Madness/Follia, by Roberta Gelsomino

Contributo alla Campagna per la proibizione assoluta del TSO

Madness (translated by Cristina Paideri)

Enraged, my father skims through
the same lost papers,
I fancy  him still cursing
a letter that more powerfully shouts.
Dear Commission
this time it’s my turn to talk.
Prestigious people behind a desk,
You are going to judge me and my life in a few minutes;
No one knows about it and you strangers pretend to know.
Like a head of cattle hastily marked and branded in the ass,
it isn’t my own good that you certainly care.
You  refer  to papers and signatures in abundance
as if I wasn’t here talking to you in this room.
You pretend that for those who help me
I must be stupid, crazy and silent
“We pay and that’s her gratitude !”
So I think the moment has come to talk.
If  only  you had the tact,  according to the Hippocratic oath,
you would propose other solutions to my needs,
even stronger, and not blackmail.
I was just hoping to be believed, what an idiot!
Into the paternal exhausting humiliation
I fear to burn myself, to fall, to hurt
what could you know of my condition!
You don’t want to help me, to waste your time ,
“Is she the only one in this condition? Poor parents!”
I believe in  things such as madness and horror.

Follia

Sfuriato mio padre scartabella
i soliti smarriti documenti
immagino mentre ancor bestemmia
una lettera che più potente grida.
Gentile Commissione
questa volta parlerò io a mio nome
Voi Illustri dietro una scrivania
in pochi minuti a valutar me e la vita mia;
Nessun ne sa e voi mai visti vi eleggete a sapere
come capo di bestiame confermata e marchiata nel sedere
in tutta fretta
non è certo il mio bene a cui voi tutti date retta.
Vi rifate a carte e firme in abbondanza
come se io non esistessi a parlarvi qui
in questa stanza.
Fate intendere che per qualcuno che mi aiuta
io debba stare scema, pazza e muta
“Noi paghiamo e questo il suo ringraziamento”
dunque per dirvi mi sembra un buon momento.
Se a valutar, se voi davvero aveste tatto
cioè coerenza con l’Ippocrate patto
proporreste altre soluzioni al mio bisogno
persino più forte, e non un ricatto.
Speravo solo di essere creduta, che idiota!
alla paterna sfiancante umiliazione
ho timore di scottarmi di cadere di ferire
che ne puoi sapere di questa condizione!
Aiuto voi non ne volete dare, perdere tempo a fare,
“V’è la sola messa così? Poveri genitori!”
Credo in cose così follia ed orrori.

poesia e disegno di Roberta Gelsomino

edizionieventualmente.it

 

“All for the Best of the Patient” – Dorrit Cato Christensen

http://www.madinamerica.com/2016/03/all-for-the-best-of-the-patient/

 

I am sharing my story in support of the CRPD campaign: Absolute Prohibition of Involuntary Commitment and Forced Treatment. This campaign is of utmost importance. Treatment and commitment carried out by force is torture, and must be abolished immediately. For psychiatric ‘help’ to happen by force is a paradox and makes absolutely no sense. It can destroy people’s personality and self-confidence. It can lead, in the long run, to physical and psychological disability – and unfortunately, as I know only too well, it can also result in sudden death.

I have been in very close contact with the Danish psychiatric treatment system. My dear daughter Luise got caught in this ‘helping system’ by mistake, but she didn’t make it out alive. I’m sad to say I later discovered that the way Luise was treated was more the rule than the exception. After writing a book about Luise and the psychiatric system, Dear Luise: A story of power and powerlessness in Denmark’s psychiatric care system, people from all corners of the world contacted me to say that Luise’s story could have been their own or their loved one’s story.

As a leader of the Danish association Dead in Psychiatric Care, I am constantly in contact with desperate people who have been committed or who have experienced some kind of forced treatment. They all talk about the tremendous amount of psychotropics they are forced to take. They feel powerless when they complain about horrible side effects and are told in response that the disease has developed and the dose has to be increased. I hear about the smug certainty of some mental health professionals, both doctors and caregivers, and the concomitant dehumanization of their patients through indifference, harassment, coercion and the use of force. Through my experience with my dear Luise, I saw this cold and dangerous treatment world.

Luise died in 2005 when her body and mind could not tolerate the inhumane treatment anymore. After her death, I got access to the hospital records. Reading Luise’s 600-page chart was a wretched experience. It presents an impersonal diagnosis, with signs of coercion, both direct and indirect, permeating the stack of chart notes. Luise wanted me to help her, but the psychiatrists didn’t want to hear my opinion. They believed that they knew better. So I watched powerlessly as Luise deteriorated both physically and psychologically. I witnessed arrogance and dishonesty, repeated misdiagnoses, professional collusion, missing official records, and falsified hospital charts.

Luise started down this path in 1992 at the age of 18. She was supposed to have a psychiatric examination without medication, however, she was heavily medicated from the very minute she set foot in the hospital. After eight days she was close to dying from medication poisoning. That was in August, 1992. In October of 1992, she was still deeply marked by the poisoning. I have no doubt that she suffered brain damage from this. Instead of treating this injury, the psychiatrists wanted to give her more medication.

Luise said no. She argued that the psychotropics had made her very ill, which was true. The psychiatrists interpreted her arguments as a sign of her illness. Shortly after that, the mandated medication began – administered by a syringe – along with the periodic use of belt restraints.

She fought for two months against the terrible drugs. The staff always won this battle, of course. They used manpower, the belt, and the syringe.

At a certain point, Luise gave up fighting. She was broken. My heart bleeds when I read the chart from November 11, 1992. Two and a half months after she first contacted the psychiatric ward for help, her chart reads, “Today the patient offers no physical resistance but is anxious about being medicated and holds hands (the psychiatrists), and afterward, she is somewhat tearful.”

After reading the chart notes, I realize that coercion, both overt and covert, plays a much greater role in treatment than I had ever imagined.

Initially, Luise fought back, which resulted in long-term coercive measures. I can see that eventually just the threat of forcible measures was enough to make Luise give in. It’s the same story I hear from many of the people who contact me. At a certain point, everybody gives up on fighting back.

July 14th, 2005, around four p.m., was the last time Luise experienced this act of cruelty. She was involuntarily committed to a closed psychiatric ward. She had a psychotropic injected. That was on top of the four other antipsychotics she was already on. On the 15th, during the night, she was walking around as usual (akathisia). A bump was heard. At 5 a.m. Luise was declared dead. The doctor’s attempt at resuscitation was in vain. My Luise was gone forever.

The hospital chart, written not many hours before she died: “The patient was persuaded today to take prolonged-release medicine.” Then a few words about the dose and about how she was feeling well and could be moved to an open ward the next day.

Luise did not want me visiting her, that afternoon of July 14. This was unusual, so I called the ward and was told that she was doing fine and she just did not want to see me. I asked if there had been a change in her medication ― I dreaded the injection the doctor had talked about, which I said would be Luise’s death. The woman on the telephone answered that, for the best of Luise, they had decided to inform me about any medication changes only once a week, so I could find out about this the following Thursday. That’s when I really got scared. Just a few words in the chart about such an important decision as giving a new drug by way of depot injection.

Medical law requires that a patient’s chart must record what information the patient has received about a new product, and what the patient has articulated about it. Nothing was noted in her chart. No informed consent. Luise would have done anything to avoid the syringe. So the sentence “The patient was persuaded today to take prolonged-release medicine” is ominous. I’m sure she fought against getting this injection, as she had earlier been about to die from injection with psychotropics.

The autopsy also revealed marks around her body, which the coroner could not explain. I have no doubt that these marks stem from the staff holding Luise down by force when she fought against getting the drug by syringe ― the injection she died from, eight to twelve hours later.

Mental health problems are not a deadly disease. Yet many people, far too many people, still die in psychiatric care. They die because they are treated with far too high doses of psychotropics, often given against their will and by force. Luise’s tragedy is far from unique in Denmark ― or indeed any other ‘advanced’ industrialized country.

After Luise’s death, I sent a complaint to the National Agency for Patient Rights and Complaints, and to The Patient Insurance Association. My complaint’s headline was “Death from drug poisoning.” I named the four different drugs she had been on, which all together was a huge cocktail.

According to these agencies, Luise received the highest standard of specialist treatment. They wrote:

The antipsychotic medication treatment has complied with the best professional standards. That the outcome has not been satisfactory is due to the nature of the condition and the circumstances that the profession’s knowledge and treatment options are limited.

As stated, I believe that the risk inherent in the medication treatment must be weighed against the sufferings Luise H.C. would have undergone without treatment.

It is incomprehensible that Luise’s treatment was judged up to standard, when in fact they administered psychoactive pharmaceuticals at three times the highest recommended dose. There was no informed consent of this polypharmacy, and nothing written in the hospital records about her treatment in the last days of Luise’s life.

According to the UN Convention, everybody should be equal under the law. So why is this equality not carried out in practice? And why is nobody held responsible when the law is violated? Will we accept a society where far too many people die from an illness that is not deadly? Can we accept a society where forced treatment is often the cause of severe disability?

My answer is NO. Please, STOP forced treatment. Why on earth are psychiatrists so keen on keeping up such dangerous and degrading treatment? I want to tell them: Please get down from your ivory tower. Down to the real world, with real people, and stop saying that this kind of treatment is “for the best of the patient.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK9K1hpDbSU]

Dorrit Cato ChristensenDorrit Cato Christensen is an author, lecturer and chairman of the Danish association Dead in Psychiatric Care. She devoted her life to helping people who are caught in the psychiatric system after her daughter’s fatal contact with the Danish mental health system. She has chronicled her daughter’s story in her talks and in her book  “Dear Luise: A story of power and powerlessness in Denmark’s psychiatric care system”

Le témoignage d’Agnès: traitements dégradants, traitements forcés en France.

http://depsychiatriser.blogspot.no/2016/03/le-temoignage-dagnes-traitements.html

En violation de l’article 16 de l’ONU, les personnes présentant un handicap psychiques subissent des traitement dégradants qui bafouent  toute dignité humaine.

Voici mon témoignage :

J’ai été hospitalisée 2 fois dernièrement à l’hôpital psychiatrique relevant de mon département
En juin, il m’ont placée dans une chambre d’isolation et m’ont attachée pendant 2 jours. J’étais allée aux toilettes le dimanche à midi et j’ai été hospitalisée vers 17heures. Le lendemain toujours attachée, j’ai crié que j’avais envie de faire pipi. Ne voyant personne venir, j’ai fini à bout par uriner dans mon lit. Des infirmiers sont venus. Ils m’ont déshabillée de force et m’ont écarté les jambes pour me placer une couche pour incontinents. Ils m’ont arraché la veste de pyjama et essayé d’ôter mon soutien-gorge, le tout avec une violence inouïe.Aujourd’hui encore j’ai un profond sentiment de honte tant je  ressens cet acte comme un viol de mon intimité. En y pensant ma gorge se noue et mon estomac se serre.

La 2éme fois en septembre cette fois, j’ai été placée en chambre d’isolement. Elle était pourvue de toilettes verrouillées de l’extérieur ce qui vous contraint à aller uriner dans un seau hygiénique sous “l’œil bienveillant” d’une caméra de vidéo-surveillance. Enfermée ainsi pendant 3 jours et 4 nuits, vous perdez la notion jour et nuit. Quand, vous sortez enfin, vous voilà docile comme un mouton prêt à quémander ou presque les médicaments que ‘l’on vous a prescrits et que l’on vous donne à heure fixe 3 fois par jour.

Tels sont les méthodes chocs employées par l’hôpital psychiatrique de mon département pour mâter les plus récalcitrants… Comment conserver l’estime de soi et se réintégrer socialement quand on a subi de tels traitements et qu’on ne peut communiquer sur ce qu’on a vécu ?

Je vis dans le sud de la France, pays des droits de l’Homme qui a pour devise “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”. J’ai une reconnaissance de handicap à 80%.

Je veux que vous apportiez mon témoignage pour que cessent ces méthodes indignes pour l’être humain et indignes du XXIe siècle.

Je voudrais dire aussi que lorsque j’ai été attachée, ils ont serré si fort les liens de contention que j’étais dans l’incapacité de bouger et que même sans bouger, ma cheville a été entaillée.

J’ajouterai que dans ce même hôpital, on utilise des mesures vexatoires à l’encontre des patients; on leur ôte toute dignité en les contraignant à rester en pyjama devant les autres patients pendant au moins 5 jours, le plus souvent une semaine, voire plus. C’est le médecin qui décide de la levée de la contrainte.

Enfin, il faut savoir que dans notre pays, les malades psychiatriques internés relèvent du “juge des liberté et de la détention” qui est aussi le juge des prisonniers de droit commun, alors que la plupart d’entre nous, n’avons commis aucun délit. Au bout de 10 jours environ, vous êtes admis à comparaître devant lui. Comment se défendre quand assommée de médicaments, on a peine à avoir les idées claires, à aligner ces phrases à trouver ses mots ? En fait le but de cette audience est avant tout de démontrer que vous n’êtes pas coopérant avec les soins ce qui justifie la poursuite de votre internement dans l’établissement.

Je pourrais aussi parler des effets qu’ont eu sur moi les neuroleptiques. Lorsqu’on me les a administrés pour la première fois, j’étais revenue à la réalité après 3 jours de bouffée délirante aiguë. Depuis chaque fois que je les arrête ou qu’on les baisse trop brusquement  ou qu’on me prescrit un traitement inadapté, je rechute.

On me disait brillante et aujourd’hui, je ne suis plus que l’ombre de moi-même: j’ai perdu mon affect, tout sens critique toute capacité d’analyser, toute intelligence émotionnelle et mes facultés cognitives. Comme ce sont les émotions qui fixent la mémoire, je suis vide de souvenirs depuis 17 ans. J’ai de grands trous noirs concernant des événements que j’ai vécus ce qui est terriblement angoissant. J’ai perdu toute curiosité intellectuelle, tout intérêt pour les choses y compris pour le domaine pour lequel j’ai effectué des études universitaires. Je subis la vie sans la vivre vraiment. Je suis une morte-vivante. A certains moments j’ai même été zombifiée. C’est ainsi qu’on m’a imposée une contrainte de soins après ma sortie de l’hôpital (loi qui a été généralisée en France par Nicolas Sarkozy en  2011) : tous les 14 jours, on m’administrait une piqûre de 50 mg de risperdal constat et les infirmiers passaient tous les soirs à mon domicile pour me contraindre à prendre un comprimé de 4 mg de risperdal (rispéridone). Incapable de me concentrer et souffrant de terribles anxiétés, j’ai été contrainte de prendre un travail à mi-temps.

Vous pouvez publier mon témoignage. J’ose espérer qu’il va servir à mettre fin à certaines méthodes utilisée par la psychiatrie moderne. Je sais qu’un jour, des gens s’étonneront de l’emploi de méthodes si barbares et  que peut-être dans un proche avenir des individus, avec l’avancée des connaissances, traîneront en justice les médecins et les industries pharmaceutiques, responsables de leur état.

C’est paradoxal. Les “psychiatres” comme leur nom l’indique devraient soigner la psychée (l’âme). Or justement en tant qu’handicapés psychiques, nous ne sommes pas traités comme des êtres humains par certains personnels soignants et cela dans l’indifférence presque totale de la société qui cautionne de tels traitements dégradants qui vont pourtant à l’encontre de la Convention de l’ONU contre la torture et les traitements dégradants. : il y a les végétaux, les animaux, les malades mentaux et l’espèce humaine. Que s’imaginent-ils? Que parce que nous perdons la raison, nous perdons notre conscience, que nous n’avons pas d’âme et que notre ressenti est celui d’un animal ? En fait je pense qu’ils ne font pas ça non parce que nous constituons un danger pour eux et pour les patients mais parce qu’ils croient qu’en nous traitant comme ça, cela nous dissuadera d’arrêter les médicament. Qu’ils se détrompent! Nous les arrêterons encore et encore pour leur prouver le contraire et nous prouver aussi à nous-même que nous sommes des êtres humains.

J’en ai moi-même fait l’expérience : en 2013, j’ai été hospitalisée une nouvelle fois à l’hôpital psychiatrique, après avoir arrêté mes médicaments,. Je n’y ai pas subi de sévices et cette fois là, et je suis tombée sur une psychiatre humaine qui m’a bien expliqué qu’il fallait que je sois stabilisée pendant 4 ans avant de pouvoir essayer (avec l’aide d’un médecin) d’arrêter les neuroleptiques. Je n’ai  plus jamais arrêté mes médicaments. J’ai rechuté en 2015 (j’avais des comprimés à cette époque que je prenais toute seule) peut-être parce que mes doses étaient trop basses. A l’hôpital sous la pression de ma famille, le psychiatre a instauré une injection retard d’abilify et comme ce traitement est destiné aux personnes atteintes de schizophrénie, j’ai rechuté une 2e fois, un mois après.

Aujourd’hui, j’aimerais bien revenir aux comprimés et être considéré comme un être humain responsable. Les injections retard sont dégradantes..Elles ne permettent pas de nuancer et d’ajuster au plus près les médicaments. Sans compter que leurs effets à long terme ne sont pas connus. Que se passerait-il en cas de syndrome malin des neuroleptiques ? C’est une question que je me pose. Malheureusement les psychiatres abusent de ces injections les généralisent et les banalisent sans mesurer les effets qu’elles engendrent. Quant à moi, je n’ arrêterai plus mon traitement car avec ce que j’ai lu là-dessus, j’ai bien compris que les neuroleptiques ou antipsychotiques sont comme une drogue et doivent être arrêtés très progressivement pendant une longue période avec des paliers de stabilisation. Les arrêter brutalement c’est le meilleur moyen de basculer dans la folie. Il m’aura fallu 17 ans pour que je comprenne tout ça, alors que si on m’avait expliqué cela dès le début(ou presque) en me considérant comme un adulte à part entière, un malade comme les autres, doué de conscience et de raison,  je n’en serais sûrement pas à ma 10ème ou 11éme hospitalisation.

Workfare coercion in UK – Anne-Laure Donskoy

Workfare coercion in the UK: an assault on persons with disabilities and their human rights

Anne-Laure Donskoy_Survivor researcher, UK

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While there is a lot of focus on coercion organised and implemented in psychiatry, less attention is being paid to state engineered welfare measures based on libertarian paternalism1, which have coercive practices at their core. Among them are policies that strongly support behavioural change using positive psychology and cognitive behavioural therapy. Freidli and Stearn (2015)2 call this “psychocompulsion”. These policies and measures are increasingly used to ambush and coerce persons with disabilities and the long term sick into adopting new ways of being and living conditions under the constant threat of sanctions and which have driven many to attempt to their lives. This paper builds on the work of Friedli and Stearn3 as an attempt to highlight current coercive welfare policies, including forcing ‘therapy’ on individuals, as human rights violation of the CRPD.

 

Background: Psychocompulsion as state sponsored human rights violations

Psychocompulsion, the use of psychological strategies to “nudge” individuals to make “life changes” that fit a political ideology or programme, is not entirely new to the UK. Already in the 1970s, some long term job claimants would be sent for a medical examination, on the premise that if people were not physically ill then they should be able to find and take up work, any work. This had all the flavours of Victorian paternalism written all over it. The ‘mentally disordered’ and the ‘mentally handicapped’ experienced a particular brand of paternalism, hidden away from society and from consciousness in specialist homes and services, often suffering physical and mental abuse or used in rehabilitation work with little or no protection.

Today, psychocompulsion in the UK has been promoted by the Behavioural Insights Team (nicknamed the “Nudge Unit”), now in private hands as a social purpose company but still working closely with the Cabinet Office4, thereby guaranteeing prime influence on policy making. It is clear that psychocompulsion is being used to lock individuals, including the long term unemployed, the sick and persons with disabilities, into back-to-work schemes as a conditionality of welfare. In recent months and weeks, voices of dissent have arisen mostly from social movements, denouncing the use of coercion which put people’s lives at risk5.

As Friedli and Stearn’s paper show, this finger wagging attitude has taken on a far more sinister slant.

First, it turns on its head the idea that unemployment is the product of a failing economy by strongly suggesting that it is a state of mind, worse still a ‘mental illness’ that can be corrected by changing the psychology of claimants, thus placing the onus of responsibility for success, for betterment, for choice etc. on the individuals themselves. This totally ignores issues of social (in-)justice.

Second, it widens the scope by netting in the most vulnerable people in society, specifically the long term sick and those with disabilities, including psychosocial disabilities. This strategy narrowly avoids attracting full-on accusations of discrimination by putting these individuals on par with the long term unemployed and by stressing ad nauseam that the policy is about helping people which should be achieved through (any type of paid) employment. Paid employment becomes the embodiment and the “pinnacle of human experience”.6

Third, the underlying premise that ‘work is good for you’ ignores those dissenting voices which argue that without strong provisos (taking into account the complexity of individual circumstances, choice, timeliness, appropriateness as much as the quality of support and work on offer) the argument is both unhelpful and counterproductive7, and can have devastating consequences for those concerned.

Finally, the stance of the policy totally fits within the libertarian paternalism agenda which moves away from collective to total individual (libertarian) responsibility, slowly realising Ayn Rand’s vision for a permanently productive (and permanently disposable/replaceable) workforce serving an elite. In this scheme, all coercive strategies acquire a legitimacy that the psychiatric survivor movement rejects.

 

Being ill or disabled, and on welfare benefits: state coercion and the CRPD

The Welfare Reform Act 2012 introduced a wide range of reforms to the benefits and tax credits system. The stated aim was to reduce the financial burden of the cost of welfare. This is being achieved by introducing ever drastic and punitive policies under the guises of a responsibilisation agenda, underpinned with an intense authoritarian ideology not seen or experienced since Victorian times. The Tory manifesto of the 2015 general elections claimed it aimed to help people with mental health issues back in to work. The reality is very different and people with mental health issues clearly face discriminations which other groups do not.

 

Article 4: The rights and freedoms of persons with disabilities are violated under the social security scrutiny regime:

When people with mental health issues are on welfare benefits, they find themselves the object of intense, intrusive and inappropriate scrutiny by the system, notably through the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) which has consistently failed these claimants as it is totally unsuited to their singular predicaments and experiences. As a result, more and more people are placed on the Work Related Activity Group of the Employment and Support Allowance which comes with strict conditionalities. Also affected are those under the new Universal Credit (UC) system which is being rolled out for all benefits claimants which places yet another layer of scrutiny on individuals, possibly more so those in work.

 

Article 1-5: Discrimination

A judicial review in 2013 found that the WCA process actively discriminates against people with mental health issues. Since then very little has been done to change the process and the status quo remains.

The Centre for Welfare reform, in its recent report A Fair Society?, also shows that persons with disabilities are targeted the most despite the fact that they have the greatest and often most complex needs.

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Article 10: Right to life: “States Parties reaffirm that every human being has the inherent right to life and shall take all necessary measures to ensure its effective enjoyment by persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others”.

A poll of over 1,000 GPs commissioned by Rethink Mental Illness in 2015, found that over 20% have patients who have felt suicidal due to the WCA8.

In a report sent to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the senior coroner for inner north London, Mary Hassell, said “the trigger” for the suicide was the man being found fit for work by the department”9.

[A Freedom of Information request has] revealed that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has investigated decisions, via peer reviews, about the welfare payments of 60 claimants following their deaths. A peer review, according to the DWP guidance for employees, must be undertaken when suicide is associated with DWP activity to ensure that any DWP action or involvement with the person was appropriate and procedurally correct.10

 

Article 13: Access to justice: 13.1: “States Parties shall ensure effective access to justice for persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others, including through the provision of procedural and age-appropriate accommodations, in order to facilitate their effective role as direct and indirect participants, including as witnesses, in all legal proceedings, including at investigative and other preliminary stages.”

Benefit claimants who wish to appeal a decision need access to justice. This represents an expense they can ill afford (if at all) therefore need access to legal aid. However, the Ministry of Justice has removed welfare benefits matters from the scope of legal aid funding, thereby denying access to justice and discriminating against the most vulnerable and poorest, among whom people with mental health issues:

In order to challenge a decision of a First-tier Tribunal (FtT) the appellant needs to identify an error of law in the FtT’s decision and then request permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal (UT). The process of appealing on a point of law to the UT has two stages, but, for the reasons set out below, the legal aid contract only covers the second stage … The absence of any legal aid at Stage One of an appeal to a UT on a point of law represents a major flaw in the current scheme as it is simply unrealistic to expect an appellant to draft an appeal on a point of law without any assistance.11

In the future, social security claimants who find themselves faced with an incorrect Upper Tribunal decision, or who win their case at the Upper Tribunal but find themselves on the receiving end of an appeal by the DWP12, HMRC13 or a local authority, could be facing the courts and the costs risks attached on their own or not at all.14

In practice, benefit claimants who wish to appeal decisions have to resort to charitable organisations to support them through the process. However these are seeing their funding cut, or they are not coping with increasing number of calls for help.15 There has also been some criticism from within the legal system with regard to persons with intellectual disabilities on matters of legal representation regarding privation of liberty; the same issues also apply to persons with psychosocial disabilities:

The Law Society, which represents solicitors throughout England and Wales, intervened [in a particular case]. Its president, Jonathan Smithers, said: “When a vulnerable person doesn’t have friends or family to represent them during a decision to restrict their liberty, it is vital that person is able to participate in the decision-making process . . . If this is not possible then they must have a legal representative to protect their rights as well as their health and general welfare. Those who are least able to defend themselves should not be sacrificed on the altar of austerity.” 16

 

Actively changing the narrative of workfare and welfare benefits

The narrative of welfare is changing drastically. As Friedi says, we are moving from a “what people have to do [to find work] to what they have to be [demonstrating the right attitude to be employable]17. This is exemplified through the new ‘Work and Health Programme’ planned to be rolled out in England and Wales.

This programme has many strands, including:

−   Embedding psychological services within Job Centres

−   Placing ‘job coaches’ within GP surgeries for people with certain conditions (specifically people with mental health issues): the ‘Working Better’ pilot scheme is funded by the Department for Work and Pensions and the coaches will be provided by welfare to work agency, Remploy (a welfare-to-work subsidiary of the Maximus).

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This programme blurs the boundary between health and welfare, health and work domains, in a way that has not happened before. This is a coordinated move to effectively bring in the benefits system within NHS care: joblessness, being unemployed becomes an illness, specifically a mental illness which needs to and care be cured through psychological therapies.

It will not only extend benefit conditionality into the NHS but also compromise clinical independence and clinical ethics. In practice, people who display the wrong attitude to work, to work placements or who have been unemployed for a long time will be referred to psychologists and given forced Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and be sent many motivational emails and text messages throughout the week; or they will be prescribed referrals to an in-house ‘job coach’. Failure to comply with these forced prescriptions will trigger an immediate sanction regime. This will inevitably threaten if not destroy that first quality that patients place in their doctor, trust. People may become reluctant to say anything whether it is about their situation or their health for fear of being forced into the schemes.

 

CRPD violations:

Articles 1-5: (equality, choice, autonomy, capacity)

Persons with disabilities are specifically targeted by the new measures

 

Article 25 (Right to health):

Currently both schemes are in the early stages of being rolled out (pilot stage) and the official line claims that they are voluntary. However, as the Tory manifesto stated “We will help you back into work if you have a long-term yet treatable condition”, this is set to become compulsory: “People who might benefit from treatment should get the medical help they need so they can return to work. If they refuse a recommended treatment, we will review whether their benefits should be reduced.”(p. 28). However, being forced to receive “therapy” for a “treatable condition” is not the same thing as being offered support, which would imply that the individual is free to choose to take it up or not. Most observers agree that what is currently taking place on a voluntary basis as part of the pilot projects will become compulsory, which would only follow the UK Government’s own stance of applying any means to get people “back to work”18.

This means that people with mental health problems will no longer be able to freely choose to consent, or withhold their consent, to ‘treatment’. There is also a high risk that people will feel intimidated into consenting to undergo these ‘therapies’. This is very similar to what happens in psychiatry whereby the right to health is invoked to forcibly treat people for their own good, “in their best interest” … but as their only option. To decline a recommended treatment or to fail to comply to the letter with the injunctions and expectations of the system will result in benefits sanctions.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), the approach chosen by the Government is highly controversial and does not suit everybody. Therefore a one-fits-all approach, whether it is applied forcibly or not, will be counterproductive as it may make some people feel worse (counter to their right to health) and shows the total lack of understanding of the often complex and singular situations of persons with disabilities.

 

Art 10: (Right to life)

Any Government that uses coercion and sanctions as a means to a political end must take full responsibility for the consequences of its actions. As with the Work Capability Assessment, people being coerced into receiving behavioural or any therapy they did not fully consent to, may experience adverse effects (making people even more unwell by making them even poorer and forcing them to live in a constant state of anxiety, making them suicidal).

It also denies the person as an autonomous individual able to make their own choices (Art 12, Equal recognition before the law; Art 16, Freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse and threatens their integrity (Art 17)).

It also contradicts the Government’s own claims that it is doing everything to make UK domestic law compliant with the CRPD:

The Convention is not legally binding in domestic law in the UK but is given effect through the comprehensive range of existing and developing legislation, policies and programmes that are collectively delivering the Government’s vision of equality.19

 

Article 17 (Protecting the integrity of the person): The issue of coercion goes beyond “designating work as a cure for unemployment and poverty”20 as Friedli puts it; this is also about changing people’s societal status and identity. In the new narrative, there are productive and unproductive individuals, therefore there is no such thing as a long-term sick or disabled person (all disabilities included). These notions pretty much disappear in the name of inclusiveness and fairness (in relation to so-called “hard working people”21 who are deserving of help and will do their utmost not to rely on the state for their individual needs).

Language is indeed important in this context, and language is shifting. As many have observed, ‘sick notes’ have become ‘fit notes’, the term ‘disability’ too is being erased as ‘Disability Living Allowance’ becomes ‘Personal Individual Payment’. This speaks to a simplistic but powerful narrative of ‘can-do-no-matter-what’ supported by having a compulsory ‘right attitude, which is where psychocompulsion comes in. Nudging then forcing people into having the ‘right attitude’.

 

Forcing people back to work by reducing their welfare benefits

Persons with disabilities are clearly targeted over and above other categories of individuals (Art 1-5 equality, discrimination, choice, autonomy). Indeed, another form of coercion has emerged through a recent drastic to the ESA in weekly support from £103 to £73, contained in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. It will apply to new ESA claimants in the work-related activity group. This vote, pushed through Parliament on 7 March 201622, is meant to “incentivise disabled people to find work quicker”. This (purely ideological) decision will not only strip them of financial security but also reinforce the idea, by bringing the rate into line with Jobseeker’s Allowance, that disability no longer exists, that anyone can and should work, that there are only productive (deserving) and unproductive (undeserving) people.

 

An unethical social experiment

It has come to light that these new programmes are also the subject of ‘research’. The new Work and Health Programme is currently at a research and trialing stage23. As Kitty Jones writes,

Part of the experimental nudge element of this research entails enlisting GPs to “prescribe” job coaches, and to participate in constructing “a health and work passport to collate employment and health information.24

However, this ‘research’ (if one can call it so), has been heavily criticised because it is not sanctioned according to the usual robust ethical guidelines. Research that adheres to robust ethical guidelines would absolutely seek not to cause harm to its participants, and would seek their informed consent beforehand25. This is not the case here where claimants are the participants are the involuntary and ‘unconsented’ participants of an experiment they know nothing about.

There are a wide range of legal and Human Rights implications connected with experimentation and research trials conducted on social groups and human subjects.26

A spokesperson for Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), talked of the UN CRPD Committee’s visit to the UK and described the situation thus:

It means the UN will examine the vicious and punitive attacks on disabled people’s independent living as well as the cuts which have seen so many placed in inhuman circumstances and has led to unnecessary deaths.27

 

Articles 1-5: discrimination against persons with disabilities who are targeted through this programme.

Article 9: right to communication: The existence of this experiment and the format of its conduct has not been communicated with the claimants (the participants).

 

Article 10 (Right to Life): when coercion brings people to the brink of suicide or they succeed in killing themselves (one court case at least has pronounced on the clear link between benefits sanctions and reasons for suicide):

Research from the Black Triangle campaign group found more than 80 cases of suicide directly linked to billions of pounds in benefit cuts. John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle, said: “The Dept of Work and Pensions refuses to reveal the findings of their own peer reviews of suicides linked to the sanctions so we will never know the truth in those cases. . . He said the Work Capability Assessment regime applied to all sick and disabled people, without adequate risk assessment ‘built into the system’28

Mortality rates bring their own tales of woe:

[The government] published or, rather, was forced to after several Freedom of Information requests – that show more than 80 people a month are dying after being declared “fit for work”. These are complex figures but early analysis points to two notable facts. First that

2,380 people died between December 2011 and February 2014 shortly after being judged “fit for work” and rejected for the sickness and disability benefit, Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). We also now know that 7,200 claimants died after being awarded ESA and being placed in the work-related activity group – by definition, people whom the government had judged were able to “prepare” to get back to work.29

 

Articles 12, 17, 19: Coercive measures embedded in all aspects of the Work and Health Programme and its various tools and strategies run counter to the premise that the person is free and able to make choices for themselves, and considerably threatens their right to independent living when they are forced into poverty.

Nothing seems to shift the current UK Government’s assault on people with disabilities or long term sickness, and on their human rights. Not the many Freedom of Information requests which have revealed that the DWP did look into the death of 60 benefits claimants but sat on the findings; nor a Commons Select Committee inquiry into benefits sanctions in April 2015, nor the visit by the UN CRPD committee at the request of a disability group (DPAC) in the late autumn of 2015, nor a coroner’s report clearly linking a claimant’s suicide to the stress caused by the Work Capability Assessment. The UK is effectively engineering and encouraging coercive and punitive policies that specifically target people with disabilities and the long term sick, putting their lives and their future at high risk. Many have observed that ‘austerity’ was only ever an excuse to establish and implement ideological policies. This is not about saving money in hard times; this is about the willful annihilation of the disabled, either through language or deeds.

 

Anne-Laure Donskoy

March 2016

 

Notes:

1https://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2015/11/28/the-goverments-reductive-positivistic-approach-to-social-research- is-a-nudge-back-to-the-nineteenth-century/– The idea that it is both possible and legitimate for governments, public and private institutions to affect and change the behaviours of citizens whilst also [controversially] “respecting freedom of choice.”

2 Friedli L, et al. Med Humanit 2015;41:40–47. doi:10.1136/medhum-2014-010622

3 See also this short film: https://vimeo.com/157125824

4 http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/

5 http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/coroners-ground-breaking-verdict-suicide-was-triggered-by-fit-for-work-test/

6Cole M. Sociology contra government? The contest for the meaning of unemployment in UK policy debates. Work Employment Soc 2008;22(1):27–43.

7 Even the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) who are driving these policies, acknowledged in a 2006 study have put forth provisos that “account must be taken of the nature and quality of work and its social context” and that, for sick and disabled people, “there is little direct reference or linkage to scientific evidence on the physical or mental health benefits of (early) (return to) work for sick or disabled people.” 8https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/is-work-good-for-your-health-and-well-being

https://www.rethink.org/media-centre/2012/09/new-gp-survey-shows-government-welfare-test-is-pushing- vulnerable-people-to-the-brink

9 See note 3

10 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/05/welf-f05.html

11 https://gclaw.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/what-legal-aid-is-still-available-for-work-undertaken-on-welfare-benefits-post-laspo/

12 Department of Works and Pensions

13 Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs

14 http://www.cpag.org.uk/content/legal-aid-reform-or-termination

15 http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/25/benefit-cuts-welfare-linked-mental-health

16 http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/10/judge-challenges-government-over-legal-representation-for-

vulnerable-people?CMP=share_btn_tw

17 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt-V0e0-ipY

18 A side point has been made by Friedli and others about the questionable ethics of those clinical psychologists who accept to take part in such initiatives and about the rapid expansion of the back-to-work industry.

19 Office for Disability Issues, UK Initial Report On the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, May 2011,

www.odi.gov.uk/un-report

20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt-V0e0-ipY

21 An expression used as a constant leitmotiv by the UK government.

22 Ministers claimed “financial privilege” to assert the Commons’ right to have the final say on budgetary measures

23 http://php.york.ac.uk/inst/spru/research/summs/esa.php

24 https://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/the-department-for-work-and-pensions-dont-know-what-their-ethical-and- safeguarding-guidelines-are-but-still-claim-they-have-some/

25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_research_in_social_science

26 See note 15

27 http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/confirmed-un-is-investigating-uks-grave-violations-of-disabled-peoples-rights/

28http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/more-80-suicide-cases-directly-5634404

29 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/27/death-britains-benefits-system-fit-for-work-safety-net

 

 

“Where Would I Be if I Didn’t Believe in Me?” – Corrine A. Taylor

Where Would I Be If I Didn’t Believe in Me

 

My name is Corrine A. Taylor, I just titled this piece, “Where would I be if I didn’t believe in me?” Every time I sit down to share an aspect of my story I do it from a place of my heart space wanting to share awareness in the world, knowing there was a period of my life where I knew nothing and only accepted what the psychiatrist and social workers told me. I was desperate to live a well life but didn’t know how. I have learned that I am not the only one and there are many more people just not knowing and accepting to be labeled and drugged. However, I have come to a place of awareness to know that this is just my story and everyone else’s story needs to be respected and validated as I choose to tell my own, knowing that each and everyone of us is worthy to live a well life. I am focusing on the aspect of my life of not being forced to take drugs and why I chose this title, “Where would I be if I didn’t believe in me?” for the Campaign to Support CRPD Absolute Prohibition of Commitment and Forced Treatment.

When I got to a place of awareness of what is happening with psychiatry and choosing to accept a mental illness diagnosis and label for so long, accepting drugs, dying slowly waiting for the cure to be better, to live the life I wanted, I decided, no more. I had been on a journey for peace in my mind body spirit since I was a child, but was interrupted by abandonment, physical, sexual and emotional abuse, along with poverty and poor education. When I said no more to the last psychiatrist I was seeing and she offered me more drugs, I had been involved with the recovery community and learned a lot of the history about mental health in our world. So I was informed and I had a choice. I choice to feel what I needed to feel, let go what I needed to let go, forgive others and myself, and to learn, relearn and learn each and every day. That meant I could no longer accept the mind numbing drugs that never allowed me to fully accept and let go the affects of trauma.

When I had that last session with the psychiatrist and she offered me more drugs, different drugs, I had to tell her no each time. I could still remember the look on her face. I could still remember the confidence in my being that I knew what I needed and what I was asking for and what I expected to get as my human rights. I could still remember the last session with the therapist I saw, giving me suggestions that I should still see her or come back to her soon, that I would need to come and dump on her all the things happening in my life instead of dealing with them. Talking to her and dumping them on her that meant, not facing the situations that I was dealing with outside of her office. That meant not connecting and disconnecting, not building relationships, and more than that, not trusting myself.

But I believed in myself that day. I believed in the journey that I have been living. I saw all the hard lessons things that I past through, learn and like sharing with others, the way that I learn from others. I had people who became friends who supported me and believed in me and helped to ease the burden of an oppressive existence of poverty and lacking. Gave me strength within the Bible stories I learned as a child of not giving up and persevering. I choose to share my story at www.theproject321.com it is the lessons I learned taking the time to take care of myself and learning the lessons from all of my experiences, especially the hard ones.

I am glad I believed in me. Working behind the scenes at a mental health clinic really helped, as I saw the psychiatrist and social workers have all there faults, insecurities, judgments, behavior issues, or really just being as human as I am. It made me strong to believe in myself. When they came at me with negative reports, I was able to stand up for myself. I saw them with all their human flaws, but deserving dignity and respect and I knew that I deserve the same and so does everyone else. If that last psychiatrist with the look on her face that she new what was best for me, had decided to call the cops and lock me up, forced the drugs on me that she was offering me, where would I be today. I have been working to live for the last five years, connecting with my children and supporting them emotionally. Made friends and allies in the community, and living my life included in society, not on the couch drugged, overdosed, dying slowly accepting a diagnosis, and label. I ask again, “Where would I be if I didn’t believe in me?” I know where I ended up when I didn’t believe in me, accepting one mental illness diagnosis one after the other, one drug after the other, and not living up to my full potential as a human being. That is all that I want. Feel I deserve and so does each and everyone of us.

Don Weitz: Fight to be Free

Fight To Be Free: Abolish Involuntary Commitment and Forced Psychiatric Treatment – A Submission to Committee on Rights for Persons with Disabilities/CRPD 

by Don Weitz

Over 60 years ago, I was labeled “schizophrenic”, locked up and forcibly drugged 110 times with subcoma insulin shock in Mclean Hospital, a psychoprison (psychiatric hospital) near Boston, affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Because I was going through an existential identity crisis – psuychiatrized as “mental illness” & “schizophrenia” – struggling to find out what I wanted to do or be with my life in college, my family colluded with the psychiatrists to “treat” and involuntarily committed me, locked me up without my consent. For 15 months, I lived on an all-male ward with 15- 20 other patients, some brain-damaged by electroshock and lobotomy, others intimidated and traumatized by “safe and effective” psychiatric drugs, all of us suffered the degradation and humiliation of being incarcerated, having our daily institutional lives totally controlled by shrinks. After I was “discharged” in 1953, I suffered frequent anxiety or panic attacks for the next few years while studying psychology in university and seeing other psychiatrists. At that time, patients had no legal or civil rights, including no right to appeal involuntary committal, I had no right to appeal or refuse insulin shock or any unwanted psychiatric treatment. I know something about what it feels like to be treated like a prisoner, what it’s like to lose your freedom without a hearing or trial – preventive detention which is what involuntary committal really is. I know what it’s like to be tortured in the coercive and inhumane psychiatric system where human rights are sanitized as ”privileges”. Violations of our human rights in the 1950s are still violated today. Human rights in psychiatry are a sham. (1).

Involuntary Committal

Involuntary committal is a legal atrocity that must be abolished. It’s a very common and widespread legal psychiatric procedure enforced by psychiatrists, judges and police in virtually every country where psychiatry is legitimized by oppressive mental health laws and promoted by psychiatrically-biased government officials and the corporate media – the psychiatric police state. Involuntary committal laws authorize the incarceration or imprisonment of people in all psychiatric facilities and mental health centres, not just for days but also for weeks, months or years – particularly under the Ontario government’s “certificates of renewal.” (2,3) To be clear, involuntary committal is loss of freedom without a public hearing or trial and without charge of any civil or criminal offence. Although legal and enforced by many states and provinces, involuntary committal is actually preventive detention which is strictly prohibited under international human rights law; virtually all provincial and state mental health laws violate our human rights and international law, yet there’s little or no awareness, discussion and resistance re this grim fact.

In Ontario, the criteria for depriving a citizen of freedom are so ill-defined, vague and broad they can apply to virtually any person. Involuntary committal qualifies as a blatant violation of human rights or “patients’ rights” which are never mentioned in mental health legislation. Consider this wording of “involuntary admission” and initial 72-hour psychiatric assessment in Ontario’s Mental Health Act:

“Conditions for involuntary admission –

(a) that the patient is suffering from a mental disorder of a nature or quality that likely will result in,

(i) serious bodily harm to the patient,

(ii) serious bodily harm to another person, or

(iii) serious physical impairment of the patient,

or [will result] in substantial mental or physical deterioration

unless the patient remains in the custody of  a psychiatric facility;…” (4)

Under the Act’s definitions, “mental disorder means any disease or disability of the mind.” This definition is a legal fiction, it’s nonsensical, illogical and unscientific; as an abstraction or theoretical construct the mind, as Szasz has pointed out, can not be diseased or disabled, only the body can be diseased. Further, this key definition obviously supports psychiatry’s unscientific and discredited biomedical medical of “mental illness” which is entrenched in all editions of the equally discredited Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry’s bible of bogus and stigmatizing diagnostic labels. Further, the phrase “substantial mental or physical or deterioration” is dangerously imprecise and subjective, it allows any physician to lock up and label innocent citizens simply by signing certificates such as “Form 1” which authorizes an initial 72 hour period of observation and assessment”, frequently followed by “Form 2” which authorizes 2 weeks of  involuntary commitment followed by “Form 3 which authorizes an additional 30 days and longer periods under a “certificate of renewal.” Also, the key term “ likely will result” is extremely misleading and problematic since it is common knowledge that psychiatrists can not validly and reliably predict harm, dangerousness or violence.

Forced Treatment

It’s bad enough that psychiatrists have so much power and that so many are incompetent while depriving thousands, if not millions of innocent people of freedom every day; however, they also have the power to forcibly treat or assault us – in the name of “mental health” of course. Although “informed consent” is a key medical-ethical concept and principle in medicine and has been since the historic Nuremberg Code of 1947, it’s frequently violated in psychiatry and the mental health system, another sham. Why7 Because psychiatrists and other physicians routinely ignore or violate its basic criteria. Consider these fundamental requirements of consent and informed consent   to treatmeent clearly and concisely spelled out in Ontario’s Health Care Consent Act:

Elements of Consent

The following are the elements required for consent to treatment:

1.The consent must relate to treatment.

2.The consent must be informed.

3.The consent must be given voluntarily.

  1. The consent must not be given through misrepresentation or fraud.

Informed consent

1.The nature of the treatment.

2.The expected benefits of the treatment.

3.The material risks of the treatment.

4.The material side effects of the treatment.

5.Alternative courses of action.

6.The likely consequences of not having the treatment. (5)

Although some psychiatric survivors may have consented to psychiatric drugs (“medication”) and/or electroshock (“ECT”), virtually none has been fully informed of their major risks and alternatives. For many, such consent has been given involuntarily-by threat, staff pressure, intimidation, physical restraint or force. During the public hearings on electroshock in Toronto in April 2005, not one survivor recalled being informed about the major effects of  “ECT” such as permanent memory loss, brain damage, and trauma; non-medical or community alternatives were never mentioned. Similar consent violations were recalled during survivor testimony on psychiatric drugs (”medication”). In other words, informed consent to psychiatric treatment is a myth, virtually nonexistent, particularly in psychiatric facilities. (6)  Given many studies, common knowledge and personal testimony of violations of informed consent to treatment, we are talking about forced treatment, psychiatric assault. Psychiatrists and other doctors who fail to fully inform patients about any prescribed treatments and risks should be criminally charged with medical negligence and assault. At the same time, all psychiatric patients should be given basic and accurate information, written or in alternate formats they can easily access and understand, on informed consent; they should also be given opportunities to discuss any questions about informed consent, including the right to refuse any treatment, with a patient advocate or lawyer, and translator if requested.

Its time to start criminalizing and launching class-action lawsuits against forced psychiatric treatments and involuntary committal; it’s time to stop sanitizing these serious human rights violations and psychiatric crimes as “treatments.”

Enough talk. How about some real action for a change? It’s our freedom and lives that are at stake!

 

Notes

  1. D. Weitz. “Struggling Against Psychiatry’s Human Rights Violations: An Antipsychiatry Perspective”. Radical Psychology [online] vol.7, 2008, http://www.radicalpsychology.org/vol7-1/weitz2008.html.

For other major critiques of psychiatry, also see, T. Szasz. Psychiatry: The Science of Lies. Syracuse University Press, 2008; P. Breggin, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, NY:Springer Publishing Company, 2008; B. Burstow, Psychiatry and the Business of Madness: An Ethical and Epistemological Accounting, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

  1. D.Hiltz and A. Szigeti. A Guide to Consent & Capacity Law in Ontario. LexisNexis Canada Inc., 2006/2007.
  1. H. Savage and C. McKague. Mental Health Law in Canada. Toronto: Butterworths, 1988.
  1. Mental Health Act. R.S.O. 1990 S.20 (5).  In Hiltz & Szigeti, p.295.
  1. Hiltz & Szigeti, p, 182.
  1. Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault. Inquiry Into Psychiatry, 2005. https://coalitionagainstpsychiatricassault.wordpress.com/events/past-events/inquiry-into-psychiatry-2005/

***

Don Weitz is a psychiatric survivor, antipsychiatry and social justice activist.

In the early 1950s, he was forcibly administered 110 insulin shocks while involuntarily committed and incarcerated for 15 months in Mclean Hospital. For over 30 years, he has been active in the antipsychiatry liberation movement. In 1977, he co-founded with Harvey “Alf” Jackson and Bob Carson the Ontario Mental Patients Association that soon changed its name to On Our Own. In 1980 with shock survivor and lawyer Carla McKague, he co-founded Phoenix Rising, the first survivor-controlled antipsychiatry magazine in Canada. A few years later in 1983, he was one of the founding members of the Ontario Committee to Stop Electroshock which was the first organization to organize public hearings on electroshock and lobbied the Toronto Board of Health and Ontario government to abolish “ECT” and has participated in nonviolent civil disobedience in Canada and the United States. In 2003 with Dr. Bonnie Burstow, Don co-founded the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault (CAPA) which organized public hearings on psychiatric drugs and electroshock in 2005; CAPA has also organized several public rallies and demonstrations against shock including a Toronto protest as part of the International Day of Protest Against Electroshock on May 16, 2015. Since the late 1990s, Don has also been an outspoken critic of homelessness and advocate for affordable housing as a member of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. He lives in Toronto.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nachgefragt – die Reform der Zwangsbehandlung mit Neuroleptika in der Praxis der Betreuungsgerichte

http://www.ilcappellaiomatto.org/2016/03/campagna-no-tso-nachgefragt-die-reform.html

Nachgefragt – die Reform der Zwangsbehandlung mit Neuroleptika in der Praxis der Betreuungsgerichte

http://psychiatrierecht.de/nachgefragt.htm 

http://www.die-bpe.de/


Von RA Thomas Saschenbrecker

 und em. Prof. Wolf-Dieter Narr

Abhandlung als Broschüre: hier bestellen oder selber ausdrucken

Abhandlung als Broschüre: hier bestellen oder selber ausdrucken

Hinweis: um eine Fußnote zu lesen, bitte den Cursor direkt daraufhalten oder am Ende des Textes lesen
Die Diskussion über die Zulässigkeit einer ärztlichen Zwangsbehandlung mit Neuroleptika gegen den Willen eines Patienten im Rahmen einer Unterbringung nach § 1906 BGB hat auch nach den richtungsweisenden Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichtes nach 20111 schon wegen der hohen Bedeutung des Grundrechts aus Art. 2, Abs. 2, Satz 1 GG nichts an Aktualität verloren.

Mit Vorlagebeschluss vom 01. Juli 2015 – XII ZB 89/15 hat jüngst der BGH dem Bundesverfassungsgericht die Frage zur Entscheidung vorgelegt, ob § 1906 Abs. 3 BGB n.F. mit dem Gleichheitsgrundsatz aus Art. 3 Abs. 1 GG vereinbar sei. Motiv des 12. Senates des BGH war allerdings eher eine vermutete Schlechterstellung von betroffenen Patienten, die sich einer Zwangsbehandlung räumlich nicht entziehen wollen oder hierzu körperlich nicht in der Lage sind, gegenüber nach § 1906 BGB untergebrachten Betroffenen. Der BGH geht dabei von seiner eigenen engen Definition der mit Freiheitsentziehung verbundenen Unterbringung aus2, die nur solche Maßnahmen umfasst, welche die “persönliche Bewegungsfreiheit des Betroffenen nicht nur kurzfristig auf einen bestimmten räumlichen Lebensbereich” begrenzt.

Die aufgrund ihrer persönlichen Disposition nicht von Freiheitsentzug betroffenen Personen wähnt der BGH deshalb benachteiligt, weil entsprechende Zwangsmaßnahmen nur im Rahmen einer Unterbringung nach § 1906 Abs. 1 BGB erfolgen könnten. Soweit eine solche nicht in Betracht käme, gäbe es auch keine Grundlage der Zwangsbehandlung.

Auch wenn der BGH mit seinem Vorlagebeschluss mehr oder minder ersichtlich die Einführung einer rechtlich in hohem Maße bedenklichen ambulanten Zwangsbehandlung favorisiert, ist zumindest zweifelhaft, ob das Bundesverfassungsgericht diesem Drängen in Sinne einer allumfassenden Vernunfthoheit im Gesundheitswesen nachkommen wird3, um den Gesetzgeber in Konsequenz hieraus zur Schaffung von Rechtsgrundlagen für die ambulante Zwangsbehandlung zu veranlassen. Wesentlich naheliegender und mit weitreichenderen Folgen dürfte daher sein, dass eine Entscheidung der Verfassungshüter zum Vorlagebeschluss in letzter Konsequenz zu einer Ablehnung der Grundlagen der Zwangsbehandlung insgesamt führen könnte. Der Gesetzgeber wäre mit seiner Novelle zur Zwangsbehandlung gescheitert.

Vor dem Hintergrund der Rechtsprechung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts4 und des Bundesgerichtshofs5 zum 26. Februar 2013 in Kraft getretenen Neuregelungen der § 1906 Abs. 3 und 3a BGB sowie der §§ 312, 323, 329 und 333 FamFG wollte der Gesetzgeber materielle und formelle Eingriffsvoraussetzungen für die Veranlassung einer ärztlichen Zwangsmaßnahme unter geschlossenen stationären Bedingungen durch den Betreuer neu schaffen6. Die Frage, ob dieses Vorhaben der Rechtspraxis gerecht geworden ist oder aber die Bedeutung und die Tragweite des Grundrechts aus Art. 2, Abs. 2, Satz 1 GG weiterhin verkannt wird, ist der Anlass, die Genehmigung der Einwilligung in eine ärztliche Zwangsmaßnahme nach § 312 Satz 1 Nr. 1 FamFG in Verbindung mit § 1906 Abs. 1 bis 3a BGB nach zwei Jahren der Reform in der Praxis der Betreuungsgerichte in einer Totalerhebung zu erfragen. Das Bundesverfassungsgericht muss nach wie vor Verletzungen der Bedeutung und Tragweite des Grundrechts aus Art. 2 Abs. 2 Satz 1 GG rügen7.

Grundproblematik:

Nach einem Moratorium, das auf die Rechtsprechung des Verfassungsgerichtes 2 BvR 882/09 vom 23.03.2011 und 2 BvR 633/11 vom 12.10.2011 gründete und den Bundesgerichtshof veranlasste, in zwei Beschlüssen vom 20.06.20128 zu § 1906 BGB a.F.9 die Zwangsbehandlung mit Neuroleptika für unzulässig zu erklären und seine bisherige Rechtsprechung zur medikamentösen Zwangsbehandlung im Rahmen des § 1906 BGB a.F. aufzugeben, soll die Zwangsbehandlung von nicht einwilligungsfähigen psychisch Kranken nach § 1906 BGB auf Bundesebene im Betreuungsrecht seit dem 26.02.2013 wieder möglich sein. Der Bundestag billigte am 17.01.2013 einen entsprechenden Gesetzentwurf von Union und FDP, wonach Ärzten grundsätzlich als `ultima ratio´ erlaubt wird, psychisch kranke oder geistig behinderte Menschen, die als nicht einwilligungsfähig gelten und bei denen keine wirksame Willensbekundung durch eine Patientenverfügung entsprechend § 1901a BGB vorliegt, auch gegen ihren Willen zu behandeln.

Der Gesetzgeber hat durch das Gesetz zur Regelung der betreuungsrechtlichen Einwilligung in eine ärztliche Zwangsmaßnahme vom 18. Februar 201310 mit Wirkung vom 26. Februar 2013 in die Vorschrift des § 1906 BGB die neuen Absätze 3 und 3a eingefügt. So wurden die Voraussetzungen der Einwilligung des Betreuers in eine ärztliche Zwangsmaßnahme, sowie das gerichtliche Genehmigungserfordernis geregelt.

Die medizinische Behandlung gegen den natürlichen Willen (Zwangsbehandlung) einer betroffenen Person greift in deren Grundrecht aus Art. 2 Abs. 2 Satz 1 GG ein, das die körperliche Integrität der Grundrechtsträgerin und damit auch das diesbezügliche Selbstbestimmungsrecht schützt. Zwangsbehandlung ist rechtlich damit zunächst von Verfassungs wegen verboten. Zwangsbehandlung könnte damit wenn überhaupt, wie jeder andere Grundrechtseingriff, nur auf der Grundlage eines Gesetzes zulässig werden, das die Voraussetzungen für die Zulässigkeit des Eingriffs bestimmte11.
Der Grundsatz des Vorbehaltes des Gesetzes für die materiellen und für die formellen Eingriffsvoraussetzungen hat den Sinn, die primäre Zuständigkeit für die Bewertung von Grundrechtsbeschränkungen als begründet oder ungerechtfertigt zu bestimmen. Nur so ist gewährleistet, dass die Grenzen zwischen zulässigem und unzulässigem Grundrechtsgebrauch und zwischen zulässiger und unzulässiger Grundrechtseinschränkung nicht fallweise nach eigener Einschätzung von beliebigen Behörden oder Gerichten, sondern primär – in der Form eines allgemeinen Gesetzes – durch den Gesetzgeber gezogen werden12. Zudem wird durch einen Gesetzesvorbehalt regelmäßig eine richterliche Kontrolle der Maßnahme ermöglicht.

Die Voraussetzungen für die Zulässigkeit des Eingriffs müssen hinreichend klar und bestimmt geregelt sein. Die zur Normanwendung berufenen Entscheidungsträger der Unterbringungseinrichtungen benötigen auch im eigenen Interesse eine “klare, Rechtssicherheit vermittelnde Eingriffsgrundlage”13. Die wesentlichen Voraussetzungen für eine Zwangsbehandlung müssen aus dem Gesetz selbst in materieller, als auch in verfahrensrechtlicher Hinsicht erkennbar sein. Das bedeutete eine “über abstrakte Verhältnismäßigkeitsanforderungen hinausgehende Konkretisierung dieser Voraussetzungen”14.

Auch die weiteren Voraussetzungen für die Zulässigkeit einer Zwangsbehandlung, einschließlich der Anforderungen, denen die gesetzliche Grundlage für eine solche Behandlung genügen müsste, hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht zunächst in seinen beiden genannten Beschlüssen BvR 882/09 und 2 BvR 633/11 geklärt15, um folgende Voraussetzungen für eine Zwangsbehandlung, die dem erforderlichen Gesetzesvorbehalt auch materiell-rechtlich genügt, aufzustellen:

1.  Zwangsbehandlungen eines Einwilligungsfähigen sind generell unzulässig. Dem Einwilligungsfähigen gleichgestellt sind Betroffene, die ihren freien Willen im Rahmen einer Patientenverfügung, § 1901a BGB, vorab hinsichtlich einer künftigen Zwangsbehandlung bzw. Nichtbehandlung verbindlich festgelegt haben.
Eine vorab formulierte Patientenverfügung ist in jedem Fall bindend, wenn diese die Zwangsbehandlung und eine vorausgehende Untersuchung untersagt: Eine Patientenverfügung manifestiert den früher geäußerten freien Willen eines Patienten selbst dann, wenn dieser im Zuge einer akuten Erkrankung als nicht einwilligungsfähig gälte. Der in der Verfügung geäußerte Wille ist maßgeblich. Es handelt sich um Entscheidungen des Betroffenen über die Einwilligung oder Nichteinwilligung in bestimmte Untersuchungen des Gesundheitszustands, Heilbehandlungen oder ärztliche Eingriffe, die auf die darauffolgend konkret eingetretene Lebens- und Behandlungssituation zutreffen. Diese Entscheidung ist für Ärzte, Gerichte und auch andere Beteiligte bindend.

2. Zwangsbehandlungen müssen den angezielten “Erfolg” erreichen

3. Zwangsbehandlung ist nur als “ultima ratio” denkbar.

4. Jeder Zwangsbehandlung muss unabhängig von der Einwilligungsfähigkeit eines Patienten “der ernsthafte, mit dem nötigen Zeitaufwand und ohne Ausübung unzulässigen Drucks unternommene Versuch vorausgegangen sein, die Zustimmung des Untergebrachten zu erreichen”16.

5. Eine Zwangsbehandlung ist so rechtzeitig anzukündigen, dass der Betroffene vorher rechtzeitig vor den Gerichten Rechtsschutz suchen kann.

6. Anordnung und Überwachung der Zwangsbehandlung dürften nur durch die Ärzte erfolgen, die in der Dokumentation zur Aufklärung und zur Behandlung namentlich genannt werden. Die Zwangsbehandlung selber, aber auch das vorangegangene Gespräch, müssen widerspruchsfrei von jenen Ärzten schriftlich dokumentiert werden.

7. Die Zwangsmedikation muss vorab in jedem Schritt hinsichtlich der Behandlung, ihrer Art, ihrer Dauer und der Dosierung der Medikation konkretisiert werden. In dem Genehmigungsbeschluss muss “die von dem Betreuten zu duldende Behandlung präzise an(ge)geben” werden. Dazu gehören die Angabe des Medikaments, seine Dosierung, Verabreichungshäufigkeit und ein Ersatzmedikament, falls das genehmigte Medikament nicht vertragen wird17.

8. Die Notwendigkeit einer länger andauernden Zwangsbehandlung muss von einem einrichtungsexternen Gutachtergremium geprüft werden.

9. Wenn eine gesetzliche Regelung fehlt, kann sie nicht mehr im Wege einer verfassungskonformen Auslegung ergänzt werden18.
Kein Patient kann im Zuge einer Duldungspflicht genötigt werden, einen medizinischen Eingriff oder eine medizinische Behandlung und damit eine Maßnahme zu dulden, “die den Straftatbestand der Körperverletzung erfüllt”. Jeder Eingriff in die körperliche Unversehrtheit ist “nur mit der Einwilligung des Betroffenen zulässig”19.

Während es selbstverständlich ist, dass ein Patient auch unter den Bedingungen von freiheitsentziehenden Maßnahmen im Zuge seines Selbstbestimmungsrechtes jedwede ärztliche oder therapeutische Behandlung ablehnen darf, auch wenn gesundheitliche Gefahr droht20, soll dies bei einem psychisch kranken Menschen im Zuge einer speziellen Gesetzgebung für psychisch Kranke zumindest dann nicht gelten, wenn ein Facharzt für Psychiatrie bei dem Betroffenen von beabsichtigten Zwangsmaßnahmen “Einwilligungsunfähigkeit” konstatiert hat.

Zwangsbehandlung wurde bis 2011 auf verschiedene Rechtsgrundlagen gestützt, betreuungsrechtlich auf die §§ 1904 und 1906 a.F. BGB, öffentlich-rechtlich auf landesrechtliche Vorschriften zur Unterbring psychisch Kranker (PsychKG).

Anlässlich einer Entscheidung zum Unterbringungsgesetz des Landes Baden-Württemberg hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht 1981 auf die mögliche Gefahr einer “Vernunfthoheit des Arztes über den Patienten” und einer “umfassende staatliche Gesundheitsvormundschaft” hingewiesen. Dieser sei auf dem Rechtsweg im Zuge effektiver richterlicher Kontrolle auch im Sinne eines “Rechtes auf Krankheit” zu begegnen21. Die Richter des BVerfG zogen dabei nicht die naheliegende Konsequenz, die Legitimation von Zwangseingriffen generell in Frage zu stellen. Vielmehr wurde in dieser Entscheidung aus 1981 zwischen leichteren Formen psychischer Erkrankungen, bei denen eben dieses “Recht auf Krankheit” gelten solle, und schwereren Verlaufsformen, bei denen die “psychisch Kranken vor sich selbst in Schutz zu nehmen” seien, unterschieden. Nur für die leichteren Verlaufsformen und “Abweichungen vom Durchschnittsverhalten”22 anerkannten die Richter ein Selbstbestimmungsrecht jenseits staatlicher Fürsorge.

Seit 2011 fand in der höchstrichterlichen Rechtsprechung kontinuierlich bis heute ein tiefgreifender Wandel statt. Dass Zwangsbehandlung rechtfertigende Eingriffe besondere Grundrechtsintensität aufweisen, wurde in mehreren Leitsatzentscheidungen erstmals in dieser Deutlichkeit anerkannt. Bei Einwilligungsfähigkeit eines Patienten kommen sie generell nicht in Betracht.
Für den Maßregelvollzug wurde die Zwangsbehandlung mit Neuroleptika mangels hinreichender Rechtsgrundlage erstmals mit Beschluss des Bundesverfassungsgerichtes vom 23.3.201123 in Rheinland-Pfalz für unzulässig beschieden (vorausgegangene Eilentscheidung 2009). Die dortige bislang herangezogene Eingriffsgrundlage, § 6 Absatz 1 Satz 2 MVollzG des Bundeslandes Rheinland-Pfalz, wurde für nichtig erklärt. Es folgten weitere Nichtigkeitsentscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichtes vom 12.10.2011 zu § 8 UBG BW des Bundeslandes Baden-Württemberg24 und am 10. Februar 2013 zu den landesgesetzlichen Regelungen der §§ 22, 23 SächsPsychKG25. Im November 2013 erfolgte eine weitere Entscheidung des Bundesverfassungsgerichtes zum Erfordernis einer grundrechtlich nirgends hinzunehmenden Rechtfertigung einer Zwangsbehandlung26 bezüglich einer hinreichenden Sachaufklärung, ebenso in 201527. Auch Verletzungen des Verhältnismäßigkeitsgrundsatzes waren Gegenstand der verfassungsgerichtlichen Rechtsprechung28.

Gerade wegen der Potenzierung der Rechtsgutverletzungen des § 1906 BGB (dem Patienten wird durch Unterbringung auf einer geschlossenen Station seine Freiheit vollständig entzogen; er wird zwangsweise durch massive Eingriffe in die körperliche Unversehrtheit veranlasst, Psychopharmaka mit wesensveränderndem Einfluss und starken Nebenwirkungen einzunehmen) kann es zur denkbar schwersten Eingriffsintensität beim Betroffenen kommen. Er unterliegt schutzlos nicht nur dem Freiheitsentzug, sondern kumulativ hierzu der Zwangsbehandlung. Sie geht oft einher mit Fixierungen und anderen freiheitsbeschränkenden Maßnahmen des § 1906 Abs. 4 BGB.

Eine Zwangsbehandlung eines einsichtsfähigen und einwilligungsfähigen Patienten muss nach den verfassungsrechtlichen Vorgaben zum Selbstbestimmungsrecht des Patienten aus den Entscheidungen von 2011 und 2012 generell ohne Ausnahme künftig ausscheiden.
Nur wenn ein Patient krankheitsbedingt nicht einwilligungsfähig sei, sei eine Zwangsbehandlung bei hinreichenden gesetzlichen Vorgaben denkbar. Denn nur in diesem Falle könne der Betroffene überhaupt gehindert sein, “seine grundrechtlichen Belange wahrzunehmen”. Das könne ebenfalls “zu einer Verletzung der Menschenwürde führen”.

Das Bundesverfassungsgericht hatte damit eine verfassungsrechtliche Rechtfertigung in sehr engen Grenzen zugelassen. Der BGH hat darauf verwiesen, “dass das Fehlen von Zwangsbefugnissen zur Durchsetzung notwendiger medizinischer Maßnahmen dazu führen könne, dass ein Betroffener ohne eine solche Behandlung einen erheblichen Schaden nehme”29. Ebenso hält der 12. Zivilsenat des BGH ärztliche Zwangsmaßnahmen außerhalb einer Unterbringung nach § 1906 Absatz 1 BGB für wünschenswert30. Dies obgleich der BGH noch 2000 in einer anstaltsexternen Zwangsbehandlung eine andere, aber ebenso schwerwiegende Eingriffsqualität im Sinne einer “Belastung für den Betroffenen” gesehen hatte, weil der Betroffene sich nur mit Zwang, unter Einschaltung der Polizei oder durch entsprechende Drohung, in das Psychiatrische Krankenhaus zu einer Zwangsbehandlung verbracht sähe, auch “wenn er die Behandlung dort ohne Gegenwehr über sich ergehen lasse”. Zudem erkennt der BGH in seiner Entscheidung aus 2000, dass die “Art der Vorführung nach außen hin diskriminierende Wirkung” hat.31
Die verfassungsgerichtlich aufgezeigte Option, dass es dem Gesetzgeber nach wie vor frei steht, Zwangsbehandlung “durch Schweigen zu verbieten”32 wird bislang nicht bzw. noch nicht vom BGH als tatsächliche Alternative zur derzeitigen Situation der gesetzlich normierten Zwangsbehandlung gesehen.

Die Forderungen nach einem “Schweigen” des Gesetzgebers zu jeglicher Form der Zwangsbehandlung mit Neuroleptika im psychiatrischen Bereich wurde indes schon durch den am 1. Februar 2013 veröffentlichten Bericht über den Missbrauch von Gesundheitseinrichtungen erhoben. Der UN-Sonderberichterstatter über Folter und andere grausame, unmenschliche oder erniedrigende Behandlung oder Strafe, Juan E. Méndez, sprach sich für ein absolutes Verbot von jeglichen Zwangsmaßnahmen aus und empfiehlt den Staaten dem damals schon beschlossenen Gesetz gegenläufige gesetzliche Änderungen33. “Die Darstellung des Sonderberichterstatters” sei, so das Institut für Menschenrechte, “wegen der strengen menschenrechtlichen Anforderungen an die psychiatrische Versorgung in Einrichtungen für die aktuelle Diskussion in Deutschland zu Psychiatrie und Maßregelvollzug von großer Bedeutung und hoher Aktualität.” Seine Position unterstreiche “das Erfordernis, die psychiatrische Versorgung in Deutschland konsequent am Ziel der Freiwilligkeit auszurichten und eine darauf verpflichtete Psychiatriereform voranzutreiben.”34

Auch der UN-Fachausschuss für die Behindertenrechtskonvention (BRK) hat im September 2015 seine Richtlinien zur Interpretation und dem Umgang mit dem Artikel 14 der BRK, Freiheit und Sicherheit der Person, dahingehend verabschiedet, dass explizit die Möglichkeiten untersagt werden, die das Grundgesetz zur Aufhebung der Grundrechte durch ein Gesetz offen gelassen hat, wenn diese gesetzlichen Sonderregelungen eine “Behinderung” zum Kriterium haben35. Hierzu zählt auch die Zwangsbehandlung psychisch Kranker36. Eine solche Behandlung gegen den Willen wäre bei einem gesunden Menschen ausgeschlossen.

Das Deutsche Institut für Menschenrechte hatte sich schon 2013 in mehreren Stellungnahmen u.a. für den Deutschen Bundestag für eine “gewaltfreie Psychiatrie” ausgesprochen und ausgeführt, “Es bestehen nach wie vor große Zweifel, ob der Entwurf im Einklang mit der UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention steht”37. Menschenrechtlich und ethisch sei es “fragwürdig, ob eine psychiatrische Behandlung ohne freie Zustimmung der betroffenen Person vorgenommen werden dürfe”. Vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen menschenrechtlichen Diskussion und der Entwicklung des internationalen Rechts gebe es “schwerwiegende Bedenken gegen eine solche Regelung”38. Schon mit Verabschiedung der Gesetzesvorlage zur Zwangsbehandlung im Rahmen des § 1906 BGB habe Deutschland “eine historische Chance verpasst, aus den Erfahrungen einer Psychiatrie ohne Zwang zu lernen und das System der psychiatrischen Versorgung weiterzuentwickeln.” Es werde mit einem falschen und unverhältnismäßigen Ansatz über eine gesetzliche Neuregelung der Zwangsbehandlung nachgedacht, ohne eine unabdingbare, umfassende Überprüfung der Psychiatrie und strukturelle Verbesserungen der psychiatrischen Versorgung auf der Basis der Menschenrechte erfolgen zu lassen39.

Eine wesentliche Kritik des Bundesverfassungsgerichtes40 an einer Zwangsbehandlung mit Psychopharmaka besteht darin, dass in Deutschland, nachdem von der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychiatrie, Psychotherapie und Nervenheilkunde (DGPPN) in den neunziger Jahren initiierte Versuche zur Etablierung medizinischer “Standards” für Zwangsbehandlungen zu keinem Ergebnis geführt haben41, “nach wie vor keine medizinischen Standards für psychiatrische Zwangsbehandlungen existieren. Aus denen müsste mit der notwendigen Deutlichkeit hervorgehen, dass Zwangsbehandlungen mit dem Ziel, den Untergebrachten entlassungsfähig zu machen, ausschließlich im Fall krankheitsbedingter Einsichtsunfähigkeit zulässig sind”42. Eine entsprechende Einsichtsfähigkeit sei verbindlich zu definieren.

Distincte et clare gilt:

Ebenso praktikable wie eindeutige Standards sind nicht denkbar.

Bis heute gibt es keine verbindlichen Standards zur Beantwortung, auf welcher Grundlage Psychiater zur Einschätzung gelangen wollen, dass bei einem Patienten Einwilligungsunfähigkeit gegeben sei. Es gibt keine Standards für die Behandlung zur Wiederherstellung einer solchen Einwilligungsfähigkeit. Diese Wiederherstellung der Einwilligungsfähigkeit muss nach gesetzgeberischem Willen im Zuge der Gesetzesinitiativen erklärtermaßen das Ziel einer Zwangsbehandlung sein.

Psychiatrische Diagnosen wie die Feststellung einer psychiatrischen Erkrankung als Anlass einer Zwangsbehandlung unterliegen dem zeitlichen, ethischen und auch kulturellen Wandel. Der neu erschienene Diagnosekatalog DSM-5, der auch Grundlage für den neuen ICD-11 als Standardverzeichnis psychischer Erkrankungen werden wird, legt die Grenzen einer psychischen Erkrankung und einer zugrundeliegenden Diagnose derart weit auseinander, dass “viele Gesunde über Nacht zu psychisch Kranken”43 gemacht werden. Erwartet wird ein signifikanter Zuwachs vermeintlicher, oder auch erfundener psychiatrischer Krankheiten bei Kindern und bei Erwachsenen, die nicht zuletzt auch die Grundlage von Zwangsbehandlungen und Zwangsmedikationen sein können. Der Psychiater Allen Frances spricht in seinem Buch “NORMAL” von einer regelrechten “Inflation psychiatrischer Diagnosen” durch das neue Manual “DSM-V”.
Künftig wird die Grenze, die bisher mit jeder neuen Ausgabe bzw. Neuauflage des DSM zu Lasten des Bereichs des Normalen verschoben wurde, noch weiter gezogen werden (Eine banale Schüchternheit wird zu einer psychiatrisch behandlungspflichtigen “sozialen Phobie”, “kindliches Trotzen” wird zur psychiatrisch-behandlungspflichtigen “Wutkrankheit” und selbst starke prämenstruelle Beschwerden gelten künftig ebenso als psychische Krankheit, wie das “Binge-Eating”, also Essattacken)44. Einer Studie zufolge erfüllten schon mehr als achtzig Prozent (!) der jungen Erwachsenen die Kriterien für eine psychische Störung45.

Sich hieraus ergebende Gefahren für den vom Bundesverfassungsgericht geforderten Grundrechtschutz46 sind evident. Alleine die Diagnose einer psychischen Krankheit soll bei Annahme einer vorübergehenden Einwilligungsunfähigkeit Grundlage einer Zwangsbehandlung sein. Gerade aber der bislang bei allen Gesetzesinitiativen unbeantworteten vom Bundesverfassungsgericht47 gesehenen Frage, wie der Problematik der Ermangelung jedweder medizinischer Standards für Zwangsbehandlungen und das Kriterium der Einwilligungsunfähigkeit einer Lösung zugeführt wird, kommt bei sämtlichen geplanten Novellierungen zur Zwangsbehandlung signifikante Bedeutung zu. Bezeichnenderweise hat auch der Direktor des National Institut für Mental Health (NIHM), Thomas Insel, am 29.4.2013 in einer NIMH-Veröffentlichung ausgeführt, dass sämtliche psychiatrische Diagnosen bisher keine hinreichende Validität hatten. Er spricht von einem “lack of validity”48.

In Kumulation mit dem Umstand, dass es im Zuge einer Zwangsbehandlung keine freie Arztwahl, geschweige denn eine Option zur Auswahl der Therapie gäbe, sowie kein Recht, bei Zweifeln an der vorgeschlagenen Therapie einen anderen Arzt aufzusuchen, um sich eine zweite Meinung einzuholen49, das seitens vieler gesetzlichen Krankenkassen für ihre Versicherten eingeräumt wird, dürfte elementarer Grundrechtschutz vor dem Hintergrund immer weiter ausufernder, invalider, psychiatrischer Diagnosestellungen auf dem Spiel stehen.

Die Umfrage

In einer Totalerhebung wurden 676 Amtsgerichte in ganz Deutschland per Fax angeschrieben. Vor dem Hintergrund der Reform wurden sie gebeten, Fragen in 4 Komplexen zu beantworten50. Es gingen 181 Antworten ein, von 5 Gerichten mehrere Antworten verschiedener Richter, also 176 antwortende Amtsgerichte. Das sind rund 26 %.
Zu berücksichtigen ist dabei, dass die Justizministerien der Länder Bayern, Nordrhein-Westfalen und Schleswig-Holstein eine Erinnerung an die Umfrage für unerwünscht erklärten, hingegen die Justizministerien der Länder Baden-Württemberg und Niedersachsen die Umfrage unterstützten. Dies schränkte den weiteren Rücklauf von Gerichten aus den drei Bundesländern, die daraufhin nicht mehr erinnert wurden, deutlich ein. Aus den anderen Ländern erreichte uns ca. 50% des Rücklaufs erst nach Erinnerung.

Die Fragen und Antworthäufigkeiten für die Komplexe A bis D lauteten wie folgt:

Komplex A)

A1. Werden an Ihrem Betreuungsgericht psychiatrische Zwangsbehandlungen richterlich genehmigt?

▢ Ja
▢ Seitens unseres AGs wird auf diese Maßnahmen verzichtet

Vom gesamten Rücklauf waren:

Zwangsbehandlung genehmigende Antworten
128
abzüglich 5 mehrfache Antworten derselben Gerichte, also 123 70 %
auf Zwang verzichtend 14 ——–8 %
keine Anträge eingegangen  11 6 %
gar keine Antwort gegeben bzw. verweigert 28  16 %

Das AG Stolzenau autorisierte, dass dessen Verzicht auf Zwangsbehandlung öffentlich benannt wird.

Komplex B)

B1. Haben die Entscheidungen des BGH und des Bundesverfassungsgerichtes zur Unzulässigkeit der Zwangsbehandlung und die darauf folgende Reform des § 1906 BGB Einfluss auf die Anzahl der betreuungsgerichtlichen Unterbringungen?

▢ Nein
▢ Ja

Wenn ja, welchen?

B2. Bitte nennen Sie uns die Anzahl der Verfahren, bei denen es in Ihrem Gericht seit dem 1.3.2013 zu Genehmigungen einer Zwangsbehandlung gekommen ist.

Bezug wird in allen folgenden % Angaben nur auf die 176 – 28 = 148 Gerichte genommen, die Antworten gegeben bzw. nicht verweigert haben:

Kein Einfluss auf die Anzahl der Unterbringungen   103 70%
Ja, hatte Einfluss auf die Anzahl der Unterbringungen      38 25%
Keine Antwort     7 ——-5 %
Angaben zwischen 0 und 167 Genehmigungen machten 120 Gerichte
(-2 mehrfache Antworten derselben Gerichte)   118  80%

Komplex C)

C1. Haben Sie in entsprechenden Beschlüssen

▢ genaue Angabe über das Arzneimittel oder den Wirkstoff,
▢ dessen (Höchst-) Dosierung,
▢ die Verabreichungshäufigkeit gemacht?
▢ die Ernsthaftigkeit eines Überzeugungsversuchs nachprüfbar ermittelt?
▢ nachprüfbar ermittelt, dass keine unzulässige Druckausübung beim Überzeugungsversuch ausgeübt wurde?

genaue Angabe über das Arzneimittel oder den Wirkstoff 110
(-3 mehrfache Antworten derselben Gerichte)
107  72 %
dessen (Höchst-) Dosierung 100
(-3 mehrfache Antworten derselben Gerichte)
97 65,5 %
die Verabreichungshäufigkeit 96
(-2 mehrfache Antworten derselben Gerichte)
94 63,5,%
die Ernsthaftigkeit eines Überzeugungsversuchs nachprüfbar
ermittelt 104 (-3)
101 ——-68 %
nachprüfbar ermittelt, dass keine unzulässige Druckausübung
beim Überzeugungsversuch ausgeübt wurde
47  32 %
alle 5 gefragten Kriterien entsprechend den höchstrichterlichen
Beschlüssen erfüllt  35 23,5 %

Auffällig: Bei den vier Gerichten mit mehrfachen Antworten, sind die Antworten der Richter uneinheitlich.

Komplex D)

•Wie beeinflusst eine Patientenverfügung, in der psychiatrische Diagnostik und Behandlung mit Neuroleptika ausgeschlossen wird, den Ausgang eines Verfahrens auf Genehmigung einer Zwangsbehandlung?
•Haben Sie nachprüfbare konkrete Anhaltspunkte ermittelt, um den mutmaßlichen Willen zu bestimmen, zwangsbehandelt werden zu wollen, wenn bei einem einwilligungsunfähigen psychisch Kranken keine Patientenverfügung vorhanden war?
▢ Nein
▢ Ja
Wenn ja welche?

Wie beeinflusst eine Patientenverfügung den Ausgang eines
Verfahrens auf Genehmigung einer Zwangsbehandlung?
Antworten unterschiedlich (-5)
119 80%
Werden nachprüfbare konkrete Anhaltspunkte ermittelt, um
den mutmaßlichen Willen zu bestimmen, zwangsbehandelt
werden zu wollen? Nein (-2)
69  ——-47%
Ja (-2)       49  33%

Die Umfragebögen und die Antworten der Gerichte sind im Internet abrufbar: http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/narrwd/legende.htm

Die Rechtsprechung reagiert im Ergebnis dieser Befragung verhalten auf die Novellierungen des Gesetzgebers zur Zwangsbehandlung. Die Anzahl der Unterbringungsverfahren sei rückläufig, so die Tendenz mancher Betreuungsgerichte in Hinblick auf die Rechtsprechung des Bundesverfassungsgerichtes.

Die strengen Voraussetzungen, die überhaupt noch zur Unterbringung führen dürfen, sehen die Gerichte allerdings teilweise als wenig praktikabel an. Die jeweiligen Entscheidungen der Betreuungsgerichte werden dem Charakter einer Zwangsbehandlung als “ultima Ratio” nicht gerecht. Besonders zeigt sich dies daran, dass nur 23,5 % der Zwangsbehandlung genehmigenden Gerichte alle 5 gefragten Kriterien entsprechenden den höchstrichterlichen Beschlüssen erfüllten.
Die Anwendung der einschränkenden Bedingungen für “ultima Ratio” führen dazu, dass die Freiheitsgrundrechte eines Betroffenen immer wieder unzureichend beachtet werden, so dass die Thematik noch häufig vor dem Bundesverfassungsgericht mündet.
Erst jüngst hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht in zwei aktuellen Entscheidungen51 nochmals moniert, dass die Gerichte trotz eindeutiger Vorgaben des Gesetzgebers “bei der Auslegung und Anwendung des einfachen Rechts die Bedeutung und Tragweite des Freiheitsgrundrechts verkannt” hätten.
Es hat die Fachgerichte nochmals angemahnt, die Eingriffsqualität einer Zwangsbehandlung zu beachten. Inhalt und Tragweite der Freiheitsgrundrechte sei durch hinreichende Sachverhaltsprüfung Rechnung zu tragen. Die medizinische Behandlung gegen den natürlichen Willen bzw. Zwangsbehandlung einer Betroffenen könne und dürfe entgegen der früher geübten Praxis wegen des intensiven Eingriffs in die körperliche Integrität der Betroffenen als Grundrechtsträgerin nicht erfolgen, wenn nicht alle strengen Voraussetzungen hierfür erfüllt seien.

Die befragten Gerichte haben sich in der weit überwiegenden Anzahl für den Vorrang einer Patientenverfügung und für die Beachtung der Vorsorgevollmacht ausgesprochen und diese als Hindernis der Überwindung eines entgegenstehenden Willens bei der Zwangsbehandlung anerkannt. Bedenklich ist gleichwohl, dass rd. 20% der Gerichte nach wie vor Schwierigkeiten haben, die eindeutigen Prämissen des Gesetzgebers umzusetzen, um generell gegen eine Zwangsbehandlung zu entscheiden, wenn eine Patientenverfügung vorliegt, die Zwangsbehandlung untersagt. Hier sind die Betreuungsgerichte künftig gehalten, neue auf dem individuellen Willen basierende Lebensmodelle jenseits des psychiatrischen Zwangs zuzulassen, denn auch die Mitgliedschaft “in einem sich gegen den Einsatz von Psychopharmaka engagierenden Verein” muss einem Betreuungsgericht Anlass sein, zu ermitteln, ob sich der Betroffene nicht schon “im Zustand freier Willensbildung zur Absetzung der Neuroleptika entschieden hat” und ein beachtlicher, der Zwangsbehandlung entgegenstehender, Wille kundgetan wurde52.

Die Last der Prüfungsdichte, die die Betreuungsgerichte als kaum praktikabel beklagen, wiegt in Hinblick auf diese aktuellen Entscheidungen des Verfassungsgerichtes noch schwerer. Auch bei psychiatrischer Behandlung wird es den selbstbestimmten Patienten geben. Die bisherige Praxis der Behandlung eines Betroffenen gegen seinen Willen mit Neuroleptika wird zum Auslaufmodell.

Ausblick

Auch wenn in der Umfrage keine Fragen gestellt wurden, die auf die seit dem 1.1.2009 zum einfachen Gesetz gewordene BRK eingehen, ist auch für die Gerichte der seit dem 17.5.2015 vorliegende Staatenbericht des zuständigen UN-Fachausschusses über Deutschland bedeutsam. In ihm wird im Hinblick auf die Psychiatrie scharfe Kritik geübt, siehe insbesondere Artikel 11., 12., 25., 26., 29., 30., 33., 34. 38. Z.B. wird Zwangsbehandlung als Folter bezeichnet53.

Die Regelung zur Zwangsbehandlung zielt nach den Feststellungen des Deutschen Institutes für Menschenrechte darauf ab, sich über das Kriterium der Einwilligungsunfähigkeit “über den natürlichen Willen der betroffenen Person hinwegsetzen zu können und an die Stelle der persönlichen Entscheidung die Entscheidung Dritter zu setzen – eine so genannte, durch die BRK untersagte, ersetzende Entscheidungsfindung (“substituted decision-making”).”

Ergänzend wird dort ausgeführt: “Im Lichte der aktuellen menschenrechtlichen Diskussion, wie sie auch in Studien des UN-Hochkommissariats für Menschenrechte (UN Doc. A/HRC/10/48 vom 26. Januar 2009) und in der Auslegungspraxis des UN-Fachausschusses für die Rechte von Menschen mit Behinderungen im Zusammenhang der gesundheitlichen Versorgung von Menschen mit Behinderungen Ausdruck findet, ist der Ansatz, wonach eine psychiatrische Behandlung ohne freie und informierte Zustimmung der betroffenen Person, allein legitimiert über die Entscheidung Dritter vorgenommen werden soll, menschenrechtlich in Frage gestellt.”54

Die gesetzlichen Regelungen des § 1906 BGB haben eine “Behinderung” zum Kriterium, die gemessen an den Grundsätzen des Artikel 14 der Behindertenrechtskonvention, Freiheit und Sicherheit der Person, als Sondergesetzgebung gegen geltendes Konventionsrecht verstoßen. So der UN-Fachausschuss für die BRK und dessen in der 14. Sitzung aufgestellten Richtlinien zur Interpretation und dem Umgang mit dem Artikel 14 BRK55.

Das Bundesverfassungsgericht hatte zur Frage der Einwilligungsfähigkeit schon 2011 ausgeführt:

“In Deutschland existieren, nachdem von der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychiatrie, Psychotherapie und Nervenheilkunde (DGPPN) in den neunziger Jahren initiierte Versuche zur Etablierung medizinischer Standards für Zwangsbehandlungen nicht zu einem Ergebnis geführt haben (vgl. Steinert, in: Ketelsen/Schulz/Zechert, Seelische Krise und Aggressivität, 2004, S. 44 <47>), keine medizinischen Standards für psychiatrische Zwangsbehandlungen, aus denen mit der notwendigen Deutlichkeit hervorginge, dass Zwangsbehandlungen mit dem Ziel, den Untergebrachten entlassungsfähig zu machen, ausschließlich im Fall krankheitsbedingter Einsichtsunfähigkeit zulässig sind. Dass dementsprechend ein Bewusstsein hierfür in den medizinischen und juristischen Fachkreisen noch nicht allgemein verbreitet und eine gesetzliche Regelung, wie im Beschluss des Senats vom 23. März 2011 festgestellt, unverzichtbar ist, illustriert nicht zuletzt der vorliegende Fall, in dem weder die Klinik noch die Fachgerichte sich mit der Frage, ob beim Beschwerdeführer eine krankheitsbedingte Unfähigkeit zur Einsicht in die Notwendigkeit der Behandlung bestehe, auch nur ansatzweise auseinandergesetzt haben. Die bloße Feststellung einer Persönlichkeitsstörung beantwortet diese Frage nicht.”56
Der Begriff der Einwilligungsunfähigkeit ist schon deshalb problematisch, weil der Begriff in Ermangelung von Standards, als unbestimmter und damit ausfüllbarer und sich wandelnden subjektiven Definitionen zugänglicher Rechtsbegriff gelten muss. Als solcher wird er wegen der Eingriffsintensität den Anforderungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichtes ebenso wenig genügen, wie in den Vorentscheidungen der Begriff der “Regeln der ärztlichen Kunst”57.

In einer Entscheidung vom Februar 2013 hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht zu § 22 SächsPsychKG in einem weiteren Nichtigkeitsbeschluss zu entsprechenden Regelungswerken der Länder ausgeführt:

“… dass § 22 Abs. 1 Satz 1 SächsPsychKG auf die Regeln der ärztlichen Kunst verweist, ändert daran nichts. Unabhängig von der Frage, ob dieser Verweis überhaupt hinreichend deutlich eine umfassende Bindung an die Regeln der ärztlichen Kunst statuiert, liegt in einer solchen Bindung keine hinreichend deutliche gesetzliche Begrenzung der Möglichkeit der Zwangsbehandlung auf Fälle der fehlenden Einsichtsfähigkeit.”58
Ohne die Schaffung von Grundvoraussetzungen und Standards besteht jedenfalls die konkrete Gefahr einer Subjektivierung des Begriffes der Einwilligungsunfähigkeit je nach Gutdünken des jeweiligen Arztes oder Gutachters.

Eine Kritik, der sich auch die DGPPN nicht verschließen kann, wenn und soweit kritisch ausgeführt wird: “Als wenig praxisgerecht erscheint dagegen die Forderung, dass unbeteiligte Sachverständige, die nicht in die Behandlung einbezogen und nicht in der behandelnden Klinik tätig sind, in dem rechtlichen Verfahren gutachterlich tätig werden sollen. (….) Erschwerend kommt der Mangel an kompetenten, externen Gutachtern dazu59.”

Damit wird von höchster fachpsychiatrischer Ebene die Gutachterkompetenz bei der Einschätzung einer Einwilligungsunfähigkeit, die immerhin über das “ob und wie” eines erheblichen Grundrechtseingriffes entscheidet, in Frage gestellt und eingeräumt, dass je nach subjektiver Gedankenwelt und Vorstel-lungen des Sachverständigen Ergebnisse bei gleichem Probanden variieren und letztlich ein schlichtes Bauchgefühl über Freiheit oder Unterbringung und Zwangsmedikation entscheidet. Bei einem psychologischen Sachverstän-digengutachten muss es sich hingegen um eine wissenschaftliche Leistung handeln.

Die Einschätzung einer Nichteinsichtsfähigkeit in eine Behandlung ist fachlich hochgradig instabil bzw. subjektiv, weil bislang keine handhabbaren Kriterien existieren, zwischen Einsichtsfähigkeit und Nichteinsichtsfähigkeit zu unterscheiden. Hierauf einen Eingriff in Grundrechte zu stützen, ist verfassungsrechtlich jedenfalls unhaltbar.

Regelung zur Patientenverfügung – Fehlende Regelungen zur Vorsorgevollmacht

Die Regelungen zur Patientenverfügung des Gesetzesvorhabens trägt dem Selbstbestimmungsrecht Rechnung. Diesem Willen wird aber nach wie vor nicht von allen Betreuungsgerichten für eine Untersuchung wie auch für eine Behandlung Rechnung getragen. Jeder Mensch hat das Recht, sich in freier Entscheidung gegen eine Unterbringung zu seinem eigenen Schutz zu entscheiden und stattdessen mit den Risiken seiner Krankheit in Freiheit leben zu wollen. Diese Entscheidung kann auch in einer Patientenverfügung für den Fall eines späteren Verlusts der Einsichtsfähigkeit niedergelegt werden60.

Die Regelungen erfolgen in Beachtung des aus § 1901a Abs. 1 Satz 1 BGB resultierenden Selbstbestimmungsrechtes eines Patienten bei Errichtung einer Patientenverfügung. Das Recht auf Selbstbestimmung und die personale Würde des Patienten (Art. 2 Abs. 2 S. 2 GG) gebieten es, jedem Patienten gegenüber einem Arzt und Krankenhaus grundsätzlich Anspruch auf Ablehnung von Diagnosestellungen und ärztlichen Behandlungen einzuräumen. Der Vorrang wird unbedingt gewährt. Es entspricht den Vorgaben des Verfassungsgerichtes zu einem generellen Zwangsbehandlungsverbot bei Einwilligungsfähigkeit bzw. antizipierter Willensbekundung im Zustand der Einwilligungsfähigkeit.

Zusammenfassung

Inzwischen hat sich in der Rechtsprechung durchgesetzt, dass die Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichtes vom 23.03.2011 (NJW 2011, 2113ff.) sowie vom 12.10.2011 (NJW 2011, 3571ff) für alle gesetzlichen Regelungen über Zwangsbehandlungen Bedeutung haben und Zwangsbehandlungsgesetze generell den vom Bundesverfassungsgericht aufgestellten Anforderungen genügen müssten61.

Die Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichtes sind auch in der Rechtsprechung und weiten Teilen der Literatur allgemein als verbindlich für alle Regelwerke betreffend Zwangsmaßnahmen bei der Gabe von Neuroleptika angenommen worden.

Die Monitoring-Stelle zur UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention, die in Berlin am Deutschen Institut für Menschenrechte angesiedelt ist, sieht die Wiedereinführung von Regelungen zur Zwangsbehandlung als nicht zulässig.

In einer Stellungnahme der Monitoring-Stelle zur öffentlichen Sitzung des Rechtsausschusses des Bundestages vom Dezember 2012 wird hervorgehoben, dass das Konzept der “krankheitsbedingten Nichteinsichtsfähigkeit” im Wortlaut der UN-Behindertenrechtskonventionen selbst keinen Halt finde.
Weder der Wortlaut des Artikels 12 UN-BRK über die gleiche rechtliche Handlungsfähigkeit noch die Auslegungspraxis des UN-BRK-Ausschusses ließen derzeit den Schluss zu, dass die rechtliche Handlungsfähigkeit auf Grund einer Behinderung eingeschränkt werden dürfe. Im Rahmen der internationalen Verhandlungen zur Schaffung der UN-BRK habe man sich bewusst dagegen entschieden, ein entsprechendes Kriterium zur Einschränkung beziehungsweise zur Bestimmung der Einschränkbarkeit aufzunehmen.

Die UN-BRK gehe davon aus, dass alle Menschen mit Behinderungen “Rechts- und Handlungsfähigkeit” genießen (Artikel 12 Absatz 2 UN-BRK). In Verbindung mit dem Recht auf Gesundheit (Artikel 25 UN-BRK) bedeutet dies das Recht, in Fragen individueller gesundheitlicher Angelegenheiten in allen Fällen eine “freie und informierte Entscheidung” über die eigenen gesundheitlichen Belange treffen zu dürfen, insbesondere darüber, ob und wenn ja, welche Therapie angewendet wird.
Die im deutschen Verfassungsrecht anerkannte Figur der “Freiheit zur Krankheit” sei genau in diesem Kontext zu verorten. Die menschenrechtlichen Regelungen gehen darüber hinaus.
In Anbetracht der Interpretation des UN-BRK-Ausschusses sind die Anwendung von Zwang im Zusammenhang mit der Behandlung von Menschen mit Behinderungen nicht legitim.

Die zwangsweise Unterbringung und zwangsweise Behandlung von Menschen mit Behinderungen stelle eine Reihe von menschenrechtlich verbrieften Rechtsgewährleistungen in Frage.
Insbesondere wenn Menschen auf Grund ihrer Behinderung oder in der Kombination mit einem behinderungsrelevanten Merkmal eine stärkere Einschränkung ihrer Rechte zugemutet werde als Nichtbehinderten, lasse dies eine Ungleichbehandlung erkennen, die nach Maßgabe des Diskriminierungsverbots (Artikel 5 UN-BRK) nicht zu rechtfertigen sei.

Darüber hinaus sei die Einschätzung einer Nichtzustimmungsfähigkeit in eine Behandlung fachlich hochgradig instabil, weil handhabbare Kriterien bislang nicht zu finden sind, zwischen Einsichtsfähigkeit und Nichteinsichtsfähigkeit zu unterscheiden.
Nach Artikel 12 UN-BRK bestehe aber die Verpflichtung, die Unterstützung (“support”) für Menschen mit Behinderungen so zu gewährleisten, dass sie autonom entscheiden – die unterstützende Entscheidungsfindung (“supported decision-making”). Diese anspruchsvolle Form der Unterstützung im Sinne von Assistenz dürfe weder über die gesetzliche Vertretung, noch durch eine zwangsweise durchgesetzte Entscheidung, die Dritte für eine betroffene Person getroffen haben, ersetzt werden62.

Der Sonderberichterstatter über Folter des UN-Hochkommissariats für Menschenrechte, Juan E Méndez, erklärte in der 22. Sitzung des “Human Rights Council” am 4. März 2013 Zwangsbehandlung in der Psychiatrie zu Folter bzw. zu grausamer, unmenschlicher oder erniedrigender Behandlung. Er forderte, dass alle Staaten ein Verbot aller nicht einvernehmlichen medizinischen bzw. Zwangsbehandlungen verhängen sollten, einschließlich nicht-einvernehmlicher Psychochirurgie, Elektroschocks und Verabreichung bewusstseinsverändernder Drogen, sowohl in lang- wie kurzfristiger Anwendung. Die Verpflichtung, erzwungene psychiatrische Behandlung zu beenden, sei sofort zu verwirklichen und auch knappe finanzielle Ressourcen können keinen Aufschub der Umsetzung rechtfertigen63.

Auch der frühere Bundesrichter Wolfgang Neškovic kritisierte das Zwangsbehandlungsgesetz. Die Kriterien seien “bevormundend und paternalistisch”. Sie “ignorierten das Selbstbestimmungsrecht”, sie “entwürdigten den Patienten zum Objekt”. Genau das habe das Patientenverfügungsgesetz verhindern wollen. Das sollte nicht nur für Komapatienten und Demenzkranke, sondern für die gesamte Gruppe der “Einsichtsunfähigen” gelten. Wenn der Patient seinen Willen aktuell aber nicht klar äußern könne, müsse “auf dessen ausdrückliche Verfügung oder seinen mutmaßlichen Willen anhand konkreter Anhaltspunkte zurückgegriffen” werden64.

Die Kritik an Zwangsbehandlung stützt sich auf Verfassungsrecht. Es muss auch für den Einwilligungsunfähigen gelten. Das Bundesverfassungsgericht habe Art. 2 Abs. 2 Satz 1 GG menschenrechtlich zutreffend als Aktivrecht jeder Person ausgelegt: “Jeder hat das Recht auf Leben und körperliche Unversehrtheit.” Art. 2 Abs. 2 Satz 2 GG laute konsequent: “Die Freiheit der Person ist unverletzlich.” Das bedeute, jeder erfahre sich als Person, indem er über sich, das eigene Leben und die eigene Unversehrtheit zu allererst ihres/seines Körpers selbst entscheidet. Darum habe das Verfassungsgericht zutreffend formuliert, es sei unzulässig, stellvertretend, und sei es als Psychiater aus gesundheitlichen oder anderen Gründen der Rehabilitation, eine Person zwangsweise zu behandeln. Die Selbstbestimmung des Menschen schließe alle kranken oder gesunden Befindlichkeiten ein.

Indem das Bundesverfassungsgericht über die historisch herkömmliche Begrenzung des Kerns der Menschenrechte als Abwehrrechte hinausgehe, folge es der BRK der Vereinten Nationen von 2006. Sie sei auf Vorschlag der Bundesregierung im Dezember 2008 vom Deutschen Bundestag als Gesetz übernommen worden. Die Behindertenrechtskonvention gehe folgerichtig im Sinne der Wirklichkeit des Menschen und seiner sozialen Bedingungen darüber hinaus. Sie verlange, die sozialen, technischen und wissenschaftlichen Bedingungen zu schaffen um Behinderungen zu überwinden. Die Behinderten würden ansonsten um ihre Grund- und Menschenrechte gebracht, obwohl sie nominell gelten65. Die “Freiheit zur Krankheit”, als Ausfluss des allgemeinen Persönlichkeitsrechts und der allgemeinen Handlungsfreiheit werde durch die Entscheidungen der Gerichte bekräftigt.

Der Staat müsse es von jeher hinnehmen, schreibt Rinke 1988 in der Neuen Zeitschrift für Strafrecht, wenn der Bürger fürsorgerische Leistungen eigenverantwortlich ablehne66.

Zwei Jahre nach in Kraft treten des BGB-Gesetzes zur Zwangsbehandlung kann nur dessen Scheitern festgestellt werden: es hat das Ziel einer “Ultima Ratio” Regelung verfehlt, stattdessen Rechtsunsicherheit geschaffen. Der Versuch körperlich Kranke und psychisch Kranken ungleich zu behandeln und letztere rechtlich mit einem Sondergesetz zu diskriminieren, wenn sie einwilligungsunfähig diagnostiziert werden sollten, ist ein Verstoß gegen den Gleichbehandlungsgrundsatz von Art. 3 GG und gegen den Kern der BRK. Es darf kein staatliches Monopol gesundheitlicher Bevormundung mit Zwang geben. Freie Willensentscheidung mit körperverletzendem Zwang erreichen zu wollen, ist in sich paradox.

Entweder Grundrechte oder Behandlung um jeden Preis.

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1.BVerfG FamRZ 2011, 1128 und FamRZ 2011, 1927
2.BGH FamRZ 2015, 567 Rn. 12; FamRZ 2013, 1646 Rn. 12; FamRZ 2008, 866 Rn. 19 und FamRZ 2001, 149 f (BGH, Vorlagebeschluss vom 01. Juli 2015 – XII ZB 89/15 -, Rn. 17, juris)
3.ablehnend schon BVerfGE 58, 208 (226)
4.BVerfG FamRZ 2011, 1128 und FamRZ 2011, 1927
5.BGH, Beschlüsse vom 20. Juni 2012 – XII ZB 130/12 und XII ZB 99/12
6.BTDrucks 17/11513 und 17/12086
7.BVerfG, Beschluss vom 14. Juli 2015 – 2 BvR 1549/14, 2 BvR 1550/14 -, Rn. 27, juris
8.BGH XII ZB 99/12 und BGH XII ZB 130/12 Beschlüsse vom 20.06.2012
9.Inzwischen novelliert durch das am 26.02.2013 in Kraft getretene “Gesetz zur Regelung der betreuungsrechtlichen Einwilligung in eine ärztliche Zwangsmaßnahme” vom 18.02.2013, Bundesgesetzbl. 2013 Teil I Nr. 9
10.BGBl. I S. 266
11.BVerfG, BVerfGE 128, 282-322 S. 317 (Beschluss vom 23. März 2011 – 2 BvR 882/09)
12.BVerfGE 116, 69 S. 80
13.BVerfG, 2 BvR 228/12 Beschluss vom 20.2.2013
14.BVerfGE 128, 282 S. 318 ff. (Beschluss vom 23. März 2011 – 2 BvR 882/09)
15.BVerfGE a.a.O. (Beschluss vom 23. März 2011 – 2 BvR 882/09)
16.BverfGE a.a.O.
17.BGH, Beschl. v. 01.02.2006 – XII ZB 236/05 – Heitmann, jurisPR-FamR 9/2006 Anm. 1
18.Heitmann, Zwangsbehandlung und Verfassungsrecht jurisPR-FamR 13/2012, S. 18
19.OLG Zweibrücken, 1 Ws 90/11 Beschluss vom 01.08.2011 (juris)
20.BVerfG 2 BvR 1194/80 Beschluss vom 7. Oktober 1981 (BVerfG 58, 208 ff.)
21.BVerfG 2 BvR 1194/80; BVerfG 58, 208 (S. 227)
22.BVerfG a.a.O. S. 224 f.
23.BVerfG 2 BvR 882/09
24.BVerfG 2 BvR 633/11
25.BVerfG 2 BvR 228/12; zuvor schon BVerfG 2 BvR 2362/11 Beschluss vom 15.12.2011
26.BVerfG, Beschluss vom 28. November 2013 – 2 BvR 2784/12 -, juris Regelung
27.BVerfG, Beschluss vom 14. Juli 2015 – 2 BvR 1549/14, 2 BvR 1550/14
28.BVerfG, Nichtannahmebeschluss vom 07. Juli 2015 – 2 BvR 1180/15 -, juris
29.BGH XII ZB 99/12 Beschluss vom 20.06.2012
30.BGH, Vorlagebeschluss vom 01. Juli 2015 – XII ZB 89/15 -, Rn. 22, juris
31.BGH, Beschluss vom 11. Oktober 2000 – XII ZB 69/00 -, BGHZ 145, 297-310, Rn. 21
32.BVerfG Beschluss vom 23.03.2011 – 2 BvR 882/09
33.Institut für Menschenrechte, News vom 25.06.2013, “UN-Sonderberichterstatter: Absolutes Verbot von jeglichen Zwangsbehandlungen im Zusammenhang der psychiatrischen Versorgung”
34.Institut für Menschenrechte a.a.O.
35.http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CRPD/14thsession/GuidelinesOnArticle14.doc
36.vgl. TAZ vom 26.2.2008 auf Seite 21
37.Pressemitteilung des Deutschen Instituts für Menschenrechte vom 13.01.2013, ” Monitoring-Stelle fordert Enquete-Kommission zu Psychiatrie-Reform” unter Bezugnahme auf Valentin Aichele, Leiter derMonitoring-Stelle zur UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention
38.Institut für Menschenrechte a.a.O.
39.Stellungnahme der Monitoring-Stelle zur UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention anlässlich der Öffentlichen Anhörung am 10. Dezember 2012 im Rahmen der 105. Sitzung des Rechtsausschusses des Deutschen Bundestages
40.BVerfG, 2 BvR 633/11 vom 12.10.2011
41.Steinert, in: Ketelsen/Schulz/Zechert, Seelische Krise und Aggressivität, 2004, 44 , S. 47
42.BVerfG, 2 BvR 633/11 vom 12.10.2011
43.Der Stern vom 31. Mai 2013, Neues Standardwerk der Psychiatrie DSM-5 -Psychisch krank über Nacht
44.Der Stern a.a.O.
45.Blech, J. in Spiegel online vom 12.04.2013 – “Normal von Allen Frances: Beichte eines Psychiater-Papstes”
46.BVerfGE 2 BvR 882/09 Beschluss vom 23.03.2011 und 2 BvR 633/11 Beschluss vom 12.10.2011
47.instruktiv BVerfG, 2 BvR 633/11 vom 12.10.2011
48.http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml
49.statt vieler: Techniker Krankenkasse vom 05.01.2010: “Recht auf  Zweitmeinung”,
https://www.tk.de/tk/behandlungen/zweitmeinung/recht-auf-zweitmeinung/213558
50.Den jeweiligen Fragen der Umfrage sind einer Sammlung an Gesetzestexten und höchstrichterlichen Urteilen zugeordnet
51.BVerfG, Beschluss vom 07. Juli 2015 – 2 BvR 1180/15 und Beschluss vom 14. Juli 2015 – 2 BvR 1549/14
52.BVerfG Beschluss vom 14. Juli 2015 – 2 BvR 1549/14
53. http://www.institut-fuer-menschenrechte.de/fileadmin/user_upload/PDF-Dateien/UN-Dokumente/CRPD_Abschliessende_Bemerkungen_ueber_den_ersten_Staatenbericht_Deutschlands_ENTWURF.pdf
Abschliessende_Bemerkungen_ueber_den_ersten_Staatenbericht_Deutschlands_ENTWURF.pdf
54.Aichele, Valentin, Stellungnahme der Monitoring-Stelle zur UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention anlässlich der Öffentlichen Anhörung vom 10. Dezember 2012, im Rahmen der 105. Sitzung des Rechtsausschusses des Deutschen Bundestages
55.http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CRPD/14thsession/GuidelinesOnArticle14.doc
56.BVerfG, 2 BvR 633/11 vom 12.10.2011
57.BVerfG, 2 BvR 633/11 vom 12.10.2011: “In Deutschland existieren, nachdem von der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychiatrie, Psychotherapie und Nervenheilkunde (DGPPN) in den neunziger Jahren initiierte Versuche zur Etablierung medizinischer Standards für Zwangsbehandlungen nicht zu einem Ergebnis geführt haben (vgl. Steinert, in: Ketelsen/Schulz/Zechert, Seelische Krise und Aggressivität, 2004, S. 44 <47>), keine medizinischen Standards für psychiatrische Zwangsbehandlungen, aus denen mit der notwendigen Deutlichkeit hervorginge, dass Zwangsbehandlungen mit dem Ziel, den Untergebrachten entlassungsfähig zu machen, ausschließlich im Fall krankheitsbedingter Einsichtsunfähigkeit zulässig sind.”
58.BVerfG, Beschluss vom 20. Februar 2013 – 2 BvR 228/12 -, juris (Rn 60)
59.Falkai, Zwangsmaßnahmen: Verfahren transparent gestalten Presse-Information Nr. 47 /19.11.2012 der DGPPN
60.Drucksage 18-0606 S. 10
61.Sachs, Grundrechte: Körperliche Unversehrtheit und Selbstbestimmung JuS 2011, 1047
62.Stellungnahme der Monitoring-Stelle zur UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention anlässlich der Öffentlichen Anhörung vom 10. Dezember 2012, im Rahmen der 105. Sitzung des Rechtsausschusses des Deutschen Bundestages
63.Statement by Mr. Juan E Méndez, SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT, 22 nd session of the Human Rights Council, Agenda Item 3, 4 March 2013, Geneva
64.Neškovic, Der Wille des Patienten geht vor – Der Tagesspiegel, 29.11.2012
65.Narr et al. Behinderung, Menschenrechte und Zwang 2011
66.Rinke NStZ 1988, 10 S. 13

Contribution to the Campaign to Support the CRPD Absolute Prohibition of Commitment and Forced Treatment: María Teresa Fernández Vázquez (Mexico)

an English summary of the Spanish original posted at https://absoluteprohibition.wordpress.com/2016/03/18/aporte-a-la-campana-por-la-prohibicion-absoluta-en-la-cdpd-de-los-tratamientos-forzosos-y-los-internamientos-involuntarios-maria-teresa-fernandez-mexico/ and at https://sodisperu.org/2016/03/14/aporte-a-la-campana-por-la-prohibicion-absoluta-en-la-cdpd-de-los-tratamientos-forzosos-y-los-internamientos-involuntarios/

In this text I try to argue my support for the Campaign from three different approaches. First, from a humanistic and social perspective that sees the human person as a unique and irreducible being, whose “inexhaustible potential of existence” [1] unfolds and may unfold in infinite ways and expressions, all of which are equally valuable and precious. For centuries, however, persons with disabilities in general, and persons with psychosocial disabilities in particular, have been put down and aside, and their expressions rarely acknowledged or approved by the vast majority. Either through ignorance, fear, negligence, lust for power and control, etc., both governments and societies have been ready to repress human conducts that do not fit the socially construed parameters already embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, symbols and cultural stereotypes. So that the status quo is maintained. We should consider any attempt at repression of human expression as a form of social and political oppression that should not be tolerated. Instead, societies should open themselves to human diversity, and build with all those who are different a permanent dialogue; create – hand in hand with them – new forms of social interaction and coexistence that enrich us all. To this I bet.

Secondly, I talk from my personal experience as the sister of a man who in his adolescence was diagnosed with epilepsy and later in his life became an alcoholic. My brother was confined to health centers, “farms” and psychiatric hospitals on the recommendation of his treating physicians. I can testify the increasing deterioration suffered by my brother after each placement, which culminated with his painful and early death. His commitments were absolutely intolerable and ominous: for him, for us as his family, and for us all. I deeply regret that we did not have access to the information, advice, proper support or the services that would have allowed my brother to live his life differently, according to his needs and potential; humanly, in short. The worst of it all is that today – forty years later – things have not changed much. There is still the same lack of such: information, advice, proper support and services. People with psychosocial disabilities keep on being ill-treated and committed, even against their will; even if there is proved evidence that such treatments do not work, but, on the contrary, they do profound and irreversible harm. Both: governments (through laws, policies and lack of political will), health professionals and society as a whole continue to condemn persons with psychosocial disabilities to oblivion and to death, and do it with absolute impunity. This too is unacceptable and has to be changed. The UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities tells us how.

The third perspective I support the Campaign from is that of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, being myself a person with a physical disability and thus actively involved in its process. Complying with the Convention means respecting the dignity and individual autonomy of all persons with disabilities, as well as respecting their right to equality and non discrimination, to personal liberty and security. As the CRPD Committee declares: “forced treatment by psychiatric and other health and medical professionals is a violation of the right to equal recognition before the law (art. 5) and an infringement of the rights to personal integrity (art. 17); freedom from torture (art. 15); and freedom from violence, exploitation and abuse (art. 16). This practice denies the legal capacity of a person to choose medical treatment and is therefore a violation of article 12 of the Convention” (Par. 42).[2] The Committee also states that the segregation of persons with disabilities in institutions violates a number of the rights guaranteed under the Convention (Par. 46).

It is absolutely unacceptable, under the Convention, not to respect the dignity of persons with psychosocial disabilities, or to subject them to scrutiny and rude, authoritative assessments. Nor is admissible for anyone to attribute himself the faculty to decide in his opinion what best suits them, or to hold them in places where they loose everything: their autonomy, their freedom, and even their dignity. Places where they remain – subjected and powerless – under the absolute control of other persons’ will – never their own – and their integrity is lacerated. As the CRPD Committee clearly declares, such practices are in frank violation of the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities and must be eradicated.

Instead, States Parties to the Convention – as well as the whole of societies – should fulfill their moral and legal obligation to eradicate all existing barriers and take all the necessary measures to guarantee that people with psychosocial disabilities enjoy each and every of their fundamental rights and are included as active and irreplaceable parts of society on an equal basis with others.

 

[1] Boff, Leonardo. Tiempo de la trascendencia, el ser humano como un proyecto infinito, Santander, Sal Terrae, Brasil, 2000.

[2] Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, General Comment No. 1 on Article 12 (2014).

Aporte a la Campaña por la “Prohibición Absoluta en la CDPD de los Tratamientos Forzosos y los Internamientos Involuntarios”: María Teresa Fernández (México)

https://sodisperu.org/2016/03/14/aporte-a-la-campana-por-la-prohibicion-absoluta-en-la-cdpd-de-los-tratamientos-forzosos-y-los-internamientos-involuntarios/

La institucionalización de personas con discapacidad es una declaración de incompetencia de las autoridades gubernamentales y de las sociedades frente al fenómeno que representa la existencia humana. Una declaración de soberbia supina y de falta de voluntad; también, de indolencia, y también, de impunidad. Nos atribuimos la facultad de decidir si una a una de estas personas debe vivir, y cómo; o debe morir – y literalmente – encerrada entre muros estrechos e indiferentes, atada a una cama, un catre, un poste; sometida a un medicamento o a un cierto trato, el que nos venga a bien dispensarle; reducida y frustrada en sus posibilidades y sueños, sin más compañía que su propia intimidad diferente y asustada. Y nos creemos juiciosos, protectores, responsables – éticos. Nos decimos humanos y nos damos baños de pureza. Mejor sería hacerlo en el Ganges.

Mi hermano fue diagnosticado con epilepsia cuando entró en la adolescencia. Se hizo alcohólico después. Me llevaba 18 años. Fue internado varias veces en distintos centros, hospitales y “granjas”. Cada vez que salía – de más en más aminorado – había perdido algo nuevo: el brillo de sus ojos, su sonrisa franca y espontánea, alguna más de sus ganas de vivir.

Y sin embargo seguimos. Seguimos sin prestar atención a lo que filósofos, teólogos, humanistas, han venido repitiendo a lo largo de la historia: el ser humano – como sus expresiones y manifestaciones – es único e irreductible, como inagotable es su potencial de existencia. Nuestra pequeñez y cortedad de miras – aunadas a nuestras ansias de “normalidad”, de resultados y de eficacia; de absurdos absurdos, pues – no alcanza, siquiera, a preguntarse lo que esas cualidades de “único” y de “irreductible”, en relación con la persona humana, puedan significar.

Si no, ¿por qué, a pesar de los tantos “avances”:  científicos, tecnológicos, garantistas de derechos, seguimos sin ser capaces de aceptar que el ser humano tiene una existencia “condenada a abrir caminos siempre nuevos y siempre sorprendentes”[1]?, ¿por qué no nos permitimos el diálogo posible – y promisorio – con las diversas percepciones y expresiones humanas de la realidad?

Cuando un niño es inquieto, o “de más” ; o un adolescente, desinteresado, o su respuesta es glacial; cuando una mujer rompe en llanto, o monta en cólera, ante – decimos – “la menor provocación”, no tardamos en enjuiciar su conducta, y diagnosticarla, y patologizarla; no sólo su conducta, su ser por entero. Son pocos y cortos los pasos para transitar del juicio al diagnóstico y de ahí a la etiqueta – que lo será, ya para siempre, incuestionable e inamovible; y luego, a la medicalización, y al mismo tiempo, o poco después, al encierro. Y en este apresurado camino nos hemos olvidado:  de él, de ella, de la persona humana que ahí vivía.  Ya hemos llegado – y con plena conciencia – al umbral. Es la muerte. Una muerte que  – pareciera que confiamos – todo lo resolverá; o por lo menos, hemos logrado que así pensando y haciendo todo se resuelva, al menos, para nosotros. La impunidad.

Cada vez que mi hermano salía de uno de esos encierros nos decía que no quería más: que se lo llevaran, que lo encerraran, que lo amarraran, que lo durmieran, que le aplicaran electro shocks. Que lo mal trataran, que lo desnudaran, que lo despojaran, hasta de su dignidad. Era intolerable. Era ominoso. Yo era muy joven. Hoy tengo 64 años. Hace 40 que mi hermano murió en uno cualquiera de esos hospitales. Sigue vivo en mí.

Estos años me han servido para aprender que a quien le importa lo humano, se propone indagar lo que hay ahí adentro de ese otro, también humano. Descubrir su razón, su interés, su necesidad, su intención, su propuesta, su expresión – diferentes. Y vestir su piel. Y estar dispuesto a moverse y a tender puentes – y cruzar esos puentes.

Por eso me pareció extraordinario que el proceso de negociación de lo que llegaría a ser la Convención de Naciones Unidas sobre los derechos de las personas con discapacidad (CDPD, 2006),[2] hubiera asumido ese reto:  abrir sus puertas – y poner oídos atentos – a lo que las propias personas con discapacidad psicosocial tenían que decir sobre ellas mismas: que son seres humanos, iguales, íntegros e integrales, redondos; formados e  informados; presentes, pensantes, sintientes, activos y comprometidos; con las mismas necesidades y búsquedas de cualquier otro ser humano – y con los mismos derechos y obligaciones; y aún así, cada una y cada uno, con maneras y expresiones distintas, únicas, propias, privadas: las suyas. Como usted, apreciable lector; como yo también, y como todas y todos. Y tan así, que la intervención de estas personas con discapacidad en las negociaciones para la Convención conmocionó – impactó –, y fue capaz de crear posibilidades nunca antes vislumbradas, para ellas, para las y los demás: Un camino al diálogo real con la diversidad.  El inicio de un movimiento franco hacia la aprehensión – y la inclusión – de formas variadas de ser y estar en el mundo. Para desde ahí, aprender. Y desde ahí, convivir. Desde ahí, transformarse y transformar.

Hasta entonces, no había pasado todavía que alguien defendiera públicamente, y con tanta fuerza y claridad, que no es posible vivir ignorando o aniquilando a seres humanos, y por el simple hecho de no ser capaces – nosotros – de inteligir sus maneras; o porque molesta que griten fuerte y disonante cuando el mundo les duele; o porque amenazan los referentes de los útiles y cómodos statu quo.

Las personas con discapacidad psicosocial desmantelaron  – en y con la Convención – uno a uno de los mitos que nos hemos fabricado sobre ellas: su indefensión, su fragilidad, su “peligrosidad”; su incapacidad: de tomar decisiones, de asumir obligaciones y responsabilidades; de vivir en este mundo y atreverse a cuestionarlo; de aportar, de enriquecer-nos.  No es gratuito, entonces, que – en y desde la Convención –, no quepa más hacer distingos sobre ellas. O no, si para atentar en contra de su dignidad, o para propiciar que se vulneren sus derechos; tampoco para someterlas a escrutinios y valoraciones groseras, autoritarias y sin fundamento, o al menos, moral. O para que alguien pueda atribuirse la facultad de poder decidir a su juicio lo que mejor les conviene, o de recluirlas en instancias en las que todo lo pierdan, incluso su autonomía y su libertad; incluso su dignidad.  Lugares donde queden – sometidas e impotentes – bajo el control absoluto de otra u otras voluntades – nunca la suya – y se lacere su integridad. ¿Qué razón – y qué derecho – le asiste: al Estado, a los profesionales de la salud, a las familias, a la sociedad en general, para permitirse un acto semejante?, me pregunto y se lo pregunto, sí, a usted, apreciable lector o lectora.

Todas las personas con discapacidad han sido reconocidas por la Convención con la misma dignidad y derechos que el resto de las personas.  Derechos de las personas con discapacidad – “incluidas aquellas que necesitan un apoyo más intenso” (Preámbulo CDPD, inciso j)) – son que se respete su dignidad y su valor; que se respete y aprecie su diferencia, tanto como su autonomía, su independencia y su libertad para tomar sus propias decisiones  – incluso, cuando estas decisiones puedan no coincidir con las nuestras, o nuestras opiniones y creencias – o nuestra voluntad; o nuestros intereses. Es también un derecho de todas las personas con discapacidad –reconocido por la Convención– que se les proporcionen los apoyos que ellas estimen necesitar para tomar sus propias decisiones (Artículo 12.3 CDPD), incluida la de dónde y con quién vivir, y sin que se vean obligadas a vivir con arreglo a un sistema de vida específico (Artículo 19. a)CDPD). También es derecho de ellas disponer de los servicios de apoyo que faciliten su existencia y su inclusión en la comunidad y eviten que se les separe o aísle de ésta (artículo 19. b) CDPD).

El Comité de Naciones Unidas sobre los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad (CRPD), en su Observación General No.1,[3] ha abundado sobre el alcance del derecho de las personas con discapacidad a tomar sus propias decisiones y que éstas sean respetadas: “en todo momento, incluso en situaciones de crisis, deben respetarse la autonomía individual y la capacidad de las personas con discapacidad de adoptar decisiones,” (O.G.No.1 CRPD, Párr.18). También ha afirmado que entre estas decisiones se incluyen aquellas “decisiones fundamentales con respecto a su salud” (O.G.No.1 CRPD, Párr. 8); y más específicamente, el Comité ha reconocido el derecho de las personas con discapacidad a no ser internadas contra su voluntad en una institución de salud mental y a no ser obligadas a someterse a un tratamiento de salud mental (Artículo 14 CDPD) (O.G.No.1 CRPD, Párr. 31). También el Comité CRPD ha dejado en claro que todas las formas de apoyo en la toma de decisiones que las personas con discapacidad opten por recibir, “incluidas las formas más intensas, deben estar basadas en la voluntad y las preferencias de la persona, no en lo que se suponga que es su interés superior objetivo.” (O.G.No.1 CRPD, Párr. 29, Inciso b)).

Lamento profundamente que nada de esto fuera del dominio público cuando yo era niña. Cuando mi madre, al no disponer de los recursos necesarios: información, asesoramiento, apoyos y servicios – porque no existían, o eran inaccesibles – no encontró mejor opción para él, para ella y para mí, que poner a mi hermano a disposición de los médicos. Ella creyendo que sabían lo que era debido hacer; ellos alegando saberlo, a pesar de que un número incontable de historias – entre las que después se contaría también la de mi hermano – testimoniaban fehacientemente lo contrario.

Gracias a mi involucramiento con los procesos sobre la Convención de Naciones Unidas sobre los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad, he aprendido que es éticamente insostenible pretender – usted, yo, los gobiernos y las sociedades – seguir ignorando las incuestionables e infinitas realidades y posibilidades humanas. Que es inadmisible seguir apelando a maneras arcaicas y lugares comunes para enmascarar nuestra incapacidad de derribar barreras, estigmas y prejuicios, o nuestra falta – evidente – de voluntad. Como la que reconoce el valor de otras existencias y mantiene con ellas interacciones fecundas; la que incursiona en nuevas formas de acercamiento a las situaciones y de brindar atención y cuidados.

Hace 40 años no existían los servicios y los apoyos que habrían llevado la historia de mi hermano por otros caminos, hoy lo sabemos, menos crueles y fatales; que habrían permitido que él – con la debida asistencia – encontrara sus propias respuestas.  Al día de hoy, esos servicios y esos apoyos siguen sin estar disponibles, o aquí, en mi país. A saber a cuántas más vidas les han hecho falta también para crearse y recrearse a sí mismas; a cuántas personas más su inexistencia las sigue condenando al olvido – o a la muerte. De las grandes claves para el cambio, y algo tan sencillo y a la vez tan crucial para producirlo, hoy sigue sin ser habitado; sin siquiera ser explorado; o aquí, en mi país. Esto también es inaceptable.

Es por todo eso que yo me pronuncio – y decididamente – por la “Prohibición Absoluta en la CDPD de los Tratamientos Forzosos y los Internamientos Involuntarios”. 

Porque, en resumen, considero que estas prácticas:

  • Son reductivas de la persona humana y de la situación existencial que experimenta;
  • Van contra la dignidad, la autonomía y la libertad de las personas con discapacidad (Art. 3 CDPD);
  • “Medicalizan” problemas que son de índole social, en los que intervienen otros elementos contextuales: familiares, sociales, e incluso políticos, que entonces son ignorados, desatendidos y perpetuados; incluso, profundizados;
  • Son invasivas, autoritarias y jerárquicas, al aplicarse a las personas aún en contra de su voluntad;
  • Son cuestionables en sus fines, en sus efectos y consecuencias – muchas irreversibles y fatales –, y en su efectividad.
  • Refuerzan los estigmas y prejuicios sociales sobre las personas con discapacidad psicosocial, al utilizar categorías diagnósticas que – además de cuestionables – encasillan arbitraria y vitaliciamente a las personas, haciéndolas vulnerables a la exclusión, a la discriminación y a la muerte – la social, la biológica;
  • Son violatorias de derechos inalienables de las personas con discapacidad como, entre otros, el derecho a no ser privadas de su libertad por motivo de discapacidad (Art. 14 CDPD); el derecho a otorgar su consentimiento libre e informado sobre los tratamientos médicos que se le propongan (Art. 25. Inciso d)); el derecho a la integridad física y moral (Art. 16); el derecho a vivir de manera autónoma e independiente en la comunidad y a ser incluida como parte activa y necesaria de ella (Art.19 CDPD).

Con mi pronunciamiento en apoyo a la “Prohibición Absoluta” quiero honrar la memoria de mi hermano, sí; pero también porque yo misma soy persona con discapacidad, en mi caso motriz, y sé lo que es y significa ser discriminada y excluida por tener una discapacidad. Pero, además, porque si bien he logrado evitar ser diagnosticada o etiquetada como persona con discapacidad psicosocial, yo también encuentro muy difícil lidiar con los tantos absurdos de nuestro mundo, y acomodarme, y cada vez, en alguna de sus escasas y limitadas formas permitidas de ser y de estar en él.

Y porque sueño.  Sueño con una humanidad polifónica y multiforme; lo suficientemente abierta, crítica y dialogante para permitirse tender hacia la otredad, en lugar de ignorarla, repudiarla o temerle; una humanidad que sabe vivir junto al otro y crear –con él–  realidades e intercambios nuevos, permeables, interdependientes, nutricios. Sueño mujeres y hombres convencidos de que toda y cualquier expresión humana – por ajena o chocante que nos resulte o parezca – no puede, al final, sino complementarnos, fortalecernos, enriquecernos.

Y porque sé que tarde o temprano así se habrá demostrado.


[1] Boff, Leonardo. Tiempo de la trascendencia, el ser humano como un proyecto infinito, Santander, Sal Terrae, Brasil, 2000.
[2] ONU, Convención sobre los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad, Resolución A/RES/61/106, Sexagésimo primer período de sesiones, Asamblea General, Naciones Unidas, del 13 de diciembre de 2006. Entró en vigor el 3 de mayo de 2008. Disponible en: http://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/convention/convoptprot-s.pdf
[3] ONU, Observación General No.1 (2014) sobre el Artículo 12: Igual reconocimiento como persona ante la ley, Comité sobre los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad, 11º período de sesiones. ONU Doc. CRPD/C/GC/1, del 19 de mayo de 2014.

Pueden leer más de la Campaña #ProhibiciónAbsolutaen: https://absoluteprohibition.wordpress.com/ 

Contribution Jules Malleus à la Campagne pour soutenir l’Abolition totale des soins et de l’hospitalisation sans consentement en application de la CDPH de l’ONU

http://depsychiatriser.blogspot.no/2016/03/contribution-jules-malleus-la-campagne.html

Merci au Comité de la Convention Droits des Personnes Handicapées.
Merci aux Usagers et Survivants de la Psychiatrie.
Vous avez su vous exprimer, vous avez su les écouter.
Grâce à vous, les bases sont en place pour faire respecter les droits de l’homme là où ils sont bafoués.
Merci du fond du cœur à chacun d’entre vous.
Je m’appelle Jules Malleus.

Sous ce nom, j’écris des articles et des contes qui sont souvent en rapport avec la psychiatrie.

Je ne prétends pas être un expert en quoi que ce soit, mais je voudrais vous expliquer ici pourquoi je participe à la Campagne pour soutenir l’Abolition totale des soins et de l’hospitalisation sans consentement en application de la CDPH de l’ONU.

https://absoluteprohibition.org
www.absoluteprohibition.org

Je souhaiterais vous parler d’une machine.
Une machine avec des engrenages et avec des pistons.
Une machine inventée par les hommes.
Cette machine, je lui en veux. Je peux même dire que je la hais.
J’accuse cette machine d’avoir détruit peu à peu ma mère, mon père, et certains de mes amis.
C’est la machine des traitements psychopharmacologiques imposés aux personnes.

Vous connaissez cette machine: C’est la machine du film Metropolis de Fritz Lang, sorti en 1927. Le héros du film recule frappé d’effroi, car il a compris que la machine est un Moloch, c’est à dire une sorte de culte maléfique auquel on sacrifie les êtres humains.En haut de l’escalier de la machine, il y a des êtres humains. Les mains liées dans le dos. Maltraités par les gardes, qui sont aux ordres des deux personnages porteurs d’une haute coiffe. Analogiquement, ce sont les patients psychiatriques traités sans leur consentement.

Ils sont poussés dans l’antre de la machine. En tous points, ils ressemblent à des esclaves. Ils ont perdus tous leurs droits  : leur corps et leur psychisme sont à la merci de la machine.

Les deux personnages à l’entrée du four portent un masque d’impassibilité  : ils ne manifestent pas d’émotion. Leur coiffe est une mitre de prétention à une connaissance supérieure  : dans l’analogie, ce sont les médecins qui désignent les prisonniers et décident de leur sort.

Quand je pense aux traitements forcés, et bien je pense à ceci  :

 
«  Toute résistance est inutile. Vous allez être assimilée.  »

La capitaine Janeway subit un traitement forcé dans l’épisode 146 de la série Star Trek Voyager. Le traitement servira à assimiler la victime dans le collectif auquel appartient le vilain monsieur.

J’ai placé cette photo parce que l’objectif d’un traitement psychiatrique est de rendre la personne moins «  anormale  », c’est à dire de la normaliser en quelque sorte. L’injection prive la victime de sa volonté  : celle-ci devient esclave du collectif.

C’est à dire que la différence, la diversité, vouloir être «  hors norme  », par exemple, est considéré comme une maladie, qu’on se propose d’éliminer, par la force.

Le traitement forcé n’est que le début  :

Dans le film «  Le Seigneur des Anneaux III  », de Peter Jackson, 2003, le héros Frodo reçoit une injection forcée de l’araignée géante Shelob, ce qui a pour effet de le faire baver et de lui faire perdre ses moyens. L’araignée entortille alors sa victime de sécrétions gluantes afin de laisser sa viande faisander quelque temps dans sa caverne.

C’est à dire que le venin sert à paralyser la victime. Les traitements dits anti-psychotiques font de même et diminuent les capacités de défense du patient. Il devient alors plus facile de briser la personnalité afin de faire consentir à ce que l’on veut.

J’ai appris la programmation informatique, afin d’essayer de gagner ma vie. Et ce que je vous propose c’est un algorithme. L’algorithme qui suit n’existe pas dans les textes, il n’est pas enseigné non plus.
Il représente davantage une sorte de boutade destinée à faire comprendre l’absurdité d’un système.

C’est mon analyse de ce qui se passe quand une institution et ses rouages se mettent à tourner sans rien prouver de concret. Le mot-clé est non-compliance. Non-compliance au traitement signifie que vous êtes aussi dans le déni du trouble, donc on vous classe dans la case psychotique.

J’ai montré cet algorithme à des survivants: certains m’ont confirmé ceci. Ils m’ont expliqué qu’ils étaient obligés de jouer la comédie du malade et de la guérison pour parvenir à sortir de l’enfer des droguages abrutissants qui leur étaient imposés.

Quand une indication n’est pas étayée par des preuves biologiques, quand la maladie supposée n’a pas été caractérisée par des pathologistes, alors il me semble légitime de qualifier le traitement d’expérimental.

J’estime aussi que la mécanique d’augmentation des doses que j’ai décrite dans cet algorithme n’est pas autre chose qu’une machine de torture.

Les victimes du traitement forcé ont été diffamées. On n’a plus confiance en elles. Elles font peur. Les personnes n’ont plus confiance en elles-mêmes. Certaines présentent des maladies iatrogènes. Beaucoup sont traumatisées par l’expérience. Elles vivent dans la peur d’un nouveau traitement forcé, elles sont menacées de «  rechuter  ». Beaucoup restent engluées dans des addictions psychopharmacologiques auto-destructrices. Il en résulte la perte de son potentiel, l’empêchement de se réaliser, l’échec, le désespoir, la culpabilité, le chômage, la précarité, et cela conduit souvent à la fuite dans l’addiction, et au suicide.

Témoignage d’Agnès:

“Ayant été hospitalisée à 10 reprises, j’ai subi des traitements
dégradants, des humiliations. Nous sommes traités là-bas comme des animaux. On nous attache, on nous met à l’isolation etc…
Ce n’est pas parce que nous sommes en crise et donc soit-disant dangereux que l’on nous traite ainsi. Non, le but est de nous casser pour nous faire avaler des médicaments et nous donner une leçon pour que nous n’arrêtions plus de les prendre. Et toute la société accepte cela comme une chose normale.”

Et voilà …

Moloch est repus. Moloch vous remercie.

Et cela va continuer à moins que …

Ensemble exigeons que les lois de santé mentale de notre pays ne permettent plus, mais au contraire abolissent, le traitement forcé.

Références:

La convention ONU relative aux droits des personnes handicapées (CDPH)
http://www.un.org/french/disabilities/default.asp?id=1413

L’Observation générale n° 1 sur l’article 12
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CRPD/Pages/GC.aspx

Statistiques 2014 Psychiatrie France
http://www.atih.sante.fr/sites/default/files/public/content/2790/rapport_2014_psychiatrie.xlsx

Statistiques judiciaires sur les hospitalisations psychiatriques sans consentement en 2014 en France
http://psychiatrie.crpa.asso.fr/2015-07-28-cm-Statistiques-judiciaires-sur-les-hospitalisations-psychiatriques-sans-consentement-en-2014?lang=fr

Le dossier de presse et les photos du rapport 2015 de la Contrôleure générale des lieux de privation de liberté en France
http://www.cglpl.fr/2016/publication-du-rapport-dactivite-2015/

Les UMD, “Unités pour Malades Difficiles”, un témoignage.
http://psychiatrie.crpa.asso.fr/IMG/pdf/2016-02-16-temoignage-sdre-epsm-rhone-alpes_2.pdf

Dimitri, 19 ans de maltraitance d’une personne adulte handicapée en institution: attaché, drogué, envoyé en UMD.
https://www.facebook.com/Soutien-%C3%A0-Dimitri-Fargette-1665872200308023/

Thomas Szasz, 1997: “Insanity: the idea and its consequences.”

M’hamed El Yagoubi, Campagne pour soutenir l’Abolition totale des soins et de l’hospitalisation sans consentement en application de la CDPH de l’ONU

http://cvjn.over-blog.com/2016/03/campagne-pour-soutenir-l-abolition-totale-des-soins-et-de-l-hospitalisation-sans-consentement-en-application-de-la-cdph-de-l-onu.htm

http://depsychiatriser.blogspot.no/2016/03/contribution-de-mhamed-el-yagoubi-la.html

aussi en traduction italien, http://www.ilcappellaiomatto.org/2016/03/campagne-pour-soutenir-labolition.html

13 Mars 2016

Photo de Nathalie prise le mois d'août 2012 Pont de l'Arc, Aix-en-Provence

Photo de Nathalie prise le mois d’août 2012 Pont de l’Arc, Aix-en-Provence

http://depsychiatriser.blogspot.fr/2016/03/contribution-de-mhamed-el-yagoubi-la.html

http://depsychiatriser.blogspot.fr/2016/03/contribution-de-mhamed-el-yagoubi-la.html

Campagne pour soutenir l’Abolition totale des soins et de l’hospitalisation sans consentement en application de la CDPH de l’ONU

Nathalie Dale. Née le 21 mai 1970 à Cagnes-sur-Mer. France.

Morte le 31 janvier 2014 à Aix-en-Provence. France.

Cause : Défaillance respiratoire au surcharge médicamenteux selon le certificat établi par le service de médecine légale le 03/02/2014.

1 – Détruite par un traitement psychiatrique non seulement inefficace mais dangereux et mortel dans son dosage à longue durée.

2– Traumatisée par l’enlèvement brutal de son enfant par le juge avec la complicité de la psychiatre de l’hôpital de Montperrin (Aix-en-Provence) et ses collaborateurs juste après l’accouchement le 30 mars 2010 à 10h00. Elle ne l’a jamais vu. Elle l’a reconnu dans sa déclaration administrative et lui a donné un nom.

– Dépossédée de ses allocations par les mandataires déléguées du « service juridique de la protection des majeurs».

4 – Hospitalisation sous contrainte à l’aide d’un arrêté préfectoral du 19 octobre 2010, non basé sur une enquête préalable mais sur une pétition d’une partie du voisinage aux comportements malveillants abusant de sa vulnérabilité. Elle aurait été sauvée si les services concernés avaient été animés d’un peu d’humanité et avaient pris en compte les nombreux rapports d’alerte que je leur avais adressés en tant qu’ex-mari et compagnon. Peut-être eux-mêmes sont-ils victimes d’un système incontrôlable et monstrueux. Un rapport écrit a été communiqué à la préfecture (Agence régionale de Santé) le 14 mars 2011 sur cet arrêté abusif violant totalement ses droits et sa dignité.

Le cas de Nathalie pointe les aspects les plus obscurs dans le non-respect des droits de l’homme et du patient en situation de handicap psychique : La maltraitance psychiatrique et l’abus tutélaire et curatelle.

Nathalie fut mise sous curatelle renforcée le 08 avril 2010 alors qu’elle était hospitalisée à l’hôpital de Montperrin. Elle n’avait pas été consultée pour avoir son avis. Un abus de sa faiblesse et les effets de sa grossesse ont été sans aucun doute une atteinte plausible à ses droits.

Elle fut éjectée de l’hôpital psychiatrique de Montperrin le 26 avril 2010 sans aucun centime, sans accompagnement social et sans suivi médical pendant de longs mois. Elle faillit mourir d’inanition dans un pays d’abondance, alors que l’hôpital et d’autres services prélevaient directement ses maigres allocations (AAH). Grâce à ma vigilance et mon soutien matériel et moral, elle a échappé à une catastrophe, mais pas pour longtemps.

Nathalie subit un internement psychiatrique du 19 octobre 2010 au 19 janvier 2011 suite à un arrêté préfectoral. Nathalie fut mise sous contrainte des « soins » obligatoires sous le contrôle de la même psychiatre au CMP (Centre médico-psychologique). Aucune écoute dans la dignité et le respect de ses droits mais des séances « expédiées » avec des menaces de retournement à l’hôpital psychiatrique et la prescription de « médicaments » aux effets dévastateurs et mortels : Lexomil, Imovane, Lepticur, Sulfarlem, Clopixol, etc. Elle passait les trois quarts de la journée dans son lit. Immobilisée, l’incapacité de se lever ou de faire quelques pas. Les traitements prescrits pendant les RDV qui ne duraient que quelques minutes n’ont pas été modifiés. Je dis quelques minutes parce que je l’ai accompagné plusieurs fois à ce centre (CMP) obsolèteLexomil, Imovane, injection (coplixol), lepticur, sulfarlem, etc. Aucune visite chez elle ni par les infirmières ni par cette la psychiatre. Tous les RDV se faisaient le matin à 09h00 dans ce centre. Nathalie ne manifestait aucun trouble et aucune inquiétude au début de la journée. Elle est matinale. Son fonctionnement global est normal. A partir de midi, les effets dévastateurs des traitements imposés commençaient à être visibles. Ils provoquaient un ralentissement de ses perceptions et de ses réactions. Sa langue se diluait, ses yeux se fixaient en haut, confusion et perte dans l’espace et le temps, la bouche ouverte avec sa langue qui descendait, toujours sèche, difficulté d’avaler, des mouvements et des réflexes de ses deux épaules perceptibles, tête baissée sur la table quand elle est sur son canapé, un ralentissement du fonctionnement de son corps, perte de sensations et de perception . Quand elle marche et quand elle parle, aucune coordination, elle tombait, elle éprouvait des difficultés cinétiques pour aller aux toilettes faire pipi. Parfois, elle le faisait dans son lit non par imprudence mais par l’incapacité de se mouvoir. Elle ne sentait plus ses jambes. Quand elle faisait un effort pour quitter son lit, elle tombait par terre sans pouvoir avoir la capacité de se redresser. Elle restait allongée avec sa langue qui sortait. Quand elle prenait son bain, ce qu’elle aimait faire tous les jours chez elle, elle aimait rester au contact de l’eau fraîche, pas trop, elle restait longtemps endormie. Elle ne prenait pas son traitement au-delà de ce qui est prescrit.

L’intervention des services de la préfecture en collaboration du personnel de la psychiatrie le 19 octobre 2010 entre 20h et 00h ont laissé des traces profondes dans le reste de sa vie. Terrorisée et mise dans un état psychologique dégradé de façon irréversible, alors que ces services savaient très bien qu’elle était fragile, dépossédée par leur pouvoir inhumain, poussée par leurs mécanismes destructeurs à l’irréparable et à l’impensable juste pour satisfaire une pétition d’un groupe de voisins violents et animés par un esprit communautariste défaillant.Elle ne pouvait pas sortir, quand ils étaient devant l’immeuble où elle habitait par peur. Quand je l’accompagnais tous les jours, dès qu’elle voyait un véhicule des services de la police ou de la gendarmerie, elle paniquait parce qu’elle a intériorisé le contenu de cet arrêté préfectoral qui fait froid dans le dos. Les pires dictatures n’auraient pas pu le faire. Et pourtant, cette décision mortifère est prise par la préfecture des Bouches-du-Rhône, haute représentation de l’ Etat de «droit». La France.

Ces éléments de connaissance sur les effets dévastateurs des traitements qu’elle prenaient ont été codifiés et mis en manuscrit pendant un longue période surtout depuis juin 2011 jusqu’à la fin de vie 31 janvier 2014. Il aurait été plus parlant si la victime était là pour témoigner. J’ai pris le risque de mettre en ligne ces quelques éléments dans une méthodologie crue pour ne pas trahir son vécu infernal que j’ai bien assumé son partage.

Ces pratiques « médico-psychiatriques », aggravées par l’enlèvement de son enfant et l’internement abusif et la privation de ses allocations par le service de curatelle ont été administrées jusqu’à l’étouffement fatal le 31 janvier 2014. Et pourtant, le dernier rapport communiqué aux services concernés sur la gravité de son état de santé et d’atteinte à ses droits a été fait le 07 octobre 2013. Un autre rapport a été communiqué le 28 décembre 2013 au Député chargé de la mission d’information parlementaire sur les dérives de la psychiatrie en France, M. Denys Robilard. Malheureusement, aucune suite.

Nathalie est victime des traitements « médicamenteux psychiatriques » abusifs suite à un internement illégitime et aggravé et une mise sous curatelle défectueuse et prédatrice.

Pour une provocation de plus, des acteurs institutionnels de la psychiatrie organisent à Marseille, Aix-en-Provence et Salon du 14 au 27 mars 2016, ce qu’ils appellent «Semaines sur la santé mentale». Il est plutôt réel de dire «Semaines sur l’institutionnalisation de la maltraitance psychiatrique mortifère».

Collectif Vérité et Justice pour Nathalie

www.cvjn.over-blog.com

M’hamed EL Yagoubi

compagnon de Nathalie

Fait à Marseille, le 13 mars 2016

Paula Caplan – Myths are Used to Justify Depriving People Diagnosed as Mentally Ill of Their Human Rights

http://www.madinamerica.com/2016/03/myths-are-used-to-justify-depriving-people-diagnosed-as-mentally-ill-of-their-human-rights/

Who in this world ought to have the right to make decisions about their lives, and who is required to lose that right and have the medical community and the courts take over?

Despite the fact that no one in history, not even the omnipotent American Psychiatric Association — which produces and profits mightily from the “Bible” of mental disorders — has come up with a halfway good definition of “mental illness,” and despite the fact that the process of creating and applying the labels of mental illness is unscientific, any of those labels can be used to deprive the person so labeled of their human rights. This is terrifying. It ought to terrify those who are so labeled and those who are not, because deprivation of human rights on totally arbitrary grounds is inhumane and immoral.

The combination of the specter of terrorism and highly publicized incidents of gun violence have led rapidly to politicians, therapists, and the general public blaming “the mentally ill” for these dangers, and that is used to justify depriving not just terrorists and other killers but anyone with a label of mental disorder of their rights. They can be locked up against their will, they can be ordered to comply with just about anything that a professional calls “treatment of the mentally ill,” no matter how these actions can harm the person and in the absence of scientific evidence that the “treatments” of people who have been psychiatrically labeled will prevent violence. In other words, the huge leap is often made from “This person has a psychiatric label” to “This person is therefore dangerous to themselves and others,” even in the absence of any history or current indication of such dangerousness, and that leap is then used to lock people up and/or otherwise “treat” them against their will.

Now the United Nations human rights treaty called the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities includes the absolute prohibition of forced commitment and forced treatment, and the brilliant and tireless advocate Tina Minkowitz is leading a campaign to show that there is a wide base of support for these prohibitions. This is especially important in the United States, because 162 nations have ratified the CRPD, but the U.S. has not.

Minkowitz worked on drafting and negotiations for the treaty from 2002-2006 and helped ensure the incorporation in the CRPD of Article 12, which says that “states,” countries and national governments bound by international law recognize that people with disabilities have the right to make their own decisions in all aspects of life and to do so free from coercion. Note that “people with disabilities” applies to anyone who has received a diagnosis of any mental disorder (in addition to other disabilities). It is important to note the CRPD’s Article14, which specifies according to the text and the authoritative interpretation by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that the existence of disability or perceived disability cannot be used to justify deprivation of liberty, and Article 25 requires that healthcare be provided on the basis of free and informed consent. The word “perceived” is crucial, in light of the fact that the ballooning numbers of categories listed as mental disorders in the two primary handbooks used to classify people as mentally ill have made it possible, even likely, that anyone entering a therapist’s or other professional’s office in other than a calm and happy state will be diagnosed as psychiatrically disordered, moving just about anyone into the “perceived as disabled” category. So one crucial myth that is relevant to the CRPD is that psychiatric diagnoses are scientific and usually appropriately applied.

If no harm came from being classified as mentally ill, there would be less cause for alarm. But it is easy, even likely, for laypeople, therapists and other healthcare professionals, and judges to assume wrongly that having a disability (even a perceived disability) means that one’s judgment is impaired and that one should not be allowed to make choices about their lives, their bodies, and the treatments to which they will be subjected. Frequently, the criterion of “dangerous to oneself and/or others” is used to justify forced commitment or forced treatment, and this is done despite the proven fact that people diagnosed as mentally ill are actually less likely than others to commit acts of violence and more likely to be victims of violence. The evidence for this pattern is all the more remarkable, given that for a number of reasons (e.g., defense attorneys trying to get psychiatric labels for their clients in order to obtain reduced sentences or diversion from prison to the mental health system; the skyhigh frequency of prisoners being diagnosed as mentally ill so that they can be heavily medicated and thus reduce the need for prison staff), statistics in the near future are likely to show an increasingly high correlation between psychiatric labels and violence. Thus, two other crucial myths that are relevant to the CRPD are that people who have received psychiatric labels are likely to be incompetent to make choices about their lives and that they are more likely than other people to be violent.

A fourth crucial myth is that forced commitment and forced treatment are beneficial (and, by implication, not harmful). That this is a myth is reflected in the high rates of suicide that follow inpatient treatment and the increased rates of suicide caused by many psychiatric drugs, as well as the plummeting rates of recovery and increased rates of longterm disability that have followed the introduction of various psychiatric drugs into the market and the use of electroshock.

Another myth is this: The important word “orthogonal” applies to the question of whether people diagnosed as mentally ill are able to make their own choices and whether they have good judgment. We all know people who have no psychiatric labels but who make terrible choices and poor judgment, yet those limitations are not used to deprive the of their human rights. These capacities are orthogonal to whether or not one has been diagnosed as mentally ill, meaning that knowing whether or not a person has a diagnosis is simply not a predictor of their judgment and ability to make good choices for themselves. A related myth is that if someone is diagnosed as mentally ill, all of their decision making power must be wrenched away from them, when — as with many people who are not so diagnosed — sometimes what the person needs is a little support of various kinds, including assistance with filling out forms or practical help with cooking or shopping or getting a service animal during times when they are struggling.

The CRPD standard is for people who have or are perceived to have disabilities must be provided the opportunity to give free and informed consent. That is very far from what happens with the vast majority of people treated by psychotherapists, not to mention those who are deprived of their human rights. Consider this: Psychiatric diagnosis is the bedrock, the first cause of everything bad that happens to people in and through the mental health system. If they do not diagnose you, they cannot treat (or “treat”) you, whether or not the treatments are helpful to you. But almost no one who enters a therapist’s office is ever fully informed and thus almost no one is put in a position where they even might give informed consent. Why? There are three reasons:

  1. They are almost never told, “In order for your insurance to pay my bills, I will have to give you a psychiatric diagnosis, but you have the right to know that psychiatric diagnoses are unscientific, that getting one does not help alleviate suffering, and that getting one carries a wide array of risks of harm, from plummeting self-confidence to loss of employment and of child custody and of security clearance…even to death from treatments that are justified on the basis of your label.”
  2. They are almost never told, “I am recommending Treatment X, but I am going to tell you everything about the potential benefits and potential kinds of harm that can result.” The reason they are almost never told this is that these days, the vast majority of treatments are with psychiatric drugs, and lawsuits have repeatedly revealed that the drug companies purposefully conceal much of the harm, so there is no way for conscientious therapists to get that information and thus no way for them to convey it to their patients. Something similar happens with electroshock and with expensive but intensively marketed programs called things like “neurobiofeedback” that have not been shown to be helpful but that are often very costly.
  3. They are almost never told, “I am recommending Treatment X, but I am also going to describe for you the huge array of approaches that have been helpful to people who are going through what you are going through … and that often carry little or no risks of harm.”

Alarmed about the lack of disclosure, which puts suffering people who seek help in the mental health system at huge risk of harm with no way even to know what questions to ask and what recommendations to challenge, I organized the filing of nine complaints to the Ethics Department of the American Psychiatric Association, because that APA publishes and hugely profits from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), whose categories had been used against the complaints with tragic effects. We said that if the APA had honestly disclosed the unscientific nature of its categories and the risks of harm, as well as that getting a label would be helpful largely or only in order to get insurance coverage for treatment, the complainants would not have blindly accepted their labels and the treatments that were justified to them on the basis of the labels (“You have Disorder Y, so you should accept Treatment Z, because that is what is used for people with Y”). The APA dismissed the complaints on spurious grounds and with not one iota of attention to their merits.

Five of those complainants then filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR). The complaints were filed pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to which people can be discriminated against by being treated as though they are disabled (mentally ill in these cases) when in fact they are not. All of the complainants had been experiencing upsetting life situations but should by no means have been diagnosed as mentally ill. Yet according to the (falsely-marketed as scientific) DSM, they were mentally ill, and the treatments that were justified on the basis of their labels had had devastating consequences for them. The OCR dismissed the complaints on spurious grounds and with no attention to their merits.

The outcomes of these complaints provide a solid paper trail revealing that in the United States, the enterprise of psychiatric diagnosis is entirely unregulated. This makes it even less regulated than the major financial institutions whose unregulated actions seriously damaged the economy. The paper trail shows that both the lobby group called the APA, which earned more than $100 million from the last edition of the DSM and spent not one cent to reveal the truth about its manual or to warn of the harms they knew about, and the government entity (OCR of HHS) that by all rights ought to provide oversight and regulation, have chosen to do nothing. This makes it all the more compelling for all of us to press for the United States government to ratify the CRPD. The loss of human rights of just one of us through fraudulent advertising, cover-ups, and perpetuation of dangerous myths is the loss of human rights of us all.

As a U.S. citizen, I am embarrassed and appalled that as this country discusses whether or not to ratify the CRPD, it wants to add what are called “RUDs,” reservations, understandings, and declarations created by the current federal administration and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. According to Minkowitz, these include the claim that U.S law already fulfills or exceeds the obligations our country would have under the CRPD treaty. The above described complaints that we filed — and the rejection of those complaints by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Civil Rights gives the lie to that claim, since there is simply no governmental regulation of psychiatric diagnosis, and diagnosis is the sine qua non of forced commitment and forced treatment.

* * * * *

Originally posted on paulajcaplan.net

This blog is a contribution to the Campaign to Support the CRPD Absolute Prohibition of Commitment and Forced Treatment. To see all of the Mad in America blogs for this campaign click here.

Paula J. Caplan, PhDPaula J. Caplan, PhD, is a clinical and research psychologist, activist, Associate at the DuBois Institute, Harvard University, and the author of 11 books, including one that won three national awards for nonfiction and two about psychiatric diagnosis. Her books include They Say You’re Crazy: How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal and the edited Bias in Psychiatric Diagnosis.

-We are not violating the human rights. -Yes, you are! by Anne Grethe Teien

http://agteien.blogspot.no/2016/03/we-are-not-violating-human-rights-yes_74.html

Introduction

Psychiatric human rights violations are often  denied and trivialized, even distortedly re-defined as “human rights” and “right to necessary health help”. The UN convention for the rights of persons with disabilities, CRPD,  is changing that. CRPD demands an absolute prohibition of forced psychiatric treatment and involuntary commitment. These are important requirements in giving people with psychosocial disabilities equal human rights. In this text, I will look at different aspects of the CRPD related to that demand. I will illustrate with some references to Norway, the country where I live, showing ways in which the Norwegian Mental Health Act does not comply with the convention. I will also share some further reflections. Towards the end I have written a short version of my own experiences from forced psychiatry.  Mental health laws may vary between countries, but some elements are prevalent: the laws are typically directed specifically towards people with psychosocial disabilities and involve forced treatment and involuntary commitment . This text is written for the Campaign to Support CRPD Absolute Prohibition of Forced Treatment and Involuntary Commitment (17). Procrastinations must stop – CRPD-based law reforms must begin!

Norway and the CRPD 

Norway ratified the CRPD June 3rd 2013, but came up with some interpretative declarations of article 12, 14 and 25 that undermine central parts of the convention (1).  Norway uses these declarations to try to defend the Mental Health Act and forced psychiatric treatment. In February 2015, the president of the Norwegian Psychological Association, Tor Levin Hofgaard, wrote an article asking for a clarification from the government whether health personnel violate the human rights when they follow the coercion regulations in the Mental Health Act (2). He referred to a report sent to the authorities in December 2013 by the then Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud –  LDO, Sunniva Ørstavik (3). The report said that the Mental Health Act is discriminatory and does not comply with the CRPD. LDO also urged Norway to quickly withdraw its interpretative declarations. In public, the LDO report was met with a noisy silence by the authorities.  So, as time had went on, Hofgaard asked for the mentioned clarification.  Anne Grethe Erlandsen, State Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Care Services, answered on behalf of the Norwegian authorities: “Vi bryter ikke menneskerettighetene” / – We are not violating the human rights (4). That answer is absolutely not right.

Norway uses much coercion in psychiatry. In spite of reduction strategies, the use of coercion stays at stably high levels (3: p.6-8; 5: p.20-23). Also, reduction strategies instead of CRPD-based abolishment strategies do not go to the core of the issue. Norway is used to see itself as a human rights protective nation and often does not hesitate to criticize other countries for their human rights violations. So it is maybe hard for the authorities to take in that the state of Norway  is actually accepting torture and other severe human rights abuses in its own mental health system, via the Mental Health Act.  Point 42 of the CRPD General Comments No 1 says as follows:

As has been stated by the Committee in several concluding observations, forced treatment by psychiatric and other health and medical professionals is a violation of the right to equal recognition before the law and an infringement of the rights to personal integrity (art. 17); freedom from torture (art. 15); and freedom from violence, exploitation and abuse (art. 16). This practice denies the legal capacity of a person to choose medical treatment and is therefore a violation of article 12 of the Convention. States parties must, instead, respect the legal capacity of persons with disabilities to make decisions at all times, including in crisis situations; must ensure that accurate and accessible information is provided about service options and that non-medical approaches are made available; and must provide access to independent support. States parties have an obligation to provide access to support for decisions regarding psychiatric and other medical treatment. Forced treatment is a particular problem for persons with psychosocial, intellectual and other cognitive disabilities. States parties must abolish policies and legislative provisions that allow or perpetrate forced treatment, as it is an ongoing violation found in mental health laws across the globe, despite empirical evidence indicating its lack of effectiveness and the views of people using mental health systems who have experienced deep pain and trauma as a result of forced treatment. The Committee recommends that States parties ensure that decisions relating to a person’s physical or mental integrity can only be taken with the free and informed consent of the person concerned.“ (6: #42)

Neglected harms and traumas – and the need for reparations

Long-term studies have shown higher recovery rates for people who were not on neuroleptics and on very low doses (14, 15). The list of potential harmful effects from neuroleptic drugs is long, including tardive dyskinesia, brain damage, cognitive decline, neuroleptic-induced supersensitivity psychosis, Parkinsonism, sexual dysfunction, weight gain, diabetes, demotivation, anxiety, aggression, suicide, akathisia [ an extreme form of restlessness which in itself can lead to suicide], neuroleptic malignant syndrome — a potentially lethal complication of treatment etc (14, 18). In a research summary on possible harms from forced psychiatry done by nurse and researcher Reidun Norvoll, she listed the following main categories:  1) violation of autonomy and of psychological and physical integrity. Deprivation of freedom of movement (deprivation of freedom). 2) Physical harm and death. 3) Violence and abuse. 4) Trauma, retraumatisation and posttraumatic stress syndrome. 5) Offences/violations, loss of dignity and experiences of punishment. 6) Psychological agony in the forms of shame, anxiety, feeling unsafe, anger, powerlessness, depression and loss of self esteem. 7) Social problems  and loss of social identity. 8) Loss of access to own coping skills and of possibilities to self development. 9) Loss of access to voluntary treatment. 10) Harmed therapeutic relationships, resentment against- and distrust in mental health services. (7: p. 16; 8: #5.3).

It can be hard to process traumas that are not acknowledged and understood as such by society in general. When mental health services represents the abuser and as it is officially seen as the mental health helper, one can be left in a very lonely situation trying to handle psychiatry-induced traumas.  I think, as part of the implementation of CRPD, there should be provided access to help and support to those who struggle with traumas and other harms from forced psychiatry.  I imagine a reality where it is possible for everyone to ask for help when they feel they need it, knowing that they have the CRPD on their side; that the state can not expose them to torture and other terrible human rights violations for being in mental pain (!).

When the necessary abolishment of discriminatory mental health laws and the prohibition of forced psychiatric treatment and commitment has become reality, I think that representatives from politics and psychiatry should publicly perform statements about- and apologies for -the severe human rights abuses that have been going on for so long towards people with psychosocial disabilities. After all the societal acceptance, silence and denial of these kinds of abuses, I think such an acknowledgement and apology is of significant importance for starting reparation work. Compensations  is also a relevant part of this.  At the same time, there should be no pressure towards victims of forced psychiatry to forgive and get over.  I strongly recommend survivor and lawyer Hege Orefellen’s appeal on the urgent need for effective remedies, redress and guarantees of non-repetition regarding torture and other ill-treatment in psychiatry (9). Her appeal was held during a CRPD side-event about article 15 and its potential to end impunity for torture in psychiatry (10). Also, in Guidelines on article 14 of the CRPD, point 24 (a-f) one can read about “access to justice, reparation and redress to persons with disabilities deprived of their liberty in infringement of article 14 taken alone, and taken in conjunction with article 12 and/or article 15 of the Convention” (11).

Danger- and treatment criteria 

The Norwegian Mental Health Act has, in addition to its danger criteria, a criterion called the treatment criterion, which does not require danger to oneself or others. The treatment criterion allows for psychiatric coercion if the person is claimed to have a severe mental disorder,  and application of forced psychiatry is seen as necessary to prevent the person from having his/her prospects for recovery or significant improvement seriously reduced; alternatively that it’s seen as very possible that the person’s condition in the very near future will significantly deteriorate without coercion (12: Section 3 – 3. 3 a). A very wishy-washy criterion indeed, which is much in use. In 2014 the treatment criterion alone was used in 72% of the cases among people commited (16: p.37).

Both the treatment criterion and the criteria regarding danger to oneself or others discriminate against people with psychosocial disabilities in that disability, or ‘serious mental disorder’,  is a premise for psychiatric coercion to apply. In other words, this discrimination is a violation of CRPD article 14 which says that the existence of a disability shall in no case justify a deprivation of liberty (13). Secondly, as the Mental Health Act allows for forced psychiatric treatment, it violates the right to personal integrity (art. 17); freedom from torture (art. 15); and freedom from violence, exploitation and abuse (art. 16). (6:#42).

Points 13-15 in the Guidelines on article 14 are also relevant in this context:

VII. Deprivation of liberty on the basis of perceived dangerousness of persons with disabilities, alleged need for care or treatment, or any other reasons. 

  1. Throughout all the reviews of State party reports, the Committee has established that it is contrary to article 14 to allow for the detention of persons with disabilities based on the perceived danger of persons to themselves or to others. The involuntary detention of persons with disabilities based on risk or dangerousness, alleged need of care or treatment or other reasons tied to impairment or health diagnosis is contrary to the right to liberty, and amounts to arbitrary deprivation of liberty.
  1. Persons with intellectual or psychosocial impairments are frequently considered dangerous to themselves and others when they do not consent to and/or resist medical or therapeutic treatment. All persons, including those with disabilities, have a duty to do no harm. Legal systems based on the rule of law have criminal and other laws in place to deal with the breach of this obligation. Persons with disabilities are frequently denied equal protection under these laws by being diverted to a separate track of law, including through mental health laws. These laws and procedures commonly have a lower standard when it comes to human rights protection, particularly the right to due process and fair trial, and are incompatible with article 13 in conjunction with article 14 of the Convention. 
  1. The freedom to make one’s own choices established as a principle in article 3(a) of the Convention includes the freedom to take risks and make mistakes on an equal basis with others. In its General Comment No. 1, the Committee stated that decisions about medical and psychiatric treatment must be based on the free and informed consent of the person concerned and respect the person’s autonomy, will and preferences.  Deprivation of liberty on the basis of actual or perceived impairment or health conditions in mental health institutions which deprives persons with disabilities of their legal capacity also amounts to a violation of article 12 of the Convention.” (11: #13-15)

The laws that apply to people in the rest of society regarding acute situations and in the criminal justice system, must apply to people with disabilities too in non-discriminatory ways. The CRPD’s demand for absolute prohibition of forced treatment and involuntary commitment means that it applies both in criminal justice- and civil contexts. (11: #14, 16, 20-21, also 10-12). For people with psychosocial disabilities who come in contact with the criminal justice system, necessary support must be provided to ensure the right to legal capacity, equal recognition before the law and a fair trial. Forced psychiatric treatment and involuntary commitment can not be applied as sanctions for criminal acts and/or for the prevention of such.

Replacing substituted decision-making with supported decision-making

Substituted decision making must be replaced by supported decision making systems. Giving access to supported decision-making for some but still maintaining substitute decision-making regimes, is not sufficient to comply with article 12 of the CRPD (6: #28). From General Comment No 1:

A supported decision-making regime comprises various support options which give primacy to a person’s will and preferences and respect human rights norms. It should provide protection for all rights, including those related to autonomy (right to legal capacity, right to equal recognition before the law, right to choose where to live, etc.) and rights related to freedom from abuse and ill-treatment (…).” (6: #29)

Some who agree with the CRPD in that diagnostic criteria for coercion should be abolished, still seem fine with the idea that ‘mental incapacity’ can be used as criteria for psychiatric coercion. This is not in line with the CRPD, which neither accepts disability criteria for the deprivation of freedom nor psychiatric coercion. Here is a relevant point to note, from General Comments No1:  “The provision of support to exercise legal capacity should not hinge on mental capacity assessments; new, non-discriminatory indicators of support needs are required in the provision of support to exercise legal capacity.” (6:#29 i)

A summary of my own experiences from forced psychiatry 

I was not suicidal when psychiatry put me under the Mental Health Act and decided I should get forced neuroleptic “treatment”. I had never been suicidal. The former mentioned treatment criterion is the criterion that was used on me.  Forced psychiatry, with its locking me up, restraining me, drugging me, and keeping me on CTO when discharged from hospital, certainly did not make my life better  in any way– everything became indescribably much worse. I experienced forced psychiatry as one long punishment for having mental problems. After having been on neuroleptics for a while, my cognition, my intellectual abilities, were severely affected and reduced – and so was my language: from usually having a rich vocabulary I could just utter short, simple sentences. My body became rigid and lost its fine motor skills so I couldn’t dance anymore. A period I also had akathisia, a terrible restlessness which made me walk endlessly back and forth, back and forth. I’m trained a professional dancer and having my dance abilities medicated away was a big loss in itself. The medication took away my vitality, my sensitivity. My emotions were numbed. My personality faded away.  Then a severe depression set in – just a complete state of hopelessness – and for the first time in my life I became suicidal. Again and again I said to the staff, psychologists, doctors: – I can not be on meds. I tried to have them understand that the neuroleptics were destroying me and my life.  They communicated to me that they thought I was being fussy. They were a big wall that just would not listen to me. Respectlessly enough, some even told me –yes, told me -that I was doing better. The doctors said I would need to be on meds for the rest of my life. That was a message which just manifested the complete hopeless situation. From entering psychiatry, indeed having mental problems, but being a vital, thoughtful, and expressive person who was dancing several times a week, psychiatry  had coercively medicated me away from myself and iatrogenically made me severely depressed and suicidal . In effect a slow form of forced euthanasia . One day, while on CTO, shortly after a new forced injection in the buttocks with those horrible meds, I did a dramatic suicide attempt. I was put back into the hospital. I am very glad that I survived. Because unbelievably, a couple of months later, I was told that someone had made a bureaucratic mistake: the coercion documents had not been renewed in time, so there was nothing they could do to hold me back. Of course they would recommend me to stick to the treatment (Ha!) and not leave the hospital too fast (Ha!). I left the hospital the same day. It took me about half a year to become myself again, to be able to think and speak freely, to get my sensitivity, my emotions back, to dance, to feel human again, to feel life. I have never been in a mental hospital since then. I have never had another dose of neuroleptics. And I have never been suicidal again.  More than a decade later, I am still traumatized by my experiences from forced psychiatry.

Conclusion

I am very thankful to the CRPD committee for their important work. The CRPD represents a paradigm shift, and there is clearly a resistance out there to accept the full width and depth of the convention. That human rights and non-discrimination applies equally to people with disabilities should not be seen as a radical message in 2016, but sadly, it still is. Societies with their leaders need to realize that systematic, legalized discrimination and abuse of people with disabilities is based on tradition and habitual ways of thinking –not on human rights. That something has been brutally wrong for a long time does not make it more right. Forced psychiatric treatment and involuntary commitment need to be absolutely prohibited.

Thank you for your attention.

References:

1) MDAC:  Legal Opinion on Norway’s Declaration/Reservation to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities http://mdac.org/sites/mdac.org/files/norway_declaration_-_legal_opinion.pdf

2)

Tor Levin Hofgaard:  Bryter vi menneskerettighetene?

http://www.dagensmedisin.no/blogger/tor-levin-hofgaard/2015/02/19/avklaring-etterlyses-bryter-vi-menneskerettighetene/

3)

In Norwegian: Equality and anti-discrimination ombud (LDO): CRPD report to Norwegian authorities 2013 – summary http://www.ldo.no/globalassets/brosjyrer-handboker-rapporter/rapporter_analyser/crpd–2013/crpd_report_sammendrag_pdf_ok.pdf

4)

Anne Grethe Erlandsen: Vi bryter ikke menneskerettighetene http://www.dagensmedisin.no/artikler/2015/02/27/vi-bryter-ikke-menneskerettighetene/

5)

In Norwegian: LDO’s report to the CRPD committee 2015 – a supplement to Norway’s 1st periodic report http://www.ldo.no/globalassets/03_nyheter-og-fag/publikasjoner/crpd2015rapport.pdf

6)

Link to download of CRPD General Comment No 1:  http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CRPD/Pages/GC.aspx

7)

In Norwegian: Equality and anti-discrimination ombud (LDO): CRPD report to Norwegian authorities 2013- full version  http://www.ldo.no/globalassets/brosjyrer-handboker-rapporter/rapporter_analyser/crpd–2013/rapportcrpd_psykiskhelsevern_pdf.pdf

8)

NOU 2011: 9. Økt selvbestemmelse og rettssikkerhet — Balansegangen mellom selvbestemmelsesrett og omsorgsansvar i psykisk helsevern. 5. Kunnskapsstatus med hensyn til skadevirkninger av tvang i det psykiske helsevernet. Utredning for Paulsrud-utvalget https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dokumenter/nou-2011-9/id647625/?q=&ch=12

9)

Hege Orefellen: Torture and other ill-treatment in psychiatry – urgent need for effective remedies, redress and guarantees of non-repetition https://absoluteprohibition.wordpress.com/2016/02/06/hege-orefellen-on-reparations/

10)

CRPD 13: WNUSP side event on Article 15: Its Potential to End Impunity for Torture in Psychiatry  http://www.treatybodywebcast.org/crpd-13-wnusp-side-event-on-article-15-english-audio/

11)

Link to guidelines on article 14 of the CRPD under “Recent Events and Developments” http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CRPD/Pages/CRPDIndex.aspx

12)

Norwegian Mental Health Act translated to English http://app.uio.no/ub/ujur/oversatte-lover/data/lov-19990702-062-eng.pdf

13)

CRPD Convention http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CRPD/Pages/ConventionRightsPersonsWithDisabilities.aspx#14

14)

Via Mad in America / ‘Anatomy of an Epidemic’ (Robert Whitaker):  List of long-term outcomes literature for antipsychotics http://www.madinamerica.com/mia-manual/antipsychoticsschizophrenia/

15)

Lex Wunderink et al: Recovery in Remitted First-Episode Psychosis at 7 Years of Follow-up of an Early Dose Reduction/Discontinuation or Maintenance Treatment Strategy. Long-term Follow-up of a 2-Year Randomized Clinical Trial http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1707650

16)

Bruk av tvang i psykisk helsevern for voksne i 2014 (report on the use of coercion in psychiatry in Norway 2014) https://helsedirektoratet.no/Lists/Publikasjoner/Attachments/1161/Rapport%20om%20tvang%20IS-2452.pdf

17)

Campaign to Support CRPD Absolute Prohibition of Forced Treatment and Involuntary Commitment https://absoluteprohibition.wordpress.com/

18)

RxISK Guide: Antipsychotics for Prescribers: What are the risks? http://rxisk.org/antipsychotics-for-prescribers/#How_likely_are_the_listed_side_effects_of_antipsychotics_to_happen

Other:

Status of Ratification Interactive Dashboard – Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities http://indicators.ohchr.org/

CAPA video and petition to Canadian Govt

CAPA has joined the call to action urging the Canadian government to follow the guidelines of the UN Declaration for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Although Canada signed this convention, they added a reservation which undermines one of the convention’s most important protections!

Allowing substitute decision making means that people with disabilities, including those in the psychiatric system, are often given “treatment” they do not want because somebody else decided it was best for them.

Check out our video below, sign the petition and go to chrusp.org for more information.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp2Y5YxwIdU]

Peter Gøtzsche – FORCED ADMISSION AND FORCED TREATMENT IN PSYCHIATRY CAUSES MORE HARM THAN GOOD

http://www.deadlymedicines.dk/forced-admission-and-forced-treatment-in-psychiatry-causes-more-harm-than-good/

By Peter C. Gøtzsche, Professor, MD, DrMedSci, MSc

8 March 2016

Forced treatment in psychiatry as we currently know it cannot be defended, neither on ethical, legal or scientific grounds. Ethically, the patients’ values and preferences are not being respected, although the fundamental human right to equal recognition before the law applies to everyone, also to people with mental disorders.1,2 This is clear from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,2 which virtually all countries have ratified. However, we ignore the convention and continue to discriminate against people with mental problems.

Please consider this. Doctors cannot give patients insulin without their permission, not even if the lack of insulin might kill them, and they cannot give adult Jehova’s witnesses blood transfusions without their permission, even if the lack of blood might kill them. The only drugs that can be given without permission are also some of the most dangerous ones. Psychiatric drugs are the third major killer after heart disease and cancer, with an estimated 539,000 deaths in the United States and European Union combined.1,3 Only soldiers at war and psychiatric patients are forced to run risks against their will that might kill or cripple them. But there is an important, ethically relevant difference: soldiers have chosen to become soldiers; psychiatric patients have not chosen to become psychiatric patients.

In many countries, a person considered insane, or in a similar condition, can be admitted to a psychiatric ward on an involuntary basis if the prospect of cure or substantial and significant improvement of the condition would otherwise be significantly impaired. After having studied the science carefully over many years, I have come to doubt that this is ever the case.1

Forced treatment most commonly involves the use of antipsychotics, but they are very poor drugs. The placebo controlled trials are seriously flawed because they have not been adequately blinded.1 Antipsychotics have many and conspicuous side effects, so most doctors and patients can guess whether an active drug or a placebo is given, which exaggerates the measured effect markedly.1 Furthermore, almost all patients in these trials were already in treatment with an antipsychotic drug before they were randomised after a short wash-out period. This cold turkey design means that abstinence symptoms – which may include psychosis – are being inflicted on patients who get placebo. Even helped by these formidable biases in the trials, the outcome is poor. The minimal improvement on the Clinical Global Impressions Ratings corresponds to about 15 points on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale,4 but what was obtained in recent placebo controlled trials in submissions to the FDA for newer antipsychotics was only 6 points,5 although it is easy for scores to improve quite a bit if people are knocked down by a tranquilliser and express their abnormal ideas less frequently. Thus, the FDA has approved newer antipsychotic drugs whose effect is far below what is clinically relevant. Old drugs are similarly ineffective.1

Whereas the benefits of antipsychotics are doubtful, the harms are certain, and the cold turkey design is lethal. One in every 145 patients who entered the trials for risperidone, olanzapine, quetiapine and sertindole died, but none of these deaths were mentioned in the scientific literature.6 Therefore, if we want to find out how lethal these drugs are, we should look at trials in dementia, as such patients are not so likely to have received antipsychotics before randomisation. Randomised trials in dementia shows that for every 100 patients treated for a few weeks, one is killed by an antipsychotic, compared to those treated with placebo.7 It could even be worse than this because deaths are seriously underreported in published trials. For example, a review found that only 19 of 50 deaths and 1 of 9 suicides on olanzapine described in trial summaries on websites also appeared in journal articles.8

There is no evidence that mechanical restraint in belts or seclusion has any benefits, but these treatments can also be lethal. Violence breeds violence and when psychotic patients become violent, it is very often because of the inhumane treatment they receive. It may also be because they get abstinence symptoms when they drop a few doses of an antipsychotic because they are very unpleasant to take, which can include akathisia – an extreme form of restlessness that predisposes to both suicide and homicide.1

Electroshock is also forced on people although it doesn’t seem to work for schizophrenia and although the effect on depression is temporary, which often results in a series of shocks.1 About half of the patients get memory loss1 and the more treatments they get, the more severe is the memory loss.9 Some psychiatrists claim that electroshock can be lifesaving but this has never been documented whereas we know that electroshock may kill people: about 1 in 1000 patients die.10

Another reason for using force is if patients present an obvious and substantial danger to themselves or others, in which case they can be involuntarily admitted. However, this is not necessary. The National Italian Mental Health Law specifies that a reason for involuntary treatment cannot be that the patient is dangerous. This is a matter for the police, as it also is in Iceland, and patients in Italy can decide that they want treatment elsewhere.1

Forced treatment does more harm than good and it kills many people, not only because of the direct harms of the drugs but also because of suicide. A register study of 2,429 suicides showed that the closer the contact with psychiatric staff – which often involves forced treatment – the worse the outcome.11 Compared to people who had not received any psychiatric treatment in the preceding year, the adjusted rate ratio for suicide was 44 (95% confidence interval 36 to 54) for people who had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. These patients would be expected to be at greater risk of suicide than other patients (confounding by indication), but most of the potential biases in the study favoured the null hypothesis of there being no relationship. An accompanying editorial noted that some of the people who commit suicide during or after an admission to hospital do so because of conditions inherent in that hospitalisation.12

I fully admit that some patients are very difficult to treat optimally without using force. But it seems that, with adequate leadership and training of staff in de-escalation techniques, it is possible to practice psychiatry without using force.1,13,14 In Iceland, belts have not been used since 1932, and there are psychiatrists all over the world who have dealt with deeply disturbed patients for their entire career without ever having used antipsychotics, ECT or force.1

I believe we have to abolish laws of forced admission and treatment, in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.2 Abandoning using force will be harmful to some patients but it will benefit vastly many more. We will need to work out how we may best deal with those patients who would have benefited from forced treatment in a future where force is no longer allowed.

Peter C Gøtzsche graduated as a Master of Science in biology and chemistry in 1974 and as a physician 1984. He is a specialist in internal medicine. Co-founded the Cochrane Collaboration in 1993 and established The Nordic Cochrane Centre the same year. He became professor of Clinical Research Design and Analysis in 2010 at the University of Copenhagen.

References

1 Gøtzsche PC. Deadly psychiatry and organised denial. Copenhagen: People’s Press; 2015.

2 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. General comment No. 1 2014 May 19. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G14/031/20/PDF/G1403120.pdf?OpenElement (accessed 1 April 2015).

3 Gøtzsche PC. Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good? BMJ 2015;350:h2435.

4 Leucht S, Kane JM, Etschel E, et al. Linking the PANSS, BPRS, and CGI: clinical implications. Neuropsychopharmacology 2006;31:2318-25.

5 Khin NA, Chen YF, Yang Y, et al. Exploratory analyses of efficacy data from schizophrenia trials in support of new drug applications submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration. J Clin Psychiatry 2012;73:856–64.

6 Whitaker R. Mad in America. Cambridge: Perseus Books Group; 2002.
7 Schneider LS, Dagerman KS, Insel P. Risk of death with atypical antipsychotic drug treatment for dementia: meta-

analysis of randomized placebo-controlled trials. JAMA 2005;294:1934–43.

8 Hughes S, Cohen D, Jaggi R. Differences in reporting serious adverse events in industry sponsored clinical trial registries and journal articles on antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs: a cross-sectional study. BMJ Open 2014;4:e005535.

9 Sackeim HA, Prudic J, Fuller R, et al. The cognitive effects of electroconvulsive therapy in community settings. Neuropsychopharmacology 2007;32:244-54.

10 Read J, Bentall R. The effectiveness of electroconvulsive therapy: a literature review. Epidemiol Psichiatr Soc 2010 Oct-Dec;19:333-47.

11 Hjorthøj CR, Madsen T, Agerbo E, et al. Risk of suicide according to level of psychiatric treatment: a nationwide nested case-control study. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 2014;49:1357–65.

12 Large MM, Ryan CJ. Disturbing findings about the risk of suicide and psychiatric hospitals. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 2014;49:1353–5.

13 Fiorillo A, De Rosa C, Del Vecchio V, et al. How to improve clinical practice on involuntary hospital admissions of psychiatric patients: Suggestions from the EUNOMIA study. Eur Psychiat 2011;26:201-7.

14 Scanlan JN. Interventions to reduce the use of seclusion and restraint in inpatient psychiatric settings: what we know so far, a review of the literature. Int J Soc Psychiat 2010;56:412–23.

AFTERSHOCK, by Connie Neil

An offering in support of the CRPD campaign, an excerpt of my (as yet) unpublished non-fiction book about my ECT and forced drug experience and my work to recover a mental balance.

 

Connie Neil

Shock survivor and anti-psychiatry activist

 

AFTERSHOCK

 

They wheel me into the white, tiled room and shunt me onto a table. “Oops-a-daisy. Slide over now, there’s a good girl.”  Globs of cool slime smudge onto my temples, my chest, and the electrodes are lodged in those spots. The needle pierces my vein and fuzz creeps into my mind.

Wait! I can’t breathe.’  I can’t move or speak. My lungs are paralyzed. I try to tell them, try to scream for help, but a mask with a hose attached blocks my mouth and nose, and I know no more. Except I feel that I am dying.

How long after? Hours? Days? I have no idea how I got here. “Hush now, Connie, don’t make a fuss.” Am I making a fuss?

Perhaps my name brings me back to this world. I know nothing else. They show me how to hold a spoon and eat. That man – Bob — keeps fidgeting around saying, “Hush,” and that he is my husband. That shrieking noise is my baby, they say, held up to me by a leering old woman. I know nothing; care less.

Something bad has happened.  I no longer exist. A shell is left in my place.

* * *

That was my first shock treatment and it was in a general hospital with anaesthetic and so-called relaxing drugs, a kind of chemical curare that stops all automatic movement –like breathing, like heartbeats. This method today is called the improved gentle ECT form by Max Fink, teacher of ECT. (Fink, 1999)

      Like any sane person, given the disastrous reaction, I refused the next session. True to protocol, that is the signal I am clearly insane and cannot be trusted on the streets of Hamilton. I am institutionalized “on the mountain”, the crazy house the Ontario government runs with our tax dollars, for 20 more ordered against my will and without anaesthetic, so I can feel the full horror of destroying my mind.

If they knew the truth, I reasoned, of the permanent brain damage that was done by this seemingly barbaric operation, it would be outlawed, banned. There must be some major accident, something broken in the machine, which caused this horrendous aftershock for me.

But no:  they already knew. This burning my brain away, this slump in my ability to learn was exactly what was planned. No, mine was a typical case handled in the socially accepted manner.  Troublesome, opinionated, loudmouth rule-breaking new mother must be brought into line, or buried where nobody can hear her complaint. Shock will fix her.

And what did they wipe out? My acting/writing career, musical training, 8 to 15 years of memory, any trace of self-confidence, my IQ, EQ, every Q.  All depleted or burned away with every session.

Where can I go to learn to be whole? Shrinks? Hell, no. To whom can I appeal when my every comment is deemed crazy? Neat trick, these bio-psychiatrists and their ilk concocted. This treatise is not about me:  I am fine, perfectly fine, just fine, really fine; fine with my alternatives to achieve adequate balance but nowhere near what I was put into this lifetime to achieve. Yes, I am fine, but what of the millions over the past (2016 – 1939 which equals) 77 years who succumbed to this torture? Shock is ordered by an elitist group of mostly men upon women who make up two-thirds of the targeted victims fed electroshock purported to be a cure for depression, for sadness, for frustration, for reaction to reality that is unfair (Burstow, 2014, pg 195).

And what behaviour did I exhibit that was “a danger to myself and/or others”, the criteria for locking away recalcitrant members of society exhibiting egregious harm? I had a baby, got flu, and failed to wrest control of my baby’s care from my obsessed mother-in-law where I was parked while hubby wrote his final exams in another city. Shock was what I deserved, they judged. My adult history showed no crazy markers to convince authorities I was in need of their ‘help’. Before their infringement I had many successes.

 

What I Lost to Electroshock

We set out in two cars towing a trailer of our dismantled farm porch theatre set on a crisp winter day to drive 150 miles past Montreal to Lennoxville where Bishop University hosted the Inter Varsity Drama League Festival. Long trip. It was Ryerson’s first entry in five years. Fellow actor Robin Brewer and I sampled the whiskey bottle to keep warm until Donald Sutherland, our English teacher and chaperone, poured the remainder out onto the snow at our second stop. No more booze.

For our technical rehearsal, we re-constructed the set, designed and built by Bill Underwood, the only one not studying Radio and Television Arts. He later made his theatrical career at Stratford. The set was praised for simplicity and atmosphere by our adjudicator, Montreal producer Rupert Caplan. In the brief time allotted, we ran lights and cue-to-cue lines while director Ken MacKay roamed the gods checking that our projection was clear.

It would be surprising if we did not do well as Ryerson attracted talented young people. And we cleaned up with Tennessee Williams’ 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, his one-acter that the controversial Hollywood movie Baby Doll was based on. We took Best Production, Best Director, Best Actress and Honourable Mention for the lead actor.

At the awards dinner, when Rupert Caplan announced, “The winner is Connie Neil” he looked at me in surprise, did not recognize me off-stage, the mark of a talent for disguise. As I rose and walked forward, he added, “and accepting for Connie Neil is . . .” I had to tell him, “Connie Neil”. He fumbled, “Is it you?” I nodded.  For the part of simple-minded Baby Doll I was padded to a plump roundness so that my ripped costume after the rape only revealed blood and bruises, and not my usual sleek shape. He said, “Although this is not a great play, it is an example of how a good performance can make a play great because the audience believes in it. Connie achieved a great degree of believability. She is a promising young actress.” Two universities choose that play; only ours won awards.

At the Banff School of Fine Arts that summer I took both acting and playwriting to help decide where I best fit. At the auditions for their mountain dialect play, they moved me up to advanced acting, the Shakespearian studies, and gave me the lead of Barbara Allen in the 3-act play Dark of the Moon. In this challenging role I was wooed by a witch-boy, raped in church, gave birth on-stage, mob-killed and left dead and sprawled on a rock for the witch-boy to play with. Brought the house down. People hung around backstage to weep and tell me how strongly I affected them with my performance.

I also got high marks in playwriting.

For my final Ryerson year I took the lesbian role in Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit”, the play of three disreputable characters in a waiting room for the afterlife that for them is hell. I received Honourable Mention for acting: No mean feat in competition with eleven universities.

Aside from these honours I performed in musical and comic revues, dance shows, piano recitals, singing, radio and TV acting and wrote a number of plays.

All this stopped with electroshock. In reviewing old papers I came upon letters of congratulations; there had been national newspaper coverage. One was signed “Sharon”, and from the content we had been close.  She named people I recognized, but she is lost in the area of my brain burnt out by thoughtless shock docs. What does it matter to them that a few lists or personnel are missing? It matters not at all.

Oh sure, my interests were still present, but all I was capable of was chorus work, minimally. Once I was helping choreograph Toronto City Hall Revue dance numbers. In the grand finale the lead dancer was to lift me, spin around and roll me out for the big finish. Because I had demonstrated both male and female roles, in performance I lifted him, spun him around and rolled him out for the final TA-DA. Did not even realize I had done it until we were in the wings and he asked, “What was that all about?” All I could do was laugh, and never tempt that brain shock mistake again on stage. Performing, even as an amateur, was over. That little brain glitch meant I was unreliable on-stage.

One reason I did well performing was my prodigious memory: All the script changes were imprinted on my mind. If an actor was in the wrong place or gave the wrong line, I could cover because I remembered every nuance of the rehearsal period. All gone now. No more connections. And what enrages me today is that psychiatry knew this destruction is the result of ECT, always the result, and in their arrogance, their greed, their lusting for the easy way around difficult personalities, they hide the truth they know; brain damage is always the result.

 

What Little They Disclose

Today there are legislated informed consent discussions as in the 2002 Andy Behrman memoir Electroboy. I notice the bio-psychiatrist and not the shock doc gives the information to him and his parents, outlining the different methods and expected results. It is now admitted the chief problem is memory loss, a condition even my nice psychiatrist suggested was brought on in me by my “mental illness”. They like to blame the victim:  it is how they are trained.  The classifications are: 1) neurotransmitter theory shows ECT is like antidepressant drugs and affects serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine; 2) anticonvulsant theory claims ECT seizures condition the brain to become seizure-resistant; 3) neuroendocrine theory says these convulsions cause the hypothalamus to release mood stabilizers; and 4) brain damage theory admits that the damage created gives the illusion of mental stability.

Note that these are theories, not proven scientific facts that explain how ECT treats depression or mania. The fact that ECT results are unproven does not stop psychiatrists from charging ahead, delivering their shocks and, when they fail to ‘work’, adding more series of shocks until you no longer complain. You learn what torture comes from objecting.

 

 

THREE DECADES LATER

Close to the end of this retreat with meditation teacher Cecilie Kwiat at the Dharma Centre of Canada I was able to report that I could see what was hidden behind that all-encompassing blob of anger that dogged my steps for the past five years. Every word of those complaining 560 pages in my crumpled discarded memoir was filtered through the veil of my unrelieved anger; and I thought all along that anger, rage, fury was all that there was.

Since I had loosened up throughout this year, attending four retreats and finishing the story of what ECT had done to my very long life, I volunteered as copywriter to publicize teachers. Research for this chore interested me in attending Body, Speech & Mind with Albertan Cecilie Kwiat. She was a close student of Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche and had produced that text book from her (and other’s) notes of his teachings on a sea journey to Peru. And I had studied that text with both Buddhist nun Karma Chime Wongmo and the Rinpoche. I thought I knew the subject. I thought it would be easy.

But just as Cecilie taught, every moment brings a brand new “I” with a possible fresh outlook and opportunity for insight.

She arrived in time for the Namgyal Memorial weekend, a gathering that brought many old students to the centre to pay tribute to our lama who passed to the higher realms ten years past.

When I turned in my seat during the temple rituals I caught her brilliant smile, her hearty laugh, and I realized I had met her once before during a longer retreat that she attended with a few of her students. Seated side-by-side in the Tea House I had heard her answer a student’s questions with such clarity that I had to comment, “That was perfect,” and she smiled, “Thank you.”

This could be a stellar retreat. The morning after her first day of teaching as I lay between dreamland and waking I saw my brain, full of holes, covered in scabrous dead areas. This, I heard, was my leaky boat that would not carry me far on this river journey to enlightenment. Then, with tears wetting my face I heard my dead guru say, “You need mentoring!” Not even sure what that meant, I approached Cecilie after class and reported that little scene, expecting perhaps a name and phone number on a slip of paper. Instead, she made me cry. I tried to make my plea clear to her with dry eyes, but she poked me in the back, saying, “You’re frozen. Cry!”

She reached and captured my wrist and pulled me to her, seating me in her lap. Oh no! I must not sit in teacher’s lap! I would break her. Then what would the class do for a teacher? In my research I learned she had been run over by a gravel truck – twice – in a motorcycle accident in her youth, and was told she would never walk, never have a baby. But she fooled the doctors, and did both.

I was very awkward on her lap, trying to hold my weight off her while she questioned me about my history that I blubbered out to her, and she told me about her difficult childhood being called a Nazi because of her father. I blurted out, “Was he?” But that was not the point she was making. Some students were still in the temple. What a show we were putting on! They drifted away. Still on her lap like a toddler, she had me write in my notebook: “Here I am right now. As I am, may I be well and happy. May I be free from enmity.” It is the translation of White Tara’s mantra, my yidam, my guardian, and I had forgotten her Loving Kindness practice. That forgetting of crucial information was what was still, fifty years after shock, the plague accompanying ECT that thwarted my need for spiritual wholeness. I am ever unsure of what I know, what is missing.

I carried on with classes and exercises, but it took days to settle this stormy episode. I passed her a note for a private talk on vanishing emotions, a failing of mine because ECT was ordered for people who cause trouble, disturb others, have uncontrolled emotions; and so was my great fear. I over-react and, not only bury my emotions, I forget I have done so.

I explained to Cecilie that an unfeeling state makes everyday life easy, tempting, that nothing bothers me in that state, but because I do not notice the trigger, I cannot climb out. I am worried that outlawing my anger will kill all the emotions.

She talks about my heart, but I know my heart is closed. She tells me that is not true, that she does not work with people who have no heart: She can see my heart. Again she makes me write; “I aspire to be free from anger. I will un-armour my heart (and may armour it up again).

Her next class is on awareness of feelings and I take in what I can. There are fifty (some say 52) skulls worn by the deity as a necklace. These transformed mind states are now seen to be his adornment, his conquered wisdom. We must describe these mind states in our own language. We are often mistaken in what is our mind state, a result of conditioning. Change is all that is constant.

This has been a very cold and rainy retreat. The storm blew out our power for a day. Snow and mud makes walking a study in problem-solving – from one dry-ish clump leap to somewhere safe. We are to move from one form of meditation to another – sit, do body scans, review, walk slowly with one foot on solid ground, one foot over the abyss. Sheer boredom of looking at 25 of the negative, dismal mind states pushes me with my umbrella out of the temple to walk the centre, to sit under the shelter with the huge peace Buddha statue the Sayadaw, Rinpoche’s teacher, built here and all across the world. And here I caught a glimmering of another mind state.

I often wondered what I did in a past life to be born into this family. Cecilie phrased it differently: Whoever made me may have put me in this family, through attraction, to learn an important lesson. Could the lesson be Loving Kindness? To armour and de-armour my heart? Forgiveness? I already know anger.

I report that anger hides a great wall of refused and unresolved forgiveness. I see the wall, name it unforgiving, examine it and its many instances in my life.  I even refused under hypnosis – not just once – to forgive especially my father. No. I won’t. Even I know these denials expand to big trouble in river city. With that early decision, unforgiving moves to other beings until it is global: I am intransigent. I judge.  But now I think about who needs forgiveness (me, duh) and what qualities he (Dad) had and who this reminds me of (guess).

When Cecilie declares Congratulations! I stipulate I have not forgiven, only seen the awful wall of it. She repeats congratulations, that having seen it, the wall will dissolve bit-by-bit, one-by-one. She can see I can be kind and I agree I can be kind. I am kind. I wonder what is behind that dissolving wall.

To close the retreat we celebrate Cecilie’s 74th birthday on November 1st with two great cakes, balloons, gifts, and a healthy meal.

She took a compartment for her train trip back to Alberta, got in her car at the station drove off and hit black ice, a major accident. Many surgeries, many crises later, by Christmas, she was working her way into wheelchair rides and therapy to help her briefly stand. When my heart clutched at the photos in casts, amid hospital paraphernalia, what I take heart in is her still-brilliant smile.

If she can do that, so can I. Nothing can break Cecilie Kwiat. But just in case, I send her Loving Kindness.

In a noisy hostel in St Maarten, I cannot sleep for the rowdy drunken crowd outside my dark window, so I practice Metta. They leave and later I see in my dorm a white-robed figure approach my lower bunk. She offers something in her right hand. Is it a blessing? I see a square of light before my open eyes. On it I see a quick sequence of hieroglyphics. There’s a dark horse’s head, but other images change so quickly I can hardly register them. Then it is over and I ponder these screened messages.

On February 15, Cecilie Kwiat passed on into communion with the enlightened who have no need of their corporeal body. I miss her. And thank her for that parting visit.

 

An Understanding Forgiveness

Our school reunion lunch was set for the hottest July day, so I left my car in Oshawa and sailed into Toronto on the commuter GO train – early.

Walking up from Union Station I was so early that I found the one shaded park bench on King Street and parked myself at the end where a man of a certain age invited I might sit and join him. He wore tan slacks and a woven beige golf shirt with new trainers on his feet and a neat pewter-coloured close-clipped hairstyle. His teeth were perfect.

“Can you tell me where the . . . uh . . . the . . .” He scowled and concentrated on the elusive words, then triumphant, “the Eaton Centre is?”

I could and did. It was within walking distance, but he stayed seated. That was not what he wanted. We spent an hour piecing together what he needed to say.

He tried again, this time searching for the French word for psychiatrist. “I was . . . sis . . . sis”

And I supplied, “Psychiatrist?”

“Yes, but . . . neuro . . . sus . . . sus . . “

“Neuro-surgeon?”

“No, neuro . . . neuro sus . . .”

“Neuro-scientist?”

“Yes!”

Lordy, I was sharing a bench with the enemy. In my mind, this was the guy who made the pills, who screwed up my brain, who pushed me to ‘gentle’ shock treatment. Does the neuroscience model of brain-based consciousness really hold up? Here was the scientist behind psychiatry. And just look at what he had become: a wreck, my victim.

We painstakingly translated his story. Six years previous he had a stroke, could not speak. But his wife helped him and they were just fine together. Every time his wife came up in what I loosely describe as conversation, he cried. I understood the stroke had taken away his emotional controls. Here waited the enemy, at my mercy.

He also could not recall the word for “tomorrow”, not surprising as he was captured in the ever-constant now. What he needed to tell me was that his wife had died two years back, was buried in Barrie, where he was headed, just resting and walking in between trains. He had come from Belleville and, just like me, had walked up from Union Station to this shaded bench.

He stopped trying to control his tears and the quavering in his voice: He must tell me his tale. The tears were just scrubbed away by his hand. It was difficult to piece together what disturbed him.

Neither he nor his wife realized that her stomach pains were serious: He particularly grieved that he did not understand in time. When finally she was settled into hospital, the medical staff and his wife dismissed him, saying to come back “Tomorrow”. But when tomorrow came, she was gone. And he was alone. “Alone,” he cried, “alone.”

Two years were not enough time for him to accept her death and his damaged condition. So, what to do with the rest of his life? How to go forward?

Because he emigrated from France, I asked if his words were easier available in French. But no, it made no difference. Did he have friends, support, family there? But no, and he loved Canada and his life here – before his calamities.

I spoke as a Buddhist of the essence of a person going on eternally. And this sparked an interest and further distress. She spoke in his head as she was dying and declared there was no more suffering, that she was happy now, that she was fine. And then he went to the hospital, pleased with her stated recovery, and found her dead. What he cannot set aside is that she died alone, and now he was alone, struck asunder. The only comment that brought him some lightening of mood was when I observed that, “with your close connection, you will see her again. She will wait for you. You will be together, not alone.”

“Yes. I know it.”

And with that, he stood, offered his hand to shake, to stroll back the way he had come. Done. I joined my fellows at our reunion lunch. Good lunch; but a better chance meeting that corrected my biased view of all psycho-workers.

No matter what we achieve in this life through education, fame, important works, in the end we carry the exact same personal conditions that are the core of our life. Previously I could not see the purpose of this exalted class of doctors that had threatened my safety, harrowed my career, and damaged my brain. But this archetype of soul examiner invited me onto his bench to reveal his crying heart. Such hurt revealed; I could not do other than extend my hand and grasp his.

I see with softer eyes.

 

References:

Behrman, Andy  (2002). Electroboy; A Memoir of Mania.

New York: Random House, Inc.

 

Burstow, B. & LeFrancois, B.A. & Diamond, S. (Eds.) (2014) Psychiatry Disrupted: Theorizing Resistance and         Crafting the (R) Evolution    

Montreal:  McGill-Queen’s University Press

 

Fink, M.  (1999).  Electroshock: Restoring the Mind.

New York: Oxford  University Press

Una campaña en contra de los internamientos involuntarios y las intervenciones psiquiátricas forzadas, por Ana María Sánchez

http://congresovisible.org/agora/post/una-campana-en-contra-de-los-internamientos-involuntarios-y-las-intervenciones-psiquiatricas-forzadas-por-ana-maria-sanchez/8152/

Escribo en apoyo a la campaña contra la prohibición absoluta de los internamientos involuntarios y las intervenciones psiquiátricas forzadas. Me piden argumentar con base a la Convención de los Derechos de las personas con Discapacidad y lo haré, aunque el argumento que expongo es el de la salvaguarda de la dignidad de todas las personas con respeto absoluto a sus derechos.

Me motiva escribir esta invitación a sumarnos en la insistente y motivada convocatoria que hace CHRUSP, Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry, pero también ante la posibilidad de generar los cambios profundos que den un vuelco a paradigmas que estigmatizan y discriminan. Me sumo contra los internamientos involuntarios y las intervenciones psiquiátricas forzadas porque:

1. Reducen a la persona a un objeto al quien se le busca controlar, aniquilan la voluntad y la creatividad, acabando con su libertad.

2. Atemorizan, estigmatizan y desinforman sobre la discapacidad psicosocial.

3. No resuelven la parte estructural de una sociedad que actúa desde el paradigma de la “normalidad” encerrando a todos los que no se adaptan a los convencionalismos sociales.

4. Es una respuesta política cómoda e insuficiente que no responde a las necesidades específicas de las personas con discapacidad psicosocial y de sus familias.

5. Descarta y abandona a las personas con discapacidad psicosocial, las confina a vivir en aislamiento, privadas de su libertad y sometidas a tratos crueles e inhumanos.

6. Promueve el olvido social y la negligencia política ante los abusos y violaciones de los derechos de las personas con discapacidad psicosocial.

 

Me sumo hoy a esta causa, convencida desde mi propia lucha a favor del reconocimiento de los derechos de las personas con discapacidad. Desde las experiencias de personas que se han visto coartadas y obligadas a vivir aletargadas, forzadas a un tratamiento y confinamiento, separadas de una sociedad que busca normalizar, homogeneizar y catalogar a quienes somos diferentes. A partir de los testimonios de personas con discapacidad psicosocial y sus familiares que sufren rechazo y discriminación, padecen la falta de servicios adecuados y el abandono en reclusión o en calle, entre otros. No nos olvidemos por ejemplo, de la violencia contra mujeres con discapacidad psicosocial, sus derechos son negados y olvidados y por lo general no se retoma la lucha desde los movimientos a favor de los derechos de las mujeres.

La Convención de los derechos de las personas con discapacidad y otros instrumentos internacionales nos hacen la invitación a pensar y actuar para que los derechos de todos y todas se promuevan y respeten. No es suficiente estar en contra de los internamientos y tratamientos forzados, se requiere pensar creativamente para hacer del modelo de derechos humanos una realidad y exigir al estado las políticas públicas que promuevan y garanticen la realización de los derechos de las personas con discapacidad psicosocial.

Para más información sobre esta campaña: https://absoluteprohibition.wordpress.com/page/2/

 

 

¿Qué ganamos con abolir la psiquiatría forzosa? -Andrea Cortés

http://congresovisible.org/agora/post/que-ganamos-con-abolir-la-psiquiatria-forzosa/8154/

Estamos impulsando cambios muy importantes que se sitúan al margen del conjunto de reivindicaciones sociales que son respaldadas por las mayorías. Me refiero al reconocimiento de los derechos de las personas con discapacidad psicosocial o discapacidad cognitiva.

Se cree erróneamente que la atención que recibimos constituye asunto resuelto y por consiguiente, la gente confía en las bondades de la psiquiatría, la farmacología, las terapias de cualquier índole y sobre todo, de la posibilidad de aislar y mantener en esa situación a quienes  no se acoplan a lo comúnmente aceptado. La sociedad crea los problemas, luego los oculta y finge no tener nada que ver en esto, de esta forma los hospitales psiquiátricos son reductos en los que se encierra a seres “molestos” y/o etiquetados como “violentos y peligrosos”, bajo la dudosa promesa de un restablecimiento de sus facultades, o de una rehabilitación. La psiquiatría biologista ha contribuído a justificar estas acciones al atribuir como causas inequívocas de los trastornos mentales a daños cerebrales, descartando de plano toda la vida y el contexto familiar y social de las persona afectadas.

En realidad, el deshacerse de las personas con discapacidad psicosocial o cognitiva mediante el encierro, ya sea temporal o permanente en una institución psiquiátrica, es una práctica común y de buen recibo entre la población colombiana. Aprovechando en algunos casos la existencia de una interdicción para disponer de la vida de alguien, sin necesidad de matarla en forma física, pero sí, matándola en vida a fin de acceder a beneficios económicos. También existen abundantes casos en los que la libertad se suprime como castigo por tener una característica personal como orientación sexual o de género diversa, o también como única respuesta ante la carencia absoluta de estrategias de apoyo desde la familia y la comunidad para manejar los ‘trastornos mentales’ y procurar un nivel de vida apropiado a quienes viven con ellos.

La aceptación social de la institucionalización forzada hacia personas con discapacidad psicosocial o cognitiva, real o percibida, demuestra la ignorancia y el desinterés de la población por entender la naturaleza de los trastornos mentales debido al miedo y a los tabúes que alientan la estigmatización. En lugar de informarse y capacitarse para convivir, no solamente cuidar, a las personas con discapacidad psicosocial, éstas y las personas del entorno prefieren asumir que los “expertos” en el tema ya tienen todas las respuestas y que las soluciones sólo provienen de ellos, de la psiquiatría organizada. Muy pocos se atreven a dudar y los que los hacen jamás son escuchados. Como resultado las personas con discapacidad quedamos expuestas a ser maltratadas dentro de las instituciones con métodos denominados como terapéuticos pero que en realidad son tortura, puesto que no curan ni ayudan a mejorar la condición mental, claramente se trata de castigos para aplacar a los anormales e inadaptados. La indiferencia de la sociedad ante estos hechos los hace parecer legítimos.

Las personas con discapacidad en Colombia no conocemos cuáles son las posibilidades de impugnar o demandar una hospitalización forzada, desconocemos cómo reclamar una reparación por haber recibido torturas y tratamientos contra la propia voluntad, no contamos con la más mínima posibilidad de rechazar un tratamiento y acogernos a otro, así como tampoco de abandonar una institución voluntariamente.

Los psiquiatras y su personal de apoyo dentro de las clínicas cuentan con todas las ventajas, empezando por la credibilidad de las agobiadas familias. Controlan la información que les brindan sobre las enfermedades, los tratamientos y justifican todas sus acciones hacia los internos. Desatienden la obligación de ofrecernos a cuidadores y personas con discapacidad toda la información necesaria para que exista un verdadero consentimiento informado, contando con la opinión de quienes vamos a recibir los tratamientos.  Las clínicas psiquiátricas son cárceles.

La abolición de la institucionalización forzada implicaría impulsar todos los cambios necesarios para brindar una atención eficaz y respetuosa hacia las personas con discapacidad psicosocial y cognitiva y le haría un aporte inmenso a la sociedad en términos de aprendizaje sobre respeto, inclusión y convivencia. También es evidente que puede contrariar a quienes vean amenazados sus intereses y privilegios. Pero somos más los afectados por el abuso de poder de los psiquiatras, de los laboratorios farmacológicos y de las instituciones que obtienen dinero a partir de nuestros padecimientos contribuyendo a empeorarlos. Nuestro bienestar físico y mental debe prevalecer ante los intereses institucionales, industriales y de personas particulares.

 

Andrea Cortés

Persona con discapacidad psicosocial

Activista independiente

 

Este texto fue escrito en el marco de la Campaña de Apoyo a la Prohibición Absoluta de la CDPD de los Tratamientos Forzosos y los Internamientos Involuntarios. Para obtener más información consulte el siguiente link: https://absoluteprohibition.wordpress.com/page/2/

“I Must Have Died and Gone to Hell” Katherine Tapley-Milton

KT-ForcedDrugging(1) (docx)   KT-ForcedDrugging(1) (pdf)

I MUST HAVE DIED AND GONE TO HELL

by Katherine Tapley-Milton[1]

 

My psychiatrist at Centracare[2] was foreign and had an accent that was hard to understand. He always treated me like I was a bad child. When he was going away for a couple of days he overdosed me with 30 mgs of Haldol. He said that it was “to keep me out of trouble”. You had to stand in line for your pills and I had no option but to take the medication or else the staff would have gotten nasty and forced me to take it.

You didn’t want to buck the hospital staff or you would end up being pinned down with a needle in your butt. I heard that political prisoners from Russia complained to the Western media that they were tortured with a horrible drug. That drug was called Haldol. Psychiatrists here affectionately call it Vitamin “H”. The overdose of Haldol put me into an “oculorgyric crisis”, which is what happens when your eye balls roll back in your head and stick there.

Wikipedia comments: “Oculogyric crisis (OGC) is the name of a dystonic reaction to certain drugs or medical conditions characterized by a prolonged involuntary upward deviation of the eyes. The term “oculogyric” refers to the bilateral elevation of the visual gaze.”

It is excruciatingly uncomfortable and terrifying. When this reaction started to happen to me I went to the nurse’s station and begged for the side effect pill called Cogentin. She rudely informed me “You’ll have to get a lot worse before we’ll do anything about it.” I went into a small room and my neck arched back and my eyeballs were stuck staring up at a light bulb. I was in physical and mental agony and could not believe the cruelty of someone who would just leave me like that. The side effects of the medication went on for days and days. It seemed like an eternity.

The pay phone was my only contact with the outside world, but the competition for its use was fierce among the patients. Also, it was difficult to hear over the din of the ward. There was moaning, crying, and screaming. I remember calling my parents long distance and begging them to get me out of Centracare. However, I was certified which meant that legally I couldn’t leave. Sobbing into the phone I told my father, “I must have died and gone to hell.”

 

[1] The author is from Sackville, Canada

[2] Centracare was Canada’s oldest psychiatric institution. It has since been demolish.

Post on psychiatric torture by Initially NO

Initially NO has brought together art, graphics, narrative, essay, and articles of the CRPD containing rights that were denied to her, in a beautiful and moving composition asserting a claim for justice.  Since the art and graphics are integral to her work and I cannot reproduce the layout here, I am sharing her introduction and a few samples of the art work and urge you to visit the original for the full effect.

of our human rights

Rights denied me, again and again over a 14 year period (1998-2012) brings back such feelings that make me not wish to attempt to talk about this again. It hurts so much, it was so painful, it upsets me to remember, but it upsets me even more knowing that over 5700 people are subjected to such horror, every year in the state of Victoria, Australia, people who actively say no I don’t want this, very clearly and are then put on Community Treatment Orders, and tortured with forced injections, electricity, and verbally abusive appointments, that must be met, or they’ll be put into arbitrary detention again. It hurts me that the people who say no they do not wish to take psychiatric prescriptions are then subjected to the system longer.

When you refuse to be injected they do this. One ambulance man said to me he was just a small cog in a big wheel. That’s the symbolism here and the bombs in the body profiteering, Otherwise, that many hands on a small young lady, as I was, as strip her and stick her.

This is what happens when you’re given threats of worse treatments such as electro-shock and detention if you do not turn up to a fornightly ‘depo’ injection. I had to pretend to be happy with this senario to a point. (I’ve cut out the true-feeling related swear words here to fit with #UN CRPD Absolute prohibition.)

Article 15 – Freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment

1. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his or her free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.