14/05/2021
NMHS ADMITS TO HISTORIC INVOLUNTARY PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT WITHOUT LEGALLY REQUIRED DIAGNOSIS.
In a landmark settlement in the State Administrative Tribunal in March, the Western Australian North Metro Health Service (NMHS) admitted to commencing a decade of involuntary psychiatric treatment in 1979 on a 19 year old student, without the required psychiatric diagnosis by a registered psychiatrist under the applicable WA Mental Health Act at the time.
Instead, the complainant says the NMHS Registrar acted on a late night assessment by an unqualified trainee/medical officer to cover up the psychiatric drug treatment already commenced on him by a locum GP during the student's false arrest in his own home as he was being held down by police. The trainee/medical officer's name appears as author of the only record taken of this incident in which she falsely claims a lawful "diagnosis" of schizophrenia was made.
However, in a letter to the complainant, the NMHS last month admitted that the necessary Form 3, required by law prior to authorise commencement of involuntary psychiatric treatment, does not exist, as the complainant had always claimed was the case. He says the first time he was interviewed by a psychiatrist was several days after admission and after the dangerous cocktail of psychiatric drugs had already been administered.
Under the Act the omission of a From 3 makes both the involuntary psychiatric treatment and the police arrest unlawful, while the indirect enablers of this abuse are culpable for making false reports to police and/or creating a public mischief.
The casualty of this abusive psychiatry claims that instead of recognising the illegality and immediately discharging him, the NMHS Registrar knowingly covered up the lack of both a Form 3, and a diagnosis, by continuing unlawful treatment with dangerous overdoses of a cocktail of the psychiatric drugs fluphenazine, thioridazine, chlorpromazine and haloperidol in an abusive practice colloquially known as "snowing" ("snow" derives from slang for co***ne). The complainant says the morning after his arrest he woke up in a locked forensic ward with a psychiatric drug induced catatonic stupor, and unable to move without assistance - a condition he had never experienced before.
In addition, the complainant states on the night of his false arrest he had been drinking alcohol heavily. As alcohol is strongly contraindicated with these dangerous psychiatric dugs they should never have been administered on that basis alone.
"The NMHS Registrar showed negligent and reckless disregard for the possible contraindications of using these drugs while knowingly, unlawfully, involuntarily and forcibly administering them", he said.
In spite of this historic case being 4 decades old, a settlement was reached in the SAT because the complaint sought to have the NMHS's entire medical record of him destroyed under Freedom of Information laws. He claims the medical record is a record only of a fictitious, factitious or induced illness by carers. He says the carers in this case are the NMHS and medically unqualified parties who propagated false statements, malicious innuendo, and defamation to impute to him a psychiatric condition he never had, and at a time when he was recovering/relapsing from a serious case of infectious mononucleosis (glandular fever/Epstein-Barr virus) acquired 8 weeks earlier.
The complainant claims the NMHS's aggravated chemical assault was a massive insult to his physical health and left him with a life not worth living. It drove him to attempt su***de at least half dozen times, resulting in as many involuntary admissions to NMHS over the next nine years. He says he finally escaped the drug culture of the NMHS's abusive psychiatry in 1989 by leaving Western Australia entirely and subsequently obtaining a dietary treatment from a Sydney immunologist for his undiagnosed, and by now chronic mononucleosis condition.
In spite of this he says he remains at perpetual risk of further unnecessary involuntary treatment by the NMHS because of the fictitious "Stazi" style file the NMHS continues to maintain on him, and their condescending contempt for people who complain of lived experience of medical malpractice.
"Original handwritten notes are illegible without the months of my effort put into deciphering them. Notes were also made in the file of my answers to invasive and inane questions concerning irrelevant matters such as my religion and sexuality. This record is evidence only of factitious and abusive psychiatry at worlds worst practice. Medically, it is out of date and lacks all credibility. If important notes can't even be read, why do they need to be kept? The file has no useful purpose other than to perpetuate a malicious lie for future unlawful treatment, or as evidence of medical malpractice for which there is no longer any legal recourse. Consequently the file should be destroyed.", he says.
“Complaints from former patients about the misdiagnosis of non-psychiatric conditions as psychiatric ones are dismissed by NMHS as a delusional symptom of the imputed psychiatric condition they don’t even have”, he says. "My complaint of this medication error is a notifiable incident to the Chief Psychiatrist, however NMHS has refused to accept even this outstanding legal obligation."
“The human right of the disabled to refuse medical treatment is automatically denied anyone imputed to have a psychiatric condition. It’s disability based discrimination and grossly offensive.”.
He goes on to claim that no involuntary treatment record should be maintained on a person beyond 7 years without their consent because the medical information is acquired without the cooperation of the involuntary patient and cannot therefore be relied upon due to the absence of symptoms (ie. reported by the patient).
"To allow a 40 year old fictitious/factitious medical document to hang like the sword of Damocles over my head into my retirement is offensive in the extreme." he says. "It is exactly the same practice Victorian courts recently found to be criminalising orphaned indigenous Australians with a permanent criminal record for being "guilty" under the Aborigines Protection Act 1869 regulations of simply being an orphan. The children taken involuntarily into custodial care under that Act were given a criminal record that remained on Police files for life. Yet they had committed no crime, were given no trial, and had no access to legal defences."
He says, "Likewise, I still have an involuntary patient psychiatric record that remains to this day, that still enables the NMHS to have me arbitrarily arrested without charge, having committed no crime, with no trial, and no access to legal defences, permitting me to be treated with dangerous psychiatric drugs without my further consent or cooperation for an imputed condition I’ve never had".
And he adds this solemn warning. "If you think this cant happen to you, then just wait until you get old. But by then it may be too late to do anything about it."
Casualties of Abusive Psychiatry remind all readers that the Australian Government has sanctioned disability based discrimination in its 2008 blanket Declaration to the UN that it would not recognise in any Australian law the international human right of Australians to refuse medical treatment, and singling out in particular, the international human right to refuse psychiatric treatment. This does not prevent you from asserting your international human right in a reasonable way to refuse medical treatment in your discussions with any medical practitioner seeking to treat you without your full consent or knowledge. However, you may still invite punitive repercussions for simply articulating that right despite being done in a reasonable way, and discretion is advised.
