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John Bonnar

Psychiatric survivors prepare to occupy Canada’s largest psychiatric facility

| May 5, 2012

Surviving the psychiatric complex

a protester carries a sign that reads proud to be crazy

People with mental illnesses are often forced into the Canadian psychiatric complex, whether through inpatient detainment, prescription of drugs or other ways. Mad movements in Canada mirror much of the same principles as the disability rights movement, by using mental illnesses as a source of pride and an identity.

Though there is nothing wrong with voluntarily seeking counselling or drug treatments, when these are interventions taken on behalf of people's well being by the system things become problematic. Often the rights of people in the psychiatric complex are trampled, they are manipulated and coerced.

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John Bonnar Audio Blog

Health-care professionals against electroshock form new speakers bureau

August 15, 2011
| Over the decades, many health-care professionals have spoken out against electroshock. But for the first time, an organization of professionals has been formed to expose this treatment.

26:59 minutes (24.72 MB)
in his own words

Nameless and homeless: Affordable housing -- if not now, when?

Remember their names:
Eugene Upper
Erwin Anderson
Mirsalah Aldin-Kompani
and hundreds more who died
on Toronto streets since '97

- From Nameless-Homeless, an unpublished rant in progress

Here's the grim context. Today, it's widely acknowledged that the "deinstitutionalization" of psychiatric survivors has been a total failure and fraud; it was from the very start. Why? Because of government incompetence and negligence, poor urban planning, and public indifference to "discharged" psychiatric survivors and other poor, marginalized and stigmatized people in our communities.

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Stark Raven: Prison Justice

Deconstructing Psychiatry: Filmmaker and activist explore psychiatry's impact on their lives

April 28, 2010
| Cindy Lou Griffith and Irit Shimrat discuss the movement for self-determination amongst psychiatry patients.

31:10 minutes (35.67 MB)
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