Mental Health Advocacy Origin

Advocacy for health care in general owes its origins to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, which helped improve health care availability to all people, regardless of ethnic background. Perhaps the strongest stimulus for the mental health advocacy movement that developed in the 1980s was the shortcomings of the typical antipsychotic medications. Although side effects associated with these medications, particularly tardive dyskinesia (TD), had been described in the literature as early as 1958, they were unrecognized by the field of psychiatry until the late 1970s. In the 1980s, through a combination of malpractice suits and advocacy efforts, serious side effects, such as TD, began attracting wide attention. Impetus for the mental health care advocacy movement also came from other debilitating side effects associated with older medications. The potential of these agents to cause irreversible involuntary movements was among the concerns of advocacy groups. Some believe that without the advocacy and lobbying efforts of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), Clozaril®, the first of the "atypical" antipsychotic agents, may not have been introduced in the US.

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By uniting patients and health care providers, as well as a variety of other supporters, advocacy groups have helped shape the policies and services that have improved the lives of patients with mental illness. One principal idea underlying their efforts is patient empowerment, a growing trend in which patients are encouraged to reject the role of being a passive recipient of services from the “all-knowing” physician. Rather, they are urged to be an active, knowledgeable, equal partner in the treatment process. Policies to encourage this trend include legislation introduced in 2001 that established regional consumer-run support centers to assist governmental and private organizations in developing peer-support activities. Thus, over the past two decades, the advocacy movement has promoted widespread changes in public attitude that have resulted in improved relationships with providers, improved treatment access, increased private and public funding, and new research into the causes of mental illness and its treatment.