Category Archives: Lecture Series

Corporate Power & Mental Health Systems, May 15, 2013

Corporate Power & Mental Health Systems:
How we can take our power back

MOMS RallyCindi Fisher has advocated for many years for her son and other adult children in the mental health system. She has accompanied them into treatment team meetings and hearings, and recorded many stories of human and constitutional rights abuses across the nation.

Cindi has been seeking answers beyond putting out fires. She became inspired by the potential that the Community Rights Movement has for creating safe, sustainable, empowered communities and its application for restoring the rights of our loved ones.

Cindi’s extensive research into the history of mental health treatment unearths violations of human rights, often formalized into law, for profit. Cindi will connect the dots to how this happens today, and Paul Cienfuegos will address us by video about the Community Rights movement.

We will conclude with how we can challenge corporate power and assert People’s Rights through a legally binding local ordinance. This is an old form of civil disobedience that has been used in the last 15 years by more than 150 communities in the United States. We will discuss how we can apply it to make local community members safe from the abuse of mental health labels, prolonged involuntary commitment and forced treatment, and ensure their rights and freedoms.

This ground-breaking presentation will leave you empowered!

Date: Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Time: 7:00 – 9:00 PM
Location: First Unitarian Church, 1011 SW 12th Ave., Portland, OR

Rethinking Psychiatry Film Festival Opens with Mind Zone

Opening night  Thursday, Feb 21, 2013

Mind Zone: Therapists Behind the Front LinesWe are proud and excited to kick off this year’s Rethinking Psychiatry’s film festival with the first public showing of the newly completed documentary, Mind Zone: Therapists Behind the Front Lines.

Mind Zone explores the controversies and challenges of keeping people in unhealthy places, of therapists as both healers and warriors. While public consciousness grows of the post-traumatic stress disorder and the alarming suicide rates among soldiers and veterans, the struggle of those attempting to diagnose and treat them has never been told. Mind Zone is their story.  

While making Mind Zone, director Dr. Jan Haaken, Portland State professor, clinical psychologist and documentary filmmaker was embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan. For the first time in historythe U.S. Army granted access to a team of filmmakers to document the challenges of maintaining mental and emotional healing on the front lines.

Dr. Haaken will introduce the film and answer questions afterwards.

Co-sponsored by

November Meeting – Nov 14, 2012

Rethinking Psychiatry lecture seriesOur October guest speaker will be Dr. Neil Falk of Multnomah County’s Early Assessment and Support Alliance (EASA).  EASA is an outreach and treatment program for young people from age 15 to 25 experiencing the first symptoms of psychosis. The goal of the program is to prevent more significant problems by using early intervention.

7:00 pm at Portland’s Unitarian Church

More information…