OCCUPY SCRANTON

I am very pleased to be a part with many wonderful people in the Occupy Movement which will begin at noon on Saturday, Octboer 15, 2011 at Courthouse Square, Scranton, PA. I will be speaking at 3pm.


-Dan L. Edmunds, Ed.D.
http://selfgrowth.com/experts/dan_edmunds.html
http://humanepsychiatry.com

LIBYAN REVOLT

In spite of attempts to shut down the revolt by barring the internet and through violence, it appears the Libyan people will persist in their efforts for justice and equality. Libya has huge wealth from oil, however its people exist on around $2 per day. The West is complicit in the creation of this misery as it has propped up many client-states. This revolt, as the others throughout the Arab world are the unraveling of this system of client-states. The people's voice will be heard!

-Dan L. Edmunds, Ed.D.

INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR HUMANE PSYCHIATRY ADVISORS

Advisors of the International Center for Humane Psychiatry are persons committed to the following:

Our work is to fight against oppression and coercion in the mental health system, to eradicate the hierarchical barriers between 'doctor and patient', to eliminate the medicalization of emotional distress, and to develop means of helping distressed persons where their autonomy, experience, and dignity is respected. We seek to return a conscience to the field of mental health and create an environment where people undergoing distress feel validated, empowered, and capable.

We believe in the power of the human spirit and each person's potential to be resilient. We believe that the forging of relationship is a key to emotional healing as well as the ability to help a person explore themselves, their world, society, and the human condition. We we seek to join with people in setting life goals, understanding the human condition and experiences without looking upon the person as defective. ICHP encourages involvement in issues related to social justice and believes that our working together to create a world free from poverty, greed, conflict, and discrimination will go a long way towards the development of true mental health.

We seek to be pro-active and preventative in our care for persons. We promote drug free, relationship based approaches for troubled and distressed children and adults and encourage the development and implementation of community based programs. We advocate for juvenile justice reform and for an education system that inspires a zeal for learning and is respectful of children's innate strengths and abilities. We believe in the development of community based options. We are opposed to force and coercion in the mental health system.

We seek to provide a place of sanctuary for people in crisis or undergoing extreme states of mind, where they can feel supported and validated, and not be subjected to any 'treatments' they do not desire. We believe distressed people thrive in environments that are non-threatening and they feel safe.

We collaborate with and offer consultation to parents, educators, and children and their families to develop relationship based approaches and problem solving towards resolving issues of distress, realizing that people are resilient and capable of healing from distress. We have been successful in helping individuals not have to resort to psychiatric drugs or to be able under the direction of their physicians significantly reduce their use.

We believe the key to this healing is by the forging of relationship and the construction of meaning. We believe that compassion is one of the highest ideals. We believe that psychiatric drugs do not teach new ways of living, thinking, loving, and being, whereas people do. We are particularly concerned about the vast prescribing of psychiatric drugs (many which carry warnings of suicidal ideation, violence, agitation, and aggression) upon individuals' well being. We are concerned about the unethical conflicts of interest existing between medical psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry.

We seek to provide to those individuals undergoing serious distress a place where they feel safe, secure, and can begin to begin the process of discovery and overcome fear and emotional chains.

We do not feel that locking individuals away in institutions solve human problems, rather it is through compassion, empathy, and seeking to understand our human condition that true mental health will arise. We believe that placing persons in mental hospitals is equivalent to incarceration however the distressed person has committed no crime, rather they are subject to a psychiatric ceremonial where the pschiatrist seen as 'sane', interrogates the person, makes a judgment, and then declares a sentence. We believe that psychiatric diagnosis often stigmatizes and limits opportunity for individuals. We believe that modern society is driving people 'mad' and that we must have radical transformation of ourselves and our values as well as return to a greater sense of community. We believe those who call themselves therapists must be actively involved in issues of social justice, helping end oppression and encourage liberation for marginalized persons. We recognize that distressed individuals must be treated as persons with respect and dignity. We believe in recognizing that even the most troubled persons and families have innate strengths. We believe that persons need to be given informed consent and not seen merely by a diagnostic label. We believe that ethics must proceed technology. We believe that bio-psychiatry has often used brutal methods (such as electroshock, insulin coma, toxic drugs, and lobotomy) and has evoked much harm in the lives of individuals and does not provide any true answers to the problems of life. We believe that there is no objectivity and science to the process of psychiatric diagnosis and that those diagnosed are often stigmatized and oppressed in society by virtue of this label.

We encourage drug free relationship based, problem solving, and holistic approaches and encourage individuals who choose to use helpful adjuncts such as meditation, acupuncture, tai-chi, and yoga. The International Center for Humane Psychiatry is one of few entities taking a strong stand on social justice issues and seeking to create a mental health system that does not treat people as objects, but persons.

We believe that it is also necessary for us to assume personal responsiblity and accountability for own own actions and choices and to not resort to the use of or embracing of labels to exonerate ourselves and institutions.


BRENT POTTER, PH.D.:
Brent Potter completed his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute. Prior to this he earned his M.A. in Psychology from Duquesne University. He lives in Bellingham, Washington where he works as a Child Mental Health Specialist, a County Designated Mental Health Professional, and a Licensed Mental Health Counselor.

GREGORY OKE:
Gregory Oke is a Mental Health Consumer Advocate in Australia.


MEGHAN CHMIEWLEWSKI, B.A.:
Ms. Chmielewski completed her Bachelor of Arts from Pennsylvania State University on Human Development and Family Studies with concentration in Psychology. She is currently involved in a Master's program in Special Education and School Counseling at Marywood University. Ms. Chmielewski has worked in community mental health and served in a therapeutic community project under the direction of Dr. Dan L. Edmunds, Ed.D.



SEAN URQUHART:
Mr. Urquhart is a counsellor in Scotland. He was trained in person centered counselling with COSCA (Scotland) from 1995-1998. He has served in a counselling center in Paisley, The Wynd from 1997 to 1998, as well as working with an HIV charity. He is currently continuing training in cognitive behavioral therapy.

DR. DAN L. EDMUNDS, ED.D.: LIBERATING VOICE OF COMPASSION IN THE MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM

Dan Lee Edmunds was born in Tampa, Florida. In 1983, he located with his mother to Fort Collins, Colorado and attended public schools there. Edmunds as a teenager developed a keen interest in philosophy and comparative religion and enjoyed visting various religious communities and having discussions and dialogue. Edmunds also developed as a young person a strong interest in social justice and spent alot of time volunteering with various projects (veterans affairs, homeless, program for developmental differences). He became interested in political change, and in 1991 became the youngest legislative aide in the State Senate of Colorado, working in the office of then State Senator Robert W. Schaffer. He later registered as a professional lobbyist and worked on various political campaigns among them the campagin of Corrine Brown for the Third District Congressional Seat in Florida in 1992 which afforded him the opportunity to transport Martin Luther King III to an event at Bethune Cookman College.

In 1993, Edmunds graduated from Fort Collins High School, he returned to Florida, and later entered the University of Florida where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree with major in Religion, minor in Sociology in 1997. Edmunds entered the Orthodox Church and was ordained in 1997 and in the same year entered the Master of Arts program in Theology at the University of Scranton and obtained his degree in 1999. He was admitted to a Doctoral program in Community Counseling at the University of Sarasota and completed post graduate coursework at Nova Southeastern University in Dispute Resolution in 2000. Edmunds served as a chaplain for a nursing care facility for the elderly from 2001 to 2003. Later becoming disillusioned with the Orthodox Church, he became affiliated with the Liberal Catholic Apostolic Church and later the Apostolic Church of the Divine Mysteries. Edmunds received his Doctorate of Education in Community Counseling in 2006 from the University of Sarasota.

In 1999, Edmunds had the opportunity to work with Bobbi Gagne, director of the Sexual Assault Crisis Team of Vermont and was greatly inspired by her. Edmunds began work the following year as a therapist for a behavioral health program for children and adolescents in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Edmunds was initially indifferent to the concept of psychiatric drugging of children and rather unaware of some of the abuses in his field. When he first encountered a young man with tardive dyskinesia from psychiatric drugs, and then began to see some of the issues related to power within the field, this had a major impact on his thinking, and he began to set forward to make changes in how to help and interact with distressed persons. In 2002, Edmunds received training in relational approaches to autism/developmental differences and began work with a number of autistic and developmentally different clients. Edmunds received Board Certification in Sexual Abuse Issues in 2003 from the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress. In 2005, he began lecturing on ways to help children and adolescents without resort to psychiatric drugs. it was also in this year that he worked with a young man with a psychotic disorder and set up an experiment to see if relational and community based approaches would be more effective than traditional hospitalization and residential programs. Edmunds found that during the time of interaction with the young person, the project was very successful, but he began to plummet uppn being returned to his home. This and future experiences shaped his idea that emotional distress is brought forward by social, familial, and political factors, and this became the topic for his 2009 book "The Meeting of Two Persons: What Therapy Should Be" which he also presented as a presentation at the October 2010 conference of the International Center for Humane Psychiatry in Syracuse, New York. In 2006, after completing his doctoral degree, Edmunds began private practice in conjuction with working as a psychological associate (conducting evaluations and assessments) and also began writing and speaking. In 2006, he completed the book "They Say My Child Has ADHD: Thinking Outside the Bio-Psychiatric Paradigm". In 2007, he wrote "Navigating Through the Mainstream" which addressed autism and developmental differences. In 2010, he completed "Mystical Metaphors" which was written with a New Zealander artist and university student who underwent what would be labeled as a 'psychotic episode'. Edmunds sought to make this experience understandable and argued that with the proper support, that this journey, though painful and terrifying could lead to a point of transformation. Edmunds also argued that much of what occurs in the mental health profession is to suppress experience which leads to oppression. Edmunds has focused much of his work presently on extreme states of mind and maintains a private practice in Northeastern Pennsylvania and continues to lecture and provide consultation. Dr. Edmunds is Founder of the International Center for Humane Psychiatry, an emancipatory movement for human rights in the mental health system and has been involved in the Society for Laingian Studies and a member of the International Society for the Psychosocial Treatment of Schizophrenia. Dr. Edmunds is adjunct Professor of Existential Psychology and Comparative Religion for European American University. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity in 2007 from St. James Theological Seminary.



www.DrDanEdmunds.com

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BECOME AN AFFILIATE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR HUMANE PSYCHIATRY

The International Center for Humane Psychiatry is an emancipatory movement for human rights in the mental health system. By becoming an affiliate, you will be helping to provide drug free, empathic psychotherapy for those who are disadvantaged, helping to fund important research and publications, and advancing the cause of a humane mental health system. Affiliates can donate in any amount they feel they are able, those who donate $40 will receive a copy of THE MEETING OF TWO PERSONS: WHAT THERAPY SHOULD BE.

For information on becoming an affiliate, please write to:

DoctorEdmunds@DrDanEdmunds.com