History of the Advocacy Movement
Massachusetts Consumer / Survivor History Timeline
1692: Salem Witch Trials sets tone for harsh treatment of marginalized citizens.
1827: The Massachusetts legislature suggests building asylums for "lunatics and persons furiously mad" then being held in jails.
1832: The first state mental hospital Massachusetts Worcester Lunatic Asylum is built.
1843: Dorothea Dix, a leader in the "Moral Treatment" Movement, convinces the legislature to expand Worcester Lunatic Asylum. She is also responsible for building several other state mental hospitals that later become public disgraces.
1907 Clifford W. Beers writes A Mind That Found Itself: An Autobiography about his mistreatment in sanitariums. Beers founds a reform movement that later becomes the National Mental Health Association.
1927: Buck v Bell a Supreme Court case legalizes forced sterilization of "the mentally ill" by the government.
1938: Department of Mental Health created.
1948: WANA (We Are Not Alone) starts as a list for mutual support of former-patients of Rockland State Hospital in New York. WANA leads Fountain House clubhouse, the first clubhouse of the International Clubhouse Coalition.
1954. First anti-psychotic tranquilizer Thorazine is introduced.
1956: Overcrowding at state hospitals reaches height nationally. Inmate population at Northampton State Hospital reaches 2,400.
1962: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" a book by Ken Kesey exposes conditions in state mental hospitals. The book is one of several exposes of this period, including "The Shame of the States," "Snake Pit" and an article with photographs in Life magazine.
1963: President John F. Kennedy's Community Mental Health Act re-focuses mental health treatment away from state hospitals and into community mental health centers.
1965: MassHealth created as a result of Medicaid legislation initiated by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
1971: Mental Patients' Liberation Front (MPLF) is founded in Boston.
1973: Homosexuality is declassified as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
1973: Psychosurgery experiments to reduce crime and political motivated riots by African-American men are conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston State Hospital.
1975: Seven patients at Boston State Hospital sue the state of Massachusetts. The class-action suit is sponsored by the Mental Patients' Liberation Front. Ruby Rogers is the lead plaintiff. The Rogers Decision of the First Circuit Court establishes the Right-to-Refuse Treatment.
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1976: Fourth Annual Conference for Human Rights and Against Psychiatric Oppression unites 50 radical consumer groups at Tufts University in Medford, MA. These conferences take place every year from 1973-1985.
1976: The label "consumer" appears for the first time in the APA journal Psychiatric Services.
1978: Brewster v Dukakis, a class-action lawsuit results in Northampton State Hospital in western Massachusetts being shut down. Northampton was once a "Moral Treatment" hospital.
1978: Judi Chamberlin publishes On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System. The book is critical of traditional, establishment psychiatry and recommends peer support an alternative.
1985: Ruby Roger's Advocacy & Drop in Center is founded by the Mental Patients' Liberation Front as a peer-run alternative to traditional psychiatry.
1985: Alternatives '85 is held in Baltimore. Alternatives conferences bring together consumers from across the country to explore alternatives to the traditional "medical model" of psychiatry.
1986: Manic Depressives & Depressives Association (MDDA) meetings begin at McLean Hospital, one of many such weekly meetings now held across Massachusetts.
1987: M-POWER is founded as the statewide voice of consumer activism in Massachusetts. Chapters are located in Boston, Worcester and Lowell.
1991: Restraints and seclusion forum of M-POWER is held in Lowell. An open microphone allows psychiatric survivors to talk about their experiences.
1992: Jonathan O. Cole Mental Health Resource Center opens at McLean Hospital.
1992: L.O.V.E. group is founded in Lawrence.
1994: "Taking Back Our Lives" conference brings together 25 consumer groups in Massachusetts. Consumers focus on three issues of passage of the Patient's Bill of Rights by the state legislature, getting 2% of the DMH budget for consumer-run organizations and funding alternative treatments..
1996: Informed consent (IC) campaigns of M-POWER and of L.O.V.E. show consumer strength. Consumers want to be informed of risks, side effects and alternatives to treatment (medications).
1997: "Deaths Rally," over 200 consumers gather near statehouse in Boston and marched carrying coffins to offices of Division of Medical Assistance. The protest focused attention of a DMH study showing consumers of mental health services die an average of 15 years younger than the general public.
1997: Boston Globe Spotlight team of journalists write a front page article exposing abuses in the civil commitment laws, Section 12 or "pink papers." The public is outraged. The number of days a person can be held in a mental hospital without trail is reduced from 24 days to 4 days.
1997: The Patients' Bill of Rights is signed into law by Gov. Paul Cellucci. The law is later called the "Five Fundamental Rights" Act and guarantees psychiatric inmates: access to a telephone, uncensored mail, privacy, visitors or refusing visitors, and access to a lawyer.
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1998: "Deadly Restraint" a front-page series in the Hartford Courant in Connecticut runs exposes the 150 consumer deaths nationally from restraint and seclusion incidents. Many of the victims are children.
1999: M-POWER uses federal government and private foundation money to open the Mass Leadership Academy (MLA). The program trains consumer/survivors to participate in policy boards, committees and other forms of governance of affecting people who use psychiatric services.
1999: Olmstead Decision by Supreme Court establishes the right to live in the "least restrictive environment" that is appropriate. Institutions are forced to let many consumers out.
2000: M-POWER opens Peer Educators Project to train consumers to advocate for others in the mental health system and to monitor psychiatric facilities for rights violations.
Valentine's Day 2001: "Have a Heart" rally at Tewksbury State Hospital unite patients' rights groups in a protest of outrageous conditions at the hospital. Margery Sherman of the Eagle-Tribune in Lawrence devotes the next 2 ½ years to researching four front-page articles shaming the hospital for abuses of restraint and seclusion.
2001: "Cut No More" rally at the statehouse brings consumer groups together with providers of human services to protest budget cuts. Many programs are saved.
2001: Freedom Center is founded in Northampton by Will Hall and Oryx Cohen. Freedom Center fights against the concept of labeling emotional distress as "mental illness" and against the use of drugs as treatment.
2004: The Coalition for Fresh Air Rights (CFAR) gains momentum in the statehouse. CFAR's goal is to guarantee the right to access to fresh air and the outdoors by adding a sixth right to the "Five Fundamental Rights" Act.
2005: Creation of the Transformation Center as a statewide peer-operated center funded by state agencies. Planning begins for certification and funding of peer-specialists.