The Alternatives Conference was a conference held in 1985 in Baltimore with funding from the Community Support Program at the National Institute of Mental Health. The conference had over 300 attendees. One of the goals of the conference was to come up with a name for individuals to call themselves after the term "ex-patient" had fallen out of favor. The term psychiatric/mental health consumer was chosen.

1985 Alternatives Conference

In the early to mid-1970s, there was a problematization of the term 'ex-patient' because it was seen as embracing the medical model by defining individuals by their status as patients. Additionally, the term 'ex-patient' by using the term 'patient' was seen as not capturing the violence of forced commitment to asylums. Groups like Madness Network News promoted the use of the term ex-psychiatric inmate for individuals who had been in asylums. The terms psychiatric client, psychiatric consumer, and psychiatric survivor also came about. 

Ex-patient was used as a term starting in the 1970s by individuals in the growing ex-patients movement. The term was used at the time because of how madness and mad as derogatory terms were not yet reclaimed. It was used as an identity to indicate individuals who have previously been 
patients in asylums or other mental health systems.

Ex-patient

Chamberlin, Judi: The Ex-Patients' Movement: Where We've Been and Where We're Going. Journal of Mind and Behavior 11:323-336, 1990

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