How to Get the Best from This Website
• Any green print on this site is a link. Some links are to other pages on this site, but many of the links are to other relevant websites. If you try a link and find it is not working, please email and let me know so I can fix it.
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• Choice for Wellness provides another outlet for PRAWI members to share their knowledge and experience. Some of our members have published their own books, videos and stories. Any member of Patient’s Rights Advocacy who would like to add a page, either telling us about their publications and where we can find them, or sharing their knowledge on any relevant subject is warmly invited to do so. Just send an email to abra@sartorelli.gen.nz and your information will become a feature of this site.
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Disclaimer: The opinions that people express on this website are not necessarily those of Patients Rights Advocacy (Waikato) Incorporated.
Three cheers for Patients Rights Advocacy!!!!
Hi, welcome to the Choice for Wellness website. I hope you will enjoy this site, there is a lot of useful information here.
My name is Sandy Sartorelli AKA Abra Cadabra and I created this site after Patient's Rights Advocacy helped me to safely taper off and stop taking psychiatric drugs. I want everyone to know about Patient's Rights Advocacy. I was so glad to discover someone - Anna de Jonge - who would support my self-directed goals for recovery. This kind of support was not available in the mental health system. I wrote a letter resigning as a mental health consumer when I realised that my psychiatrist and CPN were more interested in my compliance (with taking psychiatric drugs) than in my well-being and mental health.
I have never regretted my choice for wellness - to stop taking drugs. I've always been far better off not taking drugs than taking them. Occasionally I still struggle, but not as much as before.
It's my personal opinion that people who choose to take drugs should be able to, as long as they are fully informed about what they are taking. People who choose not to take drugs should also have the opportunity to make their own informed choices, and receive support to make their choices work.
Unfortunately, most mental health services are still not providing full information about psychiatric drugs. And they still do not usually support patients who do not choose drugs. Far from it, coercion, forced drugging and forced ECT still continues even in the 'enlightened' times of 2009. These days there is a lot of talk in the mental health services about recovery - let's all work together to ensure there is action behind that talk. Let's support the positive goals of the Ministry of Health in its plan Te Tahuhu.
And let's do everything we can to promote wellness and choice!
Cheers, Abra S Cadabra
