Raising Doubts About Drugs  
"After two weeks, four mental health advocates are still on a hunger strike, protesting the widespread use of prescription drugs to treat mental illnesses and challenging psychiatrists to document their rationale for prescribing them..." - and the national press is starting to take notice, as evidenced by this August 29 story in the Washington Post, which is also reprinted at Common Dreams. A few days earlier Activist strikes over psychiatrists' faith in drug therapy appeared in the Eugene (Oregon) Register-Guard, profiling activist David Oaks, but news coverage in the mainstream press has generally been scarce, with the only coverage of the strike's early days appearing in local (California) sources. I learned of (and have kept up on) the hunger strike through the e-mail alert service available through Mind Freedom, the activist organization Oaks is closely affiliated with. At their web site, there's a long page indexing a wide variety of materials related to the action, such as the strikers' official statement of demands, the text of a cover letter sent from hunger strikers to APA, NAMI & Office of Surgeon General, biographies and photos of the participants, an index of news stories and daily updates. There's also a web site by the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights and an index of links on "the debate" underlying the strike and reactions to it, including a number of documents not available through the Mind Freedom site.  
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People with serious mental illness see this election as a matter of life or death (Canada)
Canada Newswire story - " 'This election is about life or death for people with serious mental illness,' says Neil McGregor, President, Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), Ontario. 'Overburdened services, long waiting lists, and suicides because help isn't available are what people with mental illness and their families face after more than 10 years with no increase to the operating budgets of community mental health services.' Since 1992, demand for mental health services in Ontario has increased at a pace three times faster than demand for any other type of health care. Nineteen ninety-two was also the last year that community mental health programs received a core budget increase. The result? Seventy percent of people with mental illness don't get help. This is why CMHA, Ontario, together with the thirty-three CMHA branches across the province, wants mental health to be on the agenda for this election." See also the new section of the CMHA web site - Ontario Election Centre: Make mental health front and centre during the election, which includes a document How to Get Involved, an election newsletter and other resources.  
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Mental health care for U.S. children poor
Washington Times story - "Thousands of U.S. parents have given the state custody so their children can get mental health treatment but some are held in deplorable conditions. The General Accounting Office found about 12,700 children in 19 states were placed in child welfare or juvenile justice systems to receive mental health services. Federal officials said they had found deplorable conditions in many state institutions where children were supposed to receive mental health treatment..."  
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