David Oaks

David William Oaks (born September 16, 1955, Chicago, Illinois) is a civil rights activist and co-founder and former executive director of Eugene, Oregon-based MindFreedom International.

David Oaks co-founded the organization MindFreedom International which includes psychiatric survivors and psychiatrists who reject the biomedical model that defines contemporary psychiatry.

Oaks was institutionalized and forcibly medicated in the 1970s, while studying at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for what was diagnosed as schizophrenia.

He has stated that he recovered by rejecting drugs and getting support from family and friends.

Oaks "maintains his mental health with exercise, diet, peer counseling and wilderness trips — strategies that are well outside the mainstream thinking of psychiatrists and many patients".

He has served on the board of directors for the United States International Council on Disability.

They believe that "mental illness is caused by severe emotional distress, often combined with lack of socialization", and they "decry the pervasive treatment with prescription drugs, sales of which have nearly doubled since 1998".

Further, "they condemn the continued use of electro-convulsive therapy—or ECT, also known as Electroshock—which they say violates patients' human rights."

Oaks has stated that the psychiatric drugs that patients take are often debilitating and frequently have harmful side effects, and people can recover without them.

He has protested against drug companies and participated in hunger strikes to "demand proof that drugs can manage chemical imbalances in the brain".

Oaks has called for "a nonviolent revolution throughout the mental health system".

On December 2, 2012, Oaks fell from a ladder, suffered a broken neck and became paralyzed.

He stepped down as executive director of MindFreedom in December 2012.

The United States International Council on Disability has listed some honors and awards received by Oaks: