[NYAPRS Enews] The Personal is the Political: Reflections on an Advocacy Journey

[Briana Gilmore]

NYAPRS Note: In what many conference attendees remarked was the best keynote address they had ever heard, Leah Harris detailed her journey from oppression to determined advocate, from trauma survivor to a life of daily intentional healing. Below, you can read excerpts from her remarks, that inspired us all to build off our own personal histories and find our capacity as passionate advocates, if not for sociopolitical change, than at least for change in our own selves. Thank you, Leah, for giving our conference guests and our readership the ability to experience the grace and conviction you bring to your advocacy.
For the full text of Leah's remarks, visit her website here<http://leahidaharris.com/2014/09/nyaprs-speech-september-17-2014/>.

The Personal is the Political: Reflections on an Advocacy Journey
Leah Harris; 9/17/2014

"It occurred to me in what I can only call a "moment of grace" that I would have to drastically alter the way I viewed myself and the world.  I would no longer define myself as a mental patient.  From here on in, I would reject the diagnoses and prognoses of the mental health system and view myself as just a plain old person again.  A person with dreams and abilities- not merely disability. Not just a cluster of symptoms and diagnoses.  I would officially put the past behind me, and concentrate on a new future, which would not include a revolving-door flurry of hospitalizations and placements in systems. I would take control of my destiny. That was the beginning of self-determination in my life...
...My parents' lives were cut short by the common practice of polypharmacy that damages the internal organs, the brain, and the heart. Their lives were also cut short by a lack of hope and human compassion that damages the spirit.  My mother died at the age of forty-six, from complications of the diabetes and weight gain brought on by heavy doses of Zyprexa and other antipsychotics. My dad had been on at least six different psychiatric medications simultaneously since his youth. We were actively working on a plan to try to get his meds pared down, but it was too late. He died, suddenly, shockingly, at age 63...
...In 1989, at age fourteen, I would become one of the first youth to be prescribed Prozac - on an off-label basis, of course, since it had not been approved for use in children.  I had certainly been wrestling with difficult emotional states that often get labeled as depression, but Prozac propelled me into a full blown manic state.  I stopped sleeping, and became suddenly and completely obsessed with the idea of hurting myself.  At the time, although the suicidal side effects of Prozac were known by Eli Lilly, they were not known to the general public, including most psychiatrists.  So my experiences were just dismissed as symptoms of my "worsening illness," for which I should receive greater doses of - you guessed it - Prozac!  Thus began adolescence...
...What I needed most was validation, reassurance that I was OK just as I was, a kid thrust into extraordinary circumstances with absolutely no coping skills or tools with which to handle them.  I needed to hear that my turbulent emotions were a normal reaction to the abnormal circumstances that I had been through in my most vulnerable 0-5 years.  What I heard instead was that it was all my fault; or my faulty brain chemistry.  Something Was Wrong With Me. I deeply internalized this assessment, and so did my family...

...It was drummed into me that I could not trust myself to take risks or to accept challenges, because that would most likely trigger the return of my "illness."  I loved academics. Learning was the only thing that brought me any satisfaction. But I was systematically denied education during my year in residential treatment at age 15-16. Because I was deemed a "flight risk," they would not send me to the local high school where many of the other kids went during the day. My "education" consisted of watching movies all day. My abilities and talents wasted away while I was in treatment...

...In retrospect, the people who helped me most were my family, who let me return from the group home, and pressed me to get an education. And the educators who refused to give up on me. Mr. Harris, my honors comp teacher, visited me in the hospital and told me that I would get through this and go on to be a writer like I dreamed. We are still in touch to this day...

...The university therapist, upon hearing my family history, insisted that I needed to go back on meds, and suggested that I read Peter Kramer's Listening to Prozac.  Doubtful but willing to listen, I went looking for the book at the university bookstore, and Listening to Prozac wasn't there. What I found on the shelf instead was Dr. Peter Breggin's Talking Back to Prozac. "This can't be a coincidence," I remember thinking. I bought it and read it in one sitting, where for the first time I read an explanation of the adverse effects I had experienced, where for the first time I heard someone else critique the systems that had caused myself and my family so much pain..

...I wrote to Peter Breggin and told him my story. It was the first time I had told anybody since I had been in the group home. Unbelievably, he actually wrote me back, and encouraged me to get in touch with this movement.  I didn't even know there was such a thing-I hadn't even imagined it.  He referred me to Mindfreedom International, and I emailed David Oaks, explaining that I wanted to tell my story, and he suggested that I contribute to their oral history project, a campaign to systematically gather the stories of survivors...

...More healing than any therapeutic intervention has been the sense of belonging to a social movement - something larger than myself. My life changed when I finally found my "tribe:" a group of people who had experienced the same forms of oppression and understood me on a level that few others could. A tribe of people who were also committed to changing the way we understand and respond to the experiences that are called "mental illness." As Angela Davis said: "I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever, but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement."...

...What I have been able to accomplish in my advocacy journey thus far, I owe it to the people who saw the potential in me and encouraged me to follow that path. People like Oryx Cohen, who encouraged me to "come out of the closet" with my story as part of the Mindfreedom Oral History project in 2001. Darby Penney, who encouraged me to tell my story at a NARPA conference oral history session that same year. Dr. Dan Fisher, who encouraged me in 2002 to testify before the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. People like the late Dr. Loren Mosher, dissident psychiatrist who gave to me freely of his time and knowledge in the fight to end the silence on SSRIs and suicidality. Eduardo Vega, who in 2007 encouraged me to get involved in bringing the lived experience voice to suicide prevention. I owe a debt of gratitude to these and so many more people who paved the way for me to speak out, who have given me love and encouragement and support along the path...

...Yet becoming an advocate would not signal an end to my struggles. There were more layers to peel off the onion. A difficult life experience led to another breakdown in my late 20s. I experienced constant thoughts of suicide, and once again found myself unable to get out of bed. I had also developed debilitating chronic back pain, which I now know is extremely common among trauma survivors. Immobilized by physical and emotional pain, I knew that I was in trouble. Out of desperation, I began to study the mind-body connection and learn about alternative medicine. I took up the practice of mindfulness in earnest. I knew I had to find a way to begin to face and heal the traumas of my childhood-and the traumas I experienced in treatment-or I would be of no use to any social movement...

...My activism today extends from what Pat Deegan calls "the intersection of love and outrage." Eight years ago, I became a mother, and soon after, a single mother, which marked an extremely significant transition in my life. I never imagined becoming a parent. I never dared it was possible for me. There was a part of me that still held on to the stigma in my blood, the message my mother received, that people with mental health conditions shouldn't procreate. There was a part of me that feared the past would repeat itself, and that my son would be taken away from me like I was taken away from my mother. But thankfully, my son is 8 years old now, years past the age I was taken away, and though being a single mother with a psychiatric disability is certainly challenging at times, I am now confident that I do not need to share my mother's horrible fate. Together, my son and I are healing the wounds of intergenerational trauma that have plagued my family. The cycle of trauma stops with us. Today, I fight alongside my peers and our allies to change things so that our children need not suffer what we did...
...We must hold fast to our values and our vision. They will never steer us wrong. We might not see the fruits of our work in this lifetime, though I certainly hope we will. I believe that we will one see a day in America when:

  *   Having a psychiatric disability will no longer result in a lifespan 25 years shorter than the rest of the population.
  *   Parents with disabilities will be empowered and supported to keep their families together.
  *   No one will be traumatized or re-traumatized by their health care; "do no harm" will be a true reality.
  *   Law enforcement officers and other first responders will know how to respond when they encounter a person in crisis, avoiding tragic outcomes.
  *   There will be the social and political will to adequately fund the kinds of supports and services people and families want and need.
  *   All people with mental health conditions will have access to the same opportunities as others to pursue education and meaningful work, to be valued members of society.
  *   Students will no longer be expelled for disclosing mental health conditions, and will have access to ongoing emotional and peer-to-peer support at their schools and universities.
  *   People experiencing homelessness will have access to safe and affordable, supportive housing, integrated with the rest of the community.
  *   Returning veterans experiencing mental health challenges and traumatic stress will have access to the supports they need to heal and resume their lives.
  *   People who have been incarcerated will be given a shot at real rehabilitation - the chance to establish a life in their communities again; and opportunities to access work, education, and relationships that will help them stay there.
  *   Everyone experiencing mental health challenges, trauma, and addictions will have equal access to limitless opportunities for personal growth, healing, and recovery.
Our movement goes so far beyond mental health: it is a social justice movement, a multi-issue struggle. It's radical in the sense that it seeks to address the root causes of the conditions that cause people to go into crisis in the first place - overwhelming traumatic stress, exposure to violence and abuse, isolation, lack of access to timely support, coupled with social ignorance, prejudice, and discrimination...

...If you want to be an advocate, find the places where your personal intersects the political and take action with others. If the magnitude of the struggle we face feels overwhelming - as it often does for me - focus on what you can do for justice.

I will close with the words of Dr. King: "Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a better person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in."

-      Excerpts from Leah Harris, Keynote at NYAPRS 32nd Annual Conference, September 2014
http://leahidaharris.com/2014/09/nyaprs-speech-september-17-2014/
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