Founded by Oryx Cohen and Will Hall, the Freedom Center is a Northampton, Massachusetts-based support, activism, and human rights community run by and for people diagnosed with severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
It is part of the international psychiatric survivors movement and was founded to provide mutual aid and support to people facing emotional distress who have not been helped by mainstream hospital and professional care. The Freedom Center works to defy stereotypes of helplessness, break the silence around psychiatric abuse, expose the corruption of pharmaceutical companies and work for change in mental health care.[1] Freedom Center exposes psychiatric abuse experiences locally and challenges the 'disease and disorder' medical model of mental illness. It favors a recovery model approach and creating dialog that encourages personal exploration of the uniqueness of individual experiences of "madness" instead of diagnostic categories. Freedom Center does not present one interpretation of what gets labeled as "psychosis" or mental illness, and its members reflect a diversity of explanations, such as trauma and abuse, holistic health, spirituality, cultural difference, and social oppression.
By presenting the work of journalists, scholars, and scientists such as Elliott Valenstein, Robert Whitaker, and Paula Caplan at public forums, Freedom Center works to educate about the lack of scientific consensus behind biological, "chemical imbalance" and genetic theories of what gets labeled as mental illness. Its educational work emphasizes the social and political nature of diagnosis, how medical interpretations are driven by profit and professional power, and how the biomedical view has limited the range of possibilities for recovery and often worsened treatment outcomes. Freedom Center has been vocal about the failure of medication based treatments for many people, and the recurring trauma that many people experience from their hospitalizations. While working to create alternatives to mainstream treatments and alert people to the dangers of medications and hospitalization, Freedom Center welcomes participation by anyone with mental health experience, including those taking or not taking medication or those who use hospitalization and therapy. Despite hosting prominent psychiatrists and welcoming people taking medications, opponents have sought to discredit the organization as "anti-psychiatry" and "anti-medication."
Viewing current options for treatment as too narrow and "one size fists all," the Freedom Center has been the first in the Pioneer Valley to promote a range of holistic therapies for people who have experienced what gets labeled as "psychosis," including acupuncture, yoga, support groups, hearing voices groups, writing groups, helping people reduce and come off medications and working for system-wide change, such as non-hospital programs like Soteria House and trauma-informed care. The group's support and activism work has helped pave the way to establishing peer recovery-based alternatives in Massachusetts, including the Recovery Learning Community.
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Freedom Center seeks to provide people space to find their own pathway to recovery and let them explore, with support, a variety of wellness resources, which may or may not include psychiatric medications.
The charity has co-published a Harm Reduction Guide To Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs to help those who want to do so. The Guide has been published in several languages and widely distributed, and includes an Editorial Advisory Board of 14 healthcare professionals.
The center undertakes educational work and public events, and hosts a radio show that is also broadcast globally over the internet. Projects include a weekly support group, writing group, free community acupuncture clinic, and yoga class, as well as responding to information and resource requests from around the local area and beyond. In 2008 it was featured by Forbes business magazine.[2]
The Freedom Center's stated goals include to: