Morton Birnbaum

Morton Birnbaum (October 20, 1926 – November 26, 2005) was an American lawyer and physician who advocated for the right of psychiatric patients to have adequate, humane care, and who coined the term sanism.^[1]

His seminal paper on "The Right To Treatment"^[2] appeared in 1960 in the American Bar Association Journal, marking the first published use of the term sanism to describe a form of discrimination against the mentally ill. His "right to treatment" concept primarily addressed the legal right of 'mentally ill' patients who were involuntarily confined to receive appropriate care. He went as far as suggesting that if suitable treatment was not provided then the person should be entitled to be released, even if this presented a risk to themselves and others. It was his belief that this practice was the only way to ensure public opinion would demand suitable treatment be made available.^[3] Over a period of two years, fifty publications refused the paper. It was not published by a psychiatric journal until 1965. At the time, public mental hospitals were warehousing large numbers of patients, often without significant treatment efforts or qualified treatment staff.^[4]