Phoenix Rising

On January 19, 2011, in International Media articles, by Christopher J Sparks


Phoenix Rising: The Voice of the Psychiatrized
(1980 – 1990)

Phoenix Rising

Phoenix Rising, Myths of Mental Illness

The Psychiatric Survivor Archives of Toronto (PSAT) has made Phoenix Rising, an important zine published by ex-psychiatric inmates. From the letter Myths of Mental Illness by Carla McKague which led to the first issue:

The reason that all of us are here, .you and me, is a gigantic problem. Some of you are aware of the dimensions of the problem; some of you may not be fully aware. Let me start by giving you a little bit of an idea.

Right now, this moment, there are 50,000 Canadians in mental hospitals. Tomorrow, another 30,000 to 50,000 will be showing up either at out-patient clinics or at private psychiatrists’ offices. Every year 130,000 Canadians enter psychiatric institutions, and about two-thirds of them are coming back; they’ve been there before, and they’re back. At least one in ten Canadians can expect at some time in his or her life to spend time in a psychiatric institution. And, to switch to financial terms, the cost of maintaining those
institutions in Canada is approximately a million dollars a day. That’s the size of the problem we’re facing.

Now, I don’t know most of you sitting in front of me. I’m not sure why you’re here as individuals. I can make some guesses. Some of you are people who work professionally in the field of “mental illness”; you may be doctors, nurses or social workers who are concerned about the problem. Some of you are plainly and simply–and importantly–members of the
community who are aware that there’s a problem and would like to help do something about it. Some of you have had the experience yourselves of being patients, or have had someone
in your family have that experience. You’re probably concerned; you’re probably confused; you’re probably not quite sure what it is that’s happened to you, and why it’s happened,
and what you can do about it.

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2008 Mental Health Awareness Fair

On January 16, 2011, in Local Media articles, by Christopher J Sparks

Local video/photographer Dann Vazquez has uploaded footage of the 2008 Mental Health Awareness Fair put on by ServiceNet.

Northampton, MA – Mental Health Awareness Fair 2008 from Dann Vazquez on Vimeo.

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NAMI on C-SPAN

On January 13, 2011, in National Media articles, by Christopher J Sparks

Mental Health Laws in the US

While Mr. Fitzpatrick is undoubtedly more experienced and qualified than I am, I must disagree with his allusions to Civil Commitment laws as being the best primary gateway to treatment. However the context to which he is speaking is the lethal violence of an individual rather than the ideal for a community.

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Kollmorgen Parcel on the Block

On January 2, 2011, in Local Media articles, by Christopher J Sparks

From Northampton Media
By David Reid
Sunday, January 2, 2011

The day after Kollmorgen listed its 5-acre King Street parcel for $4 million, the U.S. Defense Department announced it had awarded the Electro-Optical Division a $41.2 million contract for a new generation of submarine masts.

Sixty years ago last month, the Kollmorgen Realty Corp. bought a 5-acre parcel on King Street for for $1 “and other valuable considerations” from the Boston & Maine Railroad. Last week, the company put the property on the commercial real estate market for $4 million.

The parcel now houses the Kollmorgen Corporation’s Electro-Optical Division, which plans to relocate its offices and manufacturing operations to 13.6-acre parcel off Route 66, on the site of the former Northampton State Hospital.

In 2009, the parent Kollmorgen Corporation bought the new headquarters for $1.65 million, and is reportedly spending $18 million on construction that is nearly done. The new facility at Hospital Hill contains about 150,000 square feet of modern manufacturing and office space, and plenty of room for the division’s approximately 390-person workforce.

Later this year, Kollmorgen’s Electro-Optical Division will move into a new $20 million facility off Route 66.

Last Tuesday’s listing of the King Street property – where the company makes periscopes, optical and imaging equipment for the U.S. Navy and other countries – came one day before the U.S. Department of Defense made a major announcement that signals good times ahead for the 195-year-old company.

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Agencies and consumers seek continued state aid

On December 31, 2010, in Local Media articles, by Christopher J Sparks

From The Republican
By Fred Contrada
Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Consumers and officials from the agencies that serve them turned out in force Wednesday to urge state officials not to cut their funding.

Secretary JudyAnn Bigby of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services made the trip to the Haskell Building at the former Northampton State Hospital campus for the second in a series of hearings aimed at helping her shape her fiscal 2012 budget.

Alan J. Klein, senior vice president of the Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps, said further cuts in state aid to his agency would affect the at-risk children it serves, as well as the workers it employs. Klein noted that the state has not increased the rate for the services his agency provides in six years.

The Executive Office of Health and Human Services oversees a wide variety of programs geared towards helping needy families, veterans, seniors and people with disabilities and mental health issues. The hearing was divided into four, one-hour sessions, each addressing a different area of service.

One of the agencies the office oversees is the Soldier’s Home of Holyoke, which last year saw a $900,000 cut restored that would have resulted in the closure of its outpatient services clinic.

Stephen B. Bernard, the chief financial officer for Health and Human Services, told the audience that the office will have to operate in 2012 without the federal stimulus money that gave it some breathing room this year.

Gov. Deval L. Patrick estimates that the absence of that federal money will contribute to up to a $2 billion gap in the state budget he is currently compiling. With fixed costs such as pensions and health care continuing to rise, Patrick has warned that all areas, including aid to cities and towns, could face cuts as he attempts to balance the fiscal 2012 budget.

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Robert Whitaker at MHC December 2

On November 28, 2010, in Events, by Christopher J Sparks

Author of Mad in America as well as Anatomy of an Epidemic Robert Whitaker is scheduled to speak at Mount Holyoke College on Thursday, December 2th at 7:30 at Cleveland Hall.

Mad in America

Mad in America

Robert Whitaker, an award-winning journalist and author best known for his work on mental illness, will speak at Mount Holyoke Thursday, December 2 at 7:30 pm in Cleveland L2. His lecture, titled “What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Rise of Mental Illness in America,” is open to the public.

While on campus that day, Whitaker will also lead a discussion in psychology professor Gail Hornstein’s first-year seminar, Understanding Mental Health, at 1:15 pm in Reese 324.

In his newest book published this past spring, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, Whitaker confronts a startling statistic: In the past 20 years, the number of Americans disabled due to mental illness has more than doubled–despite spending $40 billion each year on psychiatric medications.

“In media reports, we constantly hear these drugs being hailed as magic bullets, offering effective treatments for depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar illness, and a host of psychiatric conditions,” says Hornstein. “But Whitaker’s exhaustive review of the scientific literature of the past 50 years raises a profoundly troubling question: Do psychiatric medications increase the likelihood that people taking them, rather than being helped, are at risk of becoming chronically ill?”

Hornstein says Whitaker’s book is “important and controversial” and has been called “the Silent Spring of the pharmaceutical industry.”

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Leeds dam goes the way of Old Main

On November 13, 2010, in Local Media articles, by Christopher J Sparks

From The Republican
By Fred Contrada
Thursday, November 11, 2010

It’s exciting to live in a community where at least one person loves every single building, tree and rock. It’s even more fun if you’re a reporter.

And, so it was that I sat pen in hand as the Upper Roberts Meadow Reservoir dam went down with a bang and not a whimper at a Northampton Board of Public Works meeting shortly before Halloween.

The Upper Roberts Meadow Reservoir dam was enjoyable to write about because its name alone took up half the story. Henceforth, we will refer to it here only as “the dam.”

When it was built in 1883, it created a source of drinking water for Northampton. No one has drunk that water since 1905, however, and I’d managed to live here for 22 years without even knowing the dam existed.

My ignorance came to an end when Joe Misterka gave me a tour this past March. Misterka, who retired a few years ago as Northampton’s associate superintendent of schools, is on my Top 10 list of all-time favorite city officials, and his concern gave the issue instant credibility, at least to me.

The state wants the city to either take down or repair the dam, having given it its highest hazard rating. Repairing the dam would cost a little less than the approximately $1 million to tear it down, but the city figures it would take another $650,000 for upkeep over the next 50 years.
Friends (of the dam) said they were willing to foot the bill.

The city said, “Show me the money.”

 
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Hospital development finally taking hold

On October 5, 2010, in Local Media articles, by Christopher J Sparks

From The Republican
By Ellie Cook
Monday, October 4, 2010

Fall’s here, and with winter bearing down, projects race to the finish. If this most beautiful season proves long, work can go on right through November.

Village Hill, where the state hospital used to be (the R44 bus still has a Hospital Hill sign), has undergone a huge transformation in the past few years. At first it seemed that people were wary of buying into the new development, and the economy didn’t help.

But according to city businessman and longtime real estate agent Pat Goggins, the Kollmorgen Electro-Optical Corp. plant going up on the South Campus makes people more confident that the development will take hold. “The community has finally decided that it’s really going to happen up there,” he said last week.

He commented, as many have, on the development’s “walkability,” situated as it is about three-quarters of a mile from town, with its bike and walking paths.

Goggins, who is handling the marketing of new homes in the development, talked about the work along the eastern side of the North Campus on Olander Drive.

In the area called Morningside, four single-family houses have been built there, and all of them are now sold, the latest one early this month. Six more will be finished by early next summer; of those, four are “going into the ground in the next six weeks,” builder Jonathan Wright said last week. All six are under deposit, Goggins said. A total of 11 are planned, according to Wright.

Wright attributed the keener interest in those homes to the builders’ expanding the original two designs to seven, some of them “cottage” and “farmhouse” style – a bit smaller and less expensive. The cost ranges from $479,000 to $589,000.

The three four-condo townhouses, opposite Morningside, are two-thirds built. The first building is already entirely owner-occupied. The second is nearly finished, and two of those four condos are under deposit. Around the corner, the final building is set for a spring finish, with one condo already under deposit. They go for $269,000 to $379,000.

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Asylum Series

On October 1, 2010, in National Media articles, by Christopher J Sparks

From Speak Easy
By Alexandra Cheney
Friday, October 1, 2010

Photographer Christopher Payne spent the last seven years visiting and revisiting 70 abandoned state mental hospitals in 30 states, touring the grounds with janitors and getting purposefully locked in for hours at a time, all in the hopes of capturing the perfect picture.

Sometimes it took him five minutes to get the shot, other times, it took four separate visits during different seasons or times of day. The result, “Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals,” chronicles Payne’s travels through 180 color and black and white photographs.

“It’s the same cast of characters in a room,” Payne said. “It’s just a matter of shifting them six inches to the left or to the right.”

As the opening lecture in a three part series entitled “Arts in Mind,” Payne joined artist and 2006 MacArthur Fellow Anna Schuleit for “Elegies for Our Lost Asylums,” a three-hour presentation and conversation Wednesday night at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium.

The series was created to broaden the conversation on mental health issues, according to curator Joshua Wolf Shenk. Over 100 people were in attendance, many of whom work or worked in the health care field as nurses or doctors. There were even a couple of ex-patients.

“The hospitals were these bucolic, utopian settings that were self-sufficient, with towns that grew up around their asylums and took their names,” said Payne, “now, they’re ghost towns.” Trained as an architect, Payne became interested in shooting hospitals after visiting Pilgrim State Hospital in Brentwood, New York.

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Rumors

On September 17, 2010, in Local Media articles, by Christopher J Sparks

From The Amherst Bulletin
By Kathleen Mellen
Friday, September 17, 2010

About face: Installation artist Anna Schuleit spreads a ‘Rumor’ at UMass

There’s a new face on campus. It’s painted on the side of the Fine Arts Center at UMass, and it’s generating plenty of puzzlement: Why is it there? How did it get there? And why is it painted upside down?

Although there’s no key to this puzzle, and finding the answers won’t earn you extra credit, the artist who created the piece says she hopes it will stimulate curiosity and discussion on the University of Massachusetts campus in Amherst.

Anna Schuleit spent the last few weeks of summer painting the enormous, enigmatic portrait onto the pond-side facade of the Fine Arts Center, completing the task this week, just as students began to arrive back on campus.

“Just a Rumor” will be on view through November, at which time Schuleit will peel away the acrylic polymer paint she used, leaving no trace of the work she produced. It will be gone — forever.

That’s just fine with Schuleit.

“I don’t think this is about me and it’s not a spectacle,” Schuleit said in a recent interview on the UMass campus, while taking a break from her painting. “I’ve never made myself part of a project. I create works and I step out.”

Over the past decade, Schuleit, 36, has garnered much attention and praise for her innovative — and temporary — site-specific artwork.

Born in Germany, she moved to the United States when she was 16, attended the Northfield Mount Hermon School in Gill, and received a bachelor’s degree in painting in 1998 from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence. She splits her time between New York City and New Hampshire.

A MacArthur Fellow, she is also the recipient of many other awards, including fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard in Cambridge, the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, Yaddo and the Blue Mountain Center, both in New York, Bogliasco in Italy and the RISD European Honors Program in Rome.

In 2003, Schuleit created “Bloom,” in which she filled the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston with 28,000 flowers, and in 2007 she did extensive preparatory work for “Intertidal,” an outdoor installation on the Boston Harbor Islands that was commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, but canceled due to budgetary and scheduling restrictions. In 2009, Schuleit had her first solo show of paintings and works on paper at the Coleman Burke Gallery in New York City.

“Just a Rumor” is Schuleit’s first project in western Massachusetts since “Habeas Corpus,” her widely known sound installation “Magnificat” poured from the rooms of the Old Main building at the former Northampton State Hospital for a single day in 2000.

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