We Must Not Remove Legal Protections for People at Risk of Forced ECT

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Editor’s Note: The following is a written testimony submitted to the Connecticut State Legislature in opposition to a bill removing legal protections for people at risk of receiving electroconvulsive therapy against their will.

To the distinguished members of the Public Health Committee and the legislature:

I submit this written testimony in strong opposition to Raised S.B. No. 898, An act eliminating the requirement that the probate court issue an order allowing a patient who is incapable of giving informed consent to receive shock therapy. I strongly oppose this bill that would remove legal protections for people at risk of forced ECT, a treatment that has caused significant psychological, cognitive, and physical harm for myself and many other people, that causes brain injury, and that is not based on good, rigorous science.

Illustration of wires wrapped around a brainI am a disabled 39-year-old Middletown native born in 1983, residing in Newington for over ten years. I live on Social Security disability benefits. My father George Dubey was a mechanic for Pratt & Whitney. My mother Edith Dubey was an accountant for the State of Connecticut and, from what I recall, she was for a time campaign treasurer for current Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz back when she ran for Secretary of the State. My family also helped with the 1990s campaign of Maria Madsen Holzberg, who was our neighbor and served as Mayor of Middletown. I graduated from Middletown High School in 2001.

I was 22 years old and a recent college graduate when I was forced to have ECT, an abbreviation for the medical treatment most commonly called “electroconvulsive therapy,” also known as shock therapy or electroshock. Being forced to have ECT was the most traumatic experience of my life.

To summarize my personal experience… I was a kid with mild to moderate social and emotional problems who became suicidal shortly after withdrawing from the antidepressant Paxil and graduating college, despite excelling academically and winning many awards at the of the University of Hartford. I was 22 and stressed with employment difficulties and some pressure and verbal abuse from family members, and I had some serious suicide attempts resulting in permanent injuries. The psychiatrists and psychologist who treated me one-on-one at the Institute of Living (IOL), part of Hartford Hospital, reasoned that ECT was my best option, because I had tried a few antidepressants (Paxil and Celexa) before becoming suicidal and while at IOL I told them I still wanted to die.

The IOL got a probate judge to grant an order to force me to have ECT. An abridged account of my experience of “involuntary” ECT from 2005-2006 at the Institute of Living (IOL) is published on Mental Health Today. I also partly described my experience in a copy of a comment on an FDA docket published on Mad in America. The involuntary ECT was traumatizing, dehumanizing, and cognitively impairing. I lied to the doctors and staff in order to make the forced ECT stop. In fear, I also lied to my family and it felt awful.

The doctors viewed me as “mentally ill” through a primarily biomedical model and they didn’t do much to address dysfunctional social and family dynamics, a history of verbal abuse, trauma, and life stressors. Nor did they do much to consider and address physical health issues that likely contributed to my chronic sadness, such as a chronic vitamin D insufficiency, and irritable bowel syndrome that was later treated by a gastroenterologist and re-diagnosed as Crohn disease. I recall being labeled with “treatment-resistant” or refractory depression, a concept of poor validity that ignores when treatment is inappropriate, ineffective, or used improperly or inadequately, as well as when the diagnosis itself should be questioned and reconsidered.

On a side note, psychiatric diagnosis has gone through considerable debate in the past several years, with an argument being made that some traditional psychiatric diagnoses be reframed as understandable (though sometimes maladaptive) responses to social and other adversity. There is also now greater recognition of the social determinants of health, such as sources of psychological trauma. In 2019, Belgium’s Superior Health Council published a lengthy advisory report that critiques the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and advising “laypeople, professionals, policy makers and researchers to use diagnostic labels with caution. People with a diagnosis are sometimes viewed too narrowly from the perspective of that diagnosis. Aspects of their perception are all too quickly pathologised” (p. 26). The Council further recommended that at an organization level “DSM categories not be the focus in setting up care” (p. 27).

My doctors also did not consider, and I didn’t learn until much later, that antidepressants can increase suicidal ideation and violent behavior, especially in children and adolescents, and young adults, despite some researchers’ denial of the risk. This can occur through various mechanisms such as causing akathisia (drug-induced agitation/restlessness) or blunting emotions and reducing inhibitions or a decreased ability to metabolize the drugs. Stopping antidepressants too abruptly can also trigger a withdrawal or discontinuation syndrome, causing mental instability and even violent behavior that can be mistaken for “relapse” of a pre-existing mental disorder. I now firmly believe that my abrupt withdrawal from generic Paxil (paroxetine), without knowing the risks of SSRI withdrawal, was the most significant causative factor of my suicide attempts in 2005 when I was 22. Neither I nor my doctors knew about this at the time, although the importance of slow tapering of SSRI drugs is now more commonly recognized. There have been successful lawsuits regarding drug-induced suicides by Paxil. If my doctors had been aware of these risks, they could have informed me and helped me safely continue using antidepressants, or helped me taper slowly and carefully so as to remove these medication risks in the future, while finding alternatives. Instead, psychiatry put most of my faith in psychopharmacotherapy (psychiatric drugs). Some evidence and arguments suggest that being told by psychiatrists that “depression” or other low mood is caused by a chemical imbalance inside them (rather than external factors such as stressful events and dysfunctional relationships) leads to worse patient outcomes. I feel I would have had more hope if these beliefs had not been instilled in me of having a “broken brain” that could only really be managed by psychiatric drugs with suicide risks then unknown to me. The chemical imbalance hypothesis of depression has also been mostly debunked as based on the premature conclusions of flawed research.

My experience with ECT was horrifically life-changing, but I later learned that unfortunately my experience is far from isolated. By making contact with many other people online who have been injured by ECT, psychiatric drugs, and other treatments, and reading their stories, I have learned how psychiatric care (and other medical care) can sometimes become a vicious cycle in which treatment-emergent or post-treatment adverse effects are misidentified as a new (or pre-existing) mental disorder, treated with higher dosages or more drugs or other risky treatments leading to more adverse effects, and more serious diagnoses until a person is quite disabled. This has been referred to as an iatrogenic cascade, meaning a cumulative series of adverse effects resulting from harmful medical treatments and poor clinical practice by ignorant clinicians. There are numerous online support groups for people harmed by psychiatric drugs, such as Surviving Antidepressants, BenzoBuddies, Inner Compass Exchange, and on Facebook, with thousands of members and posts. There are also film documentaries of people harmed by psychiatric drugs such as Medicating Normal, Generation Rx, and As Prescribed. There are support groups and sites for people harmed by ECT, such as Life After ECT. These types of groups and sites helped me make sense of my experience in the context of being one of many patients given poor and abusive medical care, being injured by the field of medicine, and often having our experiences invalidated, ignored, minimized, or dismissed by medical professionals who don’t question their medical training and clinical perceptions and who assume we must be mistaken or lying. I have learned of so many other people whose adverse effects from psychiatric treatments were misinterpreted or misdiagnosed by doctors.

In January 2013, because I felt so strongly about this issue, I persuaded State Representative Sandy Nafis and State Senator Paul Doyle to raise a bill (Proposed Bill No. 5298) in the state legislature that would prohibit involuntary ECT. I submitted written testimony along with several other people, and I also testified orally at a public hearing on that proposed bill before the Public Health Committee. The bill was rewritten to a much watered-down version that activists were dissatisfied with and did not get out of committee.

A few years ago, despite my health issues, I used my knowledge gained from an associate degree in biotechnology (earned in 2009 with an award) and my readings of ECT literature to write a disorganized and flawed but lengthy and important review of the evidence that ECT causes brain damage or injury. This was published in 2017 in a peer-reviewed psychology and psychiatry journal. Although I am not a medical or scientific professional, and I know I am not an expert, my article has contributed to the progression of scientific discussion about ECT.

My article was provided to attorneys, who hired expert witnesses and in 2018 attained settlements in a California court for two plaintiffs harmed by ECT. The case resulted in ECT device manufacturer Somatics updating its risk disclosures to include permanent brain damage. More cases are being litigated against the American device manufacturers, such as the Florida case of Thelen v. Somatics, LLC et al. Several of the American lawsuits are being litigated by Wisner Baum, a law firm formerly known as Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman and noteworthy for winning millions and billions in damages against Monsanto and Bayer, for plaintiffs alleging injury by the weedkiller Roundup. Last year in the UK, the BBC and other British media reported that more than 100 people who had ECT are considering lawsuits against the National Health Service (NHS) for clinical negligence related to the injuries ECT caused them. I have also heard of lawsuits being pursued about ECT in Canada.

Among the expert witnesses for the American plaintiffs are Dr. John Read, psychologist and author of many peer-reviewed journal articles about the problems and flaws with ECT research; Dr. Janet Arrowsmith, a doctor trained in internal medicine and epidemiology and former acting Director of the Office of Surveillance and Biometrics (OSB) within FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH); Dr. Kenneth Castleman, an electrical engineer with a PhD in biomedical engineering who worked as a Senior Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was a member of the Scientific Working Group on Imaging Technology for the FBI; and Dr. Bennet Omalu, a neuropathologist famous for discovering chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in American football players.

Being that he is a renowned pathologist with extensive expertise and experience in anatomic, clinical, forensic, and neuropathology, I find it reasonable to conclude that Dr. Omalu is exponentially more qualified in the topic and diagnosis of brain injury than any doctor trained merely as a psychiatrist or even neuro-psychiatrist. Contrary to the conclusions of much of the ECT research literature, often by researchers with their own biases and financial and professional conflicts of interest, Dr. Omalu states in his expert report (pp. 9-25, Exhibit 1) and court depositions that ECT does cause brain injury and brain damage. He explains that conventional MRI and CT scans (often used by ECT researchers to conclude a lack of evidence for brain damage) have significant limitations that make them generally incapable of identifying microscopic damage to brain cells. His report states, “When a patient suffers a concussion, conventional MRI or CT scan does not locate or identify any diagnostic or pathognomonic feature of concussions, instead these imaging modalities may identify non-specific changes like brain edema. In fact, in order to make a diagnosis of a concussion, the CT scan and MRI have to show no specific traumatic changes in the brain” (pp. 22-23). Therefore, despite the beliefs of many psychiatrists that ECT does not cause brain injury or damage, there are very good reasons to believe that it does. I concur with Dr. Omalu. He even cited my peer-reviewed article as a reference in forming his expert opinion (p. 25, ref. 2).

Yet whether one believes ECT causes brain injury or damage or not, the physiological adverse effects are also important to consider.

Involuntary psychiatric treatment can be traumatizing and not only is this unpleasant or distressing for patients, but it creates its own risks. Patients who are traumatized or just aggravated or turned off by forced medical treatment may be less likely to seek medical care in the future, and may be more likely to attempt suicide. The traumatizing and cognitively impairing experience of forced ECT caused me to have less trust in the mental health system and less trust in the health system as a whole, even causing me to be dissuaded from seeking routine medical care at times. For a few years, I declined to get a flu shot because of my distrust of the healthcare system. I have even declined to report suicidal ideation at times, because of my fear of forced ECT or other involuntary psychiatric treatment.

This experience is not unique to me, but many other people forced to have ECT have found it traumatizing and harmful, and there are even many people who agreed to ECT voluntarily who later regretted it, finding short-term benefits were not worth the long-term harms. The treatment can cause memory loss, long-term cognitive impairment such as trouble concentrating, and various other adverse psychological and physical effects. Other patients and activists have told me that common neuropsychological testing methods to identify and measure adverse cognitive effects and memory loss due to ECT are generally inadequate. Research that denies long-term cognitive adverse effects is contradicted by other research and many patients’ lived experiences. Groups of people have been protesting against ECT annually for many years, in places such as Ireland and Canada. Mainstream psychiatry, ECT researchers and practitioners, and regulatory agencies have largely ignored and dismissed the extensive reports of harmful effects of ECT, such as (1) this list of comments in a petition to the FDA, (2) this qualitative study of 1984 testimony, (3) this literature review by Bonnie Burstow describing ECT as a form of violence against women, (4) this qualitative study of women’s experiences, (5) Irish grandmother Mary Maddock’s news coverage, (6) this magazine article featuring disabled survivor Kenny Fleischman, (7) this BBC article quoting Irish survivor Lisa Morrison, (8) this news article featuring a former British doctor who lost his medical career, (9) this news article featuring two other British people cognitively injured by ECT, including Dr. Sue Cunliffe who lost her career as a pediatrician, (10) this petition with over fourteen thousand signatures, and (11) this petition with over one hundred thirty thousand signatures.

The experiences of people who say ECT made their lives worse are just as important as the experiences of people who say it made their lives better. It is medical negligence to not acknowledge and offer treatment in cases of medically induced harm.

I also was interviewed about my experience at the Institute of Living in an ECT documentary film entitled Therapy or Torture. It was created by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a nonprofit organization founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and dissident psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. CCHR works to protect people from abusive practices in mental healthcare. I am not a Scientologist, and I have no comment on individual cases of allegations against their Church except that they should be left to the legal system. But I respect religious freedom and freedom of thought and CCHR has treated me with much more respect and dignity than the psychiatrists at the Institute of Living who forced me to undergo ECT against my will, and the staff who ignored my screaming in terror one day while being wheeled to the ECT room.

In one of my online support groups, we have known a few people who died by suicide partly because of the distress caused by long-term adverse effects of ECT and the dismissal by doctors of those effects. Denied help and validation for their treatment-induced injuries, sometimes having their impairments dismissed as psychosomatic or psychological, some people feel they would rather be dead. I have documented news reports of a few modern-day cases of suicide by people who had ECT (writer David Foster Wallace, inpatient Stephen Colin Robson, inmate Leo Marino), as well as cases of assault and homicide (Wilbur G. Harwell, David Tarloff, Howard E. Dibbern) in this archived blog post. Other cases include professor David Bucci and singer Naomi Judd. Australian grandfather Gerard Helliar was forced to undergo more than 200 treatments of ECT which he said “he hated” and died later after a suicide attempt.

In 2015 Australian mental health patient Garth Daniels sued the hospital and doctors who forced him to have ECT as an inpatient. He had attempted suicide after ECT and forced drugging, which caused him memory problems and distress. Psychiatrist Niall ‘Jock’ McLaren supported Daniels’ rejection of ECT and criticized his ill-treatment, saying “If you treat people like animals, they will respond like animals.” Daniels had petitioned for help from the United Nations. A Change.org petition later reported that his family and supporters helped him escape.

In 2018, two Australian patients who were forced to undergo ECT petitioned the Supreme Court of Australia. One patient quoted in the article stated, “It was one of the most traumatic days of my life.” Justice Kevin Bell ruled that their forced ECT was unlawful, reasoning that “just because someone made a decision that others might consider unwise, it did not mean that person lacked the capacity to give informed consent.” He further stated, “To impose upon persons having mental illness a higher threshold of capacity, and to afford them less respect for personal autonomy and individual dignity, than people not having that illness, would be discriminatory.”

Forced ECT can be thought of as form of torture. I certainly feel that way about my own ECT. Note that in more recent years the United Nations has even described forced ECT and other involuntary psychiatric treatments as torture, and the World Health Organization has made an initiative to end coercion in mental healthcare. Authors such as Dr. Dainius Pūras, a former UN former Special Rapporteur on the right to health and himself a psychiatrist, have stated that “coercive practices are inconsistent with human rights-based mental healthcare,” calling for “a fundamental change in the culture of psychiatry.” In a public comment responding to the CARE Act in California, citing references 21-22, Human Rights Watch states, “Studies of coercive mental health treatment have generally not shown positive outcomes.[21] Evidence does not support the conclusion that involuntary outpatient treatment is more effective than intensive voluntary outpatient treatment and, indeed, shows that involuntary, coercive treatment is harmful.[22]”

I leave you with this to consider. The fields of medicine and psychiatry have made a number of significant mistakes throughout history, only realized through the progress of knowledge and discourse and reflection. Mainstream psychiatry pathologized homosexuality as a mental disorder until 1973. Eugenics was once popular, even at Harvard, and it was supported by such luminaries as Theodore Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (para. 2). The Holocaust was supported by Nazi psychiatrists. Lobotomy was once popular, despite the existence of opposing viewpoints, and lobotomy was supported by a large proportion of psychiatric professionals, even when done without consent. Today, ECT is popular, despite opposing viewpoints, and ECT is supported by a large proportion of psychiatry, even when done without consent. How will history look back upon this?

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Christopher James Dubey

Newington, CT

 

P.S. For further reading, I have made a collection of media and references about ECT in a Twitter thread with lengthy sub-threads. Click on each numbered sub-thread to see additional tweets.

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24 COMMENTS

  1. Nicely stated, Christopher, from another person who was abruptly taken off an antidepressant by a doctor. Who then had the common symptoms of antidepressant discontinuation syndrome misdiagnosed, and mistreated, over and over again. Albeit, in my case, with the anticholinergic toxidrome inducing psych drugs.

    Thank you for your activism. And I believe the right to force – either ECT or the psych drugs, or any other drugs – on people should most definitely be made illegal.

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    • Thanks for reading and sharing your experience. The misdiagnosis of adverse prescription drug effects has been all too common. Clinicians and the public definitely need more education on these issues.

      Advocates in Connecticut are working with legislators to try to reform the law about ECT in a way that maintains protections and is agreeable to the different stakeholders.

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  2. I like the way you have assumed ‘good faith’ on the part of those forcing others to have ECT.

    Which brings me to the point you have made regarding the U.N.

    “Note that in more recent years the United Nations has even described forced ECT and other involuntary psychiatric treatments as torture”

    What was actually said was that the treatments MAY constitute torture. There is a subtle difference.

    I realised why the statement needed to be made in this manner when I considered the exploitation of the loophole contained in the Convention against the use of Torture.

    “It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.” (Article 1 of the Convention.)

    So it is as simple as making the person you wish to torture subject to lawful sanctions. In my instance this involved a simply LIE to police and telling them that I was an “Outpatient” of a hospital, and police and the hospital could then lawfully engage in acts of torture. Documents were forged, and later “edited” to fabricate the legal narrative required post hoc, and my life was deliberately and systematically destroyed by the State for attempting to access the protection of the law.

    The means and opportunity exist to use ECT as a method of torture (see for example Franz Fanon, and the use by police of his ECT machine to do just this. That and his ‘therapy’ for police and torture victims) but you can not prove MOTIVE if Doctor keeps his mouth shut ( a “sophisticated knowledge of the law” helps in this regard. The circuit breaker being the lack of a confession…… and police will not pursue the matter).

    I really like your article. I admire the way you have dealt with the issue of the CCHR, open and honest. I am of the opinion that, like Muhammad Ali and his comments about “No Viet Cong ever called me N*&^%r”, that No Scientologist ever called me ‘Mental Patient’ (a slander and nothing more…..

    I would also note that when the State had an issue with Doctors not prepared to ECT young women (some as young as 14 years old) for fear of being sued, they passed laws providing legal protections for theses Shock Docs. The new and improved Mental Health Act was then presented to the community as having “added protections”…. something that everybody wants right? What they didn’t do was explain that these added protections were for doctors wishing to carry out this barbaric practice on children, and NOT for those who were the forced recipients of the ‘treatments’.

    I found myself wondering about a young girl (just coming of ECT age) who after attending an appointment at an adolescent facility, turned and waved her mother goodbye, and stepped into traffic. Was she being ‘coerced’ into having these ‘treatments’? We’ll never know, because that particular hospital is “editing” documents before allowing legal representatives to examine the narrative. Who cares about human rights when money is at stake.

    I also have some information about the way ‘clients’ from Private Clinics where reports are prepared for the Courts are being Shag hai-ed once they receive their insurance compensation payments.

    It’s basically a method of ‘mugging’ old ladies as they leave the ATM with their pocket books full of money….. and police will provide material assistance in concealing the offences by handing complainants back to the thugs robbing them. Anyway, whilst it isn’t actually lawful, the paperwork can be “edited” after the fact to create the appearance it is.

    Good luck Mr Dubey, and please don’t stop speaking your truth, which is I note a truth shared by many others. Not just those who have been unfortunate to have been snared by the Shock Docs. Please consider including an analysis of the ‘economics’ involved with these ‘treatments’.

    The Private Clinic psychologist would have to work for 7 full working weeks (doing therapy) to obtain the same amount of money her Shock Doc husband could extract for less than 6 hours work? And once the ‘treatments’ start, there is NO ESCAPE.

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    • Wish I could edit my comments the way I used to….

      “The Private Clinic psychologist would have to work for 7 full working weeks (doing therapy) to obtain the same amount of money her Shock Doc husband could extract for less than 6 hours work? And once the ‘treatments’ start, there is NO ESCAPE.”

      Any wonder she is suggesting the ‘treatments’ to ‘clients’ of the Private Clinic once she knowns they have received a large sum of money from their court process? Could she perhaps suggest a particular doctor who can provide such ‘treatments’?

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  3. There is the possibility of a Quid Pro Quo between the State and the Shock Docs, one which would be of concern if anyone ever got the opportunity to provide the evidence of.

    I can’t imagine that these ‘treatments’ are being done for free on very many occasions except……

    An example, I met a guy who had been a particularly violent man, especially towards women. I am unsure how he fell into the hands of a psychiatrist, but he had ‘consented’ (can’t prove the coercion) to having ECT’s last time I spoke to him his brain was pretty much like Jello…… and as stated above, there would be no admission by the Doctor that this was the intention….. you’ve described the ‘excuse giving above anyway.

    I don’t know how often this sort of ‘extra judicial’ justice is going on, but I also met a man who put a pistol into his mouth and blew half his face away as a result of a doctor refusing to change the medication which was making his skin feel like it was burning. Court ordered forced treatment. An aside, he had to pull the trigger three times as the first two were misfires…. I’ve often thought about what would have gone through his head before the bullet.

    I also would like to make mention of an adult woman who I saw crawling on the floor holding a teddy bear in fear of the ECT ‘treatment’ she was about to receive. The ‘staff’ ensuring that she knew WHY she was receiving the treatment before it occurred.

    Fanon describes the screams that were elicited from the victims of the ‘treatments’ issued by his ‘machine’ as being the thing which affected the police who came to him for therapy the most. They merely wanted to PTSD to go away so they could get back to their jobs….. of torturing people. Consider that scenario carefully.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd9aIamXjQI

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  4. Legal protections.

    In my State there is a legal protection from arbitrary detention and acts of torture……. it’s S. 336 of the Criminal Code.

    “Any person who, by the production of a false certificate or other document, knowingly and wilfully, procures any person, not suffering from mental illness (as defined in the Mental Health Act) or mental impairment, to be apprehended or detained, pursuant to that Act or any law relating to mental impairment, upon insufficient or unreasonable grounds, is guilty of a crime and is liable to imprisonment for 3 years.”

    Excellent you might think.

    Well, not so fast. I have documents which demonstrate that I was subjected to this offense to a standard called “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt”. Documents that show that an Authorised Mental Health Practitioner called Police and told them I was his “Outpatient” when it is clear he knew this was a LIE. Documents were forged as a result of me being snatched out of my bed at the point of a Police weapon and subjected to an interrogation (and then being ‘verballed’ on the statutory declarations)

    And should you wish to have something done about the person who subjected you to this offense, and the resulting acts of torture? Your going to find that the Police don’t have a copy of the Criminal Code, and will not only refuse to provide you with the protection of the law, but will aid and abet the criminals to retrieve the documented proof of the offending.

    This is nothing that the National Socialist’s didn’t do, they operated on the Fuhrerprinzip (the Fuhrers word is above written law). So I have a letter from our Chief Psychiatrist where he has removed all of the legal protections afforded the community by our laws, and enabled the arbitrary detention and torture of ANY citizens based on a ‘suspicion’.

    What is really of concern are the people who turn their backs on this removal of our legal protections DESPITE it being patently obvious. Though I have noticed that in many cases the police have threatened their families……… as you would expect in a community where the Chief Psychiatrist is a demonstrable ‘political fascist’…… or is my ‘suspicion’ regarding the forging of the letter from him by the Mental Health Law Centre correct?

    I have found that legal protections are worth very little when police are assisting with delivering citizens to places wrongly called hospitals to be ‘snuffed’ for daring to present documented proof of public sector misconduct and human rights abuses on their desk. When even the Police are afraid of their own organisation because “it might be better I don’t know about that” becomes a defense for the gross criminal negligence engaged in to provide material support to organised criminals.

    Where the State is “editing” legal narratives after exploiting the trust people place in them to do a “prompt and impartial investigation” of suspected criminal conduct, and then deliberately and willfully destroying peoples lives.

    And to be honest, they aren’t really the bother. It’s the folk who stand and say nothing that are the real concern….. those backstabbers who claim to be ‘advocates’ who provide material assistance in delivering the ‘Jew’ trying to escape the Shutzstaffel to the ‘authorities’. Who else has got the documents huh?

    In other words, who else knows they are arbitrarily detaining and torturing, and simply neglecting to prosecute when the proof of the offending is available? And what can be done about it? In my State you need to be careful speaking up, because your ‘after the fact’ Do Not Resusitate order, and your ‘end of life “care” program can be instigated once you, as “Outpatient” are snatched form your bed and delivered for ‘treatment’ to your local hospital.

    No, they wouldn’t do that. And as long as your of the mind that “it might be best I don’t know about that”, then your conscience should be clear.

    The legal protections you are asking not be removed, don’t really even exist where I live. Our Law makers were wise in providing those legal protections, but police are ensuring that they are dismantling our Justice system with what looks like a malignant cancerous growth.

    Any wonder they are of the belief they can simply kick people to death and nothing will be done about it? In fact, there are good reasons they are of that belief. because they know the laws passed by our Parliament are not worth the paper they are written on……… when they can actively assist criminals in the concealment of their offending.

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    • There are of course some humorous aspects to all of this.

      I have a friend who owns a large law firm in South Africa who I play golf with. I’ve explained what happened to him, and how his family isn’t actually safe in this place he wishes to call home (unless of course he does exactly what the police want him to, ie provide them with information from ‘clients’ etc See Nicola Gobbo, or the “elegant method of overcoming ‘resistance'”).

      But he said to me “these things take time”. Well, it took the State around 3 hours to get me to a point where I was incarcerated and should have been laying dribbling in a cell for nothing more that a telephone call from my “distressed wife” who was upset about my decision to leave her (as a result of her domestic violence. ie she tried to plunge a large carving knife into my heart as I lay on a couch. Abandonment issues.)

      Now this was done minus ANY evidence/proof. That was fabricated ‘on the fly’ so to speak. I was ‘spiked’ with date rape drugs and the effects of that were used to describe the ‘illness’ I didn’t have, which would then justify more of the drugs which had caused the effect they were locking me up for.

      Not that they’re very good at any of this. Take a look at the ‘results’ they are achieving. It might sound good in the journals, but take a walk through the wards in your local Torture Centre franchise. It’s just that they’re in a position to describe the brain damage they are doing to their clients as the ‘illness’ they were trying to treat. And there are major benefits to police (and other State authorities) in enabling this loophole to allow citizens to be arbitrarily detained and tortured (and “unintentionally negatively outcomed” should they try and access the protection of the law. Your own lawyer will ensure that doesn’t occur).

      These things take time? No wonder they’re looking for a fast track method to torture confessions from people. And Mental Health Services is the ideal candidate, especially when you understand how to implement the political structures of the National Socilaists….. I note our Euthanasia Act, passed to avoid accountability under “joint enterprise laws [RICO in the U.S.] was passed using the methods which came straight out of Himmler’s diaries. The State even discussing passing laws making it criminal to make comparisons between the ‘Nazis’ and our own Government. Our intent with Euthanasia is apparently different to theirs……. Thou shalt not kill…… except in certain circumstances, and when the documents can be “edited” to suit the ‘exclusions’ to Gods law.

      Still, once again the people think they got “more than a 100 legal protections”, like the “added protections” of the Mental Health Act I discussed above. And all that really occurred was our Politicians wiped their hands of the responsibility of doctors ending peoples lives in certain situations….. that is, when there was money in it or for convenience.

      I can’t begin to imagine the problems faced by Police when a Doctor walked into Police Headquarters and provided them with the murder weapon, the place she had disposed of the body, and a full and unconditional confession. In order to find “insufficient evidence” they needed to dig up the wrong body…. because the other option of doing their duty meant????? U.N. case of Corrina Horvath, the State IS responsible for the criminal conduct of public officers.

      So just like Himmler and Josef Hartinger there needed to be laws passed to enable places like Dachau to run without concerns for the law. Killing (or ‘treating’ them if you must. Isn’t that what Euthanasia Laws do? Make killing into a medical procedure?) people for their ‘potential’ to do harm to the State, rather than anything they had actually done. Like my “potential for damage to reputation and meaningful relationships” which is everybody on the planet, but also a means to enable arbitrary detention and torture of citizens.

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  5. Thank you so much for this well written and well documented article, Christopher. And thank you for your part in the activism that put this protection in place in Connecticut. May you prevail in keeping it there!

    “…I have learned how psychiatric care (and other medical care) can sometimes become a vicious cycle in which treatment-emergent or post-treatment adverse effects are misidentified as a new (or pre-existing) mental disorder, treated with higher dosages or more drugs or other risky treatments leading to more adverse effects, and more serious diagnoses until a person is quite disabled.”

    So well stated! This is exactly what happened to my dear daughter, as described in the article published last year on this same site on the first anniversary of her death.
    https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/07/catherines-story-a-child-lost-to-psychiatry/

    If we had a law here in New York like the one you helped put in place in Connecticut, she might still be with us today.

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  6. There is a dude named Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, M.D. –author of book, “Bedlam,” that was made into a documentary– who REALLY should attend to what Christopher James Dubey has to say here. This fella, Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, who is admired by another certain fella named E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., has experienced inner torment by what happened to his sister who, after coming home from a psych hospitalization, refused any further treatment, and ended up dying in self-imposed isolation while NOT in very good shape, mentally. That other fella, named E. Fuller Torrey, also had a sister with a serious psych condition for which he, E. Fuller Torrey, thinks the sister needed to have forced medical treatment. It might not ever have occurred to these two guys, who I believe are very very smart, to consider their loved ones might have had sound reasons to refuse psych care, even when these same loved ones were not functioning well, mentally.
    Psychiatry today appears to thrive on its concept of ‘anosognosia.’ Practitioners in that field evidently do not, do NOT want to look at what they do not know about their own biasses and preconceptions.
    End of rant.

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  7. So the situation in Australia at present is;

    There are written laws which on examination provide legal protections to the community from arbitrary detention, torture and involuntary euthanasia. These are consistent with agreements made with the United Nation on behalf of all citizens.

    The Police however refuse to take documented proof of the breaches of these laws, falsely claim that there is “insufficient evidence”, thus enabling human rights violations. Police have claimed that they do not have a copy of the Criminal Code, and will provide material assistance to those who have broken the laws to retrieve any documented proof of their offending. Any complaints will be referred to the ‘corruption watchdog’ and is unlikely to result in even a question being asked of the victims.

    The hospitals where these arbitrary detentions , torture and involuntary euthanasia’s are taking place ARE subject to the laws, policies and procedures which protect the community from such human rights abuse’s. However, they are being enabled in ‘after the fact document “editing”‘ and the intimidation and threatening of victims/witnesses along the lines of what would be expected of organised criminals. If contacted by a persons legal representatives, and the “prompt and impartial investigation” identifies a legitimate complaint, the legal narrative can be “edited”, a Do Not Resusitate Order issued against the victim, and their ‘end of life “care” plan brought forward. Police can assist with the provision of a ‘referral’ and transport of the victim to a hospital for this to occur.

    Authorities such as the Chief Psychiatrist who provides “expert legal advice to the Minster” on matters of Mental Health Law does not recognise ANY of the legal protections afforded the community. I have a letter here in which he claims that all that is required for a citizen to be detained is for an Authorised Mental Health Practitioner to suspect that a citizen has a mental illness. Treatments (such as date rape drugs) can be started before the person is even examined (a prescription can be completed by a doctor post hoc) by a doctor or psychiatrist.

    The Chief Psychiatrist has rewritten the legal protections by removing the “reasonable grounds” protection afforded the community in the Mental Health Act. No requirement by Parliament for him to do this, he simply makes the law whatever he wishes it to be. By removing the Criteria which are to be met by an AMHP there is no longer any need for the statutory declarations that are being completed by them. There are no longer any grounds needed for detention and referral, other than a suspicion (often called “suss laws” though much more dangerous with mental health due to the ‘treatments’ often causing the very symptoms they claim are the illness).

    There is an inconsistency within the Dept. The AMHP are forging the documents required to create the illusion that their referrals are lawful. These forged documents are then uttered y the hospital administrators upon receiving a complaint (may require “editing”). The Chief Psychiatrists rewriting of the law means that such forging and uttering is not actually required, as there are NO protections afforded the public by his misrepresentations of the laws.

    This becomes consistent with the gross criminal negligence displayed by police while the hospital retrieves any evidence which would demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that offences have occurred.

    In fact, last night in an episode of Four Corners titled “Do NO Harm” is was shown how a doctor had vaginally and anally raped an 11 year old girl in an Emergency Dept and 17 years later the ‘authorities’ are considering doing something about it…. a psychiatrist telling the mother and father of the now dead girl (suicide) after 4 minutes that ” a doctor wouldn’t do that”…. the authorities now realising that Police, and the medical regulator had been negligent in their ‘investigation’ of the matter. I can sort of relate to the ‘treatment’ this family received….. having been slandered, threatened and intimidated, told they (the State) would “fuking destroy” me and my family for having a legitimate complaint, and subjected to criminal conduct and cover up for more than 10 years now…. despite having the documented proof of these abuses.

    Those who stand and watch while they do this just as culpable in my eyes.

    Though the regulator CEO tells us that this was the old model, the new and improved model is much better…….. until you try and have something done about an abusive medial practitioner. The you find out he lied.

    By being the people who hold themselves to account, these people have created a ‘system’ which would allow doctors who rape 11 year old girls’ to continue to work…… sometimes with a ‘chaperone’, and no one checking that they are complying with the restrictions. In most cases the complaints aren’t even heard.

    Anyone care to check what I am alleging regarding police and the Chief Psychiatrist neglecting their duty to hold abusers to account? oh that’s right, someone did look, and the system does what it always does, protects the abusers and fuking destroys the victims for complaining……. while the numbers of victims climbs at alarming rates.

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    • “We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion; the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” Ayn Rand.

      Our last Prime Minister once said “Australians value a rule of law”. That may be the case ex Prime Minister, but our governments have failed to deliver on that rule of law by enabling the subversion of the laws being passed in favor of the Fuhrerprinzip. When police can be procured by ‘medical people’ as their own persona thugs, to torture, maim and kill anyone who may be a problem to their ‘career paths’, something has gone drastically wrong.

      Isn’t it about time our Politicians got some balls and took back what belongs to the people who elected them?

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      • And aren’t euthanasia laws the ultimate inversion? Our politicians noticing that their ‘joint enterprise’ with such unlawful killings may become a problem should a rule of law ever gain traction in the public service?

        So lets do what has been done with arbitrary detentions and torture and create a situation where it can be called “medical care”, and subvert the rule of law by willful neglect and ignorance?

        And it isn’t that the public haven’t noticed, they’re simply so afraid to say anything about it, lest they too be snatched form their beds and given the ‘treatment’ (with “editing”) at a place wrongly called a hospital.

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  8. For decades now there has been a creeping campaign to return to doctors the power they held over patients before the patient rights movement got protective laws passed.

    I have certainly seen the doctors gain ground in places like California. This proposed law is another example of this. They desperately want total medical control to be legal everywhere. I don’t even think they know why. It certainly won’t result in better health across this planet, neither in body nor in mind. Medicine as it is currently constituted is not the answer to health; it is however a potent control mechanism.

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    • I agree completely. It’s easy to forget why those laws were put on the books. It was because of serious and repetitive and unapologetic abuse. It is always very dangerous to afford one person power over another, especially with the façade of “helping” the person we have the power to control.

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      • I have just been over the review the Law Centre did of their actions with regards my ‘matters’.

        I notice that the L.C. closed the file once I had been evicted from my home (so my wife could retrieve the documents for the hospital before they sent the “edited” version to the Law Centre).

        After I was hospitalized for trying to take my life over these matters, I approached them and asked them to continue with the complaint to the Chief Psychiatrist.

        Now stay with me here…… the cards move pretty quickly.

        The Law Centre made a SECOND application for documents from the hospital….. this time they asked for “redacted documents” (instead of the unredacted documents they have a right to examine to protect against human rights abuses)….. and get this……. they requested ALL DOCUMENTS from the day AFTER I was snatched from my bed and tortured.

        Why might they make such basic mistakes? And consider what it was that was being achieved by this gross criminal negligence? The enabling of arbitrary detentions, torture and involuntary euthanizing of people with a valid complaint regarding human rights abuse’s?

        They then made the bizarre claim regarding the rights (or lack of them) for legal representatives to be given access to their own documents (keep in mind these are lawyers who would be aware that the hospital maintains the records ON BEHALF of the person. They do not own them).

        It’s a strange ‘review’ of their actions, as it shows how they were trying to avoid what they had already stepped into. I mean, what would be the first item for a legal representative? Perhaps establish what the status of your client was before anything actually occurred? Oh, that’s right, they were aware I had been made into an “Outpatient” to use police as their own personal thugs and cause an “acute stress reaction” in someone who had been ‘spiked’ with date rape drugs…….can’t imagine why that might be an embarrassment to their hospitals reputation.

        So “edit” the documents, euthanize the complainant, and have the lawyers make a plausible narrative for the TWO files they are in possession of. Certainly don’t want anyone knowing they took a peep before conspiring with the hospital to pervert the course of justice?

        Still no edit function Steve, nor is there a means to “subscribe” to articles such as this one?

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        • And consider that this Law Centre boasts about their ‘advocacy’ for the mentally ill. And all the while they have been involved in the most appalling breaches of their obligations to their clients and the courts (Mental Health Review Tribunal etc)

          What an absolute disgrace that there are people aware of what they have been doing (and have been doing for many years) and they do not wish to hold them to account because ……….. just following orders while the State arranges to involuntarily euthanize people with valid complaints regarding acts of torture?

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          • Yeah yeah, I get it…… it’s obvious what’s going on with Boans…… and i’m pleased that those lacking the intelligence to figure out what I have been saying is true.

            The concealment of the attempt to snuff me by “editing” the events leading up to that attempt, and by acts of gross criminal negligence leaving the people involved in positions to continue to unlawful kill citizens (though the Euthanasia Act does provide an avenue to deny joint enterprise these days, and of course the ‘after the fact’ “editing” of legal narrative makes it look like ‘medical care’)

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      • “It’s easy to forget why those laws were put on the books. It was because of serious and repetitive and unapologetic abuse. It is always very dangerous to afford one person power over another, especially with the façade of “helping” the person we have the power to control.”

        Especially when your ‘helping’ them to end their lives when that wasn’t the choice they actually made, but that doctor made for them. Well, they weren’t even my doctor unless this idea that they can make anyone their “Outpatient” (and write prescriptions for drugs administered without knowledge and before they even know of the existence of their “patient”) to get around the laws stopping mental health services to be delivered to people who don’t want or need it.

        “Procuring apprehension or detention of person not suffering from mental illness or impairment
        Any person who, by the production of a false certificate or other document, knowingly and wilfully, procures any person, not suffering from mental illness (as defined in the Mental Health Act) or mental impairment, to be apprehended or detained, pursuant to that Act or any law relating to mental impairment, upon insufficient or unreasonable grounds, is guilty of a crime and is liable to imprisonment for 3 years.”

        See, it might be that they forgot why this offense was put “on the books”……… oh wait, police in my State have forgotten there was even a Book……. same goes for the Chief Psychiatrist……. and anyone who does remember gets snuffed for bringing it up. Because how inconvenient is it that people can’t be ‘spiked’ with date rape drugs and then interrogated in front of police at the point of a gun?

        They care.

        I also note that Shine Lawyers have a motto of “Right Wrong”….. in the interest of truth in advertising, could they perhaps change that to “Right selective Wrongs”? Because despite their claims, they’ll turn their backs on you should they be asked for ‘assistance’.

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  9. So Boans is all set up, he’s been spiked with date rape drugs, has collapsed in his bed, the Community Nurse has called Police and requested ‘assistance’ with his “Outpatient” (usually a beating by police), and the knife and cannabis have been planted.

    Boans is tortured and ‘verballed’ on the Forms, loaded into a Police van in front of his in laws (Police parked on their lawn), and the Community Nurse now needs a referral from Police to make his detention appear to be lawful.

    Now I know police aren’t that bright (some may say they’re about 40 watts) but this senior Constable must have smelled a ‘rat’ during my ‘interrogation’. I’m being asked about a knife that the police didn’t actually find, so how did the Community Nurse know about it? Cannabis left on the bedside table and my wife knew police were on their way? Might she have wanted them to find it?

    And now Boans is locked in the Police Van and the Community Nurse is asking the senior Constable to do a referral for him (post hoc)?

    Imagine that, a Police Officer with integrity? She has refused to conspire with the Community Nurse to conceal his offending….. which left him where?

    WITH NO REFERRAL SOURCE.

    And this is what the FOI Officer has concealed for him… removing any and all reference to the “home visit with Police”…. because the Community Nurse calling police and requesting ‘assistance’ with his “Outpatient” is a crime, not only that but the forging of the statutory declarations is another two crimes. And then uttering with them? Oh Dear, we are getting in deep……

    So Police didn’t want to be involved because they had a suspicion (on reasonable grounds) that what was being done wasn’t exactly Kosher. Still, these guys are “editing” and have the ability to arrange involuntary euthanasia…… though you do need to conceal the source of the morphine to get it past the Coroner but…… fairly easy really. And Police should have just conspired to conceal the offending in the first place and then there wouldn’t be a need for these killings disguised as medicine. Don’t they understand that the Community Nurse knows a Doctor? One that can write prescriptions post hoc should they ever wish to ‘spike’ people with date rape drugs?

    Who would have thought that a Police Officer with integrity would cause so much pain and grief for a victim of crime? She should just help out with arbitrary detentions and torture instead of this taking the high horse ‘I’m not getting involved in your criminal conduct Mister’.

    Leaving the poor hospital staff to worry about anyone noticing how they are doing these kidnappings and torturing people as a favor for a Private Clinic psychologist.

    Still, I gotta be honest, I’ve learned a whole bunch from that pair. And their ‘lecture tour’ here to instruct the locals ion such organised criminal methods will no doubt cause significant harm to many… not that there are many who will figure it out, because they don’t have a “sophisticated knowledge of the law”, and the victims tend to end up dead or seriously disabled….. but one persons loss is another’s gain.

    Obviously there were some who knew of these methods (they did after all rudely interrupt them), though I think they wanted to see just exactly how they were going to achieve their preferred outcome. There can be some subtleties in killing that only those with the stomach for it would truly understand.

    So it was all a three card Monte, with the Community Nurse never having the lady in the deck. And the lack of that lady meant they needed to arrange to have me killed because the truth was just too ugly to face. Still, they haven’t missed a day with their families, but then again, they weren’t too worried about arranging to have me killed either so……..

    So it’s understandable why they ight be seeking carte blanche and zero accountability in these matters, and it is being provided by a negligent Chief Psychiatrist…. because surely I’m wrong about that letter being forged by the Law Centre right?

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  10. Update:

    The Community Nurse (Authorised Mental Health Practitioner) couldn’t get a ‘Police referral’ (s. 195 Police Powers of MHA) after he had subjected me to an interrogation whilst stupefied without my knowledge on benzos, and significantly AFTER I had been taken into custody by Police.

    This means he lacked the “inherent in or incidental to lawful sanction” defense (Article 1 of the Convention against the use of Torture) of his conduct. The Police referral would have concealed these offences.

    He had NO VALID REFERRAL SOURCE, and as such the documents showed he was a criminal. No Doctor, no police no nothing other than a desire to snatch me out of my bed and torture me so he could forge the Forms for the Chief Psychiatrist to utter with should their be any problems or complaints.

    I bet he didn’t expect the police to refuse to provide him with the referral source though. I’m fairly certain the Senior Constable smelled a rat……

    Okay folk, issue resolved. We now know why the hospital was “editing” the documents and conspiring with the Law Centre to ensure they didn’t look and see what was actually done to me…….. whilst some other people arranged to have me ‘involuntarily euthanised’ in the E.D.

    Just goes to show how fragile psychiatry really is…….. without a valid referral source what it’s called is torture. And whilst God doesn’t provide ‘doctor’ with the right to snuff people because they hate the truth, the State does with the right to “edit” legal narrative, and ignore the laws (dereliction of duty) protecting the community from such abusers.

    So lets start there….. no valid referral source and the dominoes tumble. Unless like my State does, you ‘euthanise’ the person making the complaint and “edit” the documents before getting the Chief Psychiatrist to write a note or two about why the law isn’t the law anymore.

    Interesting that the Community Nurse is fully aware of the law, as he knows which documents to forge to conceal his misconduct….. the Chief Psychiatrist doesn’t even recognise the laws passed by our Parliament to protect the community, and instead prefers his version of them (which enable arbitrary detentions and torture, with a little bit of “ediitng” for the more intellectual types who prefer we have the appearance of a rule of law)

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  11. I guess there is always going to be a few teething problems when they are introducing new innovations such as ‘involuntary marriage counselling’.

    My wife wanting me to speak to a psychologist, and not having any authority to have me forced into talking…….. I mean really Boans? Do you not understand the powers being provided by the State to these people to ensure your happiness?

    Good news is there are people who do understand that there is a need for a means to have anyone they wish snatched from their bed by police, tortured and if they complain, snuff them.

    The laws matter zero to such people who have the support of their ‘superiors’, who will forgive their little indiscretions depending on whose family needs to be ‘fuking destroyed’ for daring to try and access the protection of the law.

    I guess the people ‘coercing’ Jews into the ‘showers’ could justify their actions with such ignorance…… their ‘service to the service’ worth more than their service to humanity. Which would explain the enabling act over the killing of anyone with a valid complaint about acts of State sanctioned torture.

    Still, if y’all don’t check, then you can claim that you didn’t believe me and …….. yeah, we seen you before.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkADj0TPrJA

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