The prestigious federal National Council on Disability report Inclusive Livable Communities for People with Psychiatric Disabilities March 17, 2008 included a section on Freedom Center that interviews Oryx!

The report says: The Freedom Center in Northampton, Massachusetts, is an example of a grassroots, independent program run by psychiatric survivors that receives only minimal funding, yet has developed a number of alternative programs to assist people to achieve their self-determined goals. The Freedom Center offers innovative approaches such as yoga classes and acupuncture, provides peer-run programs, helps people to find housing, and advocates for a noncoercive mental health system in which people are free to make their own choices about the kinds of treatment they want.

Read the entire report here.

Here's what it says:

The Freedom Center in Northampton, Massachusetts, is an example of a grassroots, independent program run by psychiatric survivors that receives only minimal funding, yet has developed a number of alternative programs to assist people to achieve their self-determined goals. The Freedom Center offers innovative approaches such as yoga classes and acupuncture, provides peer-run programs, helps people to find housing, and advocates for a noncoercive mental health system in which people are free to make their own choices about the kinds of treatment they want.

Oryx Cohen, one of the founders of Freedom Center, describes how the project started:

There were a few of us who were not getting what we needed out of the traditional mental health system. We didn’t know what we were doing when we started, but we knew we wanted something different. It started with me, Will Hall, and a few others. We wanted to combine support and activism. The movement had been pretty strong with activism from back in the ‘70s, but we really wanted to combine the support aspect. A lot of people we ran into wanted to do activism, but others just wanted emotional support. So we tried to do a combination. We started a monthly support group in the fall of 2001. The group was run by peers. Now it’s every week—it’s been weekly for a few years now. Anywhere between 6 and 30 people come to the group—an average of 12 to 15. There are some core people and “veterans,” but the membership changes. We met in a church. Now we meet in the Quaker Center; we’ve been there for a few years. We rent the space.

Everything the Freedom Center does comes from the membership. There are no paid employees: all volunteers. We have a collective set up that makes the key decisions. To join the collective a person has to be a member for at least six months, attend the monthly organizing meetings, and then get voted in by the rest of the members.

There was a slow transition to other activities besides the support group. The first thing was yoga; a lot of people were looking for alternatives to day treatment or medications. We decided to start a yoga class, because people couldn’t afford commercial classes. We’ve been doing that for about four and a half years. We raised some money (private foundations and individual donations) to hire a teacher. We get some money from the City of Northampton. Our total budget is about $10,000 per year. We are hoping to start another class because the current class is so big.

Then we started an acupuncture clinic. We offer these programs to everyone in the community, not just our members. We’re trying to break down labels and promote community integration. The person who does the acupuncture is a licensed acupuncturist who does ear acupuncture. We have gotten a lot of publicity—a big article in the local paper on our acupuncture clinic. About 20–25 people come each week—we’ve had as many as 50! At the start of each class we announce what the Freedom Center is and the work we do. We don’t ask people whether they are people with the “lived experience” or not.

We also do events—we’ve invited speakers on various mental health issues. We’ve had as many as 200 people show up for those events. We also get new people through these events who are interested in getting more involved. Because we don’t have paid staff, sometimes we can’t respond to all the inquiries and e-mails. We also have a weekly radio show on a local grassroots community radio station. We’ve been doing that for about two years.[77]