I've seen what I feel is real change twice, turning points for individuals:

• At the follow-up of the Summit, last year at the NMHA meeting in DC, Senator Spector’s aide was there and made a comment. Now Spector is very familiar with m. h. issues, an ally of Joe Rogers, his aide is informed, spent half a day at this meeting. She was amazed, and said so. Previously she had only thought about crisis, illness, pathology. She had spent the morning seeing ‘us at our best’, seeing functional people presenting planks, asking questions, discussing.
  
  
• At the CMHS NAC the Subcommittee on Consumer/Survior Issues recommended that the word ‘stigma’ take second place to ‘discrimination’. The several physicians spluttered some, but the people of color in the room ‘got it’ immediately.

I’m not sure if that is politics.

Sylvia