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CAPA: Joyfully and Blissfully Abnormal
Parkdale-High Park MPP Cheri DiNovo is proud that she isn't normal. To her when normal is "giving seven hundred billion dollars to companies but can't given $50,000 to buy a family's mortgage", she wants no part of it. DiNovo, early in her career, worked at Queen Street Mental Health Centre. Her memories are of nurses handing out medication, day patients playing cards and listening to The Who's Tommy. That was what passed for care. DiNovo spoke at the opening of Psychiatric Survivor Pride at Toronto's OISE on the last weekend in September. Five years ago a group formed called, The Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault (CAPA). They are "committed to dismantling the psychiatric system and building a better world." CAPA is opposed to certain methods used with the mentally challenged such as incarceration, electroshock, and the vast array of brain-damaging drugs. CAPA is upfront about their view, "the world which we strive to co-create is one where people are not pathologized, where care is neither commodified nor professionalized, where choice and integrity are respected, and where we are all joined in caring and creative community to each other and to the planet earth." On September 27th and 28th, CAPA held "Psychiatric Survivor Pride". DiNovo was invited to provide opening remarks to the group, their supporters, and any who wished to attend the open events.
Dr. Bonnie Burstow, opened the events, she said, "everyone has a vested interest in doing something about psychiatry." Asking, "what kind of world do you want? What kind of world do you want to leave on?"
The events included an art show and the premiere screening of a documentary, The Electroshock Report by Jeff Myers and Bonnie Burstow. The documentary used testimony from public hearings which took place at Toronto City Hall. It was eye opening in its demonstrations of the excesses and misuses of Electric Shock Therapy. Some culture use shocks as tortures; here, it was misused as a "cure"; an unsuccessful cure as the documentary observed pointing out some of the side affects people received and the lack of obtaining appropriate consent or even being made aware of potential problems with the treatment.
CAPA's Psychiatric Survivor Pride Weekend discussed issues that need a voice in our society. These things should not be hidden away. They shouldn't happen at all; the most we can hope for now is never again in Canada or the world. DiNovo noted Queen's Park, is filled with white men. That's normal. "Normal is destroying the planet. Normal is wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan for the desires and needs of company's that will be getting a 700 billion dollar bail-out. There are those of us who get to be joyfully abnormal. It's the moment of saying No!" |
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