Leonard Roy Frank

Who is Leonard Roy Frank?

Leonard Roy Frank is an American human rights activist, psychiatric survivor, editor, writer, aphorist, and lecturer.

Since 1959, Frank has lived in San Francisco, where he managed an art gallery before he began collecting quotations. It was Leonard Roy Frank who discovered notable artist G. Mark Mulleian in 1969 and displayed his work at the Frank gallery.

Frank graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1954. He then served in the US Army and later sold real estate. In 1962, in San Francisco, Frank was committed to a psychiatric hospital for being 'paranoid schizophrenic' and given insulin shock treatments and dozens of ECT treatments.

By 1972, Frank was staff at Madness Network News. In December 1973, he and Wade Hudson founded Network Against Psychiatric Assault, a patients' and survivors' advocacy group.

Of ECT, Frank has written: "Over the last thirty-five years I have researched the various shock procedures, particularly electroshock or ECT, have spoken with hundreds of ECT survivors, and have corresponded with many others.