Leonard Roy Frank (born July 15, 1932) is an American human rights activist, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) survivor and writer from New York. Since 1959 he has lived in San Francisco, where he managed an art gallery before he began collecting great quotations.[1](It was Leonard Roy Frank who discovered notable artist G. Mark Mulleian in 1969 and displayed his work at the Frank gallery.)[2]
Leonard was a graduate of the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. He then served in the US Army and later, sold real estate. In 1962 in San Francisco, Leonard was committed to a psychiatric hospital for being 'paranoid schizophrenic' and given insulin shock treatments and dozens of ECT treatments.[3]
By 1972 Leonard was staff at Madness Network News, and in December 1973 he and Wade Hudson founded Network Against Psychiatric Assault, (NAPA), a patients' advocacy group.[4][5]
Of ECT, Mr. Frank has written:
"Over the last thirty-five years I have researched the various shock procedures, particularly electroshock or ECT, have spoken with hundreds of ECT survivors, and have corresponded with many others.
From all these sources and my own experience, I have concluded that ECT is a brutal, dehumanizing, memory-destroying, intelligence lowering, brain-damaging, brainwashing, life-threatening technique."
Due to his years of anti-ECT testimony and activism, Linda Andre wrote of Leonard in "Doctors of Deception", "If Marilyn Rice was the Queen of Shock, Leonard Roy Frank was the King." [6]
A published author, Leonard has compiled numerous books of great quotes and passages, as well as writing about his own experiences.
Contents |