The Manifesto of a Noncompliant Mental Patient

by Aubrey Ellen Shomo

Overview

I see it everywhere: People with mental illness need medication. It sounds reasonable.

Today, there are even political organizations that seek to make it easy to force a person to take it.

It's easy to look at another and assume things like that. It's human. After all, it's compassionate to help someone who isn't able to ask for help, right? They'll thank you in the long run, won't they?

Product Details

BN ID:	2940014171663
Publisher:	Open Minds Quarterly
Publication date:	04/01/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	21 KB

About the Author

Diagnosed with a psychotic disorder at eight years old, transgendered essayist Aubrey Ellen Shomo (born Justin Michael Shomo) would spend most of the next decade on neuroleptic medication – over her vocal objections – and would be hospitalized repeatedly. Upon reaching adulthood, furious with the treatment she received for so long and her own powerlessness in the face of it, she became a psychiatric survivor activist.

Over the course of the next decade she would be honored as a semi-finalist in the international Film You Issue competition for young filmmakers for a PSA about child abuse in psychiatric hospitals, serve on the board of Colorado’s statewide consumer network, speak at the national Alternatives conference and serve on its advisory committee, and tell her story, most recently for the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery’s CD series Voices of Hope and Recovery: Our Stories, Our Lives.

Apart from her work as a psychiatric survivor activist, she works in the real world as a Network Engineer and Programmer and has published in 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and Transgender Tapestry. Her website can be found at http://www.aubreyshomo.net/