The
present Review of Mental Health (N.Ireland) being
undertaken by psychiatric and mental health professionals
is fundamentally flawed and in truth attacks the
human rights of those it regards as ‘mentally
ill’. This review forms part of a wider review
into the reform of mental health legislation in
the UK which saw the UK government produce a draft
Bill In September 2004.This new Bill will replace
The Mental Health Act 1983. The Mental Health (Northern
Ireland) Order 1986 as a part of this Act presently
governs the treatment of people with ‘mental
health’ problems in Northern Ireland.
Recently
the Chairperson of the Review of Mental Health wrote
to the NIO Minister for Finance calling for more
funding to implement the plans of a committee set
up under the Review. What is interesting is that
in his letter the Chairperson recognises the fact
that in the north of Ireland much severe mental
distress ‘derives both from the chaos of the
last 35 years as well as powerful socio-economic
factors of poverty and deprivation’.
Yet
if one examines the general thrust and content of
this letter and the committee’s calls for funding
it is clear that increased funding is aimed towards
providing more mental health professionals and physical
‘treatments’ which can only serve to perpetuate
the already failed biomedical or biological approach
to ‘mental illness’. The truth is that
the pervasive understanding within the mental health
field is that ‘mental illness’ is essentially
biological in origin. Biological psychiatry is quite
simply wrong given that the causes of this mental
and emotional suffering are societal or environmental
in origin. It is these factors which can bring about
mental suffering that they (the psychiatric profession)
label as mental disease or illness. We therefore
need approaches that address this reality by providing
a network of genuine caring and supportive services.
Disabling drug treatments and biological theories
of mental illness (‘mental illnesses are the
result of brain chemical imbalances or genetic defects’)
deflect attention way from this reality and in fact
illustrate how psychiatry continues to act as a
form of social control. In preventing recognition
of how society and the State perpetrate and perpetuate
severe mental distress (poverty, unemployment, inequality,
injustice and inter-personal conflicts, etc) the
aim is to objectify the patient telling him/her
that the problem is their ‘illness’ or
their ‘faulty’ brain chemistry or ‘neurochemical
defect’.
This
review and its members are simply acting out their
role as agents of the State in producing a review
that will not benefit psychiatric patients in any
positive way at all. It engages in the demeaning
objectification and labeling of those suffering
severe mental distress. It is an exercise in legitimising
a pseudo medical practice and its mental ‘health’
professionals. The reality is that this review supports
the internment of the ‘mentally ill’ in
psychiatric institutions or prisons against their
will. It supports the use of forced drug ‘treatment’
on people it views as lacking ‘capacity’
or ‘insight’ into their ‘illness’
(Illnesses that can’t be proven to exist through
any physical or objective medical tests!) It does
not voice any opposition to the extended powers
on forced ‘treatment’ in the community
being considered in the draft Bill if this is believed
to be in the best interests of the ‘patient’.
If one reads the review one finds that nowhere in
it do these mental ‘health’ professionals
ever once question the extremely close relationship
between psychiatry and the drug companies nor once
do they question the growing controversy concerning
‘anti-depressants’ and their serious side
effects (even suicide). Not once do they raise any
concern about the neurological diseases caused by
so- called anti-psychotic drugs. Why? Because it
would be professional suicide if they did!
Consequently
there is no recognition in the review of the need
to have in place a service that can help patients
safely withdraw from heavy psychiatric drugs which
is something that psychiatric patients have always
wanted. Mental ‘death’ professionals will
unconscionably defend the drugs irrespective of
the serious health risks to the patient. Psychiatry
today is simply about dispensing brain-disabling
and debilitating drugs. There is simply no emphasis
at all on alternatives.
I
have recently written to the manufacturers of ‘anti-psychotics’
in relation to the inadequate information and in
some cases complete absence of information provided
in the patient information leaflet for these drugs.
I raised this with the UK drug regulatory body,
the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory
Agency (MHRA) as well, who said they would follow
up certain concerns with some of the companies contacted.
When I contacted the Mental Health Commission for
N. Ireland, a body which claims to protect the welfare
of psychiatric patients and whose work is being
examined in the Review, they told me that ‘they
did not adopt any stance on the use of any psychiatric
drug’. Concerns about these drugs are clearly
only raised by concerned individuals and not the
bodies supposedly charged with responsibility for
caring for the ‘mentally ill’.
It
confirms for me the reality that state mental health
organisations will not challenge harmful drug treatments
because of the symbiotic relationship that exists
between psychiatry and the psychopharmaceutical
manufacturers. Remove drugs and the psychiatric
industry collapses along with the practice of coercion.
Drug money is what psychiatry runs on.
Drug
company domination can be seen in research carried
out at the Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience
at Queen’s University, Belfast. One research
project there is funded by Janssen Pharmaceuticals,
the American pharmaceutical company that was contacted
in 2003 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA),
the regulatory authority in the USA, concerning
their ‘anti-psychotic’ drug Risperdal.
They were told that the incidence of diabetes associated
with the drug was not as they claimed ‘very
rare’ and were warned about providing false
information to healthcare professionals. Janssen
deliberately concealed the truth concerning the
health risks this drug presented and patients who
developed diabetes as a result of this so-called
treatment have filed lawsuits in the USA against
the company. The terrible irony of this is that
this study being undertaken by Queen’s is entitled
‘Prevalence of Diabetes in Patients In a N.Ireland
population of people with Schizophrenia’. Implicit
within this is the contempt in which psychiatric
patients are being viewed. These are the people
whom Queen’s are taking drug money from!
Let’s
take another drug company, Bristol Myers Squibb,
the makers of the ‘anti-psychotic’ Abilify.
They too refuse to mention in the patient information
leaflet that it can cause diabetes. It is accepted
as medical fact that all these ‘anti-psychotics’
do present a risk of diabetes yet this company refuses
to give any indication of the risk. I contacted
the MHRA about this and they decided to raise the
matter with the EMEA (European Agency for the Evaluation
of Medicinal Products) from whom the drug is authorized.
They will be asking for changes to be made in relation
to the patient information leaflet. This Queen’s
study funded by Bristol Myers Squibb is entitled
‘A Comparison of the Effects of Abilify and
other Anti- psychotics on Weight Gain’. Nearly
all anti-psychotics are notorious for massive weight
gain and disfigurement.
Another
study by Queen’s entitled ‘The Genetic
Epidemiology of Tardive Dyskinesia in N.Ireland’
is quite astounding in its hypocrisy. The psychiatric
profession and the drug companies admit that their
drugs can and do cause this neurological disease
called tardive dyskinesia (TD) which is characterised
by involuntary muscular movements of the mouth,
face, neck, arms or indeed any part of the body.
If these drugs were only used for very short periods
during extreme mental distress there would be little
or no risk of TD and consequently no need for such
‘studies’. It is precisely because psychiatrists
insist on prescribing them long term that many patients
develop TD and other neurological diseases (if psychiatrists
weren’t dispensing psychiatric drugs, what
else, of course, would they be doing?). It is quite
simply a disgrace that this profession gets funding
and sponsorship to investigate diseases which they
themselves are guilty of causing. This ‘study’
is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health
in the USA which takes a very biological view of
mental illness ascribing as they do secondary or
no importance at all to the real societal and environmental
causes of severe mental distress.
Queen’s
claims to be involved in studying ‘genetic
risk factors for psychiatric diseases’ and
the ‘neurotransmitter pathology of schizophrenia’.
This is simply delusional stuff. No genetic cause
has ever been established for even one of the so
–called mental illnesses. All this rests on
the theory that mental illnesses are brain illnesses,
a theory which they present as if it were fact!
If they were real brain illnesses they would become
part of the medical specialty of neurology and not
psychiatry. Psychiatry on the other hand investigates
non-existent illnesses. I am absolutely convinced
that a genetic cause or genetic defect for ‘schizophrenia’
will never be found because schizophrenia, I believe,
as a brain illness simply does not exist. This department
at Queens pursues this fruitless quest because it
presents an illusion of medical science and that
psychiatry is on a par with the rest of medicine.
Instead of curing or treating disease they excel
in causing disease which is after all psychiatry’s
specialty.
The
sad truth is that no psychiatric patient in N.Ireland
can take anything positive out of this Review or
from the present research in this area funded by
drug companies. Psychiatry continues to label people
mentally ill when in fact there is no evidence that
they are suffering from brain pathology. They cannot
be said to be suffering from biological diseases
or diseases of the brain. The term needs to be replaced
by the correct term severe mental/emotional distress.
The psychiatrically labeled face a future of more
harmful drugs and the much feared depot injections
including increased stigmatization. The State though
will continue to support psychiatry and the mental
health industry. Its purpose as social control masked
as genuine medical practice will continue to harm
and ruin lives and will continue in failing to address
the real causes of severe mental distress.
