The Judge and the Jury

A short while ago I was given the opportunity to be a trainee for a day as part of my psychology internship while on leave from my job as a psychiatric nurse. I accompanied a judge, a representative from the medical organization and a representative from SIND (middle of the road mental health charity) to meet with four psychiatric patients who had all filed a complaint against forced treatment or incarceration. The purpose of this meeting was for the Judge to assess whether the psychiatric hospital had followed the rules. Not the grievance of the patient who filed the complaint which is what most people believe happens. Needless to say the psychiatric patients rarely win unless there is a procedural mistake and even then the psychiatric wards are often given a time leeway to fix the situation. It turned out that I had met the Judge shortly before when I was on the other side of the table supporting a woman who had filed a complaint against her forced treatment and incarceration. He had no recollection of me at all. I also had the shocking experience of meeting a former patient from many years ago when she was still a child and seeing how she was now. So destroyed, a horrifying experience and to think for a short while I had been a part of it.

That is why I wrote this piece.

The Judge and the Jury

My day of judgment has arrived or at least so it felt for I was bidden to preside as the grand witness to the crimes of the mad yet what I witnessed was the injustice of a system sworn to protect the weak yet colluding with the strong.

A passing comment on the way out, thrown carelessly over my shoulder ā€œperhaps I will meet someone I knowā€ I say, but little did I know what was waiting, what was in store, what a joke, a farce a ā€œI hereby condemn you to a lifetime of madness, oops no I meantĀ  treatment, helpā€¦ā€

ā€œYou mock me! My gown of respectability, my curly little wig telling the world that I am judge and in this case jury too, well YOUā€ and the finger is pointed and its pointing at me ā€œare part of the plan for you are as guilty as guilty as meā€ and under his breath he utters ā€œas are the rest of us.ā€

I shake my head for now I am here and the Judge and the Jury are waiting impatiently for I am late the taxi meter is ticking, but its only money, not minutes, hours, days or weeks just the quiet tick ofā€¦ ah you thought I would say tock but so predictable I am not. In I get and deja vue for the Judge and the Jury is the same as before when I was with ā€˜Joanā€™ fighting for her right to say no, no to forced medication and lonely seclusion but she is another story and not for now.

Itā€™s him but he sees me not, ā€œwho are youā€ he asks and I wonder, speculate is he playing games or has he really forgotten? I jog his memory but it remains stubbornly forgetful and I leave it, shrug my shoulders and sit beside him the Judge and the Jury, pretending the wrong is right and memories are forgetful.

Four cases are my privilege to witness, four cases too many for all are doomed yet the pseudo exists to play the charade a charade of ā€œwe truly are listening to youā€, ā€œyou have a chanceā€Ā  but us in the know recognize the sham, the empty words reverberating and echoing merging with the system so that silence pervades.Ā  I am given some notes, documentation itā€™s called, but I donā€™t care for I have seen a name long forgotten of a girl I once knew when she was 13 going on 14 the ā€œmost schizophrenic childā€ they said ā€œin the whole of Denmark, oh, she is so illā€ they said ā€œa hopeless case.ā€ ā€œOnly those staff who have experience, great experience in the knowledge of the mad are allowed near this crazy girl and that my dear is not youā€ so I was told all those years so long ago.

She was small and round, black, black hair and dark brown eyes, she rarely talked and looking back I realize why, for words were wasted, there were no ears only fears, she was scared but so were they, of her, this little girl who wandered the corridor back and forth, back and forth. Other memories come rushing back, the anger expressed by Morten or was it Torben, anonymous men who didnā€™t care, employed to share their kindness, their professional knowledge, the so called specialists yet men who screamed and shouted at this little girl. Once I caught a carer, big and strong, screaming and shouting at the little girl trapped in a corner unable to escape for his arms were firmly planted on the wall, and she, she was stuck between those limbs. No running for that little girl. Oh how he hated me, for I stepped between them, sent him away and away he went, for I never saw him not on my shift, for such a bitch as me he did not want to see, but as for her she had him all those seconds, minutes, hours and shifts when I was away and he could stay.

Those many years so long ago I believed in the system I thought it wrong but not in treatment, I thought the drugs, the help was based on knowledge sound and so she got her medicine and I am sad to say she too got it from me in the every day. Many a day I came and she never complaining but her eyes gone only the whites as the side effects turned and twisted making her blind for as we all know eyes turned upwards do not make a vision clear. ā€œShe is doing this on purposeā€ was a comment often heard, so suffer she must. Oh God, at least I can with a small semblance of, I like to think humanity didnā€™t believe that, pardon me, crap, and so on my shift her eyes were brown, not white with the brown twisted and gone.

Four patients I saw and she was the last, oh my Gosh what a shock. They always said she was a chronic, a chronic schizophrenic only she, unlike me, has had no breaks and when she last saw me I was a nurse a psychiatric nurse and now once again she meets me just like before, a psychiatric nurse only now I too have been mad, been labeled and negated, told I was a chronic, a chronic schizophrenic. But I have escaped, gotten out, recovered and now there I am, I sit before her as if nothing changed, happened, the tick tock of time stood still.

Onlyā€¦

She has.

For there she is coming in the door tiny and frail, every bone to be seen supported by a nurse, a helper, a who knows what she probably doesnā€™t care, slobbering and drooling her words lost in her mumbling made inarticulate by the drugs. Oh Lord, then thereā€™s her hair or whatā€™s left for there is so little of what once was a thick black mane, I can see her skull through the wisps and my chest contracts.

I suck in the well-known smell of the psychiatric wards a smell of old, of unwashed bodies that musty stench of those who have ceased to care, the shock of seeing what once was, reduced to an animal screaming for her words cannot be heard through all the drooling, the slobbering the inarticulateness of words yet still she fights. For constantly I am told, this Judge and Jury is brought to here, not there but here. ā€œI want to be out thereā€ she screams in primordial animal language ā€œfor I am a person, a human being, I want to be freeā€.

Her right to rights, to freedom expressed through starvation for here and only here she has control and they foolishly, oh so foolishly think she just wants to die. Die! No she wants to go yet here she is sitting scarecrowed on a chair, so once again the Judge and Jury parody a trial saying ā€œwe are truly ensuring justice is servedā€. And as we leave the Judge and Jury sigh ā€œback next weekā€ he mutters ā€œā€¦againā€ sigh, ā€œto ensure justice is served, for this poor creature truly is delusional she needs help she just doesnā€™t know it.ā€

And as for me struggling to comprehend, I face the shared recognition of ignorance for no one knows why she is here and humbled and ashamed I find myself facing my past through the present for I too was like them ignoring life and story and thereby, in my ignorance, condemning.

GUILTY!

 

12 COMMENTS

  1. My goodness, that was incredible. I am crying for you all. Even judge and doctor and nurse and especially, patients.

    What if I say, FORGIVEN!

    Could you believe?

    Change can only come when we admit. No, not admit a new patient to the locked ward, but admit the error. Admit the mistake. God search the Heart for malice. If it isn’t there, fear not. Know thyself.

    Dear Olga, I see for certain there is no malice in your Heart. Anyone can see that. You caught a case of madness yourself? Consider it divine, your service to the frail patient – whom you now can relate. To solve the problem, we must take it on. The problem we care about becomes our very own. I wonder if maybe she belongs to you.

    You would not be here and would not have written your excellent story if you did not care.

    What if I say, FORGIVEN!

    Could you believe?

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  2. Thank you for your wonderful and kind words! I try to forgive myself and I think if I did not believe in hope then I would not be able to be here. But also having been duped by the system and believing in it once myself, makes me understand when I meet those who are working in it today, who have not had the opportunity to really question what it is they do that they in fact just like ā€˜theirā€™ patients, have been, and are being, manipulated.

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  3. Damn this is powerful stuff!
    Thank you Olga.
    I’ve been readying for a “fight” around forced treatment here in the States and I read your piece and get a much wider perspective.

    Please keep blogging here. Your voice is important, you’re important to the change underway.

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    • If my words help to inspire you and perhaps others, in the ongoing “fight” for human rights, dignity and the right to choice then my mission is succeeding! Many ask me ‘Olga why do you bother you are fighting windmills’ but I always believed that even if it is just one person in the audience, when I lecture or hold a talk, who starts to question then I have succeeded. Now, here, I have been given the opportunity to express myself in writing, a new medium for me and therefore a different audience. Thank you for your feedback and letting me know that my words have given you a wider perspective in your ‘fight’ šŸ™‚

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  4. This is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever read here on MIA. it also stunned me so that I just sat, looking at my monitor screen for a number of minutes. You are a courageous woman. I also have to witness the “sham” of justice that takes place “to make sure that these poor people get the treatment that they so badly need!” It’s very difficult to endure as you watch people being condemned to no life, no justice, no hope, no release; and it’s all done in the name of “caring” and “justice” and all of those other nice words.

    Thank you for sharing this very powerful experience.

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    • Thank you!
      Forced treatment is an abuse, wrapping it up in words expressing kindness adds to the abuse, but it also serves the purpose of easing the conscience of those who perpetrate these acts as it legitimizes, one is after all doing it for the others ‘best’. Add to that a society which condones such acts, in fact many countries create special laws only for the ‘mad’ and suddenly you have legalized abuse. Well perhaps suddenly is a bit of misnomer…

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  5. Its a truly beautiful & remarkable piece of writing Olga, I wish I could write like this.

    I was struck by this passage though, which comes up time & time again in mental illness, self reporting. Perhaps it is the great elephant in the room of human mental health, “I am not an animal!”

    ā€œI want to be out thereā€ she screams in primordial animal language ā€œfor I am a person, a human being, I want to be freeā€.

    Does trauma experience trap us inside a thwarted natural response, by the minds resistance, suppression & denial of our animal nature? What does the word “evolution,” feel like?

    “Most people think of trauma as a ā€œmentalā€ problem, even as a ā€œbrain disorderā€ However, trauma is something that also happens in the body. We become scared stiff or we collapse, overwhelmed and defeated with helpless dread. Traumatized people are too ā€œsuppressed,ā€ too stuck in ā€œprimal defensesā€ more appropriate to our amphibian or reptilian evolutionary predecessors.

    So what is a therapist to do with human beings hurt and beaten down by past trauma? Help people listen to the unspoken voice of their own bodies and to enable them to feel their ā€œsurvival emotions,ā€ of rage and terror without being overwhelmed by these powerful states.” _Peter Levine.

    Is she telling us she feels trapped within, with her primal scream, her “unspoken voice?”

    Olga! Such a beautiful name, same as the Russian love of my life, & we both paid the price of my ignorance about my mental dis-ease. Thank God the younger generation has the internet, no longer so dependent on an educated priesthood.

    “Curse the mind that mounts the clouds in search of mythical kings and only mystical things, mystical things cry for the soul that will not face the body as an equal place, and I never learned to touch for real down, down where the iguanas feel” _Dory Previn.

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    • John Read among others has show that so many who hear voices and are labeled schizophrenic have been abused, especially sexual abuse. This not only affects the mind but also the body and I agree with you it is not just the mind that has the memories, the body has them too.
      The road to healing however, is as unique as the individual herself and therefore to create only one allowable explanation, the ‘biologically defective person’ explanation and a system built around such a paradigm, is a human tragedy. Thanks for your thoughts!

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  6. Some justice! It reflects what my son went through, here in Britain, when he contested his section. I didn’t know if I should lough or cry. I remember it now as a pantomime. The doctors told a pack of lies. The judge didn’t have time to listen to what we had to say: he was in a hurry. After that the doctors proceded to poison my son with their drugs and damaging his physical health. He still bears scars from it all: psychological and physical. The irony is that, at the beginning, the judge told us that this tribunal was serious business and reflected British justice. Some justice that was!

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    • It is tragic that these tribunals are in reality a parody. I can only assume the major reason for them is for the sake of appearances and deluding the public. Unfortunately being on the receiving end of them and realising that not even the law is on oneā€™s side can be soul destroying. I am so sorry your son had to go through that.

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