Struggling on the Streets Without the Right to Rest
Lucy is 76 years old, and she is way past tired. Years of living on the streets have taken an irreparable toll on her. She slowly walks down a busy downtown street in San Francisco.
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Exposing the Untold History of Psychiatric Atrocities
Over its history, Street Spirit has published a series of in-depth reports on many different kinds of psychiatric abuses that have been carried out in the name of healing, yet often end up damaging and disabling people for life. In light of renewed calls for forced psychiatric detention under the guise of "helping the mentally ill," we are collecting and re-publishing these stories in a new section "Psychiatric Abuses and Human Rights".
Laura’s Law and the Danger of Forced Detention
How much sweeter “Laura’s Law” sounds than Forced Detention or Treatment! Yet it all sounds an awful lot like the usual government arguments used to justify surveillance, control, invasion of privacy. Who is to say this new law won’t be used to punish and isolate the indigent and the ill?
Glimpses of the Spirit – Defending People’s Park and the Spirit of Peace and Justice
The Telegraph Business Improvement District wants to drive homeless people and meal programs out of People’s Park. Compassion for the poor was a foundational ideal of the peace movement that created the Park. Tearing out that legacy of compassion for the poor would tear the heart out of People’s Park.
Heroes in Our Midst
Many nonprofit service providers are working to alleviate the ever-worsening symptoms of poverty by meeting the needs for shelter, food and services. But very few go the extra mile to stand up in defense of the human rights of the poor, or to take part in protests against structural injustice.
Psychiatric Treatments For Depression May Be Hazardous To Your Health
By Leonard Roy Frank on My entire college education has been completely wiped out. I guess the doctors would consider [that electroshock] had beneficial effects because it has “cured my depression,” but it’s cured my depression by ruining my life, by taking away everything that made it worth having in the first place.
Electroshock Must Be Banned as Crime Against Humanity
Electroshock is a barbaric, brain-disabling psychiatric procedure that should have been abolished many years ago. Yet its use is on the rise.
Wellness and Recovery or the Same Old Sickness?
It is clear that for all my compassionate concern about the social injustice that is homelessness, I need to put more focus on my own wellness and recovery — physically, emotionally and mentally. The shift in mental health services delivery is to look more closely at the holistic link between mental, emotional and physical health, with a growing concern about diet, exercise, and the need to address physical ills facing the poor such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma, often linked to issues of environmental racism.
Speaking Out For Those Who Have Been Silenced by the Psychiatric Profession
By Leah Harris on “You are exposed, you psychiatrists of the APA. We know that psychiatry has long ago lost whatever conscience it may have possessed. We know that you are snug in bed with the drug companies, that you couldn’t even exist as a professional association without drug company funding.” -- Leah Harris