Presentation by Ron Coleman and Paul Baker

Hugh Massengil shot video of Ron Coleman and Paul Baker giving a presentation at the LILA Peer Support Club in Eugene, Oregon on November 14, 2010. This includes Ron telling his story (starting on the second video.) Ron at one point was what some might call a “sad case of chronic schizophrenia” – a man who had spent 6 of the last 10 years locked up in a hospital, very “low functioning” even when out of hospital, disheveled, typically food in his scraggly beard, cigarette burns all up his arms, a person with little to say to anyone. Later he became a powerful public speaker with an international reputation, as well as a married man with children and a farm on an island in Scotland.

First video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbiMyR5aCmY
Second Video: http://bit.ly/aGsQqR
Third video: http://bit.ly/aovwqw
Fourth video: http://bit.ly/bsNSqT
Fifth video: http://bit.ly/d1pYtV

You can also find other talks by him online, for example this collection which includes a short history of the hearing voices movement.  You can also read a print version of his story, and find links to his books an articles, at this link.

Ron Unger

PS:  The sad news is that Ron Coleman passed away this October 2025.  For some years before he passed he suffered from dementia.  But he brought creativity to the experience of having dementia as well, and he created a new identity for himself of being a demented poet, and he wrote plays, a musical, and organized the first Scottish dementia arts festival!  Details at this link.