Tom Behrendt Papers
The attorney Tom Behrendt has worked for years in the cause of civil rights for people with mental disabilities. A past president and long-time member of the Board of Directors of the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy, Behrendt served previously as Legal Director of the Connecticut Legal Rights Project and he was a founding member of the Special Litigation and Appeals Unit of the Mental Hygiene Legal Service in New York. Behrendt’s involvements have included work with organizations such as Project Release, the Free Association, Advocacy Unlimited, and PAIMI (Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness).
The collection consists of a wide array of publications and documents relating the psychiatric survivors movement and Behrendt’s advocacy work. In addition to materials relating to NARPA conferences and a long run of NARPA’s newsletter, The Rights Tenet, the collection includes newsletters and other materials relating to the movement and issues such as electroconvulsive therapy.
Background on Tom Behrendt
A lawyer and advocate for people with mental illness (sometimes referred to as consumers, clients, survivors, ex-patients or ex-inmates), Tom Behrendt was active in the psychiatric survivors movement starting in the 1970s, and continues to work on behalf of disability rights today. He served as President and later long-time board member of the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA), which published The Rights Tenet and holds annual conferences. He also worked with the New York State Mental Hygiene Legal Services, the Connecticut Legal Rights Project, Project Release, and other advocacy groups. He had regular correspondences with Cynthia “Kalisa†Miller, a prominent figure in the psychiatric survivors’ movement, and is associated with other activists such as Marilyn Rice, Linda Andre, and Alice M. Earl.
Contents of Collection
Comprised mainly of publications, correspondence, ephemera, and to some extent legal and government documents, the Tom Behrendt Papers focus on issues relating to the psychiatric survivors movement, particularly deinstitutionalization, housing, involuntary commitment and treatment, Psychopharmaceuticals, and the controversial Electro-convulsive treatment (ECT), commonly called electro-shock or shock therapy. It also addresses the split between the more radical, anti-psychiatry faction and mainstream activists, specifically disagreements over the nature of mental illness (reaction to societal pressure versus chemical imbalance), proper treatment (the peer support and self-help movements versus the medical model and traditional psychiatry), as well as protection and advocacy laws.
Publications, including titles such as Dendron News, Madness Network News (published by Project Release), the Radical Therapist (also known as RT, the Rough Times, and State and Mind), Peer Advocate, and Phoenix Rising, make up a large portion of the collection, spanning from the 1970s to the early 2000s. The collection also contains newsletters, articles, correspondence, and ephemera from several advocacy groups. These include the Alliance for the Liberation of Mental Patients (ALMP); Psychiatric Survivors of Western Massachusetts, which published Peer Advocate; the National Association of Psychiatric Survivors, formerly the National Alliance of Mental Patients; Project Release, which published Madness Network News and organized demonstrations against the International Conference on Electroconvulsive Therapy; National Association of Psychiatric Survivors (NAPS), formerly the National Alliance of Mental Patients (NAMP); Committee for Truth in Psychiatry (CTIP);Support Coalition International, later MindFreedom, which published Dendron; the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI); and the Mental Health Law Project. Also included are conference materials spanning several years from NARPA as well as the International Conference on Human Rights and Against Psychiatric Oppression.
The Tom Behrendt Papers also contain materials related to the Advisory Board to the New York
City Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Alcoholism Services. This includes documents, correspondence, and reports from the Inter-Agency Task Force on deinstitutionalization. There are also legal resources from the New York Civil Liberties Union, government initiatives pertaining to Mental Health issues, and correspondence with the White House. In addition, Behrendt kept records of court cases, briefings, and other legal documents from his work with Project Release and the Mental Hygiene Legal Services, as well as a collection of peer-reviewed articles from the American Bar Association, the American Psychological Association, and other journals.
A notable component of the collection are transcripts from the Association for the Preservation of Anti-Psychiatric Artifacts (APAPA), which document broadcastings of the Madness Network on WBAI radio, as well as interviews with prominent figures in the Psychiatric Survivors movement, such as Judi Chamberlin, Marilyn Rice, Leonard Roy Frank, Rae Unzicker, and Howard “Howie the Harp†Geld. The collection also holds a unique compilation of poetry, short stories, and other literature about mental illness.
This notebook most likely belonged to Tom Behrendt, related to his work with NARPA, the Connecticut Legal Rights Project, or other advocacy groups.
Administrative information
Access
The collection is open for research.
Language:
English
Provenance
Gift of Tom Behrendt, 2015.
Processing Information
Processed by Anne Frances Moore, June 2018.
Copyright and Use (More information
)
Cite as: Tom Behrendt Papers (MS 870). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.