DARBY PENNEY, M.L.S. Senior Research Associate Darby Penney is a qualitative researcher with a background in mental health needs assessment and planning, proposal writing and program management. Ms. Penney is a member of the Needs Assessment/Evaluation team for Oklahoma’s Federal Mental Health Systems Transformation Grant. An experienced writer and editor, she conducts constituency focus groups and key informant interviews, analyzes qualitative data, and is responsible for preparing the final needs assessment report. Ms. Penney also is a site visitor for the National Evaluation of Co-occurring State Incentive Grants (COSIG), and is responsible for assessing the state implementation of national and state program goals. Before coming to AHP, she was Director of Recipient Affairs at the New York State Office of Mental Health for nine years, where she was involved in policymaking, program development, and implementation. She was especially responsible for bringing the perspectives of people with psychiatric disabilities into the policymaking process. Her work focused on ensuring rights in a system that relies on coercion, on reducing practices that demean people, on promoting self-determination, and on diminishing prejudice and discrimination. An activist in the consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement, Ms. Penney has published and given keynote presentations nationally and internationally. She was a founding member of the National Association of Consumer/Survivor Mental Health Administrators (NAC/SMHA), and served as the group’s president from 1995-98. She has worked on historical projects related to psychiatry from the recipients’ perspective, and was awarded the New York State Board of Regents’ 2003 Archives Award for Excellence in Historical Documentation. She was honored for her work promoting the civil and human rights of people with psychiatric disabilities by being named a 2005 Fellow by the Petra Foundation, and is a 2007 fellow in Nonfiction Literature with the New York Foundation for the Arts. Ms. Penney is co-author with Peter Stastny of the forthcoming book, "The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic.” The book and a traveling exhibit of the same name, which has toured a number of states, are based on the discovery of 400 suitcases, boxes and trunks of personal items taken from patients when they were committed at Willard State Hospital near Seneca Lake, New York.
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