• flybye88

  I read. "... The most famous case was that of the paranoid schizophrenic Christopher Clunis"
  Have you ever heard of a person with a broken leg being referred to as "Broken Leg John Smith?"
  No - then how come The Independent is still clinging to this anacronism of refering to a person/human being suffering from a psychosis as "..the paranoid schizophrenic Christopher Clunis?"
  A human being, in good or ill health is still far more than thier medical diagnosis and should never be reduced to this by definition!

  Wake up Independent - write an article or two about "recovery" and "coping!"

  r.b.

  (Disabled RAF veteran, ex founding member of the Federal German Disabilities Council <behindertenrat.>)</behindertenrat.>

• Guest

  If it was an article about murder victims they might write 'murder victim John Smith'. If it was about sport they might write 'racing driver Lewis Hamilton. If it was about multiple sclerosis it might have said 'multiple sclerosis sufferer Jane Doe'.

  I think you are making something out of nothing here. It is a perfectly normal use of language.

• flybye88

  Hi, I feel it is largely a matter of perspective. On the other hand Jane Doe does not get newspaper articles refering to her as "Sclerosis Jane Doe!"

• Ian Watson

  As a mental illness sufferer myself as well as being a former psychiatric nurse too I can see your point but for the people out there who are not mentally ill or have someone in their family that they can "ground" themselves out on to gain an understanding, it is deemed by the media to label people who on the surface would seem as if nothing was wrong with them, its almost a medieval practice akin to shouting "witch" by ignorant people

• Fool_Brittania

  No person should be deprived of their freedom for more than a few days without the participation of a judge where evidnce can be brought and the conditions reviewed.

  This is simply imprisonment without due process.

• Claire Muir

  Agree except "simply imprisonment". One idiot is judge jury and executioner. See you tube "Depot injections rob artist" about Jean Cozens RIP.

• Peter

  Take the treatment, would laugh at the word treatment, not for the pain, suffering, the death I witnessed on ward. Treatment, never treat a dog that way. The sick rule the wards, its a disgust.

• Ian Watson

  What an excellent snippet of prose

• Keith Cross

  So is the ineffectiveness an indicator that the drugs are not as effective as contended?

• bobbellinhell

  'Tabloid-inspired legislation turns out to be ineffective' shocker

• Sally

  True. Guess the drug therapy didn't work, either.

• Lisa

  Pardon me, but as there's only a tiny correlation between mental ill health and violence, isn't all this just scare-mongering, based on data-mining 'violent cases'?

• Peter

  Yes. Given that what many seen at two recent football matches?

  Psychiatry does say & write anything to keep its monopoly service provision on a population of service users past and present a majority want rid of force, that cannot be treatment.

  The protectionist State, a cartel from civil servants willing to break their own code of practice, to politicians willing to remain ignorant and health care greedy for money and privilege status of enslaving a few thousand to pharmaceutical companies, none of whom defend a patients rights, nor defend science.

  If psychiatry were a reasonable institution, if were based on genuine science, then if treatments be generally well tolerated, why then when those whom from body, from nature cry out and cannot tolerate treatments, why does a psychiatrist continue to force, and why cannot said professional hand over a patient to another? Sometimes non medical is a winner for a patient, and for a State, cannot deny that be reasonable.
  

  The reason is that uncomplicated its unbelievable to a majority without direct events, psychiatry is pseudo, its PR & marketing, for profit industry of no cure, no method of action, its human experimentation on a scale bigger than Nazi Germany.

• rogerthat1945

  Football matches?
  How about the organisers of World War 1 and World War 2....and all the other wars since?

• Peter

  World wars, is that a reference to psychiatry's part in wiping out millions of people, sterilizing the disabled and then killing them? Lest we forget those true men behind the shoah.

• rogerthat1945

  Sometimes people lose the governments plots; sometimes the governments plots loses the peoples.
  One should paddle ones own canoe to get where one wants to be in life.

• Tatjana Tanya Stojkov

  People kill each other every day, everywhere! and, they are not proclaimed mentally-ill, forcefully medicated with non-working poisons, harassed by awful side-effects and their dignity taken away...I hear voices too, but don't consider myself to be mentally ill. I only got them as a result of using anti-histamines for 5 months... It doesn't make me violent or not knowing right from wrong, I don't take meds they try to force on me, I use alternative stuff because drugs don't work! I'm very affectionate person and have helped many sufferers by teaching them various techniques for improvement, I study science very succesfully and work for charity. Voices don't bother me, it can be quite funny at the times, but I have them less and less -only because I was educated enough to take a pro-active approach and refuse stuff that messed with all of my body. Did you people ever asked yourselves why is it that mentally ill people refuse meds again and again? If you had pains, would you refuse a pain-killer? You would if it made you paranoid, drooling, shuffling mess! 7 years ago my then GP suggested that I had hysterectomy, suspecting the voices are hormonal. So, your meds damaged me and your response is to cut out the healthy part of my body, to see what happens! Being bereaved recently, I went to see a psychiatrist, who insisted I take more meds. 3 times I asked him why, considering I had no symptoms but he had no answer except trying to push drugs on me even more fervently! The state of affairs in the mental health is dire, indeed! You can say that he is an expert, but people, I know my body and my mind much better than any so-called expert, I'm studying for my fourth degree and don't like other people taking liberties with me. Anyway, most mentally-ill people are lovely and very scared, treated appallingly and stigmatised because "normal people" are scared of them. What a lot of rubbish! Those who are violent would be so even if they are "normal", and altered states are a myth. The only problem I ever got was with "normal" individual who I believe is a psychopath, but is not diagnosed and masquerades as a "victim", harassing the whole neighbourhood. Go figure...Thanks for reading, people, I had to get it off my chest...and remember: no fear, compassion instead! )o(Tanya

• rogerthat1945

  `Internal Voices` can occur because there is a blockage in the corpus callosum (the part of the brain which cycles the information between the two hemispheres of the CONSIDERING mind).
  This can be attributed to head injury and/or historical content in the mind of the patient (whether secret or otherwise).
  Good luck with the self-help.

• Franklin Percival

  Quite what is going on? Most GPs are a joke, medical/neurological consultants are a load of tomfoolery and psychiatrists, when you can actually get to see such animals, are a bloody larff. This has gone on for years. When is it proposed that we will be able to expect performance from people we pay rather too much for their displayed level of competence?

• Susan Wells Vaughan

  Read Robert B Whitaker's and Dr. Grace E Jackson's evidence - long term use of psychoactive drugs (even short term use) exacerbates the condition - causes brain damage. if you want to have community programs - that's good- but have programs that WORK and that don't infringe on rights or cause worse health problems.

  If the drugs were so great, people would beg for them ---they cause very very serious side effects -and they don't provide benefits worth that suffering.

  Every community needs a Soteria House (Loren Mosher) and an Open Dialogue team (Jaakko Seikkula) - or programs comparable to these.

  Offer something good and effective, compassionate and fun and you Won't Have to Force it!

• stevehill6

  Whilst we rightly do not lament the disappearance of dark satanic Victorian "lunatic asylums", there remains a group of people whose mental health problems (for which they are not really responsible) are simply not amenable to so-called "care in the community" (copyright M. Thatcher, RIP).

  Or put simply, they represent too much of a danger to both themselves and others, unless they have round-the-clock treatment in secure, and hopefully reasonably pleasant, accommodation.

  This costs.

  But 90% of people in prisons have one diagnosable mental illness, and 70% have two or more. And that costs too.

• Lisa

  I think you will find that a lot of the people in the group you are talking about simply have poor character, or a predisposition to criminality and, by coincidence, also a mental illness. How could a health condition cause one to do criminal things? I support there being consequences for people doing criminal things, but don't really see how it can be related to their health.

• StrokeVictim

  Nonsense. "Criminality" is a stupid concept - and what is a predisposition to it???!!! Mental health conditions do cause people to do things that are "criminal|" And the high incidence of mental illhealth in prisons is because prison is not a "normal" place to be.

• Peter

  Worked in one of those asylums at the moment of Maggie's rain, the most troubled folk were troubled from the cosh #drugsneverwork why should we be medical study fodder?

• Jackthesmilingblack

  "Maggie's rain"
  Dylan fan?
  "I ain't Going to Work on Maggie's farm no More"
  Or is it, "Shelter from the Storm"?

• Peter

  Quite happy to work for Maggie, if they pay the going rate? Would then gift me somewhere to shelter. The most troubled folk were troubled from the cosh #drugsneverwork why should we be medical study fodder?

• Jackthesmilingblack

  You still don't get it.

• Guest

  You two should just enjoy the mutual company of yourselves, eh? Birds of a feather and all that.

• Jackthesmilingblack

  Another pointless comment from my cyber stalker.

• Peter

  The protectionist State that refuse to accept human personality, human characteristics, and dictates that control be from chemicals, electroshock of no cure, no method of action.

  Those with horrid side effects, yet those health professionals never give up when the patient does cry no more, no way to treat, when ways existence beyond a monopoly service provider that does degrade many a characteristic and removes personality; not a cure to the actual problem(s).

  Shut up patient is an abuse, never a cure. https://twitter.com/Psychabuse...

• rogerthat1945

  Public Authorities will never succeed in turning free-thinking humans into robotic machines for long.

• FredUp

  While a person with a mental illness who takes medication is statistically little more violent than you or me, when medication is stopped and/or drugs or alcohol abused, they are statistically far more likely to commit violent crimes than the non-mentally ill.
  The problem being that numerous studies have demonstrated a rate of substance abuse among the mentally ill at between 32 and 85 percent.
  Nobody likes to stigmatise those with mental illness, but the issue of public safety cannot be ignored.

• Claire Muir

  Sectioned people are more likely to be the victim of a crime and are not criminals but housewives. All drivers are not blamed for one accident. This legislated abuse is like the Stanford Experiment except drugs are involved and nobody will stop it.

• Peter

  Better together, divided psychiatry rule.

• Lisa

  Where do you get the stat about people with mental illness being far more likely to commit violent crime when untreated than other people? Sounds wrong to me.

• StrokeVictim

  It is wrong - and the fact is that mentally ill people are more likely to suffer violence and abuse from "normies"!!!!!

• Peter

  Maybe the treatment is the problem, no drugs, no possible withdrawal effects = CTOs and treatments are the problem. Support choice regardless of mental capacity.

• Ian Watson

  And again we see how greed and avarice by those in power has led to such enormous failings in the community.

  Almost to a person, did the RMN community of nurses predict this would happen when they stole the land the big hospitals were built upon, that the community would be inadequate in coping with the mentally ill and highlighting a singular point of failure to understand that mental illness is not something that can be treated the same as say an ulcerated leg or other infirmity but the care model of the latter was applied to those that should for their own and others protection have been dealt with in semi secure surroundings out of the community where they could do the least harm.

  I trained at a place called Warley whose closure alongside the other two hospitals in Brentwood were totally unopposed by Eric Pickles and it was said he copped a good earner by allowing these institutions paid for by the taxpayer many times over, were sold privately with little return to the taxpayer. Warley had what was known in the game then as a "section 37/41 unit" which was specifically for those deemed by the home office as being in need of particular control, most of those including one particular psychopath I remember with ill ease were sent into the community, Rampton had little room for its own clientele let alone taking on several of Warley's "37/41's" and so they were forced into open community and a disaster waiting to happen.

  Whilst Warley stood half empty, there was a case there answerable for some sensible cuts and downsizing but because of its gothic frontage and huge lands, the politicians and the land developers almost wet themselves with joy when the whole lot was sold to them on the cheap to turn into very expensive flats and properties, the developers made MILLIONS in pure profit and with the extensive land still available to them and their mates on the council who for a kickback will allow residential planning on greenbelt, they can make more millions but first off it was essential to remove the "nutters" in situ and in comes Mr Pickles who did nothing for his constituents being the patients and the local residents forced to endure them within their community.

  This has been seen across the country, Caine Hill another fine example of kickback and corrupt dealings, Bexley losing much of its grounds, these lands are owned not by the politicians but by the taxpayer but the taxpayer gets nothing whilst the councilmen, the MP's, the officers in council departments and the developers fill their pockets at what is in reality pure and orchestrated theft.

• Jackthesmilingblack

  Sanchez, what's your take on this?
  A blogger who over the past five years has told me on
  blog pages (including the Independent) that I'm not British, but Japanese (recently Korean). I'm talking of at least 100 times without exaggeration, almost certainly because I live in Japan. If a fellow Internet correspondent criticises Britain, or significantly disagrees with him, this person reacts by assigning a different race and nationality to his antagonist. Specifically saying that only genuine Brits should be eligible to comment in a British publication.
  His definition of what constitutes "British" is so narrow that many Caucasian Brits would fail to qualify. On occasion he has told me I'm a paedophile, live in an Internet cafe, and get this, guard at a Japanese WWII PoW camp. Must have been a previous existence. 
Ultra nationalist, sure. Xenophobe, racist bigot, no question, but my question is this: By providing him a forum, isn't the Independent exacerbating his mental health condition? And isn't there the danger that when cyber stalking no longer satisfies, he will move on to actual stalking?
  Jack, the Japan Alps Brit

• flybye88

  Hello Jack, (Sorry - I just managed to stop myself writing 'Hi Jack...') Just take a deep breath pal - don't forget to occasionally user your own personal "ignore" button.

  People get so upset about this and that - when the only sensible way to deal with some stuff is to skip over it and get on with something more usefull.

  My 2cents worth.

• Jackthesmilingblack

  You're probably right, but thanks for the second bite of the cherry opportunity.
  However, I do feel the underlying issue here is the way the broadsheets will facilitate a clearly mentally disturbed ultra-right nationalist simply because he can be construed as "patriotic". Indy and the other broadsheets fail to realise the damage they are going to the image of "English
  gentleman" in providing a forum for the racist, xenophobic bigot. “Only genuine Brits should be eligible to submit comment on UK publications” should be red rag to a bull, presupposing Indy had any ethical standards or moral integrity. But sadly Indy just lets it slip by. If patriotism is the last
  refuge of the scoundrel, it has to be the first refuge of the mentally deranged. Right, Indy?

  Jack, the Japan Alps Brit

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