Lessons for Psychiatry from the AIDS Activist Movement

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a historical account of how a burgeoning consumer rights movement took on a new and unprecedented form when HIV struck the United States. It then goes on to explain the social sea-change that movement provoked, including how it influenced medicine, particularly biomedical research, access to services, and the locus of control in medical decision-making. Finally, the author draws some parallels to the AIDS activist movement and some of the broader challenges confronting psychiatry today.

KEYWORDS:

• Activism
• ACT UP
• AIDS
• biomedical research
• consumer rights movement
• HIV
• insurance industry
• managed care
• parity
• pharmaceutical industry