The Mental Health System:
Who's Crazy?
by James B. (Jim) Gottstein, Esq.
April 10, 2012
Wilda Marston Theater --7:00
to 9:00 PM
3600 Denali St., Anchorage, AK 99503
Located in the Z.J. Loussac Library
The data shows our current mental health system is creating a huge class of
chronically disabled people diagnosed with mental illness, shortening their
lives by 25 years and making many of those lives miserable.
This is based upon the assumption that people diagnosed with mental
illness are consigned to a lifelong of such disability.
This has not always been the case and need not be the case now.
The
three films by Daniel Mackler that were screened earlier this year show
specific people who have recovered and programs that have a terrific record of
helping people recover.
Mr. Gottstein will present the research behind these results, discuss
common myths and misunderstandings about people
diagnosed with mental illness, including that people don't recover, what tends
to help, what doesn't, and what tends to harm.
This talk will pull together what the research shows regarding standard
and alternative treatments for people diagnosed with serious mental illness,
broken into segments on children and youth as well as adults and the elderly.
Most importantly, it will go through what directions the data suggests people
and policy makers should take.
About Jim Gottstein
Jim
Gottstein grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, graduating from West High School in
1971. After graduating from the
University of Oregon in 1974, he attended Harvard Law School graduating in 1978.
Mr. Gottstein's law career has evolved from emphasizing business matters
and public land law, with mental health representation and advocacy as an
adjunct, to increasing emphasis on mental health advocacy and representation.
After
briefly experiencing the mental health system
from the wrong side of the locked doors at the Alaska Psychiatric Institute in
1982, Mr. Gottstein has increasingly devoted his time to
improving the mental
health system from the perspective of service recipients,
commonly called "consumers." This
has included co-founding the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights®)
in 2002, whose mission is to mount a strategic litigation campaign against
forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock across the United States, as well
as a number of other Alaska non-profits: Mental Health Consumers of Alaska, the
Alaska Mental Health
Consumer Web,
Peer Properties, CHOICES, Inc., and Soteria-Alaska.
Mr.
Gottstein has won
four Alaska Supreme
Court cases
expanding the rights of people to resist unwarranted psychiatric incarceration
and forced drugging, and expanding their rights to alternative approaches.
Starting, in 2004, Jim has made addressing the alarming and horrific
increase in the psychiatric drugging of children and youth a high priority.
Mr. Gottstein was also one of the plaintiffs' lawyers in the
Mental Health Trust
Lands Litigation,
recovering almost 1 million acres of land and $200 million, and the creation of
the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority.
Mr.
Gottstein is most known around the US and internationally for subpoenaing and
releasing what has become known as the
Zyprexa Papers
in late 2006, resulting in a series of New York Times articles and an editorial
calling for a Congressional investigation.
In January of 2009, Eli Lilly pled guilty and agreed to pay $1.4 Billion
in civil and criminal fines for the activities revealed by the
Zyprexa Papers.
Mr.
Gottstein has served on the Alaska Mental Health Board, the statewide planning
board for Alaska's mental health program, and currently serves on the board of
directors of the National Association of Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA),
and the International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry (ISEPP),
formerly known as the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and
Psychology (ICSPP).
In
addition to being recognized in Alaska numerous times, Mr. Gottstein has been
recognized nationally by ICSPP with a 2005 Award "for his consistent and
conspicuous legal activism and accomplishment in the field of mental health,"
and will be the 2012 honoree at the International Society for Psychological and
Social Approaches to Psychosis, United States Chapter (ISPS-US)
Annual Meeting.
Mr.
Gottstein is also the author of a number of peer reviewed articles, and has
contributed chapters in three books, most recently in
Drugging Our Children: How
Profiteers Are Pushing Antipsychotics on Our Youngest, and What We Can Do to
Stop It (2012 – Praeger).