Overview

In 1978, not long after her College graduation, Elizabeth A. Richter experienced a temporary breakdown which led to a misdiagnosis and hospitalization of a little over two years at one of the foremost psychiatric hospitals in the country--McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA. The roots of Elizabeth's emotional distress lay in the early loss in high school of her little brother, Henry, who was born with multiple malignant brain tumors. Further, Elizabeth was marginalized, scapegoated and abused by a family deeply affected by her mother's drug and alcohol abuse and her father's history in the holocaust.While at McLean, Elizabeth endured the darker aspect of life in a psychiatric facility in the late 70s--a lengthy hospitalization far beyond what was necessary, treatment that disregarded her reasons for being there, and the inevitable abuses that emerged from the major power imbalances between staff and patients.

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9781495485633

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Elizabeth A. Richter is a long-time advocate for human rights and disability rights within the mental health system and the family court system. She is a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College with a B.A. in English, a graduate of the Harvard Extension School with an M.L.A. in English and American Literature and language, and she received her teaching certificate in Secondary Education in the field of English at UMASS/Harbor Campus. She has been certified as an ADA Advocate by Dr. Karin Huffer of Equal Access Associates and Advocacy Unlimited in Hartford. Elizabeth is a psychiatric survivor who was misdiagnosed and hospitalized at Harvard Affiliated McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA from 1978-1980. As a freelance writer, she has published a number of articles on the experience of being labeled with a psychiatric disability. She is a former member of the Board of Directors of Volunteers in Psychotherapy and the Mental Health Association of Connecticut. For twelve years she was an adjunct instructor in the English Department at Tunxis Community College in Farmington, CT and also ran a small veterinary pathology service. Currently, she is a single mother of three children and lives in CT with her partner, Sherif.

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