letter to Lord Hunt of Kings Heath 13th June 2007

Dear Lord Hunt of Kings Heath,

We met yesterday, at the Kerr/Haslam Meeting.

I was the one who suggested, single sex units should be run by same sex staff, and that rape kits, should be available on all the psychiatric wards, so that evidence may be taken immediately, these kits should also contain a camera (throw away ones) so that photographic evidence of the state of the patient (bruised) etc can be taken and the state of the room and evidence of struggle etc.

Below are a couple of letters I previously have written to Louis Appleby about the concerns that psychiatric patients are not seen to be good witness's and that there cases never seem to go through.

I would be very interested to know out of accusations made by patients how many have actually gone forward and how many if any made it to court or a prosecution.

Culture was mentioned many times last night and I worry that the underlying culture, is either to cover up allegations, or deal with it in house, often moving the perpetrator somewhere else.

Here are the emails and the response from Louis Appleby's office

Most of the 19 rape allegations made in psychiatric wards from 2003 to 2005 are subject to "significant doubt", the government has claimed.

Mental health "tsar" Louis Appleby (pictured) said after collecting information from local trusts he doubted whether 13 of the incidents actually happened as several allegations were made "when the patients' mental state was severely disturbed". community care magazine

i am dumbfounded to read your above statement in community care magazine.........many patients who have actually been raped believe the use of hallucinatory drugs is a deliberate procedure to make allegations they make doubted and difficult to prove or follow up.........if you care so much for the patients safety why are you only now bothering to provide single sex accommodation a shamefully long time coming......and will only start to work if backed up with female only staff on women's wards and male only staff on the men's wards........some people are drawn to these services so that they have the means to take advantage of those who have no voice.....and if they do speak up they are disbelieved because they are mad ........ god no wonder our society is in such a mess........you have a responsible job as the czar......maybe if we had a service user czar as it should be.....they wouldn't be making flippant and frankly ridiculous remarks....... what cos your mad that automatically makes you a liar and if your "severely disturbed" then you can't be believed.........maybe your severely disturbed because you have been sexually abused and no one is listening to you or believing you.......there there love take your medication.......or maybe you are too terrified to tell anyone......enough to make a sane person mad...sorry i forgot we are already mad otherwise we wouldn't be locked up in the first place.....so i guess that just makes us sitting ducks!!!

miranda morland

bruised uk

RESPONSE

Thank you for your email. Professor Appleby has asked me to send this reply

on his behalf.

Please be reassured that the issue of sexual safety for inpatients is

something which we take very seriously. It is simply that the 19 cases

referred to in the report did not provide good evidence of the problem.

Best wishes

Liz Gass

Private Secretary/National Director for Mental Health

miranda morland

I never received a response to my last email.

Thank you so much for all that you said last night and I feel happy in the knowledge that you take this matter very seriously and I believe that you will do all in your power to make the system of reporting abuse and preventing abuse, and procecuting the abusers a top priority.

Yours sincerely

miranda morland

More sinister than cuckoo

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Jack Nicholson shot to fame in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He played the heroic rebel McMurphy who defied the Establishment. The mental hospital was itself a metaphor for state authorities. For many people Milos Forman’s film brought to light the cruel imprisonment of mentally ill people and the horrors of electro convulsive treatment (ECT). ECT is still being practised in the UK, by the way, and under the 2006 Mental Health Bill, enforcement of treatment, including medication, can go on even after patients are discharged from hospital, for unlimited periods of time. As McMurphy discovered, being a mental patient was worse than being in jail, because at least prisoners know how long their sentences will last.

More than thirty years on in the UK, psychiatrists and mental health practitioners have united in opposing the Bill presently going through the Report Stage in the House of Commons before it receives its Third Reading. Its provisions make it easier to detain people and force them to undertake treatment, whether or not they have committed a crime.

Late in May, five organisations representing 85% of Mental Health Staff suspended their membership from the Mental Health Alliance UK so that they could air their views independently on the Bill.

Last week the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) condemned the Department of Health for “probably the worst” racial record of any Whitehall department and condemned the “manipulative practices” used to drive through the bill.

At the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Annual Conference in Edinburgh at the weekend, Professor Graham Thornicroft, of the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College, London, said “… The last thing we need now is a mental health law that will make social exclusion even worse, especially for black people who feel coerced by the system”.

One out of five mental health patients in the UK are from ethnic minority backgrounds compared to one in ten in the population as a whole. African Caribbeans are 44% more likely to be sectioned, 29% more likely to be forcibly restrained, 50% more likely to be placed in seclusion and make up 30% of in-patients on medium secure psychiatric wards, despite having similar rates of mental illness as British white people.

Suman Fernando, an eminent psychiatrics professor at London Metropolitan University, recently turned down an OBE, in protest against the racist aspects of the Bill. In a letter to the prime minister and Gordon Brown rejecting the Honour, he wrote:

“Failure of mental health services to meet the needs of BME (Black Minority Ethnic) communities results from institutional racism and injustices are evident mostly in the experiences of black Caribbean people who are disproportionately sectioned and subjected to inappropriate – often damaging ‘care’.”

His rejection of the award was welcomed by Matilda MacAttram, director of Black Mental Health UK, and Alicia Spence of African Caribbean Community Initiative, who said: “He is standing up for those who have suffered and died within the mental health system…”.

Those with inside experience of treatment, like Miranda Morland of Bruised UK have also thanked Fernando, describing the Mental Health Bill as “draconian, with no consideration for the patient”. Morland points to the dangerous fusion of functions between the Home Office and the Department of Health:

“We are all terrified by the implications of the Mental Health Bill which has clearly come out of the Home Office and not the Department of Health. In the headlines this week we have found out that the government has secretly set up a VIP stalker squad to identify and detain terrorists and ‘OTHER’ individuals who pose a threat to prominent people. The unit staffed by police and psychiatrists, will have the power to detain suspects indefinitely using mental health laws.

“We always knew we were becoming a police state but it is happening almost over night and we have no way of stopping it, when these bully boy institutions work hand in hand. We need to wake up to the Agenda being set in this country before it is too late, and someone needs to remind the government that they work for us.”

Unfortunately, it’s also time to wake up to the fact that our interests, like those of mental health patients, are not on the government’s agenda.

Corinna Lotz, AWTW secretary

Who are the Mental Health Alliance's real Allies?

To Her Majesty's Government:

"Mental health legislation is very powerful. It allows the state to deprive people of their liberty purely because of their medical condition. We believe that any compromise of a person's rights and freedom should be balanced by safeguards. People with mental health problems should have the right to help when they ask for it. Patients should only be detained against their will if it will benefit their health. They should have access to an advocate and their carers and family should be involved.

Reform of the 1983 Mental Health Act must be taken seriously. Stakeholders should be fully consulted on the Government's proposals before they are published and a comprehensive Race Equality Impact Assessment on the whole Act should be conducted, considered and published alongside the Bill."

from the MHA

my response

No doubt they want a pat on the back for bothering at the midnight hour they should have written a decent petition ages ago and the wording is dodgy

Patients should only be detained against their will if it will benefit their health. And who is going to determine that?

Too little too late

Looks like a lot more of us will be getting banged up it if it goes through maybe because we haven't followed the drive to get us back into work, as just a little push is all that's needed as it will surely benefit our health to work after all these years of pulling a fast one pretending to be unwell!

Let's all get direct payments and start a fantastic sanctuary in sunny spain

sanctuary= protection or a safe place, especially for someone or something being chased or hunted

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

More sinister than cuckoo

Jack Nicholson shot to fame in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He played the heroic rebel McMurphy who defied the Establishment. The mental hospital was itself a metaphor for state authorities. For many people Milos Forman’s film brought to light the cruel imprisonment of mentally ill people and the horrors of electro convulsive treatment (ECT). ECT is still being practised in the UK, by the way, and under the 2006 Mental Health Bill, enforcement of treatment, including medication, can go on even after patients are discharged from hospital, for unlimited periods of time. As McMurphy discovered, being a mental patient was worse than being in jail, because at least prisoners know how long their sentences will last.

More than thirty years on in the UK, psychiatrists and mental health practitioners have united in opposing the Bill presently going through the Report Stage in the House of Commons before it receives its Third Reading. Its provisions make it easier to detain people and force them to undertake treatment, whether or not they have committed a crime.

Late in May, five organisations representing 85% of Mental Health Staff suspended their membership from the Mental Health Alliance UK so that they could air their views independently on the Bill.

Last week the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) condemned the Department of Health for “probably the worst” racial record of any Whitehall department and condemned the “manipulative practices” used to drive through the bill.

At the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Annual Conference in Edinburgh at the weekend, Professor Graham Thornicroft, of the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College, London, said “… The last thing we need now is a mental health law that will make social exclusion even worse, especially for black people who feel coerced by the system”.

One out of five mental health patients in the UK are from ethnic minority backgrounds compared to one in ten in the population as a whole. African Caribbeans are 44% more likely to be sectioned, 29% more likely to be forcibly restrained, 50% more likely to be placed in seclusion and make up 30% of in-patients on medium secure psychiatric wards, despite having similar rates of mental illness as British white people.

Suman Fernando, an eminent psychiatrics professor at London Metropolitan University, recently turned down an OBE, in protest against the racist aspects of the Bill. In a letter to the prime minister and Gordon Brown rejecting the Honour, he wrote:

“Failure of mental health services to meet the needs of BME (Black Minority Ethnic) communities results from institutional racism and injustices are evident mostly in the experiences of black Caribbean people who are disproportionately sectioned and subjected to inappropriate – often damaging ‘care’.”

His rejection of the award was welcomed by Matilda MacAttram, director of Black Mental Health UK, and Alicia Spence of African Caribbean Community Initiative, who said: “He is standing up for those who have suffered and died within the mental health system…”.

Those with inside experience of treatment, like Miranda Morland of Bruised UK have also thanked Fernando, describing the Mental Health Bill as “draconian, with no consideration for the patient”. Morland points to the dangerous fusion of functions between the Home Office and the Department of Health:

“We are all terrified by the implications of the Mental Health Bill which has clearly come out of the Home Office and not the Department of Health. In the headlines this week we have found out that the government has secretly set up a VIP stalker squad to identify and detain terrorists and ‘OTHER’ individuals who pose a threat to prominent people. The unit staffed by police and psychiatrists, will have the power to detain suspects indefinitely using mental health laws.

“We always knew we were becoming a police state but it is happening almost over night and we have no way of stopping it, when these bully boy institutions work hand in hand. We need to wake up to the Agenda being set in this country before it is too late, and someone needs to remind the government that they work for us.”

Unfortunately, it’s also time to wake up to the fact that our interests, like those of mental health patients, are not on the government’s agenda.

Corinna Lotz, AWTW secretary

In all of the sensationalized reports of late it has never come down to the fault of the patient. In numerous accounts the patient and often their family have sought help which has not been forthcoming and so to just blame the patients seems ridiculously naive.

The total responsibility has to lie with the NHS trusts and their staff who obviously need to retrain to recognise and take appropriate action when someone says they intend to kill. The reason these tragedies are occurring is that there are not the means to care for those most vulnerable and in need. It's not rocket science!

More research needs to be done into the adverse affects of medication as many of the drugs given to psychiatric patients especially benzodiazepines are known to cause panic attacks, agoraphobia, insomnia, nightmares, tremor, muscle spasms, hallucinations, depression, psychosis, fits and many more not something the public are often made aware of I wonder why? What drugs were these poor souls on at the time?

- Miranda Morland, Tunbridge Wells

Draft Mental Health Bill

This bill is a violation of our human rights it is about power and social control and has nothing to do with therapeutic care. The government and media are causing stigma and discrimination and inciting the public into believing that those who have been bruised by life are dangerous. This bill will allow anyone to be treated against their will giving the authorities power over every citizen no matter their ethnicity, creed, age or religion.

There are no medical tests to prove anyone has a "mental illness" and psychiatrists admit they cannot cure their patients. However psychiatry is legally drugging an entire new generation of children into robotic zombies and the psychotic drugs used are known to cause self harm, suicide and violence, psychosis mania, heart attacks and sudden death.

The only people profiting from this legislation are the pharmaceutical companies and those who make these diagnoses. If all else fails we can still be tortured with electroconvulsive therapy, or a lobotomy as a final measure. Eugenics seem to be alive and well and living a bit too near you and I if you ask me

Where is the humanity? Where is the love?

my personal observations

RECUPERATION IN HOSPITAL

There are three things you need for a quick recovery

LOT’S OF SLEEP

LOT’S OF FRESH AIR

LOT’S OF FRESH ORGANIC RAW FOODS

Sadly you are unlikely to receive any of these in hospital

You are often woken form a slumber to fit in with staff timetables

The heating is on full blast

With no windows open keeping the bacteria and germs on the ward

You are breathing in carbon monoxide from your own breath

The food is high in sugar content

Nearly all refined, and not of a high quality

Certainly not fresh, and definitely not organic

Not surprisingly a difficult and rocky path to “wellness”

Surely we should be working with nutritionalists

Who can advise on all sorts of healthy alternatives

To help us return to health as quickly as possible

We would be saving money long term

As beds would become vacant quicker

A fast turn over is what is actually needed

Get them in Get them well Get them out

And please let’s try not to give them mrsa

“BRUISED UK”

WHAT ARE MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS?

How do you get it?

Sadly it has so many faces

Let’s look at just a few

I hasten to add you cannot catch it by association

The sooner we can all understand that the better

The discrimination and stigma we suffer will hopefully stop….

What are the causes?

Bereavement:

Loss of a child,

a parent,

a partner

Long Term Care:

of a child,

a parent,

a partner

Abuse:

Childhood abuse

Physical abuse

Mental abuse

Domestic violence

Emotional abuse

Sexual abuse

Verbal abuse

Bullying

The above can cause the following:

Low self esteem

Lack of confidence

Insecurity

Self neglect

Depression

Self harm

Breakdown

Trauma

Suicide

Notice the different degrees

Some things seem worse than others

Who are we to judge?

We must not judge!

Is my grief sadder than yours?

Is my pain greater than yours?

We all bleed when we’re cut

"bruised uk"

THE DEATH CEREMONY

BY DR LI

THE DEATH CEREMONY STARTED AS A CRUDE

RITUAL BACK IN THE DAYS OF WITCHCRAFT.

IN RECENT YEARS IT HAS BEEN DEVELOPED

INTO A SCIENCE.IT USUALLY TAKES TEN TO

FIFTEEN YEARS: HOWEVER, MODERN SCIENTIFIC

ADVANCEMENTS ARE SHORTENING THIS PERIOD

OF TIME. IT STARTS WITH ONE SIMPLE ASPRIN FOR

A SIMPLE HEADACHE. WHEN THE ONE ASPRIN WILL

NO LONGER COVER UP THE HEADACHE, TAKE TWO.

AFTER A FEW MONTHS, WHEN TWO ASPRINS WILL

NO LONGER COVER UP THE HEADACHE. YOU CAN

TAKE ONE OF THE STRONGER COMPOUNDS. BY THIS

TIME IT BECOMES NECESSARY TO TAKE SOMETHING

FOR THE ULCERS THAT HAVE BEEN CAUSED BY THE

ASPRINS. NOW THAT YOU ARE TAKING TWO MEDICINES;

YOU HAVE A GOOD START. AFTER A FEW MONTHS

THESE MEDICATIONS WILL DISRUPT YOUR LIVER

FUNCTION. IF A GOOD INFECTION DEVELOPES, YOU

CAN TAKE SOME PENICILLIN OF COURSE, THE

PENICILLIN WILL DAMAGE YOUR RED BLOOD

CORPUSCLES AND SPLEEN SO THAT YOU DEVELOPE

ANAEMIA. ANOTHER MEDICATION IS TAKEN TO COVER

UP THE ANAEMIA.BY THIS TIME ALL OF THE MEDICATIONS

WILL PUT SUCH A STRAIN ON YOUR KIDNEYS THAT THEY

SHOULD BREAK DOWN. IT IS NOW TIME TO TAKE SOME

ANTIBIOTICS. WHEN THESE DESTROY YOUR NATURAL

RESISTANCE TO DISEASE. YOU CAN EXPECT A GENERAL

FLARE-UP OF ALL YOUR SYMTOMS. THE NEXT STEP IS TO

COVER UP ALL OF THESE SYMPTOMS WITH SULFA DRUGS.

WHEN THE KIDNEYS FINALLY PLUG UP YOU CAN HAVE

THEM DRAINED. SOME POISONS WILL BUILD UP IN YOUR

SYSTEM BUT YOU CAN KEEP GOING QUITE A WHILE THIS

WAY. BY NOW THE MEDICATIONS WILL BE SO CONFUSED

THAT THEY WON’T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO

BE DOING BUT IT DOES’NT REALLY MATTER. IF YOU HAVE

FOLLOWED EVERY STEP AS DIRECTED YOU CAN MAKE AN

APPOINTMENT WITH YOUR UNDERTAKER. THIS GAME IS

PLAYED BY PRACTICALLY ALL IN THE WEST.

EXCEPT FOR THE FEW IGNORANT SOULS WHO FOLLOW NATURE.

136 SECTIONING

How many sections occur in this country every week?

How many more do the Police anticipate when the new Mental Health Bill is put into practice?

Who is being sectioned where are the figures for Age groups? Children, Adults, Older People. Gender? Race?

Where are the places of safety in this country based and are they manned 24/7?

How many Health Authorities use Police Cells as places of safety?

How many people die in custody on 136 sections?

Where are people transferred to, Prison? Psychiatric Ward? Or released?

What are the Police’s feelings about the effect on their workload when the new Bill is introduced, there must be projection figures?

Do the police have enough manpower to sustain it?

How many people suffer physical injuries whilst being 136 sectioned?

How long are people detained in police custody within the 72-hour period?

How many are detained for longer than 72 hours due to psychiatric bed shortages?

How many people are left in the community due to shortage’s of beds, manpower, etc and our these figures (waiting lists) known?

What are the top 4 reasons for a person being in such a state that they need to be sectioned? (Domestic violence victim, breakdown, bereavement)

Is there greater cluster’s of sectioning in certain areas and why should this be?

Are the criteria for sectioning in this country the same from county to county?

If not who decides what criteria are implemented?

Are any 136 sections carried out by the private sector/independent sector?

What training have they received on Mental Health Issues?

We ask these questions, as an understanding of these issue’s is crucial.

Service User’s and the Public need to be made aware of the 136 sectioning powers, and that anybody can have these measures used against them.

“bruised uk"

Service User Movement

It would seem to be a complete fallacy stating that there is a Service User Movement in this country…

The Government, NHS and Mental Health Charities are surely over the moon that it does not exist. Due to their constant buffering and manipulation, as we can’t possibly have the Lunatics taking over the Asylum now can we!!!

The struggle we find ourselves in is ridiculous. Up against bureaucracy the whole time. To be paid our travelling expenses is like trying to extract blood from a stone. We are hardly welcomed when we do attend. We have to write separate letters to ask if we may please have a free place at a conference…we wouldn’t be asking for a free place if we could afford to come! And it is humiliating to feel we are begging which puts so many Service Users off that they don’t participate at all…. Our ideas are not minuted but within about 6 months our ideas are suddenly part of the new structure and probably bringing in some form of new funding as pamphlets are being written and papers produced on the very subject matter that we were ignored over when we first brought it to the table…. Where are the copy write boys when you need them…

Where is the transparency of these groups, when we ask to see the books to find out where all the funding has gone everyone passes the buck…”past history” or “water under the bridge” “lets move on don’t jeopardize what we have”….there, there go away and don’t ask embarrassing questions…we love asking embarrassing questions of everyone… especially the Government as they seem to forget they work for us…

When funding has been received by a group, books should be kept and columns filled in so everything is above board and everyone can see what and where the money was spent…it’s called transparency.

We are told we cannot attend certain meetings unless we represent a group (most of us are individuals speaking of our own experience now you want us to be at the table on behalf of everyone else who does not or cannot engage) we do not trust these big Charities who are sitting at table’s supposedly there representing little old us, as they are not asking us what we want so why do they assume they know? They should realize that many Service Users do not engage because they are treated badly, made to feel stupid, ignored, condescended to, that is why faces come and go… we get fed up trying to be heard…and in the end we walk away…just imagine if all of us got together and started our own movement we would be a force to be reckoned with…. we can’t do that as we would not want to become a Charity we would not want to be dictated to…we are not offered funding without strings, so we would have to fund ourselves oh surely that won’t work because Service Users haven’t got any money…not to mention the in house fighting and bitching and jealousy which makes it hard for anyone to trust each other then we get down to the paranoia (it ain’t paranoia if it’s true) and guess what we all disengage cos we’ve had enough…..We should not listen to the falsehoods and rubbish passed around especially when we do not know it’s true origins!!!!!

We need to come together and work for the common good of us all.

The Powers that Be sit at tables coming up with ridiculous ideas on our behalf. Holding rallies in buildings where no one can see or hear us. We end up handing out leaflets to ourselves and not the Public we don’t need to be converted we already know the figures and the problems, it’s the Public that need to be converted…. The Public need to be given the facts on Mental Health and violence and not brainwashed by the disgusting coverage of the Media Hype that Mad is Bad and dangerous…we must not allow ourselves to be depicted in this way…

We must complain complain complain

Yet we are scared to speak up in case our services (if we are lucky enough to have any) are withdrawn.

We find it hard to stand up for ourselves, due to a minority of less than helpful professionals that we have all come across at sometime during this Mental Health Journey…Will our Doctor really report my fears of side-effects to the MHRA is it in my head or our these tablets making me feel worse?????

We want a quiet life; it is hard to fight for our Rights, when there is no fight left in us due to our diagnosis or the dummying down of the drugs we are too often prescribed.

We need to be part of the training of all the professionals working in the mental health field from psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, community psychiatric nurses and support workers…. all the way through to the Cleaners on wards who usually have more contact with us “the patients” than those paid to look after us, and lastly but especially important the Local Police….

The Police are often the first port of call for many experiencing a crisis which is a terrifying experience when you are desperate and in need. You do not expect to be put in a police car and taken to a police cell…sadly this is what happens to many of us including children…Not the best way to first access mental health services. Sadly the 136 section figures for England and Wales are extremely hard to get hold of, so we do not know how many unnecessary incarcerations are happening and how many people including children are dying in custody, apparently these figures are kept by the Home Office.

Unless we are truly integrated into the professionals, very existence

as part of normal life we will always have a situation of them

and us, causing the all too familiar faces of stigma and discrimination

from the very people who should know better.

Where are the true crisis centres (retreats) where we can go to recover quietly and in a caring environment where we are allowed to just be…When in a state most of us just want a warm bed, something hot to eat and drink…and lots of sleep in a safe and quiet environment (knowing there is someone there if we need them) This structure is fairly simple and wouldn’t cost a fortune but maybe that’s the problem it is just that, too simple…for those who love red tape and a manager for this and a manager for that and they must have a hygiene certificate, health and safety, and must be trained in IT skills etc.

Here’s a novel idea let’s get service users to run the retreats incorporating first hand knowledge and experience, empathy and I would imagine bushels of respect and kindness…

Wow that is radical!!!!!

“bruised uk”

[email protected]