“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) (more…)
Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses with significant, life-threatening medical and psychiatric morbidity and mortality, regardless of an individual’s weight. Anorexia Nervosa (AN), in particular, has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder. Risk of premature death is 6-12 times higher in women with AN as compared to the general population, adjusting for age. 
The beginning of February marks the launch of the Provincial Eating Disorders Awareness (PEDAW) campaign and National Eating Disorder Awareness Week (Feb. 3-9, 2013).
