Brian Henley was discharged from Northeastern Florida State Hospital on December 01, 2010. MindFreedom Florida would like to extend its sincerest thanks to all the kind and brave people who contributed to, and participated in, our campaign to free Brian from psychiatric imprisonment and forced treatment.
Brian Henley
MindFreedom Florida has been instrumental in the campaign to free Brian Henley from Northeast Florida State Hospital. To find out more about this campaign, and what you can do to help Brian, follow the link below:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/shield/brian-henley-nefsh
A Supporter's Plea To Florida Governor Charlie Crist
Dear Governor Crist,
Firstly, thank you for all that you do for us as Governor of Florida, especially but not limited to the work you are doing to promote adoption and prevent child abuse. I am very glad to have you on the side of Florida's citizens. There is one citizen in particular that I am hoping you will help at this time.
As an experienced mental health professional and as someone who has also been a recipient of mental health care, I know very well that no singular treatment (especially psychiatric medication) works for every individual. Therefore I am writing to implore you to intervene in the forced psychiatric drugging of Brian Henley at Northeast Florida State Hospital on Unit 58 East. Please make sure that he is provided with humane alternatives to those psychiatric drugs which, according to Brian, are causing him very severe side effects, including but not limited to weight loss of approximately 70 pounds. Here are some facts about psychiatric drugs and recovery from mental illness that you may not know about, as reported by Robert Whitaker, journalist and author of Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill.
1. In the 1970s, the National Institute funded three trials that compared traditional drug-based care to experimental forms of care that involved selective, minimal use of antipsychotic drugs, and each time the experimental group had better long-term outcomes.
2. In a long-term study of patients discharged from Vermont State Hospital in the 1950s and 1960s, Courtenay Harding determined that thirty years later, one-third had completely recovered. And all those ex-patients had stopped taking antipsychotic drugs.
3. When the World Health Organization compared outcomes for schizophrenia patients in rich countries to those in poor countries, it determined that outcomes were much, much better in the poor countries. In the poor countries, the WHO reported, only 16% of patients were regularly maintained on antipsychotic drugs.
4. In 2007, researchers at the University of Illinois reported that 15-years after initial diagnosis, 40% of the schizophrenia patients who had weaned themselves from antipsychotic medications were "in recovery", versus five% of those who were on the drugs.
My personal experience with psychiatric drugs was as a distraction from the emotional work I had to do to recover from what was once a very severe mental illness (I have been completely recovered and without medication since 2003). As a professional in the field for six years now, I have watched many others find this same distraction, or worse, be severely harmed by the drugs as in Brian's case. Despite what the pharmaceutical companies want us to believe, it is far from proven that these drugs are even helpful, and I would go so far as to conclude from Whitaker's book and many other studies and books I've read that it's been proven that they are very often, if not usually, counter to recovery. Please allow Brian the opportunity to receive alternative treatment. He has been locked up in institutions for more than 2 1/2 years and would like to have a chance at getting better so he can see his son and his mother, who has Alzheimer's.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
MindFreedom Florida Member