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.

Pills for Your Ills, Potions for your Motions!

I met up with some service users recently and we were chatting about meds; what they were taking, what I was taking, doses etc. She was very overweight and when asked couldn't remember the pills she was taking. She said she didn't feel like doing anything, had very low energy and slept most of the time. She blamed herself, saying she was just lazy. She said she felt trapped in her head.I knew what she was talking about. The desire to have a life. The desire to experience normal things, like tidying up, walking and enjoying simple things other people take for granted, is suppressed under the heavy weight of high doses of meds. The other chap I met said a few years back that he was taking 30mg of Olanzapine daily. Phew! I never said anything but if he had remembered that right (and I believe he did), that's 33% higher than the highest dose recommended for schizophrenia. The BNF has never recommended higher than 20 mg, ever. I know this because I checked.

It seemed a shame that the lady I spoke to didn't even know what pills she was taking let alone the fact that she felt the way she did, largely because of the meds. And the man, he probably never realised what a massive risk his doctor was taking by giving him such a massive dose. Wake up Doctors and prescribers and educate your patients. Try telling them the truth.

Human Rights Stuff

The government has published a response on the Declartion of Human Rights - rights for disabled people, paper published by the UN Commissioner, this month. Interested groups were given a chance to comment on this document, which ran out yesterday. However, I heard from the Office of Disabily Issues, that the deadline has now been extended to the 25th July 2011, which obviously is good news. You can visit the document here: http://www.odi.gov.uk/un-report.

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.