MPA Group 1973

Group of early MPA members meeting around a long table. Lanny Beckman is writing at one end of the table, while Stan Persky, is holding a camera.
1973 MPA meeting in the basement of their first house, Lanny Beckman writing at the table and Stan Persky holding camera

Vancouver’s MPA was an early activist response to deinstitutionalization and tragic gaps in community mental health. Inverting traditional mental health hierarchies, the group put former patients and sympathetic lay supporters in charge. Photo from early collective meeting of MPA, illustrating model of participatory democracy which the group used.