Twenty, thirty, forty years ago, we were a human rights movement. We believed in social justice. We were about liberation. We demanded, individually and collectively, our right to self-determination. Every year, we had a conference – an international conference. Every year, we met in a new State and once in Canada. People came from all over North America and sometimes from around the world. It was
our conference, ours alone. Our people, our movement – service users, survivors, ex-patients. We came together as human beings - to reclaim our lives and try to correct the wrongs of an oppressive, over-reaching social and psychiatric paradigm. We organized, funded and controlled the whole thing. The entire conference was run by us and for us, instead of power brokers, political interests and heads of organizations. It was about us - our voices, our vision, what we experienced, felt, lived and wanted to change – not about services, procedures and agendas that others want us to buy into. Our conversation at this conference was very different. We didn’t talk about how to improve our mental health, how to become better mental patients, how to cope better, accept our diagnoses, take our meds, not forget doses, relax or calm ourselves, be more compliant, less resistant, fit in better, stop worrying or acting out -- in effect, to become more cooperative cogs in a morally bankrupt social wheel…. We talked about injustice, oppression and the institutions that sustain it. We talked about our needs, our wants, our dreams. We talked about activism, organizing, how we were going to become the changes we wanted to see in the world. We talked about how we were going to do our part – and hold others accountable – to creating a morally just, socially conscious society that treated everyone better all around. These were the days before SAMHSA had bought us out. (Yep, they did – that’s how Alternatives started in Baltimore in 1985). These were the days before we went in for the trinkets and funding. Before we traded in our collective commitment to dignity, respect and full personhood for all of us for the promise of government funding, paid roles and a seat at the table for a select few of us. At one of these conferences – the Tenth Annual Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression in Toronto (May 14-18, 1982), we adopted a set of core principles. There were 30 Principles, which together became known as the Declaration of Principles. You can read them on this page. The Declaration of Principles was intended both as a snapshot and a guide. They described our values as a Movement and carried our vision as a People. Forgotten by most, remembered longingly by a few, these Principles determine our destiny. They remain as valid, pressing and urgent today as they were over 30 years ago. They are an inherent and necessary foundation for any free people – and for any society that holds the aspiration of becoming truly free.
