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Submitted by admin on Wed, 02/21/2007 - 03:34.

Read our open discussion list (FC-Discuss) here for all kinds of forwarded emails, news items, announcements, and discussions:

http://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/fc-discuss

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https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/fc-announce

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Welcome

Submitted by admin on Wed, 02/21/2007 - 04:21.

Freedom Center is a support and activism community run by and for people labeled with severe 'mental disorders.' We call for compassion, human rights, self-determination, and holistic options. We create alternatives to the mental health system's widespread despair, abuse, fraudulent science and dangerous treatments. We are based in pro-choic harm reduction philosophy regarding medical treatments, and include people taking or not talking medications.

"Freedom Center is a valuable option for many of our residents. It is a welcome addition to services available to citizens of our city."

Mary Clare Higgins, Mayor of Northampton

"The Freedom Center is one of a collection of grassroots organizations springing up across the country in reaction to the prevalance of medication in America. It alerts people to the downside of psychiatric drugs but does not try to force people off them: it seeks instead to help sufferers find the best methods of coping, even if their solution is unconventional by the standards of the medical establishment."
Forbes magazine, Sept. 6, 2004 p.122

Freedom Center's goals are:

to end all force and coercion, including involuntary treatment and forced drugging;
to ensure access to resources such as housing is without strings and not conditional on treatment "compliance;"
to defend human rights and ensure protective laws and regulations are enforced;
to ensure all treatment decisions are based on true informed consent and accurate information about risks;
to change drugging as the medical standard of care for psychosis;
to end all psych drugging of children and offer alternatives instead;
to support effective alternatives such as nutrition, exercise, holistic health care, nature and animals;
to provide voluntary, non-paternalistic social supports such as peer-run programs, housing, income, and individual and family therapy;
to create Soteria House-style options;
to expose psychiatric and pharmaceutical industry myths, propaganda, and corruption;
to end wasteful bureaucracies and expensive professional elites;
to break the silence around trauma and abuse;
to end fear and misunderstanding of "madness" and extreme states of consciousness;
and to make common cause with progressive movements for social justice and ecological balance.