When Ken Steele founded Voices, he wanted to "accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative." The only voices he wanted to hear were those of other consumers-not the internal voices that plagued him for 30 years. For a man who was so badly treated by the mental health system, including by some consumers, Ken was amazingly willing to let bygones be bygones. Perhaps he got what he needed in the end-the right medication, therapy, housing, and employment. But that didn't stop Ken from advocating for the rights of his fellow consumers/survivors/ex-patients.
In recognition of Ken's efforts to erect one big tent for consumers and progressive providers, Voices has never published editorials that pitted one mental health group against another.
In this, our eighth anniversary issue, we continue that pattern of diversity with the following stories: David Gonzalez fasts against abuses in the psychiatric system; Kurt Sass saves himself from depression with ECT; and Patricia Deegan uses Intentional Care to improve treatment of consumers.
Cindy Sostchen presents perennially impolite poetry. South Beach Psychiatric Center's Wellness Community and the Brooklyn Mental Health Council's Creative Arts Therapy Committee agree that art, music, dance, and drama beat the blues with rainbow hues, hi C's, ballet slippers, and big finales.
We have profiles of consumers of every stripe, both dead and alive; Voices' history of multiplicity; a notice of a consumer forum with the NYC head of mental health; and columns by consumers and providers on the burning issues of the day, personal and political. We regret that our pages are never large enough to contain all the differences of opinion and the many individual stories that demand our attention.
Although we realize that a cohesive mental health system cannot be built on hundreds of thousands of individual cases alone-that would be anarchy-still, we find it counterproductive when any organization or group of organizations decides that it and it alone has cornered the truth about our well-being. Voices is about bringing consumers and providers together to work for common goals that benefit consumers.
Bringing people together is the purpose of our eighth anniversary celebration on October 4-"The Writes of Recovery and the Arts that Heal Mind, Body, and Soul." We're concerned not only about the recovery by individuals from mental illness. We recognize that consumers and progressive providers form a body politic that requires entertainment from time to time to relieve stress. Our mentors knew how to live it up and so should we!