A previous post on this site described the ‘treatment’ doled out to Garth Daniels by the Mental Health Services (MHS) in Melbourne, Victoria. Briefly, the 40-year-old Daniels has spent about fourteen of the past twenty years in mental hospitals. He has been given every known psychiatric drug in large doses; he has been shackled to his bed for long periods, including 115 days in 2015, of which 69 days were consecutive; and he has been given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) three times a week for about 34wks with apparently no limit intended.
In hundreds of reports and hearings, Daniels has been characterised as an “extremely violent and unpredictable paranoid schizophrenic.” Professor after professor has described him as suffering “a brittle psychosis” that requires extreme treatment. He has been seen as quite likely the most dangerous man in the state’s entire history. While the total cost to the taxpayers has been well more than $10 million, the benefits of this prodigious diversion of resources to one (rather small) man have been underwhelming. The cost to Daniels and his family has been incalculable.
On Wednesday, May 18th, Daniels had what was probably his 102nd consecutive episode of ECT. As always, he told the staff that he did not want it and did not consent to it; as always, he got it. Later on the next afternoon, Garth arrived in Brisbane to join his family who moved here recently. When the hospital realised that he had gone, he was immediately posted as a missing person, but this notification has since been rescinded. If he were to return to Victoria, he would immediately be taken into custody, and the ECT would resume. There are no plans to return.
It is now five weeks since his last episode of ECT. At present, he lives in suburban Brisbane with his parents. Twice a week, he attends for psychiatric treatment in a building with absolutely no security facilities whatsoever. He continues to take the same fairly small dose of medication he was prescribed when he was in the hospital. Other than that, for the first time in twenty years he is entirely a free man. He is meeting people and starting to make friends. He sits in coffee shops and watches the passers-by or visits some of Brisbane’s many scenic spots, and plans to resume his much-interrupted photography course. The only official communication from his doctors in Melbourne said that he should be apprehended forthwith and immediately returned to the hospital to continue ECT. When asked which particular statute would permit him to be snatched off the streets and bundled on a plane, there was no response.
During his lengthy career as a patient, this man has been seen by something like 400 individual psychiatrists, professors, and registrars (residents in training). Over the years, his treatment has been directly approved by successive chief psychiatrists of Victoria. Even the minister for mental health, Mr. Martin Foley, felt obliged to comment on his case to dampen criticism. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP), the professional and academic body governing psychiatric standards in this country, is only twenty minutes’ drive from his hospital. As Daniels’ father previously worked for the RANZCP, the College has been very familiar with his case for years.
When asked to account for their actions, MHS states only that it “…provides treatment to all its mental health patients in accordance with the law and appropriate clinical guidelines.” The RANZCP does not comment on individual cases. Any complaint to the Victorian Medical Board will be heard by some of the 400 psychiatrists who have seen him, or their teachers, or their students, or their friends. In such a small and close-knit professional community in such an isolated and conservative city as Melbourne, an independent assessment of the merits of his case is simply not going to happen.
None of us have a crystal ball but his position now seems much better than at any stage in the past. So far, there has been only one incident to cause concern. While walking through a local shopping centre with his parents, he turned and saw two security guards walking toward them. Their uniform is very similar to that of the Victorian Police; thinking they were police coming to arrest him, Garth panicked, but the guards walked past. His parents tried to settle him, but he remained edgy and irritable for the rest of the day. That evening, he began acting in a way they had often seen in the hospital, saying things like: “My schizophrenia is really bad tonight, I’ve just had a visual hallucination.” His agitation settled after a 90-minute consultation and, the next morning, he was back to normal. His parents were clear that, in the past, this type of behaviour had led to restraint, further ECT, and more drugs.
Some people are of the view that all mental disorders can be relieved by a warm and accepting atmosphere, but I can’t agree. If a person gets better with a cup of tea and a friendly chat, he wasn’t mentally disordered and shouldn’t go anywhere near psychiatrists with their hospitals, their drugs, and their ECT machines. While some mental distress will get better with calming, empathic support, some need a lot more, but we do know that even the most transient forms of distress can rapidly be made worse by a heavy-handed, punitive or panicky response. Permanent mishandling will necessarily produce continuous suffering.
Regardless of his initial diagnosis (and I am not convinced it was schizophrenia), for 69 days last year, Garth Daniels was tethered to his bed and given injections which induced intense physical and mental agitation (akathisia) as well as a skin rash. He could neither move around for relief nor scratch himself. When the nurses came to give him the injections, he swore and spat at them, so they gave him more. I suggest that this falls within the definition of torture. Many victims of torture never recover, so it is probably going to take more than a change of scenery for Garth Daniels to overcome the legacy of twenty years of standard psychiatric ‘treatment.’
Let’s look at some of the facts and opinions surrounding this case. For clarity, they are listed as a series of problems identified by his psychiatrists, and resolutions they could have adopted if they were so inclined. The list proceeds from the most general to the particular.
Problem 1: He needed treatment for schizophrenia.
Resolution 1: There was absolutely nothing in the files to suggest any of his many psychiatrists had taken a history sufficient to justify this diagnosis. Certainly, nothing in his present behavior would count as firm evidence for what is generally regarded as the most severe and immediately recognisable mental disorder.
Problem 2: He needed involuntary treatment for his schizophrenia.
Resolution 2: In no other diagnosis can treatment be imposed by law. HIV/AIDS, diphtheria, syphilis, TB, Ebola, Zikavirus, you name it: people can choose whether they want treatment. Yes, they can be quarantined, but that is for the community’s safety, not theirs. A cancer patient can opt to terminate treatment and die, but schizophrenia? No, you must take whatever the state’s agents determine, but take care, because attempting to kill yourself will earn you more.
Problem 3: He needed to be detained because of the risk of violence.
Resolution 3: People cannot be held indefinitely in preventive custody just because they have a potential for aggression. Daniels has never been convicted of breaking the law, yet he was detained in a high-security forensic unit (Thomas Embling Hospital) for two years. In fact, his record of aggressive behavior is trivial. I routinely deal with much more aggressive and threatening people.
Problem 4: He needed to be held in a locked ward because he was likely to run away.
Resolution 4: He is now living with his parents and comes and goes as he pleases, and he doesn’t run away.
Problem 5: He needed massive doses of drugs to save his life.
Resolution 5: There is now a very substantial evidence base to argue that orthodox psychiatric treatment of schizophrenia makes it worse. In this country, people taking psychotropic drugs in the long term die, on average, nineteen years younger than their undrugged peers. In the US, that figure is twenty-five years, probably because they are exposed to larger doses with less supervision. And how solid is the evidence base for the notion that people with schizophrenia will necessarily die as a result of their condition? It’s actually very weak: in less-developed countries, such as Thailand where I worked in 1981-82, people often don’t get medication because they can’t afford it. Mostly, they get better quicker and have a lower relapse rate than their heavily-drugged western counterparts (see also Wunderink et al., 2013).
Problem 6: He needed huge doses of drugs to control his agitation.
Resolution 6: Lowering the dose of psychiatric drugs stopped the akathisia, and his agitation has now resolved. Perhaps that’s overstating the case: he was on the same dose of medication in the hospital in Melbourne as now, and he was agitated there but not in Brisbane. I could say that spending time listening to him is almost certainly contributing to his more settled mood, but biological psychiatrists eschew ephemeral explanations such as empathy so we’ll say that everything is due to the drugs.
Problem 7: He needed huge doses of drugs to control his delusions.
Resolution 7: In fact, there was only ever one primary “paranoid delusion” recorded, and after discussing it at length, it seems to have faded away. There were some secondary “paranoid delusions” recorded, such as “You people are poisoning me, you’re trying to kill me, the whole thing is a conspiracy to torture me.” They seem to have stopped when he crossed the border, although he remains petrified that he can be arrested and shipped back to Melbourne. He requires frequent reassurance that he is perfectly safe walking the streets of Brisbane and that the police here have no interest in him. He is aware his phone can be tracked, but he still carries it.
Problem 8: He needed protracted and probably unlimited ECT as drug treatment of his “brittle schizophrenic psychosis” had not been successful.
Resolution 8: Does anybody remember this nostrum from first-year medical school? “If the treatment fails, reconsider the diagnosis.” But psychiatry doesn’t do that. Psychiatric diagnoses are only ever ratcheted up, not down again (unless it goes sideways to Borderline Personality Disorder). Could 400 psychiatrists be wrong? Well, they can if not one of them has taken anything approximating a proper psychiatric history, in which case the whole thing becomes an exercise in groupthink, not science.
It is necessary to emphasize the point about taking a history. Psychiatrists like to say they are specialists. A specialist surgeon has certain skills that she learned and applies; a specialist obstetrician has a skill set and knowledge base that a village midwife doesn’t; a specialist radiologist can tell more from a x-ray than a law-enforcement officer, however well-intentioned the latter. For psychiatrists, the specialist skill set consists of two parts: knowing how to take a history from a disturbed and uncooperative or hostile patient, and then knowing how to manage the information the history has yielded. But modern psychiatrists can’t take a proper history because they weren’t taught how. The reason they have lost this vital skill is that they believe they don’t need it. They think that DSM says it all; ask the pertinent questions and the answer will drop out the end, which will also dictate the treatment. The arduous business of taking a history is left to nurses with check lists, who were never trained in this skill either.
Problem 9: He needed to be shackled to control his aggression.
Resolution 9: It would seem the shackling exacerbated his (very minor) aggressive tendencies. My experience is that shackling people makes things worse, not better.
Problem 10: He needed protracted and probably unlimited ECT to control his aggression.
Resolution 10: Stop the ECT and listen to his complaints, and the hostility fades away (so far).
Problem 11: He needed involuntary ECT as he had “unreasonably refused consent.”
Resolution 11:
Part a): What would constitute ‘reasonable’ refusal of ECT? No psychiatrist has ever been able to answer this question. Psychiatrists who use ECT take it as given that if they recommend ECT, they are doing so reasonably; anybody who declines the experience is ipso facto acting unreasonably so his opinion can be over-ruled. The fact of the matter is that when a psychiatrist decides to use ECT, he is admitting he has reached the limit of his skill set.
Part b): Anybody ‘offered’ ECT must give “informed consent.” But the information on which the approval is based, never includes a statement that some psychiatrists use ECT a great deal while others, seeing virtually the same patient population, use it rarely or not at all. It is entirely a matter of chance, not of science, which psychiatrist the patient sees. If patients were told that, very few would consent – but they’d get it anyway. Many psychiatrists are wedded to ECT.
Problem 12: He needed involuntary ECT as he was incapable of giving consent.
Resolution 12: Now we move into Kafka’s territory: the psychiatrist said Daniels had a memory defect and could not remember the advantages of ECT after he had been told them, so he was, in law, incapable of giving consent. Why did he have a memory defect? ECT (and yes, he still has a memory defect).
Problem 13: He and his family were repeatedly told by numerous psychiatrists that the ECT would stop if he consented to take clozapine.
Resolution 13: In most states of the Commonwealth, this is a criminal offence known as “demanding with menaces.” Putting that aside, and all its implications for a caring, empathic psychiatry, one would like to know how he could be capable of consenting to this especially toxic chemical, one he had had before and didn’t tolerate, yet he couldn’t consent to ECT?
Problem 14: Once he moved to Brisbane, he should have been arrested as a “dangerous person.”
Resolution 14: The Victorian Mental Health Act doesn’t apply in Queensland, and he hadn’t done anything that warranted his detention under any act in this state, so that went nowhere.
Problem 15: He should be arrested and returned to Melbourne as a “missing person.”
Resolution: 15: He wasn’t missing, he and his family knew exactly where he was, as did a number of other people. But regardless, missing persons can’t be arrested nor can they be shipped across state borders.
Problem 16: Four hundred or more psychiatrists and trainees agreed he was a “very brittle paranoid schizophrenic with a tendency to extreme violence.”
Resolution 16: ‘Extreme’ means ‘at the limits of human experience, the point beyond which there is no return.’ I agree that mass murderers, such as the perpetrator of the gruesome Orlando massacre, show ‘extreme violence,’ but I will submit that spitting and swearing aren’t quite in the same league. But back to the four hundred psychiatrists, their serried ranks marching in lockstep toward the future of psychiatry as “clinical neuroscience” (Insel et al. 2010; Insel & Freund 2012). If everybody simply memorises DSM5, and criticism is suppressed (McLaren 2010), then science degenerates into an echo chamber. What happened was the ’emperor’s new clothes’ effect, where everybody is too scared to question the diagnosis for fear of being regarded as stupid. Be assured this effect is very, very powerful in medicine. And a “brittle psychosis”? That just means, “We don’t know what to do,” but the expression can be recommended to trainees because it fools a lot of senior people, including ministers of the crown.
Problem 17: That’s Victoria’s problem, it would never happen here.
Resolution 17: Sorry, it happens everywhere, all the time. However, Queensland’s mental health act has a hidden catch. Nobody is allowed to publish any material that could serve to identify a person who has an action before a mental health court. Essentially, everything is suppressed. That means a patient’s relatives can’t go to the media or their member of Parliament and complain about the treatment. And, being in a locked ward, the patient can’t contact anybody himself because his phone is removed. If the relatives try to smuggle a phone in or a letter out, they can be permanently barred from visiting with no appeal.
Finally, we come to psychiatry’s problem, which I can only indicate briefly. Modern biological psychiatry says that all mental disorders can be reduced to particular cases of brain disease, with no questions left unanswered. I have argued at great length that this project is non-scientific and will necessarily fail (e.g.,. McLaren, 2011). Through the obsession with biological reductionism, we are completely missing the point of mental disorder. The cause of this problem is that the drug companies have colonized modern psychiatry. The historic collapse of the psychodynamic models left an intellectual void into which the pharmaceutical companies quickly moved. Our profession is now little more than a profit centre for Big Pharma, and what a tidy little profit it is.
For example, 10% of the Australian adult population is now taking antidepressants, and that figure shows no signs of levelling. In their drive, the drug companies have been aided and abetted by intellectually naive and ethically unscrupulous academic psychiatrists who willingly dance to the tune of the wealthy pipers who control the flow of research money. Modern psychiatry has become a joint venture of the surveillance state and transnational corporate capitalism, generating obscene profits for some of the most venal companies on earth (Whitaker & Cosgrove, 2015).
Moreover, the case of Garth Daniels shows that the so-called “review process” of mental health tribunals and courts is little more than an enforcer for the corporate state. One should not expect psychiatrists with the power to rectify this situation to do so. Partly, they have lost control of their field, and partly, they are making too much money. Fundamental reforms never come from those who profit from the status quo. That is psychiatry’s problem, and that’s how Garth Daniels got his problem. Whether he can survive his decades of “treatment,” only time will tell.
References:
Insel TR, Cuthbert BN, Garvey M, Heinssen R, Pine DS, Quinn K, Sanislow C, Wang P, 2010: Research Domain Criteria (RDoC): Toward a New Classification Framework for Research on Mental Disorders. Commentary: American Journal of Psychiatry 167: 748-751
Insel TR, Freund M (2012). Shedding light on brain circuits. Biological Psychiatry; 71:1028-9.
McLaren N (2010). A life of its own: the strange case of the biopsychosocial model. Chapter 7 in Humanizing Psychiatrists: Toward a Humane Psychiatry. Ann Arbor, Mi.: Future Psychiatry Press.
McLaren N (2011). Cells, circuits and syndromes. A critique of the NIMH Research Domain Criteria project. Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry 13: 229-236
Whitaker R, Cosgrove L (2015). Psychiatry Under the Influence: Institutional Corruption, Social Injury, and Prescriptions for Reform. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Wunderink L, Nieboer RM, Wiersma D, Sytema S, Nienhuis FJ (2013). 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 JAMA Psychiatry. 2013 Sep;70(9):913-20. doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.19.
Interesting article, am very glad to hear Garth has at least for now escaped from his tormentors.
But a few questionable parts, including these statements by author McLaren:
“Many victims of torture never recover”… what does this mean, I.e how is recovery being defined, and where is the data to support this? How is torture defined? Etc. McLaren should write more clearly.
Also, in asserting that other psychiatrists may have misdiagnosed so-called “schizophrenia”. McLaren appears to believe that schizophrenia is a valid diagnosis that can be reliably identified. If so, where is the evidence for that? Many authors such as Bentall, Boyle, Poland, Kinderman, Read etc have laid bare the total lack of validity and the relative unreliability of the schizophrenia concept. In fact, their writing details how two people given this label can have nothing in common (i.e. only two out of five arbitrary behaviors are required… One can easily walk into a hospital and report hearing a voice and get diagnosed as having this illusion).
Jock, there is a better way of thinking about and discussing severe psychotic conditions, in my opinion: https://www.schizofreniebestaatniet.nl/english/
We should not pretend that there is a schizophrenia out there that we know and that some enlightened people can reliably identify. It ain’t there baby.
We should primarily debate behaviors and experience, not illusory illness diagnoses they are assumed to have.
“In no other diagnosis can treatment be imposed by law.” – this appears mistaken, or perhaps it only applies to Australia; but in America multiple other psychiatric diagnoses can be have treatment imposed by law, such as bipolar, schizoaffective, psychosis not otherwise specified. Of course, the notion that these are in fact discrete illnesses is an illusion.
Well done to McLaren for pointing out honestly how harmful and limited psychiatric treatment of psychotic states really is, and for adding to the chorus of voices exposing the symbiotic relationships between psychiatrists, the state, and Big Pharma.
Lastly,
It’s sad to hear Garth say this:
“My schizophrenia is really bad tonight, I’ve just had a visual hallucination.”
This shows just how indoctrinated he was by the psychiatrists who told him he “had” “schizophrenia.” Hopefully eventually Garth will realize that there is nothing innately wrong with his brain, but so much wrong with how his psychiatric captors abused him, as well as potentially earlier traumas and deprivations he may have experienced.
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I think ECT against your will and being tied down is torture.
It reads to me like this was done to him because he would not shut up and comply. That is why torture is often administrated – openly question the regieme and you are locked away and tortured. The analogy to how it is used in repressive regiemes is illuminating. Those outside the regime can critice, those in who dare to do so will be tortured.
I think he may never recover from the ECT induced brain damage.
I do not know what the outcome of those who were tortured is likely to be. I did look it up on torure survivor organisation websites but have not found out so far.
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Yes, I agree these things are torture. My point is that making a generalized statement like “many people tortured never recover”, as if that were a known fact (but with no data to back it up provided by McLaren) is kind of meaningless. Severity, length, kind of tortures vary greatly, as well as the resilience and resources or lack thereof of people subjected to whatever torture. Also, recovery is partly subjective and occurs in degrees. It’s not all or nothing… that’s why that statement didn’t make sense to me.
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A major initial problem was legal pressure from Garth’s father exposing illegalities in the involuntary use of ECT during his last admission. I was present when, following a tribunal on 28/9/15 where the issue had come up and was deflected by the lawyer on the panel, the psychiatrist in charge, J S, made a threat directly to Mr Daniels senior’s face that he would apply again and again for ECT as he saw fit. It was an aggressive, unnecessary and chilling thing to do. During the next 6 months Garth’s treating doctor, S M, frequently behaved in a vindictive, spiteful way such as giving Garth ECT on Xmas day.
I believe Garth was being punished for his family’s attempts to protect him. The family was eventually legally overwhelmed by the deep legal pockets and systematic corruption of the Government of Victoria. It was a frightening abuse of the power of the state supported psychiatric lobby and augers ill for anyone attempting to question it.
PS The draft for the new Mental Health Act of Victoria, July 2014, had a clause that banned ECT for children under 14 as a result of 6 years of consensus by various relevant parties. The draft that was presented to parliament did not contain that clause. The change was not known to parties involved other than the RANZCP until a few days before the act was tabled and it was too late to discuss the matter.
This matter has exposed the mental health system as corrupt, dishonest and frighteningly powerful.
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“In no other diagnosis can treatment be imposed by law.”
Sorry, my mistake. I should have said “In no physical diagnosis…”
All people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders can be detained and treated against their will in this and most Anglophone countries.
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mmmm maybe
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-08/chemotherapy-ordered-for-oshin-kiszko-cancer-stricken-perth-boy/7310614
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Boans that is a child, not an adult. Adults can legally refuse treatment and decide to die, parents do not have the legal right to kill their own children. Adults can make a decision not to have a simple blood transfusion because of religious beliefs, they do not have the right to kill their own children, on the same basis.
Similarly parents do not have the right to forcibly sterilise their child, if they have a severe disability, a court order must be obtained and that is incredibly hard to get and if many have their ways that will be removed and it will be completely illegal.
If parents have the legal right to kill their own children, does that mean we allow them to kill them, because they behave badly, because they do not believe anyone else can care for them, etc. Where do the rights of children start and the rights of parents end.
It should be noted that in the case above the doctors did not get everything they wanted, they wanted radiotherapy as well, but the level of evidence to support it was not high enough in the thoughts of the judge.
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Hi Belinda,
tis true, this was a case involving a child. But the claim was that “in no physical diagnosis can treatment be imposed by law”. Is this not a case of treatment for a physical diagnosis being imposed by law?
What I find almost amusing is the high burden of proof regarding the forced treatment in this case compared with the flimsy burden of proof placed on mental health professionals before depriving a person of their liberty and force drugging them. In fact our Chief Psychiatrist in a letter to me removed ANY burden for forced treatment under the Act.
I literally had a Community Nurse turn up at my home, make up a mental illness on the spot to deprive me of my liberty, have police deliver me to a hospital, and have me force drugged. I was fortunate that I was seen by a psychiatrist a few hours later who declared that the mental illness was no longer there and was discharged.
I was under the impression that a person would need to have been declared to have a mental illness before this could occur, but apparently not. Just snatch em from their beds and make some stuff up on the spot (got anti spyware on your computer? Paranoid delusions. Ever have a fight in school? Psychotic.) and human rights removed in a moment. And once removed you have no right to access to the courts as you are no longer human in their eyes sooooo….
Oh, and I dont think the parents want the child in the above article dead. More an issue of the quality of life he will have as a result of the treatment.
I also had some discussions with some JWs regarding blood transfusions and the right to refuse. If an issue arises they have the doctors contact them own medical people and try to resolve the matter. But as the law stands their is no right to refuse if it’s what doctor orders. On your knees to the tin gods lol.
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But then again, I had no idea that in Australia, Community Nurses could authorise the drugging of people (with benzos) without their knowledge either. Or that Police could simply say they found a knife on a person in their own home and despite this being unture, then make a referral to a waiting Community Nurse to fabricate the “reasonable grounds” (that the Chief Psych doesn’t even recognise) for incarceration and forced drugging.
Still, documents tampered with and sent to my lawyers and its all coming up roses huh?
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My question would be this. In what area of medicine would police be required to retrieve documents which demonstrated serious criminal offenses such as stupefying to commit an indictable offense (kidnapping), intoxication by deception, conspiring to kidnap, conceal evidence of a criminal offense….. and on?
Only in psychiatry?
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I know child protection got involved in JW refusing blood transfusions for their own children, when the child would have died without them. They were court ordered to allow the child to have them. Doctors cannot force someone to have something unless the person is unable to do so. If the person is unconscious, then a blood transfusion would be given. If the person is needing surgery and the surgery would involve a blood transfusion, then they can absolutely refuse it and in turn die as a result of it. What is often done these days is to arrange for them to donate their own blood, to have that kept and use that or to use blood of relatives if that is their choosing. The parents of the child I know who were forced to have the child have one, were thankful for what happened but were tied between wanting to follow their own religion and knowing what was needed for their child. They were glad the decision was taken out of their hands.
I do not deny that the case in question above was more about quality of life, but again the question is one in which what rights to parents have. No one would say an 8 or 9 year old child can make a fully informed decision, if they even have a basic understanding of what is going on. They do not even know what death is to any real degree, and often believe the person will come back. Children are not property owned by parents. Hence when children cannot make their own decisions, and parents go against general community standards the courts intervene. The same is true for those with disabilities. While we might grant guardianship to someone else, often a parent, that does not give them the right to make all decisions, and they can have the rights they do have removed at any time. Not saying the decision made is right, it is a moral one and not one everyone will agree with.
I do not disagree with anything you say in relation to mental health. Fact is no one questions the diagnosis as made, regardless of the evidence that is there. Regardless of what one thinks of the DSM, fact is in the vast majority of cases I have seen there is not even evidence presented that the people meet the criteria as written in the DSM. They just say the person has x condition, say schizophrenia, why, because I say so. Compare that to a friends child who was recently diagnosed with autism. I’m well aware that not all autism diagnoses are done this well, but this is the example and a true one. The child was put through a battery of tests, as well the child was observed in the clinic, at home and in child care, on separate occasions, by a paediatrician, psychologist and speech therapist. in all, over 9 visits were had, no top of the testing and each of the professionals, in the assessment report detailed how the child was displaying each of the criteria in each setting, as well as what tests were showing. Yet what I have seen time and time again in mental health is someone says they have this, because I don’t like what they are doing or a family member told me, so it must be true, the person is then locked up and forcibly drugged and worse against their will. While I do not like the DSM, fact is they do not even use it as it is written.
I have heard of cases where the danger to themselves is that they might embarrass themselves, we all have the ability to do that every day.
No one would deny a violent offender access to a lawyer, we do at times restrain people while they see lawyers to protect the lawyer, but here the person who declares you unwell, the psychiatrist, with no evidence to back up their claim can also refuse you access to a lawyer and can also refuse you access to your own hearing. Again violent offenders, will be securely restrained, but still have the right to be present at the hearing.
I also question why we need special hearings, if the person is so acutely psychotic, so acutely violent, it would be obvious to the average person and so why not take them to court and have a court make those decisions.
of course none of this takes away from the fact that even if they are acutely psychotic and violent, the so called treatment they will be given is not going to help them, but I think you get the idea.
I know people who hanged themselves in psych wards in the last few years, when I questioned why it was allowed to happen, when for over 30 years all prion cells have been required to be suicide proof, I was told they were not criminals and should not be treated as such. The person was forcibly locked up as she was suicidal, they defend that right, but then defend the right for them to kill themselves while locked up, as they cannot remove all of their freedoms!!
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Hi Belinda, you write;
“Doctors cannot force someone to have something unless the person is unable to do so.”
Perhaps someone can explain to me then why attendance at an emergency dept and on a ‘hold’ to be examined by a psychiatrist, a person who refuses a fist full of benzos can be forcefully restrained and injected with other stronger stupefying drugs?
It is the case that there is a strict prohibition on the use of intoxicating/stupefying drugs (as well as pork and alcohol) for Muslims. And yet simply saying “no” constitutes an “emergency” under the provisions of the MHA and restraint and forced drugging can be used. Can they also force pork or alcohol down my throat should I refuse? I guess we could call it ‘treatment’?
Personally, given that I was to be examined by a psychiatrist I would have liked to have been aware of what was occurring, not stupefied by drugs to a point of not being conscious. Guess it would save a lot of time for the psychiatrist though, forgone conclusion………
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Concerning your comment on Resolution 2. Dr McLaren is clearly referring to diagnoses outside of the DSM. Other medical conditions, not “mental disorders”. Each state of Australia has its own Mental Health Act and many so called “mental disorders” are treated under involuntary treatment orders. So called schizophrenia is just one on the list of many.
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Thanks for the update on Garth Daniels as well as your trenchant commentary. You are certainly looking full into the face of a crime. Good luck to you both.
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Yes, it was great to hear some news about Garth. Sitting in coffee shops, walking around the streets, starting to feel safe – fantastic. It will be challenging for Garth as far as recovery goes but having met his wonderful family I know he has a great deal of support. A challenge for many who end up in the hands of mental health services in Victoria is the lack of support. They are often estranged from their families, and friends seem to run the other way when a person becomes “mentally” unwell. Congratulations to Niall and others who have the courage to speak out.
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My self is not mentally unwell in my entire life, but was misdiagnosed kidnap and tortured for 2 weeks and just sent my 83 page writ and statement of claims from China to Perth’s District court Western Australia to sue the horror house for $750.000
Its a lonely road as for example even this web site I am home alone and the best thing I did was go alone and not rely on any one like this web site which is fruit less,
I am different as I was the fly on the wall in the horror house and have proven no mental illnesses, if had a mental illness you are disadvantaged by 99%.
Garths a fine example and how powerful Jocks words are which are worthless and not targeting the real issues such as the diagnoses is wrong which jock is focusing his energy on a wrong diagnoses and misinformation from the monsters.
As I said I am fly on the wall and know exactly what happened to Garth and that Jock has problems with listening like all god oh mighty psychiatrist .
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Great successful escape from the hospital story. I hope Garth continues to elude the worst that psychiatry has to offer. It is horrible to hear how oppressive the system was towards this one poor individual it didn’t understand. Thanks for the update, and particularly this one. Apparently, there is some cause for optimism. They can’t always manage to take everything.
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Hi Frank
you say, “It is horrible to hear how oppressive the system was towards this one poor individual it didn’t understand. ” I know you probably didn’t intend to imply this was an isolated case, but unfortunately, this is how the system operates for ALL patients – not just against this ONE individual.
While it did a particularly spectacular job on Garth, as noted by Jock, Australian psychiatry is absolutely abhorrent. Jock and one or two others are truly notable exceptions.
The laws do vary a little between the states and territories, but I was actually told by the Human Rights Commission that psychiatrists wrote sections of the laws pertaining to this sort of thing in my state. There is no recourse for patients and usually, there is NO escape. In my state, even the Human Rights Act denies some of the most basic rights of people who are labelled as “dangerous” by a psychiatrist. Convicted criminal in jails, however, have mandated rights.
That Jock and/or Garth’s family were able to get Garth out, maintain his freedom and begin his recovery is an absolute tribute to their love and respect for him and their ingenuity.
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I certainly wouldn’t disagree with you there. Families are often the reasons some people find themselves caught up in the system and abused by it. Garth is lucky in the sense that he does have people who care about him, and who are willing to take risks on his behalf.
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According to your perspective he was mentally sick, but was over medicated and over treated with electrical currents. You also mention that compassion and love is not enough to treat all mentally ill, and I would agree as I have seen really bad forms of it. Where do we draw the line and find a balance between the incredibly sick, and the ones who are not as sick but still need help.
The mentally ill as a whole are victims of society, some more than others. The ones really devastated by mental illness where they can’t function are the same as those poisoned by food and get heart attacks and cancer, it is just their form of illness from the toxic world created by excessive greed.
He is free now but has a warrant for his detention by the hospital ?
I don’t know how to reconcile this with what your ultimate point is, the taxpayers have a give and take relationship with the corporate industry. They pay the corporations to keep them employed as taxpayers, and the corporations profit from treating mentally ill people like Garth Daniels.
What is the solution that you are proposing? How do you convince a majority of people to correction a systemic failure this big?
Your resolutions don’t seem to fix a corrupt system, so even though they appear rational and practical it really is not practical at all. Can you implement your solutions within the psychiatric system?
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Unfortunately the corrupt system is the government, its powerful allies and a propensity to suppress any publicity that might embarrass it. Cognitive dissonance is not exclusive. “[A] criminalizing ingredient of governing consists in the incessant bombardment of government by a multitude of contradictory interests of various persons and groups. The. government is the focal point of the relentless pressures of clashing interests which the rulers, as legislators, judges, or executives, have incessantly to resolve. These pressures generate inner conflicts in the minds and conduct of the rulers. When one is subjected continuously to the contradictory stimuli of this sort, ones moral integrity and mental sanity tend to become fragmented, confused, and often self-contradictory.” Sorokin & Lunden
Dostoyevsky said, `When a man has unlimited power over the flesh and blood of his fellow men, when a man is in a position to degrade another human being to the limit of degradation, he is unable to resist the temptation to do wrong. Tyranny is a habit. In the end it becomes a disease. The best man in the world becomes so brutalized as to be undistinguishable from a wild beast’.
The resolutions of one man, or a few men, or large organisations of people without power or money are unlikely to overturn the institutions of establishment power, are they?
To overthrow the tyrant, Machiavelli points out that…`conspiracies conducted by a handful of men acting secretly invariably meet tragic ends, Open revolts involving large numbers of people do not.’
The overthrow of the Duke of Athens involved the `great, the people, the artisans’ – they may begin as secret conspiracies [until] the secret is shared’ .
We are ALL responsible.
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It appears like a losing battle, if we are all responsible they we may have been irresponsible for far too long for this to be corrected.
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Thanks to your efforts. This case demonstrates the available abuse of “mental health laws”. I believe these psychiatrists wanted to shock Garth Daniels to death or disability (and could easily have gotten away with it).
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“Kafka’s territory” – that seems standard for psychiatry.
I saw a student production of The Trial and thought, patient of psychiatry on a section. Every objection is seen as further proof off illness and justification for more drugs
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Brilliant analysis!
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This is crazy. This should be an international case, with celebrities talking about it at the Academy Awards or wherever, emergency proceedings at the U.N. and sympathetic countries offering political asylum, coupled with demands for the prosecution of those responsible by the International Criminal Court. They are the ones who should be on the run, not Garth Daniels.
It’s pathetic to see all these arguments posed from the bloody narrative of psychiatry. There is no schizophrenia, period. There are no “mental illnesses” or “treatments.” There is nothing but the natural and inevitable consequences of living in a system based on corporate profits and murder. This is a war crime, and the silence is deafening.
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I don’t understand why he doesn’t just run away? There are various points at which the psychiatrists have him on leave. I’m sure a bus ticket, train ticket, plane ticket, etc, could be had during those instances.
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Perhaps he needed a bit of encouragement and some money for the ticket?
Looks like that is what he has done now anyway.
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No immediate need for flight. Australian states have more autonomy than ours. The cops in Brisbane have their own problems. They could care less about what 400 shrinks in Melbourne think. In the lexicon of the locals, “they can all bugger off.”
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He was locked in, often shackled, had a `special’ nurse at his side, was escorted for his cigarette breaks (10 minutes) AND after 20 -30 ECT treatments then 40 -50 – 60 -70 – 80 – 90, he was so brain injured that simply didn’t have the ability to PLAN anything. I set up an interview with a legal service after he’d had 30 or so ECT treatments but he was unable to initiate the contact by himself, and since this service required him to personally request help, none was forthcoming. In fact I had to put the words into his mouth for the in ital contact but a few hours later he didn’t remember what to do. I suggest you check information on Repetitive Traumatic Brain Injury to see exactly why Garth wasn’t able to help himself.
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I’m sorry, I didn’t think of this. I’m an ECT survivor myself, I know the damage. I should have realized.
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Corinna. Australians are generally law abiding people. They also believe that if you follow the law and the proper processes that the truth will usually surface and all will be well. This doesn’t happen in psychiatry, it just digs you in deeper. A psychiatric history, no matter how inaccurate it may be, has a way of building upon itself. Absconding is interpreted as lack of insight and within the same state you will be returned by the police to the facility. No one would even entertain the idea that a patient might be absconding to save their own life. I certainly hope that Garth will be safe in his state of Queensland and the family will have peace. He is doing well under the care of Dr McLaren.
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Once “identified” the “patient” becomes the victim of torture and abuse by a tag team of psychiatrists and prosecutors and judges. The prosecutors and judges always blindly support the junk science thrown at them by the psychiatrist and approve their “plans” which are arbitrary and punitive. The “patient” is treated much like the American slave was treated before the Civil War. Instead of whips and lashing, it is shocking and drugging. It is all intended to make the “patient” comply and be subservient. Once you are owned by the state, there is no legal means of escape because “there are no cures.”
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Thanks so much for this analysis and update.
It make me so relieved to think that Garth is now at home with his family and being treated with empathy and compassion. However, it frightens me so much to think that if this could happen to someone who did not have the symptoms of ‘schizophrenia’, what chance would a person who did have more symptoms of ‘schizophrenia’ have had to escape from that type of torture. It is truly horrifying how fragile human rights are once someone is diagnosed with mental illness.
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It is so distressing to read that a fellow human being can be treated this way, and that it be in any way justified and considered anything less than criminal, never mind that passes on any level as some kind of “health care.”
I can’t imagine being one to administer such torture on another human being. That is one place I’d have trouble achieve empathy. Even those whom I perceive to be social bullies and instigators of violence deserve compassion, we all have our stories. But to insist on this kind of behavior toward another human being in the name of professional health care is a bit too way out there for me to grasp. I know it’s reality, but at the same time, it’s surreal, too, in a very queasy-making way. All I can think is toxic, toxic, toxic. Somehow, I don’t think that the phrase “fellow human being” would register as it should.
What kind of internal defenses that must take, really cut off from their humanity would be my guess. We need wayyyyy more kindness in the world. I think that has become sorely missing.
My very best to the extremely courageous Mr. Daniels.
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THANK YOU, JOCK McLAREN.
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I second that.
Thank you Jock McLaren!!!!!!!
…and you too deee042 for your part in getting him his life back.
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In America, when the founding fathers drafted the declaration of Independance and US Constitution, and later, the bill of rights, they made a point that all men were created equal. The equal protection clause was in the Fifth Amendment, ratified in 1791 and the 14th Amendment applied it to all states around 1865. At that time, there was no DSM4-5. The founding fathers did not exclude people from “all men” based upon some book that was not published by the legislature. Yet here in America, like Australia, prosecutors, judges and psychiatrists ignore the equal protection clause and routinely strip people of rights based upon DSM4/5 codes. I submit that all such deprivations of rights are in violation of the constitution, and need to be challenged all the way to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, there are few lawyers who will take these cases. I believe this is in part due to the fact that 93% of lawyers have little training in science. People without scientific and mathematic aptitude have difficulty seeing the scientific flaws in psychiatry. Diagnoses are arbitrary, thus the deprivation of rights is also arbitrary. But most judges, lawyers and prosecutors don’t care. They have the collective mentality of the prison guards in the Stanford prison experiment. Punishment and punitive measures are doled out like candy with little concern of harm.
There was a case in the US about a dentist, Charles Sell. Dr. Sell was put in federal prison for some strange reason and the prosecutor sent a psychiatrist in to render a diagnosis. Once he was diagnosed, the prosecutor said that Sell needed to be drugged to make him “competent.” Sell refused the drugs. The prosecutor said he could not put him on trial until he became “competent.” When Sell was interviewed, he was perfectly normal and intelligent. But the prosecutor kept insisting he be drugged.
After rotting in jail for years without a trial, the case finally went to the US Supreme Court. Guess what happened?
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Good on you Jock- not everyone has a top odds psychiatrist in their court – or on their support team either- it’s not just a simple solution to pack up the family and move interstate- anyway that’s why people don’t just get away- escape- plus they’re always in hope each CTO will be the last- the withdrawal will be OK this time- but it never is for some- and they go back- but no one knows this – until they’ve been on the journey- merry go round- with mental health or psychiatry- when often its way too late by the time they realise this despair and abuse – they cant believe is till going on- “just doesn’t end”- but never too late we know- just could have been earlier-as in Garth’s case–they just live in hope and despair- like they always have since psychiatry got a grip on their loved one- until the years just roll on and past- and the hope dies off- and the despair just becomes way too overwhelming- and everyone’s in despair and traumatised by it all- no one more then the patient- but if you think about it that would mean thousands of people treated by mental health- in Victoria- would have to move to Queensland- and that just doesn’t happen– how easy would it be to move the whole family away from one American state to live in another- when you just cant believe in the way a state is treating you- still wouldn’t be easy- but easy to say when your not actually in that situation- and then you’ve got to get someone to help there- and get through the withdrawal thing that no one can- haven’t so far- or if they could have- would have- so yeh not so simple and easy- and like one writer said everyone’s a Garth in Victoria- not in such a violent way as Garth was treated– but much the same- and the other thing is they undermine the parents concerns and despair- as part of the problem-carers- who try to tell them to about their horrible drug side effects- and treatment of their loved ones- and some of those loved ones- start to believe them- or become unsure/ more insecure about themselves -and this so called mental illness- that “maybe they have got”- not saying that happens to all- but to some it does too- anyway theirs a lot to moving to another state or country to get what most people think should be happening at home- and to some extent might or hopefully will, they think and still hope- as their children mature, and learn to cope and manage better from that maturity- be able to withdraw much safer better successfully- without any interfering behaviours or party drugs in the mix- unhealthy company- things like that- easy to get trapped and stuck anyway- thanks for a great article- and for the update and relief about Garth’s new life and freedom. Cant wait for some time to pass- and for Garth to just keep on getting better- your all stars to me- Jock.- hangin for the movie.
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Problem 18: There is a Doctor who now has a gap in their calendar, and more importantly in their income that needs filling.
Resolution: have Police snatch someone from their bed, verbal them up for a knife, refer to MHS, and have a Community Nurse fabricate a ‘mental illness’ on the spot.
I am pleased to hear that Garth has escaped. Thank you for the update.
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Good news about Garth and his brave father Bernard who carefully thought out a plan for Garths escape, Bernard held a meeting with the freaks at the horror house while his other son was granted permission to take Garth out for lunch during that meeting.
Bernard stretched the meeting out for 4 hours knowingly his two sons by the end of the meeting are above the clouds flying safely to another state where the horror houses have no legal authority to torture and false imprison Garth any further.
Its found Garth has most likely no mental illnesses after all, but needs time to recover from the gross torture experiences and severe drugging , other wise Garth is in good spirits and well on his way to recovery.
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The Mental Health Review Tribunal of Victoria, Australia, seems to be as appalling as the Mental Health Review Tribunal (MHRT) of Queensland, Australia – a state of Australia with around 4.8 million residents. The MHRT panel members simply rubberstamps the recommendations of the “treating” team from the mental health facility – they rubberstamp applications for ECT. An application for ECT can be made by a treating consultant psychiatrist who is also an appointed member of the MHRT at the same time, who is also employed by Queensland Health and in private practice. There are conflicts of interest all over the place. The decision to confirm an Involuntary Treatment Order is made well before the MHRT hearing, so it is a waste of time and funding for anyone to even turn up for the hearing. The rights and dignity of the patients are ignored. Patients are kept under Involuntary Treatment Orders when they do not satisfy the criteria under the Act – no one cares or does anything about it – medical practitioners break the law every day here. The mental health facilities fail to compile a full and accurate medical history of the patient, and medical records take on a life of their own. No amount of pointing out the errors will amount to anything, they are set in stone and lead to incorrect “treatment”. There is not a clear complaints process in Queensland to report this. Reports of mistreatment as a patient to the MHRT are ignored, and the MHRT refuses to even accept complaints against the conduct of MHRT panel members. Reports of mistreatment and misuse of the Mental Health Act when made to the Minister for Health the Office of the Health Ombudsman, politicians and others, are ignored. Complaints processes can take years and are designed to wear out the complainant who is immediately discriminated against in the area of psychiatry. Legal firms won’t take on cases in medical negligence/personal injury in psychiatry because all the lawyers know all the psychiatrists involved. Queensland is a small place. A complaint made against a consultant psychiatrist with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation was assessed when a colleague from the same practice was a member of the Queensland Medical Board and is also a consultant psychiatrist who advises the Mental Health Court. False statements are written on Forms under the Mental Health Act, used to detain a human being, such as declarations that a patient has been assessed in person by the consultant psychiatrist, when the consultant psychiatrist has just signed off on what a nurse has assessed. It goes on and on, and no one is held accountable – this will change.
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Shame on the legal profession of Victoria, Australia, to allow this to happen over many years. Where were all the lawyers offering their help? What a disgrace. Shame on the legal profession in each state and territory of Australia who stand by year after year and do nothing while human beings are abused in mental health facilities and their rights ignored. But mostly, shame on the medical profession – you are supposed to be doctors and you know all of this goes on, and you stand by and do nothing. You have no backbone and decency.
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Anne,
thank you too for putting the reality of mental “health” and human rights here in Australia out there for all to see.
Psych patients here have NO rights and no-one at all looking after their interests and wellbeing, let alone their survival.
Garth’s situation should be a very clear warning to ANYONE seeking psychological services in Australia. The instance you walk into a doctor’s office saying you are unhappy or experiencing distressing symptoms is the same instance in which you surrender every one of your human, medical and legal rights.
Yes, Jock is a psychiatrist and an absolute champion, and so are one or two others who write for this site, but they are voices in the wilderness and unless you can actually be sure to see them (or someone they directly recommend) be aware that you are entering a reality that would make both Kafka and Orwell turn in their graves and that rivals Alice’s adventures in Wonderland for pure insanity. Yet, here in Australia, psychiatrists have managed to created just that! And other doctors, governments, lawyers, and human rights commissions have been absolutely complicit.
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And thank you Kim for your comment well put!!! What you say is so true …where are all these lawyers and human rights organizations pushing to try and keep our people here alive who have ended up in our mental health system…Now that our government is once again on the war path by removing our DSP pensions ??? People like myself are being told we are now fit for the work force again with what could only be described also as Alice In Wonderland like programs such as work for the dole and provide job placement agencies and training for us to somehow make use of by helping us find jobs that don’t even exist in the first place. and to cap it all off mutual commitment to make it absolutely certain if you survive the work for the dole and job agencies and training programs you will still end up losing your employment benefits sooner or latter. Centrelink and all these agencies training institutions it ties itself into are completely unsympathetic to the plight of people like myself and do not want to understand how impossible it is for people like myself to find suitable jobs given the amount of stigmatization we face in the outside world add to this all the unethical treatment i and many others have been forced to endure for many years now from our government run mental health systems. Centrelink really tripped themselves up recently by telling me i now have a temporary condition so they can reject any more medical certificates from my Doctor making my life much more difficult since i will now have to somehow comply with all of these demands they will now place on me or risk losing my unemployment benefits. If that is the case the least you think they could do is remove this mental illness diagnosis now that Centrelink regard it as being a temporary one from people like myself but i guarantee you they wont.
LET THIS BE A WARNING to anyone reading this post who is currently in our Mental Health System and also ended up becoming dependent on our Welfare system both of these systems are now crashing and burning the government policy is quite clear sooner or latter you will end up losing all of your welfare..And if you really do become unwell and need to go to Hospital and try and admit yourself as a voluntary patient you will be told no bed is available for you… This is what happens when peoples greed runs out of control and is left unchecked for to many years and with no watchdog looking over governments like Australia’s shoulder to make sure all of our people are being treated in a decent humane and ethical manner as possible. Sad to say Australia is ending up day by day becoming more like Nazi Germany… with the state we now have that cannot even look after our own people by providing a welfare system anymore especially those who have ended up in our Mental Health System and a universal health care system that is either unwilling or capable of providing any care leaving our people literally out in the cold who have ended up in our Mental Health System or worse people such as Garth who have ended up being tortured by this system needless to say it will prove to be a killer combination for many …As you mentioned Kim Doctors,governments,lawyers human rights organizations and commissions have all been absolutely complicit in making this now unfolding catastrophe happen.
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Great article. Great commentary. To all those involved in this escape, this is no less important than the liberation of the Jews at Aushwitz. Or Andy’s escape from Shawshank. This is a heroic act of civil disobedience.
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What I do not understand why Niall McLaren would say in his last article about Garth,
“Oddly enough, the majority of his admissions were voluntary; he takes himself back to the hospital sometimes as little as a week after discharge.”
That’s not true and wonder who told you that.
Niall you should ask Garth and his father to read any article before you publish incorrect statements also to at least let them know you wrote about them.
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My situation is I recently escaped from the clutches of the Western Austrian Rockingham hospital closed ward called Mimidi park where I was kidnapped, torture, forced injections from hell and on purpose misdiagnosed when it is proven at a cost of $12.000 of my hard earned $ that I had no mental illnesses in my life, which I was kidnapped because I saved a women inpatients life who is now 68 years old from a brutal and viscous king hits to her face by a psycho who also injured myself.
I wanted police and said I would go to the media because the male nurse and security are laughing while they are pushing the head of the screaming psycho into the concrete floor and it took one hour before they tended the 68 year old called Denise who is covered in blood and in extreme shock, plus I am injured and threatened with violence each time I asked for them to help Denise,
I kept asking for police and they screamed no police are coming and when at the ED I waited out side for some fresh air and then a male nurse comes outside and starts yelling at me to go inside the locked part of the hospital, I said I want police, and again he screamed NO POLICE ARE COMMING and then pulled out his cell phone and rang the administration to start a involuntary order.
I left the hospital grounds to go the nearest house to ask them to phone police because I feared for my life.
The police came and then dropped me of back at the horror house without a word and then I was surrounded buy security and male nurses forcing a large cocktail of drugs or they are going to hold me down and inject me.
I place the drugs under my tongue and calmly walked to the bedroom and spat them out and pretended to sleep.
It was two weeks of hell and injections which I ended up and making them believe they had broken me, but the moment I was free I cursed them and said I will sue, they hunted me all the way to Darwin where I was safe like Garth is in Brisbane, but they still sent faxed messages to police and medical professions to look out for because I started two ministerial enquires which the reprisals are unimaginable harrowing.
I escaped Australia and went back to my home in Thailand and studied the FOI files for one year to sue the horror for $750.000 in the WA Perth District court.
I need income so it was time to back on the tools, but my wife feared for my life if I return to Australia, so we decided to create designs and develop ideas in China to place on http://www.kickstaer.com to make an income which I am doing right now while preparing a writ to sue the Rockingham hospital for kidnap and torture which I have 3 months time left to take legal action or I forfeited the rights to do so.
I have research all organizations that say they help with complaints including mental health law organizations and all are shams grouped with the actual predators them self’s, although one was helpful called the Citizens Committee on Human rights that put me in contact with Garths father, Bernard.
I did contact Jock but he barked up the wrong tree and did not listen, thinking I wanted his help which is fruitless..
Even this web site have all theses people that write books, but they are all are powerless as jock was with Garth in Brisbane and was only because Bernard had a escape plan, Garth is free.
I have come to the final solution there is no help except false hopes and will go it alone and beat theses f..,kers in a court of law as the representing lawyer and lead the way for others to follow.
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How you can help
I mentioned about there is no help even with this web site and all its forum members are powerless, including the many book writers such as Niall McLaren, how ever by lifting a finger and press the send button in an including Niall McLarenn finger.
For and example I saved the 68 year old lady who had a flurry of full power king hits driven into her face by a extremely violent psycho which I dived between her and the psycho taking the punches meant for Denise, then grabbing him around his arms and held him tight, but after some time I lost my balance and both our weights fell onto my shoulder slamming into the concrete floor which I experienced extreme pain but still held him tight with an injured shoulder.
As you would of read my last comments what happened after that.
What every one on this forum can do is so easy, such as Denise wants to reunite with me who called me her guardian angle that saved her life and wants to be friends and a witnesses the night of the assault.
Denise at the time of the assault was further traumatized when she saw me kidnapped and made involuntary just after saving her life because I asked for police and was going to the media, which at that time she was covered in blood while kept repeating, its my fault, its my fault they are doing this to you.
Denise’s said she wants to know me personally for saving her life and also a witnesses to what happened but the WA state insurance company called Risk Cover and the Lawyers who are defending the defendants I am suing which are Daniela Vecchio Raj Sekhon Biji Thomas Geraldine Carlton Chris Cullen Geoffrey Williamson who are involved in my kidnapped, torture and harrowing reprisals who the lawyers will not give an answer to my request to reunite with Denise which of course would be with her consent.
The lawyers say their clients are the WA state as Risk cover is owned by the WA state.
All you have to do is send an email to Alix Whowell Risk Cover [email protected] and the law firm owners that are working for her, Piet Jarman and David McKenna, [email protected] [email protected] for a simple answer, yes or no about Denise and I to reunite ?
They are meant to do an investigation but all they have done absolutely nothing so far but dig their heels in and keep silent hoping I will disappear like they all do, but I am in China so they can not get their hands on me again and are the representing lawyer that can have the Perth’s District court trial televised from China.
You can also send the same message CC to the Western Australian news [email protected]
Its as simple as lifting a finger and press send.
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Great to hear the news on Garth Daniels but only time will tell how much he can recover from his horrific experience with our Mental Health System here in Australia. I would like to point out that Garth is one of many victims of a very corrupt system we now find ourselves with here in Australia. The 2 main issues we need to address firstly to at least reduce the amount of people ending up being diagnosed that would have an effect on reducing the numbers of people who end up becoming victims. With Psychiatry in epidemic proportions here thats not going to be easy to do intimately the goal should be to abolish Psychiatric diagnosis altogether given the deadly way its being used to force Psychiatric drugging and ECT on our people here.. As has been pointed out in many books over the years these supposed Mental Illnesses mentioned in the DSM5 are not based in proper medical science and even if these conditions could be proven it still cannot justify continuing to use Psychiatric Drugs and ECT now that we know beyond any reasonable doubt that these medical interventions are harmful at best and with some people they prove lethal at their worst. Secondly if we are going to continue down this very destructive path we should at least have a proper legal process for people who end up in front of our mental health system’s tribunals and courts to use we don’t even have the right to a lawyer being present at these hearings the best anyone can do is have someone from a legal service help you write up a statement you hand over in your defense against a forced treatment order and no right of an appeal. If we did have the right to an appeal and if that is dismissed you should also have the right to lodge a court injunction to have your case put before a judge. No small wonder why so many people have ended becoming victims when the government have put in place a kangaroo court for our people to use. Its pretty obvious that Psychiatry itself is not going to fix any of these problems when the power that has been handed over to them by government has produced a huge financial windfall for them. Psychiatry along with the Pharmaceutical companies have the money and the power and their going to run with this corrupt system for as long as they possibly can until the day finally comes when enough people here wake up to whats been going on and provide the political pressure needed to change our system. Sadly we “that is the kind decent people here” who want this barbarity to end could be in for a long wait ahead of us yet. With stories now of children as young as just 3 years of age now being drugged by psychiatry how much further dose this nonsense have to go i wonder… might babies be next??? just in case there feeling a bit depressed or anxious after being born. I think Dr Peter Breggin was right this is MEDICATION MADNESS spot on Doctor!
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