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Morton Birnbaum (1926 - 2005, Brooklyn) was an American lawyer and physician who advocated for the right of psychiatric patients to have adequate help, and who coined the term sanism. He received his law degree from Columbia Law School in 1951 and his medical degree from New York Medical College in 1957. He then undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University in 1958/1959, which included a training programme funded by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. He would work as an internist in private practice and conduct legal work pro bono. His seminal paper on "(The Right To Treatment )" appeared in 1960 in the American Bar Association Journal, marking the first published use of the term sanism in reference to the mentally ill. 50 different publications over a period of two years had refused the paper. It was not published by a psychiatric journal until 1965. At the time public mental hospitals were warehousing large numbers of patients often without significant treatment efforts or qualified treatment staff. ==Cases== After publishing his right to treatment article in 1960 and, through a friend, getting the issue covered in the New York Times,〔(Law Precept Urged: Aid for Mentally Ill; LAW RULE URGED FOR MENTALLY ILL ) By LAWRENCE O'KANE, New York Times, May 26, 1961〕 Birnbaum was contacted by two separate psychiatric patients (Edward Stephens and Kenneth Donaldson) and he took on their cases. He would spend the next decade fighting such cases, financing them himself. The case of Edward Stephens, a man with schizophrenia being detained for more than 30 years and without treatment, was unsuccessful, though he was later released. A partial legal victory involving the right to treatment argument was the case of ''Rouse v. Cameron'' (1966), when U.S. Appeals Court Chief Judge David L. Bazelon, writing for the court, became the first appellate judge to say that civilly committed mental patients had a "right to treatment." Birnbaum was involved in the Alabama class-action of ''Wyatt v. Stickney'' (cf Bryce Hospital) starting in 1970, U.S. District Court judge Frank Minis Johnson held that involuntarily committed patients are entitled to adequate care and treatment otherwise there would be a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Subsequent hearings defining this right continued for decades, becoming the longest mental health case in national history, and resulted in the "Wyatt Standards" - a humane psychological and physical environment, adequate staffing, and individualized treatment plans. However, as Birnbaum pointed out, there was little in the way of effective enforcement. The landmark case in which Birnbaum was probably most involved personally was O'Connor v. Donaldson starting in Florida in the 1960s. He would later recall his amazement that for 14 years, in every Florida and federal court with jurisdiction and before more than 30 state, federal and Supreme Court judges, he was unable to obtain a fundamental writ of habeas corpus for Mr Donaldson. However, in 1971 Donaldson was released, and in 1975 the United States Supreme Court ruled on the case that a finding of mental illness alone could not justify a State locking a person up against their will and keeping them indefinitely with nothing more than custodial confinement. Birnbaum also repeatedly challenged the Medicare exclusion of institutionalised mental patients under the age of 65. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Morton Birnbaum」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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