recently published CQC report covered in this Guardian article.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/27/mental-health-patients-hospital-law
Here goes.
I've been illegally detained. This is when a person isn't sectioned but
not allowed to leave the ward either or discharge themselves. It was for
a period of 3 days till I confirmed with the local Mental Health Act
manager that I had the legal right to leave. I spoke to some lawyers
about it and started a court case. They told me the hospital did this
regularly and had some money set aside to hire lawyers to slow down
claims. I was also acute tranquillised without need and put in a
seclusion room that didn't meet the hospital policy or human rights law.
The policy stated that it should be correctly temperature controlled,
there should be proper communication with the outside and there should
be toilet facilities made available.
Psychiatric patients don't have the right to fresh air and sunlight.
Irrespective of the therapeutic value, this is a basic human right.
They're incarcerated. This is societies greatest punishment since the
last person was hanged. They've committed no crime but the same protocol
is used. Long stay patients loose significant basic rights. A right to a
normal life shouldn't be taken away just because a person has "an
unsound mind, is a vagrant or a drug addict" (or something along those
lines).
The amendments to the MHA 1983 in 2007 took away so many rights. It also
allowed for something quite frightening to me. It expanded the
definition of mental disorder to include psychopathy and it removed the
treatability test. this was done because of the perceived danger of
people with dangerous personality disorders. It was through the work of
the Zito Trust which promoted the prejudice of the psychopathic killer
(what happened to her son was still very sad though but the result is
sadder in my eyes). By removing the treatability test it allowed for
incarceration without healthcare, judicial process or serious crime
committed. I don't know if anyone has yet had this happen to them.
Incarceration is the punishment for serious crime but there's a massive
legal system which costs billions of pounds in legal aid alone to ensure
that no one who is innocent is punished. The other frightening thing is
the quality of some prisons compared to some psychiatric wards.
The overuse of the CTO is worse than the worst estimates but this
coercive tool is becoming ever popular internationally. France is about
to introduce something similar. It's psychiatric parole. It's a coercive
medico-legal tool that allows psychiatrists greater power to force
medication on patients who want alternative treatment. people have a
right to chose but it's violated by the current laws.
It's been woefully overused and this was known well before the CQC
report came out. It's also significantly used more on the black
population (the information's in one of the reports that are available
to the public at the NHS Information Centre. I would guess that it's
used a lot more on black men but the report didn't break down the
figures by gender. After all, the UK is one of the leaders in the world
at overdiagnosising black men with schizophrenia (9x more than their
white counterparts whereas this doesn't happen in the Caribbean). This
was noted in the New Horizons consultation document last year.
In a recent report the Royal College of Psychiatry estimated that people
with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar live 20 years less on
average. This was much higher than I used to remember. People used to
quote 10 years. It's not surprising though if they're being treated so
badly. They're being locked up, forced on drugs and given no other
treatment. People with depression and anxiety can get access to CBT or
counselling through the multi-million pound IAPT scheme while people
with a diagnosis of schizophrenia are just left to rot on medication
with only 50% getting access to CBT. those are the lucky ones. Some
can't even get toilet paper.
No comments:
Post a Comment