repeating a lot of stuff I've written before about the movement for
change, the repeal of the medico-legal framework and stuff about how
there are alternatives if people are willing to think crazy enough. I've
tried to be a little bit more professional and positive in this last
email. I still can't quite hold back the unbridled need to be
inappropriate though. It's a serious character flaw....or perhaps it's
just character.
-----
You'll have to excuse me. It is Friday night and I'm sober. On my
personal measure of madness this is insanity for me. :-)
I consider myself a survivor. When I was first hospitalised I think I
asked "but what crime have I committed?" At the time the crime was en
during a paranoid delusion (possibly cannabis induced however there were
several other factors) and hypermania which lead to me threatening suicide.
In principle I am in favour of the repeal of mental health laws after
what has happened to me in my lifetime but were this to magically happen
the vacuum would be filled by something else. When I read the subject
title of this email I was briefly happy but I am also critical. It is
one of my failings but I hope it can be useful to the movement.
We speak a lot of disability in these conversations but this is a modern
reason to pathologise the mentally ill. Doctors use figures such as the
20 year reduced life expectancy of people with bipolar or schizophrenia
as a way to enforce treatment. It is their parental compassion. The very
high risk of completed suicide during the initial stages of
schizophrenia is a reason they use the medico-legal framework to
incarcerate and forcibly treat those who don't accept their dogma
perhaps more so than the risk of violence or homicide. Without the
powers of the medico-legal framework - specifically the deprivation of
liberty but also the power to enforce treatments on those who lack
'insight' - many lives would be lost without the free and not regretted
choice of the individual.
I'm not surprised to hear that the mentally ill as a whole are less
violent. Sadly the problem in the UK is a small number of the mentally
ill - I think specifically those treated for psychotic disorders rather
than common mental disorders - kill a lot of people, far more than the
average. The arguments given by psychiatrists are the risk factor to the
individual person is like the risk of being hit by lighting however it
is also easy to see that 1-2% of the population given specific labels
account for up to 10% of the homicides is...well...it is food for thought.
There is also this problem of pre-crime which is part of what the
medico-legal framework is shifting towards. I think this was one of the
reasons behind the introduction of the Community Treatment Order, a
legal instrument which (if I remember right) was over-used by
psychiatrist by about 900-1000% in the UK in the first year, as well as
the economic problem of repeated hospitalisations by patients who came
off their medication.
On the other hand those labelled "male" account for around 95% of the
homicides and, I would guess, do a lot of the physical harm. My kind can
do terrible things in the heat of the moment. We also start a lot of the
wars and global recessions.
Psychiatrists also killed 1,800 people with dementia every year in the
UK until the danger of antipsychotics in the elderly was discovered.
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1227240/Wrong-dementia-drugs-linked-1-800-deaths.html).
The drug clozapine killed 3% of patients within the first 6 months when
it was introduced through a blood disorder called agranulocytosis. The
manufacturers voluntarily withdrew it however psychiatrists got it back
and used blood monitoring to halve the number of deaths. The 6,000-7,000
people on the drug in the UK are dying significantly earlier than the
rest of the schizophrenic population. This drug is still the only option
for treatment resistant schizophrenia across the world and most of the
research I've read seems to be looking for more opportunities to use
this dangerous behavioural change chemical. I think i may have ended up
on the drug myself but the private psychiatrist who I was seeing opted
for high doses of antipsychotics, mood stabilisers and antidepressants
for treatment resistant depression instead. I think he was hoping to
replicate the neurobiological 'sawn off shotgun' effect of clozapine
using a combination of other drugs to hit a wide range of
neurotransmitter sites.
So there are many labels which can be associated with homicide and risk
of homicide. At the moment "psychiatrist" is the most dangerous group in
my opinion. Sadly there is no survivor-legal framework to protect the
public from them.
I agree with the idea that the principle of the right to mental
integrity would mean the medico-legal framework should be repealed. I
know, from personal experience, the coercion and loss of liberty can be
akin to torture so these could be argued as reasons to repeal the
medico-legal framework. The fundamental tenets of the justice system, in
my lay opinion, are reason enough to repeal them because the
medico-legal framework is not just but the punishments it enforces are
not far removed from the punishments handed out by the criminal justice
system. Often the distress of mental illness is punishment enough but
the medico-legal framework adds so much more harm.
I have personally had my human rights violated by the NHS. There is no
oversight in psychiatric wards because it is assumed doctors only do
good things. This is the privilege of the medical field and it allows so
much inhumanity and death to happen without raising public concern.
There was no public outcry when it was reported that so many old people
died unnecessarily. There was no punishment wrought upon the profession
who were responsible for this mass slaughter which happened because
doctors have an easy tool to control behaviour and the public were
willing to accept this supposed treatment. The antipsychotic should not
even be called an antipsychotic because, as far as I am aware, it isn't.
The active and desired effect is behavioural change and this is allowed
to be enforced using the medico-legal framework.It has not been proven
to nor has any attempt been made to show if the drug truly makes the
delusions and hallucinations stop. As far as I am aware there hasn't
been a retrospective meta-analysis of the effect of the chemical cosh
looking solely at the measures of delusions and hallucinations, two
factors which are included in PANSS and BPRS (two commonly used
psychiatric scales). This means no psychiatrists has the evidence base
to select the right drug for the patient who says, "doctor. Please make
these delusions and hallucinations stop." (I suspect that most
psychiatrists know that the drugs were never designed to be
antipsychotic. They used to be called major tranquilisers and the term
"chemical cosh" is a far more appropriate neologism. "Antipsychotic" is
a convenient lie in my opinion. I wonder if I am right and if this would
constitute false advertising or perhaps a greater crime? What is the
punishment for the institutional suppression of a valid human type?)
None of the treatments in mental health are genuine medical treatments
as far as I am aware. The only reason psychiatrists are doctors is
because of the biomedical model but the biomedical model of illness
means they should be attempting to heal the brain. The antipsychotic
may, in fact, damage the brain and does nothing to heal the supposed
brain deficits which, in my opinion, have not been scientifically
established even in schizophrenia but nonetheless are used by the
hegemony as reasons to pathologise this different type of human being.
The reason they are used is often immoral. They are clearly not used
judiciously and, to paraphrase a Harvard provost (a quote I remember
from www.criticalthinkrx.org), doctors are trading a behavioural
difference( or condition in his words) for a life long addiction which
causes real physical illnesses. (He was talking about the use of
psychiatric drugs in children.)
Tina, ENUSP, Mind Freedom International and the other contributors to
the survivor movement. I'd like to close my contribution to this
discussion thread with these final few paragraphs.
The work you are doing is an important step towards a significant and
vital change and one day the medico-legal framework will be repealed.
But while the masses excluded the unmedicated mentally ill, while
employment systems disadvantage them and communities exclude people for
their aberrant behaviour there exists a real problem. This problem is
the problem of social disability and, sadly, the only thing a few
centuries of psychiatry has come up with is drugs for kids, adults and
the elderly. Drugs to make them 'normal' when, in fact, they were never
abnormal. They use concepts like insight and capacity to force these
immoral and dangerous treatments on the mentally ill.
What happens in the UK is probably a lot better that what happens in
other countries. Cage beds are inhumane. Tethering children to a wall is
evil. Forced electroshock. The poor conditions of psychiatric wards in
other countries. The dehumanisation and degradation of our people
happens every where, and it is a lot worse in other countries as I'm
sure you are aware. Perhaps only prisoners of war know worse treatment
but they have organisations like Human Rights Watch ready to fight for
their rights. The privilege extended to the medical field means the
psychiatric patient can have unlimited punishments and tortures wrought
upon them with no oversight and no justice. The biomedical labels are
used for whatever purpose suits the hegemony of psychiatry in whatever
country at whatever time in history, irrespective of the concepts of
social disability.
In countries many of the mad end up homeless, poor, isolated, outcast
and worse. These were the conditions which lead to the creation of
psychiatry in the first place.
It is unfair of me to expect a solution to all this madness in society.
But without the solution the psychiatrists and other power holders will
never allow the repeal of the medico-legal framework, not without
replacing it with exactly the same thing or using our arguments made to
take even more rights and power away from the mentally ill.
The struggle we all fight for is a classic struggle of the oppressed
against their oppressors. We need to get it right. We need to think
better and harder because so many of the failures of the past and so
many of the injustices of the present are because people stopped when
they discovered easy solutions or never even bothered to seek a real
solution.
Tina you are correct that the idea of implants is a poor solution
however it is my belief and, perhaps, my bias which makes me hope that
technology can be applied to what I hope is the last struggle for human
equality. It is not just engineering technology, though engineering has
offered extraordinary advances for those with physical disabilities
(like the wheel chair that can go up stairs -
http://www.gizmag.com/go/4380/).
This new area of thought is perhaps a hope beyond what psychiatry could
ever offer. There is social technology too from organisational systems
to applied sociology.
I suppose that's all I have to say really. There is hope.
Fight the good fight
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