“It made me want to die … I remember that they would stick a rag in my mouth so I wouldn’t bite through my tongue and that it took three attendants to hold me down”

Ted Chabasinski is an American psychiatric survivor, human rights activist and attorney who lives in Berkeley, California. At the age of six he was taken from his foster family’s home and committed to a New York psychiatric facility. Diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia he underwent intensive electroshock therapy (now termed electroconvulsive therapy or ECT) and remained an inmate in a state psychiatric hospital until the age of seventeen. He subsequently trained as a lawyer and became active in the psychiatric survivors movement. In 1982 he led a successful campaign seeking to ban the use of electroshock in Berkeley, California. (source: Wikipedia)

Ted Chabasinski, now 76 years of age, was in San Francisco over the weekend of May 19-21, 2013 for protests held against the American Psychiatric Association during its 2013 annual general meeting.

We speak with Ted Chabasinski.

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RELATED | Wikipedia: Ted Chabasinski | Blog: Still crazy after all these years | Facebook: Ted Chabasinski |

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Ted Chabasinski at Occupy the American Psychiatric Association rally (May 7, 2012)