Judi Chamberlin
| Judi Chamberlin | |
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Judi Chamberlin upon the publication of the National Council on Disability's federal report From Privileges to Rights
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| Born |
Judi Ross October 30, 1944 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A. |
| Died | January 16, 2010 (aged 65) Arlington, Massachusetts, U.S.A. |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Midwood High School, Brooklyn |
| Occupation | Director of Education National Empowerment Center Co-chair WNUSP |
| Years active | 1971–2010 |
| Known for | Internationally known psychiatric survivor movement activist and author |
| Notable work |
On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System (1978) From Privileges to Rights (2000) |
| Board member of | MindFreedom International |
| Spouse(s) | Howard Cahn (divorced) Robert Chamberlin (divorced) Ted Chabasinski (1972–1985) |
| Partner(s) | Martin Federman (2006–2011) |
| Children | 1 |
| Awards | Distinguished Service Award of the President of the United States |
| Website | www |
| Notes | |
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Ted Chabasinski and Judi Chamberlin divorced in 1985 so that he could marry his second wife. However, they separated as couple c. 1974. They remained close friends.
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Judi Chamberlin (née Ross; October 30, 1944 – January 16, 2010) was an American activist, leader, organizer, public speaker and educator in the psychiatric survivors movement. Her political activism followed her involuntary confinement in a psychiatric facility in the 1960s. She was the author of On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System, which is a foundational text in the Mad Pride movement.
Judi Chamberlin was born Judi Ross in Brooklyn in 1944. She was the only daughter of Harold and Shirley Jaffe Ross. Her father was a factory worker when she was a child, later he worked as an executive in the advertising industry. Her mother was employed as a school secretary. Chamberlin attended Midwood High School.
In 1966, at the age of twenty-one and recently married, Chamberlin suffered a miscarriage and, according to her own account, became severely depressed. Following psychiatric advice, she voluntarily signed herself into a psychiatric facility as an in-patient. However, after several voluntary admissions she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward in a New York state hospital for a period of five months.
As an involuntary patient, she witnessed and experienced a range of abuses. Seclusion rooms and refractory wards were used for resistive patients, even when their forms of resistance were non-violent. The psychiatric medication she was given made her feel tired and affected her memory. As an involuntary patient she was unable to leave the facility and became, she said, "a prisoner of the system". The derogation of her civil liberties that she experienced as an inmate provided the impetus for her activism as a member of the psychiatric survivor movement.
Following her discharge, Chamberlin became involved in the nascent psychiatric patients' rights movement. In 1971 she joined the Boston-based Mental Patients Liberation Front (MPLF), and she also became associated with the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University . Her affiliation with this center facilitated her role in co-founding the Ruby Rogers Advocacy and Drop-in-Centers, which are self-help institutions staffed by former psychiatric patients. and was also a founder and later a Director of Education of the National Empowerment Center. The latter is also an ex-patient run organization that provides information, technical assistance, and support to users and survivors of the psychiatric system. Its mission statement declares its intent is to "carry a message of recovery, empowerment, hope and healing to people who have been labeled with mental illness".
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