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The Mental Health Bill will see a return to Bedlam
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Don’t return to days of Bedlam
Anna McHugh reveals her ordeal when she was held against her will simply for complaining of depression
WITH a bureaucrat’s characteristic blend of cagey statements and solemn threat-pushing, David Taylor tells us that “in some cases the new compulsory mental illness treatment provisions the government is presently urging Parliament to accept may help reduce the risk of tragedies like murders and suicides occurring.” (Mental health problems have an affect on all of us, Dec 14).
Consider his statement that “just as irrational fears about physical conditions like cancer have been reduced as treatments improve and its causes become widely understood, so the same is like to be true for mind illnesses such as schizophrenia”. But can you imagine locking a cancer patient up and forcing them to have treatment in the name of educating the public?
The current process of detention under the Mental Health Act has unpleasant ramifications; compulsory treatment for the mentally ill would be the state-sanctioned debasement of the most vulnerable.
These linguistic slips and strategies issue from a mental-health specialist who seems to know less about the day-to-day reality of mental healthcare than performing linguistic high-wire acts for the Camden and Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust (CIMHSCT).
The reality of treatment in the Trust’s facilities often falls far short of an acceptable mark. My own experience with the CIMHSCT was an exercise in fear, debasement and clinical brutality.
In the summer, I underwent a cycle of IVF. It’s a difficult enough process, but for someone who suffers depression, it’s doubly arduous.
As I waited the result of my pregnancy test, I became anxious and depressed and sought help from my GP
A mere four hours after explaining my feelings to my GP, I found myself in a stifling room in the St Pancras Hospital. The place reeked of cigarette-smoke and there was an unidentifiable brown substance smeared on the windows.
Attempting to take control of my own care, I told the doctor that I thought it was an unhelpful environment for me, and that I would prefer to go home and use the out-patient services of which the CIMHSCT is so proud.
The doctor announced that she was detaining me. For a rational person struggling with depression, fertility treatment and an early pregnancy, being sectioned was like having my dignity marched out for execution.
It turned into a circus. My husband arrived and begged her to let me leave. I could not present my own feelings about this because I was too busy being held down by two burly nurses (I tried to walk out of the front door), the doctor would have none of it and so there I stayed, with my copy of section 5.2 for light reading.
I was alone in a lock-down ward, in a sweltering room where my only view was of the trains coming and going into the back of King’s Cross station, being watched night and day by a changing guard of nurses who broke my sleep and who watched me as I showered, dressed, and toileted.
Never a terribly religious sort, I prayed the rosary so often that I cannot begin it now without feeling the same heat and panic. I can’t go to the British Library on the 46 bus without passing the gates of the St Pancras and feeling my stomach curl in fear. I wake up every night sweating, remembering the screams of the patients in the ward below. I miscarried my baby shortly after leaving the hospital, after nights of broken sleep and anxiety attacks which happened in the street whenever I saw anyone who vaguely resembled the young woman who had sectioned me.
I made my moan to the CIMHSCT, who allowed the very doctors about whom I had complained to investigate. Not surprisingly, they decided that they had acted most professionally. I then complained to the Mental Health Act Commission, which is snowed under by other complaints about a service which is, according to David Taylor, one of the best in Europe.
Certainly, join the Foundation Trust, participate in its governance. I will not because am too afraid of the CIMHSCT.
I have felt their muscles flex and it has cost me my liberty, my peace of mind, and a greatly-wanted baby. “Fear, prejudice and lost personal opportunity” – the very things David Taylor wants to reduce.
I am afraid of the proposed amendments to the Mental Health Act. Forcing the mentally ill into compulsory treatment is a straight road to the days of Bedlam.
The suffering and the simply eccentric will be disappeared into forced “treatment” which extinguishes dignity and hope.
It will ultimately destroy that which David Taylor seems to want – the removal of exaggerated fears about mental illness, and the building of greater respect for mental health service users.
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