Interview with Oryx Cohen, October 2010

Oryx Cohen, M.P.A., is a leader in the international consumer/survivor/ex-patient (c/s/x) movement. Currently he is the Co-Director of the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community. He has helped to spearhead an innovative peer-run approach focusing on recovery, healing, and community. Oryx is also the co-founder of Freedom Center, the Pioneer Valley's only independent peer-run support/activist organization. Freedom Center's purpose is to empower and support people with psychiatric labels while challenging oppressive mental health policies and practices.

Oryx serves on several boards and committees internationally, nationally and regionally, including being a member of the International Network Toward Alternatives for Recovery (INTAR). Oryx volunteered for several years with MindFreedom International, directing its Oral History Project. This project involved collecting and documenting c/s/x stories of abuse, empowerment, and healing in the mental health system. Oryx is now featured in a book by Gail Hornstein called "Agnes's Jacket: A Psychologist's Search for the Meanings of Madness" where he and Will Hall are compared to the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Flick Grey: How would you describe what consumers/survivors/mad folk (or whatever language you use) are doing at the moment - a broad brush picture - in terms of changing the mental health system or the world.

Oryx Cohen: That's a big question [laughs]! I think that the biggest thing that we are doing right now is we're getting more active in terms of presenting an alternative view of extreme emotional states - trauma, madness, what have you. We're doing a better job of getting that out into the mainstream media. There are more and more people who are having these views, who are questioning the establishment, questioning the Big Pharma. There are more and more people all around the world who are thinking similarly, who are doing similar work and so it's just a matter of time until these ideas really catch on in the mainstream. It still hasn't happened yet. Yeah, I think the biggest thing that are doing is trying to get these ideas out into the media and creating our own media. So that's my simple answer to a complex question.

FG: What place does activism have in mental health and what top three areas would you target?

OC: I think that activism has a really important place in the movement, and I think that independent activist groups are really important because peer-run or survivor-run organisations that are funded by the government have a real danger of getting co-opted, and even if they are not co-opted they still cannot do the kind of activism that independent groups can do. And so, I think they are crucially important.

The top three areas: number one would be to protest the mainstream mental health system, for buying into the medical model that doesn't work - the "broken brain" theory. There's too much of a tendency to be co-opted into that. So, number two … [laughs] I'd like to see a moratorium on the term "mental illness." A campaign to strike that term, to stop using that term! Number three would be a protest of Big Pharma.

[FG: Can you elaborate a bit on that term "Big Pharma"? I mainly hear that term from activists in the US - we seem to use it less in Australia]

OC: It's the big pharmaceutical companies, like Eli Lilly, Pfizer, the companies that make all the medications, psychiatric drugs. They are - at least in the US - extremely corrupt. In the United States, they are the most profitable industry, in terms of net profits. They have more lobbyists on Capitol Hill than we have members of the House of Representatives, they control the Federal Drug Administration, they fund all the research that is done on psychiatric drugs and other drugs. So, there's really no independent watch dog. The pharmaceutical companies have spun completely out of control. Now they have direct advertising on TV all the time, which is completely illegal in every country except the United States. It's very bad news. And the pharmaceutical industry has gotten in trouble for hiding documents that show that their anti-psychotics can cause early death, and all sorts of health problems. That was Eli Lilly with their drug Zyprexa, but there's another company … anyway, it's really bad! Does that answer your question?!

FG: What would you expect to be different if we lived in a community that embraced people who have mental health problems or experienced madness?

OC: Well we'd be a much better society because we wouldn't suppress those states, we could learn from what's going on! A lot of times when more sensitive people are freaking out, it's telling us something about the whole society, that something is wrong with the whole society. Like in terms of the environment, or what we're doing to each other, you know, wars, and in our families and in our communities. So, I think we would be a much healthier society if we were more enquiring and just accepted altered states and tried to learn from them, instead of trying to suppress them. I think we would be much better off.

FG: If you were asked to give the government advice on how to spend $500 dollars for mental health, what would you spend the money on? What about if you had only $10,000 to spend?

OC: Actually my answer is about the same for them both. $500 million I would put into community - true community - mental health. Meaning, the idea of building community from the ground up, and that having to be led by people with lived experience. That doesn't necessarily have to be everyone who is involved in leadership, but it does have to be a critical component. There are people will lived experience are leading these efforts. And what could it look like with $500 million? There could be peer-run respite, safe houses for people to go and detox from medication or get through a crisis. Community centres where people could go throughout the day with all sorts of things to do like yoga, accupuncture, support groups, exercise. And these community centres would be open to everyone, to members of the public, they would be integrated, and they would fight stigma that way. You know, you could open up bakeries, clubs … the sky's the limit with what we could do with $500 million!

As far as $10,000, well you could create a Freedom Centre for $10,000! The Freedom Centre doesn't have an money, but they have done a lot of grea stuff for amost 10 years now.

[FG: Can you elaborate a bit?]

OC: Yeah, the Freedom Centre was started by people with lived experience who rejected the mainstream mental health system, and decided to start something of our own. I was a co-founder of the Freedom Centre, and we went from being a little group that me once a week to have been a group that has 100s of people who are involved in the local area, and even more who have been involved in our website and on-line, you know at different conferences and whatnot. Locally, we have weekly support groups, weekly acupuncture for the community, yoga, a radio show that is syndicated nationally. We were featured on the Forbes magazine website and lots of people have healed through the freedom centre. And it doesn't cost that much money to create any of this.

FG: What are some things that could happen in one day that would give you a really good night's sleep where you woke up feeling hopeful and ready to take on the world?

OC: Well, if one person makes a huge change in their life, well that's really inspiring. And we see that a lot! And if I woke up tomorrow and [laughs] the government decided to regulate pharmaceutical companies and had them stop lying to the public, that would make me feel a lot better! Those are a couple of things I guess.

FG: And now the final question, what's more important, the outcome or how you get there, and can you give an example?

OC: I think it's all about the process, how you get there. Because I think you can make positive changes in your own life, and positive changes in your community, and then that will have a ripple effect. But if you go about things the wrong way, then that's no good for anybody!

An example would be, you know looking at leaders like Gandhi and Nelson Mandela - a peaceful, non-violent revolution is what we need!