Autistic People Against Neuroleptic Abuse

Abstract

In 1998, Dinah Murray founded APANA (Autistic People Against Neuroleptic Abuse), an autistic-led campaign in the UK to stop the overuse of drugs being given to people with intellectual disabilities. The campaign subverted the medicalization of “challenging behavior” and focused on three cases studies of institutionalized autistic adults who were being overprescribed. Murray compiled statistics on their medications and their visits to doctors, found allies, began spreading the message via the internet and using legal recourse. Espousing a non-pathological model of autism, APANA raised awareness of the harms of overmedication in the learning disability world and, perhaps, more caution in the psychiatric world. It may have impacted on some government guidelines, and on the author’s reputation as resourceful and reasonable, which benefitted her future activism.