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To med or not to med
BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI
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September 2 marks day 18 of the Fast for Freedom in Mental Health, an ongoing hunger strike to protest the widespread use of prescription drugs to treat mental illness. On August 16, six members of the advocacy group known as MindFreedom Support Coalition International, which is based in Eugene, Oregon, kicked off the fast with a celebratory brew of juices made from garlic, beets, kale, and carrots. Since then, nearly two dozen strikers from across the country have downed nothing but the dark-red concoction in a spirit of solidarity. One of them is Ria Fey, a 36-year-old Cambridge resident who began fasting in earnest on August 19. When Fey heard about the goals of the strike — strikers, for instance, want the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to provide concrete evidence that mental illnesses are the result of brain-chemistry imbalances — she didn’t hesitate to participate. "I believe the psychiatric system dehumanizes people," Fey explains. The psychiatric-drug industry, she says, reduces those who suffer from mental illnesses to labels while mystifying everyday emotions like sadness, fear, and anger. As she puts it, "Psychiatry represents to me hierarchy in its purest form, control of actions, attempted regulation of thought and feeling." Fey speaks from experience. At age 10, after repeatedly acting out at school and even biting the hand of a classmate, her parents sent her off to a mental institution, where she was forced to take Ritalin. "I still resent that," Fey says. By the time she turned 18, she found herself in an adult mental institution: McLean Hospital, in Belmont. There, she was confined to an inpatient unit for five months, strapped in a bed by four-point restraints, and required to take medication for what she describes as "a list of medical labels." Three years later, she relived the psych-ward scene after being admitted to McLean again — this time, for a two-month stint. The experience of being a psychiatric patient has left Fey, in her words, "completely wounded." To this day, more than a decade after her last admission to McLean, Fey shuns traditional notions of psychiatry. When asked about her past diagnoses, for example, she replies, "I could give you some labels, but they would only play into the system." She does not see a therapist, nor does she take prescription drugs. Instead, she’s dealt with her mental-health issues by relying on alternative treatments, such as daily exercise and changes in diet and nutrition. That said, there’s no question that MindFreedom Support Coalition International is on the fringe of psychiatric-reform advocacy. Toby Fisher of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), in Massachusetts, declines to comment specifically on the group. "I don’t know much about them," he says. But he notes that most mental-health advocates see psychiatric medications as an important tool in treatment — especially among the chronically ill. People who suffer from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder have been able to hold down jobs, live normal lives, and stay out of mental institutions because of their drug regimes. Medications, he says, "certainly are not a magic bullet. But for many people, they’ve proven to be enormously beneficial." At the same time, Fisher says, more and more advocacy groups, including NAMI, recognize that alternative treatments like daily exercise and good nutrition are essential to treating mental illness properly. The bottom line, he says, is that treatment "is an individual choice. People with mental-health concerns should make use of all available options." Now that Fey has begun her fast for mental-health freedom, ingesting nothing but juice, water, and vitamins, she’s content to keep going until the APA meets the strikers’ original demands — or, at least, until the organization talks publicly about the permanent changes psychiatric drugs can cause. Fey likens the current strikers to gay and lesbian activists in the early 1970s, who pushed the APA to change its classification of homosexuality from a mental disorder to a sexual orientation. It’s a comparison that many gay men and lesbians might reject, given that the classification of homosexuality as a mental illness was rooted in social prejudice. Nevertheless, Fey and her fellow strikers are adamant in their belief, as Fey puts it, that "coercive psychiatry causes more hurt than good. The more distance I put between myself and therapists, the more happy and together a life I have." For daily updates on the Fast for Freedom in Mental Health strikers, check out the MindFreedom Web site at www.MindFreedom.org
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