Ted Chabasinski
Encyclopedia
Ted Chabasinski is an American psychiatric survivor, human rights activist and attorney who lives in Berkeley, California
. At the age of six he was taken from his foster family's home and committed to a New York psychiatric facility. Diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia
he underwent intensive electroshock therapy
(now termed electroconvulsive therapy or ECT) and remained an inmate in a state psychiatric hospital until the age of seventeen. He subsequently trained as a lawyer and became active in the psychiatric survivors movement
. In 1982 he led a successful campaign seeking to ban the use of electroshock in Berkeley, California.
In 1944, at six years of age, Chabasinski, then a shy and withdrawn child, was taken from his foster family and committed to the children's ward of the psychiatric division of the Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, New York. While in this ward, known as Unit PQ6, he was brought under the care of the celebrated child psychiatrist Lauretta Bender
, now deceased, who is the clinician commonly credited with founding the study of childhood schizophrenia in the United States. She formally diagnosed Chabasinski as suffering from schizophrenia
. He was one of the first children ever to receive ECT, which was then given in its unmodified form without either anaesthetic or muscle relaxant. Despite the strenuous protests of his foster parents against the treatment, he underwent ECT under a regressive and experimental protocol where the treatment was given at a more intensive frequency than was the norm for shock therapy. Chabasinski received ECT daily for a period of about three weeks, comprising approximately twenty sessions of the procedure.
Recalling the experience, Chabanski stated:
In 1947 Bender published on 98 children aged between four and eleven years old who had been treated in the previous five years with intensive courses of ECT. These children received ECT daily for a typical course of approximately twenty treatments. This formed part of an experimental trend amongst a cadre of psychiatrists to explore the therapeutic impact of intensive regimes of ECT, which is also known as either regressive ECT or annihilation therapy. In the 1950s Bender abandoned ECT as a therapeutic practice for the treatment of children. In the same decade the results of her published work on the use of ECT in children was discredited after a study showing that the condition of the children so treated had either not improved or deteriorated.
Commenting on his experience as part of Bender's therapeutic program Chabasinski said that, "It really made a mess of me ... I went from being a shy kid who read a lot to a terrified kid who cried all the time." Following his treatment, he spent ten years as an inmate of Rockland State Hospital, a psychiatric facility now known as the Rockland Psychiatric Center.
Chabasinski was discharged from the Rockland State Hospital at the age of seventeen. He evetually went to college where he qualified as a lawyer.
, he was a leader in the campaign. The campaign group, supported by human rights organisations such as the Berkeley based ex-patient group Network Against Psychiatric Assault, consisted of some 250 people approximately half of whom were former psychiatric patients with the majority of the remainder consisting of students from Berkeley and individual doctors who were opposed to ECT. The coalition's entire campaign fund was in the region of $1,000. The American Psychiatric Association
provided funds of $15,000 to campaign against the initiative. 2,500 people petioned in support of the initiative exceeding the 1,400 signatures required to put the motion on the ballot.
At the time Chabasinski argued that the enforcement of the law governing consent to ECT in psychiatric facilities in the state of California was so lax that a total ban on the procedure was required. He and his fellow campaigners also claimed that ECT was a dangerous and barbaric treatment that could cause either long or short term memory loss, brain damage and that the procedure could even result in death. They also charged that when resident in a psychiatric institution the very concept of informed consent is meaningless.
During the campaign dozens of ex-psychiatric patients gave testimony against electroshock at a Berkeley City Council hearing. Protests were also held outside the Herrick Hospital, then the only facility in Berkeley where ECT was provided. In 1981 that facility administered ECT to 45 individuals. In order to collect and exceed the requisite number of signatures required to place Initiative T. on the ballot paper, members of the coalition campaigned outside supermarkets and went from door to door soliciting support.
The ballot was held on Tuesday 2 November 1982 and the measure passed with 25,380 voters, or 61.7 percent, supporting the ballot calling for a ban on ECT while 15,756 residents, or 38.2 percent, voted against the measure. Giving his perspective on why the measure had passed so resoundingly, Chabasinski stated that: "I think it's a very sympathetic issue ... Basically, they're going ahead and causing brain damage just to subdue people." Speculating on the possibility of extending the ban across the state of California and alluding to the wider aims behind the campaign he also said: "To be honest, this is one way of having a referendum on mental patients' rights and the way they are treated".
In response to the passage of the initiative the American Psychiatric Association asserted that plebiscite was not an appropriate means to arrive at a medical judgement on a complex issue. A spokesman for the association stated: "The voters have passed a law we believe is unnecessary, probably unconstitutional and ... dangerous ... We hope it will be overturned before doing harm by denying a seriously ill person access in Berkeley to treatment that could be lifesaving," One of the two doctors who administered ECT at Herrick Hospital, Dr. Martin Rubinstein, contended that the vote to ban the procedure reflected "pathological consumerism" and constituted "another case of the inmates trying to run the asylum". He further epitomised the ballot result as stemming from "an uninformed electorate [deliberating] on esoteric matters."
In June 1983 Donald McCullom, an Alameda County Superior Court Judge, issued an injunction on the implementation of the ban on ECT. Initiative T. was overturned shortly thereafter following a successful legal challenge initiated by the American Psychiatric Association, on the constitutionality of the measure.
, the medical journalist and author of Mad in America
and Anatomy of an Epidemic
Robert Whitaker
, and the director of MindFreedom International
David Oaks in opposing a motion by Eli Lilly to extend an injunction to conceal documents that revealed that the company had known for the previous decade of the potentially lethal effects of Zyprexa and had engaged in an illegal off-label marketing campaign.
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
. At the age of six he was taken from his foster family's home and committed to a New York psychiatric facility. Diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia
Pediatric schizophrenia
Pediatric schizophrenia is a type of mental disorder that is characterized by degeneration of thinking, motor, and emotional processes in children and young adults under the age of 18...
he underwent intensive electroshock therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy , formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown...
(now termed electroconvulsive therapy or ECT) and remained an inmate in a state psychiatric hospital until the age of seventeen. He subsequently trained as a lawyer and became active in the psychiatric survivors movement
Psychiatric survivors movement
The psychiatric survivors movement is a diverse association of individuals who are either currently clients of mental health services , or who consider themselves survivors of interventions by psychiatry, or who identify themselves as ex-patients of mental health services...
. In 1982 he led a successful campaign seeking to ban the use of electroshock in Berkeley, California.
Early life
Chabinski was born in New York to a Polish-born immigrant woman. His father was of Russian descent. In the period just before and after Chabasinski's birth his birth-mother, who was poor, unmarried and had been given a diagnosis of schizophrenia, was committed to a psychiatric facility. He was subsequently placed in the care of a foster family in the Bronx, New York. While an intelligent child his social worker from the Foundling Hospital, a Miss Callaghan, thought him withdrawn and suspected that he was exhibiting the initial signs of an incipient schizophrenia. Chabasinski himself attributes this diagnosis to the then widepread opinion that mental illness was hereditary and thus, he contends, the social worker supervising his foster home placement was "looking for symptoms".In 1944, at six years of age, Chabasinski, then a shy and withdrawn child, was taken from his foster family and committed to the children's ward of the psychiatric division of the Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, New York. While in this ward, known as Unit PQ6, he was brought under the care of the celebrated child psychiatrist Lauretta Bender
Lauretta Bender
Lauretta Bender, M.D. was a child neuropsychiatrist, best known as the creator ofthe Bender-Gestalt Test.- Early life :Bender began to be interested in the development of language disorders and learning problems, and their causes, when she was in third grade, around the age of eight...
, now deceased, who is the clinician commonly credited with founding the study of childhood schizophrenia in the United States. She formally diagnosed Chabasinski as suffering from schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
. He was one of the first children ever to receive ECT, which was then given in its unmodified form without either anaesthetic or muscle relaxant. Despite the strenuous protests of his foster parents against the treatment, he underwent ECT under a regressive and experimental protocol where the treatment was given at a more intensive frequency than was the norm for shock therapy. Chabasinski received ECT daily for a period of about three weeks, comprising approximately twenty sessions of the procedure.
Recalling the experience, Chabanski stated:
"I was one of 300 children involved in an experimental program ... I remember being dragged down a hallway, thrown on a table and having a handkerchief stuffed in my mouth."
"It made me want to die ... I remember that they would stick a rag in my mouth so I wouldn't bite through my tongue and that it took three attendants to hold me down. I knew that in the mornings that I didn't get any breakfast that I was going to get shock treatment."
I wanted to die but I didn't really know what death was. I knew that it was something terrible. Maybe I'll be so tired after the next shock treatment I won't get up, I won't ever get up, and I'll be dead. But I always got up. Something in me beyond my wishes made me put myself together again. I memorized my name, I taught myself to say my name. Teddy, Teddy, I'm Teddy ... I'm here, I'm here, in this room, in this hospital. And my mommy's gone ... I would cry and realize how dizzy I was. The world was spinning around me and coming back to it hurt too much. I want to go down, I want to go where the shock treatment is sending me. I want to stop fighting and die...and something made me live, and go on living. I had to remember never to let anyone near me again.
In 1947 Bender published on 98 children aged between four and eleven years old who had been treated in the previous five years with intensive courses of ECT. These children received ECT daily for a typical course of approximately twenty treatments. This formed part of an experimental trend amongst a cadre of psychiatrists to explore the therapeutic impact of intensive regimes of ECT, which is also known as either regressive ECT or annihilation therapy. In the 1950s Bender abandoned ECT as a therapeutic practice for the treatment of children. In the same decade the results of her published work on the use of ECT in children was discredited after a study showing that the condition of the children so treated had either not improved or deteriorated.
Commenting on his experience as part of Bender's therapeutic program Chabasinski said that, "It really made a mess of me ... I went from being a shy kid who read a lot to a terrified kid who cried all the time." Following his treatment, he spent ten years as an inmate of Rockland State Hospital, a psychiatric facility now known as the Rockland Psychiatric Center.
Chabasinski was discharged from the Rockland State Hospital at the age of seventeen. He evetually went to college where he qualified as a lawyer.
Activism
Chabasinski has been active in the psychiatric survivors movement since 1971.The Berkeley ban
Chabasinski was Chairman of the Coalition to Stop Electroshock which in 1982 qualified an initiative measure, titled Initiative T., for municipal ballot to make the application of electroconvulsive therapy a misdemeanour in Berkeley, California, punishable with a $500 dollar fine or up to six months imprisonment. Chabasinski was the author of the ballot question and, along with fellow psychiatric survivor Leonard Roy FrankLeonard Roy Frank
Leonard Roy Frank is an American human rights activist, electroconvulsive therapy 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.Leonard Roy Frank (born July 15, 1932) is an American human...
, he was a leader in the campaign. The campaign group, supported by human rights organisations such as the Berkeley based ex-patient group Network Against Psychiatric Assault, consisted of some 250 people approximately half of whom were former psychiatric patients with the majority of the remainder consisting of students from Berkeley and individual doctors who were opposed to ECT. The coalition's entire campaign fund was in the region of $1,000. The American Psychiatric Association
American Psychiatric Association
The American Psychiatric Association is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the most influential worldwide. Its some 38,000 members are mainly American but some are international...
provided funds of $15,000 to campaign against the initiative. 2,500 people petioned in support of the initiative exceeding the 1,400 signatures required to put the motion on the ballot.
At the time Chabasinski argued that the enforcement of the law governing consent to ECT in psychiatric facilities in the state of California was so lax that a total ban on the procedure was required. He and his fellow campaigners also claimed that ECT was a dangerous and barbaric treatment that could cause either long or short term memory loss, brain damage and that the procedure could even result in death. They also charged that when resident in a psychiatric institution the very concept of informed consent is meaningless.
During the campaign dozens of ex-psychiatric patients gave testimony against electroshock at a Berkeley City Council hearing. Protests were also held outside the Herrick Hospital, then the only facility in Berkeley where ECT was provided. In 1981 that facility administered ECT to 45 individuals. In order to collect and exceed the requisite number of signatures required to place Initiative T. on the ballot paper, members of the coalition campaigned outside supermarkets and went from door to door soliciting support.
The ballot was held on Tuesday 2 November 1982 and the measure passed with 25,380 voters, or 61.7 percent, supporting the ballot calling for a ban on ECT while 15,756 residents, or 38.2 percent, voted against the measure. Giving his perspective on why the measure had passed so resoundingly, Chabasinski stated that: "I think it's a very sympathetic issue ... Basically, they're going ahead and causing brain damage just to subdue people." Speculating on the possibility of extending the ban across the state of California and alluding to the wider aims behind the campaign he also said: "To be honest, this is one way of having a referendum on mental patients' rights and the way they are treated".
In response to the passage of the initiative the American Psychiatric Association asserted that plebiscite was not an appropriate means to arrive at a medical judgement on a complex issue. A spokesman for the association stated: "The voters have passed a law we believe is unnecessary, probably unconstitutional and ... dangerous ... We hope it will be overturned before doing harm by denying a seriously ill person access in Berkeley to treatment that could be lifesaving," One of the two doctors who administered ECT at Herrick Hospital, Dr. Martin Rubinstein, contended that the vote to ban the procedure reflected "pathological consumerism" and constituted "another case of the inmates trying to run the asylum". He further epitomised the ballot result as stemming from "an uninformed electorate [deliberating] on esoteric matters."
In June 1983 Donald McCullom, an Alameda County Superior Court Judge, issued an injunction on the implementation of the ban on ECT. Initiative T. was overturned shortly thereafter following a successful legal challenge initiated by the American Psychiatric Association, on the constitutionality of the measure.
Other roles
Chabasinski is the former directing attorney for Mental Health Consumer Concerns, (MHCC), and a former president of the board of Support Coalition International (SCI) board president. He was also a board of the successor organisation to the SCI, MindFreedom International, for whom he also served as an attorney.Eli Lilly and Zyprexa
In January 2007 Chabasinski acted as the attorney for the late psychiatric survivor activist and author Judi ChamberlinJudi Chamberlin
Judi Chamberlin was an American activist, leader, organizer, public speaker and educator in the psychiatric survivors movement. Her political activism followed her involuntary confinement in a psychiatric facility in the 1960s...
, the medical journalist and author of Mad in America
Mad in America
Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill is a controversial book by Robert Whitaker published in 2002 which is highly critical of the psychiatric profession. Problems with many historical aspects of treatment, as well as antipsychotics, are covered...
and Anatomy of an Epidemic
Anatomy of an Epidemic
Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America is book by Robert Whitaker published in 2010 by Crown. Whitaker asks why the number of Americans who receive government disability for mental illness approximately doubled since 1987...
Robert Whitaker
Robert Whitaker
Robert Whitaker or Whittaker may refer to:*Robert Whitaker , American author*Robert Whitaker , British photographer*Robert Whitaker , British showjumper*Robert Whittaker, American vegetation ecologist...
, and the director of MindFreedom International
MindFreedom International
MindFreedom International is an international coalition of over one hundred grassroots groups and thousands of individual members from fourteen nations. It was founded in 1990 to advocate against forced medication, medical restraints, and involuntary electroconvulsive therapy. Its stated mission is...
David Oaks in opposing a motion by Eli Lilly to extend an injunction to conceal documents that revealed that the company had known for the previous decade of the potentially lethal effects of Zyprexa and had engaged in an illegal off-label marketing campaign.
See also
- Linda AndreLinda AndreLinda Andre is an American psychiatric survivor activist and writer, living in New York City, who is the director of the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry , an organization founded by Marilyn Rice in 1984 to encourage the U.S...
- Clifford Whittingham BeersClifford Whittingham BeersClifford Whittingham Beers was the founder of the American mental hygiene movement.Beers was born in New Haven, Connecticut to Ida and Robert Beers on March 30, 1876. He was one of five children, all of whom would suffer from psychological distress and would die in mental institutions, including...
- Lauretta BenderLauretta BenderLauretta Bender, M.D. was a child neuropsychiatrist, best known as the creator ofthe Bender-Gestalt Test.- Early life :Bender began to be interested in the development of language disorders and learning problems, and their causes, when she was in third grade, around the age of eight...
- Judi ChamberlinJudi ChamberlinJudi Chamberlin was an American activist, leader, organizer, public speaker and educator in the psychiatric survivors movement. Her political activism followed her involuntary confinement in a psychiatric facility in the 1960s...
- Lyn DuffLyn DuffLyn Duff is an American journalist with the Pacific News Service and KPFA radio's "Flashpoints", an evening drive-time public affairs show heard daily on Pacifica Radio.- Early years :...
- Leonard Roy FrankLeonard Roy FrankLeonard Roy Frank is an American human rights activist, electroconvulsive therapy 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.Leonard Roy Frank (born July 15, 1932) is an American human...
- Kate MillettKate MillettKate Millett is an American lesbian feminist writer and activist. A seminal influence on second-wave feminism, Millet is best known for her 1970 book Sexual Politics.-Career:...
- Eli Lilly controversiesEli Lilly controversiesEli Lilly and Company is a global pharmaceutical company and one of the world's largest corporations. Eli Lilly's global headquarters is located in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the United States...
- Elizabeth PackardElizabeth PackardElizabeth Parsons Ware Packard was an advocate for the rights of women and people accused of insanity.-Life:...
- Psychiatric consumers movement
- Electroconvulsive therapyElectroconvulsive therapyElectroconvulsive therapy , formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown...
- Icarus ProjectIcarus Project.The Icarus Project http://theicarusproject.net is a mental health movement characterized by the view that many phenomena commonly labeled as mental illness should actually be regarded as "dangerous gifts"...
- Involuntary commitmentInvoluntary commitmentInvoluntary commitment or civil commitment is a legal process through which an individual with symptoms of severe mental illness is court-ordered into treatment in a hospital or in the community ....
- Involuntary treatmentInvoluntary treatmentInvoluntary treatment refers to medical treatment undertaken without a person's consent. In almost all circumstances, involuntary treatment refers to psychiatric treatment administered despite an individual's objections...
- List of psychiatric consumer/survivor/ex-patient related topics
- Mad PrideMad PrideMad Pride is a mass movement of mental health services users and their allies. The first known event specifically organized as a Pride event by people who identify as psychiatric survivors/consumer/ex-patients was in Toronto, Canada when it was called "Psychiatric Survivor Pride Day", held on...
- MindFreedom InternationalMindFreedom InternationalMindFreedom International is an international coalition of over one hundred grassroots groups and thousands of individual members from fourteen nations. It was founded in 1990 to advocate against forced medication, medical restraints, and involuntary electroconvulsive therapy. Its stated mission is...
- National Empowerment CenterNational Empowerment CenterThe National Empowerment Center is an advocacy and peer-support organization in the United States that promotes an empowerment-based recovery model of mental disorder. It is run by consumers/survivors/ex-patients in recovery....
- Psychiatric survivors movementPsychiatric survivors movementThe psychiatric survivors movement is a diverse association of individuals who are either currently clients of mental health services , or who consider themselves survivors of interventions by psychiatry, or who identify themselves as ex-patients of mental health services...
- World Network of Users and Survivors of PsychiatryWorld Network of Users and Survivors of PsychiatryThe World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry is an international organisation representing, and led by "survivors of psychiatry". As of 2003, over 70 national organizations were members of WNUSP, based in 30 countries...