Press

In collaboration with the New York State Museum and the New York State Archives, The Community Consortium, Inc., will present two Saturday panel discussions on June 5th and June 12th at the New York State Museum, focusing on the history of psychiatry from the patients' perspective.

The Community Consortium, a non-profit organization of ex-patients and their allies, works to end the marginalization of people with psychiatric disabilities and to foster their integration into the community.

These educational programs expand on themes presented in the exhibit "Lost Cases, Recovered Lives: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic," on display at the State Museum through September 19th. The exhibit uses artifacts from patients' suitcases discovered in an attic at Willard (NY) State Hospital and material from medical records to present the life stories of 12 people who spent decades at Willard from the late 19th-late-20th centuries.

On June 5th from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Museum Theater, a panel entitled, "The History of Mental Health Services: Alternative Views," will feature Patricia Deegan, Ph.D., an ex-patient and a pioneering scholar in the history of psychiatry from the patients' perspective. She will present a slide show summarizing her work in documenting ex-patient viewpoints, which have been ignored in historical accounts, and contrasting the "official" views on the history of psychiatry with the experiences of asylum inmates from the mid-19th-late 20th centuries.

Author Brad Edmondson will also be on the panel. His book on the history of New York State's insane asylums, Empire of Madness, will be published by Cornell University Press in 2005. Edmondson will speak on Willard's founding during a period of intense national controversy about treatment philosophies in the 1860s. As the first officially "custodial" institution, Willard set a national trend that played out over the next 100 years. The panel will be moderated by Gloria Bartowski, M.L.S., of the New York State Archives.

On June 12th from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Museum Theater, a panel "Mental Patient Narratives: Critiquing the System, Healing the Self," will feature Gail Hornstein, Ph.D., Shery Mead, M.S.W., and
Steven Periard. Dr. Hornstein will talk about her current research, a large-scale project using first-person
narratives by psychiatric patients to reconceive fundamental assumptions about madness and its treatment. These narratives offer a provocative alternative to standard views of the mind and mental illness. Ms. Mead, an ex-patient researcher who did ground- breaking theoretical work on peer support, will discuss the construction and deconstruction of the "mental patient" narrative. She will focus on the need for psychiatric patients to unlearn "the mental illness narrative" and begin to create an alternate story. Periard, an oral historian, will speak about the themes which emerged from 200 oral histories of mental patients in New York State. The narratives, which were collected by a project he headed from 1999-2003, included, among other topics, stories of trauma and abuse that were ignored by the mental health system. Darby Penney, M.L.S., a guest curator of the exhibit "Lost Cases, Recovered Lives: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic," will moderate the panel.

These programs are supported by funds from the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in these programs do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York State Museum or the State Archives.

The State Museum is a cultural program of the New York State Department of Education. Started in 1836, the museum has the nation's longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey. The museum is located on Madison Avenue in Albany. Further information is available by calling 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

The New York State Museum is located on Madison Avenue in Albany. It is open 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week throughout the year except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Further information about programs and events can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.