Mental Patients' Union


The Mental Patients' Union was an activist organisation founded in March 1973 in Paddington Day Hospital. Some of the founders had previously been members of the Scottish Union of Mental Patients.
Andrew Roberts and Liz Durkin were among the six people involved in setting up the original meeting. Durkin had been employed at Paddington Day Hospital as a social worker and was asked to speak about the meeting on Radio 4, but the group insisted that the spokesperson had to be a patient. Roberts was interviewed on the Today Programme. As a result of the publicity generated by the interview more than 100 people turned up for the meeting, which was held on the same day.
A list of demands was produced:
The Mental Patients' Union has been described as a "pivotal organisation which marked the beginning of the organised psychiatric survivors movement in Britain. Their first publication, known as "The Fish Pamphlet" has been said to be of great historical and political importance. The figure of a fish caught on a hook was used because his gyrations would "look peculiar to other fish that don't understand the circumstances; but his splashes are not his affliction, they are his effort to get rid of his affliction." It argued that psychiatry was one of the most subtle forms of repression in advanced capitalist society. The use of the word "Union" was a deliberate political choice.
The Union evolved into People for the Rights of Mental Patients in Treatment, which eventually turned into Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression.