 Daniel B. Fisher, M.D., Ph.D.
Executive Director
Recovery From Mental Illness and Becoming a Commissioner - Dan is a person who has recovered from schizophrenia. He was hospitalized several times prior to becoming a psychiatrist. He is one of the few psychiatrists in the country who publicly discusses his recovery from mental illness. He is a role model for others who are struggling to recover, and his life dispels the myth that people do not recover from mental illness. His recovery and work in the field were recognized by his selection as a member of the White House Commission on Mental Health.
Education and Practice - Dan received his AB. from Princeton University, his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin and his M.D. from George Washington University. He is a board-certified psychiatrist who completed his residency at Harvard Medical School. He is presently an Executive Director of the National Empowerment Center and a practicing psychiatrist at Riverside Outpatient Clinic, Wakefield, MA.
Speaker/Teacher/Researcher - Dan travels to all parts of the country to conduct workshops, give keynote addresses, teach classes, and organize conferences for consumers/survivors, families, and mental health providers to promote recovery of people with labeled with mental illness by incorporating the principles of empowerment. He has been featured on many radio and television programs, including CNN Special Report. In addition he is a researcher having carried out research into neurotransmitters at the National Institute of Mental Health and on the ways that people recover. Along with Laurie Ahern, he developed the Empowerment Model of Recovery and the PACE/Recovery program to shift the system to a recovery orientation. He was recognized for this work by being selected to Clifford Beers, National Mental Health Association Award and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law's advocacy award.
Author - Dan has written chapters in many books, as well as a number of articles in professional journals such as Hospital and Community Psychiatry and the Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal In addition to recovery, his focus is on how consumer/survivors can gain a voice in managed care, for which he has produced a video, "Self-Managed Care." He has produced a video and booklet about important aspects of recovery, "Recovery is for Everyone" as well as a video on "Consumers Working as Providers."
 Debbie L. Whittle
Director
Debbie L. Whittle comes to NEC as a consultant, educator, counselor, artist, writer, motivational speaker, and change agent. She has transformed her own experience of suffering and is passionate about helping to birth a new paradigm in mental health care by moving away from pathology toward wholeness-based perspectives.
Debbie devoted the past 16 years to the study of psychology, holism, metaphysics, process therapy, spirituality, and the healing process. She held positions in business management, volunteer management, training and development, community organizing, and mental health advocacy. She served as direct care staff in several DMH and DMR funded residential facilities, volunteered on a telephone counseling service, and had a private counseling practice. She was the team leader for a federal grant project to create a statewide network of people who use mental health services in Massachusetts, and established the first Massachusetts Leadership Academy to build advocacy and leadership skills. She received cultural competence training at the National Coalition Building Institute in Bethesda, Maryland and is of Native American heritage.
Debbie is an experienced trainer, workshop facilitator and speaker. She has been developing and facilitating workshops since 1989 and has presented at Massachusetts Human Rights Conferences, annual statewide consumer conferences in Maryland, Virginia, and New York, and nationally at NARPA and Alternatives Conferences. She has also conducted one-day workshops and led retreats in Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Maine, and Pennsylvania. As Director of Training and Development, she coordinated a state-work-force training grant awarded to Relief Resources, an organization that provides relief staff to direct care facilities.
Debbie is developing a curriculum: Living Into Wholeness. This combines her experiential wisdom and studies to create principles and practices that help change habitual thought and behavior patterns, bringing one to a greater state of wholeness and wellbeing.
Debbie has written extensively on mental health issues and recovery. She has published essays, poetry, photography, as well as book and theater reviews. All of Debbie’s activities are informed by her own experience of personal transformation from psycho-spiritual suffering and trauma history. Debbie is also a family member.
Education: Leslie College, Cambridge MA: Bachelor’s Degree in Behavioral Science 1995
Middlesex Community College, Lowell, MA: Associates Degree in Mental Health 1993. Graduated with highest honors; Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society
Debbie is available for trainings, workshops and keynote presentations and consulting on the following topics:
- Wellness Principles & Practices
- More than Brain Chemistry: Holistic Approaches to Alleviate Suffering
- Inside/Outside: Personal and Systemic Transformation
- We’re in this Together: How do I Help my Family Member?
- Beyond Pathology: Training for Professionals
 Judene Shelley, M.P.H.
Judene has long believed in the power of people working together to create change. While raising her children, she worked with other parents to reform a public elementary school in New York City, to build a playground for young children in Rowley and to establish a weekend drop-in activity center for teens in Hamilton, Massachusetts. She currently volunteers as a girl scout camping leader and accompanies the public school chorus where her children sing. She has helped raise funds to preserve music, arts, and world languages in her local public school system. Judene’s recovery from a label of mental illness included counseling, publishing articles and speaking about choice in treatment and recovery as well as singing, kayaking, hiking, bicycling, and cross country skiing with family and friends.
Education - Judene has been an advocate for positive health since receiving her Master of Public Health degree from the University of Chapel Hill in North Carolina. She taught at Durham Community College's Early Childhood program, served as Interim Program Director, and helped organize annual conferences for providers. Judene worked for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health as a Health Educator in the addictions field before coming to NEC.
Advocate - Judene has been an active member of the consumer-survivor-expatient movement since her involuntary hospitalization in 1993, testifying before Massachusetts legislative committees in the process of passing a Bill of Rights for mental patients and reforming the involuntary commitment law. Judene was one of the people whose story was highlighted in a May 1997 Boston Globe Spotlight Series on Involuntary Commitment. She also worked as the Boston Area Director of the Massachusetts Consumer Satisfaction Team.
Presenter and Writer - Judene presents at conferences on Consumer Choice through Crisis, Experiencing the Full Range of One’s Emotions, and Wellness and Recovery. Her newspaper articles include topics such as Teen Anger, Depression, and Finding the Path to Mental Health. Judene was the former chair of the Human Rights Committee of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, and organized their series of highly successful statewide human rights conferences for several years.
 Amy K. Long
Amy K. Long is a person who received four or five different diagnosis while in the mental health system years ago. She refused to be seen through those labels and fought to regain her voice and take charge of her healing journey. She is herself a Survivor of the mental health system and personal trauma and firmly believes that the "healer lies within" each of us. Amy believes they tried to order her day, and give her life meaning with "day structure", but she assures us that her life needed much more, and that by struggling to regain her sense of confidence and dignity she was able to hold on to and not lose her spirit!Amy has worked as a Psychiatric Nurse for the past 17 years in both community mental health settings and on inpatient units. Today she is an Educator/Trainer for the National Empowerment Center and works part-time for a supported employment program. She is one of the founders of Bridges of Hope, a supportive network for Consumers working as Providers.
Amy is also one of the trainers of the "Hearing Voices that are Distressing" workshop- a simulated training program that fosters empathy in all non-voice hearers and educates mental health professionals to teach self help skills to persons who suffer with voices.
Amy is a sought after speaker at conferences both nationally and internationally and has been known to touch the lives of many, whether Survivors/Consumers or professionals as she speaks with passion and humor and challenges us to "push the envelope" within the system today, so as to provide an environment where healing can and will happen.
 Judi Chamberlin
Psychiatric Survivor - Judi is a psychiatric survivor and a long-time activist in the survivor/consumer/ex-patient movement. She is a co-founder of the Ruby Rogers Advocacy and Drop-In Center, a self-help center run by and for people who have received psychiatric services.
Author - Judi is the author of On Our Own: Patient controlled alternatives to the mental health system, which was originally published in 1978 and has recently been republished in Britain and Italy. She has also written numerous articles about the movement, self-help and patients' rights.
Consultant - Judi is currently affiliated with the Boston University Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation where she directs a research project on user-run self-help services. She is also on the staff at the National Empowerment Center.
Activist - Judi is a board member of the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA) and the National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems (NAPAS). Other boards and committees on which she serves include: the Massachusetts Mental Health State Planning Council; the Disability Law Center Governing Board; the Coalition for the Legal Rights of People with Disabilities; and the Consumer/Survivor Mental Health Research and Policy Work Group.
Speaker/Lecturer - Judi has spoken at conferences and meetings throughout the U.S. and has appeared on many radio and television programs such as Oprah, Sally-Jessy Raphael and Geraldo, discussing the topics of self-help and patients' rights. Her international appearances include Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, Sweden, Holland, Portugal, Italy, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
Awards - In 1992, Judi was awarded the Distinguished Service Award of the President of the United States by the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities. She also received the David J. Vail National Advocacy Award and the 1995 Pike Prize, which honors those who have given outstanding service to people with disabilities.
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