Schalk notes that in his writings Crockett described himself as currently incarcerated in the Chester Mental Health Center in Chester, Illinois after being found incompetent to stand trial for robbery in Chicago. Crocket uses the work incarcerated rather than committed or treated. While this may have just been a personal preference on Crockett's part based on his experiences of medical racism, this wording also helps in framing Crockett's experience as one more akin to prison rather than therapeutic psychiatric/medical care.

A Note on Identity Language Used by Crockett

In the Letter to the Editor Crockett described how he was compelled to take medication four times a day because his psychiatrist said he had an explosive personality. When those incarcerated at Chester refused to take medication they were either compelled through force or given medication through a shot. 
Crockett also uses the rhetoric that he is "supposed to be a schizophrenic" this wording of "supposed to be" encourages readers to question the validity of this diagnosis given by an establishment psychiatrist.

Crockett's Experience with Over Medicalization

Crockett in his letter to the editor presented some changes he would like to be made to psychiatric care, including that patients in security hospitals who are not presenting violent actions or reactions should have the right to appear in court every 90 days to appeal their cases, and in particular whether they need medication. This appeal should be heard according to Crockett by both a judge and a court appointed psychiatrist.

Crockett's Plan for Improving Psychiatric Care

We know the Black Panther was delivered to people in some prisons as a means of connection, education, and empowerment. There is also evidence that it was delivered to those in psychiatric institutions with the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola having its own chapter of the Black Panther Party. The Letters to the Editor from Crockett and Anderson also suggest that the paper was distributed near some prisons hospital wards. The Black Panther as highlighted in Anderson's piece was essential for folks developing their own critical perspective on their own confinement in mental hospitals. 

The Black Panther as a means of Community among those confined in institutions

1) A Note on Identity Language Used by Crockett
2) Crockett's experience with Overmedicalization 
3) Crockett's Improvement Plan as Disability Politics

University of Wisconsin - Madison

In 1976, the Black Panther published several letters to the editor that provided direct statements from Black individuals being held in psychiatric institutions. During 1976, the Black Panther also published two articles providing state and federal legal context for the claims of those being held in psychiatric institutions. One of the two context articles explains a proposed California state bill that would mandate the right to refuse psychiatric medication, psychosurgery and other "psycho-organic procedures." The other article reported on the congressional National Commission for the Protection of Human Biomedical Behavioral Research's decision that allowed the continued use of psychosurgery as an experimental research procedure.

These articles represent the BPP awareness and promotion of political anti-psychiatry work on the macro-level, along with Mad pride and other consumer/survivor/ex-patient movements that attended to the microlevel experiences of individuals.

Letters to the Editor published in the Black Panther

Schalk, Sami. Black Disability Politics, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478027003

Black Disability Politics

In this second letter to the editor Crockett and his cosigners charge Chester Mental Health Center with violations of mental health code and request legal assistance from the BPP.
In these charges, Crockett reiterates that the patients' experience with forced pharmaceutical treatment is the only therapy patients receive at Chester. Crockett states that many nonviolent patients are subjected to chemotherapy. This forced medication starts a cycle where patients are found incompetent to stand trial and in need of more medication against their will, and those patients are held and forcibly medicated in lieu of trial. This is shown as an example of how the industry of psychiatry at this time worked in conjunction with the prison system to segregate, confine, and contril Black people with and without disabilities.

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