Psychiatric Survivor to Receive Prestigious Disability Leadership Award

The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) is pleased to announce that international human rights lawyer and disability rights advocate Alison Ashley Hillman will receive a prestigious 2003 Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award for emerging leaders with disabilities. The award presentation, which includes a $10,000 cash award, will take place at AAPD's Third-Annual Leadership Gala on March 16, 2004, at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC. Secretary of Commerce Don Evans and Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta will deliver keynote remarks, and a host of Congressional leadership will also be part of the program.

After receiving her bachelor's degree with distinction from Cornell University, Alison Ashley Hillman was handcuffed and taken to the psychiatric ward of her local hospital. She was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder and rotated in and out of a locked ward for five months. Allison faced bankruptcy and was on food stamps, Medicare and SSI -- she also was forced to abandon her dream of becoming an international human rights lawyer. For two more years, she struggled and experienced first-hand the vast barriers that people with psychiatric disabilities face, including obstacles in finding employment, accessing healthcare and suffering debilitating stigma and discrimination.

Allison struggled, but survived. She also received her law degree cum laude from American University's Washington College of Law in 2002, and fulfilled her dream of becoming an international human rights lawyer. After graduation, she was awarded a New Voices Fellowship to work with Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI). New Voices is a national leadership development program that helps nonprofit organizations recruit creative and diverse "new voices" in the field.

Through this fellowship, Alison now manages MDRI's Americas Advocacy Initiative, where she works for the international recognition and enforcement of the rights of people with mental disabilities. In this capacity, she confronts and addresses the very barriers she experienced.

Allison hopes that the groundbreaking cases she is currently working on will establish legal precedent in the Inter-American system that recognizes and enforces the rights of people with mental disabilities, and also help illustrate that community alternatives are needed for people with mental disabilities and effortless detention in psychiatric facilities is inappropriate.

Alison's goals are to empower consumer-driven support and advocacy organizations through workshops in advocacy, human rights of people with mental disabilities, documentation of human rights violations, and the establishment of a small grants program for consumer-run advocacy organizations. Ultimately, she hopes to end the institutionalization of people with mental disabilities and aims to establish their right to appropriate treatment in the community.