Testimony on Essential Points for Promoting Peer-run-Respites

And Testimony on the Five Fundamental Rights and Fresh Air Right

September 23, 2009

Gail Shamon

Representing M-POWER, Inc.

We have no freedom to come and go, to leave when WE feel well enough. Being held behind locked doors means to me that we are being penalized for being having an illness. The insurance companies abolished the privilege system that allowed people to leave for short time periods and test the waters before they are discharged (except on pass). And they discharge us when they feel we’re ready to be discharged, not when we do.

Insurance companies have made it a trap when in order to ask for help, or to get help, either you say you are suicidal or you are turned away. Mass health does this. Only once you say the word "suicidal," there’s no chance to leave, even if you feel better enough to do so. This benefits no one and c certainly not the person looking for help.

My third point is that the hospital takes over and makes people totally dependent on it, rather than help them feel empowered to help themselves. They do everything and all you have to do is eat, sleep, take their meds and cause no trouble. In DBT terms, it’s called a" hospital habit," which is not to blame the victim here.

The arguments for peer-run respites are many. They are empowering rather than disempowering, allowing us to decide when we are ready to leave. This promotes trust in our own judgment. Peer-run respites treat people like people, and not like chronic mental invalids who will never get better, and can’t be trusted to know when they are ready to leave.

5. It is a human and civil rights violation to have hospitals and residences routinely ignore fundamental rights law. It is also outrageous that people with psychiatric diagnoses are not given access to fresh air, when even prisoners who have committed a crime are. We are not

We have committed no crime, unless having a psychiatric problem is considered a crime instead of an illness or extreme state. Stop treating us as dangerous criminals and please stop spreading fear of violence by people with psychiatric diagnoses when all the statistics say otherwise. Stop treating us like criminals, only worse