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Responsibility
September 26, 2011 by Gary
Hipworth
My sister Cheryl has been a psychiatric patient for the last twenty years (“Another way of thinking,” The Age, 6/9).
For many years I was ashamed to admit that Cheryl was my sister. Her behaviour was unpredictable and she looked, well, ‘mad as a cut snake.’
However around two years ago when I was told that she was to be given electroconvulsive therapy because there was nothing else they could do for her, I decided to find out for myself what was going on with her treatment, rather than relying on information I was being told by her Psychiatrist.
What I have discovered has left me shocked and determined to make sure the truth about mental illness is made available to the public and carers of people like my sister so that they can stop being brainwashed as I was for so many years and be in a much better position to support their loved ones.
I wrote to the Chief Psychiatrist Dr Ruth Vine, the Minister for Health Hon David Davis, the Executive Director of the Mental Health Research Institute Colin Masters the Managing Director of Lundbeck Australia Klaus Abel (manufacturers of the anti-psychotic drug that my sister was being forced to take) and Cheryl’s psychiatrists and I asked them two fundamental ‘duty of care’ questions:
The responses I received in writing are proof that no-one, I repeat no-one, has any idea what causes mental disorders, or any evidence that a chemical imbalance in Cheryl’s brain has caused her to become unwell, or any evidence that the drugs are correcting an imbalance of chemicals in Cheryl’s brain.
I quote Colin Masters at the Mental Health Research Institute, “Regretfully, all I can offer is a prospect that future research will uncover ways that will benefit people like your sister. It may be possible that you and your sister could help us in our research probably through some trials and experiments that we plan to conduct over the coming year.”
Surely Mr Masters, Cheryl has been a guinea pig for long enough?
Then there is this reply (in part) from the manufacturers of the anti-psychotic drug, and this is when the hairs on the back of my neck really stood up! “It is acknowledged that the exact cause of most mental disorders remains elusive.” And followed by the best buck-passing of all time, “Doctors are responsible for choosing the most appropriate medication for their patients.”
At the end of the food chain, Cheryl’s doctor could not provide us with any scientific evidence either, although he promised to send me an email. Despite repeated requests I am still waiting many months later, but my sister cannot wait much longer for safe and caring treatment.
If no-one really knows ‘the exact causes of mental disorders’ then administering cocktails of chemicals into someone’s brain without knowing fully what you are doing surely amounts to gross negligence by all the authorities involved in the system, including the Chief Psychiatrist, the Minister for Health, the psychiatric profession and the drug companies.
I am not advocating that drugs should never be used to contain or quieten a violent or disturbed person. As
Marshall Rosenberg puts it so well in his ground-breaking book, ‘Nonviolent Communication’, “In situations where
there is no opportunity for communication, such as instances of imminent danger, we may need to resort to the
protective use of force.”
However, once the danger has passed, and there is opportunity for reasonable communication, the subdued person should now be entitled to have their human rights restored including the right to make informed choices about their future medical treatment. This is not the case under the existing Mental Health Laws.
I believe my sister may well be in a classic ‘Catch 22’ situation where she is now free of her original mental ‘distress’, (she has not shown any signs of delusions, hallucinations or other symptoms of Schizophrenia for nearly two years) but must continue to take her anti-psychotic medication because if she does not take it then she may suffer a psychotic episode due to the medication itself! And her Doctor attributes her lack of psychotic symptoms to the medication when this cannot be proven!
Why has it taken me nearly two years to get to the truth about the Mental Health system in Victoria and why didn’t I do it twenty years ago when my sister started to have mental issues?
I believe that one of the main reasons is that we are brainwashed from an early age to obey authority and this makes many of us into submissive, obedient ‘sheeples’ and serves the interests of the existing power structures. I was one of these obedient sheep thinking that the authorities knew what they were doing and were being responsible in carrying out their duties to my sister.
Who needs police on every corner when the ‘policeman’ program in our heads is telling us what we should or must not do and makes us feel guilty or shameful or angry or depressed if we don’t do ‘the right thing’.
The education system also teaches us that life is very simple and black and white – you are either good or evil, mad or normal, smart or dumb. For example, once we put a label on someone such as schizophrenic, then we think we have them worked out, and under control and this is fixed in stone forever, although life is in a state of flux, continuously moving and evolving
This fixed labelling has happened to my sister. I was told recently by her psychiatrist that two things were non-negotiable about Cheryl’s situation: her diagnosis and her ongoing need for medication.
Well, if that’s not a death sentence for Cheryl I don’t know what is.
Self-interest also plays a big part. Not many people will become whistleblowers and put their jobs on the line or suffer the backlash that is sure to come from their peers and bosses.
The medical industry and drug companies are in big trouble too if they ever admit that their medical model is not based on sound science but ignorance, fear, money and secrecy.
All these complex factors have produced a broken, violent and dehumanising mental health system in Victoria.
So we should not demonise the psychiatrists as a group or any one individual or institution or seek simple solutions. The people in positions of authority are as brainwashed as anyone else; except that once any individual becomes aware of inhumane or violent behaviour to patients they can no longer claim ignorance. After all, they have a duty of care under the same law that allows them to lock people up and force them to have electric shock therapy against their will. In the worst cases many people give up hope and take their own lives.
For real lasting change to happen, we all must share responsibility for creating more just and humane social, education and mental health systems as they are all interrelated – cultures produce minds and minds in turn change cultures. No human mind has ever been developed in isolation from its social and cultural environment.
It will also involve transforming our education system to respect wisdom and compassion and the life force within, and treating each other as equals with dignity and respect for human life and human rights.
As Rosenberg advocates so brilliantly we need a new language of life that flows with each new day’s events and in context with each new situation, not a life-alienating language that stresses human’s innate evil and deficiency in a depressingly fixed way with no hope that people can change.
Most importantly, we must never give away our power to other people, for this is the quickest path that I know to apathy and depression and losing our self-respect and maybe ending up in the loony bin!
Perhaps giving our power away to others might one day prove to be the fundamental cause of human distress, depression and other social and mental problems, and not a chemical imbalance in sight!
Or in other words, God helps those who help themselves.
