Michael Sabourin: Public Comments re: Closure of VSH Canteen

Upon my request, Michael Sabourin e-mailed me the following written comments of his that he shared during today's VSH canteen press conference held by advocates and concerned citizens:

I’m Michael Sabourin and I have been the patient representative at Vermont State Hospital since March. My son was a patient at VSH for a year. When I told him last night that the canteen was supposed to close he replied, I love the canteen. That’s were people meet - especially when it’s to cold to go outside.

The canteen has proven itself a vital place for patients. As a former patient commented, “it is an oasis of informality.” For long term patients, it is an important adjustment to the “real world”.

The patients I have spoken with are upset by the news of the canteen closing. Eliminating it would be disheartening, demoralizing, and dehumanizing.

A couple of days ago a recently admitted patient said to me that he was looking forward to visiting the canteen. I hope that in the future patients will still have that option.

Rep. Anne Donahue: Public Comments re: Closure of VSH Canteen

The following is by way of an e-mail via State Representative Anne Donahue in response to my request for an electronic copy of the print version she had available at today's VSH canteen press conference held by advocates and concerned citizens:

Advocacy Coalition Holding Press Conference & Protest re: VSH Canteen Closure

(cross-posted to Green Mountain Daily, here)

*Updated* (updated information posted, below first item)

From an advocate's e-mail concerning a press conference, followed by a protest, planned for Friday, November 6, 2009 at the Vermont State House beginning at 12:15 PM:

The baleful influence of Big Pharma

Yesterday's New York Times covers an issue that Vermont patients' rights advocates have been trying to address for years. NAMI, a national organization that attacks the patients' rights movement and the very concept that anyone would have the right to refuse treatment by labeling mental illnesses as "brain diseases", received almost $23 million from the drug industry in the last three years, almost three quarters of its funding.

Psychiatrists to Big Pharma: Get Lost!

Great piece in Sunday's Times Argus about how two psychiatrists responded to the blandishments of Schering-Plough, one of the big drug companies, this year.

Vermont legislators have long recognized the corrupting effect, and intent, of payoffs to doctors by the drug companies:

State plans to close VSH canteen

Picture this: you're scooped up out of your apartment and taken against your will to the Vermont State Hospital. Waterbury. You've heard of it before, but now you're there. You don't know anybody there, you have to eat and drink whatever food they serve you, and you're stuck in the building twenty-four hours a day.

Eventually you start doing what they want you to do, mainly taking meds, and they give you off-ward rights. One of those rights, which is built into a lot of patients' treatment plans, is the right to go to the Canteen. It's not fancy, but maybe you can get some potato chips or order a sandwich or a burger; maybe you'll listen to the juke box or watch cable news on TV; maybe you just want to be off the ward for a little while. Believe it or not, the Canteen is so important it's written into Vermont statutes.

Robert Guy Mandatta (aka Butch Ponzio): You Can't Drown Love

Special Reprint

YOU CAN'T DROWN LOVE!

By Robert "Butch" Ponzio

Vermont's first documented mental patient was a successful politician and young lawyer named Richard Whitney. Although little is known about his Massachusetts childhood, before turning thirty he not only had moved to the Green Mountains, he also had become Vermont's Secretary to the Governor and Council, a prestigious and powerful position. When his term expired in 1804 Whitney established a promising law practice in Brattleboro. For the next several years he became a prominent figure in the community, but by his late thirties Whitney’s behavior reportedly had become so bizarre that he had to be physically confined in nearby Hinsdale, New Hampshire.