A Letter To Ted Chabasinski

By Philip Kumin

Author’s Note: Ted Chabasinski is one of the few surviving founders of the mental patients’ movement in the 1970’s. The following is a letter I wrote to him.

Ted, let me answer the points you’ve made regarding my article on Linked In. By the way, you and I have communicated before. I once sent you an email telling you that I had seen you at the Alternatives ’85 conference here in Baltimore, but didn’t actually introduce myself to you. Do you remember that?

You’re one of the few surviving activists of the original mental patients’ movement in the ‘70’s. I’ve paid homage to you for that. It’s obvious from the things you’re always saying, that you feel that the Movement was coopted and ruined after 1985. It’s also obvious that you really enjoyed being a part of what had gone on previously. That makes perfect sense. It was FUN! All of the demonstrations and protest marches of the ‘70’s, with patients chanting slogans in unison and pumping their fists into the air! I’m sorry you weren’t present for the Alternatives ’90 conference, which was held in Pittsburgh that year. As part of the conference, a big protest march was held. I don’t remember the exact number of people who participated in it, but it was huge. I think just about everyone who had come to the conference participated in it, and numerous others too. We assembled up on a hill outside of the immediate downtown area, next to Duquesne University. We then marched into downtown Pittsburgh. Somebody, somewhere, had a megaphone and led the call-and-response chanting. At one point in the parade route, we passed through a short tunnel underneath some railroad tracks. Since we were momentarily in a chasm, the sound of our chants was magnified and reverberated back and forth between the walls! There was such a sense of solidarity, conviction, and authenticity! I had been to many other protest marches before I was ever involved in the mental patients’ movement. But this one was by far the greatest one I’d ever been a part of. We got VERY favorable press coverage from both the Pittsburgh newspapers as well as the Philadelphia Inquirer, unlike the usual lousy shit they’re always saying about us. I’m SO sorry you weren’t there! You would have had a very good time. You may know that soon after that conference SAMHSA, the federal government agency which was funding our conferences, cracked down on us, and told us we couldn’t any longer stage demonstrations at our conferences if we wanted to take any more money from them. So, one of the very nice things about our conferences not any longer being government-funded is that we’re free to have them again. It would probably be a good idea for me to discuss doing that with Dan Fisher.

But listen, Ted, let’s face it: there’s only so much that protest marches can accomplish. What’s going on today is the REST of what needs to be done. The fervor within the movement back in the ‘70’s hasn’t disappeared. It’s still there, and it always will be. What patients are doing now is IMPLEMENTING the ideals Judi Chamberlin laid out in her famous book. There is a tremendous push going on now, successfully, to compel mental health professionals to accept the validity of peer counseling and self-help. More and more jobs ARE being created now for peers in the mental health system. I know this is what you’ve always thought of as patients, “selling out,” to the Establishment. But listen, what better way is there to fight the stigmatization of us by professionals than to prove to them that we’re far better at helping people than they will ever be?!

There’s another development going on which I’m REALLY excited about.

Apparently it has become somewhat easier than it used to be for mental patients to go to school and get college educations, (wish I’d had that kind of luck.) As a result, there are more patients graduating and then going on to grad school. One of these people was a patient named Nev Jones, down in Florida. I don’t know what she’s got her doctorate in, but I know she’s a researcher. She’s spearheading an effort to encourage other patients who are considering grad school to become researchers too, and there’s a very important reason for this. I probably don’t have to tell you that Nev Jones is totally open and public about her status as a former mental patient.

It’s an established fact that the results of ANY scientific studies dealing with mental health issues which are conducted by researchers who are not themselves former patients, are skewed in favor of the Establishmentarian medical model point of view. Because those researchers have a lot of academic credentialing and respectability, what they announce is instantly believed and accepted by the public. So, the point of Nev Jones’ effort is to accrue a pool of researchers who ARE former patients, to counteract the opportunistic distortions of non-patient researchers. These patients will be able to prove the validity of their differing findings because they will be just as well educated and respectable as those other researchers. There are a lot of great things like this in the works, Ted.

Regarding your fears about the effect Trump could have on us, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. He may be mouthing silly stuff about putting all of us back in institutions, but he’s far too much of an imbecile to know how to actually do it. When he makes remarks like that, he’s simply parroting other similar fools. That’s where he got that idea from.