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Sally Zinman wrote: We believe someone will introduce some vehicle for family member and history inclusion in the commitment process.Sure looks that way. Plus maybe other stuff. :-( Many of you at the Client Forum know that the membership addressed this issue and gave the Board direction.That depends on your point of view. Some of us e.g. me are in the position where we feel that the policy determination is such an exclusionary process that our point of view is in effect not considered, except in a token fashion. Look for an announcement about a hearing addressing the Little Hoover Commission Report — coming soon. It was tentatively scheduled for January 30. We are hoping a large groups of clients attend and speak at the open mike. The Little Hoover Commission report supports comprehensive and holistic voluntary community services. Among the issues that the LHC should guide the debate over LPS Reform is : “An assessment of how improved access to voluntary treatment could diminish the need for involuntary treatment.”I’m more moved by W.’s comment, that the struggle the last year was something of a burnout. W. wrote: To be honest, the struggle to defeat AB 1800 last year drained me physically and mentally. I had nothing left to do any public relations.When I look at why, the obvious thing is that I don’t agree with the perspective Sally enunciates above. We need to be focused better than that, use our energies more wisely. 
I feel that trauma of treatment is and
has been forever and a day the issue.
Back in the 60s and 70s this got turned into a kind
of confrontational anti-psychiatry which had some kinds of positive
impacts but mainly muddled things. Since then the main rule on
‘trauma of treatment’ has been silence.
Unless the trauma is so
frightful and plain that you want to litigate
via “patients rights.”
But the normal workaday or not easily litigable traumas which
dominate the treatment scene — the folks in the system twisting yr.
arm so you will live yr. life a certain way — these have not
been contested meaningfully in general by the clients movement.
I am not sorry for helping out with the AB 1800 struggle, but I don’t want to confine my approach to the present situation to the framework Sally suggests. I’m working to construct a framework where respect is the issue. I think the development of a negotiation over ‘trauma of treatment’ is the way to go forward on this. Respectfully Andrew Phelps | ||||||||
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