Category Archives: Personal Mental Health Experience

Stories based on the author’s own personal experience with mental health

Gwent Police and Senior Mental Health Managers Meeting

On 26/07/17 I wrote to Gwent Police and senior Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust Mental Health Nursing Manager, Perry Attwell.

Hi Perry and Gwent Police,

I have been wanting to write to you, with regard to the current status of my detainment under section of the mental health act at my home address.

I have been subjected to the mental health act since 2nd April 1997. I have never been violent towards the police nor mental health workers during the 20 years in which I have been treated. At present, I feel that there is an over-reaction to me when I am processed for sectioning under the mental health act. There are up to 50 police officers in my street during a sectioning and the whole process is very daunting both for myself and also the officers. I am transferred in the back of the police van like a common prisoner and feel that this aggravated my early stay in hospital. As I am never aggressive, I am asking you that, for any potential future assessments, we have a low key approach whereby, if necessary the police can attend in a single car and transfer me in the back of a car, humanely, and so that my mental health in the community is preserved for any potential hospital assessment. I feel that as things stand, with such a hullabaloo raised, it doesn’t assist me nor my local community in the whole process. These most recent hospitalizations have cost me my career at university and I am really struggling to rebuild my life. I am never going to be violent or troublesome and do not wish to be portrayed in a bad light in my neighborhood with a vast police presence and a seemingly violent capture ahead of any mental hospital admittances. Also, Perry Attwell has mentioned to me himself that he would be arranging for me to be transferred directly to Talygarn and not being sent to the processing unit at St Cadoc’s. I ask for a response to this letter as I wish to improve the oft fractured relations I have with this whole service as part of my processing under the Mental Health Act. Theresa May says that she wishes to improve Human Rights for mental patients and here I believe that, at grass roots, I am helping to do just that.

Regards

Wesley Gerrard

After a very long delay and much avoidance by the requested parties to attend this meeting, I finally managed to sit down and meet with mental health managers and police in an attempt to diffuse the whole of my mental health situation / saga. Here is a report I have prepared about this meeting:

After waiting impatiently for this meeting since I first tried to arrange it last July, I finally managed to get the chance to sit down with some of the local police and senior mental health management on Thursday, 26^th October 2017 at Caldicot Library. I had wanted to begin a dialogue so as to analyze exactly what was happening in both the police and mental health services during the far too often sectioning process that they have been using on me for a number of years. It seems that not twelve months can go by without me being aggressively taken out of my home or off the street and removed to Talygarn and St Cadoc’s for lengthy stays. Every time I come before an appeals court these days I win my case so it is becoming ever more annoying that the police and mental health community teams plus psychiatrists in the hospital are persisting in performing these sections. It is so disruptive to me and has continued for over 20 years and I do not intend for it to go on any longer. I am trying to nip the whole saga in the bud and this meeting, whilst I am free and comfortable at home, I felt would be a good way of starting a constructive dialogue to help end the process. Senior manager Perry Atwell, has been taking an active role during my care in recent years and he, for one, is hoping to end the repeat process of me being taken into hospital as he on the whole feels it unnecessary. Unfortunately Perry has now retired from his senior management role and Anne James has taken his place. I have known Anne for most of the 20 years for which I have been a patient.

Anne James was present at the meeting. Also, my social worker / care co-ordinator, Elen Mcelroy. Plus psychologist John Baird (about to retire). Representing Gwent police there were two WPCs. I didn’t manage to record their names although I was aware of one as she has previously processed me during a detainment. The one WPC was senior mental health representative for the whole of Gwent. The other WPC was specifically the mental health liaison officer for my local area.

The whole atmosphere was pretty hostile from the start. I explained some of my grievances. The police denied tasering me etc. They denied assaulting me in the cells. Everyone was pretty much of the steadfast opinion that there has been no wrongdoing on behalf of the powers that be and that all that had been done was necessary. Anne James admitted that in the twenty years I have NEVER once been a danger to myself or others. I have though been sectioned and get regularly aggressively sectioned on no fewer than fifty occasions. The whole criteria of being sectioned means that you have to present as a danger to yourself or others. Yet, here on record, they have admitted that this has never been the case. The police corroborated that I have never been violent to them in any way nor have I any form of criminal record.

The police stated that they have no interest in fighting crime in the local area any more. They said that nowadays their policing was to be targeted towards the policing of vulnerable people.

They said that the main reason of me being violently sectioned by them was that in their view, when they turn up to my property they feel that I am intimidating in character towards them. I explained that I was not trying to intimidate them but that based on the history of what they have been doing to me for years that I am genuinely in fear for my life when they turn up. I cannot go past a police officer or car in the street without experiencing a panic attack through fear of them. It is more them who are intimidating me and the facts and evidence will verify this.

They said that when a magistrate passes an order they are just doing their jobs. I asked as to why they were using this system which is open to corruption. I do not get processed fairly under the mental health act as it is supposed to be.

They said that the social workers involved – mainly Linda Price – have a way of perceiving that I might be perceiving something that might make me mentally ill and they apply to judges for these orders.

In other words I am being detained and sectioned and locked away based on pure speculation of Orwellian ‘thought crime’.

It is illegal, unjust and wrong and must be stopped somehow. It is no way for me to live in constant fear from these hideous people.

I have never experienced the symptoms of any of the diagnosed mental illnesses they accuse me of. I have never sought treatment from them. I never take their medications willingly. It is all done against my will and consent and by using violent force. It has simply gone on for too long.

They have said that the whole process will not be stopped, will not go away and will simply intensify in the years ahead. They want to have more access to me in the community and to lock me away more regularly.

To be honest, the whole meeting was a shambles, very much what I expect from a broken dilapidated system that has perpetually abused me for years on end.

There must be some form of political / legal solution to this.

I am hoping that someone will be able to assist me in getting a better result from this attempt to diffuse the situation and also to look at the wider picture of how this system and its actors might be detrimentally affecting the lives of other victims.

At the very least I demand a full investigation into local mental health services and practices. If they have no evidence for their persecution of me then it should surely be stopped once and for all. They will end up killing me one way or another if they are allowed to proceed and we are not some third world country with no legal process or 21^st century morals. We are supposed to be a democracy where freedom is almost guaranteed.

‘I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in its hand.’

Caroline’s Complaint about H Ward, Somerset Partnership Trust Mental Health Services

1 Reply

My letter of complaint about my experiences of mental health care in UK..
An experience no one should ever be put through but they are every day.. This is the reality of care in the UK mental health services for many ppl.

CONFIDENTIAL

My name is Caroline Breslin. I am writing to you because I would like to make a formal complaint about my treatment by mental health services. When you reply to me please would you also send a copy of your reply to my advocate:

My complaint is about the ongoing effects of my treatment in H Ward in 2015 and the follow up care given to me in 2016. Before I set out details of my complaint I would first like to give some background about my experience at an earlier time because I see it as all connected. At my first contact with psychiatric services in 2008 Dr gave me a contraindicated drug Amyl Sulphide that was not meant to be taken with citalopram antidepressant. This resulted in me being very heavily sedated to the extent that I was unable to organise leaving house for counselling therapy offered by the service so I was cut off from their services and basically existed in a heavily sedated state until I ended up in a manic state in 2012 or 2013, which I blame on the contraindicated drug given alongside the anti depressant citalopram.and the services allowed me to re-engage with them. I never had mania before or since, apart from once mild flight or fight in 2004 when my dad died and I was mugged and assaulted twice in Dublin; it was a reaction to these traumas. I have problems with dates as I have complex PTSD which was a result of my treatment by police and mental health services. I am currently receiving help privately as I will never trust the statutory psychiatric services ever again.

I was sectioned to H Ward on 15 Oct 2015, and discharged from the section around 15 November 2015. I was offered a very high dose of quietiapine which was much higher than I had been taking previously. I refused this so then was given forced injections – to this day I do not know what drug it was. I was given up to five maybe six intra-muscular injections. I was left with a lump on my right buttock that to this day causes me physical pain and discomfort.

I would like to point out that I was sectioned following police intervention in a domestic dispute. This was as a result of crossed wires. My past experience of police when I lived in Dublin had been very traumatic. My treatment at the hands of the police on this occasion totally terrified me and severely traumatised me and the traumas continued until I disengaged with the psychiatric services in after the summer of 2016. I would like to stress that I did not attack anyone nor behave in an uncontrollable manner in H ward.

While I was detained in H ward I injured my leg which needed treatment, but it was nearly two weeks before I was taken to hospital for an x-ray, despite repeated requests by my flatmate. My leg was severely swollen from the injury which turned out to be a severed achilles tendon, which to this day causes me discomfort and significant pain and difficulty walking any distance. Because of the swelling my footwear did not fit and the ward insisted I wear slippers which they gave me; these were unsuitable as the inside heel was not covered and this caused me pain.

Upon leaving the unit in Nov 2015 I disengaged from mental health services services but then reengaged Feb / March 2016. After a few weeks the injected drugs (I don’t know what they were as I was never told when I asked) started to cause major physical and mental withdrawal symptoms. It was then I agreed to have the mental health services help me. A decision I have come to deeply regret. I was then placed under Dr S. I began treatment with Dr S at the end of January, or February 206. I explained I felt it may be the injections making me feel so mentally and physically ill. I was not listened to. I was ignored and felt bullied and pressurised by Dr S and by my care coordinator and support worker into continuing their line of medication treatment. My flat mate witnessed this bullying and pressurising by those who were meant to be helping me, as I asked her to come with me to some meetings.

Dr S and the team proceeded to pressurise me into taking very high doses of medications namely seroquel, zopiclone, benzodiazapines, and various other medications. When I had side effects from the drugs Dr S diagnosed these as more mental illnesses, and refused to acknowledge how obviously physically sick I was becoming to the point of not being able to eat at all or sleep or to go to the toilet normally as I was severely constipated and was urinating for over 25 mins every time I needed to use toilet. Also I lost the ability to communicate properly with others, my very essence of who I am was destroyed. I was severely dehydrated and my skin turned black and nails started to turn black and have holes in them I was also suffering very bad nerve pain at night that travelled up my legs to the rest of my body, extremely uncomfortable nerve and body pain that I am very convinced was caused by these psychiatric drugs.

by seroquel or the combination of these toxic drugs I was prescribed and found almost impossible to come off or reduce dosage. Also I am very concerned about the unknown not studied long term effects of these drugs on an individual given to them by mental health professionals. One instance relating to these side effects was my skin starting to turn very dark which prompted support worker to say how great it was my tan from summer 2015 had lasted into March or April 2016. My very obvious physical and mental distress was put down to my being extremely mentally ill. No effort was made to even listen to my concerns and my understanding that the many injections I was given during a short time 3 1/2 weeks in H in Oct 2015, was what caused the severe physical and mental effects upon me when those drugs wore off and left my body.

In late December 2015 to early January 2016 I started to experience severe withdrawal effects from the injections they had given me in H ward. However when I complained of adverse effects from the medication it was implied that I was like this because I was very mentally unwell, and that I did not know what was good for me as I was in no fit state to know my own mind. I was not listened to and the team refused to acknowledge or hear my obvious distress and suffering. I believe if I had been listened to and the injections and the withdrawal effects from them researched further into I would not have suffered so much and so cruelly and unnecessarily under Somerset Partnership Trust’s mental health services. Instead I was judged unable to know my own mind and my valid fears and concerns were ignored.

Since my extremely traumatic experiences in H I have refused to engage with the mental health services in……….
.

I will not let this matter lie as I have suffered very significant harm mentally and physically through no fault of my own. I believe that those who were meant to be helping have in fact damaged me very significantly mentally and physically. I have PTSD which is mainly as a result of my treatment at the hands of so called professionals who behaved, in my opinion, in a very barbaric manner.

The main points of my complaint are that:

· medication I was given has been damaging to my health and well-being.
· I was not given timely care or treatment of a leg injury while on H Ward.
· I was not listened to regarding my views about medication, and I was bullied and pressurised by the treatment team
· I was not given proper information about the medication I was given or its side effects.
When I experienced unpleasant side effects these were not recognised.

I would like there to be a thorough investigation of my complaint and an independent clinical review of the treatment decisions. The indiscriminate use of powerful medication has caused me great damage and I would like this to be acknowledged and for changes to be made so that others do not suffer as I have done.

Yours sincerely

Caroline Breslin

End Of Terror Meeting with Politician, Jessica Morden MP

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This morning I met with my local MP Jessica Morden. Jessica represents Labour and is the parliamentary representative for the Newport East constituency. Over the past few years that I have known Jessica we have had two face-to-face meetings scheduled that have unfortunately not materialised due to me being sectioned on both occasions by mental health authorities. It was to be third time lucky and it was with great pleasure that, without any unwanted intrusions, I attended Jessica’s surgery at Caldicot library today.

In Wales, health is a devolved matter and most of the issues I have with Mental Health Authorities fall into the remit of Jessica’s Welsh Assembly cohort, John Griffiths AM. I had a productive meeting with John Griffiths AM a couple of months ago and we are still following up with work based on what was discussed at that meeting, with Welsh Minister for Health Vaughan Gething currently attending to my plight. Parliament, however, does house the Mental Health Act, the legislation that governs Mental Health care in this country and I felt that a meeting with Jessica Morden MP would be of paramount importance in order for me to successfully challenge the provisions of this Act. After being contained within the mental health system for approximately 20 years I am especially keen to find a permanent solution to escape this legislation as a persecuted individual and also to build a better future system for the healthcare users of tomorrow.

Jessica welcomed my partner, Nicola and I, with warm smiles and an invite to take a seat in her office. Jessica was accompanied by an assistant who was very helpful throughout the meet. Jessica was pleased that I had previously met with John Griffiths and from the outset of our meeting Jessica was graced with an air of positivity and a desire to help me change the system for the better. I explained the circumstances of my most recent hospitalisation, when pure ‘thought crime’ was invented and acted upon and how I was shepherded off to detention and tortured for several months before the Mental Health Review Tribunal Courts overturned the psychiatrists and, finding in my favour, secured my release. Only 5% of patient appeals ever result in success and despite the long wait for justice,I felt that it had been served and that I was a lucky man. I made it clear that after that judgement I had sought to avoid psychiatric services completely, failing to engage with social services or medics. For the past six months I have been successfully living outside of the mental health system and have been re-attending university, getting on with life. I explained to Jessica that I aimed to continue this progress outside the auspices of Mental Health.

Jessica wanted to know about the progress of my complaints. I explained that Perry Attwell of Aneurin Bevan university Health Board Trust, acting on behalf of Chief executive, Judith Paget, was still dealing with two ongoing complaints and also that I was awaiting a response from the Public Service Ombudsman for Wales. I explained the detail of my latest complaint within the system relating to my drinks ban at the Castle Inn, Caldicot – the psychiatrist and police had informed the landlord of the Castle Inn, Steve Gribble, that he wasn’t to serve me alcohol as it interfered with the prescribed mental health medications. Jessica felt that this was rather bizarre and that the mental health authorities were over-extending their powers unnecessarily in the community. It is an ongoing matter where I aim to use the Equality Act in court against the pub landlord and once the complaints have been resolved I aim to bring the matter before the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) who could fine the health authority £500 000 for illegally disclosing confidential private medical details.

I have a lifetime award of DLA (Disability Living Allowance) for my mental health conditions. Due to government changes to the benefits system I am currently in the process of having to reapply and migrate over to PIP (Personal Independence Payment). This whole shift has been a controversial government policy and many difficulties have been created for the often marginalised disabled community across the country. Jessica was glad that I have been getting support from Monmouthshire Mind and she offered to appoint some government PIP advisors to assist my case, something that I was especially grateful for.

Jessica pointed out that only last week, Prime Minister Theresa May had made some further, controversial alterations to how difficult mental health sufferers would find the application for PIP. I explained that I was aware of this and dismayed that the news had so successfully been oppressed by the mainstream media. I did, however, explain how I had been impressed by some of the changes that Mrs May had made to the mental health system. At End Of Terror, we started tweeting Theresa May during her time as Home Secretary and it was during this period that she started to divorce the cosy relationship the police had been having with mental health services. Theresa May has now dramatically reduced police involvement in mental health care and police cells are no longer to be used as ‘Places of Safety’ under the Mental Health Act. I welcomed this change and feel it improves the system no end. I had been a victim of some of the most horrific human rights abuses by Gwent Police over the course of my extended life as a mental patient.

We were discussing charities in mental health and I said that I was often frustrated by the activities of MIND, who I felt actually were quite powerless in the quest to genuinely support mental patients. I want there to be wholesale changes to the Mental Health Act, in particular for Treatment Against Consent to be abolished. Jessica wondered if there were any charities that were set up that could support my anti-psychiatry stance. I said that the closest i had found so far was the CCHR (Citizens Commission on Human Rights). I praised their stance on anti-psychiatry and also the volumes of material that this charity releases online to combat Big Pharma and the slavery-like Mental Health industry.

In university I have been studying the Francophone Caribbean. We have covered slavery and colonialism, from the French perspective, of the controversial slave trade that persisted in the French Atlantic Triangle. Slaves were moved wholesale across the ‘Middle Passage’ from Africa to the French Antilles where they were bound to masters and forced to work plantations, providing the capitalist goods and profits for their European overlords. Coffee, Sugar, Indigo and Cotton flooded the economy back home in France and vast profits were made by this now recognised as criminal enterprise. It was the epitome of the Capitalist system. I explained how the whole French slave system was legalised and regulated by the introduction of the French King of the ‘Code Noir’. These laws were controversial and in today’s light can be seen as very brutal as they set out the policies for punishing the property that were slaves, by cutting hamstrings and whipping for misdemeanours. I equated the UK Mental Health Act of today with the ‘Code Noir’. It is a modern day Code Noir, legislating a modern form of slavery, again driven by capitalism and producing vast profits. The Mental Health Act is inhumane and in today’s age of modern enlightenment, should be abolished.

I explained how I wanted Jessica to somehow put me in touch with government think tanks and health policymakers so that I could continue to lobby for real change in Mental Health. I feel that the voice of individuals, who suffer the system, is suppressed. The decision makers who determine law are simply unaware of the real experiences of those on the front line, fighting the battle. Jessica was intrigued to learn of exactly what happened tome during my most recent stay in hospital. I went into detail to explain just exactly how degrading depot injections against consent can be and the indeterminable suffering that they produce, turning the patient into a zombie who is unable to read anything, to concentrate, to move about or to focus on basic life. These depot injections are about the most powerful weapon in the psychiatrists’ arsenal and they overuse them, disabling and rendering useless a vast swathe of the mental health population.

Jessica concluded the meeting by saying how she would be following up on what we discussed and, with her aide, she arranged to visit the House of Commons library to conduct some follow-up research. I have produced a document for Jessica Morden and John Griffiths, outlining the key areas where I wish to see change.

Jessica said that she could see that I was in very good health and kindly wished me all the best with my continued studies at Cardiff University.

My whole case is an ongoing matter. After 20 years in the system, I struggle to make sense of the war but feel that today’s meeting with Jessica can certainly be marked as being positive, encouraging and hopefully will produce long term results that satisfy the End Of Terror campaign against mental health abuses. The people of Newport East are lucky to have such fine political representatives as Jessica and John. They both earn their votes and devote considerable time to improving all of our lives locally. If ever you have an issue, please do not hesitate in contacting them and you will be surprised just exactly how helpful they can both be. I look forward to continuing to lobby for improvements in Mental Health and look forward to fighting the whole overall war with renewed vigour.

Interview with Justin Bond, Mental Health Sufferer from Birmingham

Report on Mental Health in Southeast Wales for John Griffiths AM and Jessica Morden MP

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I have been a non-consenting patient of southeast Wales’ mental health services since 2^nd April 1997. I have almost amassed twenty years of living within this closed mental health system. I write this report with a view to enacting real change for the better for myself and other end users of the mental health services in our area.

Ideally I would like to see the Mental Health Act scrapped in parliament. I feel that it is antiquated and rooted in Victorian Bedlamism.

Psychiatry is not a science. At best it is a pseudoscience. There is little actual medical evidence for most, nearly all mental illnesses. Mental illness, unlike normal illness, cannot be scientifically assessed. If an illness cannot be scientifically diagnosed, how can it be an illness? The blood, body, mind of a schizophrenic is exactly the same as a healthy person. There are no biometric markers that indicate a sickness in someone’s mind. The point is that mental illness is not pathological. Cancer has its markers, as does AIDS. As these illnesses can be scientifically studied and examined, they can also be scientifically treated and hopefully cured. What hope is there for a cure for mental illness if the illness itself cannot be determined scientifically? This point exposes the myth that mental illness is untreatable and cannot be cured. It cannot be cured as it does not exist in the first place. I was given a diagnosis of schizophrenia in 1997. Schizophrenia is apparently an incurable disease. This is not true as it does not exist and I have never suffered the symptoms psychiatrists identify in schizophrenia. For 19 years I have been confident that I have been misdiagnosed and yet I still experience treatment and simply cannot evade the system.

Big Pharma is the driving force behind the mental health industry. For every identified illness there is often expensive treatment available from big global pharmaceutical firms. Drugs companies rarely see their share prices topple and mental health is a very profitable sector. With all this big business and money flying around I often worry about exactly how precise and effective these treatments are. There must be a more ethical means of turning a profit for Big Pharma than mental health drugs, drugs that are often used against the consent of patients.

Treatment against consent is my biggest bugbear in psychiatry. In every branch of medicine the patient has a choice bar psychiatry. If someone falls ill they may choose to consult a healthcare professional or doctor. The doctor can then diagnose illness and offer treatment with a view to curing the illness. At any stage the patient is within his or her rights to refuse the doctor’s advice and to consult elsewhere or simply ignore the treatment. Often illness is an individual matter and if the treatment doesn’t feel right to a patient then why should that patient continue the course of treatment. How many of our medicine cabinets are full of half-used prescriptions of painkillers and antibiotics or the like? In mental health as treatment against consent is condoned and used, patients’ rights are eroded. We move out of a realm of doctors and patients and into a realm of torture and torturer. Treatment against consent is torture plain and simple. It was used in the days of Bedlam, in the Victorian Institutions and has been a cornerstone of the short history of psychiatry and mental hospitals. Yes, some more barbaric, outlandish practices (with no scientific basis) such as lobotomy have been ceased, but treatment against consent continues to this day and with our modern technology and advancements in science chemical lobotomies occur on a daily basis through the use of some of psychiatry’s arsenal. We are talking drugs such as Clozaril, depot injections, Risperidone, Olanzapine.

It is often argued that psychiatrists are dealing with the most disturbed of patients. People always use Peter Sutcliffe in Broadmoor as an extreme example and say how this abhorrent man who has committed abhorrent crimes needs to be treated against his consent. Unfortunately, the vast majority of service users aren’t Peter Sutcliffe, yet they get tarred with the same brush and treatment against consent affects this majority of patients far worse than they do Sutcliffe and other extreme cases. Even in the case of abhorrent psychiatric criminals, these people are human beings with human rights. The choice of treatment and the right to consent to treatment is an absolutely fundamental human right and is part of what separates us as an intelligent species from the animal world. Treatment against consent fosters a concentration camp mentality. It is Nazism, plain and simple, extreme far right use of force to disrupt nature. It is man against the environment in its most absolute ultimate form. Man mistreating other man using torture and chemicals. So much of psychiatry is rooted in eugenics and this is a distant historical archaic fixation that needs to be properly eradicated in order for human society to function properly,

To set this treatment against consent in its context I give you my 19 year case as an extreme example. I have never accepted my diagnosis, nor felt mentally ill. I therefore reject treatment. When under section of the Mental Health Act you lose your right to consent. From Day 1 on my healthcare plan I have been forcibly injected against my consent, with drugs unknown to me and only through experience and research have I discovered what these drugs do. When you refuse tablets in a mental health environment they will turn to injections to guarantee that you take the treatment. They are allowed to use force and in my case have done that or always used the veiled threat of force to get me to take down my trousers so they can inject my thigh or backside. By law, mental health professionals can freely assault, restrain and drug with hardcore, mind and body –altering chemicals with no repercussions. If this happened in a war environment – let’s say Aleppo, there would be international outcry and it would be seen as a war crime, yet it occurs on a daily basis inside British mental hospitals, and worse, with new CTO legislation, also in our communities. Depot injections that I am allergic to have caused me to have a severe hiatus hernia. This makes me projectile vomit all my meals and every morning I start the day puking. It was brought on by depot injections against my consent and the NHS is powerless to stop psychiatrists doing this to me and so my hiatus hernia cannot be treated and cured so I have to live with a permanent disability caused by treatment against consent.

What if treatment against consent was outlawed? It would force the mental health services to adapt greatly. For a start, less emphasis would be on Big Pharma and the medications it produces. We would move away from clinical psychiatry and into the realm of more natural, talking therapies. I’m not saying people should all be freed from mental hospitals, just that the emphasis on drugs would be less. People could choose to be unmedicated and if deemed ill, remain inpatients, but unmedicated ones by choice. When a lay person thinks of a psychiatrist they think that these people sit down and chat with you for hours about your problems and your childhood etc. This is a common misperception. Psychiatrists tend to be just clinical and rely on prescribing drugs. It is psychologists, who aren’t necessarily medically trained, who perform the talking therapies one associates with US Sitcoms and films etc. Psychologists won’t offer you medications. They aren’t doctors so lack prescribing power. They will recommend ways and means of dealing with your problems and often over a period of time will assist you in coping with your problems by identifying root causes and disruptive patterns of behavior. Psychology is a buzz subject academically these days with university departments full, yet try seeing a psychologist on the NHS. You will always find a psychiatrist. They are funded by Big Pharma. I have been on the waiting list to see a psychologist for over ten years. I am deeply embedded in the mental health system with regular hospitalizations yet cannot get to see a psychologist. Aneurin Bevan UHB simply employ too few psychologists and those they do are fully overworked and do not have time for their clientele. The local NHS invest in psychiatry and virtually ignore talking therapies yet it is in these areas where psychiatry and its relevant research are most accurately close to being a proper genuine science. We are supposed to be moving away from clinical mental health environments and towards ‘care in the community’. It is imperative that talking therapies get adequate financial coverage and are accorded a valued place within the therapeutic setup, especially in our local area.

Another great area for improvement locally is another variety of talking therapy in use in mental hospitals, that of occupational therapy. The occupational therapy has as its aim the goal of readying an inpatient for reintegration into the community and outside world. They will work on basic skills, life skills, things one would normally do on the outside and from within a hospital environment an occupational therapist shall aim to get you back to full healthy working order, enough so you can function independently in the real world. Two years ago I met with Judith Paget, Chief Executive, Aneurin Bevan UHB, and in this meeting I emphasized how I disliked the cutbacks that were being made within her system on occupational therapy. To me, as a longstanding mental inpatient, I found the most value in the hospital to be in occupational therapy. Occupational therapy made me feel normal. Whether it be a day trip to the beach, cooking a lunchtime meal for fellow patients, doing a morning crossword or just simple arts and crafts, occupational therapy is vital in an inpatient environment and indeed in out patient aftercare. Yet, consistently over the past twenty years the OT budget has been cut, staff have been laid off and services and end users suffer as a result. On at least three occasions over the past 3 years there has been absolutely zero occupational therapy at all in Talygarn. When you combine the fact that you can’t see a psychologist or engage in other meaningful talking therapies, it seems that the local system is over-reliant on psychiatry and Big Pharma meds. It’s how to pass your time in the hospital system. One aims to be as active as possible and all It seems you can physically do as a patient is sit and smoke cigarettes. It’s no wonder that drug use is becoming ever more prevalent inside mental hospitals as people are genuinely bored and need to occupy their time in some way. Judith Paget incidentally promised to get me in a consultation meeting with the heads of OT for the Trust and to suitably increase funding in their direction. Instead she brushed me aside, ignored her promise and cut back more funds and saved more money by binning OT which she obviously deemed a non-essential luxury.

In general, human rights for mental patients need to be improved. I worry about the scrapping of the human rights Act and how it will affect mental patients. There are a few safeguards I’ve noticed in use in the tribunal courts which do protect certain interests of patients. In general, there is a massive stigma attached to mental illness and perhaps the worst part of being diagnosed and treated is how the community and society change to treating you as an individual. It is a difficult period for patients and their families and friends. This is made worse by the massive stigma and misunderstandings associated with mental health. I think that it all begins with the vast divide between staff and patients within hospital systems. Too many fundamental freedoms and rights are taken away from inpatients. If one is being treated like a subhuman one will feel like a subhuman. Mental hospitals become, not healthcare environments,but punishment centres. They are prisons for the disaffected. Most patients I have spoken to who have experience of both the prison service and mental hospitals actually prefer prisons as they have more freedom there and it is more like normal life inside. They can have jobs and tvs and do what they wish during association hours. Mental hospitals, and you must try visiting Talygarn and St Cadoc’s to see this, are dark and dismal places often threadbare with so little to do for patients. Facilities are dilapidated, often broken and rarely repaired. If mental health is to be treated on a parity with physical health then surely the environment of the hospital can be improved. Rights are taken away. Mobile phones are confiscated, or mobile phone chargers. Cigarette lighters are confiscated. You can’t drink caffeinated coffee. Takeaways are banned. Are these rules fit for patients or fit for prisoners?

As the last twenty years have gone by I have noticed how freedom within the community, within the hospital itself, has slowly been tightened up. Twenty years ago, patients would wake in St Cadoc’s, have a cooked breakfast, do the crossword together in OT, and disappear to Caerleon town to trawl around the pubs all day. You could freely walk around the beautiful countryside grounds and vistors could come and go as pleased. Nowadays, you are more likely to walk onto the ward after some leave, forced to submit to a full body search and have a breathalyzer to test you for any signs of alcohol. Your visitors have to stay outside the entire ward and can only come at certain times. You cannot simply walk out into the grounds for a bit of fresh air. These hospitals are now heavily policed by the staff that have become warders as opposed to nurses. As smoking bans enter the fray, staff can no longer socially smoke with patients and talk about their problems. It adds to further separation between staff and patient and ultimately when the smoking ban is enforced life for an involuntary smoking patient will be a nightmare as they will be forced to quit on the spot and that is unhealthy. If the aim is to get patients into the community they need to be able to have trust built in that community from as early a stage as possible. Mental Health systems should be about lifting barriers, not erecting them. There is enough stigma in the real world without stigma inside the hospital system.

There is a major problem in justice for mental patients. The current tribunal system is very unfair and far too heavily weighted in favor of psychiatrists. For a start one of the three board members of a Tribunal is a psychiatrist. There is an unhealthy backlog of delay in the Tribunal system meaning that you often have to wait several months under treatment (against consent) in hospital following your appeal being lodged prior to the Tribunal sitting. Solicitors are hard pressed and often very impotent in terms of what actual assistance they can give you. The hospitals are full of people living in hope about their appeals yet on average only about 5% of appeals are ever successful for patients. I feel that similar to the criminal justice system, prior to being locked away you should get your chance in front of a court for them to decide if the psychiatrist is right in saying you need to be detained under section. It is only reasonable for this to happen.
Police have become a lot more involved in mental health – Cells are being used to hold patients prior to them being transported to hospital. Often patients’ first contact with services is via the police, police transportation being used instead of ambulances and handcuffs and, worse still, tasers are routinely used on mental patients. The last thing you expect as you enter a healthcare environment is to be shot in the chest by a police marksman. I have been the victim of a taser attack in my own home and it severely traumatised me. Again, are we treating health or is this just a form of social control for disciplining the marginalized and disaffected.

Police have no role in healthcare. When you need to use the police as a patient they will ignore you and they routinely ignore some of the worst crimes perpetuated by staff in mental hospitals. The training of the police re mental health needs to be completely overhauled and they need to distance themselves as a system as a whole from the mental health sector if we are ever to achieve parity between mental and physical healthcare.

Training needs to be revamped and brought into the twenty-first century. Antiquated ideologies need to be erased. I find that most mental health workers appear to have a glazed sense of brainwash about them. They are conditioned into distancing themselves from the mentally ill, into building barriers. They are oversold the pharmaceutical benefits of the drugs and are misled, like doctors, by drug company marketing material, false claims and the vast profits that multi-billion dollar industry generates.

Lastly, does it really need to be said that the system should not be employing criminals. Often psychiatry and the industry attracts some dark people in its workforce. There are far to many with brutal prison-warder type mentalities who get their kicks out of oppressing others. And psychiatrists are not always the sanest and most reasonable people. I was appalled to learn that my psychiatrist of two years had a history of child sex offences. Dr Darryl Watts was employed by Aneurin Bean UHB after spending 30 hours a week surfing child pornography on the internet whilst working as a psychiatrist in Bristol. He was convicted, struck off and the later employed to work in a position of responsibility. He is unfit to judge the sanity of others in my opinion and this is a clear scandal.

For more see http://endofterror.org

Dear Judith

2 Replies

JUDITH PAGET – Chief Executive, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust

Last summer I was sectioned under the Mental Health Act. After two months or so in hospital I won my appeal against section in the Mental Health Review Tribunal Courts. I now have no psychiatric treatment and am a free man. I used my time in hospital to gather as much documentary evidence as possible and have reproduced in this blog post here my fight for justice. I wrote letters of complaint on an almost daily basis and am still dealing with the matter via the Ombudsman, my MP and Welsh Assembly Member plus the Minister of Health for the Welsh Government. If you are a detained mental patient I suggest that you fight in a similar manner and document your case as the results are apparent. I typed up all the documentation from handwritten letters photocopied in hospital and reproduce them here.I also submitted all my documentation to the Tribunal courts. ENJOY THE LITANY OF COMPLAINTS! (and responses)

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18th July 2016

Dear Judith Paget, Chief Executive, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board,

I am sure that you remember me Judith. I have previously written umpteen complaints to you regarding the abominable health treatment I receive from employees of your Trust. Most of the time these complaints achieve nothing other than generating even more animosity between staff and myself. I am a patient and thus an end user of the service. I expect to be treated like a human being at all times by Aneurin Bevan UHB employees.

I have been out of hospital since November, being discharged from section in January. My consultant psychiatrist was changed from Dr Basu to Dr Attwood. I was put under the care of the Abergavenny-based Assertive Outreach team with most of the outreach work being supervised by Freya Crowley. Since November I have kept my nose down and used the time out of hospital for recovery. I was severely traumatized by the torture I experienced on Talygarn and PICU and I haven’t been up to much at all. My fundamental aim is to stay out of hospital. I have received visits from AOT on a weekly basis, changing that at my request to fortnightly about two months ago. Dr Attwood has been out to visit me twice. I do prefer him to Dr Basu who quite frankly is an insane clown, yet I still wouldn’t trust Attwood as far as i could kick him and he has already threatened me with long term hospitalization for my next admission. I guess it’s the lesser of two evils.

I was removed from my university studies at Cardiff – Translation (BA) – to be incarcerated in your mental health system. I do prefer education to being part of a sick human experimentation where anything goes. However, it was deemed by the authorities that it was better for me to while away my time in hospital. I will be returning to the second year of my course in September at which point I will be severing all ties with mental health workers to focus on my goals of achieving a degree – something I have been trying to do since 1997 when I was initially removed from study. Over the past month I have started to become more outgoing and active. I completed a university assessment for the course I missed whilst in hospital and achieved a 75% mark – a first class honours. I started quite heavy exercise, returning to the gym and attending various martial arts classes. I also began t read heavily and reignite my websites. I am taking things at a steady pace despite the increase in useful activity. To do well in university I need to be as fit and healthy as possible and sitting around like a mental health couch potato is not a good way to prepare for the challenge ahead.

Freya from Assertive Outreach has been devolving her responsibilities as my primary carer and sending out junior members of the team, including students. I had two junior members from AOT attend my home last Tuesday. I don’t know their names as they are all strangers to me and there are so many people on this AOT team. From the outset of our meeting they were both hostile. It was obvious that they weren’t in the best of moods. I stopped what I was doing and paid attention to them. They were just conducting a fascist style interrogation, totally nitpicking at anything I said and inferring that I was mentally ill.I recognized their game and resisted but it didn’t matter what I said they had made up their minds. This is despite the fact that all of my friends and family and everyone else in society have been remarking on how well I’m doing and how they are glad to see me finally getting back involved in the community and my life. I realize that any change from being a mental health couch potato might strike AOT as being odd, but it is not my aim to be totally subjected to the totalitarianism of the mental health act. I do intend to live a good, healthy life in spite of constant oppression by your employees and Gwent Police.

The two members of AOT went away and my partner Nicola and I were instantly frightened. We spent the rest of the day jumping out of our skins when a car pulled up outside our home, worried sick that it was a police snatch squad. I have cancelled all my activity with martial arts and going to the gym and cannot concentrate on reading. My suspicions of the team’s intent were proved correct this morning. I received a worrying phone call from Freya Crowley dictating to me that the team were concerned about my mental health and how Dr Attwood’s underling doctor (some Asian sounding name) was going to be making an emergency visit. Now this set all the alarm bells ringing. I stayed calm on the phone and informed Freya that I would be receiving no emergency visit as my mental health was fine. I explained that the two women from AOT last Tuesday were out of order and misconstruing evidence. I said to Freya that if she insisted a doctor attend it could be done on the next scheduled fortnightly visit when I expected to see her. I also stipulated that it should be Dr Attwood in attendance and that he should not be diffusing responsibility to his junior doctor.

I am now sat at home, absolutely petrified about the forthcoming week and whether or not I will retain my liberty. I did immediately phone my solicitor Neil Confrey, for advice. He instructed me to remain calm with these halfwits when they do turn up.

I want to know why it is that, technically a free man, I am subjected to what is tantamount to Cartel-like intimidation in my home. If I was being stalked by the Sicilian Mafia the maybe I should expect to live in fear. These are your employees, supposedly having a mandate for healthcare. They induce poor health in people, through their lack of training and irresponsible behaviour. Yes, they have done this many many times over the years but this does not mean that the cycle will perpetuate forever. I can assure you that I will break this cycle and live unmolested in a normal fashion, contributing to society in my own way, using choice and democracy in my actions. I have been taught how not to behave as a human being through prolonged exposure to your workers. They treat me like a piece of dog shit, with total disdain, with no respect for my human rights. I am a piece of meat to these captors, someone who can be chucked away and forgotten while they go home on their comfy wages and bliss out in front of the television.

It’s got to stop somewhere Judith – You have to learn to leash up your workers, to keep them under control. I will not and will never submit to the authority of the mental health services in South East Wales and I will continue to honour the values that I held as a young man prior to 1997 when this nightmare began. You may get away with it every time but some day somebody somewhere will put a stop to my torture.

I expect this complaint to be dealt with promptly and effectively with suitable disciplinary measures instilled.

Regards

William Wesley Gerrard

Ps. as a result of all this mayhem I have managed to produce two new articles on the End Of Terror website that I think you should be reading http://endofterror.org

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Chief executive
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust
St. Cadoc’s Hospital
Caerleon

30^th July 2016

Dear Judith Paget,

This letter follows on from my complaint from several weeks ago. I received a response saying that you had up to six months to investigate this complaint. I find this unacceptable.

Since I wrote the complaint there has been follow up from your workers and I have subsequently been detained at Talygarn under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act. This entire detention is due to the fallout from the aggression displayed by AOT in my home. I have already missed a year of my university studies due to Dr Basu, Dr Al Hasani and the care teams (now including Dr. Attwood). Being sectioned on 29^th July means that a tribunal will not convene for at least two months. My university studies are due to resume on 22^nd September 2016.

I have had enough of your mental health teams disrupting my life. I do not wish to sit at home, on the unemployed fringes of society, a static target for aggressive mental health practitioners. Whenever, I seemingly begin to piece my life together and enter mainstream society, your teams attack. It is nothing but psychiatric enslavement to which I am subjected. It has to stop.

The AOT team’s report from that initial aggressive visit was riddled with fantasy, Dr Attwood invented an incident, accusing me of sending beheading videos via Facebook to my sister in Australia. This is utterly false and both my sister and I have refuted Attwood’s claims. Social worker Linda Price needs disciplining, as do Al Hasani and Basu. They are just targeting me without reason. My mental health is in perfect condition and it is shambolic how I am detained. This situation will continue to escalate and I will resist and attack Aneurin Bevan UHB Trust through endofterror.org until I achieve satisfaction.

Surely, it is better to quit the harassment of me and to allow me to pursue my Translation (BA) studies at Cardiff University in peace?

I copied in my MP, Jessica Morden and AM, John Griffiths, to the original complaint and am hoping to achieve an independent political solution to my woes.

I wish for you to consider the escalations that have occurred and indeed will continue to occur as a result of my original complaint. I will not serve the doctors, nurses, social workers, willingly, when they are denying me all rights to function in the community as a human being.

Something must be done, and done swiftly, Judith. And you know that you have the power and capacity, to enact change. I implore you to finally act on this saga that continues to spiral out of control.
Regards,

William Wesley Gerrard

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Chief executive
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust
St. Cadoc’s Hospital
Lodge Road
Caerleon
Newport
NP18 3XQ

1^st August 2016

Dear Judith,

As you are well aware I am a detained Section 3 patient at Talygarn Ward. Last week when Dr Al Hasani detained me he promised that I would have overnight leave at home with my partner and nearest relative, Nicola Edwards. Dr Al Hasani has now reneged on that promise. His superior Dr Basu has allowed me 4 hours leave daily. I was told that I could go home for those four hours. Obviously with Caldicot being a forty-five minute drive away, this four hours is not particularly suitable. I need, however, to be at home, to look after my partner, to recover from hospitalization, and to prepare for my return to university in September. On leaving the ward round meeting, I asked Keith Sullivan, Deputy Ward Manager, for a lift home to Caldicot, Keith Sullivan flatly refused so my leave will not be facilitated. There is no excuse for this.

I am being held under false pretenses. I have no health issues. After what transpired last year when Basu ignored the court ruling about my discharge, causing me to miss a full year of university, I demand now a full investigation into my case.

Regards,

William Wesley Gerrard

Chief executive
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust
St. Cadoc’s Hospital
Lodge Road
Caerleon
Newport
NP18 3XQ

1^st August 2016

Dear Judith Paget,

Following on from my complaint earlier today regarding the failure of my four hour leave to Caldicot being facilitated, I write another complaint, specifically about Deputy Ward Manager, Keith Sullivan.

Firstly, I am disgusted that you continue to employ this imbecile of a man. It seems that every complaint about him is simply ignored. Healthcare to me is about providing a decent medical service and at all times your staff should be trained to be polite and courteous. Even if, like Keith, they hold personal grudges, professionalism from nurses (and doctors) is what the end user of your service expects.

As I couldn’t go to Caldicot, I went out for a couple of hours, a walk in the rain to Pontypool town centre, to meet with local friends. I returned to the ward after two hours, in time for my evening meal.

Keith Sullivan opened the doors to me, was instantly in my personal space, and demanded to conduct a full body search. Now, I have been a patient within the Aneurin Bevan UHB Mental Health services for 19 years. On PICU, they do conduct a fairly thorough search, but it is a new thing to me that full searches are now condoned on acute wards. I have watched people come and go with no such search occurring, and never, in 19 years, has one been demanded of me. I simply refused point blank, clearly expressing my views to Mr. Sullivan and accusing him of unnecessary animosity.

I am unsure of what disciplinary measures might be taken against me. I demand fair treatment. I am sure that hostile notes will be recorded in my medical file, more ammunition for Messrs Attwood, Basu and Al Hasani, no doubt. But, how is a full body search contributing to my healthcare and wellbeing? I find it intrusive, invasive and unsettling to my mental health. What I want, is for Keith Sullivan’s animosity to be nipped in the bud. I would prefer it if he was fired, or when I am a patient on Talygarn, that he is transferred to a different ward for employment. I think that he is a petty little dictator , on a power trip that needs to be curbed.
Regards,

William Wesley Gerrard

Chief Executive
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust
St. Cadoc’s Hospital
Lodge Road
Caerleon
Newport
NP18 3XQ

4th August 2016

Dear Judith Paget,

I am writing to you to request a complete change in the medical staff caring for me. I wrote to you last year to remove Dr Basu and Dr Al Hasani from my care team yet nothing was done. The problem still therefore exists and this year I want it to be rectified.

Both Dr Basu and Dr Al Hasani are totally incompetent. They do not carry themselves as medical professionals and are overtly hostile to me in every aspect of my care. They are ‘extreme psychiatrists’, constantly medicating against consent and placing me on the highest possible maximum doses available to them. They withhold my leave and do not take into account my partner’s wishes. Incidentally, my partner, Nicola Marie Edwards, my fiancée, with whom I have lived for fourteen years, as my nearest relative, has been denied her right, under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act, to have me discharged. This is illegal.

Basu and Al Hasani are hostile to the point of being racist. They will never discuss the symptoms they believe me to suffer from and they openly lie, Dr Basu stating last year at a tribunal that I believed President Obama was my best friend. These doctors are liars, are irresponsible, and shouldn’t be allowed to practice at all, let alone lord over me with their ‘mighty’ powers.

Dr Basu and Al Hasani totally ignored the tribunal verdict last year which stipulated that I should be immediately released on a CTO in order for me to resume my second year of a Translation (BA) at Cardiff University. Instead they held me for the maximum 6 month duration of the Section 3. I therefore missed a whole year of my education program and now they have me again in hospital it looks likely I will have to defer my studies for another year. They are constantly putting every possible obstacle in my path and fail to recognize me as a fellow human being. They seem to perversely get kicks out of their treatment of me, often giggling in my face when they do something negative to me, knowing full well they will get away with it. They are rude, insolent and have no place in yor Trust as ‘responsible’ clinicians.

I also request that Dr Attwood be removed from my care in the community. I wish to apply for him to be struck off and will be contacting the GMC myself at the earliest available opportunity. Dr Attwood has lied to have me placed under section. He has stated that my sister, Melanie Powell, in Australia, contacted him to complain about me sending her ‘beheading videos’ on Facebook. This is a complete manifestation, a delusion on the doctor’s behalf. My sister has sent me a written statement for the courts, stipulating that she has never had contact with Dr Attwood, nor have I ever sent her beheadings videos. Beheadings videos are something I do not dwell upon. In fact, my only knowledge of them comes from the Daily Mail and Bristol Post articles on Dr Darryl Watts, who in addition to his addiction to child pornography, also had a fetish for snuff movies. I find it very bizarre how the devious psychiatrists involved in my care could plot so wickedly. Both Basu and Al Hasani seem satisfied that Dr. Attwood speaks the truth and are treating me with full force based on his imaginary evidence. The scandal involved in my care continues to grow and will provide rich material in my endofterror.org campaign against Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust.

I ask you how I am supposed to put faith in the professional opinions of this trio of second-rate doctors, when they so openly and blatantly lie? They may fool the courts and indeed yourself and the managers with their lies, but I assure you, that they do not pull the wool over my eyes. These men are heinous and deserve proper disciplinary action, bans from practicing and prolonged retraining. I simply refuse to accept their authority or judgments.

In addition to requesting a fully fresh team of psychiatrists, I also want rid of the Assertive Outreach Team involved in my outpatient care. I asked for them to be removed and to have Elen Macelroy, Hywel Dda social worker, to replace them. Under the guidance of Jackie Lewis they are irresponsible and hostile. They should act with more compassion in their duties and not be antagonistic and hostile. They are prepared to lie to further the goals of their psychiatrist masters.

I hope that you will swiftly replace the aforementioned medics and care teams so that the substandard service I currently receive can be upgraded to some proper professional NHS care. Incidentally, I am still waiting to see psychologist John Baird after Perry Attwell ordered Dr Basu, last year, to arrange an appointment with him for me.

I apologize for sending you a stream of letters from my captivity in Talygarn. I feel I am bringing important issues to your attention, however. Please respond in writing. If perhaps, there wasn’t a situation here of ZERO occupational therapy then maybe I’d have other constructive things to do. When yourself, Perry, Nicola and I sat down for an hour’s meeting about two years ago, I am disappointed to record that nothing at all came of that meeting. ZERO results. As Chief Executive, I remind you of your duties to service users. You have the power to implement change for the better, and you should use that power wisely. Please bring the second rate medics involved in my care into line so that you can ease my pain as a disgruntled service user.
Regards,

William Wesley Gerrard

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Chief Executive
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust
St. Cadoc’s Hospital
Lodge Road
Caerleon
Newport
NP18 3XQ

8th August 2016

Dear Judith Paget,

I have already written to request a change of consultant. This letter of complaint provides more detail on the lackluster service that Dr Basu has provided me during my most recent detention. There have been no fewer than five meetings already between Basu and me. On every occasion I have asked the doctor to inform me of the symptoms he believes I am suffering from. I have also asked him to provide me with information about my future studies at Cardiff University. Being a detained patient in his care, I feel that I have a right to know his medical opinion, also how his plans are going to affect my future life and career. Basu is constantly evasive and just deflects to Dr Attwood, saying he was responsible for detaining me and it has nothing to do with Basu. Having heard this exact same argument used on five occasions I realize that Basu intends to pursue this course, like a stuck record. I have been under close observation for two weeks and as far as I’m concerned have made no slip ups. Surely, Basu must have some form of symptoms recorded or am I simply not suffering from the mental illness that he diagnoses? I am supposed to be beginning the second year of my Translation (BA) course at Cardiff University on September 22^nd 2016. Obviously, this will only be possible depending on Basu’s plans for my care. Basu doesn’t seem to recognize at all just how important this course is to me. His actions last year, when he deliberately flouted an MHRT court ruling about me being discharged, have already caused me to postpone my studies for a year. I find Basu’s outright refusal to discuss university as a breach of his medical responsibilities. I would rather some form of negative indication from him than deliberate evasive prevarication. I have been liaising with Cardiff University and also my Assembly Member, John Griffiths. Both parties are keen to learn about what provisions are being made for the continuation of my studies.

I will not continue to accept Basu being ignorant and simply burying his head in the sand when my whole life and future depends on the decisions he is making. He provides a dismal service and should not be placed in a position of responsibility at all, especially not involving me.

Basu has frozen all my leave, refusing to extend it beyond four hours daily and I don’t even get these four hours due to the constant excuses about staffing levels, despite Perry Attwell assuring me that the complaint I previously informed you about, would be resolved, and I would get my full leave.

I implore you AGAIN, to remove Dr Basu from my care.
Regards,

William Wesley Gerrard

Chief Executive
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust
St. Cadoc’s Hospital
Lodge Road
Caerleon
Newport
NP18 3XQ

9th August 2016

Dear Judith Paget,

This is another complaint about Deputy Ward Manager of Talygarn, Keith Sullivan. On Sunday, 7^th August, I had arranged with the morning staff for a lift home to Caldicot for my four hours leave. Keith Sullivan was the nurse in charge of the afternoon shift. I asked Keith to facilitate my lift home and he replied that there was a staff shortage and this wouldn’t be possible, despite there being an over-abundance of working nurses. I explained that Perry Attwell had said, when resolving a previous complaint, that when staff couldn’t facilitate transport, the ward would pay for taxi fares. Keith informed me that he would not pay for taxis. I decided to ring Perry Attwell, as I have his private number. I felt bad contacting him during his weekend time off, but had no alternative. I put Perry on the phone to Keith and luckily afterwards Keith provided transport although I was only allowed home for two hours.

What annoyed me the most was that when Keith refused initially, I requested some paper from him to write a complaint. Keith refused to give me paper from the office saying that he wouldn’t let me complain about him. He sadi that he didn’t care what Judith Paget might say, adding that he was leaving the trust soon anyway, and didn’t care if he was fired so my complaints about him were irrelevant. I do not believe that someone with such a ‘laissez-faire’ attitude should be employed by the Trust.
Regards,

William Wesley Gerrard

Chief Executive
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust
St. Cadoc’s Hospital
Lodge Road
Caerleon
Newport
NP18 3XQ

14th August 2016

Dear Judith Paget,

I am sure, Judith, that you are aware of http://endofterror.org This is my company and is set up to promote better practice in psychiatry. It has run for a number of years now, and increasingly I am finding that it is under direct threat from Mental Health workers in your system. Dr Basu began targeting it last year, suspending content from being posted by ordering the initial monitoring and then confiscation of my mobile internet devices. This year has proved no different. In Friday’s Doctor meeting, where Perry Attwell, Manager, was present, Basu ordered that should, over the duration of the weekend’s home leave, I post on @endofterror twitter or do a full website blog post, then my leave will be immediately rescinded and I will be recalled to hospital and have future leave revoked. I get a lot of support from the public, politicians and journalists through End Of Terror and I find it therapeutic. I feel that Dr Basu is acting illegally by directly confronting this business. He is breaching ‘freedom of speech’ legislation and I should be free to use the Internet how I choose, in particular in my own home. Apparently social worker, Linda Price, who classifies my 14 year relationship as a delusion, objects to me tweeting about her, having put in an official complaint. It is interesting to note that, from her holiday, she manages to monitor the @endofterror tweets, yet she is unable to address her boss, Steve Woods, or my solicitor, Mr. Confrey, as to the role of my nearest relative. The nearest relative is of course my partner, Nicola Edwards, by law, even if Linda Price illegally claims otherwise. The fact of the matter is that my whole detention is provably illegal yet Linda Price wants to continue to flout her power and illegally clamp down on legitimate business activities. ie. End Of Terror.

I would like for you to formally write to me to inform me of how and why the Mental Health Act can be used to suppress freedom of speech on the Internet. I would like all conditions on my internet usage to be lifted and for Dr Basu and Linda Price to be reprimanded.

I thank you, in advance, for responding to this complaint hastily and with the full force of your executive powers.
Regards,

William Wesley Gerrard

Chief Executive
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust
St. Cadoc’s Hospital
Lodge Road
Caerleon
Newport
NP18 3XQ

28th August 2016

Dear Judith Paget,

I am currently being injected with 50mg Modecate fortnightly on Dr Basu’s orders. This is treatment against my consent. I am allergic to Modecate like I am with every other depot injection. I am vomiting 15-20 times a day and cannot focus at all to do my studies. I cannot eat due to the vomiting and the sickness I have from this treatment is incredible. When you factor in that Dr Attwood has initially lied and made up my symptoms prior to treatment, I trust that you will empathize with my view that a healthy individual has been taken and made sick by mental health treatment.

I have tried explaining these symptoms to Dr Basu so that something can be done but Basu just brushes them aside saying that I must have an underlying physical sickness and he tries to refer me to the GP. Both Nicola and I know from multiple previous occasions that it is the depot medication treatment causing this sickness as once the depot stops the sickness disappears. Also, the GP, Dr P Gedman, will do nothing to stand up to the psychiatrists. He may be able to prescribe some gastro-intestinal medication such as Olanzoprazole to help ease the pain of vomiting but he will not stop the psychatrists from pursuing their depot medication goals, goals which I truly do not comprehend. In the past both neurologists and gastro-intestinal specialists have concluded that my illness is due to the depot injections and that they should be stopped but psychiatrists act as a law unto themselves.

I want Basu disciplined for failing to deal with the sickness he is causing me through his treatment. I am supposedly being discharged on Tuesday so hopefully these depot injections will stop at that point and I will be able to regain my lost fitness and resume my studies at Cardiff University. The psychiatrists should not be allowed to inflict pain and torture upon their patients.

I hope that you will be able to hastily and satisfactorily deal with my latest complaint.
Regards,

William Wesley Gerrard

Chief Executive
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust
St. Cadoc’s Hospital
Lodge Road
Caerleon
Newport
NP18 3XQ

Tuesday, 30th August 2016

Dear Judith Paget,

For the past two weeks in ward round meetings Dr Basu has been giving me today’s date as a final discharge date. My partner, Nicola Edwards, had a meeting regarding her role as nearest relative, with social services manager, Steve Woods, at Hywel Dda Centre, Chepstow, last Wednesday, where Steve stated that the nearest relative problem would be redundant as of today as Basu intended to discharge me, thus making the position of nearest relative irrelevant.

What actually transpired at today’s meeting was that rather than discharging me, Basu instead revoked all my leave and, after spending the past two weeks or so at home, I have been forcibly redetained in Talygarn, with no leave even to the local shop. I want to know why Dr Basu has lied outrightly to Nicola, Steve Woods and myself. I am supposed to be attending university on 19^th September and any plans I make towards this goal are thwarted by Dr Basu and Dr Attwood. Dr Attwood was indeed present at today’s meeting which I believe did not help the situation. Attwood accused me of being aggressive which is a falsehood as it was him and Basu that reduced my partner to tears in the meeting. Attwood claims that I am prepared to complain about anything. He dismissed my complaints as nonsensical and openly mocked me. When I told Attwood that I had applied to the General Medical Council (GMC) for him to be struck off he accused me of threatening him.

Are the Aneurin Bevan doctors that powerful that they are exempt from any complaints procedure? Are they above the auspices of the GMC? Who will rein in their misperceived omnipotence?

The reason given for my renewed detention were that Doctor Attwood disbelieves that I am vomiting 15-20 times a day on the current 50 mg Modecate depot injection. He said that he didn’t want me claiming this at tribunal and I was to be kept in hospital to ‘prove my vomit’.

I have a sick bowl at home and the care of a trained nurse in Nicola. I have been doing well back in the community and completely begrudge being held here just to satisfy Basu and Attwood’s curiosity. Since I was readmitted this afternoon I have vomited 9 ties which has been documented by staff yet it wasn’t until I saw Dr Rankin later in the day that some form of medical examination was attempted. Basu has actually increased the depot injection Modecate to 100mg for tomorrow, a doubling of the dose and the maximum dose allowed of this medication. Is this a wise medical decision? At some point I wish for medical ethics to be considered with regard to the aggressive ‘extreme psychiatry’ I experience at the hands of your doctors. After 19 years of treatment against my consent I fully appreciate how far psychiatrists are prepared to bend the rules and test the limits of their power.

Well, now I guess the question of my attendance at university has been settled. Your doctors have won for another year and have yet again thwarted my life plans.

As my partner correctly pointed out to Basu and Attwood, why now after 19 years of my allergy to depot injections causing me to vomit, have they suddenly decided it warrants close hospital observation? Why now am I detained, a such a critical point of my university preparations?

Two weeks ago when 50mg Modecate was injected against my consent, I went home and had a bad reaction. I started seeing shapes appear across the left side of my vision which clouded over, blocking my sight. I was hyperventilating and had to calm down in bed. I spent about an hour on the phone to NHS Direct who wanted to send an ambulance for me to be admitted to Accident & Emergency. I also experienced heart palpitations and irregularities. I just wish that when you use non-consensual treatment it wasn’t so damned dangerous and life threatening. The dosage of this drug has now been doubled so God only knows how badly I’ll be faring tomorrow. I’d love to know the medical justification of this.

I would like you to examine why Dr Basu lied about my discharge and also why they are becoming aggressive due to me utilizing the complaints procedure. I believe that doctors bullying patients is not the way forward for the NHS.
Regards,

William Wesley Gerrard

Chief Executive
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust
St. Cadoc’s Hospital
Lodge Road
Caerleon
Newport
NP18 3XQ

Monday, 5th September 2016

Dear Judith Paget,

On Wednesday, 31st August, nurses Gabrielle Gwyther and Olu Alcanvo, administered, against my consent, 100 mg Modecate depot injection. I had asked them both to check with NHS direct about my symptoms from when 50mg was administered two weeks previously due to the bad reaction I had experienced. They refused to do this, stating that because the doctor had written it up they had to give it.

Ten minutes after the administration of the drug I had a seizure in the smoking area. It was consistent with the previous seizures I have had whilst on high doses of depot injection. Involuntary head movements and loss of control of my tongue. I reported the seizure immediately to Olu and Gaby and they just laughed in my face. Olu said he had been watching on the video camera and it wasn’t a seizure – presumably he thinks I faked it? He said that the medication was a long-acting drug and couldn’t possibly cause seizures of any kind, certainly not so quickly.

I went on to have three more minor seizures in the smoking area, some witnessed by patients. I went to the nurse’s station and they were all crowded around the TV monitors roaring with laughter. Olu, who couldn’t stop giggling said he was glad I was having seizures. I had no medial treatment whatsoever, and was refused access to the Ward doctor.

I find that the employment of staff who are prepared to openly laugh at your medical problems and do nothing at all to remedy your situation should be terminated. There is no excuse on this issue and I expect Olu and Gaby to both be fired.

I presume that yet again for another year I will not be referred to the neurologist. These psychiatric drugs are causing me brain damage which is what seizures indicate. It is a real shame that Aneurin Bevan are prepared to cause illness and then fail to treat the subsequent medical issues.
Regards,

William Wesley Gerrard

Chief Executive
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust
St. Cadoc’s Hospital
Lodge Road
Caerleon
Newport
NP18 3XQ

Monday, 12th September 2016

Dear Judith Paget,

I wish to report Dr Basu for again wasting my time today, lying and leading me to false hope. After the fiasco two weeks ago when he had arranged to discharge me but failed to do so Dr Basu arranged for me to come in to his ward round today, telling me beforehand that he would be discharging me on a CTO, ahead of the resumption of my university studies on the 19^th September. Following a prolonged meeting with Steve Woods, head of social services, Basu again decided to renege on his word and failed to discharge me. Basu was wanted to illegally subvert the conditions of the CTO whereby he could force me to take the depot injections with threat of hospital recall if I refuse. These are not mandatory conditions of a CTO and are non-mandatory additions he is making to subvert the Mental Health Act. I had intended to be free of the depot injections that make me so violently ill ahead of returning to university but now Dr Basu will be using the full powers of his under my Section 3 detainment to administer depot injections against my consent.

It is clear to me Judith that you are showing a blatant disregard for my complaints by the lack of haste you use in addressing them. Perhaps if Aneurin Bevan University Health Board’s complaints procedure was more robust and fulfilling, then maybe this whole nightmare scenario would by now be over. I do hope that you will seriously consider ALL my complaints as these doctors and staff who I complain about are free to do what they want at present to other patients and myself. These dissidents need to be brought into line.
Regards,

William Wesley Gerrard

—————————————————————————————————————————

Chief Executive
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board
Headquarters
St Cadoc’s Hospital
Lodge Road
Caerleon
Newport
NP18 3XQ

Wednesday, 14^th December 2016

Dear Judith Paget,

I have received your response to my complaints dated 21 November 2016. Please excuse my tardiness in replying to your response as I have been completing my Autumn Term at Cardiff University. I have now finished for Christmas and have the time available to deal with this ongoing matter.

When I wrote you the litany of complaints it was in the hope of achieving some worthwhile change within the system that would benefit not just myself but other service users. I feel that your response was very light-hearted, lightweight and left virtually every issue I identified as unaddressed. It seems that you are not interested in the views of end users of the Mental Health Service and that you just wish to maintain the status quo of your staff treating patients in a subhuman inhumane manner. I have subsequently asked the Ombudsman to intervene and I’m sure he’ll be in contact in due course. I am also keeping my AM John Griffiths and MP Jessica Morden in the loop so I do not regard the matter as closed. Rather, having read your response I feel that something ought to definitely be done to address the local mental health system. You need to look from management down and address the fundamental building blocks that so fracture this system. If no change occurs when it has been clearly identified then the system is in an archaic state and that system will rust into disrepair. What you have in Talygarn and St Cadoc’s is a corrupt and decadent system where so much has been allowed by management to run out of control for years. This produces a very unhealthy environment for service users and one which cannot easily be fixed. Doctors, nurses, social workers, they all run amok and they all fully know that management will turn a blind eye to any misdeeds. The staff get lazy and decadent and do not devote their work to the end user. They are all looking out for number one, doing just enough for their jobs and protecting themselves, without sticking their heads on the line to question the flaws in the system and improve the local mental health units, to bring them into line for what twenty-first century hospitals should be.

When looking through your response I cannot see an individual point where you feel that I am correct and right in feeling aggrieved with the system. There are plenty of lapsadaisy excuses in your response, plenty of instances where you fully believe that the correct procedures were followed by your staff.

I was locked up for no reason at all, taken from my own home, put into a hospital cell and kept to fester at the amusement of Dr Basu and Dr Attwood for a period of months. I was taken out of preparations for my university course and removed from my loving relationship. If all this was just and good and necessary then why did the Mental Health Review Tribunal when it finally sat, find in my favor? You have to ask yourself a question at this point. If a court of law can find a problem then why cannot management find a problem? It’s not as if I didn’t persevere and put in a lot of hard work, whilst under duress in hospital, to produce the complaints in the first place.

The Assertive Outreach team began being aggressive with me at a prior meeting when Dr Attwood was not present yet you find that Dr Attwood had correctly identified mental illness in me. If you read the very first complaint I wrote to you, that clearly shows that Dr Attwood was not involved at that point as I wrote to you before we had met.

I was accused of sending beheadings videos to my sister and I have in writing evidence from my sister saying that this is a complete falsehood. Perhaps a woman claiming to be my sister rang the assertive outreach team but it certainly wasn’t Melanie. I cannot see how anybody is following a Professional Code of Conduct when they are creating fictitious false accusations. You’ve opened the door for mental health professionals to say just about anything about a prospective patient with no recriminations. This is so fundamentally wrong and such a critical point that I cannot accept being locked away for something I simply haven’t done nor would dream of doing. I can fully well see that the mental health system struggles with the digital age – the internet and social media – as do many other industries. Yet to allow people to invent fictitious facebook stories when evidence can be produced to back up any counter-claim, this is a bad omen for the future of your service.

I’m dragged halfway across Wales to your hospital, well away from my home, friends and family and yet it is satisfactory that I cannot have leave, unlike every other patient on the ward. Eventually after persisting I did get leave and was thankful but it is not an area where I should be fighting in the first place.

Keith Sullivan searched me fully or attempted to, knowing fully that he was doing it to just annoy me. This is t the purpose of a search and Keith searched no other patients or visitors entering the ward. Keith is cantankerous and abused his power fully when he was working for your system. A truly terrible embarrassment of a man and a nurse.

I do not wish to hear management excuses about why I cannot change physician. I want to see whatever physician I choose irrespective of their workload or other commitments or whether or not they fancy the challenge of dealing with me. I feel it is a right for a patient in any form of healthcare to choose their doctor. In mental health where treatment against consent predominates it seems as though the doctors are the ones with the true power to choose their patients. This is wrong. I do not recognize either Dr Basu or Dr Attwood as responsible clinicians or indeed as my responsible clinician.I will refuse or future contact with both men and their vile, despicable treatments. You have to provide doctors for patients and not patients for doctors.

I think that the real reason nothing was followed up following our meeting two years ago is that you do not value patient input and couldn’t care a less for what an end user experiences in your system. You have a system that you are not interested in improving or you would be consulting all patients properly and adjusting the system according to the feedback. Mr Attwell may say that attempts were made t work with me but I can assure you that no attempts were made.

I struggled to cope in university all term as I missed out on the key preparation time I had identified that I needed prior to attending university as I was experiencing yet another Talygarn debacle.

Linda Price told me I’d been detained for sending beheadings videos and that was that. Basu or Attwood both denied to open up to explain further why I had been detained. This is deeply unsatisfactory and is a situation where each of the protagonists is lending a hand to help the other out during the investigation. If passing the buck satisfies your management criteria then so be it,but I feel that a large NHS Trust should be run professionally and the investigation should uncover sinister errors.

Nicola is a joint tenant fact. Whatever paperwork Linda Price may or may not have doe not justify ordering my partner out of her home. According to Linda Price, Nicola is not even my partner. It all fits conveniently when you weigh up how much my treatment depends on treatment against consent but in the real world Linda and her comrades should be disciplined for breach of professional ethics. I never want to see Linda Price anywhere near my home again. She is most certainly an unwelcome intruder.

How can my website be part of a mental health condition? Dr Basu should worry less about his name on the internet and worry more about his patients. Dr Basu had been stalking me online for some time and I have proven this despite his objections. You should supervise the use of the internet by psychiatrists. I need not bring up the example of Dr Darryl Watts to illustrate the necessity of this point.

I still have a critical hiatus hernia which is being untreated by the NHS, caused directly by Basu’s use of depot injections. His notes of a gradual improvement in mental health are medical proof that his treatment is good and works? Be a bit more scientific please. Since I’ve been off the injections my health has improved dramatically so that I can study and attend university. This would have been impossible had I stayed on the injections and lost in court. Basu and Attwood are old school in using depot injections as punishment for dissidents. Depot injections and treatment against consent are two of the biggest flaws in modern psychiatry and why it will never be a true science.

Dr Basu was breaching the law and this was clearly pointed out by Steve Woods as he tried to manipulate CTO law to hold me in his grasp. I truly thank God for my solicitor Mr Confrey, who was successfully able to steer the Tribunal into making a just and correct decision.

I would like you to look at my points and reassess your entire investigation as I feel that he first attempt at dealing with my complaints was most unsuccessful and leaves the service in a poorer state than it was before I was last admitted. People’s lives are on the line in a frontline mental health care environment and by Christ I’ve witnessed enough deaths within the system caused by the malpractice and neglect of clinical staff. It’s about time you brought this whole shambles of a system into the present age. This is not Bedlam and the people of South Wales shouldn’t have to accept the shambles that you run. I am truly thankful to be away from the system and hope never to return although I’ve a feeling that my detractors – the enemies in the system – are too much of a multitude for my stay away to be permanent.
Regards

William Wesley Gerrard

Customer Relations Team,
Monmouthshire County Council,
PO Box 106
Caldicot
Monmouthshire
NP26 9AN

8th August 2016

Dear sir / madam,

This is a complaint about Monmouthshire Social Worker, Linda Price. Linda Price is an odious woman, who has harassed me using the Mental Health Act, over a number of years, consistently abusing her power. On 26/07/16, Linda Price, as AMP, attended my address and with the support of police and psychiatrists, removed me to Talygarn, where she subsequently sectioned me under the Mental Health Act. Linda Price identified my father as nearest relative, I believe deliberately. She knows that my parental relationship has broken down and that she can exercise her powers more with the support of my father, than if she had to seek the approval from my nearest relative, partner and fiancée, Nicola Marie Edwards. Nicola and I have lived together in a loving relationship for fourteen years and have been engaged for ten years. Under Mental Health Act law, as Nicola and I have been cohabiting for over six months prior to my detention, she is automatically classed as my nearest relative. Linda Price has told a massive lie that I uncovered today through speaking to Abergavenny-based social worker, Steve Woods. Linda claims that on 26/07/16, during a consultation with my partner, Nicola, that Nicola told her we weren’t in a relationship, we weren’t engaged and we had not been living together. This is pure fantasy on Linda’s behalf. It is not a simple oversight but a maliciously schemed plan to enforce the power granted to her by the Mental Health Act.

Linda Price made no attempt at a private consultation with Nicola on the 26/07/16 and indeed, after I had been removed from my property, ordered Nicola to leave the property, despite it being a joint tenancy in both our names. Nicola stayed at the property as she was rightly entitled to do.

Linda has persisted in insisting that Nicola is not my nearest relative and refuses to back down. This has created a whole host of problems with Mental Health Act Administration and also my legal team. I should have been discharged from hospital last Friday after Nicola applied for me to be released which is what she is entitled to do as my nearest relative under the Mental Health Act.

Linda Price needs disciplining. She should be forced to recognize my fourteen year relationship, be forced to apologize to Nicola and myself for lying, and should have all her responsibilities as an AMP removed, so that she may not perpetuate any further injustices as a social worker in Monmouthshire. I demand a full investigation into this abominable dragon of a woman and as any delay in investigation adds to the burden of my detention, I implore you to act speedily in resolving this issue.
Regards,

William Wesley Gerrard

—————————————————————————————————————————–

End Of Terror Under Attack – Repression Inside Talygarn

The authorities – local mental health workers and Gwent Police – are not happy with End Of Terror exposing their misdeeds. When I first started the website there was an immediate clampdown and I was ushered off into the Mental Health system. I later understood why my then Doctor, Dr Darryl Watts, was unhappy about being published on the internet as he had been convicted of child sex offences. It is convenient for the authorities to mask their repression and cover up End Of Terror. I think it important though, to expose this hidden system to the world and I certainly, over the years, have taken much refuge in the fact that End of Terror exists. It is a crutch of support to me.

2015 was a horrific year for me. I was taken into the hospital on no fewer than four occasions. It took me out of my undergraduate university studies at Cardiff University and set my life back again. After nineteen years in the mental health system it came as no real shock and i am used to dealing with the State disrupting my life. It is an asset to be resilient and to forge on with life plans in spite of the constant mental health harassment and its infringement upon my liberty.

During the last hospitalisation I was detained from July 2015 through to November. I was sat at home, minding my own business, doing work on the internet for my music business and out of the blue Dr Basu turned up with the police and a magistrate-signed warrant to remove me for assessment. I had done nothing whatsoever and was just carted off and incarcerated. Basu proceeded to give me the maximum dose of CloPixol Depot injection, something to which it has been proved I am allergic to. I had two stints on the secure PICU (Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit) Beechwood, St. Cadoc’s, Caerleon, for dissent on Talygarn Ward, Griffithstown County Hospital, Pontypool, where I was detained for the bulk of my stay.

My notoriety as a patient precedes me on Talygarn and on the ward I have some formidable enemies, usually within the nurse management structure. People who are constantly vying for their own selfish climb up the ladder whose disdain for patients is most cruel. I name Keith Sullivan, deputy ward manager, Jayne Hughes, former ward manager and Paul Hanna, Deputy Nurse Manager, to be among the most appalling of these ladder-climbing despots. They spend their days in a twisted Machiavellian power struggle, never hesitating to have a pop at patients using any means at their disposal to make their victims’ stays in hospital less comfortable. They are the antithesis of good nursing and miss the fundamental point that they are there to serve the patients’ needs. These are the prison warders whose radical oppression of patients and their rights truly epitomise the struggle within mental hospitals – the very examples of why there is such a divide between staff and patients.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_Yayz5o-l0

One of the scariest movements within mental health hospitals is the inevitable ban they seek to impose on smoking. Anti-smoking lobbies have successfully campaigned across the board of the NHS for smoking to be restricted. Due to the enforced nature of sectioning, where patients are detained against their consent, smoking is still, on the whole, allowed inside mental hospitals. Smoking is one of the few things you can actually do to while away your time and most mental patients are heavy smokers. It upset me to see during my stay on Talygarn, that the inside smoking room had been closed and patients had been relegated to the garden area. It is one step closer to the achieved goal of a complete ban. Lighters were confiscated and the nurses had to be called to light your cigarette. This is one undignified way of removing patient’s human rights, but not the major subject of this article. I dread to think what it will be like in the future to be detained and forced to quit smoking instantly. There will be uproar within the services and most patients will struggle to come to terms with the ban.

Since the advent of mobile phones, patients have found new ways of staying in touch with the outside world during their incarceration. Although some parts of the system do deny access to mobiles eg.PICU, most acute wards allow patients to use their phones, although they often confiscate them at night and refuse patients the use of their chargers. This leads to a clandestine smuggling operation for patients whereby contraband chargers exchange hands on the ward so that everyone can top up their battery. Nurses spend their days lighting cigarettes and searching bedrooms for hidden mobile phone chargers – hardly constructive medical care?

Smart phones with internet are especially useful and to maintain social media accounts and have internet access is a godsend, especially to me. I have been able to update my EndOfTerror from within the confines of the establishment and being able to reach out to followers gives a certain empowerment. Being locked away from society is lonely and frustrating and although not freedom, internet access allows a certain maintenance of your outside life. Messages of encouragement from friends and family are invaluable to your disrupted mindset and as a patient the therapeutic value of support on the outside is immeasurable.

Resisting as ever, during my stay, I was actively tweeting on the @endofterror timeline. It’s rather difficult to do full blog posts from a mobile phone and tweeting is a handy alternative, even if the tweets just serve as a personal reminder of incidents once one gets back to the outside world. I regularly study social media activity of mental patients during detainment through online mental patient friends and although often disturbing in content I know that I am not alone in seeking solace through social media use during a section. Each individual has their own methods of reaching out.

The Indian Dr Basu and his underling, the Iranian Dr Al-Hasani, were being particularly virulent in their disdainful treatment of me. They simply failed to recognise me as a human being with human rights and used the treatment against consent to the maximum. They frustrated me by denying me any leave at all and I was forced to resort to criticising their actions on twitter. They were both monitoring my twitter use and the End Of Terror website and threatened me saying that I was not allowed to post anything about them or their names. This infringes upon my freedom of speech and expression and I simply refuse to bow down to fascism and change my policies of exposing the fault-lines of the mental health system. Prior to hospitalisation Dr Basu had been stalking me online and although he denies this, I caught him, through analytic software, studying my Linkedin and invading my personal space on the web. This adds to my conspiracy theory of how the actions of psychiatrists are preordained and not rooted in healthcare. My enemies will pursue me despite me having good health. The voice of dissent will be punished by the system and EndOFTerror is a nightmare scenario for my pursuers.

I started using the smartphone camera to take some visual images of the hospital surroundings. Most people fortunately never get to view the bare oppressive inside walls of a psychiatric hospital so it helps in exposing the realities inside. One night in the smoking area, where we were jovially listening to some music, I took a photo of some fellow patients, with, of course, their permission. I posted this photo on my personal networks (not end of terror). The psychiatric nurses and doctors who were glued to my social networks, looking for an excuse to pounce, did just this. They cited privacy rules and said that I had broken confidentiality rules and mobile phone policies and they confiscated my Iphone. I was up in arms. I said I would delete the offending photo but could not see what harm I had done. In the real world I am always updating my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with all my escapades. Why should this be any different during a stay in hospital?

After many complaints the nurses came to a compromise and returned the mobile phone but they decided to do this with a twist and use an experimental policy. This experiment was horrendous to me and signified the extreme measures of state repression that little Hitlers within mental health services are prepared to use. I was allowed ten minutes of access to my mobile phone per shift and this access was to be supervised by a nurse. They wanted the inner workings of End Of Terror and were prepared to intimidate me into revealing my personal use of the internet. Nurses were quite uncomfortable with doing this and many expressed this to me. However, there are nurses who just relish the sort of power this experiment brings and jump at the chance of subverting patients’ rights. I found that my internet use was to be closely scrutinised and used in ways to justify my mental illness. Everything I did online found its way into my notes and was judged as mental illness. It’s just a total invasion of privacy and when you hear about internet repression in far off places such as China, to see this obsessive monitoring occurring in the UK just proved to me the State’s obsessiveness with surveillance.

Pretty soon, the ban on my phone use became compounded. I am a translation student at Cardiff University and use social media and the internet to maintain contact with a host of international friends and business associates across the world. The nurses started to complain as they could not understand my social media messages when I spoke in a foreign language. Therefore I was banned from speaking foreign languages and banned from internet contact with anyone outside of the UK. It is bad enough being prevented from studying your Translation degree, being forced to mss key lectures and examinations while you are subjected to the human experimentation of mental health. These authorities were now dictating to me that use of foreign language was a mental illness. I was being treated for my education skills and prevented in every way possible of exercising my study mindset. I found this to be ignorant, racist and typical of a stupid mentality. Why should my ways be changed to suit my captors?

Is it mentally ill and evil to contact people in the outside world and to use foreign languages? I was disappointed with the recent Brexit vote that demonstrated a democratic dislike for the EU and its foreign characteristics yet inside the mental hospital I witnessed some of the sickness of the system and how ignorant people could be. Right wing tendencies and oppression are key to the success of the mental health movement and where people have the right to exercise their power, I feel they often abuse this power, typical of the little Hitlers that so plague our fragmented society. Be it a police officer with a trigger-happy taser or a racist nurse, these people love mental health systems and what their roles in society entail. I feel sick that people can actively monitor my personal correspondence – most of the time it being innocuous contact with friends and family. I was forced to submit and to be honest dreaded my ten minute sessions on the phone. In a locked ward surrounded by cameras monitoring your every move, with your body given up to non-consensual mind-altering drugs, not being able to set foot on the grass or go to the pub for a pint, or even walk to the local shop, I felt that the monitoring of me could not possibly extend any further. Why does psychiatry have to be so intrusive? Do they really need to know every last detail of a patient? If they ever did anything useful with the information then I might be able to understand the medical necessity of information-gathering. However, the information is always misused and leads ultimately to further oppression.

Eventually, the whole charade cracked. While the nurses were running around lighting cigarettes, hunting down mobile phone chargers and peering over my shoulder at my Facebook messages, they obviously neglected their key role and jobs – that of nursing. An unmonitored patient slipped away to his room and hung himself with his dressing gown belt. Priorities should be given to prevent suicides and it is a nurse’s role to stop this happening. Suicides are sad affairs for all witnesses. I’d been close to the dead patient, sorting him out some tobacco and keeping his spirits high as he came to terms with his own incarceration yet he had gone ahead and done what he intended. All I did during my ten minutes of mobile phone usage that day, was to post an RIP message on my Facebook to my personal friends. It asks you how you feel on Facebook when you post a status. I was feeling sad about the suicide and posted so. Whenever somebody dies who I know, I tend to do a simple RIP message on Facebook. In the modern world of social media, many do this and I believe it is a key way of us dealing with grief as a society. The nurse who was monitoring me freaked out, tried seizing my phone and although I did post my status, I was reported to senior staff and my phone was permanently confiscated. Senior management were called to endorse this ultimate ban and despite my protests, Nursing manager Perry Attwell confirmed that my social media usage was not to be tolerated and the phone would remain in the possession of the Trust.

I do not know where monitoring and surveillance in society will ultimately lead but remember that the insides of mental hospitals where there is a captive population are very often where the most disturbing ideas in society are first trialled. Oppression begins in mental hospitals and they serve as a mirror to the realities and horrors of the real world.

Cardiff student tells of sectioning nightmare – from Gair Rhydd – Cardiff University student newspaper

2 Replies

Cardiff student tells of sectioning nightmare
Posted in News by Alexander Norton on March 3, 2015

http://cardiffstudentmedia.co.uk/gairrhydd/news/cardiff-student-tells-sectioning-nightmare/

A mature student has revealed to Gair Rhydd details of eighteen turbulent years as a mental health patient.

Wesley Gerrard, 37, is currently studying Translation at Cardiff University’s School of Modern Languages – but for nearly two decades his academic career has been disrupted by a series of detainments.

Gerrard claimed that his extensive experiences with the system have been far from positive and provoked him to set up the campaign site ‘endofterror.org’. The site aims to raise awareness of his experiences – but this in itself has brought him problems.

“As soon as I started publishing stories on ‘endofterror’, I’ve had major police involvement. I came to realise it was dangerous to publish this sort of thing,” he said.

In all, the part-time DJ claimed to have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act on “fifteen to twenty” occasions.

He claimed that his encounters with mental health services started when he was studying for an undergraduate degree in Geography at University College London in 1997.

“I ran into some trouble in London and when I came home, my parents forced me to go to an outpatient appointment.

“Since then I haven’t really progressed or gotten out of the system.”

He said that he was discouraged from undertaking further education by the fact that they “wouldn’t let me out of hospital to complete my exams [and] sectioned me whilst I was preparing my dissertation”.

Despite this, he re-entered higher education with the Cardiff Centre for Lifelong Learning in around 2008, and subsequently progressed to undertake a full degree.

However, he still had encounters with mental health authorities – until an academic “would not accept me pulling out of classes and put me in touch with disability advisor.”

“They said: ‘enough is enough, we’re not going to have this student’s life ruined anymore’. It made me very happy knowing I was going to get some protection from Cardiff University.”

The University’s intervention reportedly caused the mental health authorities to “lay off me”, and despite averaging a sectioning a year he came to an agreement with mental health authorities “not to disrupt his studies for three years”.

However, over the festive period he once again found himself incarcerated at St. Caldcot’s Hospital – and was accused by the authorities of having delusions over his status as a Cardiff University student.

“I tried getting hold of student support but they were away on Christmas break, something my tutor was not happy about,” Gerrard said.

“In the end I managed to get a phone call through, and said ‘I’m in an emergency situation, can you implement the emergency plan to help me out?’”

“They didn’t do anything they’d agreed to. I felt really betrayed by Student Support and Cardiff University,” he claimed.

He alleged that despite showing official ID, it fell to a number of Cardiff University students on placement to confirm his identity.

He subsequently won a tribunal against the National Health Service relating to his treatment over the Christmas period.

He claimed that although his personal tutor continues to be “really supportive”, he was disappointed that “there was nothing directly from the University.”

Gerrard made a number of claims regarding his treatment that we are unable to publish here, but continues to detail his experiences on endofterror.org.

A Cardiff University Student Support spokesperson said that “quite obviously we can’t comment on individual cases, even if the student has opted to speak to you”.

“In such situations it is our aim to ensure that Cardiff University students continue to have access to the facilities here which are designed to aide them with whichever problems they might be experiencing,” they added.

Hamster Disorder

12 Replies

Let me introduce a new character on the doctor front. Dr. Agniezsca Tyson, or Agi, is a Polish female acute psychiatrist employed by Aneurin Bevan University Health Board. She works out of the Hywel Dda Centre in Chepstow and is head of psychiatry for Lower Monmouthshire. She is also a lecturer in Psychiatry at Cardiff University thus bringing the new generation of mental health employees up to scratch. Agi has a command role within the local police and they have to attend regular briefing and meetings at Hywel Dda. I think she relies far too heavily on the fear factor her surname induces with it also being that of the fearsome world champion boxer, Mike Tyson. A world champion, Agi isn’t.

I was transferred to Tyson against my consent after the previous Sri Lankan psychiatrist managing me, Dr. Nirmalie Mirando, retired. Never keen, as the Chepstow shrinks are usually a lot worse than the Newport ones and the general staff they employ are totally militant and more obnoxious than the average mental health worker. Almost automatically I ended up feeling the full force of Tyson. I filed multiple reports of attempted murder against her with the police and over the several years she acted upon me it was a truly frightening experience. Eventually, Tyson transferred me into the care of convicted child sex offender Gwent Police-employed forensic psychiatrist, Dr Darryl Watts (see category http://endofterror.org/?cat=191 ). I was ‘under’ her from around 2006-2010 and fought every second of the way to be transferred away from her grasp.

When my partner, Nicola, lost our unborn child in the womb (due to her enforced mental health drug treatment regime), we decided we would bring some life into our home by getting some family pets. A kind neighbour gave us our first hamster, ‘Rafa’ or ‘littly’. I bought a nice cage complex for our living room and our friends and us had hours of fun with a whole mass of roaming Roborovsky dwarf hamsters. Yes, our front room became the Gobi desert away from home, but these creatures are magnificent and they were well looked after and bred really well.
Obviously the psychiatric establishment (who you are forced by law to enter your home regularly) disapproved. When a whole industry is based so heavily on the inhumane torture of rodents it is no wonder that well-looked after hamster pets are an anathema. I disagree with scientific testing on animals wholeheartedly.

Pretty soon, I got a new diagnosis added to me medical sheets. Tyson brandished me with ‘hamster disorder’. Obviously I felt she was deranged and couldn’t understand how this new illness to me fitted into the DSM. I made some enquiries next time I was among sane people. I casually mentioned to a female music industry friend and associate next time I was at one of my artist’s studios in Cardiff. I often tell people about some of the nonsense I put up with in this mental health system. It helps to have normal people’s advice. Kath explained to me that ‘hamster disorder’ was in actual fact a real medical condition ans warned me that I shouldn’t perhaps be quite too blasé about this new condition and that I certainly shouldn’t be so casual in revealing it to people, especially strangers.

I was a little concerned at Kath’s tone of voice as I realised that she was being serious. She got out the laptop and quickly googled a page for me too show exactly why she was concerned. Most of my friends knew how much our hamsters meant to me and I really wish I hadn’t investigated my new diagnosis. It turns out that hamster disorder actually refers to a sexual fetish whereby ‘people’ get pleasure by inserting live hamsters up their rectal passages. Obviously, I hit the roof just to know the cheek of this woman doctor, Agi Tyson, to have actually accused me of bestiality with my family pets. Things went even further downhill from then on. I was soon kidnapped and taken away to the mental hospital. Tyson tended to use Talygarn Ward at Griffithstown County Hospital in Pontypool. While she injected me with medicines to which I have an allergy over a period of months, the council-employed rat-catchers were sent out to my home to lay down traps everywhere and exterminate my family pets.

Just to set the record straight, I do not suffer from hamster disorder and I do not indulge in bestiality of any kind. I do resent the diagnosis from Tyson and I do resent the false accusations. I resent the police involvement in enforcing the mental health act and I resent to be treated for this ‘illness’. I do agree it is a sick condition and I don’t care if Hollywood stars have been afflicted with it. My hamsters were well-looked after and Nicola and I loved having them be part of our lives for several enjoyable years. Psychiatry is sick and it is that which needs to be eradicated, not animals.

Police Brutality and Mental Health – PART 3

5 Replies

I’ve written two articles already on policing and mental health. The impact of this particular episode still hasn’t quite sunk in. Bang out of order is obviously one of my judgements. Equally, writing this blog, just knowing firsthand exactly what the British police are capable of, means that my life is in potential danger as something equally as bad or worse could quite easily happen at any time.

I was just reading a fellow DJ’s Facebook about returning home to a key UK airport to see heavily armed police officers ‘greeting’ people as they got off the plane. OK. We may be on whatever alert, but I do passionately disagree with the arming of the police. Unless laws are passed for the general public to have the right to bear arms, it is unfair to arm a civilian force. Army and other military services, by all means, weapons are a necessity. But not the police. They do not have responsible enough a mentality to be given the easy power over life and death that a trigger brings. I speak from experience.

If you actually ever look at the mental health act, when you are admitted to a hospital or sectioned, you are supposed to go through a process of assessment. There are balances and checks in place. I do believe that the process is unfair as it stands. However, over the years the mental health system has been opening up to allow the police more and more involvement and they more or less have a free reign today. The ‘Place Of Safety’ in the legislation allows them to use their premises as mental hospital holding cells. As soon as I heard of the police being armed with tasers I was against the idea. I don’t believe that any form of weapon can be safely deemed as providing non-lethal force, in particular a ballistic weapon. it is no surprise to me that there are so many deaths caused by tasers.

I was spending the evening in my home studio, making music. I use Ableton and have various MIDI instruments that plug into it. I was having a quiet jam on my keyboard and laying down the foundations of a new tune. It’s quite a creative process, making music and is very tranquil and relaxing as a producer, although repetitively listening to the same beat patterns as you build up a track from scratch can be frustrating for other people to listen to. My missus has to put up with a lot of this. On that particular evening, she decided to pop out to see her friend down the road. Nicola went and I carried on making music. I powered down the studio for a while and went out to the kitchen to grab a bite to eat. I was in my dressing gown, as I often am at home. As I returned from the kitchen into my living room, all of a sudden I felt a jolt and these wires seemed to be coming out of nowhere at me. I looked down and I had some sharp metallic objects in my heart, with cables attached that were whirling around and heading for me. I immediately, AND I MEAN IMMEDIATELY, ripped at my chest to remove these objects. The wires came flying out and scattered away, off to my left. I had thought I was alone in the flat. I couldn’t get these metal rods out of my chest. Suddenly there was a clatter at the front door as it was being forced open. I ran over to the door, opened it quickly as the intruders were trying to break in and strongly slammed it shut on the intruders and double locked it. They couldn’t get in.

I still had the metal in my chest and wanted it out. It was in my heart, two tiny rods of aluminium-looking, man-made material, with bits of plastic and other junk attached. I knew who the intruders were now, as obviously, I had seen them when I shut the door. It was the police. They now had a battering ram to the door and were attempting to force it; yet couldn’t. They couldn’t muster the strength. There was a hell of a noise coming from them. Lots of shouting and panic. I was alone in my home and I have to say, was truly scared. This was a life or death situation. I took and air rifle pellet in my backside as a kid but this was the first time I had been shot with a gun. I finally just ripped at the metal and they were barbed, fish-hook like prongs that were retaining the rods in my chest. They were almost impossible to remove. I realised that it was a taser that had been fired at me and was thanking my lucky stars that I had managed to rip the wires out prior to the post-impact electric shock being discharged. The idiots had not only randomly shot an unarmed man, minding his own business, in his own home, but they had also misfired their own weapon. I didn’t have any weapons in my home to defend myself and was left to the mercy of what happened when they eventually got in. Alone, with no witnesses, the panic set in. I had removed the metal as best I could and realised that I wasn’t going to die from the first shot. Blood was gushing out of the open wound and it bloody well stung, like never before. It’s a truly horrible feeling, reminded me of how you feel inside your body, under the cosh of the biological weapons they use in mental health treatment. It’s just that this was exterior, on the body, and not inside.

I decided that I needed to inform the public in order to protect myself. I was still trying to figure out how they had shot the weapon. They weren’t inside the house. Either they had fired through the open front window or had fired through the letter box. Either way, there was no warning, either in human voice or any noise at all. I knew they had tried to assassinate me and I just didn’t want to be a random statistic of police murder. I looked out the front room window and, there was, I’d estimate, about 50 or so police officers. All in uniform, milling around. I screamed at the top of my lungs: “HELP!!!” “I’ve Been Shot!” – I felt that I had to let people know. In a life or death situation you have tremendous power in your voice. Despite having a serious traumatic injury to my chest, I shouted louder than I’d ever shouted before. I decided that I would scream the neighbourhood, the whole town, down. I thought of every person I knew nearby, and others in the locality further afield. I was even screaming to friends far away in London, lest my voice should carry as far as it seemed to be able to. Members of the public started to gather and the police were sort of shepherding them around and trying to clear the vicinity. I knew they were up for another pop at me that night. Someone suggested that I jump out of the window but I didn’t really fancy flying out of the flats into a bunch of armed police for obvious safety reasons. There were witnesses now to me being alive. I decided to go off to my bedroom and try to relax in bed. They were still bashing hell out of the door and it would give at any moment. I felt that even the most heartless copper ain’t just going to shoot an unarmed man, naked in his own bed, in cold blood. I lay in bed, pretty sure that my time on this planet was coming to a close. I heard the front door give and was just hoping that the duvet would protect against any further taser shots. I’ve taken a full mains electric shock before, whilst setting up DJ equipment, and electric shocks are not pleasant. Your heart has a weakness after one full shock and is never quite the same.

It took ages for them to open the bedroom door after entering the building. I could hear loads of noise. Movement of people. Suddenly a plastic shield came through the door and hordes of riot police stormed into my bedroom, their shiny metal helmets peaking above the heavy-duty reinforced, hardened plastic riot shields. I’d never been in a riot or demonstration so had only ever seen riot police on TV or in photographs or internet videos. They surrounded the bed with their shields protecting them completely. I was just glad that they hadn’t shot me and I couldn’t see any weapons. I just stayed calm and quiet and then about 8 of them just dived on me, riots shields down, and were trying to squash / suffocate me. They just bounced off me really and it was a non-effective whatever-it-was-supposed-to-be. They all seemed pretty much in a right panic. Eventually, one broke the silence and I realised he was Scottish.

I said ‘Hi, Are you Scottish?’

He said ‘Yes’

I said ‘Where are you from’.

He said ‘Glasgow’

I said ‘Ah, you’ve come a long way.’ Do you support Rangers or Celtic?’

He said, rather proudly, ‘Rangers’

Being a Liverpool fan, there are a lot of links between Rangers and Celtic and our club. I just started having a conversation with this guy from out of town as his mates continued to act silly with their weapons etc. I have to be fair to this guy. He did look a bit shocked and disillusioned with the whole situation.

Someone else took command as they did some sort of hold on me and started lifting me out of bed. They have manoevres, these riot police and I was surrounded by large plastic shields at all times. As I was naked they decided it was appropriate to get me dressed. It’s a surreal experience, I can tell you. Watching a bunch of armed, grown men with plastic shields and helmets and sparkly badges with ‘police’ on, fish around your bedroom, while you’re naked, boxed in by plastic, with blood pissing out of your chest from a misfired taser. I explained to the guy, that the Bermuda Shorts he dug out of my drawer. just didn’t fit me. I hadn’t worn them since I was about 12. I was trying to help the situation. stay calm, release the pressure. Talk to a copper on duty though and they think you’re trying to be smart. They got heavy handed and were forcing me into the shorts. In the end, as we had now shuffled into my living room, a couple of them realised that the shorts just weren’t going on and it wasn’t the best thing to do to a man in his own home, forcibly dress him into child’s clothes. I just kept saying softly, ‘just let me put the shorts on’ They were petrified and trying to cover up what was obviously quite an extreme incident. Someone managed to fetch another pair of shorts from back in the bedroom. I was getting frustrated because they were in my living room causing havoc. They broke my computer system, my studio monitor speakers and ripped all my wiring out. Just out-and-out criminal vandals. I cannot believe how inhumane these people are. Eventually I had a pair of surf shorts on. It was a freezing cold night. I was bleeding, been shot in the chest, attacked by riot police and now I was to be dragged into the middle of my neighbourhood in the dead of night in a pair of surf shorts. Not very practical, Mr Policeman, really? Simple health training. Normally when someone is shot, first aid is applied, especially if the weapon has, perhaps, misfired? They seemed more keen on removing the remnants of the taser in my front room than anything else. Bloody wires everywhere.

If their idea of helping a shot human is to help him get dressed in his old shorts, then they really need to go back to the drawing board. Emergency services? it’s no wonder we have so many bloody disasters in this country. They are incompetent. It’s just inappropriate. How are this lot supposed to deal with an actual riot where the people are actually committed to achieving their aims? They don’t even understand how to get dressed? I can just picture police across the country waking up every morning for mummy to slip on their pants for them and help them get to the potty toilet. They couldn’t blow out a candle with a fire extinguisher: the idiots!

Outside the property, and there were lots of people. The fear for my life hadn’t quite dissipated. Obviously, when you are being kidnapped after being shot, the fear doesn’t erode at all really. Until I get home to my bedroom after the whole charade, however much time it takes, everything is by force, and everyone can be regarded as an unnatural encounter.

Back of the van. I just zoned out in the van. The pain in my heart was great and I know that I was at risk of heart failure. I was not aware of any rulebook to guide you from, when you are shot. It doesn’t help that you aren’t getting immediate medical assistance and I will be eternally grateful to the police for that. Handcuffed (incidentally they went on back in the bedroom – yet still they had to crush me with the riot shields), I was banged into the back of a van. A long time to get going as they were doing their ‘hush, hush, nice police in front of the public operation’ to ease the crowded streets into believing that they were somehow doing some form of fitful employment and public service.

By the time we reached our destination, I just felt like it would be safer to feign unconsciousness and just to fall out of the back of the van when the doors opened, just in case there were any surprises awaiting. It’s a complete bastard, having an open chest wound with shrapnel remnants in it and being handcuffed behind your back, unable to tend to your own wounds. We were at the Royal Gwent hospital in Newport and I was wheel-chaired in to a new little corner of it, shall we say ‘the police’s special room’. The Royal Gwent is a good hospital and I’ve had top notch treatment there over the years. All the time. Except on this occasion. In ‘police corner’ you get junior nurses who do not understand how to use expensive heart monitoring equipment. You get crazed coppers running the whole show. I do not believe that I met a trained doctor throughout the whole incident. It was like some sort of twisted perverted medical saga. They seemed to be getting some sort of thrill by pretending that they were actual nurses. There were two male police officers, quite young, probably the same age as myself, maybe a little younger. One of them was quiet and didn’t speak. the other just kept repeatedly, in a sort of spaced out drone-like mantra, saying. ‘Hi Wesley, I’m your friend!’ He repeated it about 300 times that night. I might have possibly seen the guy once before on a police mental hospital kidnap operation, But i have never spoken to him at all in my life. Never once met him. I don’t know who the hell he is. He’s not my friend. Talk about stalkers! I’m repeatedly asking him to un-cuff me so that I can get medical attention and at the very least tend to myself. I just thought this guys is just so unbelievably sick that I don’t know how I am going to every have faith in the human species again. They were just sort of mincing around, waiting for me to die, in some way of ‘natural causes’. I was detained at this hospital for seemingly forever. then i got bundled back in the van. no medical care at all. Nor medical staff to explain anything and i was just being rotated around by two clueless policemen in full uniform with handcuffs on and some gaping wounds which by now and ceased oozing of their own accord.

It was the short journey to their gaff now. At this stage I was just hoping they’d take me to St. Cadocs’. Whereas, at St. Cad’s there are plenty of ex-police officers on the nursing staff, at least they don’t parade around in uniform and I actually know some of the nursing staff quite well, enough to have a sensible occasional human-to-human conversation.

Back in ‘police world’ I was escorted into Newport Central and, finally, the cuffs were removed. I just couldn’t believe I was alive. My body was numb with shock and I had shooting pains in every direction. I felt never more in need of a medic in my entire life. I was put in a cell with no camera and weirdly they left the door open. The same two police stayed outside the cell all night and I was just walking back and for, in and out of the cell, trying to speak to them, as when they are on their own turf they settle right down and are far less weird than in public. I just tried persuading them to just call it a day and take me home to my missus who used to be a nurse and we could all forget about the little incident earlier. Obviously police don’t quite grasp the reality or the impact they have on people and it was a no-go zone.

I knew I wasn’t getting medical attention and it is imperative that you somehow calm down. I eventually got an hour of snooze on the cell bench. I wasn’t keen on having an open door as I slept,. Especially with two police outside. After all that had occurred. But, survival is survival, I guess.

Next day, transfer to Beechwood secure ward, St. Cadoc’s Hospital, Caerleon. And this is the point where I object, based on what has come to light to me in the past month. I am handed over by the police to a police-employed forensic psychiatrist who will treat me for mental illness against my consent for an indeterminable period. Dr Darryl Watts (see full details here… ) sectioned me under the mental health act immediately. I had zero physical medical attention for my injuries., this man is a convicted felon. Now it’s all very well me banging on about his child sex convictions. I am not a child and we live in a world where there are paedophiles. Deal with it. What alarms me is, that, when you read the articles about his sick habits in the papers, it isn’t just child porn he fetishes about. He is into extreme violence and some weird conspiracy sort of nonsense. He is a dangerous man, who is unreformed as he has never served any time and been punished for his convictions. He does not understand remorse and is a danger to society.. A long time after this whole escapade, I was told off the record by an off-duty policeman, in the knowing loop, that Dr Darryl Watts had ordered the whole taser operation on me.

To see these police charge into my home, rip my life apart another time, attempt to murder me and realise they are all doing it on the orders and advice of a 30 hour a week child porn addict….. Where indeed does this place the British legal system? Yes, Watts won several hearings again this time in Mental Health Review Tribunal Courts. What sort of world is it that I can be judged ill in the head when these people are just not natural at all, nor human?

A long time has passed since then and I’m recovering from the scars. I still wonder the trajectory of the weapon. I’d love to come face to face with whoever pulled the trigger. See what sort of person that they actually are. Not that I’ll ever know.

On a quiet note, just to bring some rationale back, to myself as much as anything…. I can remember when I was taught how to use firearms. On a farm in New Zealand, my mother’s family farm, out in the country, outside Wanganui: My Uncle Johnny took me out hunting. He taught me how to use a shotgun and I took a rabbit – they are pests on the farmland in NZ. It’s a dark feeling post-trigger, and seeing an animal die in front of your eyes is a sight to behold. Shortly after taking kill I was back, aiming. I had a lovely pretty bird, way up in the tops of the trees in the telescopic sight. My Uncle just checked to see what I was aiming at. He asked me softly and i described the bird – its bright plumage, green and beautiful;. He said, ‘Stop Wez’ – ‘don’t fire!’. I had half slipped the trigger and it was on the point of a shot. i relaxed my finger and asked him “why?”‘ “oh, that’s a native pigeon and they are protected birds under Maori law and it is illegal to kill them. You’ll get into trouble if you shoot that one.” I learnt the difference between a fluffy rabbit and a native pigeon and it was a wonderful day. The farm cats feasted on the rabbit and i got to keep its tail.

Guns are dangerous, people, and the police should not be carrying them, certainly not for medical purposes.

Coffee Cup Syndrome

1 Reply

Here is another letter of complaint about a Dr Darryl Watts incident. this complaint resides with a senior nursing manager (Perry Attwell) at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board. It shows how trivial medical staff can be in the mental health system.

Hi Perry,

Further to our telephone conversation, I am writing you an email, as requested, with Karen Newman cc’ed.

I would like to request that you reinvestigate the incident which I already reported to you regarding the acuphase I endured at the hands of Dr Darryl Watts. I found this particular incident to be one of the worst incidences of malicious medical malpractice I have ever witnessed and believe that it clearly indicates Watts’ un-reformed criminal character.

Whereas I have found it unsettling to discover Watts’ past demons, I do smell blood here and will not let my enemies have a wink of sleep. I will not let this matter rest, purely from a vengeful perspective. Watts went out of his way to take 4 whole days out of my time and life (plus recovery) by delivering an unnecessary acuphase.

He thought it was particularly funny and Gareth Lane and himself had a good giggle at the time. I hope that giggling now haunts him because it has fired me into action. He wants to go out of his way to ruin my life, then I will let as much of the public know about his own failures in life and his own sick ideas on reality.

I was an inpatient under Watts’ treatment at Talygarn. I like drinking green tea and always have my own green teabags. It is an antioxidant and helps combat the torture chemicals you use by force upon me during incarceration. The teacups at Talygarn were small and it was difficult to get a good brew from them. I asked the staff and got the staff’s permission to bring in my own mug so that I could enjoy my green tea more whilst an inpatient.

Nicola, my partner, brought me a mug from home and on entering Talygarn at visiting time she was subjected to a search by nurse in charge, Jayne Hughes (one of Agi Tyson’s good friends and working colleagues). By the time I managed to locate Nicola she was crying her eyes out and Jayne was screaming at her. Jane banned her from visiting me any more and entering Talygarn as Nicola had brought contraband into the ward. The coffee mug was deemed an offensive weapon. I tried explaining that I had staff permission for the coffee mug. Jane threw Nicola out. She then called in Dr Watts and Gareth Lane who decided that it would be a good idea to implement their obvious punishment strategy a further notch (due to Agi Tyson affair).

Watts and Lane, while giggling uncontrollably took me into a room where Lane was physically threatening and Watts thought he’d get in on the act too, while being protected by his insane nurse. They ordered me off to Beechwood for four days for Acuphase as a result of Nicola bringing me a coffee mug.

Acuphase, as I need not explain is a pretty serious affair. This was completely unnecessary. I travelled down to the secure Beechwood Ward and accepted my fate. I didn’t resist as I didn’t blame the Beechwood staff for just following the orders of their employment. The nurse, Paul (with moustache) who administered the injections did tell me (and he wanted it off the record) that he really disagreed with his instructions in this incident as he knew that Watts was out of order and that I didn’t require acuphase.

I tried writing a letter of complaint at the time but it was torn up by Beechwood staff when I gave it to them to deliver to the Hospital managers. I think I may have written another note to the managers but of course the matter went unresolved. I also did inform you verbally in person about the incident at the time but no action was ever taken to investigate or discipline Watts, Lane and Jane.

I would like this matter looked at again as there must be medical notes in existence to verify that I am not a liar.

After the acuphase I returned to Talygarn and eventually returned home, although I think I lost several managers hearings / section appeals (as I usually do).

I actively tried to remove Watts as my psychiatrist from that point as I obviously regarded him as very dangerous. I also tried to avoid Lane. Eventually – a long time afterwards I was transferred out of forensic psychiatry and away from Watts although Lane persisted in harrassing me and treating me for a considerable amount of time afterwards. The fact that you are getting Lane to harrassingly call me and ruin my Christmas and enact police / section kidnaps – on my birthday no less, shows me that the immaturity and criminality of the local mental health system knows no bounds.

I would like this particular incident to be addressed, especially now in the knowledge that Watts was in fact a convicted criminal. I find the matter so deeply disturbing my feelings cannot be expressed in words.

Regards

Wesley Gerrard

As you might be able to tell, I am a little angry about the ridiculousness of this situation. It may be minor to the casual reader, but let me assure you that Acuphase is about the most serious form of mental health drug on the market and it makes you feel so bad that words cannot describe. It’s a serious misuse of medicine and clear negligence. All over the sake of a coffee cup… These doctors are out of their minds and out of control.

Here is the official response, from Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Chief Executive, Judith Paget…

As can be seen by the response to this complaint, the bosses of Darryl Watts have defended his abominal actions to the letter claiming he made good medical decisions. We are talking about a convicted paedophile who has no right to practise medicine, who is treating me, a non-criminal, against his consent, while detaining him, using the mental health act. I find the inability of Watts’ bosses to recognise malpractice as particularly irresponsible and most disturbing. It seems as though I will not be getting justice on this particular occasion and to be honest I feel that any for,m of justice in my plight against mental health is seemingly futile based on the clear cut defensive stance taken by senior NHS policy-makers towards their psychiatrists. Where can one obtain justice as a mental patient?

Aneurin Bevan University Health Board: Complaint about Criminal Psychiatrist, DR DARRYL WATTS

14 Replies

When I found out just prior to Christmas 2014, about my former psychiatrist Dr Darryl Watts’ criminal convictions (see category http://endofterror.org/?cat=191 for more details) , I was upset, to say the least. I decided to follow the appropriate channels and sent a complaint to the Chief Executive of the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust, the local NHS for this area of SE Wales. They are ultimately the employer of Dr Watts and were responsible for him being assigned to my care in the first place. Judith Paget is the current Chief Executive and having attended a private meeting with her in the past to address mental health issues, I do know her personally. I addressed the complaint to Judith, as I discovered (here: http://www.wales.nhs.uk/sitesplus/866/opendoc/169907 ) that she was part of the small committee that actually gave Watts the job in the first place. From the newspaper articles surrounding his conviction I know that he is forced to disclose the full details of his criminal history to any future employer. Therefore the Aneurin Bevan UHB had full knowledge of the character of the man that they were employing.

Here is the relevant text from the above cited NHS WALES document (pp13-14) surrounding the appointment of Dr Watts.

“3.3 Appointment of Consultant Adult Psychiatrist with a

special interest in Forensic Rehabilitation
The Health Board held interviews for the post of Consultant
Adult Psychiatrist with a special interest in Forensic
Rehabilitation on Friday 25th February 2011.
13Aneurin Bevan Health Board
Wednesday 23 March 2011
Agenda Item: 7.2
The appointments panel comprised the following members:
REPRESENTING THE CHAIRMAN:
Miss Sue Kent, Vice Chair, Aneurin Bevan Health Board

REPRESENTING THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE:
Mrs Judith Paget, Director of Planning and Operations, Aneurin
Bevan Health Board
REPRESENTING THE MEDICAL DIRECTOR:
Dr Stephen Hunter, Associate Medical Director, Aneurin Bevan
Health Board
REPRESENTING THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF
PSYCHIATRISTS:
Professor Gary Sullivan, Regional Advisor, Bwrdd lechyd Cwm
Taf Health Board
REPRESENTING THE ANEURIN BEVAN HEALTH BOARD:
Dr Steve Attwood, Consultant Psychiatrist, Aneurin Bevan
Health Board
1 applicant was interviewed for the post.
The recruitment and interview process was conducted in
accordance with Health Board policies and procedures.
The appointments panel recommended Dr Darryl BallantyneWatts
for appointment to this post.”

I heard nothing for quite some time from the Trust and then received the below letter that I was told was a final resolution to my complaint about all the misdemeanours I suffered under the ‘care’ of Dr Watts over a two year period.

[Here is the body text of the letter, reproduced…]

“I am writing further to your email to the Putting Things Right Team on 22 December 2014 regarding issues you have raised in relation to the background of a clinician providing care for you within the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board. Firstly, can I please sincerely apologise for any distress you may have experienced in relation to this matter.

On receiving your e-mail, I asked colleagues in the Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Division to contact you before Christmas to discuss this matter with you and I am aware that you have been receiving ongoing support from our team over the last couple of weeks. I hope this support has been helpful.

Specifically in relation to the concerns that you raised, I should like to inform you that when the Doctor in question was appointed to the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, the appointment panel was aware of the individual’s past history and due process was followed including confirmation that the Legal and GMC restrictions had been served and that there had been no fresh issues since the original offence that would cause concern to prevent the clinician’s right to practice

In conclusion, I would like to thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention. I understand that you have already received a copy of our information leaflet which explains how you may take matters further, through the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales, should you remain dissatisfied with this response.”

My first impression of the letter was disgust. I was annoyed that Paget herself could not regard the matter sufficiently horrific to attend to the complaint. I felt the sarcasm of the fact that they admitted sending out mental health services and subsequently police to harass and detain me, over the festive period where I wanted to enjoy myself at home, while on a study break from my university courses. The last place I wished to be was under treatment from the very organisation about which I was complaining. I do not have faith in the mental health services of Aneurin Bevan UHB and do not feel safe in their environment. AT ALL.

They seemed completely nonchalant about Watts’ appointment and seemed to defend him to the hilt. He had a right to practise his medicine and who are they to deny that? I just wonder how many others have been affected by an irresponsible appointment? Now that the man is allowed back working with children in the area, as a psychiatrist, I find this sickening. When you hear about the convicted Welsh footballer, Ched Evans, facing such public outcry over his return to football it does make you question some of Aneurin Bevan UHB’s decisions here. A convicted doctor has a right to work and ‘sod the public’ – they have no need to know. It’s just ridiculous and smacks of institutionalised paedophilia that you here so much about in the media. I am unsatisfied with the response and have informed the trust of this and have taken the matter to the Public Ombudsman for Wales where I hope they will see some sense in my grievances.
I am annoyed that it seems that my whole meeting with Mrs Paget and some colleagues about a year ago, is now a complete waste of time. In our hour session we discussed from a patient’s perspective how the mental health services could be improved. In particular I talked of how Occupational Therapy could receive more funding and one of Judith’s colleagues suggested how they wanted to employ me in a education role, to help train their staff about how a mental patient actually perceives the services. After the meeting I left feeling like my voice had been heard but there was zero follow up and nothing ever transpired.

Quite frankly, having worked in an educational role: teaching music (DJing) for the government, Arts Council Wales, Newport Arts Council, Monmouthshire Youth Services, DOE Award Scheme, Newport Arts Disability, Nash Pilot Project, NASH homeless hostels, Young Offenders Orgs and various others – I cannot possibly accept a position as a teacher for an establishment that actually employs convicted child sex offenders. It is just ridiculous attempting to educate in a system where the very head is knowingly appointing such vile members of society to work at taxpayer wages of some ridiculous 6 figure per annum sum… How I am expected to maintain any sort of faith in this Health Trust from now on, God only knows, but I do know that they won’t be going away.

Yes, it may be victory for you, Dr Darryl Watts et al, but I’ll be the one sleeping tonight, with a clear conscience. Have a look in the mirror at your own mental health issues, all involved.

All I can say is that Aneurin Bevan, for all the good he brought to Britain, in founding the NHS, must be turning in his grave to see his name attached to such a vile organisation as the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Trust.

You may have won this round, mental-healthers, but the End Of Terror will fight on…

Police Brutality and Mental Health – PART 2

2 Replies

In this second post about my experiences of police brutality and mental health, I wish to discuss the nature of problems affecting diagnosed mental health victims when it comes to attempting to conventionally use police services.

If you’ve ever been a mental inpatient you are probably aware that the police’s jurisdiction does not extend to mental hospitals. There is no protection for incarcerated patients no matter how many times you contact police. Therefore you are forced to deal with crime inside a hospital environment on your own. This in itself is dangerous, especially when often it is the polices themselves who have removed you to the locked environment. I suppose, it could be argued that it makes sense not to want to seek help from an organisation that works on behalf of the secret prison system that is mental health lockup.

The problem I have found, is that once back in the community, attempting to build up your life, should you ever require the assistance of the police in a conventional way. To report a crime or anything else, you do not get standard service that a public user of their service might expect.

This dilemma is created by, despite diagnosed mental illness not (yet) being a criminal offence, it is recorded by the police and you do show on their system as being diagnosed mentally ill. When you call 999 or 101, caller display and police monitoring systems indicate immediately and you are flagged as a ‘mentally ill’ customer.

I first encountered the reality of this situation over a decade ago when, during a business dispute whereby some of my business’ equipment was illegally seized and I was attempting to recover it I was held hostage on someone else’s business premises with active threats of violence which I feared could result in murder. I felt I had no real alternative but to report the matter to the police, from a question of personal safety as much as anything else. Luckily, I had a mobile phone so I dialled 999 and reported the matter from within my locked environment.

After about 15 minutes the police turned up at the location. they entered the premises where the owner was actually in the room with me. The police entered, and despite me having given a lucid sane account of the crime I alleged, the police did nothing to the person I was reporting, but on entering the building put me up against the wall, inside the place where I’d been captive for about 90 minutes and started conducting a body search. I asked them exactly what they were doing as it was I who had contacted them and was the victim of a crime. The Asian officer, who I knew from the local Caldicot police (part of Gwent police), informed me that because I was mentally ill, this was standard procedure and he had to check me for concealed weapons which I obviously did not have. After conducting a thorough body search I asked him if he would now attend to the criminal matter at hand and that a) I wanted out of my hostage situation and if possible I wanted the recovery of my stolen computers and other business equipment that were being locked in a different part of the building. The police officer told me that I was trespassing and had to leave the premises without my equipment. I was quite shocked, but equally quite glad to be alive and no longer being held in a hostage situation. The police never followed up the matter at all, but I was very ill at ease and realised that I wouldn’t get conventional treatment from the police due to my mental health status. As a business you have to right off the occasional asset and possessions aren’t everything in this world. Health is a priority and preserving life is a necessary factor in living.

I tried my best not to ever contact them again but unfortunately many years later I had the misfortune of having to report a crime and felt that to make a 999 call was the only viable option.

My fiancée, Nicola, had a friend around our house for the evening. They had been enjoying themselves and having a few drinks whilst I was just minding my own business, ploughing away with my computer work…. running so many internet sites and social media takes a lot of dedicated effort! lol…

It came time for Nicola’s friend to go home. It was about midnight and she had booked a taxi. Nicola told me her friend was leaving and asked if I’d do the gentlemanly thing and escort her friend outside and to see her safely into the taxi. Of course, as chivalry demands I obliged and walked the lady outside. As she got into the taxi, a little drunk as she was, I Couldn’t believe my eyes when the taxi driver leant over her, strapped her seatbelt in and not realising that I was present, openly groped the passenger’s breast. I immediately protested and demanded to see the driver’s identity card. He showed me a ‘hackney carriage id’ with his photo on. I felt it strange that a local taxi in South Wales should have a London cabbie’s ID. The taxi sped off down the road before I could discuss matters further and sort the situation myself.

I rushed back inside and quickly explained to the missus what had happened. She was shocked and we both realised that the only people we could realistically call in this potential kidnap situation was the police on 999.

I reluctantly dialled ‘999’ and the operator speedily put me through to the police. As I was reporting the incident, I realised that I was speaking to a local police operator from her accent. the questioning seemed to be directed away from the incident and she seemed to be just gathering information on me. there was an obsession to get my details and not the details of the crime. It was like going through a standard call centre security check, like when you ring the bank. I suddenly realised that I had obviously flagged on their system as mentally ill and they were messing around. This, when Nicola’s friend’s life was in potential danger, made me angry. I hung up on the 999 call and immediately rang 999 again to try and get a better response from a different operator. I got put through to a police operator somewhere in the East Midlands if I remember correctly. I rushed through my incident report which was accepted well and she informed me that the matter was being dealt with and that the incident could expect a response.

After this 999 call ended, I quickly rang Nicola’s friends partner, who was waiting for her at home. I explained to him the situation and he was very worried, but luckily as we were talking, his drunken partner stumbled through the house door. Nicola and I breathed a sigh of relief and were just glad that the worst had not transpired in the incident. As we experienced relief we could hear a massive noise outside as vehicles started storming the neighbourhood. I realise it was the police arriving. Nicola went running outside to explain what had happened and that her friend was home safe.

I had my dressing gown on and was pondering about getting changed before I saw the police but I thought I’d better get outside and check that Nicola was OK.

This is where matters broke down and still to this day I cannot get my head around the actual lunacy that resulted. I have put in IPCC complaints etc about this and tried to pursue the matter but obviously it’s a waste of time dealing with that particular organisation.

I went through the front door and Nicola was about 25 metres away, surrounded by a group of yellow-vested police. She looked frightened and I was worried about what was happening. Stood on my front lawn I politely inquired of Nicola if she was Ok and all was OK. On hearing my voice, a second group of approximately 10-12 officers, saw me and in a military formation started rushing at me, as a group…. I raised my hands just to try and settle them. Perhaps they thought I was the reported criminal, and Nicola was the victim? This was not actually the case as the IPCC would have reported this to me when I entered my official complaint.

The police grabbed me. I offered no resistance at all, as obviously I had just dialled 999. I was thrown face down on the floor and handcuffed. The young PC, about 20 years old, who led the charge and had handcuffed me then proceeded to boot me in the back of the head and left his foot embedded in my neck, applying pressure. I couldn’t breathe at all and felt close to death. I was suffocating as I was face down in the mud with a boot in the back of my head / neck, obstructing my airways. I was in a stress position with my hands secured behind my back in cuffs. I started having an asthma attack after several minutes and somehow the officer’s heavy jackboot was removed from my neck. I was hyperventilating and just pleaded to see a doctor. He shouted at me that he was a doctor. As i re-caught my breath I was removed from the ground and escorted towards one of the waiting police vans. I asked them politely if they could get my inhaler from inside my home as I was having an asthma attack and needed it, especially anticipating I would be locked in the airtight, sealed back of a police van for a journey to wherever.

They refused to get an inhaler and were still surrounding Nicola in a military-style ring formation. I was concerned for my partner’s safety as I didn’t really want to leave her in the company of this particular section of police officers. You have no choice, however, and there was nothing I could do but quietly pray as the vehicle moved off. Cuffed, back of the wagon, not for the first time, hardly able to breathe. It is disturbing travelling in the back of a ‘meat wagon’ yet when you’ve been cuffed in the back of an ambulance the first time they introduced handcuffs to your life, travelling police-style isn’t as scary as people might imagine.

The van stopped and the doors were opened and I was grabbed out, yet the cuffs were not removed. I was at the back of Newport Central police station. I was escorted into the processing area. I thought I’d go straight to the custody desk and be able to get some sense out of the custody sergeant and at least be able to phone and check that Nicola was safe and well as that was my main concern. With a sexual predator being around my home, the last thing I need is to be wondering if the missus is home safe with doors securely locked. At Newport Central, however, nothing is very easy. There were two police in the van. One, the 20 year old male ‘doctor’ who had assaulted me. The other, one from Nicola’s surrounding ring, a woman officer, who I later established was the officer in charge of the whole ‘operation’ and was a beat officer from Chepstow. Never seen either before in my life. They stopped behind the closed door of the custody suite, just inside the entrance, one either side of me restraining my arms, even though I was cuffed behind my back. We stopped and I was held there for I’d estimate about 60-90 minutes. The bloke on my left was obviously bored and decided to relieve his boredom by twisting my thumbs on my left hand around, trying to dislocate them or break them, no doubt. After being the victim of his assault outside my home I was in no mood to verbalise anything with him, for obvious reasons. In a police situation the best thing to do is to remain calm. A police officer full of adrenaline is a dangerous thing. Any form of ‘dissent’ will be punished. His officer to my right was not torturing my thumbs nor was she aware of his little idea of ‘fascist police brutality’.

I got to the custody desk, asked to call my partner at home, was denied and moved straight to the holding cells. No charge, no comment, no offer of communication about what is going on, no offer of legal representation. No communication whatsoever. Luckily, another officer managed to release me from the rather restrictive cuffs at this stage and I was so glad to get into the back of the cell where I could start reworking my circulation. At the end of the day, as a professional DJ who requires his hands for work, there is nothing worse than handcuff wounds and finger / thumb injuries… My thumb has never become right since that day. It’s a real challenge, spinning vinyl, when you’ve been tortured by police officers on so many occasions, directly on the parts of the body you need most to earn a living.

Unfortunately they wouldn’t shut the cell door and give me any peace and kept it open as, after waiting so long to get into the place there was a crazy rush to get me out. I was moved on by a fresh police officer straight out of the nick and into a more comfortable cage in the back of another van. No communications again as to where we were heading, why we were heading there, what was going on, but you expect it off the police. I recognised this copper from a previous detention and he seems a little more settled than the rampaging lot who had kidnapped me earlier in the evening.

Eventually we turned up at the secure mental hospital ward, Beechwood, St. Cadoc’s Hospital. Luckily an Ok nurse, my mate Mick was the nurse in charge for the evening. He could see that the coppers had had a right go at me and luckily as they released me into his custody he let me just have a wander off in ‘freedom, around the St. Cadoc’s grounds and garden outside the ward as he knew full well I wouldn’t be seeing any outside or nature for quite some time.

I was of course to be ‘treated’ by the criminal mental patient forensic police-employed Newport Central psychiatrist Dr Darryl Watts (see – #EoT category http://endofterror.org/?cat=191 ) for the duration of my detainment. Mick gave me one last privilege before I was sectioned as he humanely allowed me to phone Nicola, who thankfully was at home, alone, with doors locked, and safe. I had a cigarette to calm and then faced a junior shrink to get sectioned. god knows what for… to this day and post court hearings (Mental Health Review Tribunal) I do not know how the hell calling 999 to report a directly witnessed sex crime can be mental illness, yet if the police psychiatrist who is treating you is a convicted sex offender then I suppose it makes some sort of sense (as twisted as mental health logic goes).

I think that as much as I hate the police state that I believe one has to accept that it is a reality. With the IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) being so useless, it is important for people to document crimes by the police publicly. At the end of the day, if the outright murders of Brazilian tourist, Jean Charles de Menezes, and newsagent, Ian Tomlinson, go completely unpunished then what hope is there for other police victims in the UK? History teaches us about the rise of Nazi Germany post-1933 and what resulted in that. The scariest thing for me was that one of the first groups of people Hitler exterminated as war broke out, were the mental patients. i think that they paved the way for the gypsies and jews and slavs etc that followed. Obviously modern psychiatry was born directly out of concentration camp science. We live in a repetition of history and early 21st century Britain is in danger of being remembered in the same way as 1930s Germany.

I’ve got plenty more episodes of this blog to release, equally traumatic, if not more so, and while ‘freedom’ allows I shall continue to fight for the truth and justice and the end of tyranny and evil in mental health and psychiatry.
to be continued…

Ps. they didn’t have an asthma pump in the police station or hospital so I had to wait for my partner to arrange visiting times and bring one in for me at which point it was confiscated as it hadn’t been prescribed by the psychiatrist in charge.

[This is part 2: READ PART 1 of this story thread here… http://endofterror.org/?p=512 ]

Immigrant Doctors on the NHS: A Good Thing or Bad Thing?

4 Replies

Not wanting to sound the horn or anything, but: PEOPLE, THERE IS A GENERAL ELECTION COMING UP! Come May unless you adhere to Russell Brand’s non-voting strategy, then you could well be heading to the polling booth. We heard of ‘weaponising the NHS in the buildup and it looks like a weird old forthcoming election with the rise of UKIP and some pretty unsettling times here in the UK and indeed in the wider world.

I put a picture of Farage on this post as I have heard time and time again people citing immigration as a key issue. I am very pro-European in essence. As a Translation student and a man with a passion for foreign languages, I embrace the ‘otherness’ of cultures from abroad. I think that in expelling immigrants and abandoning the European we would instantly be cats back into the stone age. Immigration brings us a net benefit in terms of capital, cultural diversity and skills in the workplace, plus it would be rather difficult to study foreign languages in the education sector if all foreigners are thrown out à la Farage.

But, politics aside, immigration is a real issue. We hear of how our NHS is full of nurses and doctors from abroad. In fact, I believe that I am correct in saying that proportionally, the NHS employs more foreign workers than the average organisation.
I think that in healthcare, some of my pro-immigration views do distort. I can especially remember when my dying grandmother was in hospital. She came from a pre 1960s immigration boom generation. She was supporting an RAF pilot during WW2 and part of the incredible effort made by home soil women during that conflict. Her values and ideas were very old-fashioned and quite a bit different from my own. I felt a bit ashamed when she was openly cursing foreign NHS workers during her treatment. I found it a little rude, but, who am I to judge? I come from a more tolerant generation whose values have been shaped by a different set of problems and I live in a more or less totally globalised world. I wonder though, how the older, often politically silent generation feel about their healthcare needs being attended to by foreigners.

We are constantly told how our education and especially higher education system is among the best in the world. If that is the case, why can not one of our biggest national establishments, the NHS, fill its parole with home-born, home-educated, British doctors and nurses? Are we lacking in the educational field for medicine? Are salaries in the NHS really that dire? We recruit from abroad in our healthcare sectors. Doctors and Nurses who have trained up and learnt their craft in a different educational environment, in nations where we do not control the political systems and where life values are very much different.

I would argue that surgery is surgery and a surgeon, who is treating the body, usually of an unconscious patient, is either skilled and capable or not, wherever he has been taught medicine. He is not necessarily having to speak to a patient. He has no real need to understand them, and he has no real political power in terms of affecting that patient’s life, bar saving it from a scientific bodily perspective.

At the other end of the top pay-scale NHS bracket, however, is consultant psychiatrists. They have no surgical function. They allegedly ‘treat’ mental issues, which are societal in nature and where the medical science is extremely lacking. My argument against psychiatrists, is that they have much more scope for errors in judgement. A psychiatrist who makes poor decisions can cover up their mistakes with political obfuscation. Their failures are buried in the system. They take people’s liberty, have the facility to treat against consent and their process takes on average a much longer period. They have more long term impact on a patient’s life and can be severely disruptive even if they happen to be benefitting the patient. A surgeon who makes an error on the operating table has little recourse for excuse-making as the patient will usually directly have a major emergency issue or the health problem (where science is a lot more accurate) will not dissipate.

When you take into account the societal factors affecting mental illness and introduce immigrant psychiatrists to the equation we have a whole host of medical ethics issues. I can understand the internationalisation of academia, especially in today’s world. A medical degree in Prague, could carry equal weight as one from Delhi or London. Faculties exchange ideas, information and share resources. However, how can the value system of a a foreigner, born and brought up in a different land, be shaped as to fit the needs of patients in the host country?

Over the 18 years I’ve been in the UK mental health system, I can actually count the number of UK born, UK raised, UK qualified psychiatrists who have treated me on one hand. There has been a rainbow of different nationalities involved in the senior position of psychiatrist in my healthcare, which on the whole has been very suppressive and done entirely against my consent, involving large quantities of restricted liberty. I’ve had consultant psychiatrists from Sri Lanka (Dr Nirmalie Mirando), Poland (Dr Agnieszca Tyson) and my current one is from Iraq (Dr Nahla Jamil). Other psychiatrists who have treated me hail from Sudan (Dr. Ali, Dr. Ahmed), India / Pakistan (unknown – several), Egypt (Dr Nimkar) other African doctors. There is a multitude of senior professionals who have had a lot of power invested in them by the British system. I question the ability of these doctors to be subjective and to truly understand British values and the psychiatry of people who are nurtured in this country. Most of them only arrived on these shores post- qualification, as young adults. They know little about core UK cultural values and textbooks I’m afraid are no substitute for living the real British life. I find these foreigners to be often lacking in critical understanding of what it is to be British. Often their medical knowledge of their subject field is vastly superior to the British psychiatrists that I have encountered. However, these doctors can be quite irrational and lack understanding. If you had been educated and brought up in a civil war environment, or behind the depths of the Iron Curtain, or in a land where Jihadism is rife and governments are notable for their lack of organisation, how can you hope to understand the complex nature of the United Kingdom and its remnants of Empire? Perhaps it is these very remnants which leads these doctors here to practise in the first place?

I object to almost omnipotent unchecked power being awarded to foreign nationals, whatever their qualifications, as it leads to controversial issues which the almost childlike, trusting, naive nature of UK authorities cannot bring to heel. If these foreigners ever had malicious intent it would be far too easy for them to disrupt future generations of Britain through the suppressive nature of irresponsible legislation such as the Mental Health Act.

In the USA, they have a sensible law that states that the US President has to be a US born US citizen. Does this make the USA a racist, undemocratic country?

For or against foreigners in the NHS? I see the mental health branch of the NHS being an overall disgrace and believe that foreigners elevated to positions of power within it is a dangerous policy for senior NHS recruitment managers.

I don’t believe in force and enjoy the ideology of democracy so I won’t force my ideas down your throat. It’s just an experience-based opinion and despite being on the whole pro-immigration, I feel that there should be rational balances and checks in place to protect the native-born nationals of these Isles.

Living With Schizophrenia – PART 1

1 Reply

Living with Schizophrenia Part 1 from End Of Terror on Vimeo.

This is the first part of my mental health story, explaining how I first came into contact with psychiatry in 1997 and the horrors I experienced during my first mental hospital incarceration. I plan to do a series of videos about mental health.

More http://endofterror.org

This was a video I did a couple of years ago. It was originally posted on my youtube but I had to take it down as it cost me a job. I had gone through the interview process and been appointed by Pharmya ( http://www.pharmya.com/ ), a pharmacovigilance company in the South of France. It would have been an interesting position, combining translation, interpreting, my language skills and also knowledge of medical industry, but the woman boss found this whilst googling and decided that she couldn’t employ me as a result.

Anyway, I like the fact that the video is the truth… You can run and hide from your past or you can live with it. My biggest goal in life is not to make money, or to travel, raise a family, fall in love etc… My primary goal is to sleep at night with a clean conscience. I feel that on the whole I manage to do that.

Since the making of this video my incurable ‘schizophrenia’ has actually been ‘cured’ and I have a new diagnosis that I haven’t even bothered to research bar a brief scan of wikipedia. I’m now apparently suffering from Schizo-Affective disorder which sort of buggers up the future episodes I plan to do for this series…

Enjoy the vid, any comments most welcomed… Hope I don’t lose any more work for putting it out into the ether…

Police Brutality and Mental Health – PART 1

3 Replies

I have no criminal record. But, I have been in the mental health system of the UK since 1997 – 18 years to date. Unfortunately the name ‘health’ in ‘mental health’ is a misnomer. The mental health system is nothing but a secret prison system where people can be easily silenced and removed from society without appropriate balances and checks such as those that exist in the criminal justice system. The police have a very active role in mental health and very often the first people you see when you are sectioned under the mental health act are the police. They do not have to place you under arrest verbally. If you are diagnosed or under suspicion of having a mental health condition you can just be attacked by them, handcuffed and dragged off in the back of a van to either a police station – deemed as a ‘place of safety’ under the mental health act, or directly to a mental hospital, usually in the custody of police, direct to a secure mental hospital locked ward. There is an illusion in the public that you have to be seen by a judge or get legal assistance but the reality is that once TAKEN you usually have to wait 5 months in custody before going before a court of law. Those five months of non-consensual treatment and torture with no freedom at all are obviously hell.

Over the years the police have become more and more involved in my mental health treatment. I want to use End Of Terror to publicly address some of the worst brutality I have experienced from them. I feel I have a duty to the public to warn them as the police are very dangerous and can cause members of the public serious harm. They have been stepping up their militarisation here in the UK for a number of years now and I believe them to be a hardened criminal incorporation who believe they are exempt from the law.

In this post I will illustrate one example of brutality where I have photographic evidence. I have presented this case to the IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) on a number of occasions. This body, however, is a sham and is not fit for purpose. The police escape punishment and never learn from their crimes.

The above scar comes from a stay in Newport Central Custody Suite – a ‘place of safety’ in the summer of 2011. I had been seized by police from my front garden after a transvestite neighbour who I didn’t get along with falsely reported me as streaking in the neighbourhood. I hadn’t been streaking at all. I was in my dressing gown and was minding my own business. The police turned up, stripped me naked and handcuffed me. I had recently been appointed a police forensic psychiatrist on my previous visit to Newport Central. This psychiatrist, Dr Darryl Watts, is a convicted criminal, convicted in 2003 of serious child sex offences. In 2011 (and still to this day to my knowledge) Watts was working for the police out of Newport Central. It sort of defies logic that the police should employ a convicted sex offender to work out of their station, but that is my opinion. It just proves the criminal mentality of Gwent police and how low they are prepared to stoop.

I was thrown naked into a cell, having been bundled out of the van. At last, I was free from the handcuffs. I didn’t have time to inspect my handcuff wounds, however. As per usual the custody sergeant gave me no access to a phone call either to family or to a solicitor. I was then kicked in the side by a forensic community nurse, Gareth Lane, who was Dr Darryl Watts’ partner in crime or second in command. The police refused to clothe me. I was then left alone in the cell with the convicted paedophile sex offender, Dr Darryl Watts. [See Daily Mail and Bristol Post]He was mouthing off repetitious nonsense, about me being the sickest person he has ever seen, some sort of mantra which I later discovered was part of his own plea to the judge during his trial and conviction years ago. Watts is obviously a mental patient himself and although under the treatment of a psychiatrist for diagnosed mental illness, he is allowed by the police to practise psychiatry.

Watts eventually left thank god, and although naked, I was allowed time to recuperate although without a toilet or any water, despite asking for hours for either a glass of water or to be able to go to the toilet, I was just left alone , naked. I wonder about deaths in custody and just exactly how many police prisoners in custody actually starve to death, die of thirst or suffocate in cells.

Police started gathering outside the cell as I could see them through the little glass window. I counted about 8 or 9 of them in all and could hear them egging each other on to psych themselves up for something.

The cell door open and the light switch was turned off. Officers started piling into the cell and that was the last thing I could remember. I awoke some time later in a secure ward – Beechwood Ward, at St Cadoc’s Hospital. As I awoke, I felt great pain in my side and I looked down on the bed and I had a deep cut running from my belly around my hip to my back.

I struggled up and asked a nurse on Beechwood how on earth I had gotten there and who had assaulted me. He said that the open wound was an old rugby injury but I had retired from rugby 20 years previously and hadn’t touched a ball since.

I had been placed under section and when I finally got a transfer for good behaviour off the secure ward to Talygarn Ward, County hospital, Griffithstown, Pontypool, I managed to smuggle in a mobile phone with a camera to take the photos of the injury that you can see in this post.

A friend who visited me and who was no stranger to police brutality himself, informed me that in his opinion the weapon used was an ‘extendy’ truncheon, a thin metal rodlike truncheon. To this day, however, I do not know what actually happened although I do know that a criminal police doctor was present at Newport Central that day. I do regard the matter as not only a serious physical assault but a sexual one also as I was naked the whole time and when you are naked in the company of sex offenders and rendered unconscious, God forbid what might have happened.

There was a camera in the cell that I was in and I later got a solicitor from the criminal justice system to obtain the footage for me so I could see how the assault was committed. However, the tape conveniently went missing and Gwent Police refused to hand it over.

After a while and having lost all my court hearings due to my psychiatrist – Dr Darryl Watts’ lies and nonsense, I eventually returned home and went back to my civilian life. However, it wasn’t long before the police stepped up their act and went a few stages further in their brutality….

I was lucky on this occasion to have escaped with my life. I am scarred for life physically yet the worst scars are the mental ones. When you are treated by police officers in this way it puts you in a difficult situation mentally whenever you are unfortunate enough to encounter them. When I see them in public, at train stations or driving past in the street, I experience levels of fear and stress and anger that are indescribable. I do not believe that the police are human and think that they are a sub-species.

(to be continued)

[This is part 1: READ PART 2 of this story thread here… http://endofterror.org/?p=650 ]

Your God is a False God

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Crucifictions

Just going back to my regular meeting with the Stasi earlier this week… (Stasi were originally the East German Secret Police) I refer to my crack psychiatric home treatment team endearingly as the Stasi as it sums up neatly what they are really like.

I was discussing with David, the new Irish male CPN (Community Psychiatric Nurse) a load of reasons why they were all evil for not leaving me in peace alone, away from the horrendously haunting psychiatric system. He said that I was babbling speculative philosophy – that it was all mental illness. I then asked him to expand why it was philosophy. I said that I was speaking the truth and reality but it was philosophy to him as he’d been brainwashed and divorced from humanity through his psychiatric education and training. I was asked repeatedly to show more ‘Courtesy’. I said that there were no laws saying I had to be courteous, especially to people I do not choose to be in my life. He said that he would get the psychiatrist to implement that I had to be courteous as part of the legal conditions for my C.T.O. (Community Treatment Order). I said that this wasn’t legal and that the psychiatrist had no legal powers to do such a thing. He then spoke about the fact the psychiatrist (Dr. Ballantyne-Watts [Wales Forensic Psychiatry]) actually did have these powers. He expanded by saying that psychiatrists are very powerful (of that I am positively certain) and that some people believe that they are modern day Gods. I thought it was just a witty retort from him at first and giggled a little but the CPNs face remained stern and unchanged. I realised he was serious. I said that I would never be worshipping a human as a God and certainly not a psychiatrist and certainly not Dr. Ballantyne-Watts. He looked puzzled and didn’t seem to comprehend. I guess when you are so conditionned to working in the system, to blindly follow any order from above, that seeing the boss as a living embodiment of God is not strange. He then implied that psychiatrists had superhuman intelligence and were divine. I didn’t really wish to blaspheme against the poor fella’s beliefs. At the end of the day, I believe in freedom of choice, in particular the right to choose one’s religion (as enshrined in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights). I had to just leave the topic and accept that our views differed.

I have noticed, however, over the years, how positively psychiatrists and the mental health system rejects religion. They sneer at it. When I first entered hospital in 1997 I noticed a lot of patients reading the bible and talking about stories from the Bible. this seemed a little strange to me. It was the modern world and our society is quite secular. I hadn’t been brought up particularly religiously, yet had attended school chapel and assemblies every day and had a faint understanding of the Bible. I believed in God, but not rigorously. I was 19 – often people find religion or ‘God’ later in life than at this freshfaced tender age. It seemed bizarre but what seemed more alarming and strange was the way in which the Mental Health nurses enforcedly rejected religion. Bibles were confiscated from patients. Anyone mentionning a religous topic openly was condemned immediately, either sent off for punishment in the secure ward, medicated more (eg. injection), or just harshly verbally reprimanded and mocked. Perhaps there was something to this religion malarky?

Over the years, as I spent more and more time on lockdown I decided to put the time to as good a use as possible by studying and reading. I wanted a career as a musician but music is so oppressed inside a mental hospital it isn’t funny. Radios are confiscated and banned . When i first entered the Mental Health System, patients used to gather in the smoking room around the radio all day. On a Saturday Night there was quite a party atmosphere. I can remember grooving around to the Radio 1 Essential Selection or Lovegroove Dance Party. If you closed your eyes you could imagine yourself in the Ministry of Sound, or wherever you so desired or should have been spending the weekend.

In about 2000 when I was sectionned for a total of ten and a half months, my first experience of total institutionalisation. I managed to smuggle my old school King James Bible in. I secretly read it at night and went straight through, cover to cover. It was a really good read and I’d recommend for anyone to do the same regardless of your religious beliefs. It was also during this period of incarceration that I began going to church. It wasn’t really to fulfill a higher purpose; I just noticed that, by attending church on Sunday in Caerleon’s local church, it gave a good excuse to actually get out of the nuthouse for a while. You could claim that you wished to exercise your right to worship the state religion, and although it took weeks of playing this card before they finally acquiesced, it came to the point where they knew that they might get into trouble for continuing to prevent you from exercising this right. Initially the excuse for not allowing it was that there was a hospital chapel which arranged a Sunday service but it just so happened that at that time nobody could be bothered to actually allow this service to proceed, so in the end they had to let a few others with the same idea, and me, pop into the town for an hour or two. One thing I’ll say about the Caerleon congregation is that they are all very welcoming and the church at that time was generally well-attended. When I saw Arthur, the vicar, stood in his pulpit, remembering those less fortunate in the community, those stuck inside the Mental Hospital, it genuinely touched my heart. I came to know Arthur personally as he made regular trips into the hospital and for patients with few visitors he was absolutely critical to their wellbeing. An outsider might imagine that you have all the care you need inside a nuthouse, with all the healthcare professional being paid to look after you in there. The reality of that situation is quite different. Arthur would sit and chat to everyone, whether they wished to talk about God or anything else they were bothered about. You get treated like cattle awaiting slaughter inside a nuthouse. Another myth of treatment is that you will spend hours talking over all your mental health issues with the psychiatrist. This is the biggest lie of the lot. You see the shrink once a week, usually a Monday morning – It’s the only time they actually are in the hospital physically. And you see them for ten minutes, no more. Never is anything substantial discussed, bar medication. The treatment system is totally dependent on drugs. The rest of the time the shrinks are analysing drugs company marketing material, to see which company is offering the best incentives. Usually cash incentives. I have picked this knowledge up from reading psychiatry books – and just noticing all the drug company bumph lying around in offices – you can see what’s coming next in your treatment regime when the staff start drinking from fresh drug company branded coffee mugs, as it means the drug rep has been and left a few parting gifts after striking a big deal.. There is such a fierce war between drugs companies for the increasingly lucrative market share that the advertising campaigns are like US Presidential races in terms of budget and ferocity of advertising.

Arthur was about the only person to turn to for salvation and, to be fair, is a good man, as he serves his community in the correct manner. When I was in the Beechwood PICU in St. Cadoc’s secure Unit where you have literally nothing, no possessions – nothing, for about 4 months straight, Arthur noticed I’d disappeared and sought me out, bringing a Bible which was like a Godsend, literally. Of course it soon gets confiscated once he’s out the door, but the thought is well intended. I also had my first and only communion inside the locked ward. The staff even told my visitors who turned up that I wasn’t there – I’d been transferred somewhere else and they didn’t know how to find me. They do get perverse kicks when enhancing your suffering. Arthur still managed to get through those barriers and I will forever be grateful.

As a side note, one day on Augustus Ward, an acute Unit in St. Cadoc’s, this posh-looking, well-spoken holy man came in. I sat and had a good quarter an hour chat. He was the Bishop of the See of Monmouthshire, a certain Rowan Williams, who of course is the current Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s funny watching him in Westminster Abbey on the tele with the Queen when you know you’ve had a tepid St. Cad’s coffee with him – of course nowadays they’d probably class this as a delusion but it is true. Ask Rowan Williams if you bump into him if he’s ever been to St. Cadoc’s with Wez G and he’ll tell you the truth… The Priory may get all the spotlight as the place to be but we’ve had a few stars down our way too…

I sound a bit like a preacher here but although I believe in God, after reading the Bible, I read a load of other major religious texts and philosophy and much more. I don’t believe that any one world religion has their definition of God correct – I think that a fusion of beliefs is possible and that religion has been alarmingly misused over the years. My facebook-declared religious views are ‘Ayahuasca Shaman’ but that’s a story for another day.One thing I can say is that most religions carry the same fundamental message. It’s easy to hear people say ‘religion = load of nonsense – cause of all wars -and totally dismiss it, but we must remember that most of modern society has developed as a result of these belief systems. Our ancestors chose to (and indeed chose not to and were sometimes forced to) live their lives by the laws laid down in these books. Even a sceptic has to recognise that there is a great deal of knowledge of good and evil contained in holy texts or beliefs or traditions. It is part of history and culture. The point I aspire to is that it would not harm these Mental Health workers to actually accept some of the ideas and wisdom of these religions. There is a tendency nowadays to reject the old in favour of the new and we have come to accept that change is always for the better. This isn’t strictly true, as too much change will upset the overall balance of any system. Being radical for the sake of being radical leaves you clutching at straws as if you abolish everything as you have no canvas left on which to paint a new picture. The religious beliefs have been around in most cases for thousands of years. Psychiatry is a much more recent cult or fad, which has never properly defined itself. It is a lost pseudoscience (or other categeory) with really wishy-washy vague ideas and definitions.

When I hear daftness coming from people appointed by the UK government to march into my home, threaten me with the law and try and get me to worship another human being, who quite frankly cannot possibly be God…It irritates me to the core and I cannot understand what accepting to do this will achieve. Perhaps why they say I’m mad. If I do bow down before the Doctor, will they finally leave me alone? It’s gone too far for them to withdraw by now and once I’m bowing, I’ll soon be forced to kneel and pretty soon I’ll be prostrating myself and self-whipping my back to punish myself for not being chaste enough in God’s sight. The guy’s only in his Mid-Fifties and even despite the argument between Creationists and Evolutionists, even they would, I hope, unanimously agree that whoever created the world must have done so more than 60 years ago. If there’s evidence to suggest otherwise then I stand corrected.

As I counter-psychoanalyse my interrogators, I observe that they are always so cagey at giving information up, it is hard to pinpoint their actual goals and agenda. God-king cults have sprung up in history – Are the psychiatrists a priesthood? It worries me as people will think that this is all bonkers, I’m lying, nuts whatever, but if you are all worshipping psychiatrists in a decade or so you can look back and say you heard it here first. Silly things do emerge in society from time to time and unless you see them coming it is often difficult ever understanding how they arrived. Take X-Factor or Pop Idol for example? How on earth did they crop up? I, for one, didn’t foresee the music industry being so affected by these TV talent shows. I will always totally reject the worship of psychiatrists, until the torture gets too intense perhaps, but even then I think that I shall resist. Perhaps when my brain finally is in the pickle jar on their desk I might be tempted to pay homage, but even then I’ll still be pulling faces. Psychiatry as a religion disgusts me. Yes – you may think – oh – this cannot possibly be true or ever eventualise but I don’t think that the public in general understand just exactly how powerful the Mental Health movement is. It has all the traits of religion – vast amounts of money, people in powerful positions across society all profit from it, they have the unquestionable loyalty of the weaponised authorities (ie. Police) who are prepared to use force to protect the regime, they have the desire for more control over those they see as weaker and will cease at no issue of morality in order to achieve their ends. When you couple in the sheepish nature of the masses to follow whither they are ordered without questionning the command, the scene is set. I don’t know just how far the Mental Health Act powers will take what is being done in the name of the law. I don’t wish to discover either. Like a cornered animal you have to stand and fight and it would be nice to maintain civilized protocol that dates back before the time of Marx and has been the preserve of peaceful people across eternity. Examine history – look at how such horrific movements spring up from time to time. Psychiatry is weaving its clutches virtually everywhere in a world that has been globalised more than ever before. The entire future of our species is at stake.

Psychiatrists. mental health workers, police, social workers, all involved, your God is a false God. I will not worship my psychiatrist.

[MORE on Dr Darryl Watts aka Dr Ballantyne-Watts – the psychiatrist I am supposed to be worshipping religiously!!! after I discovered his criminal history as a child sex offender in Dec 2014 … http://endofterror.org/?cat=191 ]

Mental Health Review Tribunal – Phone In Sick

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VtDSIBWkOQ]

Sicknote are my mates – please support their great music!

I’ve been up all night debating about whether or not to go to the Mental Health Review Tribunal Scheduled for tomorrow at 11am at Talygarn Ward, Griffithstown Hospital, Pontypool. I have an appeal against the Community Treatment Order (CTO) that I was placed on following my discharge from Section 3 of the Mental Health Act when I was detained a few months ago. When you are placed on a section order – whether it be for hospital detainment or one of these horrible new-fangled freedom-crushing CTOs – you get the right of appeal. Well – by law and the Mental Health Act itself you should get the right of appeal. I have been through entire sections without any appeal at all. What they claim at the Tribunal Office is that they are too busy, too snowed under to process the appeal. If you are lucky enough to have one scheduled, usually it comes very late on into the section. For a six month detention under section 3 you can expect to be waiting at least 4 months for your appeal hearing. After which time you are pretty much adjusted to the inner workings of the looney bin. Not that you should ever hold out any hope whatsoever of ever winning. The Mental Health Review Tribunal (MHRT) service is there to make Mental Health look legal and just. It is a facade for public and media consumption. Yes – they’ll give you a sheet of paper when you are locked up as a patient, explaining your rights. If they say they do this it makes it a lot easier for all the politicians in Westminster or Cardiff, to vote in favour of more punitive conditions and laws for detainees as they (in the adept lying manner only politicans can really truly understand) can justify to themselves that they are acting justly and they can sleep at night. It’s all self-reassurance. Before you ever get a chance to read the slip of paper, they rip it back from you and get straight to the more pertinent and relevant to their work needle-jabbing process to drug and torture you. After several months of drowning in pools of your own drool and taking a break in your chainsmoking to slurp drool, while adopting a military like program of getting out of bed and getting back in at regimented times, you tell yourself repeatedly – “Oh – it will all be OK when I get to the Tribunal. They will see how unjustly I’ve been treated and release the shackles of my bonds and I will be able to return home to my loved ones, my possessions, my job, my life’ It is only human to think this way – Look beyond the mental health literature at the thoughts of hostages across the world. Terry Waite, John McCarthy, Ingrid Betancourt. They all can speak of how twisted your mind becomes under torturous kidnap conditions. It’s a journey of your self which is a tough, rocky road. Survival instinct kicks in and only when you are released back into the ‘real world’ do you start to heal the scars of your time of suffering.

The disappointment when you finally open the Victorian Doors to the Courtroom kicks in when you see the same old faces. The panel of three who have been appointed with the power of either freeing you from the daft silly bit of paper which they all go around decrying as ‘The Law’ or whether they should rubber stamp all that the Psychiatrist and Mental Health team have done and intend to do in the future. The retired psychiatrist who is always part of the team of three will never decide in your favour. it simply goes against the grain of all they believe in. They stick together like glue. If blood is thicker than water, a psychiatrist has treacle in his veins. The Medical Member of the ‘Independent# board will be your worst nightmare.; He will drive any shadow of debate about the situation far away as he drives the whole procedure. If the lay member or legal chairperson even show the slightest seeds of doubt, the veteran shrink will redirect their opinions, not as a judge may direct a jury, but in the most manipulative cunning manner that only a true torturer can comprehend. They set their whole system around the ideology of conditionning and as much as I despise the methodology of it, eventually, with enough sweat tears and blood it will achieve the end results. Of course conditionning is far from humane but thoughts of humanity and fundamental human rights are far far away. I’ve had maybe 30 tribunal hearings in 14.5 years. I’ve had some really clear cut cases where I have been able to prove beyond all shadow of doubt the lies and myths in the tribunal reports, with hard evidence. Yet, I have never won a tribunal, not once, not even have I come close. Ok – sounds a bit ‘poor me’ – but the paperwork is done that tightly so that all sing from the same hymn sheet, it doesn’t matter what you say or do you ain’t getting off the treatment order. Why do I bother going at all? Why do I consider going? Well – they are useful exercises as you do get to keep the specially drafted reports from your care team about your treatment. The Doctors, Nurses, Social Workers, and all else involved from the police to the public… They all have input. Usually it is the first and only time you will get to hear and understand what you are accused of. You listen to the court proceeedings and wonder who the devil they are wittering on about. It must be Satan himself, the evilness of this person’s deeds. And then you realise that it is you. They create such fiction that by the time come for you to have your say you even start believing that you are Fred West or Ian Brady, such is the power of the whole conditionning process. But – at the end of the tribunal, you get to keep the reports. You can take time to mull over them at a more convenient safe environment. You can file them away for use in future cases in real court situations like, for example, the Eruopean Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Kangaroo Courts will never achieve justice. The way they are set up prevents them from achieving it. They achieve their goals and they serve their purpose in this. The Care Plan gets a rubber stamp, the profiteering continues and everyone can go home satisfied that they have prevented a disaster. they are all heroes and have prevented the public from being butchered by the crazy maniacs from the mental hospital. They put on their slippers, sip their cocoa and sleep like babies. You, on the other hand, have to endure the torment of this rubber stamping and decision. It reinvigours the whole team who are treating you. They have spent so much time contructing the myth that you have rights and can achieve justice at the tribunal that they have even started to doubt themselves whether they will win. Now that they have won – they like to bask in the glory of a good victory. They put work into their reports and by heck are you going to feel the pain you have caused by resisting them in a ‘court’ situation. Why can’t you be a good boy and just accept your illness and treatment? It all works 100% – They know this as they were taught it in Universities. The nice guy from the drugs company explained how the medication is perfect and works so well for patients. It’s your damned mental illness that prevents you from seeing this and we will free you from this horrific burden. Once you get over the worst hurdle and symptom, that of DENIAL, we can at least start curing you. Not that a cure exists of course – as it says that in the textbooks also. But at the very least we can experiment until we achieve a cure and once that has been achieved then the world will be a safer and healthier place as it will be free from mental illness.

Back in the real world, you have to deal with the fallout but at least you get to keep the documentation. Next time you have an appeal you can compare notes. It’s always vastly different. Your ‘disease’ has morphed completely. A new set of symptoms, a new set of delusions, a new regime of medication and a new set of treatment conditions. When it has happened on repeat like this for years on end it just gets a bit tedious and boring. I have a tendency to get carried away in these mock court situations and kind of unleash hell – when you are surrounded by enemies in one of these hostile situations it is tricky keeping a cool head, whatever your temperament. I leave the hearing after all is done while the panel decide on a verdict and you always think to yourself ‘Oh maybe, maybe this time will be the one, maybe they will see the light and my whole nightmare will be over’ Waiting for a verdict does this to one’s mind. Whether you are innocent or guilty the waiting on a verdict is a weird situation. I’ve come to the point whereby I take the whole tribunal system as a complete joke. If you don’t recognise their authority in the first place, it doesn’t matter what they say or find or do, it won’t affect you. A bunch of tarty posh out-of-touch-with-reality former professional dogsbody dogooders can think what they want about how risky I am, it will not change my outlook or attitude or what I say or do. They harm themselves ultimately as they create a bubble for themselves, a mental cocoon which envelopes them from the real world. If you believe every Tom, Dick and Harry who is set in front of you is a murderous psychopath who is that dangerous your soul will not rest until you have treated him psychiatrically. That you are the hero of the tale. The protector of the good, the saviour of the values of society… You are building sandcastles. As much as I like to watch their pretty constructions, should someone who actually is dangerous ever come along, they won’t have the ability to recognise it. They think that harmless ordinary folk are inherently evil. They will not recognise the genuine article. He’ll be nestled inside their cocoon, devouring them and they won’t even notice. When the tide washes in I aim to be far from the swash and safely tucked away in my home on dry, hilly ground.

The tribunal was scheduled for last month when I was still an inpatient. Well – on the day of my discharge in fact. It had been a section 3 detained patient appeal. So, as psychiatrists are prone to do – it has happened to me on multiple previous occasions – if there is any doubt at all that they could lose the tribunal, thereby freeing you as a patient, from their lengthy clutches. They will do a bit of swap and shift with the legal paperwork to ensure that the victory is achieved. An unretained patient who is back in society is not a reality for them. It is totally unaccaptable. A psychiatrist would sell his own grandmother ahead of letting go a client. Without experimental material the science is dead. If a whole develops in the net and a single fish manages to get out then pretty soon the whole trawl will be void and your dinner plate will be empty. I was taken off the Section 3 that morning, discharged from hospital, put ona CTO immediately and then told that the tribunal would be addressing an appeal against this new document, still wet with ink. Yet, as the reports hadn’t been updated to reflect these new conditions at the tribunal, after all the extended waiting – formality, rigmarole and all the hoo-ha etc. The legal member just declared an immediate adjournment for updated reports. they would all go away and work and get paid preparing new ones so that justice could be achieved.

As much as I hate to see a man starve from his fish & chip supper, I have a few bigger fish to fry myself. The hospital is way up in the Welsh valleys, a good 2 hour journey from me. My university course began yesterday and I’ve had a busy week workwise, taking on several new clients. End of Terror has been launched and I’m loving the response thus far in terms of traffic and comments from my friends and supporters. I could trek about telling small pockets of strangers my woes in person, or I could tell 7 billion people on the internet the same story, For the End Of Terror to be realised I know which camp my heart lies in. Sod the tribunal, sod the verdict I shall Phone In Sick. Meanwhile I shall blog my merry heart out and see if I can help in bringing about fundamental change, not just for myself as an individual, but for the people today across the planet and more importantly, leave a blueprint for the children of tomorrow so that they understand what mistakes their ancestors have made. Real change is built one brick at a time. The sea will wash in and out every day and those sandcastles are never left standing. The End Of Terror is sat there, perched, on high ground, where the echo of the waves are nowt but a distant whisper.

Alexander The Great – just a step too far?

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Alexander The Great

Yesterday was the due date of my scheduled home visit from the psychiatric services. I have a new male Irish nurse, David, and one of the former female CPN’s, Sharon… I do not seek treatment in any way but as I am under one of these new-fangled Community Treatment Orders, I am compelled to receive these unwanted guests in my home. I have learnt over the years that no matter how pleasant you are to these people, they always rear up and bite you in the neck when you least expect it. It always ends up in tears, your tears, as they cart you off to the nuthouse, lock you down and drug and torture you for months on end. They always begin the same, explaining their petty mission statements and decrying how their sole aim in life in to prevent you being hospitalised. I sound, perhaps, a little sceptical of the system, to the non-inductee, but it’s just being frank. The harsh reality is that if their aim is to keep everyone out of hospital they’ll be out of jobs.

I am not a naturally hostile person – but toe to toe with the enemy I will react verbally, especially when in the comfort of my own home. Perhaps the creation of the End Of Terror Organisation has me on edge and fired up a little more than usual. Anyway, pretty soon into the session, I hear myself being repeatedly accused of ‘lacking courtesy’. It’s so typical of these ill-educated drones, to take a poshish sounding word, and twist its meaning completely. I call it psychiatry doublespeak. It must come out in the training and indoctrination of mental health workers. the lexicon of mental health workers is bizarre to say the least. They hammer on and on, repeating accusations of you fulfilling some negative criteria, twisting the meaning of the word from its actual meaning and using it in a special mental health way. It always is done to satisfy their most basic of needs, to prove that they are mentally superior to you as a human and that you are mentally inferior. They went on babbling ‘lacking courtesy’ and then went into their more typical recent finger-pointing accusations of me ‘intimidating’ them. Apparently my music-making and poker-playing intimidated them a couple of months ago and since then, every thing I say or do or they imagine me to say or do is designed for intimidating them as individuals and as part of a wider organisation. I tried explaining what intimidation meant to me. I said it conjured up images of Italian Street Mafia in New York extorting money from shopkeepers for protection. That to me is intimidation. Or maybe it is the action of an aggressive drunk in a pub? I was told that I was still lacking courtesy when trying to point out their linguistic fallacies. ‘Why should I be courteous? I don’t want to be seeing you – You force yourselves upon me. If you are uncomfortable, simply don’t come around….’ While on the point of linguistics I tried hammering home my opinions of the definition of healthcare , medicine and doctors… One seeks treatment from doctors to get advice on health matters which one can then choose to accept or reject and act accordingly depending on their own views. Health care should not be enforced at gunpoint upon people who neither seek or choose it. Like a red rag to a bull, when you criticise their belief system, we went back to my lack of courtesy and how it demonstrates I am ‘mentally ill’ They were there as the law says they have to be there. They are good people doing their job, keeping evil me away from all the harm I cause the public and community. They went on to say that they would get the psychiatrist to enforce by law that I had to be courteous to them from now on. They would make it part of the conditions of my Community Treatment Order. I just chuckled at their whole misinterpretation of law and what is actually legally allowed. Since when has discourtesy become an offence? I asked on whose authority the psychiatrist could do this, on what grounds and who appointed him with such powers. – ‘Oh The Queen did… She signed off the Act of Parliament making it lawful’ – You see – the legal can of worms is vast… Lacking courtesy is not a criminal offense in Britain, but these automatons have a very limited understanding of what is legal and what isn’t. Human Rights Law is overwritten by the Mental Health Act according to the mental health indoctrination for workers. The Mental Health Act gives any of them any power to do anything they like, including deciding whether me being rude becomes a criminal offense. Of course, I’m on shady ground as they can lock me up at any stage and as they have done in the past, can do at any stage in the future. When the horse bolts, the stable door cannot withstand the pressure and the system wheels in motion have you carted off before you can muster up a whisper of resistance. I was told that all I was doing was philosophising, how they were simply individuals, doing their jobs, accepting orders from above and complying with the law.

I’m just trying to rebuild the wall, one brick at a time. These mental health workers are so indoctrinated with their false belief system, all I am trying to do is help them adjust back into reality. I have studied them closely for well over a decade, listening to them bark on how mentally inferior I am, and trying to understand what drives them. It’s as though that in taking up their profession they are forced to renounce any previous traces of humanity, to become total automatons, pilotless drones carrying out bombing missions in Afghanistan. ‘Do not question the leadership, do as instructed from above at any cost. You are mentally superior to these ‘sick’ people you treat. Do not let them get into your heads. Any sign of resistance from them must be punished.’

I tried explaining that I was trying to help them. the train is off the track on this windy out of control system. They’ve forgotten which carriage contains the controls. the only way the mental health system will ever change is when those within force that change themselves. When I say those within, I don’t include myself. Yes, I’m a patient, but in addition to mental health, I have a real life, in real society, forging relationships with real people. normal people. Yes – I get locked up far to frequently and have to endure these ‘thought crime examination’ sessions on a very regular basis. But asides from that I think very little of mental health. In my own views I have no health issues with my head or brain. This ‘illness’ doesn’t affect my life in any way. It scares the hell out of me, though, that these people will not simply go away and leave me alone. They have journeyed too far to turn back and I am wedged so deep in the system that they don’t know how to let go. they just keep prying and trying to entangle me in a death roll. Obviously the only choice is to resist. Never be beat. That is survival. But I do dream longingly of a time when they will disappear, when the system will evaporate. How can this be possible?

Born in 356 BC, son of Philip the Macedon, Alexander the Great, achieved more than he could ever imagine, more than any man had ever achieved to that point in time. He left his home, raised an army, and marched across the earth, from Egypt to Persia, from Greece to India. By the time of his premature death at the age of 32, he had conquered the whole of the known world. he is one of the most revered characters in world history. However, Alexander was disappointed at being unable o fulfill his ambitions and goals. He knew that there was more to conquer and wanted to keep going. Of course he was correct in this presumption. The trouble was, that, as great a general he was, perhaps the finest military campaigner the world has ever seen, to achieve his lofty desires, Alexander couldn’t go it alone. He needed the support of his men. His army was comprised of a core of his loyal supporters, but also as his empire expanded, soldiers were recruited from across all his territories. It was a global hotchpotch of the hardened fighting men. Full of spirit and testosterone they willingly gave their all to stand alongside the great victor. But years on the road, and endless miles away from home and families took their eventual toll. Not perhaps on Alexander. He was happy with his horse, Bucephalus, and his gay lover and best friend, Hephaestion. the exotic nature of his adventures had taken their toll on his outlook. He had forced most of his leading men to abandon their wives at home and take on Persian brides. Eventually in the midst of an Indian campaign, coming up against the might of War Elephants, and having to withstand the arduous conditions of the Hindu Cush, Alexander’s men said ‘enough is enough’. Unease in the ranks had spread, soldier by soldier, right the way up to the top to his leading generals. They had seen and taken far more than they had ever bargained for. They now wished to return home, to a peaceful existence. The revolt of his men meant that a line had to be drawn in the sand and Alexander was forced to concede defeat and turn back. For all his fighting, his own men, those most loyal to him, finally pulled the plug on it all. The lack of faith in him didn’t sit comfortably with Alexander, and out there on the edge of the abyss, his spirit wheezed and weakened and left him. Soon after returning West, an innocuous minor illness seized his enfeebled body and in 323BC, in the heart of Babylon, Alexander the Great departed from this world.

These mental health footsoldiers have to realise, to understand the realities of their system. To endlessly march on the orders from above, without considering one’s own thinking and beliefs, is good for a strong army up to a point. Eventually the powers of goodness will triumph over any individual’s need. If every mental patient can just sow the seeds of doubt into the frontline workers, then eventually it will be them that bring down the whole system, like a pack of cards, from within. It is blatantly obvious to me, as a long term patient, that no matter how hard I try, my voice will not be heard from above. The sinister controllers at the top of psychiatry, who love in a murky David Ickesque illuminati world, who govern the goals agenda and action plans of all beneath them, will never be defeated by their enemy. If, on the other hand, their own troops can be realigned, if the indoctrination somehow fails,, maybe the revolution will result. There’s only so much space in the Swiss Vaults for Drugs Companies to store their cash. The whole system will be brought down from within. It is so insular, the god being prayed to is so false, eventually sheer overwhelming people power and common sense will turn the beast upon itself and it will be devoured. A foundation of sand is a silly place to build a skyscraper, as tall and as wonderful as that monolith is intended to look.

Fighting for Truth and Justice and the End of Tyranny and Evil in Mental Health and Psychiatry

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End Of Terror

On April 2nd 1997 my life changed forever. I was a fresh-faced 19 year old student atUniversity College London, a DJ and party promoter with a promising career in front of him and a healthy and active social life. I had my whole life in front of me and not a care in the world. On my ‘Ground Zero‘ disaster day, that sunny Spring afternoon, I was handed a sheet of paper by a social worker in a room in a local Welsh mental hospital and informed that I had been placed under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act. I would not be able to leave the hospital. My nightmare had begun. 14 and a half years on from that point in time and I am no closer to escaping the clutches of these horrific people that forced themselves into my life. I have come to realise that technology harnesses true power. In my struggle for freedom and a life void of the tyranny and evil that oppresses me, I am turning to the internet to empower my plight, to share my story, to help combat psychiatry and all it represents and to hopefully inspire other people who have met with similar disasters. My ‘End Of Terror’ organisation will hope to shine a light of truth on the barbaric industry that is psychiatry. The journey promises to be long and arduous and although many will find my musings those of a maniac, I hope to sow a field of seeds in the minds of the general public and to enlighten one of the most concealed corners of the human mind. Before that April day in 1997, I had thought little, if anything at all of mental hospitals, psychiatrists and mental illness. I have since learnt a lot and realise that the general public is mainly ignorant of some of the facts and the truth regarding these matters.

Buckle up and seat yourselves and I will guide you like a beacon through the dark murky waters of the epic mystery…