Mindfreedom Oral Histories: Ted Chabasinski J.D.

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Ted Chabasinski J.D.

Born: March 20 1937

 

Click here for contact information.

 

Currently Doing: Ted is working as the directing attorney for Mental

Health Consumer Concerns (MHCC).

 

Psychiatric Labels: Schizophrenia

 

Mental Health Experience: Shocked, Inpatient, Outpatient, Forced

Treatment, Raped, Restraints, Tortured, Solitary Confinement

 

Recovery Methods: Peer Support, Self-Help, Social Activism, One-on-one

Therapy, Group Therapy, Diet, Exercise, Art/Music, Family/Friends

 

Brief History: Psychiatrists and social workers had already decided

before I was born that I was going to be a mental patient. My natural

mother had been locked up just before she gave birth to me and was

locked up again soon after. The social worker from the Foundling

Hospital told my foster parents that my mother was " peculiar, " and

Miss Callaghan soon had them looking for symptoms in me, too. Every

month Miss Callaghan would come and discuss my " problems " with my

foster parents. If I only wanted to stay in the back yard with my

sister and make mud pies, this was a sign that I was too passive and

withdrawn, and my mommy and daddy were supposed to encourage me to

explore the neighborhood more. When I started to wander around the

neighborhood, I went to a neighbor's garden and picked some flowers.

The neighbor complained, and Miss Callaghan held a long session with

my parents about curbing my " hostile " impulses.

 

I knew that my foster parents were afraid of the Foundling Hospital

Lady. But I didn't understand why. Because it was only me she could

take back to the hospital. " If you're not a good boy, we'll take you

back to the hospital where we got you, " my mommy and daddy warned. But

sometimes they would make the hospital sound nice, the place where

they picked me out from all the other little boys and girls, though

they never explained why they picked me. My mommy and daddy pointed to

me and the nurse brought me out, wrapped in a blanket. And they took

me home to the Bronx.

 

When Miss Callaghan had discovered enough " symptoms, " I was sent to

the Bellevue children's psychiatric ward, to be officially diagnosed

and to be made an experimental animal for Doctor Bender. I was one of

the first children to be " treated " with electric shock. I was six

years old.

 

I won't go to the shock treatment, I won't! It took three attendants

to hold me. At first Doctor Bender herself threw the switch, but later

when I was no longer an interesting case, my tormenter was different

each time.

 

I wanted to die but I really didn't know what death was. I knew that

it was something terrible. Maybe I'll be so tired after the next shock

treatment I won't get up, I won't ever get up, and I'll be dead. But I

always got up. Something in me beyond my wishes made me put myself

together again.

 

I memorized my name, I taught myself to say my name. Teddy, Teddy, I'm

Teddy...I'm here, I'm here, in this room, in this hospital. And my

mommy's gone...I would cry and realize how dizzy I was. The world was

spinning around and coming back to it hurt too much. I want to go

down, I want to go where the shock treatment is sending me, I want to

stop fighting and die...and something made me live, and to go on

living I had to remember never to let anyone near me again.

 

I spent my seventh birthday this way, and my eighth and ninth

birthdays locked in a seclusion room at Rockland State Hospital. I had

learned the best way to endure this was to sleep as much as possible,

and sleeping was all I could do anyway. I was in a constant state of

exhaustion, and I began to have colds that lasted all year because the

more sadistic attendants would turn off the radiator and open the

window, even in December. Doctor Sobel said it was a sign of my

sickness that I didn't like fresh air.

 

Sometimes the attendants would leave the door to my room unlocked

while the rest of the kids went to the dining room. I would roam the

hall looking for something to read, something to look at, to play

with, anything that would make the time pass, anything I could use to

keep myself distracted. I would save part of my food and think for

hours of when I would eat it. Sometimes mice would run through the

room, along the walls, and I would watch them carefully and try not to

scare them. I wished that I were small enough to run under the door

like they could. Sometimes there was nothing in the room, nothing at

all, and I would lie on the mattress and cry. I would try to fall

asleep, but I couldn't sleep twenty-four hours a day, and I couldn't

stand the dreams.

 

I would curl into a ball, clutching my knees, and rock back and forth

on the mattress, trying to comfort myself. And I cried and cried,

hoping someone would come. I'll be good, I said. And the attendant

would stare at me unexpectedly through the little window with wires in

it so I couldn't break the glass and kill myself. Every few days,

Doctor Clardy would come in surrounded by attendants and tell me that

I had to learn how to " adjust. " " Well adjusted " was a phrase that

Doctor Clardy used often. By the age of ten, I had adjusted well to

being in solitary confinement.

 

And so I spent my childhood waking from nightmare to nightmare in

locked rooms with scraps of torn comic books and crusts of bread and

my friends the mice, with no one to tell me who I was. When I was

seventeen and the shrinks thought they had destroyed me, they set me free.

 

I was free.

 

Interviewer's Comments: Ted had been active in the psychiatric

survivors movement since 1971, and is a former SCI Board President. He

was the lead organizer of the 1982 campaign that successfully

persuaded Berkeley voters to ban shock treatment in the city. Amongst

his colleagues, Ted is known as a visionary, an articulate, tough, and

often witty speaker, and a man of substantial character.

 

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