The place of users

by Claude Deutsch 2003
Psychoanalyst, Caen Advocacy France

A mechanical translation from French to English using Bing

ARTICLE PLAN

An international movement
And in France?
Attacking the fortress...
Demystifying mental illness
Conclusion

In France, the creation of social security will put users of the healthy situation of managers of health through unions spending. Trade unions will become actors and build partnerships of which the best known is the National Federation of the sick, infirm and paralysed (FNMIP) secreted by the CGT and mobilized at the start on the issue of the fight against tuberculosis. The FNMIP has become in recent years the WFH (Federation of the sick and disabled). Managers associations will federate in order to become recognized and essential government interlocutors. Using as core Congregational medium, they create the UNIOPS (Union nationale inter federal private sector health and social works). The UNIOPS is both national interlocutor and local interlocutor through regional URIOPS and the departmental UDOPS. This good idea mounting the will position of strength at the time of decentralization. The UNIOPS intend to assume both a function of 'meta-representation': it unites, the major federations UNAPEI, AFSEA, FNARS, etc., and a function of representation for associations that are federated through it, small, the "no grades", congregations, associations combating poverty.

2 This dual mission is at the same time its weakness, because it causes the tightness in his own action. It cannot evoke the UNIOPS not to mention François Bloch-Lane, figure remarkable foresight and commitment which the 1969 report is a cornerstone in the history of social and medico-social sector and who presided over the destiny of the UNIOPS for many years.

3 Family associations on their side somewhat in the same way, gather the UNAF coordinating departmental UDAF and representatives at the national level.

4 The UDAF are natural home and federation of associations of parents, including in our sector (UNAPEI UNAFAM including). They develop services that will override the deficient families to manage family allowances and benefits of State by CAF (guardianship for adult social benefits), then by extension, exercise of guardianship and curatorship at the major protected, in the wake of the 1968 Act. The ADAPEI create Associations of guardianship to major protégés (ATMP). Other associations Finally, little or less related to the UNAFAM or backups, will be required to substitute for families in the management of the concerned property, in the civil proceedings with sometimes a real know-how teaching.

An international movement

5 The release is also seen to arise on the basis of the Universal Declaration of rights of man, the United Nations, UNESCO and WHO. Mental health is no slouch that generates the World Federation of Mental Health, and we have seen the role that Paul Sivadon played. The World Federation of Mental Health was founded in London on August 19, 1948. The first President was Margaret Mead known for its work in the framework of the school thrived and author of morality and sexuality in Oceania, teens in Samoa.

6 For more than fifty years, his real inspiration was Eugène Brody who was expert in Nuremberg and who recounted with simplicity his childhood with a schizophrenic mother. The World Federation of Mental Health claims two roots. On the one hand labour activist Clifford Beers, former psychiatric patient, to reform the conditions of care in asylums, secondly, the action of Adolph Meyer who created the international mental hygiene Committee and organized the 1st Congress Washington mental hygiene in 1930 where he gathered 3,000 people from 53 countries. The second took place in Paris in 1937.

7 En Europe, la Ligue européenne de la san- té mentale date de 1926 et pris l'initiative du 1er congrès d'après guerre, d'où naîtra la Fédération mondiale. C'est Edith Morgan, vice-présidente de la Fédération mondiale pour la Région européenne qu prit l'initiative d'intégrer la Ligue euro- péenne de santé mentale dans la Fédération mondiale de santé mentale et elle devient officiellement en 1983 Conseil régional européen de la Fédération mon- diale de santé mental

7 In Europe, the European League for mental health dates from 1926 and taken the initiative to the 1st Congress after the war, hence was born the World Federation. It is Edith Morgan, Vice-President of the World Federation for the European Region who took the initiative to integrate the European League for mental health in the World Federation of mental health, and it officially became in 1983 European regional Council of the World Federation of mental health.

It was an organization in seven regions: North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia, Oceania. In 1997, the regional Council of the World Federation of mental health adopts new associative status under the name of health mental Europe in order to be recognized as a partner by the European Commission.

In 1990 however, the World Federation of mental health lives a split and the World Association of psychosocial rehabilitation was born in Vienna in France.

10 It is indeed, Jacques Dubuis which will long be the Secretary-General. The PAAA is probably more francophone and hence, more accessible to the French than the WFMH. This is Gaston Harnois, a Canadian, who is the linchpin. There alongside her Italian Benedeto Saraceno, Greek Stylios Styhanidis, French Alain Pascual. It was in 1995 in Lille on the occasion of a Congress organized by Jean-Luc Roelandt that is based the PRTC (French Committee of psychosocial rehabilitation) chaired first by Gilles Vidon, then by Denis Leguay. The PAAA advocates a policy of sector. It is in my opinion much more inspired by the psychiatric spirit as WFMH. It is adherent to the French Federation of Psychiatry.

11 Two world associations are going to compete with these two there in the who lobbying: the World Association of Psychiatry whose strong character is Norman Sartorius and the World Association for social psychiatry.

12 From birth, therefore, the World Federation of Mental Health is committed to taking the word of the user account. Anglo-Saxon speak on the subject of Advocacy which refers not to a legal approach as the French lawyer might suggest, but to 'ad-vocare', etymologically ' talk side of ', 'supporting the floor '.

13 It is instructive to observe that in countries where the Advocacy approach of solidarity, is strong, the guardianship, the equivalent of our guardianship, is not widespread. Should be noted and stressed that this practice of guardianship - or curatorship - which allows to replace the person is an exception in the proportions that it reached in France.

It is natural that the CRE will be partner and support of the European Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry from its birth in 1991. It is formed at a first Conference in Zanfort in the Netherlands and other Congress followed, including in Elsinore, in London, Luxembourg, etc.

15 Le Réseau européen des usagers et survivants de la psychiatrie, in English European Network of Usersand Survivors of Psychiatry (ENUSP), has long had a permanent secretariat in Holland held successively by Vouter van Der Graaf, Jan Dirk van Habshoffen, Clemens Huitink. Since the departure of Clemens, the secretariat is provided voluntarily in Berlin by Peter Lehman. The Presidency is, however, it is ensured for several years by a Hungarian, Gabor Gombes. Why this name of users and survivors of Psychiatry? The explanation provided by Iris Holing is clear. Users are those who benefit from psychiatric care, the survivors are those who challenge the good founded of Psychiatry. One and the other have their place in the network. The term "survivors" bumped the French. Perhaps is meant it thinking about the "experience of the end of the world into madness" of Tosquelles.

16 The Network, as they say for short, had a newspaper held since the Sweden by Maths Jesperson. I do not know if it still exists.

17 At the global level, the network has its equivalent around Judi Chamberlin. Europeans, Karl Bach Jansen, Danish, and Iris H”ling, German already cited, play a major role. Finally, I would like to cite the work of Jo‰l Slack who was long assigned by the Governor of Alabama to develop associations of users and who founded International Respect.

And in France?

18 As we have seen, there are two major streams: the first is based on the utopian anarchist tradition, which has joined without hesitation the social and democratic Catholicism. This tradition is also at the origin of the cooperative movement of mutual savings banks. Marc Sangnier will create the French League of youth hostels.

Comme nous l'avons vu, il y a deux grands courants : le premier est issu de la tradition anarchiste utopique, auquel s'est joint sans hésiter le catholicisme social et démocratique. Cette tradition sera par ailleurs à l'origine du mouvement coopératif des mutuelles, des caisses d'épargne. Marc Sangnier créera la Ligue française des Auberges de jeuness

19 A movement of which there is little compared to the revolution that it has caused should be cited here: it is ATD Fourth World. Thanks to Joseph Wresinski and sociologists that he coached, as Jean Labbens, it now recognizes the existence of a culture of the fourth world. It is recognized that it is a world. One speaks of the people of the misery that takes the floor (and this, at the beginning of the 1960s) and in doing so, covers his dignity. "Such as they are, said Jean Labbens, the poor have individual role or collective role. The company mainly offers them relationships of individual aid without further consideration that to use it imposes, it creates them a situation of personal dependence without return... Need them recognition, security, freedom independent always possible individual failures and collective measurement of their environment. Ż

20 This speech is a political commitment. A few years after the Maos will claim the motto of "serving the people".

21 The antiauthoritarian claim is not sufficient to account for the creation of the Groupe information asile [GIA: Group for information on asylums] after 1968. Other events will contribute.

22 Maud Mannoni organizes in 1966 [October 1967] the Symposium on the alienated child. It combines both Lacan and Oury, Winnicott and the English antipsychiatres Laing and Cooper.

23 It is fashionable today to reject the anti-psychiatry to reason that it would have confused the social alienation and insanity and claimed that it was enough to make the revolution to solve the pain of living. Indeed, Cooper will say these days:

"Ce que je vise n'est rien d'autre que la libération de celui qui vient me trouver. Cette libération peut prendre des formes très diverses et trouver un sens dans des engagements politiques, c'est-à-dire dans la transposition sociale d'un problème personnel."

"What I aim for is nothing other than the liberation of those who consult me. This libertion can take very diverses forms and can find meaning in political commitments, that is to say, in the social transposition of a personal problem."

But it is disregard of the importance of their existentialist and phenomenological research.

24 R. Laing writes:

"En tant que psychiatre, je me suis heurté dès l'abord à une difficulté majeure : comment m'approcher des patients si le langage psychiatrique dont je disposais les tenait à l'écart de moi? Comment démontrer la signification humaine de leur état si les mots dont on use sont spécifiquement conçus pour isoler et circonscrire la signification de la vie d'un patient en en faisant une entité clinique particulière? Regarder et écouter un patient, voir en lui des 'signes' de schizophrénie et le regarder et l'entendre simplement comme un être humain sont des manières de le voir et de l'écouter aussi différentes que celle qui, dans la figure ambigu‰ font voir tantôt un vase, tantôt deux visages."

"as a psychiatrist, I struck at the outset to a major challenge: how to approach me of patients if the psychiatric language I had taken them away from me? '' How to demonstrate the human condition meaning if the words we use are specifically designed to isolate and identify the meaning of the life of a patient in making a particular clinical entity? Watch and listen to a patient, see him as 'signs' of schizophrenia and watch it and hear it simply as a human being are ways to see and listen to it as different than that in ambiguous figure are sometimes see a vase, sometimes two faces."

25 At the same time, are published in France the book by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz Le mythe de la maladie mentale [Myth of Mental Illness] and a book by Erving Goffman, Asiles [Asylums] The sociologist Goffman was hospitalize in psychiatry to explore the social condition of the mentally ill. It defines the psychiatric hospital as totalitarian institution. At the same time, the work of Basaglia to Parma, and then especially in Trieste begins to be known.

26 The phenomenological English, even if they take a revolutionary speech is in no way comparable to positions very social and political movement of Italian democratic Psychiatry which will cause the vote of the 1980 Act. Caen Italian practice is well-known thanks to Maurizio Costantino. Rotelli which took the rest of Basaglia and is close enough to the PAAA.

27 Jean Aymé rightly sees the ASEPSI, and I add for my part the route association, as heir both of this movement than the GT Psy.

28 Jean-François Reversi, founder of the association for the study and promotion of the intermediate structures, thus defines them in the days of June 1979 Orsay: "by intermediate structures, we have therefore defined any creation of a community on a small scale, inserted space to the maximum in social life and which could be used in all situations of break with it, conduct a stay in an institution.an original uprooting, social or psychiatric invalidation or a distress situation. "Today, the ASEPSI, chaired by Jean-Marc Antoine, remains the unifier of the places of life which the Coral of Sigala is the best-known, the signifier space intermediate well scoring filiation in the teaching of Winnicott. Life also claim the heritage of Fernand Deligny. It has created Monoblet in Gard, a community of life with autistic children. He is known for having created la Grande Cordée, wrote Gary Clark, the effective Vagabonds, we and the Innocent. Its rigor ("Should always be strung up like a rainbow", he'd say), had no equal as its capacity and taken account of the other in its difference.

29 If, as pointed out Robert Castel, asylums Psychiatry appears to a lot in the years 60/70, as the paradigm of the totalitarian to destroy institution (and not only among the leftists), the creation of the information asylum (GIA) group, is part of a general movement.

30 At the same time develop the MLAC (movement for abortion and contraception) which will see his victory consecrated by the Veil law in 1975, GIHP (information of handicapped grouping), which today is structured into Manager association of resources for accessibility, including adapted buses, and GIP (Groupe information prisons). The GISTI was immigrant workers and the GITS was the information of social workers group. Announced by the Bloch-lane report, the mutation quantitative and qualitative social work - educators and social workers professionals - is highlighted by a book that will have a big impact: the special issue of the spirit of May 1972 review coordinated by Philippe Meyer (the radio): "why social work? This book clearly the question of the ethics of social work through the case of Besançon (two educators condemned for refusing to denounce a young) and l'affaire Josette D'Escrivain, a social worker fired after reporting to the Embassy American case of a prisoner in Fresnes in depression following ill-treatment. "In the service of that are we?", written Josette of Escrivain. "Can we practise our professions without denouncing the unacceptable? '' To what extent are we related to the employer? Are we the auxiliaries of power whatsoever? Ż

Attacking the fortress...

31 Today, thirty years after, on 2 January and 4 March 2002 laws protect the person who denounces unacceptable facts in its service. The number 1 of the journal social field, in article "worker solidarity social-user". "It is necessary that the social worker radically changes its position in the relationship with the user: it is necessary that he was abandoning the paternalistic position of superior at the bottom and that it adopts the position of technician collaborator, equals.". Saying technician social legislation, it must demystify its role as representative of the company. "It will use the information available to it for the service of the user and not for Administration: the file will be written with him as well as the various reports requested by the administration. The Act of January 4, giving access to the patient's record, is the same logic. To get there, it will be AIDS. Although the tone hardens one number to another, especially on the issue of sexuality and homosexuality, social field uses a vocabulary significantly less radical that its equivalent in Psychiatry crazy custody including the title of the number 6 is no more and no less "for a new balance of power in psychiatry. I quote: "wanting to change a report's forces, it is first know what it is going to tackle. And there should not be any illusions, the fortress psychiatric is not anything... Still standing and solid, and armed with a formidable internal logic. And yet vivid enough to push out its tentacles in the form of sector institutions. Then keep it extend, make his seat (inside and outside) and destroy it without allowing him to swarm into all the winds, this is the project ones (we are...) who take now this fortress. Ż

32 At the same time, the authors (among them, Jacques Hassoun, Jean-Pierre Winter), warned against the earth-shattering denunciations and advocate modest tools. What is humor?

33 De même que les handicapés ont leur journal Handicapés méchants, les malades mentaux créent Psychiatrisés en lutte. Dans le numéro 1, d'avril 1975, Philippe Bernardet fait état de la disparition des psychiatres :

" Le GIA a été fondé il y a cinq ans par un groupe de quelques internes en psychiatrie. Au départ, il s'agis- sait d'exprimer la révolte des soi-disant soignants devant les excès des institutions sans toutefois les remettre en cause. Dès que des tentatives dans cette direction apparurent, on vit disparaître en gros, puis un par un, discrètement, les élèves psychiatres. Lorsqu'il ne resta plus de psychiatres au GIA, celui-ci alla s'installer à Censier où il fut un moment soutenu par quelques intellectuels psychanalysants du CERFI [Centre d'études, de recherches et de formation institutionnelles] (rattaché à la clinique de La Borde) qui tentèrent de récupérer son énergie mobilisatrice. S'échappant de Censier, le GIA recommença ensuite ses activités à Jussieu. Très vite, il apparut que l'action allait connaître des limites. Le GIA éclata en groupes de quartiers. Cet éclatement offrait un double intérêt : éviter que des groupuscules politiques s'emparent du GIA et, en forçant les militants à avoir une politique de rue, les contraindre à abandonner le vocabulaire pseudo scientifique. L'autre intérêt était de susciter par l'existence de groupes multiples, autant de pratiques différentes."

Persons with disabilities have their journal Handicapés méchants, the mentally ill create Psychiatrisés en lutte. Number 1, April 1975, Philippe Bernardet reported the disappearance of psychiatrists:

"The GIA was founded five years ago by a group of a few interns in psychiatry. Initially, it was to express the revolt of so-called caregivers over the excesses of institutions without however jeopardising. As soon as attempts in this direction appeared, one lives disappear, then one by one, discreetly, psychiatrists students. When he remained more psychiatrists to the GIA, it moved to Censier where it was supported by some intellectuals psychanalysants the CERFI (attached to the clinic of La Borde) which attempted to recover its mobilizing power. Escaping from Censier, the GIA then began its activities at Jussieu. Very quickly, it appeared that the action would know limits. The GIA broke out into groups of districts. This burst provided a double interest: avoid that political factions seize the GIA and, by forcing the militants to have a policy of street, forcing them to abandon scientific nickname vocabulary. Another interest was cause by the existence of multiple groups, as many different practices."

34 What Philippe Bernardet does not say is that one of the reasons the burst - and not least - is the violence of tone of the members between them and that the fragmentation of groups will discredit the GIA, some relying on its behalf to illegal, or even violent and inadmissible actions. Philippe Bernardet will give its business a legal form and specializes in appeals to the European Court of the human rights where he obtained some successes in cases of hospitalization under duress. He published Black of psychiatric hospitalization records and more recently with Corinne Vaillant and Thomas Douraki Psychiatry, human rights and defence of consumers in Europe. And finally with Catherine Derivery, enclose them all. His thesis of doctorate in history of science is for title history of the evolution of coercion in Psychiatry in France from 1945 to the present day. Taking the Presidency of a dispersed GIA André Bitton stays the course of a legal policy.

35 Meanwhile, the CERFI will give rise to the House of chimeras, the magazine founded by Félix Guattari, that hosts the Club des Impatients and close psychiatrists of USP (Trade Union of Psychiatry) lead an interesting research work in the context of CEDEP (European Committee, law, ethics and Psychiatry) chaired by Claude Louzoun.

36 A patient or former patient, user, patient, has the idea of creating an association in the sphere of the Network and the GIA unlike which him lies in the challenge, can be a citizen mutual assistance association. It is psychologist by training, paid in computing, Loïc Le Goff recruited from within the GIA Bernard Franck and Patrick Laude and creates the APSA l'Association des Psychotiques Stabilisés Autonomes (Association of psychiatric stabilized autonomous) in 1989.

37 APSA is defined as psychiatry human rights association: "the symbolic benefit of joining an association of former patients taking their business in hand is for the outgoing of institution: a qualitative leap that changes the status of institutional purpose to the status of citizen subject", said the presentation of the APSA, which continues: "the goal of this project is therefore to allow topics ex-psychiatrises not to permanently enter an association institutional ideal that would become sprawling but allow to. citizens to fit into the social reality of their cultural association without creating new ghettos. Ż

Le Goff will lead a fierce fight against article 20 of the law on bioethics which specifies that "the genetic makeup of a person cannot be amended except if required by the interest of it". Lo‹c Legoff creates in May 1992 the FNAPSY Fédération Nationale des Associations d'usagers en PSYchiatrie (National Federation of the associations of patients and former patients psy) with Jacques Lombard, Hélène Laure Mora and France Cassagne Méjean.

Demystifying mental illness

39 Jacques Lombard is president of the association revived in Jouy-en- Josas. Framework for Air France retired, he created this association in the hope of promoting a day hospital to combat depression. France Cassagne Méjean and Hélène Laure are respectively President and Vice- President of the Association for the better be the existence, soul in Montpellier. Hélène Laure was hospitalized more than twenty years in extremely difficult conditions. It tells of his journey in a book very touching true story of crazy.

40 This federation has for purposes of, I quote:

41 "-Regroup the French associations of patients and former patients working for mutual assistance, protection and defence of the interests of their members;

facilitate the action and the development of the associations members;
assist in the creation of associations of patients and former patients having similar motivated;
disseminate information to the public by all appropriate means.

Each of the associations Member of the Federation retains its specificity and its autonomy.

42 Our Federation has very broad goals for the defence of the solidarity, understanding and mutual cooperation in all their forms.

43 Associations that make up the Federation have already acted, are acting and will act to demystify mental illness and mental differences with public opinion, the entourage and the families of patients. Ż

44 Unfortunately, Lo‹c Legoff died suddenly of sudden death in April 1993 on the sidewalk outside his home.

45 Jacques Lombard replaces it to the Presidency of the FNAPSY.

46 His designs are significantly more consumerist and less militant and socially responsible than those of Lingala. It challenges the Network that he described as anti-psychiatry group. It is therefore with Hélène Laure that I host in February 1995, at the request of Karl Bach Jansen, the first (and only) European seminar of WUAs in France at the Philippe-Paumel centre with the support of Gérard Massé, of the support Mission in mental health and the effective presence of Jean-Luc Roelandt, but especially Laurence Lefèvre charged in mission of Psychiatry at the Directorate-General of health of the Ministry of the same name. The idea was to bring the French from the experience of the associations of users of the countries of the Northern Europe much more developed than our embryonic French associations at the time. It was an event that the Ministry also clearly manifest his interest in WUAs which it press the inevitable development and he wants as a counterweight to the medical power.

47 It is in this function of the interlocutor of the Ministry that the FNAPSY will specialize, leaving the action of land to its member associations.

48 Jacques Lombard merit is to have wanted an enlargement of the FNAPSY and after a first meeting on 14 May 1994, the General Assembly opens Sept. 24, its Board of Directors to new associations: AUSER, AFTOC, found wire, Revivre Côte-d'Or, the different look of Rennes. On the proposal of Daniel Bestin it acquires a newsletter which becomes beginning of 2001 the journal of ordinary madness.

49 It elects home, thanks to the personal Jo‰l Martinez then Director of hospital Esquirol, rue Philippe-Auguste near Père-Lachaise, then moved to 9e arrondissement, rue Saulnier then rue de Maubeuge.

50 Very challenged, Jacques Lombard ceded the Presidency in very turbulent conditions to Jean-Michel Cahn found wire president and nevertheless psychiatrist who will be replaced in 1998 by Claude Finkelstein. It always presides over the destinies of the FNAPSY with activity and boundless energy. Recognized by the Ministry, she writes and signs with the Conference of presidents of CME of CHS, the Charter of the user in mental health. It campaigns for the representation of users in the instances provided for by law and regulations and again most recently in the sector councils. The FNAPSY brings together 30 associations and the events it organises attract several hundred people. Today, the FNAPSY is defined as entirely dedicated to play alongside of of the UNAFAM the role of interlocutor of the Ministry and the psychiatric facility.

51 All associations are not in the FNAPSY: I will mention that for information the citizens for the Human Rights Commission. Despite its enticing title and a maximalist versus antipsychiatric program, this organization and the creation of the Church of Scientology including sectarian practices and manipulative oblige us to the largest reserve.

52 France Depression does not participate in the FNAPSY. It is an association of patients that has been created on the model of the patients associations inspired and initiated by the medical profession as France Alzeimer or Association with Parkinson's disease. France Depression organizes information and measures psychoeducational lectures in bipolar patients. France Depression is related to the associations of the same type through the Global Alliance of Mental Illness Advocacy NetworkŻ GAMIAN and seeks to develop regional antennas. Despite its history, and no doubt thanks to the personal quality of its leaders Stéphane Wooley and Monique Longuet, France Depression develops authentic associative life of mutual assistance. "France Depression primarily is an association of patients... With unipolar or bipolar disorders, we must affirm our commitment to be treated with dignity and humanity in all circumstances in a same civilization has become o how complex and hard for the weakened life. This is the essential role of a patients association. Must be vigilant and intransigent on these fundamental points", writes Monique Longuet in France Depression news.

53 The association Advocacy France finally, has an original story. By its composition, it is today an association of users. These are the overwhelming majority of its 300 members and are largely majority to the governing body and the Office, if one includes the parents and children of mentally ill. Its President, Martine Dutoit, is both a social worker in Psychiatry and mentally ill girl unfortunately died by hanging. By vocation, it is an association for the defence of rights and dignity. By its nature, it is a popular education association. Users and those who are not mutually enrich themselves by their experience and their know-how.

54 The motto of Advocacy France can say taking this sentence from an English document: "When people not used to speaking out are heard by people not used to listening, then real changes can be made". {"When persons not familiar with talk will be heard by persons not familiar with hear, great things can happen."} [John O'Brien. "New Paths to Inclusion"]. Our journal, the Megaphone is defined as 'the door plume doors voice. We took over the English word because it appeared untranslatable in our culture of Roman law, as are untranslatable terms of " speaking up " (speak loudly?) and " empowerment " (assumption of responsibility?).

55 We left the observation of disqualification a priori of the psychic suffering person and have set ourselves as a aims to recognize his integrity in his difference, his dignity. This disqualification takes concrete forms in terms of prejudice. Put under guardianship without consultation, professional discrimination, not right to the choice of his doctor, etc. Of all the France coming from the calls from people who want their word to be sustained in order to be heard. It should be that the State put in place of authentic mediators of services. In the meantime, we respond voluntarily and under difficult conditions (4 calls per week on average), to make work of testimony.

56 Our second field of action is the creation of our spaces Conviviaux citizens of Caen and Paris. Meeting places, mutual assistance and responsibility. These spaces allow people in suffering, out of the boredom and loneliness through self-managed activities. They are managed by our regional delegations of lower Normandy and île-de-France.

57 New Finally, our association pilot project. On behalf of health mental Europe, the Organization in October 2003 of a forum for citizen policy in mental health under the title "the person accompanied by to the accompaniment of professionals. The goal is to demonstrate the usefulness, for user experience professionals.

58 This project brings together a collective of associations including ATD Fourth World, Cemea, the Asepsi, the association Emmaus, France Depression and FNAPSY (Destination future, Auser, new world) adherent associations, CEDEP, ADSP (social and solidarity economy movement), the French Federation of mental health.

59 The workshops will be "workshops action" using the tools of expression (theatre, music, painting, etc.) around the themes of the fight against discrimination.

60 This forum lies in the continuity of the first forum in 2001 around the Piel Roelandt report.

Conclusion

61 The associative landscape has changed somewhat since the judge Rao. It is true that since Rock Hudson and Line Renaud, from the Telethon, since aid has demonstrated that patients themselves were actors in their healing, things are more similar.

62 I mention Daniel Defert, founder of aid: "for at the outset, the fight against AIDS was not only a struggle against discrimination, only defensive struggle, but was just as much a struggle for recognition of persons, new rights, life styles.Ż It is an important ideological shift. The report essentially far charity of society towards the sick, will find there an important turnaround. Ż

63 Concerning the mentally ill, when it tells me that they do not have the capacity to take responsibility, I answer that it is the argument that is opposed to justify censal last century suffrage, to ban until 1946 women access to universal suffrage.

64 Text extracted from a presentation at the Symposium of Prism, November 2002.