My father's advocacy for a right to treatment.

My father, Dr. Morton Birnbaum (may his memory be a blessing), unfortunately passed away in November of 2005, but it seems like just yesterday to my five siblings and me. I was in the middle of medical school training at the time. Toward the end of my medical school tenure, with the help of some members of the psychiatry faculty, I began to read through my father’s law and psychiatry articles, detailing his life-long advocacy on behalf of the mentally ill. I had not read his articles previously, since I had always relied on him for a steady stream of information. As I found myself gravitating toward psychiatry in my own clinical work, and now, at the outset of my psychiatry residency training, I felt compelled to review his articles more thoroughly. I began this undertaking, not only as a gesture of my own healing and remembering, but also because I wanted to shift his work in my mind from hearsay and childhood recollections to a more mature and germane understanding. His stories seemed like folklore to me growing up, but they are now becoming a reality for me in my daily work with the mentally ill. Given the nature of his efforts on the right to treatment, I thought that this exercise of reviewing his work would be a valuable retrospective to share with the forensic psychiatry community as well. Always for the Underdog