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Peter Lehmann's list of world-wide links to organisations and web sites orientated to the interests of (ex-) users of psychiatry, their friends, supporting relatives and professionals

Information Sources about Psychiatric Drugs · Electro- & insulin-shock · Mailing lists · Overview: Self-help & Alternatives beyond Psychiatry

Warning! In spite of all care when installing links, I cannot guarantee for the correctness of the addresses nor the actual political or personal positions of the persons or groups on the list. See my disclaimer. User/survivor of psychiatry groups and other ones have different positions and perspectives. Trying out contact addresses is always at your own risk.

Please give me a short note, If you find

  • links to groups paid by Big Pharma to make public relations for their campaigns and products. I know from own experiences, media reports and reports of the bereaved, that a lot of people are harmed or do die from psychiatric treatment with toxic psychotropic substances which have been offered originally as helpful drugs and without warning of the real risks.

  • links to groups who follow the ideology of electroshock and forced treatment. I know from own experiences and media reports from the damage electroshock and forced psychiatric treatment are causing.

  • groups of Scientology or other sects. I know from media reports which damage the fans of the ideology of Ron Hubbard, for example, may cause.

I will delete these links at once.

World

  • International Network Toward Alternatives and Recovery – INTAR: International group gathers to promote non-medical approaches to treating people diagnosed with mental illness

  • INTERVOICE – International Network for Training, Education and Research into Hearing Voices. "We understand 'voices' to be real and meaningful, something that are experienced by a significant minority of people, many of whom have no problems living with their voices. Research shows that to hear voices is not the consequence of a diseased brain, but more akin to a variation in human behaviour, like being left-handed. It is not so much the voices that are the problem, but the difficulties that some people have in coping with them. On this site we have provided information about ways of overcoming the difficulties faced by people who hear voices and information about the more positive aspects of the experience as well as the cultural and historical significance of this important variation in human behaviour."

  • MindFreedom International

  • World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry – is an international organisation, advocates for human rights of users and survivors of psychiatry, speaks internationally for them, promotes their movement in every nation around the globe and links their organisations and individuals throughout the world. Old und new web site

  • The Inner Compass Initiative provides information, resources, tools, and connecting platforms to facilitate more informed choices regarding all things "mental health" and to support individuals and groups around the world who wish to leave, bypass, or build community beyond the mental health system.

Africa

  • Information required

Asia

Australia / Oceania

  • Patients Rights Advocacy (Waikato) Inc. New Zealand: "For those who want to promote their own rights and the rights of others to mental wellness and choice. Some people who use this site have found psychiatric drugs and/or ECT less than helpful (understatement) and we would like to see real changes and choices in the way that people given the label of patient or consumer, and those who choose the label 'survivor' are treated by the Mental Health System"

Europe

  • Anton Blitzstein: Website des Wiener Art-Brut-Künstlers Anton Blitzstein mit Link zur Fotogalerie / Website of Anton Blitzstein, Art Brut artist in Vienna, with link to his photo gallery

  • Art-Transmitter ist ein Projekt der Europäischen Gesellschaft zur Förderung von Kunst und Kultur in der Psychiatrie e.V. Es hat sich zum Ziel gesetzt, durch die Anerkennung des künstlerischen Schaffens psychisch beeinträchtigter Menschen ihr Selbstbewusstsein zu stärken und der Stigmatisierung dieser Menschen in der Öffentlichkeit entgegenzuwirken

  • Critical Psychiatry Network: first met as 'The Bradford Group' of psychiatrists in January 1999. It provides a network to develop a critique of the contemporary psychiatric system

  • Edition Humanistische Psychologie: Humanistische Psychologie, Existentielle Psychotherapien, Organisationsentwicklung, Beratung, Supervision; »Gestalttherapie. Forum für Gestaltperspektiven«, »profile. Internationale Zeitschrift für Veränderung, Lernen, Dialog«, "Zeitschrift für Gestaltpädagogik"

  • European Network of (ex-) Users and Survivors of Psychiatry – demokratisch strukturierter Verband von Psychiatriebetroffenen-Organisationen, mit Mitgliedsverbänden in vielen europäischen Ländern. Beraterorganisation der WHO und der Europäischen Kommission. The Network is the only grassroots umbrella organisation on a European level that unifies (among others) national organisations of (ex-) users and survivors of psychiatry across the continent to provide a direct representation of people who are or have been on the receiving end of psychiatric services. Involvement of both user and survivor organisations from all over Europe is a unique added value of the Network. The European Network of (ex-) users and Survivors of Psychiatry is an initiative to give (ex-) users and survivors of psychiatric services a means to communicate, to exchange opinions, views and experiences in order to support each other in the personal, political and social struggle against expulsion, injustice and stigma in our respective countries. With links to organisations and groups in nearly all European states

  • Soteria Network – umbrella organisation for various projects including the dissemination of information, support for proactive community groups run by mental health users, and the creation of crisis houses which offer a non-medical alternative to acute hospital care/rehabilitation

Middle and Southern America

Northern America

  • Advocacy Unlimited, Inc. "is an advocacy education program for persons with mental health disabilities. This web site contains lots of information and resources for persons with mental health disabilities. The highlight is on a training program that educates individuals with psychiatric disabilities in areas of self, systems, and legislative advocacy skills."

  • Alaska Mental Health Consumer Web provides recovery stories and other recovery resources.

  • Alternatives – Magazine For Cultural Creativity Issue (Eugene, OR)

  • Alternative to Meds Center (San Francisco) is committed to helping people end their dependence on medication or drugs (including anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, anti-anxiety medications, opiates and other recreational drugs) and achieve mental health naturally through medication tapering, targeted nutritional therapy, brain chemistry testing, yoga, acupuncture, counselling, instruction in clinical nutrition and sauna detoxification within a residential setting

  • The Analyst: diagnostic online tool on tardive dyskinesia etc.

  • Antipsychiatry Coalition – deutsche Ausgabe: www.antipsychiatry.org/deutsch.htm

  • Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (CHRUSP) – works for full human rights and legal capacity for all, an end to forced drugging, electroshock and psychiatric incarceration, and support that respects individual integrity and free will.

  • CounterPsych (Canada): Offering explanation, encouragement and psycho spiritual support to the psychiatrized and all others bent or broken by systemic dysfunction. Helping to awaken the mental illness industry to some very old, yet still resisted, truths. Taking back the right to speak in the first person about my experience and to offer ideas and practical help to others trying to do the same.

  • Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education & Living – to carry forward Dr. Breggin's several decades of psychiatric reform and alert the public about the failure of psychiatry to offer genuine help as well as illuminating psychiatry's many dangers, and o develop and encourage better and empathic human approaches to the genuine emotional suffering that many experience and to provide information and inspiration for all of us to lead richer, more fulfilling and empathic lives.

  • Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault: information about CAPA's mandate, events, and other relevant information about anti-psychiatry in Canada and worldwide

  • A Drug Recall – Information on the side effects of recalled drugs and access to attorneys specializing in drug side effects litigation

  • Seth Farber, Ph.D., a psychologist, sociial activist and founder of the Network Against Coercive Psychiatry. His forthcoming book Lunching with Lunatics: Adventures of a Maverick Psychologist will be published in 2006

  • Global Vision Project: an international educational media campaign to promote the concept of sustainability as a global goal. Sustainability means using the Earth's resources to meet the needs of the present generation without violating the right of future generations to meet their own needs

  • Elvira Huang: 12 Ways to Stay Positive While Recovering on Crutches

  • Lars Martensson's web site on "Brain & mind, schizophrenia, and neuroleptic (anti-psychotic) drugs"

  • MadinAmerica: Blog owned by Robert Whitaker with several authors from USA and abroad contributing on topics from news around the world and psychiatry with articles from both survivors of psychiatry as well as health care providers who are leading the way in creating a change of psychiatry and offering information and insights on alternatives beyond psychiatry..

  • MindFreedom International: A non-profit federation of 100 groups mainly in USA united to WIN human rights in the "mental health system". Address: MindFreedom, 454 Willamette, Suite 216, PO Box 11284, Eugene, OR 97440-3484, USA. Toll free order number: 1-877-MAD-PRIDE. Phone: (541) 345-9106 / Fax: (541) 345-3737 / eMail: office[at]mindfreedom.org

  • NARPA: the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy, an independent organization, is a unique mix of people who've survived these institutions, of advocates, civil rights activists, mental health workers, and lawyers. NARPA exists to expose abuse, to shed light on coercive and dangerous practices, and to promote real alternatives to a mental health system that even professionals agree is a disgrace.

  • National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse: Consumer-run technical assistance center

  • PsychRights: The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights, a non-profit organization, has a mission to bring fairness and reason into the administration of legal aspects of the mental health system, particularly unwarranted court ordered psychiatric drugging.

  • Radical Psychology Network "seeks like-minded psychologists and others to help create a society better able to meet human needs and bring about social justice. We want to change society's unacceptable status quo and bring about a better world."

  • Ragged Edge magazine is successor to the award-winning periodical, The Disability Rag. On the website you'll find today's writing about society's "ragged edge" issues: medical rationing, genetic discrimination, assisted suicide, long-term care, attendant services in Northern America

  • Saveourspirits.org: A holistic, natural and different approach to getting in touch with your spirit and recovering from depression, addiction, ptsd and suicidal thoughts.

  • Successful Schizophrenia: "Our mission is to help psychiatry (for its own good) free itself from the delusions that keep it from being an effective medical speciality and to provide proof that thousands of people are right when they say they are NOT mentally ill"

  • Susan Lien Whigham: BEYOND SURVIVAL: THE SCHIZOPHRENIA MYTH. Questions and Answers about Schizophrenia. Dedicated to debunking the myth that schizophrenia is a disease

  • Western Massachusetts Training Consortium: a center for responsible innovation, creates conditions to enhance the lives and make possible the dreams of people living with disabilities and/or living with the impact of abuse. Address: 187 High St., Suite 202 Holyoke, MA 01040, Tel. (413) 536-2401 x3032, Fax (413) 536-4166, eMail ocohen[at]wmtcinfo.org

  • Windhorse Northampton: "Windhorse Associates is a non-profit treatment and education organization with a whole person approach to recovery from serious psychiatric disorders. Our services are individually tailored in close communication with each client and family. This community, known for its natural beauty and vibrant cultural, recreational and educational life, is located two hours from Boston and three hours from New York City."