The Gun Lobby Moves Against the Mentally Ill

The gun lobby stayed silent for a while after the Newtown killings. Perhaps they were in shock. They are not known for their sympathy for victims of gun crime. But it comes as no surprise that as the leading politicians wanting gun control laws, such as Mayor Bloomberg and Obama, begin to come out in favour of more gun controls, the gun lobby has to provide its own answer to the problem. Scapegoat the mentally ill. Yes, that's it. Blame the mentally ill and the mental health system. The shooting in Tuscan, which almost killed Senator Gabrielle Giffords, involved someone with severe mental health problems. Anders Brievik on the other hand, struggled throughout his trial to show that he was perfectly sane when he killed 77 people, and got what he wanted. The gun lobby just won't learn. But how powerful are they? Can they really control legislation in America? We will just have to wait and see.

The Grievance Collector.

A Grievance Collector is the latest piece of neat jargon, to describe people who blow up and go on a sudden random killing spree. Many nations suffer this phenomenon, and nobody really pretends to understand why people do it. The Grievance Collector will be someone who is not coping with their lives, someone who feels he is being hurt by everyone around them, usually it seems by being excluded from a social standing, that is comparable with his peers. Someone who may or may not have some kind of mental disorder. In the latest and one of the most horrific examples in Newtown Connecticut, children have become the principal target for this killer, Adam Lanza. There are many other examples. The machete attack at a Birmingham school a few years ago. The Dunblane attack in Scotland and there were two attacks on young children in China also. These tragic events are often linked to mental disorder. And while it makes sense to explain that these men are suffering mental health difficulties, it doesn't help the rest of us, who have mental health problems, integrate with the community. I know for a fact that I am not likely to hurt anyone because I feel isolated or insulted by people's attitude. It doesn't stop me feeling hurt, or angry. But unfortunately, very occasionally someone with access to very powerful weapons, especially in this latest incident, will carry out these terrible crimes, attacking people who could never have personally hurt them. Over time the Grievance Collector will build up a series of hurts, insults and his anger will grow, until he snaps. Why these people decide to hurt children is an unknown part of the process. It seems they choose the most horrific thing they can possibly think of and then do it. Why these people don't choose to simply take their own lives, if they're so unhappy is also a mystery. Anders Brievik stands out as the only one who seemed to want to survive after his crime. Most seem to want to take their own lives, often as part of the plan, rather than a sudden realisation of their crime and the shame they feel afterwards. But I don't know. Maybe that is why some of them commit suicide, that it isn't part of the plan? Perhaps it is out of fear of what might happen to them - that they don't want to go to prison for the rest of their lives? Whatever it is that drives these men to kill, it is certainly at the very extreme of human behaviour, and must be understood more. The political response, whatever it might be, must be harsh and it must work. These killings cannot carry on.

The downside is how people feel about the mentally disordered person living in the community. There is a lot of fear out there. When I had a story in the Gloucestershire Echo, asking for more rights, some of the comments, seemed quite typical to me and what I would expect people to say, after seeing such a terrible crime unfold on the news in Connecticut.

Someone using the name Glosanarchy, said:

"If a schizophrenic kills your family following various previous violent episodes would you say it's OK because if they had locked him up before it would have been against his rights?

If your sibling jumped in front of a train because the mental health services didn't force treatment, it's fine you won't go running to the papers to blame it on the NHS will you?

If your entire family is burnt to death by a pyromaniac it's fine he wasn't kept locked up after his prison sentence for the protection of the general public because it would affect his human rights.

What about the human rights of the general public?”

Bonkim2003 added: "I have to agree with GlosAnarchy regards public safety being paramount. Regrettably you need to cut out an infected finger or two to save the person - likewise a few deranged harming themselves or being locked up is O.K by me. Individual rights - prisoners, mentally deranged or criminals - can rightfully curtailed if they pose a danger to the rest.”

These very unpleasant comments, posted underneath my story, illustrate just how much ignorance there is about mental illness. Uneducated people like this cannot be expected to know that the vast majority, backed up by the medical evidence, are not at risk of carrying out horrific crimes. Many of the people that go on killing sprees for example, aren't known to mental health services. But the public cannot be expected to be liberal and to hold liberal views about risk posed by mentally disordered people, even though the medical evidence shows us that we can work out those who are at high risk of violence, from their case histories. The problem is that perceived risk, is what gets you locked up, which includes the public fears, justified or not. The public and therefore the government, won't countenance the idea that people who have a full assessment, taking into account the medical evidence, about those that pose a risk or are more likely to pose a risk, can be treated differently. Many members of public want mentally ill people locked up forever, in large asylums, but are not prepared pay for it. In other words people want to be away from the mentally ill. They don't want to live next door to a mentally unwell person. They feel fearful. And incidents like those in the US are tragic for many reasons, including the affect it has on public perception of mental ill health.

Echo Readers.

If you've read the article in today's Echo, I am looking to raise some money to try and reach patients, carers and professionals, to tell them about the UN Declaration and to lobby parliament about the lack of rights for patients. Thirdly I would like to do some research to support the argument for a change in the law. The change I suggest is detailed in the Manifesto, which is avaible to download for free, or you can buy a paper copy. Both links are available via the Mental Health Manifesto link to the right of this article. There is also a donate link to the right of this page, or you can contact me directly, at dedicate@blueyonder.co.uk. Thanks.

The Schizophrenia Commission Strikes Back!

Last year Rethink Mental Illness commissioned a report into care for people with Schizophrenia. In it they attack the appalling care for people in hospital, calling it 'catastrophic'. They say that not enough is done to provide calm, safe environments and the wards are mostly secure wards to prevent patients hurting others. Rethink believes and the commissioners from this report, that this is wrong. That most patients don't hurt others and those that do are more driven by drug and alcohol abuse than mental ill health. They say that the standard of care is poor, too focused on medication, too focused on locking people up and patients need more early intervention services and more access to psychological therapies. This is one of the most damning indictments of health services for many years.

I welcome this report, although I have only read a summary. What also stands out for me is that it sits at the very top of the stories on the BBC News website and Paul Jenkins was interviewed on the BBC morning show, talking about schizophrenia. Usually broadcasters and news organisation steer clear of the subject. If you feel up to it, go and find the report, read it and link it up to your Twitter accounts, Facebook etc, and get this report spread as far across the community as you can. Something has to be done about the care we receive. For far too long the NHS has been building lock up wards, while at the same time focusing exclusively on medication. When medication fails patients and become ill they're locked away until the doctors have finished with them. Many patients then leave hospital on huge doses of medication, that patients find hard to come off. This in turn leads to physical health problems. The Schizophrenia Commission recommends more focus on calm environments and alternatives to medication.

Consultation. What Consultation?

When the governments Office for Disability Issues, said they were going to consult on the UN Declaration of Human Right for People with Disabilities, you would think they would take in a wide range of opinions from lots of different people. Despite the fact that what is contained in the declaration, its basically a get out of hospital free card for mentally ill people, the ODI consulted one mental health charity. One. On the list at the back of their report, are about fifty organisations, almost all of which are charities and groups, for physically and mentally disabled and yet this UN Declaration doesn't really apply to physically disabled as much as it does to the mentally ill. So I wrote to every Mental Health NHS Trust in England and Wales, asking them whether they'd heard of the UN Declaration, whether the ODI had told them about it and what they did in response to it. All of them, (all 54), said they had not been told and had never heard of it. Shocking stuff. This is the greatest breakthrough in mental health ever. It compares easily with the Civil Rights movement and the suffragettes movement. The mentally ill have been locked up and forced to take meds that damage their mental and physical health for far too long. And the papers aren't interested either. We need to mobilise to get this UN Declaration implemented properly. Please download the manifesto and tell others about it, because contained within it is a starting point for full implementation. I don't pretend to be a lawyer, but this is what I came up with when I tasked myself with coming up with a plan.

Another Poor Soul

I found out a couple of days ago that a friend of mine has died aged 32. I don't know the cause of her death, but she has had more than one serious attempt at suicide in the past, one of which left her in a wheel chair. She leaves behind a sister and a young lad. This brings the total suicides of people from the mental health system that I have known personally, to 19. It isn't healthy to keep a tally, but given the sorry state of treatment and the general understanding of illness, I think its important to remember every one of them. She suffered from severe depression.

Milliband Strides Out for Mental Health

I have written to Ed Milliband several times, even posting him a copy of the Mental Health Manifesto, and this week he will make a speech, saying that mental health in the UK needs to be improved in terms of access to a full range of therapies, (referring mainly to talking therapies), and comparing stigmatisation of the mentally ill, to racism and sexism. He says that "Just as we joined the fight against racism, against sexism and against homophobia, so we should join the fight against this form of intolerance." He goes on to say that "There are so many people in Britain today who could be treated but who are intimidated from seeking help." By intitimdated I'm guessing that he means people with depression who are too aware of other peoples attitudes. Colleagues, family and so on. I don't think he means people with ongoing severe mental illness who are too scared of being sectioned to tell their mental health team that they're not feeling well? Good for Mr Milliband though.

In other news a survey of mentally unwell young people has surprised me, and must have surpried others. The headline figure said that 90% of young people with a mental illness had suffered some form of discrimination. Unfortunately I cannot locate the source of this research. I saw a news story on the TV. But if I find it I will let you know...

The Vast and Gruesome Clutch of Our Law

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Coffee and Escitalopram!

For years I have struggled with motivation and concentration and I still do. It would take me three weeks to wash up, three months to hoover. It took me five years to finish my first book. I would struggle to get into town to do shopping and struggle back. I would end up spending the day playing cards on my computer and checking emails, mostly achieving nothing. I might do ten minutes work a day if that. I have suffered from depression for many years, and I put my lack of motivation down to not feeling like I had a future, or that I wanted one. But recently I have tried a cocktail of strong coffee and a low dose of the anti-depressant Escitalopram. I have tried anti-depressants before, and believe me I don't have much faith in them. Most of them are effective for about three months and then their efficacy drops off a cliff. So far I have taken it (when I remember) for about six weeks. I have also increased my caffeine intake. This combination seems to be working, but not always. I am a little more active and I am writing again, after a period of being totally blocked. I just didn't want to write. I felt silly, like I wasn't good enough. I plan to take Escitalopram for three months and see what happens. Not that I am recommending drinking loads of coffee and taking anti-depressants as a solution to chronic laziness, driven by desperately bad depression, but hay, what works, works. The trouble is my blood sugar levels have shot up, as a result of taking this drug. So as soon as I solve one problem I have effectively created another, potentially as serious as the one I was trying to solve. Prolong my life, by feeling happier, but shortened it via diabetes. I can't win.

Read my books! http://www.vagabond-unlimited.co.uk

The Vast and Gruesome Clutch of Our Law: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0954969189/

Super Red: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0954969170/

Has The Science Been Lost in Big Pharma?

Over the last year I wrote to several leading science journalists and scientists, one of whom was lamenting the loss of two major drug companies to neuroscience. They didn't want to develop drugs for the brain any more, and while I sighed with relief, others were calling it a tragic loss to brain medicine. In my letters I explained the following: 1) We don't yet fully understand the normal brain and how it functions. 2) We don't yet know what causes schizophrenia and 3) we prescribe expensive and risky drugs, based on what exactly? The science just isn't there to justify millions of presciptions, to millions of people across dozens of different drugs. But not only are we taking them in large quatities, we are also forced or intimidated by the health authorities to take them.

One of the people I wrote to was Ben Goldacre, a journalist and author, who has recently published his new book, Bad Pharma, published by The Fourth Estate. Even though he never replied to me, I read an excerpt from his book on the Guardian website and in it he describes an industry that has lost all sense of scientific rigour, lies to and manipulates doctors, withholds vital data, and issues drugs that are not only completely useless, but also cause unpleasant and dangerous side effects. The drug companies are not held to account by the regulators and they are deliberately using ineffective regulations to push drugs that have very iffy efficacy data. Goldacre says that 'Because researchers are free to bury any result they please, patients are exposed to harm on a staggering scale throughout the whole of medicine. Doctors can have no idea about the true effects of the treatments they give.' This admission is just unbelievable. The trouble is though, governments and politicians cannot move against big pharma to sort this out, because of lobbyists, who will hound and buy off politicians, with offers to fund campaigns. In America if the government moved to tighten regulations, the right would block any major restrictions against dodgy drugs. The reason for this is that because a lot of drugs are implicated in this scandal, the pharmaceutical industry would be threatened with almost total collaspe. Goldacre claims that so many drugs are ineffective, with masses of withheld data, held back by drug companies, that every type of illness would be effected, from anti-depressives to statins.

Also, Goldacre explains about one scientific journal who published an article about the scandal. The journal Jama, explained the situation and the regulator in Denmark, Lif, went on the offensive and attempted to refer the authors to the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty. They presented zero scientific evidence that the authors had been dishonest, but the investigation was conducted any way, eventually being dropped after a couple of months. This is what doctors can expect who don't tow the line of a system that has lost all perspective about scientific rigour in medicine. And in the meantime we all suffer.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/sep/21/drugs-industry-scandal-ben-goldacre

Books Selling Well.

My book The Vast and Gruesome Clutch of OUr Law, seems to be shifting copies, in the few bookshops who have taken it. After all these years something is happening at last. I have offered the book for sale on the UK Amazon site (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0954969170/), and the US site, using Createspace an Amazon service: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0954969170/

The Vast and Gruesome Clutch of Our Law is also available to you at http://www.vagabond-unlimited.co.uk, where you can check artwork, satirical cartoons, and my animated film, which is still seeking funding.

Super Red, which I think is a cool little production, is also available here at the UK Amazon site: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0954969189/ and here in the US, also using Createspace: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0954969189/ .

Kindle versions are also available.

My other sites worth a recce:

http://www.the-debt-pack.co.uk
http://www.futuretowns.org.uk

Changes to Working Practices

It seems that in two key areas there are positive signs that the mental health system is recognising it needs to do better. In my local NHS Trust at least, doctors are now required to give patients a run down of side effects of the drugs they are prescribing. I recently saw my doctor, and was prescribed a new drug. She got out the BNF book (the British National Formulary - the reference book for drugs), and ran off a very long list of known side effects. It read like a very horrific medical accident, but it was important to do this. However, it also means that patients can't claim they didn't know about the drugs side effects before agreeing to take it. At that point of desperation, when a patient feels they need something to help them, who is going to turn it down based on side effects? However, I have in the past turned down medication because of unnecessarily high risk, due to side effects. But many patients won't.

Secondly there are plans a-foot to allow advocates to come in with patients when seeing a doctor, so that patients can ensure that they get good advice, and another perspective to their care, other than their doctors. There is a new law going through parliament (which I myself haven't had a chance to read yet), but you can take a look at here:  http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13/mentalhealthdiscriminationno2.html. This law also states that people who have been sectioned for longer than six months, cannot be barred from becoming MP's and company directors.

61% of All Deaths in Custordy Are Mentally Ill.

"There were 3,628 deaths in mental health detention (501 self-inflicted) between 2000 and 2010, accounting for 61% of all deaths in state custody. The proportion of deaths recorded from "natural causes" is also exceptionally high." says the Guardian. With the death of Janey Antoniou, a leading mental health campaigner and sufferer of Schizophrenia, questions are being asked about why so many people die in mental hospitals whilst undergoing treatment, but also why proper independent investigations aren't carried out afterwards. If a death occurs in a prison then an indenedent body, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman carry out an investigation, independently of the prison service. And deaths whilst in the custodary of the Police are carried out by the IPCC. Whereas deaths in NHS mental health facilities are carried out internally. This discrepency is another sign that the wholsale discrimination of the system, with all it componants towards the mentally ill, is an issue. A big issue.

Janey's death, has led to questions being asked about whether independent equiries should be carried out, and her husband, Dr Antoniou is now leading a campiagn to get this changed. The fact is, he was constantly frustrated by the investigation that was carried out after Janey's death. He still isn't allowed to read the report, but also he was asked no questions about what led up to her death, neither was he consulted about the reasons why she might have died, nor his opinion sort about the conduct of the NHS Trust.

It is my view that should we have an indendent body that investigates these deaths, with the power to censure people who's conduct may have contributed (including doctors, nurses and social workers), then deaths in custodary might actually go down.

Please Help Us Reach More People

I would like to extend my activities and reach more people, both patients and carers, doctors and doctors groups, politicians and political organisations. To do this I would like to raise some funds. I need £500 to help me promote the work I am doing. Please follow this link to make a donation. Thanks.

Paul Farmer Walks.

Mind's Chief Executive has walked from his advisory role with the DWP, on its benefit reforms, saying that the new system is 'deeply flawed'. But as usual the government is completely unyielding and simply claims that because its biased and discriminatory new assessments are kicking a third of claiments off welfare that it must be a sign that all of these people were in fact liars and cheats, determined to sit at home and do nothing all day. He says on the BBC news site that "The Work Capability Assessment really is letting people down... so it's not right for me to be seen to be associated with it." This new assessment puts far too much pressure on people with a stress related illness and there is nothing more stressful than money - particularly when you have little of it. There are rumours that Mind is preparing to take legal action against the government, to try and change the assessment so that it is fairer for mentally ill people and says Chris Grayling the work and pensions minister, this is why he could no longer serve on the advisory panel. Mind denies this.

Patients Aren't Told About Their Rights.

Yes, patients have a right to oppose their detention. But most patients aren't told what their rights are, says Alison Kerry, Mind's Head of Media. Alison was sent a copy of the Manifesto and said that Mind often get calls from patients on section. They call because they've lost their liberty and don't know that they're entitled to legal representation and a tribunal hearing should they want it. And this is an issue I've brought up before.

When I was in hospital in 2001, I was active in the User movement and was employed to advise senior managers and nurses. I met a Department of Health executive at a meeting and asked him if we could meet. He agreed and we made an arrangement to meet up in Bristol. By the time the meeting came round, I was in hospital going through an episode of illness. I was a voluntary patient. I had written down on a sheet of paper all the things I wanted to say, one of them being that patients aren't read their rights when they are interned in hospital. Even criminals get read their rights, I told him. He agreed.

The fact is patients should get read their rights at the moment they get sectioned, plus a referral to a tribunal or mental health act managers review should be automatic. It isn't right that someone going through the worst times of their lives should be left to defend their own rights and should be left ringing round the charity legal advise lines trying to get to grips with how they might defend themselves.

Mental Health Manifesto

I am about to publish the Mental Health Manifesto, which calls for more rights including Habeas Corpus for mentally unwell people detained in the UK. This came about because the UN declared the practicies of dentention without trial and forced treatment unlawful.

I have been contacting people for comment on this document, which can now be purchased in print form here:

As part of this process I have contacted Liberty and Justice for their comments, but they have not yet got back to me.

However, I did speak to Professor Peter Beresford, who is the Chairman of The Centre for Citizen Participation and has been appointed to the Department of Health Policy Research Programme. He says that Civil Liberties groups take little or no interest in Mental Health issues, despite the gaping hole in human rights for the mentally ill. He also says that he sometimes feels that patients would be better off taking their chances with the criminal law, than mental health law, because mental health law is so open to abuse.