Dear Amy Goodman,

Since I first heard Democracy Now! in 1999, I have been an avid listener and supporter of your show. By remaining steadfastly independent of corporate sponsorship and the inevitable censorship and distortions of embedded journalism, DN! has been a national model and inspiration. In the summer of 2001, as a pirate radio broadcaster and weekly current affairs host, I had the opportunity to interview you briefly after your address to the Alternative News Media Expo in San Francisco, on the movement to democratize the airwaves -- an inspiring interview that I later aired on my show (shortly before the FCC paid us a visit and my broadcasting days came to an end). Your show continues to be "the exception to the rulers" on most issues, featuring first-hand perspectives from individuals directly affected by a story, yet who are often marginalized or ignored by other media.

However, when it comes to breaking news and issues affecting mental health clients, I feel your reporting has consistently missed the mark. By failing to bring actual mental health clients with first-hand experience on your show for such stories, while inviting on lawyers, doctors, family members, service providers and other "experts" to speak on clients' behalf, these stories often lack fairness and accuracy, and leave uninformed listeners to assume that the clients being discussed -- whether they be the 24 men from the Leben Home in Queens who were illegally subjected to experimental surgeries, the 23-year-old woman who was discharged from the Florida mental hospital Gov. Jeb Bush had ordered closed, or the 17% of veterans returning home from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder, some of them now homeless -- must be incompetent or unwilling to speak for themselves on the issues that affect their everyday lives.

Currently, several very underreported news stories of national importance about the mental health system deserve to see the light of day on your show, and I will forward you links to articles on these stories that warrant further investigation, analysis and discussion. However, if you decide to cover one or more of these stories, I urge you to take a more balanced and inclusionary approach by bringing clients on the airwaves, and by looking more closely at the misleading 7and stigmatizing messages your guests may be spreading on other media. One striking example is Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, who uses a "medical model" explanation of mental illness to argue in favor of court-ordered forced drugging of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorders who refuse treatment, and advocates for involuntary warehousing of "treatment-resistant" homeless clients in mental hospitals (albeit non-profit and taxpayer-funded ones), claiming this would protect the public from dangerous mental patients.

About four years ago, you covered the abuse at Leben Home for Adults and Jeb Bush de-institutionalization scandal, and invited as your guests the trial lawyer representing the Leben Home clients, the NAMI-Florida president, Rhonda Atkins, the mother of the 23-year-old woman who lived at the closing Florida state hospital, and Dr. Torrey. (The Leber Home was also contacted for the story, but they "hung up".)

The stats Torrey quotes have no apparent basis in reality. For example, the actual umbers of homeless people are extremely difficult to count in any one city or county, and the few local officials who attempt such counts (i.e. the ones in cities vying with each other for federal homeless grants) have never been known for being particularly thorough or methodologically consistent year-to-year, and conflicting census figures abound. The number Torrey now uses on his website for the total U.S. homeless population, 600,000, he says is based on data from the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, but how he came up with the number of "individuals with schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness [who] are homeless" (approx. 200,000 was his estimate in 2003 when he last updated his fact sheet on homelessness) remains an unexplained mystery. And he shows no hard data on that fact sheet to back up his claim that there are high rates of suicide and homicide among homeless people with "untreated severe mental illness". Facts are of little use to Torrey, who is accustomed to "doctoring" his data to suit his agenda, and to preserve his steady flow of funding and perks from the pharmaceutical industry.

The interview with Rhonda Atkins was similarly problematic. Atkins' solo appearance to promote involuntary hospital commitment and parental control of adult "mentally ill" children was not at all respectful of her daughter's right to self-representation. Already having subjected her daughter to large-scale public humiliation by describing her as "a manic-depressive substance abuser" on the show in her absence, the mother added insult to injury by proudly telling listeners that she had threatened another Florida state hospital (one of 13 her daughter has been locked up in) with unwanted media attention in order to pressure them to keep her daughter locked up there when the hospital wanted to discharge her.

As a formerly homeless young, queer woman who was diagnosed with several major mental disorders, and as a friend of many young clients very much like me, most of them lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender, who've found themselves hospitalized and drugged against their will, I take great offense to the absence of clients on shows like this to counter the claims of pharma-funded "family" groups like NAMI, abusive parents like Atkins and professional pro-forced-treatment, pro-institutionalization crusaders like Torrey. If you do invite Torrey back on the show for future stories, you owe it to your listeners to also invite an equally knowledgeable, forceful and articulate client activist from the grassroots movement of consumers, survivors and ex-patients could serve as a counterpoint, along with other guests, as you feel the story requires. I am available as a consultant (I have been working as an advocate for mental health clients' rights in the Bay Area for three years) and would be willing to be a guest on your show, as would many other clients from all over the U.S. (and other countries too). I would also be happy to connect you with clients who are involved in our growing grassroots movement, who have expertise on many different issues related to the mental health system. Just ask!

By making the effort to include clients' perspectives, I believe Democracy Now! will be much more balanced in its coverage of stories that affect clients' lives, and will likely gain a whole new listenership as well. If the National Institute of Mental Health's figures are to be believed, an estimated 44.3 million Americans ages 18 and older-about 1 in 5 adults-experience what could be diagnosed as a mental disorder in a given year -- and that's just the adults! Of course, some of us have been listening for awhile now, and we're waiting for you to do the right thing.

Thank you for listening, and please write back soon.

Delphine Brody
Oakland, CA