Kalkion Publishes Short

Kalkion the online short story publisher has just published my story The Rioters Candle. Please go read it...It follows a young man arrested during the Arab Spring uprising. He is put into jail beneath the Presiential Palace, where he is visited by a mysterious stranger.

Vagabond Unlimited Relaunches

I have just launches a new version of http://www.vagabond-unlimited.co.uk, which uses HTML5 instead of flash to keep up with changing web use on phones and tablets. Flash has for a long time been unavailable for use on many hand held devices. I've added some new content including some new Ted on Street cards and some articles, including one on post apocalyptic literature. Please check it out before you go.

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.