MAD FOR IT
"Over the last century, giant strides forward were made by those
asserting their rights and self-determination in the fields of race, gender
and sexuality, but ‘mental health’ issues failed to keep pace.
This is set to change."
Mad Pride
Last November the Government released a Mental Health Green Paper (Reform of the Mental Health Act). The 'mental act from hell', as some are calling it, will sanction the medically approved force-feeding of toxic drugs to people in the community with a mental health disorder. A side effect will be increased profit for pharmaceutical multinationals. ‘Mad’ people will continue to be incarcerated with even fewer rights of appeal than before, and the boundaries between ‘mental illness’ and ‘criminality’ will blur further.
The Act includes Community Treatment Orders (CTO). This power requires a person to live at a specified place to allow easy access by professionals, “trained paramedics” and the police. The person will be under curfew at particular times to allow for scheduled visits. Consequences of non-compliance may include powers to enter by force and convey the person to a place of treatment (in the community) or to hospital. Although the order will last for specified periods, it is renewable, so could be indefinite. At the moment Approved Social Workers (ASWs) can apply for someone to be sectioned, but the government is pushing to change this to any mental health professional. This could be, say, a Care Home worker, leading to such abuses as sections being used to evict people. Part of a compulsory care plan may require attendance at a controlled Day Centre where they may be charged for this ‘service’. While the paper talks at length about “initial assessment and treatment”, there are fears that assessment is to be abolished. So treatment will take place against the will of patients and without appeal. How many people who get wrongly sectioned now ever get redress? People have been sectioned for reasons such as “smoking in bed” at a residential home or crossing a busy road slowly. Without the testing of evidence, more people will be forcibly treated and die as a result.
All those whose mental health is called into question will be deemed to have no capacity to decide anything about their treatment which is inconvenient for professionals. They will decide what is in the “best interests” of “patients”.
There is no mention of what should be the central aim of mental health services - the relief of suffering of people in distress or crisis. Sadly, Human Rights of people are to be ignored under this legislation. But the stigma, fear and inconvenience of this interference in people’s lives is as nothing compared with the so-called treatments that will be forced on out-patients. For at the heart of this procedure lies the effects of old-fashioned and often dangerous injectable neuroleptic (antipsychotic and tranquiliser) drugs and forced Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT).
The new proposals suggest that the new Act should operate in prison - quite unlike the 1983 Act which prohibits this. For good reason too, since forcing medication on prisoners used to be thought to be so liable to abuse it could not be allowed. Why it is thought that abuse would not operate now is hard to see. Magistrates and higher courts will also have a new power to remand people to hospital for treatment - even if they are unconvicted or convicted of an offence which does not carry a custodial sentence. One of the most abhorrent parts of the Green Paper suggests that prisoners with a “mental disorder” i.e. a majority of all prisoners according to research cited by the Expert Group may now be treated differently from other prisoners. They may now be assessed under the new act and treated either in hospital or in prison. If treated in prison, s/he may be treated for as long as that mental disorder lasts. The net effect of this may be the end of time-limited sentences for some, and the end of parole for others.
Madness: the new rock ‘n’ roll…
Resistance is being spearheaded by Mad Pride, a direct action group looking to educate and wind up so-called normal people and, as their name suggests, get some pride and self-respect going for all those fucked over by the medical-legal institutions. From strikes over the stupidity of work, to parties in hospitals, to an A-Z of advice on how to deal with doctors who think they know it all, Mad Pride are breaking down prejudice in all areas.
* They’re having a festival in Clissold Park, London N16 on July 15th, 1pm-9pm, featuring P.A.I.N and many others. * Check out their brill book, ‘Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture’, available from AK Distribution.
* Highly recommended: ‘Shibboleth: My Revolting Life’ by Penny Rimbaud, a founding member of anarchist band/collective Crass. The book describes how Wally Hope, the founder of the Stonehenge Free Festival, was grabbed after a Stonehenge festie in the 70s, taken to a mental hospital and pumped full of dodgy drugs. Crass then rescued him, and he was on the road to recovery when he died under mysterious circumstances. AK Distribution: 0131 555 5165 www.akpress.org