarity strikers in various locations internationally.]

Review Panelists -- Fred Baughman, MD (CA), Peter Breggin, MD (NY), Mary Boyle, PhD (United Kingdom), David Cohen, PhD (FL), Ty Colbert (CA), Pat Deegan, PhD (MA), Thomas Greening, PhD (CA), Albert Galves, PhD (NM), David Jacobs, PhD (CA), Jay Joseph,PhD (CA), Jonathan Leo, PhD (CA), Bruce Levine, PhD (OH), Loren Mosher, MD (CA), Stuart Shipko, MD (CA).

OUTCOME: We asked: ‘Has science established, beyond a reasonable doubt, that so-called “major mental illnesses” are biological diseases of the brain?’ We also asked: ‘Does the government have compelling evidence to justify the way it singles out for its primary support this one theory of the origin of emotional distress and of pharmaceutical remedies for its relief?’.

For example, we requested evidence for a physical diagnostic exam – such as a scan or test of the brain, blood, urine, genes and so on – that can reliably distinguish individuals with these diagnoses (prior to treatment with psychiatric drugs), from individuals without these diagnoses. We refused to eat until we received a reply from the American Psychiatric Association and other psychiatric organizations, and the nonviolent conflict resulted in significant national media attention.

To its surprising credit, the American Psychiatric Association entered into a helpful and extensive back and forth written dialogue with our MindFreedom Scientific Panel. Several of us hunger strikers also met with the elected APA president. In the end, the APA did not claim to have any scientific evidence for a biological basis for psychiatric disorders. The concluding statement by the MindFreedom Scientific Panel on 15 December 2003 raised a final question that is especially applicable:

The hunger strikers asked the APA for the ‘evidence base’ that justifies the biomedical model’s stranglehold on the mental health system. The APA has not supplied any such evidence, which compels the scientific panel to ask one final question: on what basis does society justify the authority granted psychiatrists, as medical doctors, to force psychoactive drugs or electroconvulsive treatment upon unwilling individuals, or to incarcerate persons who may or may not have committed criminal acts? For, clearly, it is solely on the basis of trust in the claim that their professional acts and advice are founded on medical science that society grants psychiatrists such extraordinary authority.

In Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, the Supreme Court rules that states can be sued in federal court for violations of the Family Leave Medical Act.

In 2003 CAPTA received reauthorization through 2008 under the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act (Public Law 108-36). The law, among other things, directed more comprehensive training of child protective services personnel, including a mandate that they inform alleged abusers, during the first contact, of the nature of complaints against them. The law called for child welfare agencies to coordinate services with other agencies, including public health, mental health, and developmental disabilities agencies. The law also directed the collection of data for the fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect.

Congress passed the Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today (PROTECT) Act (Public Law 108-21) on April 30, 2003. Among other things, the act established a national Amber Alert Program for recovering abducted children and provided that there will be no statute of limitations for sex crimes and abduction of children. (Under previous laws, the statute of limitations expired when the child turned twenty-five.) The law also provided for severe penalties for sex tourism and the denial of pretrial release for suspects in federal child rape or kidnap cases. (The Amber Alert program is named after Amber Hagerman of Texas who was abducted and murdered in 1996. She was nine years old. A witness notified police, giving a description of the vehicle and the direction it had gone, but police had no way of alerting the public.)

In September, over 200 disabled activists march 144 miles from the Liberty Bell in Pennsylvania to Capitol Hill in Washington, DC to demand passage of the Medicaid Community-based Attendants Services and Supports Act (MICASSA) and “no more stolen lives.”

David Hilton (1953-2003), the first director of an Office of Consumer Affairs in New Hampshire, dies in Spokane, Washington.

Quincy Boykin (1944-2003) His story provides a rare glimpse into the trauma created by a crushed and compromised revolution for black liberation and wide-scale societal transformation societal transformation.

SAMHSA holds national “Call to Action” event on Seclusion/Restraint in Washington, DC. SAMHSA funds 8 three-year incentive grants to create alternatives to Seclusion and Restraint.

The American Psychiatric Association, American Psychiatric Nurses Association, American Hospital Association, National Association of Psychiatric Systems and the Children's Welfare League make policy statements and recommendations on reducing and eliminating restraint and seclusion.

The Institute for Wellness and Recovery Initiatives formed to provide peer delivered wellness and recovery training and education to assist in mental health system transformation in New Jersey.

US Supreme Court strikes down as unconstitutional state sodomy laws in the 13 states that still criminalized consensual, adult homosexual behavior.

Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Jones, Charise and Kumea Shorter-Gooden.

The Access to Recovery initiative is established to enable individuals seeking drug and alcohol treatment with vouchers to pay for a range of appropriate community-based services.

MindFreedom Ireland was founded. Opened serious and sustained Media Campaign on going in Ireland.

Friendly Spike Theatre Band who has been taking part all along, along with Parkdale Community Legal Services and Parkdale Activity Recreation centre, puts a Mad Pride into its season, brings in ongoing sponsorship and administration, begins working with City of Toronto to proclaim Mad Pride as an official City of Toronto Day.

“Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America.” New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Jones, Charise and Kumea Shorter-Gooden.

“Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and Tranquilizers.” Author. Peter Lehmann (ed.)

Northern Ireland appoints a Commissioner for Children and Young People.

In the UK, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 lowered the age of consent for certain sexual activities from 18 to 16 in England and Wales. Section 45 defines a "child" for the purposes of the Protection of Children Act 1978 as a person under 18 years, rather than under 16 years, of age. Despite a previous "deep lack of understanding" of incidents of abuse in children's homes run by Islington, Margaret Hodge is appointed Children's Minister in June 2003.

In the UK, the Laming report on the murder of Victoria Climbie recommended the creation of the post of Children's Commissioner and generated legislation known as Every Child Matters. A revised Children Act based on Every Child Matters was enacted in 2004.

In the UK, after the murder of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, the Bichard report severely criticised the Chief Constable of Humberside Police for ordering the destruction of criminal records of child abusers as required under the Protection of Children Act 1999. A revised registration scheme for people working with children and vulnerable adults was recommended. The report also revealed that investigation into the murders was severely compromised by involvement of some of the police officers in child pornography, or were Operation Ore suspects.

2004

In Tennessee v. Lane, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act did not violate the sovereign immunity doctrine of the 11th Amendment when, based on Congress's 14th Amendment enforcement powers of the Due Process clause, it allowed individuals to sue states for denying them services based on their disabilities. The Court held that Congress had sufficiently demonstrated the problems faced by disabled persons who sought to exercise fundamental rights protected by the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment (such as access to a court). The Court also emphasized that the remedies required from the states were not unreasonable - they just had to make reasonable accommodations to allow disabled persons to exercise their fundamental rights. The Court thus held that because Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act was a "reasonable prophylactic measure, reasonably targeted to a legitimate end," and because Congress had the authority under the 14th Amendment to regulate the actions of the states to accomplish that end, the law was constitutional. In the United States Supreme Court hears Tennessee v. Lane, a case in which individuals sue the state of Tennessee for failing to ensure that courthouses are accessible to people with disabilities. One plaintiff is arrested when he refuses to crawl or be carried up stairs. The state argues that they can not be sued under Title II of the ADA. The Supreme Court decides in favor of people with disabilities, however, ruling that Tennessee can be sued for damages under Title II for failing to provide access to the courts.

SAMHSA/CMHS National Consensus Statement on Mental Health Recovery on December 17^th defines mental health recovery. This is one of the terms used in the President’s New Freedom Commission Report of 2003. Mental health recovery is a journey of healing and transformation enabling a person with a mental health problem to live a meaningful life in a community of his or her choice while striving to achieve his or her full potential.

First Disability Pride Parade. A coalition of disability rights advocates and organizations holds the first Disability Pride Parade. Organizers expect 500-600 people to attend the event, which is designed to "change the way people think about and define disability, to break down and end the internalized shame among people with disabilities, and to promote the belief in society that disability is a natural and beautiful part of life." Almost 2,000 attend.

“Lost Cases, Recovered Lives: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic,” seen by over half a million visitors. Exhibit at the NYS museum curated by Darby Penney & Peter Stastny. Excerpts from article in Albany Times Union by Paul Grondahl: Willard State Hospital opened in 1986 as the Willard Asylum for the Insane and closed in 1995. More than 400 suitcases, boxes and trunks filled with personal items which were taken from patients as they were committed had gathered dust for decades in an abandoned building. Tipped off by a staff member who had stumbled upon the suitcases in the hospital attic, New York State Museum curator Craig Williams got his first look in 1995 at the personal effects of individuals whom society had banished. “The objects had great emotional power,” said Williams. “It was an amazing sight, like a time capsule.” It has taken eight years of research by Williams and two colleagues, Darby Penney, a former Director of the NYS Office of Recipient Affairs, and Dr. Peter Stastny, a psychiatrist at the Bronx Psychiatric Center, to match personal items from the attic with those to whom they belonged. In 1955, at the height of confinement. there were 93,314 patients in 19 psychiatric institutions across New York State. At it's peak in 1958, Willard housed 3,131 patients. Today there are 5,294 patients statewide in 26 psychiatric facilities run by the state, according to the Office of Mental Health. “We don't want people to see the exhibit and have a feeling like it's too bad these horrible things happened in the old days,” Penney said. “Times have changed, but it's not much better now for psychiatric patients.”

Dare to Act. In 2004, CMHS built on the growing momentum for trauma-informed care by hosting Dare to Act, a second national conference devoted to understanding and addressing the needs of trauma survivors. At this conference, practitioners, researchers, and policymakers discussed WCDVS and related research findings regarding trauma-specific services, strategies for implementing trauma-informed care and personal stories of survival, healing, recovery, and triumph.

Cyber Bullying Statistics from: http://www.isafe.org/channels/sub.php?ch=op&sub_id=media_cyber_bullying Based on 2004 i-SAFE survey of 1,500 students grades 4-8

• 42% of kids have been bullied while online. 1 in 4 have had it happen more than once.

• 35% of kids have been threatened online. Nearly 1 in 5 have had it happen more than once.

• 21% of kids have received mean or threatening e-mail or other messages.

• 58% of kids admit someone has said mean or hurtful things to them online. More than 4 out of 10 say it has happened more than once.

• 53% of kids admit having said something mean or hurtful to another person online. More than 1 in 3 have done it more than once.

• 58% have not told their parents or an adult about something mean or hurtful that happened to them online.

Psychological Association issues positions statement in support of marriage equality.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) directed manufacturers of all antidepressant drugs to revise the labeling for their products to include a boxed warning and expanded warning statements that alert health care providers to an increased risk of suicidality (suicidal thinking and behavior) in children and adolescents being treated with these agents, and to include additional information about the results of pediatric studies.

President George W. Bush announces plans to screen whole US population for mental illness.

Funding for Youth Information Centers. The Administration for Developmental Disabilities begins to fund Youth Information Centers (YICs). Modeled after Parent Training and Information Centers, YICs are designed to be run by and for youth and emerging leaders with disabilities, promoting a youth-led agenda and providing services within the disability community.

Congress amended the Assistive Technology Act to support state programs addressing assistive technology needs of people with disabilities. Authorization of the amendment shifted programs from capacity building to providing core service activities such as assistive technology device demonstration, device loan, device reuse, and alternative financing for the purchase of assistive technology.

Since 1991, 160 institutions, nearly half of the nation's large institutions for people with developmental disabilities, had closed.  All but twelve states had closed at least one of their institutions.

An effort by advocates including Howie The Harp Center representatives, Larry Roberts, & Carole Hayes-Collier, working with NY OMH Recipient Affairs, was successful in getting OMH to overturn the oppressive recommendations of a task force on restraint & seclusion, and replace it with a policy with the goal of eliminating restraint & seclusion.

INTAR, the International Network of Treatment Alternatives for Recovery, is an international summit of world-renowned psychiatrists, people who have experienced psychiatric treatment, family members, psychologists, and other mental health professionals who meet annually to counter the belief that people with diagnoses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder can never completely recover.

18^th Annual “Alternatives” conference in Denver, Colorado sponsored by the Clearinghouse. Theme: Achieving the Promise of Recovery: New Freedom, New Power, New Hope

“Consumer-Directed Transformation to a Recovery-Based Mental Health System”. Delivered at the Consumer Initiatives Summit Conference, March, 2004.

“Infusing recovery based principles into mental health services,” a white paper by people who are NYS consumers, survivors, patients and ex-patients. Fisher, D. and Chamberlin, J.

“Hope on a Rope,” by John F. McCarthy. Ireland.

In the UK, After a long legal battle by the family, the Law Lords ordered Home Secretary David Blunkett to hold an Inquiry into Zahid Mubarek's murder. Sentenced to 3 months imprisonment in Feltham Young Offenders' Institution for stealing razors and interfering with a motor vehicle, the 19 year-old was murdered by his cell-mate on the eve of returning home in 2000. The report's findings are a 'devastating indictment' of the prison system, to which teenagers are routinely consigned.

The Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People was appointed, with Children's Hearings and the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration as significant components of children's rights in Scotland.

2005

APA issues a position statement in support of same sex civil marriage.

Roadmap to Seclusion and Restraint Free Mental Health Services. DHHS Pub. No. (SMA) 05-4055. Rockville, MD: Center for Mental Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

19^th Annual “Alternatives” conference in Phoenix, Arizona sponsored by the National Empowerment Center. Theme: Leading the Transformation to Recovery: And Still We Rise.

Joseph Rogers, a movement leader, receives the Heinz Award for the Human Condition, a prestigious award administered by the Heinz Family Philanthropies, which is accompanied by an unrestricted $250,000 cash prize.

Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, markets Risperdal (risperidone), an antipsychotic drug that grossed $2.3 billion in US sales in 2005.

In Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education, the Supreme Court rules that Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, also inherently prohibits disciplining someone for complaining about sex-based discrimination. It further holds that this is the case even when the person complaining is not among those being discriminated against.

The World Health Organization announced they are dedicating International Human Rights Day, 10 December 2005 to all people diagnosed with mental disorders “and the all-too-prevalent violations of their basic human rights.”

Wall St. Journal, United Press International, WebMD and Time Magazine Pacific all cover the story that researchers have debunked the “chemical imbalance” claim of psychiatric drug manufacturers. Media Advisory - Fact Sheet: Hunger Strikers Challenge American Psychiatric Association, US Surgeon General, and National Alliance for the Mentally Ill; WHAT: Six MindFreedom International members from throughout the USA have gathered in Pasadena, California and started a fast on August 16, 2003 while awaiting three leading advocates of psychiatry to provide evidence for claims; Hunger strikers are refusing all solid food while they await responses to seven challenges they have made to leading national advocates of mainstream psychiatry. Hunger strikers seek reliable and valid scientific evidence backing claims about psychiatry, or a public admission by the American Psychiatric Association, the Surgeon General, and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill that the claims do not meet the standards of orthodox science. Responses to the challenge are being reviewed and analyzed for scientific credibility by a panel of mental health academics and practitioners; WHO: Hunger Strikers -- Vince Boehm (Wilmington, DE), Krista Erickson (Chicago, IL), David Gonzalez (New York, NY), David Oaks (Eugene, OR), Romi Sayama (CA), Mickey Weinberg (Pasadena, CA). [Plus solidarity strikers in various locations internationally.]; Review Panelists -- Fred Baughman, MD (CA), Peter Breggin, MD (NY), Mary Boyle, PhD (United Kingdom), David Cohen, PhD (FL), Ty Colbert (CA), Pat Deegan, PhD (MA), Thomas Greening, PhD (CA), Albert Galves, PhD (NM), David Jacobs, PhD (CA), Jay Joseph, PhD (CA), Jonathan Leo, PhD (CA), Bruce Levine, PhD (OH), Loren Mosher, MD (CA), Stuart Shipko, MD (CA). Their demand: that the mental health industry produce even one study proving the common industry claim that “mental illness is biologically-based.” The hunger strikers charge that the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatry are medicalizing an ever-widening spectrum of human emotion and behavior for financial gain, and are willing to deceive the public while they too frequently humiliate and harm their clients; “The government gives virtually total support to a quick-fix, pill-pushing model of mental health at the expense of alternative, less invasive ways of helping people in emotional distress,” asserts David Oaks, hunger striker and Executive Director of MindFreedom Support Coalition International.; The hunger strikers are subsisting on a liquid-only diet until the American Psychiatric Association (APA), The Surgeon General, and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) adequately respond to seven challenges sent to them. The American Psychiatric Association has sent the Fast for Freedom a response.; A team of 14 mental health academics and practitioners are reviewing the APA response. One, Loren Mosher, MD, former head of schizophrenia studies at the National Institute of Mental Health said, “What we are dealing with here is fashion, politics, and money... I want no part of a psychiatry of oppression and social control.”; “The targets of our fast have muddied the waters of mental health for too long,” said Mickey Weinberg, hunger striker and MindFreedom board member. “It's time they come clean. They claim science is on their side. We're just saying, 'prove it.'“ There are no biochemical markers, no biological tests, no hard evidence at all, to “prove” the existence of “mental illness.” Proof means to demonstrate a reliable association between a clearly specified pattern of observables and other reliably measurable event(s) which operate as antecedents. (This is same level of proof used for TB, cancer, diabetes, etc.) (For those who adhere to the “chemical imbalance” theory, Which of the neurotransmitting brain chemical(s) is it that is/are out of balance? What is the nature of the imbalance(s) -- Too much, too little? In what part(s) of the brain is/are these imbalances occurring? What is the formula for determining the baseline “normal” amount of the offending chemical(s), given one's gender, age, weight, etc, and where can that information be referenced?) Outcome: The American Psychiatric Assn. did reply, meeting personally with a delegation of hunger strikers. In a statement released in September, the association conceded that “brain science has not advanced to the point where scientists or clinicians can point to readily discernible pathologic lesions or genetic abnormalities that in and of themselves serve as reliable or predictive biomarkers of a given mental disorder or mental disorders as a group . . . . Mental disorders will likely be proven to represent disorders of intercellular communication; or of disrupted neural circuitry.”

In Spector v. Norwegian Cruise Line Ltd., the U.S. Supreme Court held that Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act applied to foreign-flagged cruise ships in U.S. waters.

Peggy S. Salters, from South Carolina, became the first survivor of electroshock treatment to win a jury verdict and a large money judgment ($635,177) in compensation for extensive permanent amnesia and cognitive disability caused by the procedure.

Cuts in Tennessee Medicaid Leads to Sit-In. Upset by Governor Bredesen's massive cuts to the state Medicaid System, TennCare, disability advocates in Tennessee begin a sit-in at the Governor's office that lasts 75 days, replacing the record set in 1977 by the HEW office takeover.

Schivao's Husband Has Right To Let Her Die. Terry Schivao's husband Michael is given the right to remove her feeding tube. Terry dies at the age of 41 after living 15 years in a "persistent vegetative" state. Despite numerous protests by her parents, she dies from dehydration after the feeding tube is removed by court order. The case gains national attention and continues to direct public focus on living wills and other forms of life/estate planning. Schiavo left no written instructions concerning her wishes if she were to ever become so severely disabled.

Disability Art and Culture Project (DACP) was founded by Kathy Coleman, Erik Ferguson, and Jody Ramey as a way to support and expand upon a number of inclusive and mixed-abilities dance events that have been occurring in Portland since 2002.

Over 300,000 Perkins Braillers have been produced and distributed in 170 countries around the world.

World Conference on Prevention of Family Violence 2005 held in Banff, Alberta, Canada.

It’s Our Story (IOS) begins filming 100 video histories of the disability community in 28 locations across America. In 2010, the IOS archives house over 1,100 video histories from 220 locations across America.

In Campbell v. General Dynamics Gov't Sys. Corp., the First Circuit Court of the U.S. had to consider the enforceability of a mandatory arbitration agreement, contained in a dispute resolution policy linked to an e-mailed company-wide announcement, insofar as it applied to employment discrimination claims brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Under the Court's analysis, the question turned on whether the employer provided minimally sufficient notice of the contractual nature of the e-mailed policy and of the concomitant waiver of an employee's right to access a judicial forum. The Court weighed the attendant circumstances and concluded that the notice was wanting and that, therefore, enforcement of the waiver would be inappropriate; thus the Court upheld the district court's denial of the employer's motion to stay proceedings and compel the employee to submit his claim to arbitration. The case is a principal case in the Rothstein, Liebman employment law casebook.

The Support Coalition International (SCI) changed its name to Mind Freedom International with David W. Oaks as its Director. MindFreedom International is a Non-Governmental Organization with Consultative Roster Status in the United Nations, and a non-profit that unites 100 sponsor groups to win human rights & alternatives in mental health.

American Psychiatric Association President Admits the Psychiatric Profession is Dominated by the “Bio-Bio-Bio” Pill Model. APA President warns “Big Pharma's” huge “kickbacks and bribes” hurt credibility.

Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) released a 2005 report about human rights abuses in Turkey, including electroshock of children. MDRI is a sponsor group of MindFreedom International.

Mother Jones exposes psychiatric drug screening.

“Letters: The evolution of the survivor movement.” Psychiatric Services, 57,1212-1216. Oaks, D. et al.

“Depression an Emotion not a Disease,” by Dr Michael Corry and Dr. Aine Tubridy.

“Separate and unequal: the legacy of racially segregated hospitals.” Monograph. Vanessa Jackson.

“Talking back to psychiatry: The consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement.” New York: Routledge. Morrison, L.

“RTE Dairy of a Madman,” Ireland.

England appoints a Children’s Commissioner.

In the UN General Assembly, a Special Summit on the Millennium Development Goals reviewed progress since 2000 on the Goals, which included halving the proportion of people living in poverty by 2015.

In England, at Ampleforth College a monk admitted to 20 incidents of child abuse at a leading Catholic boarding school. At least six paedophiles were active for decades following a decision by former Abbot Basil Hume not to call in police during his tenure, which commenced in 1963.

2006

The National Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/Survivor Organizations (NCMHCSO) (now The National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery – NCMHR) is formed consisting of statewide consumer-run groups and the consumer-run National TA Centers. As of 2008, consists of 31 statewide groups and 4 TAC’s.

Peer Specialist Alliance of America is founded. The goal of the organization is to promote the emerging profession of certified peer specialist.

NMHA (National Mental Health Association) becomes MHA (Mental Health America)

MindFreedom Radio Show has supported a nonviolent revolution in the mental health system.

Alaska Supreme Court Strikes Down Forced Psychiatric Drugging Procedures

Bastille Day 25th Annual Demonstration, Vigil & Celebration led by the Mental Patients Liberation Alliance changed procedural issues concerning forced ECT with a 8 day fast.

Rebecca Riley (April 11, 2002 – December 13, 2006), the daughter of Michael and Carolyn Riley and resident of Hull, Massachusetts, was found dead in her home after prolonged exposure to various medications, her lungs filled with fluid. Rebecca was found on the floor of her parents bedroom, dead from a drug overdose. Immediately after her death, her medication regime was defended by Tufts-New England Medical Center. The medical examiner's office determined the girl died from "intoxication due to the combined effects" of prescription drugs and her heart and lungs were damaged due to prolonged use of these prescription drugs. Police reports state she was taking 750 milligrams a day of Depakote, 200 milligrams a day of Seroquel, and .35 milligrams a day of Clonidine (and Dextromethorphan). Rebecca had been taking the drugs since the age of two for bipolar disorder and ADHD, diagnosed (mainly on the basis of information given by her mother) by psychiatrist Kayoko Kifuji of the Tufts-New England Medical Center. Michael and Carolyn Riley were taken into police custody on February 6, 2007 for Rebecca’s death and charged with first degree murder. Their two other children, who were also on a number of prescription medications, have been moved to foster homes and the Department of Social Services reports the parents have a history of being abusive and neglectful. On February 9, 2010, Carolyn Riley was found guilty of second degree murder in the death of her daughter and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 15 years. Michael's trial began on March 8, 2010. On September 27, 2010, Michael Riley was found guilty of first degree murder and received the automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. As of 2013, Kayoko Kifuji continues to practice as a child psychiatrist.

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ADHD Depakote & Clonidine Cocktail Settlement: No Cheers Heard

January 27th, 2011. By LucyC

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/blog/adhd-depakote-clonidine-cocktail-settlement-no-cheers-heard.html#more-6638

Rebecca Riley ADHD Depakote & Clonidine Cocktail Settlement: No Cheers Heard

Remember Rebecca Riley? The four-year old who died of a clonidine overdose at the hands of her parents, Michael and Carolyn Riley, on December 13, 2006? This utterly tragic cautionary tale reached its final conclusion this week, with the announcement of a $2.5 million settlement to be paid by the Tufts Medical Center psychiatrist Dr. Kayoko Kifuji, who prescribed the clonidine and depakote cocktail as treatment for Rebecca’s attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and bipolar disorder. Most settlement announcements can have an air of the bittersweet coupled with a sense of vindication—but in this case, the settlement was for a cocktail that would never be followed by a “cheers!” from anyone—so there is only the sense of sadness all around.

When this case broke, Dr. Kifuji’s role ignited quite a controversy around her having prescribed these drugs in the first place. Clonidine is a high blood pressure medication that can be used as a sedative in children—for ADHD. Depakote was prescribed for bipolar disorder—it is an anti-convulsant also known as valproate semisodium or divalproex sodium.

According to the state medical examiner in Massachusetts, the four-year-old girl’s death at her family home was indeed the result of a drug overdose. Dr. Elizabeth Bundock, who served as the deputy chief medical officer in Vermont, concluded in her autopsy that Rebecca died from intoxication after being administered a combination of clonidine, Depakote and two over-the-counter cold and cough medications. Bundock testified during the trial that the drugs affected Rebecca’s brain, heart and lungs, leading to “a pump failure of the heart,” overworked lungs filled with bloody fluid, coma and death.

In 2007, the father, Michael Riley, and mother Carolyn Riley were charged with first and second degree murder respectively. They were found guilty. During those trials, in the summer of 2009, Dr. Kifuji was cleared of the criminal charges. Consequently, she had her medical licence reinstated and she returned to her practice at Tufts.

Dr. Kifuji had voluntarily surrendered her medical licence in 2007—when the Riley’s were charged with murder. Even though she was cleared of any wrongdoing, she decided to settle the lawsuit, according to a report in the Patriot Ledger, “in part because of public outcry and questions about the medical care Rebecca Riley got.” According to Benjamin Novotny, a lawyer involved in the case, the amount is the limit for Kifuji’s malpractice insurance with Tufts, where she practices today.

Tufts has also agreed to launch an awareness program, so young doctors know the dangers of over-prescribing these types of drugs. Tufts declined comment on that but said the hospital will be looking for ways to expand education programs for caregivers who treat “psychiatrically ill children in troubled homes.” (Patriot Ledger)

So where does this leave things? It would seem the onus lies with the health care consumer, yet again—to get educated. Know what’s being prescribed, and understand what the side effects might be. In Rebecca’s case, one of the drugs, depakote, while a useful medication in the treatment of epilepsy, has been linked to birth defects resulting from in-utero exposure during pregnancy—it’s a category D drug because it can cause serious and potentially life-threatening birth defects such as spina bifida, underdeveloped heart, nerve problems and fetal death.

Making the problem more complicated is that Depakote has been found to affect the patient’s brain chemistry, leading doctors to prescribe it “off-label” for migraines, mania and bipolar disorder—even in children.

This final chapter in Rebecca Riley’s story—the multi-million dollar settlement—is considered a satisfactory outcome. At least her siblings will benefit from it, with the money placed into Rebecca’s brother and sister’s trusts. Her brother is reportedly in foster care, while her sister may soon be adopted. Rebecca is dead and her parents are in jail. A satisfactory outcome, but not a happy one.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

US launches federal center on 'trauma informed' care. The US government announces a new national center on care from a trauma perspective.

The vote to establish a national memorial being built at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. is made.

In United States v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the protection of the Americans with Disabilities Act extends to persons held in a state prison and protects prison inmates from discrimination on the basis of disability by prison personnel. Specifically, the court held that Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12131–12165., was a proper use of Congressional power under the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 5, making it applicable to prison system officials.

National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) issues a report that people who receive public mental health services are dying at an average age of 52 (and its falling) while the general public lives to an average age of 78 (and its rising). This represents a gap of over 25 years while that gap was only 15 years in 1990.

Pfizer Inc. (PFE.NYS), the world’s largest drugmaker, said in a regulatory filing that its outgoing CEO, Hank McKinnell, would receive nearly $198 million in total compensation.

New Mexico's Senate adjourned without passing an involuntary outpatient commitment law.

In January 2006, the US Congress passed a law making it a federal crime to “annoy, abuse, threaten or harass” another person over the internet (cyberbullying).

England's Rufus May comes to Toronto and urges Psychiatric Survivors to present a Bed Push during Mad Pride.

“Can You Dig It?” A participatory action research project on The Opal is coordinated in New York State.

An article reveals that the American Psychiatric Association is launching a curriculum in USA schools to promote their perspective on the mental health system, which tends to promote psychiatric drugging. Funders of the APA's campaign are mainly drug companies giving more than $400,000 in total.

20^th Annual “Alternatives” conference in Portland, Oregon is sponsored by CONTAC. Theme: Blazing the Trail to Recovery through Transformation. James P. Chasse, Jr. was a resident of Portland, Oregon, USA diagnosed schizophrenic who died in police custody. Psychiatric survivors and mental health consumers marched from the Alternatives 2006 conference to a memorial on 27 October 2006.

Nineteen social work academics have signed an open letter protesting the way the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) has entered into a financial relationship with the huge psychiatric drug manufacturer Jannsen.

The twenty-first century's first human rights treaty was adopted by the United Nations a year ago and opened for ratification on March 30, 2007.

Anna Schuleit, A New York City-based artist who works on transforming abandoned psychiatric institutions into memorials with art (such as Northampton State Hospital in Massachusetts) won a MacArthur “Genius Award” of $500,000.

U.S. FDA approves Risperdal for “irritability” in autistic children as young as 5 years old.

The Supreme Court upholds the ban on the "partial-birth" abortion procedure. The ruling, 5–4, which upholds the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, a federal law passed in 2003, is the first to ban a specific type of abortion procedure. Writing in the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy said, "The act expresses respect for the dignity of human life." Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who dissents, called the decision "alarming" and said it is "so at odds with our jurisprudence" that it "should not have staying power."

Launch of Hearing Voices, Cork, Ireland.

Mother Jones Magazine September 2007 six-page article “School of Shock” by Jennifer Gonnerman.

On 23 November 2006 The New York Times ran a major article questioning the way young people in the USA are frequently prescribed a “chemical cocktail” of prescribed psychiatric drugs.

Gallaudet Students Protest New President. I. King Jordan resigns from Gallaudet University. Students protest the hiring of his replacement, citing issues such as not being raised using American Sign Language (ASL) and her lack of familiarity with deaf culture.

“My Body Politic” by Simi Linton is published

Today, over 30,000 individuals have been implanted worldwide, over 3,000 cochlear implants were performed in 1999 alone.

History of Disability Rights Enters Curricula. The first bill requiring that students in a K-12 public school system be taught the history of the disability rights movement is passed, largely due to the efforts of 20 young people with disabilities from the state of West Virginia.

50-State Road-To-Freedom Tour. The Road-to-Freedom tour kicked off on November 15th. This 50-state bus tour and “Tom Olin” exhibit chronicles the history of the grassroots "people's movement" that led to passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the first comprehensive human rights treaty of the 21st century.

BBC News: Professors say psychiatric use of the term “schizophrenia” ought to be abolished because it's unscientific.

“The Electroshock Quotationary,” by Leonard Roy Frank.

“Soul Survivor: A Personal Encounter with Psychiatry,” by Mary and Jim Maddock.

“They took my depression and then medicated me into madness: co-constructed narratives of SSRI-Induced Suicidality.” Journal of Radical Psychology. by Rachel Liebert and Nicola Gavey

“Who fancies to have a revolution here? The Opal Revisited (1851-1860).” Journal of Radical Psychology. by Lauren Tenney

“They will find us and infect our bodies” The views of adolescent inpatients taking psychiatric medication. Journal of Radical Psychology. by Brenda A. LeFrancois.

“A matter of definition: Acknowledging Consumer/Survivor Experiences through Narrative.” Journal of Radical Psychology. by Linda Morrison.

“Psychiatric Survivor Testimonials and Embodiment: Emotional Challenges to Medical Knowledge.” Journal of Radical Psychology. by Christopher Canning.

“Alternative Sli Eile (another way) became a reality in Charleville,” Cork, Ireland.

In the British Army, an independent review commissioned by the Minister for Armed Forces into circumstances surrounding the deaths of four soldiers recruited under the age of 18 at Princess Royal Barracks, Deepcut between 1995 and 2002, concludes that the deaths were self-inflicted, despite a catalogue of allegations of misconduct at the relevant times. The call for a public enquiry is rejected.

In England, following the Make Poverty History march and Live 8 events, NGOs launch a coalition to secure the Government's 1999 pledge to halve the numbers of children living below the poverty line by 2010 and eliminate child poverty by 2020.

In England, the Howard League for Penal Reform: publication of Lord Carlile's inquiry into the treatment of children in penal custody. The 47 recommendations include: severely restricting physical intervention; stopping the strip searching of children; and an end to prison segregation.

2007

UN General Assembly adopts the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and it enters into force in May, 2008.

The SOCSI (Subcommittee On Consumer/Survivor Issues) of CMHS/SAMHSA provides a definition and guideline for “Consumer-Driven.” This is one of the terms used in the President’s New Freedom Commission Report of 2003. Consumer-driven means mental health consumers have the primary decision-making role regarding the mental health and related care that is offered and received. In addition, the consumer voice is paramount in determining all aspects of care for consumers in the community, state, and nation. The consumer voice must be present and fully represented both collectively and individually with regard to all aspects of service delivery from planning to implementation to evaluation to research to defining and determining outcomes. This includes the policies and procedures governing systems of care, choosing supports, services, and providers; setting goals; designing and implementing programs; monitoring outcomes; and determining the effectiveness of all efforts to promote mental health and wellness.

The Office of Disability Employment Policy, Department of Labor endorsed customized employment strategies for increasing the employment options of job seekers with complex needs through the national workforce development system.  Customized employment involves the negotiation of a personalized employment relationship between a specific individual and an employer to meet the needs of both.

The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) headed by Peter Ashenden receives a grant to become National Technical Assistance Center.

Simone D., a psychiatric patient in the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in New York, won a court ruling which set aside a two-year-old court order to give her electroshock treatment against her will.

MindFreedom Youth Campaign

The Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act is introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein for the ninth time since the 106th Congress. The act would establish an Office of Children's Service at the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Zyprexa Papers Scandal. A group of shareholders of Eli Lilly sought to sue officers and directors of the corporation for illegal fraud regarding their psychiatric drug Zyprexa. Attorney Jim Gottstein obtained copies of court records and made copies of damaging internal Eli Lilly documents relating to the controversial prescription drug Zyprexa available to a reporter from the New York Times, resulting three articles written about the unpublished risks associated with Zyprexa. According to The New York Times reports, the Eli Lilly documents show that the company intentionally downplayed the drug's side effects, including weight gain, high blood sugar, and diabetes, and marketed the drug for “off-label” uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The documents were leaked from the ongoing Zyprexa products liability lawsuit, where Weinstein is the presiding judge. Copies of the leaked Eli Lilly documents have appeared on a variety of websites and other Internet sources. Zyprexa is Eli Lilly's best selling drug, used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Eli Lilly recently agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle claims relating to Zyprexa. This latest settlement brings the total paid by Eli Lilly to resolve lawsuits involving Zyprexa to more than $1.2 billion. 17 December 2006 — First article: Eli Lilly Said to Play Down Risk of Top Pill. 18 December 2006 — Follow-up article the next day, on the front page: Drug Files Show Maker Promoted Unapproved Use. 19 December 2006 — Editorial calling Eli Lilly to task, based on these revelations, Playing Down the Risks of a Drug. Eli Lilly sought and obtained the first court gag order on December 18 2006, requiring Jim Gottstein to cease and desist from disseminating any of the memos about Zyprexa from Eli Lilly. The court is also required Jim to save all copies of his email for possible examination by the courts. The documents remain available from a Zyprexa wiki via a Tor share (http://zyprexa.pbwiki.com). Outcome: Court held that its injunction was unenforceable, allowing John Doe journalists to continue to post the documents (http://www.eff.org/cases/eli-lilly-zyprexa-litigation).

Larry Fricks

On 15 August 2007, the huge USA federal funding agency Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a long-awaited guideline about their funding of peer support mental health services. The letter from CMS names peer support as an evidenced based practice and provides states with guidelines to create a workforce of trained peers who can bill Medicaid for peer support services to help transform mental health to strength-based recovery.

CMS's Final Rule concerning patients' rights goes into effect.

On the CBS television show “60 Minutes” on 30 September 2007, Katie Couric looks into the death of four-year-old Rebecca Riley who was given multiple psychiatric drugs after being diagnosed “bipolar.” The parents were charged with murder.

Washington D.C.’s 'icon' lesbian activist and archivist Cheryl Ann Spector died. She was 49.

International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology conference. International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP) is a key network of dissident mental health professionals and allies who are willing to challenge abuse in the mental health system and promote alternatives.

The Crazy Bed-Push from July 13, 2007, to Bristol.

BBC reports that UK House of Lords may make it far easier to coerce people living in their own homes who have not broken any laws to take psychiatric drugs against their will.

A new alliance called the “Opal Network” is beginning in Lane County, Oregon to support the voice, empowerment and self-determination of mental health consumers and psychiatric survivors.

MindFreedom affiliate in Maine began.

A nonviolent protest using banners and guerilla theater was held in and outside of the “First Eastern European Psychiatric Congress” in Thessaloniki, Greece on 21 September 2007. The protest was by the Pan-Hellenic Coalition for Psychiatric Reform.

Celebrate World Hearing Voices Day and 20 years of achievement, 14th September 2007.

MindFreedom International presents a conference retreat supporting the growth of workable alternatives to the mental health system entitled “Creative Revolution in Healing: Turning Our Minds Around.”

Terence McLaughlin, editor of Asylum magazine, dies. (1947-2007).

Oregon groups of mental health consumers and psychiatric survivors create a steering committee for a state-wide alliance called “Oregon Consumer Suvivor Coalition” (OCSC).

National Public Radio's show “Justice Talking” featured discussions with representatives of 'both sides of the story' about the issue of involuntary psychiatric drugging of people out in their own neighborhoods and homes using court orders. The show aired the week of 20 August 2007.

2 July 2007 update: Simone D. has had more then 200 forced electroshocks. The State of New York went to court to give even more. Simone D.'s attorney, Dennis Feld, fought valiantly. But the courts agreed to order even more forced electroshock. Electroshock is also known as electroconvulsive therapy or ECT.

MindFreedom South Africa launched a new project in the summer of 2007, at the founding meeting of the Maitland Ubuntu Centre for Treatment: Alternatives in Mental Health and PsychRights Advocacy.

Soundtimes Support Services Mad Pride Organizing group joins the effort and through their effort comes Mad Pride Toronto Bed Push Parade.

The TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes exposed the torture and killing of a man with mental and emotional problems inside a Michigan prison through hour upon hour of agonizing restraint.

Disability rights advocates marked December 3, 2007 - International Disabled Persons Day - by launching RatifyNow, a global campaign based in the U.S. to maximize the number of nations that ratify the new Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

November 20 is the Day of Remembrance for Transgender communities as they gather across the country to commemorate those who have lost their lives to hate-motivated violence and neglect.

21^st Annual “Alternatives” conference in St. Louis, Missouri sponsored by the Clearinghouse. Theme: Spanning the Recovery Movement: Consumer Control and Choice.

NAPS, the National Association of Peer Specialists hold their first conference in Denver.

SAMHSA renews grants to create alternatives to Seclusion and Restraint.

The 2007 Thomas J. Dodd Prize for International Justice and Human Rights has been given to Mental Disability Rights International, a sponsor group of MindFreedom International.

In Toronto, Canada, 29 September 2007 is celebrated as Psychiatric Survivor Pride Day by the Mad Pride Toronto Organizing Committee.

The Recovery Learning Communities (RLCs) were started, funded by the state, in Massachusetts.

The American Psychological Association vote against a ban of psychologists from helping interrogators at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. military detention centers. Instead, the Association voted for a milder resolution that banned about a dozen interrogation techniques. Dissident psychologists protested the vote.

Mother's Day Protests of Electroshock in Ireland, Toronto and Montreal.

First Madman stands on Mental Health in General Election in Ireland.

BonkersFest 2007 on 2 June 2007 was a wonderful success. There was a celebration of music, creativity, poetry, and strangeness! Mad Pride UK was one of the sponsors.

Freedom Center's Bed Push and “Escape from Psychiatry” to celebrate Mad Pride! July.

Representatives from National Consumer/Survivor groups from 7 countries (England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, US, Australia, and New Zealand) that formed an international coalition called Interrelate.

Launch of report on 'The Adverse effects of Pharmaceuticals'. Ireland.

The first Electro Shock public protest in Cork, Ireland.

Launch The Full Shilling in Ireland.

In Jersey, England, social Worker Simon Bellwood was dismissed after making a complaint about a "Dickensian" system in a secure unit where children as young as 11 were routinely locked up for 24 hours or more, in solitary confinement. Police subsequently commenced investigations at the site of former children's home Haut de la Garenne.

In the UK, Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 was extended to apply to prisoners and young offenders killed or injured whilst in custody, with effect from April 2008. From monitoring and analysis of deaths in custody, NGO INQUEST propose an independent, overarching standing commission on custodial deaths, with statutory powers to address the breadth of social and political issues that arise when these deaths occur.

Following publication of the Shaw report "Historical Abuse Systemic Review: Residential Schools and Children's Homes in Scotland 1950 to 1995", the Scottish Government proposed a truth and reconciliation forum for victims of historic abuse. The discussion paper named "Acknowledgement and Accountability" will be published 2008/9.

“Not to be tabled: STOP forced “mental health” treatment.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, The Feminist Press. by Lauren Tenney

The Medicine Wheel and 12 Steps for Teens is developed in Montana.

“A Fight To Be. A psychologist’s experience from both sides of the locked door,” by Ronald Bassman.

2008

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Amendments Act of 2008 became law, and it broadened the scope of who is considered disabled under the law, and when considering whether a person is disabled, the law required that people ignore the beneficial effects of any mitigating measures (except ordinary eyeglasses and contact lenses) the person uses; furthermore, when considering whether a person is substantially limited in a major life activity, which would make them disabled under the law, the law required the consideration of bodily functions as well as other major life activities, and having one major life activity substantially limited is enough; when considering whether a person whose condition is episodic or in remission is substantially limited in a major life activity, the law required the consideration of the person's limitations as they are when the condition is in an active state; furthermore, determining someone is disabled under the law does not require individuals to meet the substantially-limited-in-a-major-life-activity standard, but does not include impairments that are transitory and minor.

Congress passed the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 which requires insurance companies to treat mental and chemical health on an equal basis with physical illness when policies cover both. The Act was named for the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), who were dominant figures in the quest for equal treatment of benefits throughout their Senate careers.

The first Implementation Manual for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities addressed specifically to users and survivors of psychiatry.

Largely due to the efforts of 20 young people with disabilities from West Virginia, the West Virginia Youth Disability Caucus, the first state legislation requiring that students in a K–12 public school system be taught the history of the disability rights movement was passed.

One of the first cyberbullying laws is passed in California; Assembly Bill 86 2008 gives school administrators the authority to discipline students for bullying others offline or online.

SAMHSA/CMHS National Wellness Summit

David Romprey (Oregon) died July 30

22^nd Annual “Alternatives” conference in 2008 in Buffalo, New York sponsored by NEC. Theme: Creating Community Through Active Citizenship

Youth Power! in New York State releases their Policy Agenda.

Dare to Transform. Following the creation of NCTIC in 2005 and building on the momentum of Dare to Act, SAMHSA hosted a third national conference, Dare to Transform in 2008. At this conference, people working to implement trauma-informed care shared best practices and explored innovative strategies for organizational change.

Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act of 2008 was introduced by representative George Miller. The act, supported by organizations such as Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth, would require certain standards and enforcement provisions to prevent child abuse and neglect in residential programs, and for other purposes. It passed the House on June 28, 2008.

Mad Pride Day July 14 - Bastille Day - becomes Mad Pride Week July 14 - 20.

Mayview State Hospital in Pennsylvania to close December 2008.

Green Body and Mind Declares Santa Cruz a Psychiatric Drug-Free Zone.

Branches of Ireland's Full Shilling established in Kampala and Mbola Uganda.

Mindfreedom Uganda established.

The Managed Care Consortium (MCC) formed in 1955 to create educational opportunities for a host of advocacy organization across the United States. The MCC, with funding from CMHS, encouraged teams to form in each state to impact the development of managed care programs.

Nearly half of psychiatric hospital beds (from the peak in the 1960’s) are closed

CPSNJ developed the Economic Development Program under Community Enterprises Corporation (formerly Butterfly Property Management) to provide economic development opportunities to low-income people with special needs, in order to decrease reliance on public assistance and enable them to progress towards economic self-sufficiency.

Public television's “Frontline” is airing a show Tuesday, 8 January 2008, on the psychiatric drugging of USA children, particularly with the super-powerful “antipsychotic” or neuroleptic drugs.

UK's Guardian newspaper covers the news that a major study says SSRI antidepressant psychiatric drugs are no better than placebo.

Bonkersfest is a wonderful annual Mad Pride event in UK that brings thousands of people together for creativity, music, costumes, strangeness and even a bit of education about human rights of people in the mental health system!

UilenSpiegel from Belgium celebrates its 10th Anniversary. Seminar “Patient Rights en Patient Representation mental health care” on the 4th of October.

“Agents in My Brain: How I Survived Manic Depression,” by Bill Hannon.

“Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry” co-edited by Peter Lehmann and Peter Stastny.

“The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic.” http://www.suitcaseexhibit.org by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny (Bellevue Literary Press).

The Children's Commissioner for Wales, Children's Commissioner for England, Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People and the Commissioner for Children and Young People, Northern Ireland jointly report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, in preparation for the 30th Anniversary of the International Year of the Child.^[5] The remit of individual UK Commissioners differ in the devolved administrations, however the first report by federal Commissioners is unanimous in calling for incorporation of UNCRC into domestic legislation and a ban on police indefinitely keeping children's DNA on record. Amongst 100 recommendations are: increasing the age of criminal responsibility; a reduction in the number of children in custody; and a public inquiry into the deaths of 30 children in custody over the past 10 years. UK's main NGO's including UNICEF and CRAE also attended the Pre Sessional Working Group with the UN Committee. 12 Children and Young People represented England as well.

In England, after details of the tragic life and death of the 17 month-old “Baby P” at the hands of his parent and carers, whilst on the 'At Risk' register of Haringey Social Services were revealed, Ofsted confirmed that between April 2007 and August 2008, 282 children died of neglect, abuse or in the care system. Of that total, 72 died in accidents, stabbings or shootings while in foster or residential care, while the remaining 210 died of abuse or neglect at the hands of their families. This means that 12 children are killed by some form of abuse each month.

An internet search found the Top Ten Disability Events for 2008:

10. Students with Disabilities in Advanced Coursework

9. The Medicaid Moratorium

8. The PreNatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act

7. U.S. Treasury Lawsuit (ACB (American Council of the Blind) demands accessible currency)

6. Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities or CRPD

5. Mental Health Parity

4. Importance and Emphasis on Media and Disability: Tropic Thunder, Blindness and SNL

3. ADA Amendments Act

2. The Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act

1. Presidential Campaigns and the Courting of the Disability Vote

2009

23^rd Annual “Alternatives” conference in 2009 in Omaha, Nebraska sponsored by Self-Help Clearinghouse. Theme: Uniting Our Movement For Change.

Pam Hyde

Pamela Hyde was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November 2009 as Administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a public health agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. The agency’s mission is to reduce the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on America’s communities. Ms. Hyde is an attorney and comes to SAMHSA with more than 35 years experience in management and consulting for public healthcare and human services agencies. She has served as a state mental health director, state human services director, city housing and human services director, as well as CEO of a private non-profit managed behavioral healthcare firm. In 2003 she was appointed cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Human Services Department by Gov. Bill Richardson, where she worked effectively to provide greater access to quality health services for everyone.

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act became law in the U.S., and it expanded the definition of federal hate crime to include those violent crimes in which the victim is selected due to their actual or perceived disability; previously federal hate crimes were defined as only those violent crimes where the victim is selected due to their race, color, religion, or national origin.

Congress introduced the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act - Amends the federal criminal code to impose criminal penalties on anyone who transmits in interstate or foreign commerce a communication intended to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to another person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior. This prevention act came to be because of a 13 year old girl who committesd suicide after being a target of cyberbullying. Megan developed a relationship on MySpace with an individual who she thought was a new boy in the area, but turned out to be a group of other individuals from the neighborhood, including adults. The group created an elaborate hoax to make Megan believe that she had a flourishing relationship with the boy. When the plot was revealed for all to see, Megan was unable to deal with the humiliation and took her own life.

In Forest Grove v. T.A., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the parents of a child with a disability. The Court held that even though their son had never received special education services from the school district they were entitled to pursue tuition reimbursement for the private educational program they secured for their son, T.A.

2010

24^th Annual “Alternatives” conference in 2010 in Anaheim, California sponsored by NEC. Theme: Promoting Wellness Through Social Justice

The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessiblity enacted into law

President Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, which allows victims of pay discrimination to file a complaint with the government against their employer within 180 days of their last paycheck. Previously, victims (most often women) were only allowed 180 days from the date of the first unfair paycheck. This Act is named after a former employee of Goodyear who alleged that she was paid 15–40% less than her male counterparts, which was later found to be accurate.

Judi Chamberlin dies January 16 from pulmonary disease. Author of On Our Own, speaker, representative and leader in the movement for the rights of people with disabilities and people with mental health issues.

Peerlink National Technical Assistance grant received by Mental Health America of Oregon. This establishes first consumer-survivor T. A. Center West of the Mississippi. The National Empowerment Center used to have an office in California that was staffed by one person.

WRAP listed as evidence-based peer-led intervention in SAMHSA’s Registry of Evidence-Based Practices.

Day Al-Mohamed via her blog published on the internet the Top Ten Disability Events of 2010:

Number 10. The loss of long-time disability scholars and advocates – Laura Hershey, Paul Longmore, and Paul Miller.

Laura Hershey, known as a writer and poet explored diverse topics in her work including body, community, activism, and social justice. She authored of Survival Strategies for Going Abroad: A Guide for People with Disabilities, published by Mobility International USA. Over 100 of her articles, essays, poems and art have been published in journals, anthologies, websites and magazines including the 2010 National Disability Employment Awareness Month poster for the U.S. Department of Labor. She also led or participated in campaigns to remove Social Security work disincentives, to challenge the negative images of the Jerry Lewis Telethon, to increase visibility of LGBTQ people with disabilities, to improve Medicaid home and community-based services, to promote the rights of home care workers.

Paul Longmore, professor of history and director of the Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University could be considered the nation’s leading scholar of disability history. He spoke and wrote about disability studies before there ever WAS a disability studies. The initial story of how he got national attention – burning his own book – has stuck with me. He wrote The Invention of George Washington. The book was published and he received royalties. However, federal law limits how much money a person with a disability can earn and still get personal assistance (which can be very very expensive). Paul needed that assistance to live, work and write his book. But because he made too much in royalties from his book, he’d lose the assistance that he needed to write the book in the first place!

Paul Miller, was Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law. He had been a Commissioner on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, had been an adviser to President Bill Clinton and (in the capacity that I knew him) was special assistant to President Barack Obama. He took very seriously his role to prepare and identify qualified young people with disabilities an give them the opportunity to serve.

Number 9. The Department of Justice and Department of Education issue a joint letter about equal access to educational technology.

In 2009, lawsuits were filed at universities that used the Kindle DX, an inaccessible, electronic book reader, in the classroom as part of a pilot study with Amazon.com, Inc as they did not offer equal access to blind and visually impaired students. The Department of Justice and Department of Education followed up in a letter to all colleges and universities stating that requiring use of an emerging technology in a classroom environment when the technology is inaccessible to an entire population of individuals with disabilities is discrimination prohibited by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504).

Number 8. Death of Seclusion and Restraint Legislation (Top doesn’t necessarily mean good)

In December 2009, Representatives George Miller and Cathy McMorris Rodgers introduced the Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act. However, action didn’t really begin until 2010. The bill easily passed the House in March. However, it was revised in the Senate (becoming S.3895, Keeping All Students Safe Act) and by November had lost all momentum. Part of the stall was due to a split among disability advocates due to a provision in the new version that allows restraint and seclusion when it is included in a student’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP). You can follow the entire timeline of events on DisabilityScoop who did a great job of documenting events.

Number 7. Olmstead Settlement in Georgia and Prioritization of Community Living (also in Health Reform)

Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Thomas Perez declares that enforcement of Olmstead is a priority. In December, he announced that the DOJ had settled with the state of Georgia. Georgia will spend $77 million over the next two years to move thousands of people with disabilities from state hospitals to living in their communities. The DOJ has filed has filed lawsuits in Arkansas and Georgia, intervened in a case in New York, and filed amicus briefs in cases in Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina, Illinois, Florida, New Jersey and California to do the same. As of this writing, I think the total is closer to 20 states that the DOJ has been moving actively towards Olmstead enforcement.

Number 6. President’s Executive Order on Hiring of People with Disabilities

In 2000, President Clinton signed Executive Order 13163, calling for an additional 100,000 individuals with disabilities to be employed by the Federal Government, but it didn’t happen. In 2010, President Obama put forward his own Executive Order to reinforce Clinton’s Executive Order 13163 and promote the Federal government as a model employer, decrease the stigma attached to hiring people with disabilities and increase the number of individuals with disabilities in the Federal workforce. And to do it in 5 years. Obama’s order is very specific in its demands and timeline, directing federal agencies to design model recruitment and hiring strategies to increase Federal hiring of people with disabilities, as well as mandatory training programs for both human resources personnel and hiring managers on the employment of individuals with disabilities.

Number 5. Rosa’s Law

In October, President Obama signed into law S. 2781, also known as Rosa’s Law. Rosa’s Law replicates a Maryland law. It changes references in Federal law from “mental retardation” to “intellectual disability”, and “mentally retarded individual” to “individual with an intellectual disability.” The family of Rosa Marcellino, a nine year-old girl with Down syndrome, worked with their state representative to pass the legislation in the Maryland General Assembly and then worked with Senator Mikulski to bring the legislation to the U.S. Senate. I wrote a short article on this issue when the bill was moving through the Senate for Disability.gov’s 100 Days of the ADA blog series.

Number 4. Telework Act (flexible work)

Although this bill did not get a lot of fanfare at the time of its signing, the Telework Enhancement Act could be considered a sign of things to come. This law requires every Federal agency to create a telework policy and give employees the option to telecommute. Considering the Federal government has over 1 million employees and that often the Federal government has used itself to “test-run” policies, it could be a sign of the future of labor. With a recession and many companies scrambling to control costs and keep the best talent, offering a flexible workplace and cutting down on overhead and real estate costs will start to look better and better. More than 10 years ago, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office began allowing telecommuting; they claim that they’ve had a 10% increase in productivity as a result. Pretty impressive, yes? This move towards greater flexibility can offer significant benefits for workers with disabilities should (as a result of Federal efforts) it become more prevalent in the private sector.

Number 3. Anniversary of the ADA 20th anniversary

So may events. So let me just put forward a few words from the President’s speech on the anniversary, “Equal access — to the classroom, the workplace, and the transportation required to get there. Equal opportunity — to live full and independent lives the way we choose. Not dependence — but independence. That’s what the ADA was all about. But while it was a historic milestone in the journey to equality, it wasn’t the end. There was, and is, more to do.”

Number 2. 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act

Technology is what moves our society today; it is in our homes, our workplaces, our public spaces. It connects us with entertainment, culture, people and at times, critical information for our health and safety. It has shaped the way we live our lives. This update to the Communications Act establishes new guidelines for disability access to ensure that people with disabilities are not left behind as technology changes and the United States migrates to the next generation of Internet-based and digital communication technologies. COAT has been the major player in ensuring passage of this legislation. Find out more about this coalition and accessible technology policy.

Number 1. Health Reform (pre-existing conditions, disparities, accessible equipment)

Obviously, there are a lot of things that impact people with disabilities in the several hundred page document that makes up the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Chief among those is: 1. not being denied coverage or charged higher premiums for having a pre-existing condition or having coverage rescinded upon gaining a disability; 2. the ability for state Medicaid plans to choose home and community-based services and supports as the rule, rather than an exception with a 6% increase in what the Federal government pays as an incentive to provide this versus institutional care; 3. the creation of standards for medical diagnostic equipment for people with disabilities to make it clearer (and reinforce the requirement) that examining tables, x-ray machines etc must be accessible; 4. the creation of the CLASS Act establishing a national voluntary, disability insurance program and 5. the collection of data to enable better understanding of the health of people with disabilities and provide recommendations to address health disparities.

2011

On March 15, 2011, new Americans with Disabilities Act rules came into effect. These rules expanded accessibility requirements for recreational facilities such as swimming pools, golf courses, exercise clubs, and boating facilities. They also set standards for the use of wheelchairs and other mobility devices like Segways in public spaces, and changed the standards for things such as selling tickets to events and reserving accessible hotel rooms. The new rules also clearly defined “service animal” as “…any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability.” This portion of the law also states that the services the service animal provides must be “directly related to the handler’s disability” and dogs that provide only emotional support or crime deterrence cannot be defined as service animals.

National Black Disability Coalition (NBDC) is a response to the need for Blacks with Disabilities in America to organize around issues of mutual concern and use our collective strength to address disability issues with an emphasis on people who live in poverty

The Broken Arrow City Council, Oklahoma, unanimously voted to create an exotic animal ordinance exemption allowing Christie Carr, who was depressed, to keep her therapy kangaroo within city limits so long as certain conditions were met.

In Virginia Office for Protection and Advocacy v. Stewart, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Virginia cannot invoke its sovereign immunity to prevent the Virginia Office for Protection and Advocacy (an independent state agency and member of the National Disability Rights Network) from suing state officials for a court order. In other words, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Ex Parte Young allows a federal court to hear a lawsuit for prospective relief against state officials brought by another agency of the same state.

Facilities licensed by the DDS (Department of Developmental Services) in Massachusetts, including but not limited to the Judge Rotenberg Center, were banned from subjecting new admissions to severe behavioral interventions including electric shock, long-term restraint, or aversives that pose risk for psychological harm.

The FAIR (Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful) Education Act, which states that California schools must include the contributions of people with disabilities in their textbooks and in teaching of history and social studies classes, became law.

25^th Annual “Alternatives” conference in 2011 in Orlando, Florida sponsored by The National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse. Theme: Coming Home: Creating our own Communities of wellness & recovery.

The Supreme Court held in Brown v. The EMA that rights protected under the first amendment were extended to children.

Ricky Wyatt (Wyatt v Stickney) dies. Alabama chooses a memorial day of remembrance.

Spoken and written testimony by Leonard Roy Frank to FDA ECT Hearing

Date Published: Jan 27, 2011 04:00 AM Author: Leonard Roy Frank Source: MindFreedom

1. WRITTEN TESTIMONY (780 WORDS)

THE ELECTROSHOCK MACHINE IS AN INSTRUMENT OF INFAMY

My name is Leonard Roy Frank. I’m 78 years old, live in San Francisco and have been active in the struggle against electroshock for almost 40 years. In 1974 I co-founded the Network Against Psychiatric Assault (NAPA) and published The History of Shock Treatment, in 1978 and The Electroshock Quotationary, an e-book, in 2006. I am here today to urge the commission to recommend that electroshock devices not be reclassified from a “high-risk” to a “low-risk” category because these instruments of infamy can and often do cause tremendous harm.

I know this from having studied the professional literature on electroshock for many years, from having spoken with and read about hundreds of people who have been electroshocked, and from having undergone the procedure myself.

In 1963 I was forced to endure 85 shock procedures, 50 insulincomas and 35 electroshocks. As a result, my memory for the three most recent years of my life was obliterated. In addition, my high school and college educations were effectively destroyed. Every part of me – spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical – was less than what it had been. I believe I never recovered fully from these repeated brain assaults which rendered my life since then less abundant.

The brain is a terrible thing to damage, and brain damage is electroshock’s bottom line. The surest indicator of this brain damage is memory loss which is practically universal among survivors. But electroshock psychiatrists deny that electroshock causes brain damage. 

The American Psychiatric Association’s Task Force Report, The Practice of Electroconvulsive Therapy: Recommendations for Treatment, Training, and Privileging (2nd edition, 2001) stated that “In light of the accumulated body of data dealing with structural effects of ECT, ‘brain damage’ should not be included [in the ECT consent form] as a potential risk of treatment.”

This is one of modern psychiatry’s biggest lies. The scientific evidence contradicts this claim. The best example of such evidence I’m familiar with is the 1957 report by psychiatrist David Impastato, a leading electroshock advocate who some believe introduced electroshock in the United States in 1940. In the largest and most detailed review of electroshock-related deaths ever published, Impastato studied 254 deaths, all but 40 from published reports, and found that “66 patients” died from “cerebral” causes. In other words, they died from electroshock-caused brain damage. There’s no mention of Impastato’s findings in the APA’s Task Force Report; nor is the study listed among the 1,200 articles in the Report’s reference section.

The telling remarks at a meeting of electroshock psychiatrists by another leading electroshock proponent supplies anecdotal support for the fact that the procedure causes brain damage. Psychiatrist Paul H. Hoch, a past commissioner of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, said “This brings us for a moment to a discussion of the brain damage produced by electroshock.... Is a certain amount of brain damage not necessary in this type of treatment? Frontal lobotomy indicates that improvement takes place by a definite damage of certain parts of the brain.”

Electroshock psychiatrists have had more than 70 years to prove that their procedure is “safe and effective,” and they haven’t been able to. During that time, with no moral or scientific justification, more than 7,000,000 people in the United States alone have been electroshocked. Even today more than 100,000 people a year in this country are being electroshocked, along with— according to one electroshock psychiatrist’s estimate — another 1 to 2 million people throughout the world. The time is now to call the psychiatric profession to account for its inhumanity and criminality, and the Food and Drug Administration is the place to begin. I say “criminality” because electroshock is rarely, if ever, administered with genuine informed consent: the absence of the brain-damage risk from the consent form makes the electroshock consent process entirely fraudulent. If the law considers touching another person without their consent an assault, then administering an electric shock with an electroshock device to another person without their genuine informed consent should be regarded as aggravated assault, a felony punishable by a term in a state prison.  

Because it destroys memories and ideas, electroshock violates these hallmarks of American liberty: freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. This leads me to say, there is no place for electroshock in a free society, and no society where it is sanctioned or tolerated is justified in calling itself free.

If the body is the temple of the spirit, the brain may be seen as the body’s inner sanctum, the holiest of holy places. To invade, violate, and injure the brain, as electroshock unfailingly does, is a crime against the spirit, a desecration of the soul.

     2. SPOKEN TESTIMONY (575 WORDS)

My name is Leonard Roy Frank. I’m 78 years old, live in San Francisco and have been active in the struggle against electroshock for almost 40 years. I am here today to urge the commission to recommend that electroshock devices not be reclassified from a “high-risk” to a “low-risk” category because these instruments of infamy can and often do cause tremendous harm.

In 1963 I was forced to endure 85 shock procedures, 50 insulincomas and 35 electroshocks. As a result, my memory of the three most recent years of my life was obliterated. In addition, my high school and college educations were effectively destroyed. Every part of me – spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical – was less than what it had been. I believe I never recovered fully from these repeated brain assaults which rendered my life since then less abundant.

The brain is a terrible thing to damage, and brain damage is electroshock’s bottom line. The surest indicator of this brain damage is memory loss which is practically universal among survivors. But electroshock psychiatrists deny that electroshock causes brain damage. 

The American Psychiatric Association’s Task Force Report, The Practice of Electroconvulsive Therapy (2001), the most authoritative text on the subject, stated that “In light of the accumulated body of data dealing with structural effects of ECT, ‘brain damage’ should not be included [in the ECT consent form] as a potential risk of treatment.”

This is one of modern psychiatry’s biggest lies. The scientific evidence contradicts this claim. The best example of such evidence I’m familiar with is the 1957 report by psychiatrist David Impastato, a leading electroshock advocate. In the largest and most detailed review of electroshock-related deaths ever published, Impastato studied 254 deaths, all but 40 from published reports, and found that “66 patients” died from “cerebral” causes. In other words, they died from electroshock-caused brain damage.

Electroshock psychiatrists have had more than 70 years to prove that their procedure is safe and beneficial, and they haven’t been able to. During that time, with no moral or scientific justification, more than 7,000,000 people in the United States alone have been electroshocked. Even today more than 100,000 people a year in this country are being electroshocked.  

The time is now to call the psychiatric profession to account for its cruelty and criminality, and the Food and Drug Administration is the place to begin. I say “criminality” because electroshock is rarely, if ever, administered with genuine informed consent: the absence of the brain-damage risk from the consent form makes the electroshock consent process entirely fraudulent. If the law considers touching another person without their consent an assault, then the law should regard  administering an electric shock with an electroshock device to another person without their genuine informed consent as aggravated assault, a felony punishable by a term in a state prison.

Because it destroys memories and ideas, electroshock violates these hallmarks of American liberty: freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. This leads me to say, there is no place for electroshock in a free society, and no society where it is sanctioned or tolerated is justified in calling itself free.

If the body is the temple of the spirit, the brain may be seen as the body’s inner sanctum, the holiest of holy places. To invade, violate, and injure the brain, as electroshock unfailingly does, is a crime against the spirit, a desecration of the soul.

2012

26^th Annual “Alternatives” conference in Portland, Oregon sponsored by PeerLink.

In August, Paolo del Vecchio, M.S.W., is announced as the Director of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)'s Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS). Previously, Paolo was the CMHS Associate Director for Consumer Affairs where he managed SAMHSA's precedent-setting activities in addressing consumer participation and education, issues of discrimination and stigma, consumer rights, wellness, recovery, trauma, and others. Paolo was the first Consumer Affairs Specialist hired in 1995 by SAMHSA. In this capacity, he promoted consumer participation in all aspects of the Center's policies and operations ranging from public education to developing evidence-based practices to address the needs of persons with mental illnesses. Those efforts included initiating historic dialogue meetings between consumers/peers and practitioners, regional peer meetings, social inclusion efforts, training programs, and grant development. Prior to joining SAMHSA, Paolo worked for the Philadelphia Office of Mental Health in the areas of policy formulation and the planning of a comprehensive system of community-based mental health services addressing homelessness, HIV/AIDS, and many other issues. A self-identified mental health consumer, trauma survivor, and person in recovery from addictions, Paolo has been involved for over 40 years in behavioral health as a consumer, family member, provider, advocate, and policy maker. He graduated summa cum laude with a master's degree in social work from Temple University, has published widely and is a highly sought after national and international speaker. Paolo has been a leader in many Federal efforts including the Mental Health Statistics Improvement Project Ad-Hoc Advisory Committee, the Federal Advisory Planning Board for the Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health, the HHS Multiple Chronic Conditions and Community Living Initiatives, and numerous others.

On Friday 16 March 2012 schools throughout Australia will join together to celebrate the annual National Day of Action Against Bullying and Violence. The focus of the 2012 day will be on parents and families taking a stand together with school communities and recognising the important role everyone plays.

30^th Annual NARPA Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio

Lead On Update published on the internet the Top Ten Disability Events of 2012:

It has been an amazing and very full year with a Presidential (re)election, the plunge of the American economy, Hurricane Sandy’s visit to the East Coast and of course, the demise of all civilization as we know it (as foretold by the Mayans).  However, as exciting (or non-exciting) those events may have been, we’d like to talk to you about events that will continue to shape the future – especially for individuals with disabilities. So put on your party hat and grab a flute of champagne because here are the Top 10 Disability Events for 2012 –

1.     Closed Captioning Required on the Internet

In January, the Federal Communications Commission released a Report and Order adopting rules to implement certain closed captioning provisions of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA). Why this is a big deal? All video programming that is shown on television with closed captions MUST BE closed captioned when delivered on the Internet.  Think about it; many of us watch more programming via the Internet now than regular television.  We are in a new era of digital distribution and playback (via the web) so ensuring that accessibility at the very least stays in programming is critical.  Now this won’t happen immediately, but will be phased in over a two-year period with a “drop dead date” in 2014.   There was much cheering from us folks here at Lead On as this is one more step toward the place where accessibility is second nature.   Click for more

2.     Repeal of the CLASS Act

One of the biggest issues of the last couple of years (and arguably the most controversial) has been the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a key component of which was Title VII, the Community Living Assistance Services and Support program, or CLASS Act.  The CLASS Act would have created a voluntary and public long-term care insurance option for employees. The supports would have been most beneficial to the significant number of Baby Boomers that are aging into retirement over the next few years. Not only will this group need additional supports, they will also be aging into disabilities.   Note we said, “would have.”  In February, the CLASS Act was first suspended, and then repealed.  An ominous sign of the arguments to come throughout 2012.

Even Bob Dole in his wheelchair was not enough to gain the Senate OK on the CRPD. The action failed by 6 votes.

3.     Failure of the Senate to sign the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Disability advocates and pundits continue to voice their displeasure with the U.S. Senate and their failure to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Though this issue has been present in the disability community’s discussions since the  George W. Bush Administration, the attention given to the failed  CRPD ratification by advocates outside of the disability field brought disability to the forefront for the nation . In addition to making the rounds on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report, the failed CRPD vote has been highlighted as yet another example of partisanship outweighing the ideas and concerns of American people and has the potential to become a rallying cry for change and a return to the common-sense decision making that is supported by many Americans.  Perhaps what is of even greater concern to us as a community is that historically, Disability has been an issue that easily crossed party lines, and for the first time, this was not the case.

4.     Disability in the Mainstream Media

Disability has slowly been creeping out of the shadows in the entertainment field. Though 2012 did not mark any firsts as it related to characters with disabilities on television or film, there has been a significant jump in the levels of inclusion as well as the types of stories being told. Individuals with disabilities are beginning to tell more of their own stories and the entertainment industry is providing even more content.  Projects in 2012 such as Push Girls and the Sessions or web series like My Gimpy Life not only illustrated that individuals with disabilities can participate in all forms of the entertainment industry, but that also the intersection between disability, entertainment and culture is more accessible and acceptable than it was previously. 2012 also offered a major entertainment coup for the disability community when Turner Classic Movies offered their Disability Film series with Lawrence Carter-Long in October.

5.     High visibility of disability at the Olympics and the Paralympics

2012 offered the Games of the XXX Olympiad where athletes from around the world convened in London for competition. The last Olympic held in China offered some coverage of the Paralympics and due to the extreme delays in time, many world audiences had the opportunity to see Paralympic Sports and Athletes with disabilities for the first time. This year, the world got something event better. The opportunity to see an athlete with a very visible disability compete on the world stage with the athletic elite. The inclusion of Oscar Pistorious in competition at both the Olympic and Paralympic games was just the beginning. In addition individuals with disabilities were present in the opening ceremonies, and the Paralympic ceremonies were broadcast by NBC and available for the world. This is not to say that the playing field has been made totally inclusive, but the presence of Oscar Pistorius is as significant as Jesse Owens contribution to inclusion in organized sports.

6.     Violence Toward Individuals with Disabilities

In addition to the ups and downs of disability policy and inclusion, 2012 also saw a serious discussion about violence toward individuals with disabilities – specifically the death of people with disabilities at the hands of their parents and caregivers. The disability community was shocked, not only by the killing itself, but by the apologetic and empathetic tone taken toward individuals who in any other case would have been called murderers.

A National Day of Mourning was held on March 30, 2012 and self-advocates began calls to focus attention on the victims rather than the stresses their caregivers face. This recurring sentiment of sympathy towards caregivers who perpetuate violence against individuals with disabilities and the underlying attitude that because of the significant disability, their lives are somehow less than anyone else’s represents a dangerous path that all who support the values  of inclusion and justice should work to avoid.

7.     Parents with Disabilities Battle for Custody

Individuals with disabilities are still fighting every day to create a world that believes in their abilities and rights as human beings. In 2012 the National Council on Disability pulled back the veil on parents with disabilities and in their report, “Rocking the Cradle: Ensuring the Rights of Parents with Disabilities and Their Children” identified the significant amount of discrimination and eugenics fueled bigotry that impacts parents with disabilities and the more than 1 in 10 Americans that has a parent with a disability. The report not only offers suggestions to protect the fundamental rights of all parents but also shines a light on the significant number of parents with disabilities and the practices that seem to specifically separate them from their children. Combating this type of discrimination in a time where all Americans understand the importance of families is key and the report offers food for though as well as action.

8.     Cuts in services related to disability around the world

In addition to supporting the passage of the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, the International disability community has been working to ensure that services and resources are available in their respective countries. Though the interest in disability has been steadily rising in the world forum, many countries have also significantly cut services related to disability. Atos, the company currently holding UK contracts to reassess individuals for disability benefits being specifically mentioned.  As described in the Guardian, “If there is another company in Europe that has waged such a considered, unrelenting war against the disabled, such an unaccountable, cheese-paring, suspicious-minded erosion of disability’s already meagre compensations, I can’t name it.”  This was a running theme of 2012 and a variety of examples of poor planning and judgment –  People dying soon after being pronounced fit to work and their benefits cut.  Protests over these and measures have taken place in Spain, Bolivia, Ireland, Greece, and India and have been part of both international and local disability efforts. As the entire world struggles with financial recession it will be more than an interesting value judgment if disability is seen as a luxury item that cannot be afforded in tight financial times.

9.     Passage of the Affordable Care Act

No matter what feelings one has toward the current administration or your personal opinions on healthcare, it would be difficult not to admit that the Affordable Care Act has a significant impact on the lives of all individuals with disabilities – whether they consider themselves a part of the community or not. The Supreme Court’s Decision to uphold the legislation represents a value shift in the way that care will be offered to individuals with disabilities who have historically had a hard time gaining coverage because of their “pre-existing conditions.” The legal issues the Court considered were: (1) the constitutionality of the individual mandate, (2) whether the federal government could force states to expand their Medicaid programs, and (3) whether the law as a whole would stand if one provision was unconstitutional. The only part struck down was the required Medicaid expansion. A big win for the disability community. However, we at the Lead On Update want to make sure our readers get the WHOLE story.  Though the ACA stands, the impact of the loss of the Medicaid expansion means that there are potentially 16 million poor Americans (many with disabilities) who will NOT have access.

10.  Shootings in Aurora, Colorado and Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut

Finally, the last of the Top Ten events affecting disability in 2012 is one that has already indelibly marked the entire nation’s memory of 2012. The Shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School were not the first incidences of violence in a public place for the year, but do represent one of the most tragic and senseless losses of life that has impacted many Americans. The outcry from the events in Newtown have caused many to raise questions about how to prevent incidents like this one and the shooting at a movie theater in Aurora Colorado from happening. These events have always led to an outcry for more gun control measures, to which the firearms lobby always inserts issues related to mental health and the inherent disability of the shooter. The suggested measures often offer few changes in policy with the exception of limiting the rights of individuals with disabilities who are often caught in the demand for something to be done and the lack of a powerful lobby to offer policy protection. Within mere days of the Sandy Hook Shooting, there were calls from media pundits to abandon the inclusion of anyone with mental disabilities in the community and a return to institutionalized care. Mental health registries were demanded to track these individuals.  The rights of children with mental health conditions, HIPPA concerns, and violence against individuals with mental health conditions were all parts of discussions around the country.   Because of these events in 2012, this next year promises to be one of change around the arena rights of individuals with mental health challenges and can either provide greater inclusion and support, or discrimination.

2013

27th Annual Alternatives Conference in Austin, Texas sponsored by National Empowerment Center.

DSM-5 (formerly known as DSM-V) is the 974-page, fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. More than 400 mental professionals worked for thirteen years to complete the text. The book is so large and has such sweeping definitions of disorders, however, some claim it has contributed to the over-diagnosis and over-medication of Americans. Indeed, one quarter of American adults currently live with a mental illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control. It was published on May 18, 2013, superseding the DSM-IV, which was last revised in 2000. It includes several changes, including proposed deletion of the subtypes of schizophrenia. Former DSM Editor, psychiatrist Allen Frances has expressed concern regarding what he calls 'commercialism and heavy handed censorship' in the DSM-V process. He argues that psychiatric classification is too important to be left under the exclusive control of one professional organization. Frances and others have published debates on what they see as the six most essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – are they more like theoretical constructs or more like diseases; how to reach an agreed definition; whether the DSM-V should take a cautious or conservative approach; the role of practical rather than scientific considerations; the issue of use by clinicians or researchers; and whether an entirely different diagnostic system is required. The ten personality disorders in DSM-IV will remain, (Paranoid personality disorder, Schizoid personality disorder, Schizotypal personality disorder, Antisocial personality disorder, Borderline personality disorder, Histrionic personality disorder and Narcissistic personality disorder), the multiaxial system will be dropped in favor of a system evaluating psychosocial and contextual factors and will use a new trait-specific diagnostic method. Asperger's disorder will be merged into Autism, and new disorders added, such as Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (for children to reduce reliance on a Bipolar disorder diagnosis), Excoriation (skin-picking) disorder, and Hoarding disorder. Disorders not accepted include Anxious depression, Hypersexual disorder, Parental alienation syndrome, and Sensory processing disorder. Pedophilia is retained as is but renamed to Pedophilic disorder. David Kupfer, M.D., was the DSM-5 Task Force chair.

2014

28^th Annual Alternatives Conference in Orlando, Florida sponsored by The National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse.

TANISHA ANDERSON

Family member called 9-1-1 to report that Anderson, who suffered from mental illness, was acting unruly, but non-violent. November 2014. Anderson, her family and the responding officers eventually agreed that Anderson should be taken in a patrol car to a local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. Anderson's family said she became extremely nervous, did not attack the officers and lost consciousness after an officer used a takedown move to put her in a prone position on the cold Cleveland street. Family called for force as they’ve been taught to do. Force (police) arrived. Force body-slammed Tanisha to the concrete. By the time the officer put his knee in the middle of her back to attach handcuffs, she had already stopped breathing. She was dead. Family need a different message. Perhaps call for peer support.

2015

29 Annual Alternatives Conference in Memphis, Tennessee sponsored by PeerLink

Leonard Frank died January 15, 2015

Contributors: Peter Ashenden, George Badillo, Su Budd, Maggie Bennington-Davis, Gayle Bluebird, Celia Brown, Jacob Bucher, Angela Cerio, Oryx Cohen, Richard Cohen, Ted Chabasinski, Amy Coleante, Eva Dech, Mark Davis, Deb Damone, Doug DeVoe, Gloria Gervais, George Ebert, Mike Halligan, Daniel Hazen, Kevin Huckshorn, Vanessa Jackson, Daniel Fisher, Leonard Roy Frank, Larry Fricks, Ben Hansen, Daniel Hazen, Ellen Healion, Karen Henninger, Marry Maddock, John McCarthy, Richard McDonald, Traci Murry, David Oaks, Stephanie Orlando, Darby Penney, Pat Risser, Joseph Rogers, Susan Rogers, Ruth Ruth, Dally Sanchez, Judene Shelley, Y Z Smith, Lauren Spiro, Peggy Swarbrick, Lauren Tenney, Can Truong, Carlton Whitmore, Debbie Whittle, Sally Zinman, and You.

Major Works Utilized: (footnotes to be added) Gail Hornstein’s First Person Accounts of Madness, Third Edition; Judi Chamberlin’s works; Vanessa Jacksons’ works; Pat Risser’s time line; www.mindfreedom.org; http://www.aglp.org/gap/timeline.htm; http://www.menstuff.org/issues/byissue/mentalhealthtimeline.html; http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/history/history_article2.shtml; wikipedia; and the world wide web; http://www.theopalproject.org/ourstory.html

Also see: History of historic asylums at: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~asylums/index.html