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] He then undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University in 1958, which included a training program funded by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.
It was through his pro bono work that he first advocated for better treatment for the mentally ill, winning several legal victories for their civil rights, and for improved Medicaid benefits in state hospitals.
Other lawyers disagreed with his concept because it still allowed that a patient could be indefinitely detained as long as some potentially superficial criteria were met (staffing levels, some claimed treatment), and instead argued for a better review process.
Donaldson later worked for a year as a night auditor for a hotel, and began writing a book on conditions in mental institutions, entitled Insanity Inside Out.
The Supreme Court decision never directly addressed Birnbaum's concept of "Right to Treatment", but instead wrote that "a person could not be held against their will unless they were deemed dangerous to themselves or others".
In 1966, he noted three essential factors affecting the law and confinement of psychopathic offenders; a need for a practical dividing line between the areas of mental health and correction; a lack of adequate psychiatric knowledge concerning the many aspects of the psychopathic personality, and a dire lack of personnel and facilities required to provide even minimal care for the nearly 500,000 patients in public mental health facilities at the time.
U.S. District Court judge Frank Minis Johnson held that withholding adequate care and treatment from involuntarily committed patients was a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Subsequent hearings defining this right continued for decades, making Wyatt v. Stickney the longest mental health case in US history.
Resolution of the case resulted in the "Wyatt Standards" which called for a humane psychological and physical environment, adequate staffing, and individualized treatment plans for involuntarily committed mental health patients.
Birnbaum is credited with coining the term sanism (from sane), a form of discrimination, which he felt was in all areas of life and which obstructed justice in the courtroom.
[18] In November 2005, Birnbaum died of a stroke in Brooklyn at the age of 79, survived by his wife Judith and children: Julius, Jacob, Belinda, Rebeca, and David.