Tag Archives: Human rights

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.’

Psychiatry in the Former Soviet Union

7 Replies

[Here is a post by our first international guest poster. Leoned is from the former Soviet Union and has sent us this about his mental health experiences. End Of Terror is a worldwide struggle and campaign for better rights for mental patients, wherever you may be in the world. ENJOY! Wez G, End Of Terror]

I really experienced the disaster. And it happened not in Auschwitz and not in Dachau, but in the ordinary mental hospital. It happened yet in childhood. Adults branch staff mercilessly tortured, oppressed us, disadvantaged and without this children
… One night I was awakened by the noise. Opening my eyes, I saw how two nurses are beating the boy, who lies at the window. The boy was trembling. « “Again Vovka has epileptic seizure», – someone said . “How epileptic seizure?!” – I blurted out: “But why to beat ?!” Then the nurse left Vovka for a second and turned to me: Shut up, otherwise, and you will be bad”. That nightly incident was bothering me for long time. I hoped, that gits will be punished. But all gone, as if nothing had happened.

… Once, one nurse pegged me in punishment for disobedience. And did it in a special way: the hands were were fixed to the metal corners of the bed. She had said, that she’ll unbind me, when I’ll ask forgiveness and went away. The circulation was disrupted , the hands swollen. Endure was becoming increasingly difficult. Nurse had entered in the ward and asked, I am going to ask forgivness or not. I hadn’t answer and she left.
The matter was already nearing to an evening. Soon the night shift had to come . I was very hoping, what this damned wretch will go, and the other nurse will unbind me.
However, it soon became clear, that the damned wretch stays on the night shift. She had come into the room and announced by triumphant tone: «Well, do you intend to ask forgiveness?» I wasn’t able to endure anymore and asked forgiveness from this crud as she had wanted. After that I was feeling myself horribly
humiliated.
They constantly indoctrinated us, that at any rate everything will be as they want. Any meanness, any overwhelming nightmare – everything will be as they want.

There was a teenage boy. He was suffering a severe form of epilepsy with mental retardation and was very irritable. The bastards were using this. They were provoking him intentionally and when he had come into anger – they attacked him from all sides and commited reprisal. In the time of the reprisal, when he was already tied, one nurse had gripped his genitals and furiously jerked. That nightmare still causes me stupor.
In general, intimate dignity was the subject of their special, sophisticated hostility. We were all Bug and cows, devil knows that have grown in us. It is terrible how our balls hindered them . The desire to tear off this” surplus ” again and again flied from their trashy sip. And some ones organized games such violence – chased the children and pulled their genitals and this wild nightmare took place quite openly, in front of everyone.
But the most terrible thing was chlorpromazine. The terrible effect can not be described. In what satanic laboratories was prepared this drug!? It was destroying the thinnest, most intimate strings of essence. Its action caused a complete rejection reaction. Every cell, every nerve were screaming with outrage. As long as overwhelming effect of chlorpromazine was manifesting, this reaction was completely suppressed. But as soon as this action is being weakened, the whole being is being filled with rage. But they were continuing to do chlorpromazine else and else.
There was one nurse, very greedy and cynical. She was often substituting others and was on duty multiple shifts in a row. And in order that the duty roster would pass quietly she was doing chlorpromazine to all. She was getting this with different ways. At the beginning with help on duty doctors. There were a lot of young doctors. Basically women. With them she was in familiarly relationships. She was calling a doctor by phone, a doctor was coming and appointing chlorpromazine, even not seeing for whom she appoints. Then they ceased trouble oneself to arrive. They were assigning by a phone. Then and this turned out to be unnecessary. The nurse herself was doing chlorpromazine, and the appoint was being done after, backdating. Then others followed her example .
And no salvation from this destruction remained. I was then completely destroyed! Physically and spiritually. The mind found itself in a state of complete prostration. I lost the ability to feel, resent and somehow to react. In this condition I was discharged home.
After some time, snippets of feelings began to erupt. Firstly the earlier depressed rage as a reaction on the influence of chlorpromazine. Gradually the awareness of what happened filled me. Experiences, that i endured, atrocity, vile, impunity were overflowing me. Precious moments of life, youth sped by. I was biting my lips from despair and was able to change nothing. I was dreaming about a retribution for the bastards. But they were far and i was not be able to do anything against them. And then all of uncontrollable pain fall at the man who was next. – On my poor mother. The dearest person in the world. Who gave me whole life without residue.
When I hit her all yelled in me: «What am I doing?!» And I felt, what i do not govern yourself. And i again was there.
… Again violence, merciless cynicism. Again boorish edification, that everything will be as they want. All they want, they will do – no one is decree for them . Yes, there was no hands on them. Abomination predetermine everything! Unlimited possibilities of absolute nothingness.
I could neither tolerate them, nor resist them! And again they were grinding me and scraping me with chlorpromazine. Until they destroyed all flesh and bone, every nerve, every cell. Human nature did not presuppose such exposure and did not envisage any protection against it. A human must not survive such ruinous exposure. So ruinous effects ssence not should survive.
He must die before going to happen like that. But the sadistic action of chlorpromazine overcame this last protective edge. And destroys not only the essence of life, but also the ability to die.
And I did not die then only by this terrible reason.

Leoned also has an antipsychiatry petition for you to sign:

Here’s what else I want to offer … Petition: https://goo.gl/sMnJ6y signed by much more people! Moderators facebook blocked most of the signatures! The number 1473 – is absolutely false! About it i reported not only once to recipients in UN Human Rights Committee. But they ignored all my appeals. Not on single of letter was not answered. So I suggest to you, what would you also ask them the same. Confirm that the petition actually signed a lot more people. Maybe the appeal of many people, they will not ignore.

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

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A Step Too Far: Mental Health and The Castle Inn, Caldicot

35 Replies

I have a disputed diagnosis of schizophrenia and have lived with this diagnosis since 1997. For the past 18 months I have been banned from drinking more than two pints of beer in my local pub in Caldicot, the Castle Inn. This blog post will tell the story of how this ban came about and how I intend to fight for my rights to overturn the ban.

I had been sectioned and detained in the mental health system at Talygarn Ward, Griffithstown County Hospital, Pontypool. I spent several months locked up and was treated against my consent with Clopixol depot injections by the Muslim psychiatrist of Indian origin, Dr Basu and his sidekick the half-Iranian Dr Al-Hasani. When they finally released me from hospital I got home and went straight down to the Castle Inn for a quick pint to settle my nerves. Inside the mental hospital there is a ban on alcohol for all patients and they even breathalyse you with drink-drive breathalysers on your return from any leave to test if you have drunk any alcohol. The reasoning behind this is that mental health establishments treat a lot of alcoholics and alcohol is forbidden, even if, like myself, you have never had any issues with alcohol. I feel that alcohol is a decent recreational drug that is part of British culture and having worked in the entertainment industry my whole life I am well used to it and regard it as an essential part of my life. Landlord, Steve Gribble, refused to serve me a pint and said that the local police had, on my doctor’s advice, placed a ban on me drinking alcohol in my local community. Apparently alcohol doesn’t mix with my medication. I was absolutely disgusted by this. I felt that patient confidentiality had been breached and that my psychiatrist was unnecessarily interfering with my life in the community. I argued with Steve the landlord and put forth my views and he came together with a compromise that I would be allowed in his pub but had to stick to a two pint limit and leave. This ban has stayed in place now for 18 months and even at funeral wakes I have to leave after two pints. Landlord Steve Gribble and his wife Judy Gribble, are doing their jobs but I feel that they are breaching the Equality Act 2010 in their treatment of me. Under the Equality Act, public services are not supposed to discriminate against you for any form of disability.

I believe that I am being used as a guinea pig and that this new policy has not yet spread across the UK. The licensing trade is already suffering enough and is in a massive recession, with pubs closing their doors permanently like never before. The pub is a traditional British Institution and a cornerstone of our communities. Will mental health drugs be replacing alcohol as our method of relaxation? Will mental hospitals be becoming the new place for community hubs to exist? We are witnessing change with draconian mental health policies, backed up by the police and establishment. Mental Health is becoming an ever more buzz industry and although much of the public never see the inside of a mental health establishment, many are prescribed outpatient treatment, be it anti-depressants from their GP or over the counter sleeping tablets. At what stage will doctors cease to reveal to pub landlords private medical details such as a patient’s condition? If a visit to a doctor means that they will inform all and sundry about your health condition then where does this leave us? I am non-consensual to treatment and refuse medication as I do not believe I suffer from the diagnosed condition. Dr Basu is acting extra-judicially, out side of the law and I believe is in fact breaking the law. I am disappointed that Steve Gribble, a man who I admire and respect, has tolerated this open abuse of my healthcare.

Perhaps the ban has served me well and being minus alcohol is beneficial to my health. I feel, however, that pub landlords should be controlling the sale of alcohol to people with alcohol-related health conditions and they do continue to serve alcoholics in pubs across the land. I’ve decided to take the matter public and am pursuing a court case against the Castle Inn. I feel that my lone voice needs to be heard and that I need to warn the public about the sinister activities of the local southeast Wales mental health system who will stop at nothing to continually disrupt my life.

Brexit and Mental Health

2 Replies

Brexit, like it or not is a reality. 54% of the public voted in a referendum for us to leave the EU. I watched with despair as events unfolded and was almost praying for us to stay in as I feared that a Brexit decision could really send my End Of Terror situation spiralling out of control. Post-Brexit, if I believed in restricting people’s liberties for thought crime and nowt else and I had the power as a psychiatrist, then maybe I’d be sentencing 54% of the population for section detainment in mental hospitals for making a completely irrational decision in voting, a decision I believe that long term will make the entire UK suffer, economically, politically and more importantly, to End Of Terror, within the mental health system.

Why the big fear, you may ask? Firstly, one of the core components of EU membership is that EU citizens have access to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. This court, although I’ve never used it personally, acts as a safeguard for human rights. I’ve always dreamed of getting over to Strasbourg and felt that it would be one of the only places in which to get justice for End Of Terror. I will never realise that goal. But,many good things have come from Strasbourg over the years and indirectly it has safeguarded all those unnecessarily under the cosh, detained in UK mental health institutions. One piece of legislation that has been delivered through the presence of the EU Human Rights Court, is our own country’s Human Rights Act (1998). This Act came into being under the supervision of the Tony Blair government and basically enshrined EU Human Rights legislation into British Law.

I have always felt that the Human Rights Act is incompatible with the Mental Health Act. The fundamental freedoms it enshrines are usurped once the Mental Health Act is invoked. I have constantly tried to argue a Human Rights case for myself, even in the Mental Health Tribunal Courts, quoting the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights and referring to Strasbourg and indeed the Human Rights Act. Most debate, however, falls on deaf ears, and the tribunal courts tend to favour the misplaced incorrect mindset of Mental Health Workers who generally claim that the Mental Health Act is more important than any human rights legislation and overrides it. Treatment against consent is my main bugbear with the Mental Health Act and any fool can see that this is incompatible with virtually all that Human Rights laws suggest.

Brexit has created not just deep divisions in society, but also a pre-Revolution like political fallout. Both major parties – Labour and Conservative, are quarrelling within their ranks and their infighting is spilling over into a tense political anarchy, spreading like wildfire across the Nation. Brexiteers are abandoning their pre-referendum promises and also withdrawing on the whole from their ideology, as they resign from political decisions, themselves surprised that they duped the British voting public so wonderfully. I need not mention the falls of Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Michael Gove, all leading campaigners for Brexit, who have all not quite stood up to their vision. The reality is that there is a great political awkwardness lying in the immediate future for those decision-makers that have to actually go ahead and invoke Article 5o of the European Constitution and officially make the UK no longer an EU member. These shirkers will rear their ugly heads at some distant point in the future to carry on their warped visions and lies.

It was already a major part of David Cameron and the Conservative Party’s plans to terminate the Human Rights Act and to replace it with a UK Bill of Rights. The Human Rights Act was a Labour policy and is loathsome to rightist politicians. It is a safeguard that protects and restricts Conservative policies. Perhaps a tonic to Cameron as he resigned in the wake of Brexit, was that Britian leaving the EU would enhance the powers of those opposed to Human Rights legislation as the people of this country would no longer be able to challenge the UK government in Strasbourg, thus consolidating more power in Westminster. However, the Brexit fallout is not all rosy for the mental health system and those who rely on the comfort of human rights. Theresa May is our new unelected Prime Minister, avoiding even the vote selection for leader of the Conservatives from within the party ranks. At End Of Terror we have already pleaded with Theresa May to sort out the situation with Mental Health and Policing in South East Wales. She was home secretary for the vast duration of the period when the police and mental healthers stepped up their violent pursuit, culminating in them opening fire on me with a taser through the letterbox at home (see articles on Police Brutality and Mental Health). I tweeted Theresa May but like David Cameron, she just completely ignored End Of Terror, a response that we are well used to seeing from policymakers and the powers that be, in general. Theresa May is dangerous to Mental Health as she has some radically twisted views on human rights and wherever possible has exercised her parliamentary powers to vote against any form of human rights that would protect people within the Mental Health system. I just hope that now she has reached her zenith of power, in being Prime Minister, that perhaps she has the responsibility to change her views. She promises a better Britain for all and I pray she delivers this FOR ALL, and not just the privileged few.

It’s not all bad, perhaps, for mental health detainees. I’ve pondered Brexit substantially and one of the possible benefits could be that due to the falling pound, the departure from the Common Market and tighter budget restrictions there could be a corresponding fall in budget expenditure for mental health and policing. Mental Health spending was supposed to reach parity with Physical Health spending and this goal is far from being realised and is very distant on the horizon. I think that in a shrinking economy with less access to European markets, psychiatry, whose total reliance on Big Pharma with its almost pure dedication to pharmaceuticals, may be forced to tighten its purse strings. A lot of psychiatric medicines are produced abroad and imported into the UK. With the pound demolished and the exchange rate to Euro and indeed dollar damaged, the cost of bulk buying mental health medicines from abroad could almost double in real terms. Tariffs on European imports will further exacerbate these costs. Will we see a move towards non-pharmaceutical interventions in mental health? Will the oft-neglected talking therapies enter fashion? Will the taxpaying public support rising pharmaceutical expenditure, on drugs that are very iffy at best and have no scientific or medical foundation?

Looking towards the Mental Health Review Tribunal Courts, any change in Human Rights legislation could alter the way that they work. Most people are not aware that the current status quo has been changed slightly in favour of patients at Tribunals due to the Human Rights Act. At present the onus of responsibility in the courts for burden of proof falls upon the detaining authority to prove that ongoing detention of an appealing patient is warranted. Any loss of human rights laws could lead to a reversal of this situation thus making the patient’s job of appealing against section detainment even more difficult. Already the courts decisions are heavily weighted to rule against patients, with only approximately 5% of appeals resulting in success for patients.

An interesting point to note and one that I have already touched upon in a previous article – Immigrant Doctors on the NHS – Will there be fewer foreign doctors and therefore psychiatrists as a result of Brexit? I do not believe that positions of such power and responsibility should be allocated to immigrants in psychiatry. I do not feel that foreigners truly understand the nature of our society as they have not been nurtured in it. I would welcome fewer immigrant psychiatrists. However, on the flipside, I think that fewer foreign mental patients, nurses and cleaners could be detrimental to mental hospitals as it would essentially reduce the complexity of the usual rich biodiversity of nationalities they contain. I’m sure foreign patients such as the Italian Allesandra Pacchieri might be glad not to be in the UK mental health system, most certainly after her terrifying ordeal here.

Research is one area of society dependant on Europe and its links with universities across Europe, sharing their studies and cross-funding. Already the science of mental health is most imprecise – it is a pseudoscience at best. The lack of research as a consequence of Brexit will leave us ever deeper in the dark ages of this medieval-like system of torture.

On the whole I think that Brexit produces a new, more isolated society with fewer safeguards in place that will lead to more suffering for mental patients and an increased government reliance on the oppressive system that mental health provides. Isolation and a warped power sense triggered the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany. Remember that post WW2, one of the mechanisms set up to prevent the incidence of Nazism from ever reappearing, was the creation of closer international co-operation via the European Union. It mustn’t be forgotten that one of the first groups of people Hitler tested the concentration camp system upon were Germany’s mental patients. Often it is in times of crisis that mental patients’ suffering is at its most acute.

Brexit Britain, cast adrift from continental Europe, will be a lonesome island, its asylums even lonelier, darker, more eery than ever. Big Pharma is too far embedded to disappear and I fear that the new government, most certainly outside of the European safeguard mechanisms, will further erode human rights making an easier triumph for the fascist powers that control mental health and perpetuate modern day psychiatric slavery.

Interesting internet articles:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/29/eu-referendum-mental-health-vote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Act_1998

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Human_Rights

http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

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.

Police Brutality and Mental Health – PART 2

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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 ]

Mental Health Act (UK)

2 Replies

End Of Terror

Well, like it or lump it, as we stand the Mental Health Act is an Act of Parliament. The United Kingdom is a democracy so I understand and we, the British people have voted for this act. Personally I feel that this act has ruined my life. It is an interesting read, whatever your views, and if we wish to bring our campaign to a wider audience, to broaden the understanding of Mental Health, then, equally, it is a very important thing to study. I know that before I was first sectionned I hadn’t even heard of it. There are various aspects to the Act and discussing them will be an ongoing concern of End Of Terror. Have a read of it and see for yourselves exactly what it entails. As with any law or act, the interpretation and application of the law is relevant. Is the Mental Health Act just, or not? As someone deemed to be of unsound mind who has been denied a vote in this democracy (1997). I am not really capable of passing serious judgement. If democracy is real and hasn’t been hijacked by the doublethink word renovation brigade, then maybe End Of Terror can persuade people for this Act to be abolished, or at least seriously renovated, to take into consideration Human Rights and other important fundamental aspects of life on this planet. I am constantly told by workers within the system that all they do is legal because of this Act: that it supercedes any previous legislation and is entirely compatible with the Human Rights Act, which is another Parliamentary Act, that, perhaps, we can discuss in the future.

Here is the link to the Act at the UK Government department of Health website http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Legislation/Actsandbills/DH_4002034

World Of Hurt

1 Reply

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVdzY7IsxF4]

Sub Focus provide some nice easy-listening Drum & Bass… World of Hurt I think is appropriate for #EoTVibe and relevant to the #EndOfTerror struggle, as we fight for rights in #MentalHealth

More Sub Focus http://www.last.fm/music/Sub+Focus

Ladies And Gentlemen (Roll The Dice)

1 Reply

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaxNaPv4cAM]

From Kasabian’s great album West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum – Couldn’t be too long before this one hit #EoTVibe … One of the finest bands in Britain

More Kasabian http://www.last.fm/music/Kasabian

Universal Declaration Of Human Rights

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United Nations Flag

I won’t make any silly comments on this as I feel that when The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed, (a fair time ago now) and how it was intended, is important for all people on this planet, whatever their views. I’m going to copy and paste the preamble and link to the United Nations website. Just read through this document and analyse whether you are getting the rights that it sets out. Mental Health is a field which has a general lack of justice and it’s s shame that fundamental rights are not adhered to within the field.

PREAMBLE

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

Borderline

1 Reply

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSaC-YbSDpo]

Do you have a ‘borderline’ personality? ‘Feels like I’m going to lose my mind….’

More Madonna http://www.last.fm/music/Madonna

Chemical Warfare On Humans

1 Reply

Natural News Article Link

I’m a 14 year veteran of Psychiatric services in the UK having had 10 forced admissions and have had most of the drugs mentionned here (in article below) and indeed more. It’s an accurate article based on my own research and experiences. The trouble is, as a patient, there is no get-out clause at all. The worst form of human rights violations in history, all for the sake of profit and power. When you factor in that, the practicionners of the pseudoscience of psychiatry, the doctors, the nurses, the police, are all fully prepared to lie to whatever extent to maintain patients fully in the system, patients with no rights to consenting to the drugs, you have a serious danger. People are having lifelong illnesses created for them by the drugs companies, they become unemployable in every aspect of society and the media do nothing but stir up mass hysteria about mental illness to ensure that profits increase. Most of the original research came straight out of Nazi Germany and the implementation of the system on a global scale is pretty much akin to most of the horrific ideologies of such barbaric regimes. I’d like to sound optimistic about these problems having a nice happy solution but I am realistic and until the Genetic agenda is satisfied and the goals of the people working in the entire system are met, those unfortunate enough to end up with an incurable diagnosis have no choice in their suffering. We live in dark times. I guess I just wait now for the prototype brain implant to come to me, if it hasn’t already been put in yet. To what end? That is what I’d really love to know.

http://www.naturalnews.com/011353_bad_medicine_psychiatric_drug.html?fb_comment_id=fbc_10150217128877837_21055098_10150429138757837#f3b5193c88

EoTFMH0002 – Famous Mental Healthers – António Egas Moniz

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António Egas Moniz

Here is an interesting tale which I think demonstrates some of the extremes involved in the psychiatric industry.

António Egas Moniz was a neurologist who went on to become the founder of modern psychosurgery. He invented the procedure called leucotomy. In 1949 he was the first Portuguese National to be awarded the Nobel Prize. Leucotomy is a prefrontal lobotomy. In Moniz’s words “Prefrontal leukotomy is a simple operation, always safe, which may prove to be an effective surgical treatment in certain cases of mental disorder.”He tested this procedure on some human patients and after reporting that his procedure worked and achieved good therapeutic results for the treatment of mental illness, the industry started adopting this wholesale. Now I will link to the Wikis for both Moniz and the procedure itself so you can view on the net what info there is. I had a book – It was either called ‘Blaming the Brain’, which a former psychiatrist, Dr. Nirmalie Mirando, stole from me, or it was called ‘Madness Explained’ which I’ve lent out to a bloke I met in the hospital on my last admission. I refer you to these books as both are good and one of them has a lot more detail on the Moniz case than I can find on the net anywhere after a good old trawl. Perhaps I will return and edit the post when I get the correct books back. One of the patients that had an early leucotomy, not by Moniz himself, but from memory, was actually in another country entirely, was so annoyed at having his brain partly removed, and suffered to such an extent, that he tracked Moniz down, and, laying the blame on him for having introduced such a vicious technique to the world, shot him. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair and died in 1955.

António Egas Moniz wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_Egas_Moniz

Leucotomy wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucotomy

I won’t bore you with too much with medical details but notice in the leucotomy post how the technique was developed by testing on chimpanzees. Now, the sort of people that are prepared to do this to an animal and then proceed to do it to a human, are, quite frankly in my opinion pretty damned inhumane. If it was announced that McDonalds were doing this procedure to cattle, then letting them live on for a few years, prior to their slaughter, what sort of public outcry would there be? Likewise KFC and chickens. Not wanting to target fast food that isn’t the point. There are some really nasty people out there, I am sure, but most should hold onto their humanity enough not to want to do this to masses of people and try to convince the world that it is for their benefit. I’m not sure exactly how the lobotomised patients were initially diagnosed with Mental Illness, but I would have thought that the diagnostic procedure was about the same level of lameness as it is today and that they were out and out psychiatric victims. It sort of denigrates the value of the Nobel Prize that it should be awarded to someone for inventing and carrying this out. It’s like giving Hitler an award for services to Jewry, or something ridiculous like that.

As I say, the story provokes extremes, as it isn’t right to condone the shooting of someone. But put yourself in the picture, if it had happened to you wouldn’t you be upset by it? Unless you’ve had this procedure yourself, how can you know and I’m afraid it will only be that patient who committed the shooting who knows why he did it. Is he a hero or victim, or is Moniz a hero or victim?

I’d like to say that the story has a happy ending but it’s a bit mixed and ongoing. Yes, leucotomy was phased out of healthcare after about 20 years or so, when people finally realised and accepted that it was just barbaric. Took a lot of studying and ruination of humans for that to be deduced when any sensible person would not consider this sort of action in the first place? In my opinion.
What emerged though, in the place of lobotomy, was the modern revolution of drugs for psychiatric treatment. The invention of Chlorpromazine replaced lobotomies and although I haven’t knowingly ahd a physical lobotomy with a surgical instrument into my brain my initial treatment after the introductory KO injection, back in 1997, was with Chlorpromazine. I’ll save that story for a later post but not wanting to spoil the surprise, it’s brutal. The argument is made that the only reason leucotomy was withdrawn was that the invention of Chlorpromazine enabled the chemical lobotomy to remove the unaesthetic procedure of physical lobotomy. Chlorpromazine, feted as the wonder drug back in the day is still used, but has been phased out. When you see the longtermers dribbling through the corridors of the inner sanctums of hospitals, those first test cases for that particular wonder drug, you can see why it was replaced, with the new ‘miracle cure’. I pity these patients, but when speaking to them and it is often difficult for them to reply due to the horrendous extrapyramidal effects, you can often tell that they aren’t harmful characters. When you’ve had a bit of treatment yourself and you look a patient in the eye you get the message without communicating conventionally. Meds have moved on and although Chlorpromazine is a sick old thing to have to take I believe that there are far worse out there on the market.

Pro-psychiatry advocates may shout – well – the fact that Moniz was shot by a mental patient shows how dangerous these mental patients are. The media machine is very good at painting a picture of the occasional maniac who emerges from the mental health shadows, but I put it to you media tycoons, who so well shape the image of mental patients in order to perpetuate the profitable human tragedy of this Mental Health industry… How many of your lead psychopaths, the heavy duty ones – the mass murderers etc… How many were identified with their illnesses prior to committing these crimes. And how many identified with illness went on to commmit such barbaric crime? I imagine that statistically these figures will show failure. If psychiatry is so amazingly scientific and advanced, why so many harmful crimes are committed without these people ever being identified. Is it that the treatment works so efficiently that it prevents such barbarity from occurring by nipping everything in the bud, or does the industry just require a large pool of experimentees. I vouch for the latter side of the argument as the pro-psychiatry propaganda is a bit too good to be true. When you spend time in hospitals the patients are, on the whole non-violent and clearly victims of a rather harsh criminal style regime. I wish the mainstream media would expose some of the industry criminals as flagrantly as the household name inpatients of Broadmoor, Ashworth and Rampton. Were all the thousands of people that were lobotomised in 20 years all on the verge of becoming psychotic killers, about to murder innocent women and children? Was the treatment absolutely necessary? Bit too much philosophy in a post perhaps – trying to maintain balance. Blogging ain’t easy when you are passionate about a topic. There is medicine and there is human butchery, the line between the two should be a bit clearer.

Your God is a False God

2 Replies

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

4 Replies

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

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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.

East vs West?

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Chinese Herb Shop

Years of psychiatric abuse and torture in a non-voluntary capacity has left me deeply sceptical of Western Medicine (as it is practised in the UK at least). In a way I can thank the years of chemical torture the psychiatrists have committed upon me for opening the doors to Alternative Health. When your body is being pumped full of female hormones a la Risperidone or your white blood cell count is being ripped out by Clozaril, leaving your immune system exposed to any minor virus., you sure start shopping about.

Normally the first point of call for health matters would be the GP’s surgery, in my case, Gray Hill Surgery, Caldicot. Now, years ago, this surgery seemed to me to be well run and dealt with most of my innocuous childhood ailments. However, especially over the past fifteen years, during my ‘mental illness’ treatment, my lack of faith in the charlatans that practise there has eroded beyond all hope. They will never stand up to a psychiatrist and question their medical opinion. This has happened to me on numerous occasions, when all the medical tests prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the psychiatric treatment is causing me severe medical distress and shoudl be stopped purely on health grounds. It’s as though teh Hippocratic Oath has been dissolved in favour of powers under the Mental Health Act and to me, GPs are interested less in prevention and cures of illness and are simply tablet dispensers. They are the pushers of the Drugs Companies’ product. The final cog in the wheel, necessary for the grand machine to keep churning. The only reason these days that I go to the GPs is for the antibiotics they so blatantly overprescribe to the public. I need them every once in a while to clear up nasty chest infections that my damaged immune system just cannot easily clear. In, Past the Desk Nazis, grab a script and straight out. It’s like a military operation to just arrange an appointment these days so I endeavour to make the whole procedure as painless as possible.

This leaves a gulf, however, as I do not have a regular healthcare provider, or one that I recognise. The internet is a great help in terms of medical education, but as for most things it is best to see a pro. My exploration of Alternative Remedies and Natural Products has been vast. Some works, some doesn’t. It’s an experimental journey which is often fun and overall my health has been vastly better managed in this journey. I find that most of the knowledge and literature for alternative health dates back many years. It is easily dismissed by the profiteering Drugs Companies as all a load of nonsense and some of it might. But as you full well know yourselves, the healthiest things in your lives are almost always those things which are as close as possible to their natural form. As soon as industrial processing of a product emerges, we start to see the trigger finger of commercial exploitation and big business. For the sake of profits, the product suffers, even if the original intention is good, the final outcome is bad for your health.

I noticed the Chinese herbal shops springing up everywhere in South Wales and began to get intrigued. For ages I have sought out loose Chinese Jasmine Green Tea and I religiously swear by its cleansing properties. It is available in Chinese supermarkets at dirt cheap prices. On day leave from the local nuthouse for that area (Talygarn) – I wandered into Pontypool town centre and came across a little herbal shop just by the newsagent’s in the High Street. The Chinese Owner ‘Louis’ peered over his counter at me and politely inquired as to the nature of my malaise. I explained how I was seeking something that could counteract the harmful properties of the psychiatric meds that I was at that time having to endure. Louis, had a puzzled look, and then sprung into action, digging out some entwined leaves. I was to put one in a cup of boiling water once a day where it would unravel and diffuse. once ingested, it would act upon my digestive system and assist in processing the toxic chemicals in my body and reduce the harmful side effects and general imbalance that was harming my body. He popped a selection of these weird dark green leaves into a brown paper bag, wrote a few characters on it for me and having paid the two or three quid cost, I muttered a quick ‘Xie Xie Ni’ and went on my merry way.Yes – once I got back to the hospital they gave their usual sneer and confiscated the product with glee as it ‘hadn’t been prescribed by a doctor’ but I managed to smuggle a few leaves out with me for use at home and did exactly as instructed. The mild bitter taste was great and it is an old adage that bitterness is best for the body. After a few weeks I genuinely did feel a lift. The taking of this ‘tea’ became part of my daily ritual and was civilised and pleasant. That is what healthcare should be more about. Voluntary, helpful, pleasant and non-intrusive. Eastern Medicine has been around for thousands of years and techniques are highly sophisticated. I realise that Western Doctors study for a fair amount of time at university, but Eastern practionners are not just in jobs they live as medicine men. Their knowledge comes from a whole lifetime’s experience. Secrets are preserved and handed down from generation to generation. There is a spiritual reverence for their products and their systems when properly analysed, even with Western scientific methods, do actually perform very well indeed. I know that in places like China, western Medicine is also available and popular, but they haven’t totally abandonned traditional medicine and its deep cultural roots. I think that there is hope and much to be learnt by Western Doctors and scholars, from studying this style of medicine. Ignorance is not acceptable for a genuine doctor.

I did read a disturbing recent article about a Chinese political prisoner within their mental health system. I think all the human rights orgs were up in arms about his situation. I read in detail about the guy’s experience and although it wasn’t exactly Cinderella, and the guy had a lot of bad things done to him, it was obvious to me that he hadn’t had the full Western style chemical cosh applied to him. The meds were low dose, low quantities, and weren’t hardcore psychotropic drugs like Clozaril or whatever the en vogue drug company affiliate program happens to be promoting that month. The point is – I think that in not totally devoting a healthcare system to modernist ideas and over-teched experimental drug solutions, perhaps it is a healthier way to conduct a health program? East vs West may be a theme I touch upon a lot, and Modern & Industrial vs Organic Natural & Traditional is certainly a debate well worth considering.

Two Types of Patient

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As found often in life, mental health reveals a distinct dichotomy when categorising patients. The dividing line falls between voluntary patients (who constitute the vast majority of the world’s mental health patients) and compulsorily treated patients. The difference between the two is significant. I like to think of the distinction in terms of pornography. There is a great variety of porn on offer in today’s world and it can neatly be placed in two major categories: Softcore porn might be viewed post-watershed on Channel 4 or be made by a loving couple at home on their Nokia Camera Phone; Hardcore Porn, although a lot rarer, can emcompass anything an although not a particular porn aficionado myself, I understand from friends that seeing lesbian dwarves being impaled by horses is not uncommon. There is a gulf of difference in acceptability and the way in which these two types are viewed. It is a lot easier to take up softcore porn and get back out of it into a normal life, yet on the other hand you can slip deeper into the murky world by joining in and end up being drawn into the niche area of hardcore porn. Very rarely indeed do people move in the other direction. There is no turning back.

The housewife who gets a bit overexcited around Christmas time and needs some valium prescribed from the GP to beat away the January blues is a fair way from, for example, Peter Sutcliffe or Charles Bronson, who while away their days in the confines of Broadmoor. What defines the boundary between patient categories? It comes down to law. In Britain we have the Mental Health Act which attempts to define mental illness in terms of the law. Mental Health Law is very very shady. It allows for psychiatrists to pass legislation based on their medical examination of a patient which can mean that he or she can be ‘sectionned under the Mental Health Act. If a doctor decides this then, as a patient, you lose your rights to decide on treatment and your (self) appointed doctor is able to treat you without your consent. The rights and wrongs of this fundamental principle of Mental Health is a subject which I really want to delve deeply into as the End Of Terror blog develops. It opens a whole massive can of worms of medical ethics and human rights. Not all psychiatric’ patients see the inside of a mental hospital and indeed not all mental hospital patients are ‘detained‘ patients (a sectionned patient also loses his fundamental right to liberty in addition to enforced treatment). Many inpatients are ‘voluntary‘ patients who are deemed sufficently within their capacity of mind to choose what treatment they receive, although this can also be bit of an illusion as a voluntary patient who chooses not to agree to a doctor’s recommendation of medication can easily slip into the ‘hardcore’ world.

Like hardcore porn stars, many sectionned patients are victims and merciless to what life has thrown upon them. They never wittingly chose this lifestyle and once in, as much as they long to leave the dark world, they cannot get out. At the same time there are one or two real purists who just simply love to test the boundaries and see just how dirty they can go in the quest for hell. They revel in the unnatural world, their goal is to push out the boat in terms of what evil humanity can really achieve. These purists, however, might not always be on film. In hardcore porn there are one or two cameramen and producers or directors who never appear in the footage. They may reveal themselves in the end credits as ‘Dick Dastardly‘ or ‘Pervy Peter’ but they are critical to this world and keep it all flowing. they are the ones who coin it in, who recruit, keep people involved in the hardcore world, and ultimately decide what trainwreck results in the end product. Back in the healthcare system ‘Pervy Peter’ is likely to have a title of Doctor or Consultant before his name, or maybe ‘Dick Dastardly’ is a simple Nursing Assistant who gets his kicks while plugging people into the mains for E.C.T. treatment. These people are the unknown quantities. Their stories are rarely told. They are adept at occluding themselves from society but could it be possible that the odd shrink or nurse are as inherently evil as the most notorious of our mental patients?

My first involvement with mental health came not through volition in any way. At the age of 19 I was thrown right in at the deep end. Sink or swim, it was straight into the danger zone. Horse penis or not, it has been an unpleasant journey but the interesting thing is that I have maintained sanity throughout (in my own opinion). It’s as though they are filming me shagging with all my clothes still on… It’s weird staring at the film crew all day every day and wondering what they are actually achieving in this purgatory or getting paid for, but a job’s a job, and if society needs them to record every detail then so be it. Maybe there needs to be a change in market appetites for a new vice to emerge and the evils of porn could be wiped from the face of the Earth.

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