[OCSC-news] Street Roots publishes article about OCSC launch!

[David Oaks]

Hi OCSC News list!

The below article in the new Street Roots (available all over  
Portland, Oregon) is all about the launch of the Oregon Mental Health  
Consumer/Psychiatric Survivor Coalition (OCSC). The teleconference  
launching the first board is 22 April 2008.

Please print this out and photocopy for those NOT on the Internet!  
Help them hear about the OCSC launch!!

For more info about the new "OCSC" see links at the BOTTOM. By the  
way, I'm emailing this to the OCSC-News list. There is also an OCSC- 
Talk list for discussion. On there we are talking about organizing,  
exchanging introductions and news, and posting info about the  
upcoming launch. If you are not on the OCSC talk list and wish to be,  
you can sign up here:

http://www.intenex.net/lists/listinfo/ocsc-talk

~~~~~~~~~~~

Published in _Street Roots_ newspaper, Portland, Oregon, USA:

4 April 4 2008 -- News

New mental health coalition organizes survivors for reform

By Mara Grunbaum, Staff Writer

As far as David Oaks is concerned, it's no coincidence that "One Flew  
Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Ken Kesey's novel about the dark side of the  
psychiatric system, takes place in Oregon. Forty-six years after the  
book's publication, Oaks - who was himself institutionalized and  
involuntarily medicated in the 1970s - has serious reservations about  
Oregon's public mental health system. He isn't the only one with  
concerns, but the state, he says, isn't listening.

Oaks heads up MindFreedom Oregon, a Eugene-based advocacy group whose  
several hundred members are mostly "mental health consumers and  
psychiatric survivors" - people who partake in mental health  
services, and people who feel the psychiatric system has harmed them.

"We are an extremely disempowered constituency," Oaks said, despite  
the fact that more people now have psychiatric diagnoses than ever  
before. Oaks contends that decisions affecting mental health  
consumers are made without adequate input from those who will be  
affected most. For example, he said, instead of letting politicians  
argue over how to best help the homeless population, "Let's hear from  
homeless and ex-homeless people who've been through the mental health  
system about what helps them."

In 2007, the McKenzie River Foundation granted MindFreedom $8,000 to  
set up the Oregon Consumer/Survivor Coalition. The coalition, which  
officially kicks off April 22, will unite 14 consumer/survivor groups  
statewide. Oaks and other members of the coalition's steering  
committee hope that by banding together, they can consult with  
thousands of mental health consumers across Oregon and push for  
reforms that people using the system actually want.

The Oregon Department of Human Services treats between 70,000 and  
75,000 people with mental health issues each year, and they're  
currently meeting less than half the need for publicly-funded  
services, according Addictions and Mental Health Division Deputy  
Assistant Director Madeline Olson.

The state used to fund an Office of Consumer/Survivor Technical  
Assistance (OCTA), whose small staff served as a liaison between  
mental health consumers and the government, kept track of programs  
statewide, and provided technical assistance to consumer/survivor  
groups looking to expand their services. The office's director,  
Rollin Shelton - who says he received public psychiatric services in  
California in the 1980s - advised state committees on consumer  
concerns and regularly helped inform decisions on mental health  
programs. When a revenue shortfall forced the state to make budget  
cutbacks in 2003, OCTA was one casualty, and Oregon has not paid for  
a comparable entity since.

The consumer perspective is important, Olson said, and DHS has  
supported several attempts to reestablish an office like OCTA, but  
each failed to win funding from the legislature.

"There are never sufficient revenues in this state to fund everything  
that people need, let alone everything that people would like," Olson  
said. She cited the $458 million project to replace the aging Oregon  
State Hospital as one thing that has taken precedence over funding a  
consumer affairs office. "There's a lot of value in a dedicated  
office, but if I had to trade between continuing to treat people in a  
building that was built in 1883 or building that office, I would  
elect to have a safer treatment space for those people."

Oaks isn't convinced. If the state can find nearly half a billion  
dollars to build new institutions, he said, they should be able to  
devote some money to an organized consumer voice.

Shelton, the former OCTA director, is now the executive director of  
Mental Health America of Oregon/PeerLinc Oregon, which provides  
training and technical assistance to people with mental health issues  
and consumer/survivor groups. He is also on the new coalition's  
steering committee.

Without statewide coordination, Shelton said, the mental health  
system operates in many "different little fiefdoms." While some  
counties improve mental health services, others are still "in the  
dark ages," and little information is shared between them. "As a  
result, folks all over the state are again and again and again in the  
position of having to reinvent a wheel that someone else has already  
invented," he said.

The Oregon Consumer/Survivor Coalition will represent a wide variety  
of viewpoints, Shelton explained, from those who vehemently oppose  
chemical treatment of mental health issues to "folks who believe with  
equal strength of conviction that without their psychiatric  
medication, they'd be lost."

Oregon has taken some steps to include the mental health consumer  
perspective in its decision making. A senate bill passed in 2007  
requires at least one fifth of the members of any government-formed  
mental health advisory group to be consumers of mental health  
services. Olson also said that DHS has added staff at the state  
hospitals who are trained to respond to consumer concerns. "I think  
we've tried to compensate," she said, athough "it's not quite the  
same thing as having an everyday voice at the state," which OCTA  
provided.

The level of consumer representation at the state is "still sort of a  
token," said Amy Zulich of Empowerment Initiatives, another Portland  
group involved in the coalition. Empowerment Initiatives gives 25  
individuals a year grants of $3000, which they use as part of a self- 
directed mental health plan. Grant recipients might spend the money  
on clothes, art supplies, or a personal skills coach, depending on  
what they determine would help them reach their goals.

Zulich hopes the coalition can give mental health consumers wider  
access to these "brokerage" programs and other community tools.  
Shelton would like to expand peer-delivered services, where people  
who have experienced mental health issues are paid to assist others  
facing similar challenges. Oaks wants to put an end to involuntary  
psychiatric treatment, which is court-ordered for about 800 adults  
every year. All three advocates emphasize that what they really want  
is to hear from as wide a range as possible of mental health  
consumers and to bring those voices into the public process.

"Nothing about us without us," Oaks stressed. "If we're talking about  
mental health.. Let's have people who've been at the sharp end of the  
needle. Let's have them at the table."

- end -

Street Roots, which is published every two weeks, has been Portland,  
Oregon's flagship publication addressing homelessness and poverty  
since 1998.

You may submit a letter to the editor of _Street Roots_ here:  
info at streetroots.org

ORIGINAL online article and info about Street Roots click here:

http://www.streetroots.org/past_issues/2008/04_01/ 
news_mental_health.shtml

The article is also online here:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/media/mf/street-roots-ocsc

YOU are invited to support and become involved in the Oregon Consumer/ 
Survivor Coalition (OCSC)!

INFO about OCSC:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/as/act/us/or/ocsc

INQUIRIES: You may e-mail questions or comments about OCSC to: Mark  
at mfisher88 at msn.com

E-LISTS: You may sign up for an OCSC News list, OCSC Talk list, or  
both, here:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/as/act/us/or/ocsc/ocsc-lists

PLEASE FORWARD this important news to all appropriate places on and  
off the Internet.