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.

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.

Non Responders

In my efforts to obtain support for this campaign (to get compo for users of A-Typicals who contract Diabetes), I wrote to the following leading politicians and mental health academics, campaigners and journalists. All but one (now two) failed to acknoweldge my letter. Even a follow up letter was ignored:

Professor Appleby (DoH) – no response.
Zac Goldsmith MP – no response.
Ron Coleman (Campaigner) – no response.
Prof Fulford (University of Warwick and Oxford) – no response.
Richard Bentall, University of Manchester – no response.
Ed Milliband – responded - has written to MHRA (09/11/11).
Lord Jones – no response.
Paul Farmer (Mind) – responded and are helping me.
Marjorie Wallace (Sane) – no response.
Paul Jenkins, (Rethink) – no response.

Ben Goldacre - The Guardian - no response.

And just today leading psychaitrist Dr Alex Mitchell said he would be happy to help (see http://www.psycho-oncology.info/). Still waiting for the others...

Download the letter here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zI4AYpNDKIsayIFmRCzkemBSz_5c2czXvBpriGSG1LA/edit

An Open Letter to Eli Lilly

Eli Lilly set up a compensation fund in the US for $750m, to compensate users of its drug who contracted diabetes. This was done a while ago, but UK sufferers don't get a penny. Why? Because UK law is rubbish. It requires such a high level of evidence that solicitors won't touch it and even if they did on the basis of the law, and the strength of the evidence, the government, keen to slash budgets don't want to fund these types of cases anymore. So, Eli Lilly et al get away with pushing a drug that kills you.

The mentally ill are kind of special on this particular issue, simply because when elderly users, who were prescribed A-Typical medication to control symptoms of dementia (incidentally this was the starting point for anti-psychotic drugs), they came down hard on care homes and doctors using them to treat the older patients. The older patients were dying earlier than they should, via strokes, heart attacks and the like. But when it comes to the mentally ill, that fear factor I've discussed excludes the mentally ill from protection, simply because the various authorities desire the mentally ill to be medicated up to the eye balls rather than running around killing strangers. They'd rather have a sedated, quiet patient with diabetes, or a dead patient, than a patient killing people and generally causing havoc.

I know it all sounds very cynical. But I have experienced this first hand. I know what I am talking about.

Another Death - Another Lost Friend

I mentioned my friend Kerry (not her real name), in an earlier post. She was in her thirties and suffering from cancer. She collasped and died last month from a Deep Vien Thrombosis. It is another tragic sign that the pills are killing us and the system stands by and does nothing. She leaves her boyfriend and her sister and parents behind, who may or may not realise that her pills contributed significantly to her death. And the tradegies continue...

Hated and Ignored.

I've often said, that as a mentally ill man, I am invisible at all times, except when I am threat. The fact that I am never a threat (no more than anyone else that is) and the fact that the vast majority of severely mentally ill people cower at home too scared of the public to go out, rather than running around the streets attacking passers-by at random, is lost on most people. Everything about the way we are treated is wrong. I often feel I get ignored because the person I am contacting believes that I am a threat to him or her. It is rather ironic. Then when I do become unwell I do get noticed - by the Police, Social Services and mental health services. This is the limit of my presence. And the language is also as bad. Over the period of the unfolding terror of the Norwegian attacks by the right wing terrorist Anders Breivik, the loon factor came up again and again. I am the same as him, according to these well educated journalists in the media. Severely mentally ill.

And the language demonstrates the attitude of most people. It is the tip of the iceberg. I have often argued that with all the Political correctness that has invaded every aspect of public and private life, the mentally ill were effectively excluded from this. With new legislation on disability discrimination we are excluded from that also. Not via the letter of the law, but the unwillingness of people to stick to it. For example, pretty much every time I have contacted a solictor about an issue affecting me, outside of the Mental Health Act and getting entangled with mental health services, the solictor I contact turns me down for representation automatically, after mentioning my health problem. They don't even listen to my argument. It happened recently. I did not even speak to the solicitor concerned to explain to her what I wanted to achieve. She left two messages on my answer phone saying they didn't have the capacity to help me. There wasn't even a discussion about what I wanted, so how did she know? My theory is that solicitors consider the mentally ill unreliable witnesses in court and therefore unless you've been banged up they don't want to know.

On Radio Five Live I was listening to Tony Livesey and guests discuss the pie thrower at the select committee hearing for Murdoch and the phone hacking scandal. At one point Tony and his guests all agreed that the attacker should be down graded from stupid to loony - in other words he wished to differentiate between stupidity and mental illness - that one was slightly higher than the other.

In another BBC incident of stigma, Jeremy Vine, arguably one of the country's leading broadcast journalist and presumably Oxbridge educated had two guests on at different times, discussing two attacks on members of the public by severely ill people. One wife of a GP who was used to welcoming various patients into her home, allowed a female suffering from schizophrenia into her house, when she was distressed. The woman attacked her with a knife. She was lucky to escape with her life. She was kind enough to understand and to forgive her. But at one point the victim of this poorly woman, said that the woman had 'super human strength', 'like they do,' meaning that when a person becomes mentally ill he or she becomes physically stronger. AND, Jeremy agreed with her! I was astonished. I was shocked and angry! What do people think, that we're all like David Banner! That we can pick up a car with our bare hands, that it takes ten Police officers to control us when we become distressed and angry? It is a myth. If anything we become weaker, because under the haze of drugs we sleep away our lives and as anyone who has cared for someone who is bed ridden, muscles waste away if you don't use them. Besides the fact, that it is an idea that has come from film, television and fiction. The mentally ill don't really experience super human strength. IT'S FICTION! How stupid can people be?

I also wrote to a lot of people over the years to ask them to help me campaign for better rights for mentally ill people. An incredible amount of people ignore me. I have written to politicians, famous psychologists and psychiatrists, bosses of big companies and organisations. Some have written back, most have not. I wonder what would have happened if I had been a Radio Two broadcaster or a famous psychologist? What do the mentally ill do about being forced to take drugs and getting locked up without trial, when the people who are doing this to us, believe that it is right? Everyone can now see that the slave trade was wrong. But at the time they couldn't see it. They fought a bloody war - the longest and bloodiest war that America has ever fought to keep the slave trade in place. They did the same with the civil rights movement in the sixties. Also, the public believe they need to be protected from people like me. They don't. They are and we are just being lied to. We believe media stereotypes and works of fiction and because we're frightened we find it hard to change our beliefs. That's why this issue above most others, is so essential and cannot and must not be ignored.

The Green M: The Battle for Freedom and Justice in Psychiatry

If you're visiting this site as the result of a letter I've sent to you, please do pick up my book which goes into a lot more detail. It is an ebook only and really pushes the boundaries of psychiatry and asks the professionals to get their act together. The list of stuff that needs to change is so long and the road to freedom and justice isn't blocked by anything other than fear: fear of the mentally ill, that in reality isn't justified...

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/67050

Thanks.

Welcome to the Battle.

Psychiatry is young. It isn't much of science unless it hooks up with neurology, and it is still abusing the rights and freedoms of the mentally ill on a daily basis. This blog will cover some aspects of my fight to have the mental health law reviewed, and to have treatment changed, to reflect what we now know, or more realistically what we don't know about the dopamine theory of illness.

Firstly I believe that dopamine maybe the problem, but that the blocking of dopamine, may not be the answer. The blocking of dopamine has only a short term benefit and in the long term stifles the healing process.

Secondly I believe that the internment without trial and forced treatment of mentally ill people is illegal and unnecessary in most cases. The key document that supports this view can be found on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights page, written by the UN Commissioner for Human Rights.

I will not be posting everything that happens in this battle, because I have to use my own case to push for these changes. Some of it is private. But I have engaged in correspondence with several governmental and non-governmental agencies and organisations already on this issue and I have so far not really got the answers I was seeking. But there have been some surprises along the way, of which I will keep you posted.

Please do download and read my book The Green 'M': The Battle for Freedom and Justice in Psychiatry, as this is the document that I will be using as a keystone, around which all the arguments will be put forward. Seeking the balance for freedom, whilst controlling the worst of the illness in its sufferers is a large part of that battle, along with holding back societies tendency to see all mentally ill people as a threat to the safety of the community in which we live and are desperate to take an active part in, but are preventing from doing so, because of other peoples prejudices.