Lowell M-POWER members are meeting in late October [1998] with three lawyers for Stigma Awareness Campaign training.
They are Massachusetts Department of Mental Health Human Rights Officer Bill Crane, Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee (MHLAC) Executive Director Frank Laski and Protection and Advocacy for the Mentally Ill (PAMI) attorney Robert Fleischner.
This meeting is being held to explain our Stigma Awareness Campaign to these officials so that we may have a better understanding of how consumers can be trained as advocates.
The first meeting with Fleischner was August, 25, 1998 at the Northeast Independent Living Program in Lawrence, Massachusetts. We searched for answers to questions about abuse of patients, personal space at Tewksbury Hospital, patients' rights, and how Fleischner will teach us.
We need to know the basic approach of his training methods. He said he was going to put it into nine different phases.
Fleischner said he can train Lowell M-POWER members for two hours each week until a person has the training to take down a patient's complaints and advocate for higher privileges at treatment team meetings.
By giving a patient their rights to an advocate, M-POWER is empowering patients to have their highest privileges granted to them.
Once a patient has the freedom to their own space off the hospital grounds, advocates will be requesting a pass to go into Tewksbury.
M-POWER wants to do this without being harassed by local law enforcement and with the approval of Department of Mental Health (DMH)
DMH policy 96-1 allows patients with the highest privilege level to leave Tewksbury Hospital for wherever they want to go.
People are not given the privileges of a three-day outday release from the hospital if a patient doesn't obey treatment team direction.
Other privileges policies and laws are violated by Tewksbury Hospital staff because stigma promotes abuse, disregard, denial and prejudice.
Tewksbury Hospital can charge a patient for services if they don't have medicine or Medicaid. Fleischner suggested patients keep their own money in a bank separate from the Tewksbury Hospital Finance Officer.
A committee is designing a co-op for interested advocates. Common interests for the advocates and the patients include limitations of money, privacy , health, well-being and quality care.
The co-op will recognize barriers to freedom such as teasing and baiting of patients, staff benevolent attitudes about decision-making by patients, hospital staff paranoia, threatened and real abuse like restraint and seclusion and taking away privileges that encourage recovery of patients.
Everyone in Tewksbury Hospital has human rights. Freedom is being able to assume respect of patients outside and inside state mental hospitals.
This means being able to be healthy and that well-being is achieved through ownership of a patient's recovery.
Tuesday, October 27th, 1998 2:30pm-4:00pm Northeast Independent Living Program Lowell M-POWER Stigma Awareness Campaign Meeting with Bob Fleischner, Protection and Advocacy for the Mentally Ill lawyer (PAMI), Frank Laski, Executive Director, Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee (MHLAC), Bill Crane, Human Rights Officer, Department of Mental Health