Social security is not enough to live on
By Jack Bragen on When a person is born disabled or becomes disabled as an adult, they are in for a life of hardship
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Sidestepping Democracy: A Berkeley Tradition Lives On
By Carol Denney on The anti-panhandling law, the anti-sitting law, the two-square-feet-of-possessions-only law, and the proposal to equip the smoke-free downtown with ashtrays have one thing in common: the Downtown Berkeley Association. This unelected group was given a free hand in crafting contradictory and unconstitutional legislation.
Greyhound Therapy: Symptom of a Failed Mental Health System
Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas handed out bus tickets to about 1500 gravely disabled patients, “transferring” them to states all over the country. Patients were sent to states where they had never been a resident and areas that had no mental institution prepared to receive them.
Penciled Out of Existence by Some Grand Authority
Our society doesn't want to be inconvenienced by someone who is suffering or is impoverished. As a disabled person, it feels as if I have been penciled out of existence by some grand authority, one which expects me to disappear into nothingness, or end up jailed, homeless or just dead.
Laura’s Law Turns a Psychiatric Diagnosis into a Crime
Laura’s Law criminalizes mental illness and is spreading like cancer across California, county by county. Those labeled “noncompliant” can be subjected to forced medication and court-ordered involuntary treatment. In essence, they become captives of the criminal justice system even though they have committed no offense.
Unethical Medical Experiments on U.S. Citizens
The United States has an epidemic of ill health due to excessive drugging. The American people are considered a giant pool of experimental subjects for massively wealthy drug companies. Many persons diagnosed with mental illness are experimented upon, often without their consent and against their own best interests.
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.
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.