Mission Statement
The Don Weitz Legacy Project was founded to commemorate the late, great activist Don Weitz
(see forevermissed.com/don-weitz). We lost Don on September 1, 2021, but we will always
honour him by continuing his lifelong struggle against psychiatric dominance and every other
kind of social injustice. As a founding member of the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault, Don
was firm in his belief that psychiatry cannot be reformed but must be abolished. We agree!
Although Canada signed and ratified the United Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities (CRPD) more than a decade ago (see madinamerica.com/2020/06/canadian-mental-health-legislation), it has utterly failed to implement any of the CRPD’s requirements, which include the abolition of forced psychiatric interventions.
Many Canadians have no idea that forced hospitalization, drugging, and electroshock, as well as
physical restraints (shackles) and solitary confinement (“seclusion”) are routinely used on people
labeled “mentally ill” and “noncompliant.” These practices cause harm to an ever-increasing
number of people.
We challenge the notion of “mental illness” and note that psychiatry has never been able to
prove that any supposed mental disease or disorder has any basis in biology, despite many
decades attempting to do so.