In 1986, I was put on lithium for “Manic Depression”. The dose given me was excessively high. Over the years pharmacists told me this. Then in 1993, my thyroid began to malfunction. I was attending Sarsfieldscourt for blood tests for the lithium and even when these were above the therapeutic level and I had symptoms the consultant never followed it up.

As a result my kidneys and liver are weak. By 1998 I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME). I believe that ECT toxic drugs especially lithium are major factors in the undermining of my health.

There is a tragedy that occurred in my family due I feel in great part to the limitations of the current psychiatric system. My mother had been given the same label as myself — “Manic Depression”. In 1985 she became extremely depressed. She was so bad she was hallucinating. She drowned herself in October 85.

you insane and you go to the madhouse, or you enter the Convent where the nuns of your old school love you. At my 18’s, my second stage of joys ended within that Convent. The exorcisms, the lighted candles around my 18 years, I was on the floor, I still shake, it seems that I still hear the chorus of nuns, I wanted to die at each session, Why I did not die at each session? Why did I go through that torture? Until now, I do not understand it. But those exorcisms did not have good results.

I think that happened to me for me to be able to speak for our little brothers and sisters, who are stolen away from their 13-14 year old happiness … their 18-19 year old happiness, the happiness of the best years of life.

Then I did not have more than one alternative, the same one I had had before: to flee. I could escape from that convent and be alone in the world, I began to be happy again. Little by little I recovered my identity, I still had “my things” and need to take a low dose of medicine and had that much love to give.

But they had stolen away my best years of adolescence, youth and I continue dreaming about the lost years, years of enjoyment, to meet friends in at college, to share and be with my sisters and brothers

From 18 to 28 I was just “another crazy person”, fighting against stigma, exclusion.

Other madness came to me, “the madness of love”. With my husband’s support I began to look for direction, I found it. I do not know if this testimony will be useful.

I don’t know if this testimony is useful at all. Perhaps I did not tell the hardest part. If you expected something harder, something that can make people to respect our right to exist, the right to be different, the right to assume our identity on our own best terms, to look for and decide about how we feel and experience, what is the best for us, I believe that the strongest story would be that you, states, families, community, acknowledge that when you exclude us, or when you make decisions on our behalf, about each step in our lives, without giving the option to speak on our own behalf, to talk to you, like siblings within a family talk to each other, then this is the strongest thing of this story, the story of you, the one that must be changed, oriented, not to continue to violate our right to be

ecognized as equal persons with the same rights and obligations.

‘The crazy one” is just a product of the fears of a competitive society where only the material exists.
Elena

Supported by judges and the hospital medics. The “TUTOR”got legal rights to name his nephews totally disabled (insane) at that time these young adults were 22 and 24 years old.

The “TUTOR” deceived to his nephews telling them the judgments were to make them free from living in the hospital.

They were free to go out from the institution. They went out to the street. They didn’t get their house and any other his father’s heritance. Actually the “TUTOR” enjoys with the house the one that is originally his nephews belonging.

Today they are 36-38 years old. They still fighting to put the drugs away, without a house to live, living where they get in, in a very poverty and very sad situation. They can’t make any claim to the law because they are declared “totally insane” (unpersonalized Interdictos).

They presented their case once in some communication programs, but they didn’t get anything. They are still, with their life with many limitations, suffering on the street, in Lima – Peru.
Elena

i asked the nurse. What do I do? She said, you’d better sleep.

I did.

I woke up in a different hospital. That was CDPC (Capital District Psych Center) and this was Albany Med Center (E2 ward). I was given a lot of seroquel which I began to refuse. They took me to a hearing, at which the lawyer for their side said, among other things, “How many times HAVE you been raped, Miss Nichols?” I replied “well, what do you call it when a guy refuses to use a condom?” The judge said I was sane and released me.

Oddly, I have been raped but it’s no one’s business. I was just trying to show I can keep my cool. So I lied.

Anyhow. I asked for my meds so I could titrate down my dosage. But no luck — they said they wouldn’t give me any since I was leaving against medical advice.

I went to the social service office the next day and demanded to get my kids back. They were frightened as they felt I’d escaped from a mental hospital. They called the cops. They brought me back to the hospital.

But I had an opportunity to see a Dr. at Mt. Sinai/NYU in NYC who did not like Haldol. It was the best thing I could have done medically.

They (Albany Medical Center discharge planners) wanted to place me in mental health supervised housing but I said I wanted to go back to my own apt. They scoffed at the idea that I had an apartment but I did and I went there.

I was shaken and had nightmares about restraint and forced

When I got out of the hospital I felt hopeless. Even though I was only twenty one years old, I felt like my life was over. It was only because I got involved in the self-help and advocacy movement that I discovered that it was possible to rebuild my life.

4th attempt (September, 2003) – a letter with 6 questions repeated and the suggestion for psychiatric examination in the hospital repeated once more.

5th attempt (November, 2003) – a letter with a remark that “information requested is:” on past health state but not current health condition – so there is no meaning for psychiatric examination in the hospital. And the suggestion for hospitalisation can be considered as discrimination as the Law doesn’t require such way to get personal information”. An answer signed by 3 leading psychiatrists was given where attempts to get information were described as “you were consulted and psychiatric help was suggested but you have refused”.

No one answer to 6 questions was given!

spread meaning of foolishness; painful; outrageous; they give us a raspberry – what to do – we clean splits and go further; yes – I am ill: but who enabled them to put indignities and mock on me and my disability?; who asked me what I think about this advertisement; they do not care to provide us a human view; does derisive and humiliating saying “a loosened screw” can advocate for image of full-fledged employees?; this saying associates with limited possibilities; expression “a loosened screw” contradict itself the proposition used in the advertisement that “60% of mentally ill can work with full competence”.

The organisers of the project explained that: “shall we close our eyes or not the saying “loosened screw” will exist. So we use it for attracting attention to painful problem of employment of mentally disabled”. So the last question is: does all the means are good for purpose to be justified? The Nacism showed the falseness of such an attitude.

The board of Lithuanian Fellowship of Mental Health Care Users consider that usage of stigmatising saying “a loosened screw” is moulding discriminatory opinion in labour market as is based on making joke of mental disorder.

The view of “loosened screw” transform mentally ill persons into stuff without human shape thus illustrating well the reality of mentally ill: we are invisible in the society.

** As matters stands now (and my story of attempts to get information shows it very well) query is: does mental illness is illness or a crime? The answer is offered that it is more a crime than an illness: psychiatry is the only branch of medicine where the issue of human rights is brought to the fore. The article on access to information speaks about danger to “the interests of third persons” or “information can cause danger to patients health and life”. Psychiatrist is to decide what amount of information to give to the patient while criminals have right to all process materials. Women criminals if they give birth to a child in the prison they have possibility to nurture them till one year under the care of personnel – that is impossible at all for mentally ill in social care institutions (even cat breeders recommend little kittens to be taken from mother cats at the age of 8 weeks – but human child in the case of mental illness is taken away at once: mothers pain and protest is suppressed by medication).

According Lithuanian laws mentally ill persons become legally incapable at the moment of coming to the court but not after the court decision. There are no mandatory requirements to get opinion of mentally ill on the suitability of the candidate as caregiver. And nobody in the court question the opinion of psychiatrist when involuntary treatment / hospitalization or legal incapacity / disability cases are sued to court. And judge never asks for the presence of the patient here in Lithuania. The fact of presence of special law – Lithuanian Law of Mental Health Care exclude social group of mentally ill from the society.

And what possibilities for mentally ill persons are to protect ones rights if a lawyer was suggested to pass psychiatric examination when he asked for medical information of his client. He returned to his client and refused from the case as he said: “nothing can be done”...

http://subs.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=699&ObjectID=10368790

2 There is the legal procedure of family guardianship to decide who will be a guardian in the family but there is no legal procedure whether one will be under the guardianship or not and it is automatically decided and there is no exam whether users are competent or not.

All users not only in-patients but also outpatients should have “Hogosha” in MHL.

3 http://www.imhpj.org/search/Law_realted_to_Mental_Health_2000.pdf

In Japan all users of psychiatry are under the family guardianship without any legal procedure2 . It is in Mental Health Law and it is called “Hogosya” which in general means parents of children. So in fact users are treated and regarded alike children. (Law Related to Mental Health and Welfare of the Person with Mental Disorder3 — Chapter 5, Section 1)

Generally speaking because the government does not take the responsibility of social security or welfare, families must to take the responsibility to persons with disability welfare.

There are many cases that families gave consents to hospitalization or all forced treatments -drugs or ECTs in Japan without our own consents. It is not illegal in Japan.

In this decade ECTs have revived and there are many not-modified ECTs in Japan and many cases are without informed

Tristano Jonathan Ajmone (Italy)

My name is Tristano Jonathan Ajmone, I’m 34 years old, I live in Italy and, between 1998 and 2003, I have been subjected to a forensic-psychiatric regime for a period of five and a half years following a court sentence that declared me “partly incapable of intending and willing” — which is the juridical means by which an offender is denied moral agency for the acts of which he is accused.

The court decided that I was mentally insane based on a five minute meeting with the court’s psychiatric expert who visited me in prison. We didn’t exchange many words, yet he decided that I was a psychotic and insane.

For people judged totally insane, the sentence is entirely converted from punishment to “cure”, so people are “exculpated”, and a cure of minimum two, five or ten years is imposed on them in OPG facilities.

In my case, I was sentenced to three years of prison and, after serving time in an ordinary prison, a period of cure of minimum one year (which was later extended, by psychiatrists, to two and a half years). Even though people judged partly insane are recognized as suffering from mental disorders, in Italy the alleged cures are often postponed after the ordinary imprisonment time. So, in my case, I was declared mentally sick and sent to ordinary prisons for a period of three years, after which I was meant to be cured.

The 7th Branch of Horrors
nyhow, my state of mind was such that ordinary prison personnel did not manage to cope with me, so I was moved to a special psychiatric branch inside the prison facility of Le Vallette, in Turin.

In this special branch (at the time, called “Settima Sezione blocca A” / “7th Branch of Block A”), I was locked in a very small cell. The cell was about 9 square meters; it had bars on the windows and on the inner cell door; the outer cell door was an iron door filled with cement, and in the middle it had a big three-layered soundproof glass window that made it possible to see inside the cell, but sound would not escape the cell, nor could I hear what was going on outside when the door was closed; the toilet was in an open space, so that I would always be visible to the prison guards; there was a small sink with no hot water; the bed was a metal cot cemented to

manage to shout, he would scream a bit at the beginning, but after the first boot kicks in the stomach and in the ribs, usually he would start to hiss in pain, rather than shout. We used to call it the “death squad”.

Once — while due to the branch being over-packed I had an inmate sharing the cell with me — my cell mate gave two batteries to the man in the cell opposite to us. The man swallowed the batteries — he could no longer bear staying there, so his plan was to end up in a civil hospital for a surgical removal of the batteries from the stomach, where he could rest until dismissal. When he told the police guards that he had swallowed the batteries, they dragged him along the corridor by his hair, punching and kicking him, and then they came in our cell to beat my companion (who was the only one with batteries nearby) and they banged his head against the sink four or five times. He was sick for several days but was afraid to call the doctor because if he didn’t give an explanation for his bruises the doctor would accuse me of having beaten him, and he didn’t want me to be punished for what the guards did to him.

This type of cruelty and abuse — and many other episodes which I will omit for sake of brevity — only happen in psychiatric branches, where the inmates are mainly suffering people, weak and not strongly tied to the rest of the prison population. Similar interventions could not be carried out in an ordinary prison branch without the risk of a revolt. The point is that the psychiatrists in charge of such wards cover up all this by discrediting any inmate’s attempt to report what takes place there. Also, in the 7th Branch it was not possible to speak with the psychiatrist without the presence of a police ward, so one had to be very careful as to what one uttered.

The two psychiatrists who run the Seventh Branch are outstanding psychiatrists in Italy, both in the midst of a rampant political career, publicly promoting democratic ideals in the psychiatric reform that is allegedly taking place in Italy

.The” Holy Lagers” for Restless Souls

So, after four months of pain and horror in the Seventh Branch I was moved to a civilian psychiatric hospital, as a convict under a regime of home arrests. The place was an ordinary private psychiatric institution which happened to house, from time to time, convicts for treatment. The place was quite huge and well kept — it was clean, the food was good, and the staff was relatively respectful — it was owned and run by the Catholic Church.

In my 18 months that I spent there, I managed to settle my inner turbulence that derived from the past experience, and at the same time I got to know how non-forensic psychiatric institutes work. Even though the place was comfortable and clean, and we were not subjected to any particular harassment, one thing was clear: the fee we all had to pay for all this “paradise as an alternative to hell” was to take all drugs without protesting. The institute did not tolerate any questioning about the drugs they gave us, we only had to swallow and “rest”. We were not even allowed to ask the nurses what drugs we were given.

I remember those 18 months as the period of my life in which I was most sedated. I gradually slipped in a state which was quite close to mental vegetation. Side effects were really harsh to cope with, my limbs would shiver all the time, and I got fatter and fatter, my mind confused, and I soon wasn’t able to read a novel.

.So there was a double standard: the same doctors who in court declared us “mentally sick and unable to sustain ordinary prison life” were ready to send us back to prison if we didn’t comply with their orders. Despite the fact that the institute had a neat and peaceful appearance, we were subjected to a regime of obedience in which rules were created on the spot and had to be blindly obeyed.
While I was in this institute, the police raided it and confiscated a significant amount of expired medicines. This was an event which

was covered by the local newspapers. Three days after the police raid, I was given an expired cough syrup. As it goes in Italy, most of the court cases against private hospitals simply get filed and forgotten.

Territorial Psychiatry: 5 Stage Lagers

After a year at the Catholic psychiatric facility I was moved to a private “community” (comunità, as they are defined in Italian Mental Health System), which was a villa in the countryside (far away from my home and family).

The transferral was due to the bogus implementation of the infamous law decree Legge 180 (often erroneously referred as Legge Basaglia). This law dates back to 1978 and was intended to abolish psychiatric asylums. In reality it is used mainly to force psychiatric patients to constantly move from one structure to another. Technically speaking, as a consequence of this law, patients are not allowed to stay more than a year in the same place, which would render the place a place of long-permanence (an “asylum”). This is why I was forced to leave the previous institute. The effect of this “deinstitutionalization” process is that people are moved up and down the country like postal parcels, completely disrupting their lives, preventing any significant construction of lasting human relations. And, of course, at arrival in each new institute, the rehabilitation program starts from square zero again!

This “community” housed 30 people with psychiatric diagnoses. Some of us were forensic, others not. Many people were there due to drug-addiction or alcoholism, and their regime was a kind of “soft coercion”, meaning that their staying there was a trial period of rehabilitation alternative to major juridical interventions. In other words, if they did not comply they would be persecuted as drug-addicts by the State machine (courts and social workers) and they would end up in a lot of trouble.

The day I arrived I was immediately body searched and all of my luggage was thoroughly searched. They confiscated all shaving blades, needles, and condoms. This place (like the previous one) was a mixed gender institute, so I thought it was really absurd to forbid us possession of condoms, especially since it was clear that sexual intercourse was a common practice amongst residents despite the fact that it was considered a breach of the contract and it would imply expulsion from the community. Also, many people there came from a life of street drug-addiction, and contagious

diseases constituted a risk. Psychiatrists gave more importance to moral rules than to medical common sense. Strangely enough, in the Catholic institute they did not interfere with such issues, and we could freely have condoms and entertain in love affairs (except with the staff).

Also, in this community we were not allowed to have money and to keep our cigarettes. All our money was handled by the staff, and they would give us the fags according

It was like a kindergarten for adults, and it was something quite odd since a few of the residents were there following serious offences, like murder. Also, we were forcibly given strong psychiatric drugs in huge quantities (some people took up to six or seven different drugs at the same time).

There, we were forced to work. For example, we had to clean up the facility, prepare the dining room, and carry on other tasks. According to Italian law, such tasks constitute labor, and even in divorce cases the State recognizes that for housewives, housekeeping is a real job for which they can seek compensation.

We were forced to work and we did not receive any compensation at all. The work we carried out allowed the

institute to save money on staff expenses — but they claimed it was for our own good that they put us to work (it was meant to be therapeutic!).

Escaping Hell: Running Back to Prison

After a few months, I left the facility asking to go back to ordinary prison, because I could no longer stand the working rhythms, the massive drugging, and the endless sequence of false promises they would feed me regarding my social rehabilitation program and its coming steps. Since they didn’t allow us to use or possess phones, and I was denied access to a fax machine to contact the judge or phone the police, I climbed the fence and ran to the nearest police station and asked them to take me back to ordinary prison. For my leaving the facility I was further charged with jailbreaking.

The “Cure Begins”:  Entering the OPG of Montelpo

Shortly after going back to jail, my prison sentence expired and my period of Cure and Custody began in OPG. I was thus moved to the OPG of Montelupo Fiorentino1, near Florence.

Montelupo is an old Medicean Villa, which we used to call “the castle” because it had towers. It was converted into a “criminal lunatic’s asylum” in the late 19th century and it’s a very old and degraded facility.

There are five OPGs prisons in Italy (Montelupo Fiorentino, Aversa, Castiglione delle Stiviere, Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, and Sant’Eframo). Only one of them has no bars and police guards (Castiglione delle Stiviere), the others are prison facilities. If it weren’t for the fact that they give lots of drugs you wouldn’t think that they are hospitals, yet they are called hospitals.

Life was really miserable there; most people lived in a state of total self-abandonment and simply lost any hope of getting free again. Young and old people alike were heavily drugged and had such strong side effects that you could notice them from a far distance. The place was really filthy and stinky. It took me a good amount of time to get used to its stench.

At the new-entries branch (known as “sezione d’osservazione” /monitoring branch) cells were jam-packed. In my cell we were eight people in a space that was meant for four — and we were not allowed bunk beds because of self-hanging risks. With eight beds in the cell we couldn’t even clean the floor because we had no

space to move the beds about.

In OPG, we all lived in a regime of fear: fear of the prison guards who had the duty to maintain order in a military fashion, and fear of the doctors who were always ready to order a 5-point restraint, increase drugs and send a negative report to the custody judge, who would then add another six months period of cure by virtue of the legal formula known as “proroga” (“prorogation”, which we called “la stecca” — “the slat”). But most of all, we feared that we would never see freedom again.

It’s hard to describe how an inmate feels when his sentence is linked with a cure program which could last forever (indeed many people enter OPG with a 2 years period of cure and end up dying there after a whole life of “prorogations”). Unlike the man sentenced to death, a psychiatric hostage is tortured between the promise of imminent freedom and the risk of the request for another six months of cures. In such a state of uncertainty, it is very difficult to invest on anything. It’s like trying to build a house on quicksand.

I have met men who were locked up in OPGs only because they were deemed “socially dangerous”. The “crimes” that brought them in those facilities are often hasty acts resulting from inner-despair situations. Having been deprived of the right to defend themselves in court, because discredited by psychiatrist who branded them “incapable of intending and willing” (the cornerstone formula of the Italian insanity defense), these people soon found themselves locked up in a ghastly, atrocious reality — places and situations that cannot but exacerbate the original sufferance that brought them there.

I have met people who had been in the OPG for five years for having stolen a purse, or having smashed a window out of rage. Others no longer remembered how they ended up there, decades ago. Many died without ever seeing freedom again.

Violence was a normal part of our everyday life in OPG.

I remember that in the OPG there was an Arab young man who shouted all night, keeping everyone awake, so the next morning the police ward (who didn’t manage to rest during his night of duty) gathered four inmates, opened the Arab’s cell, and ordered them to “take care of him”. The inmates dragged the Arab out of his cell, into the corridor, and literally “beat the shit out of him” with punches, kicks, and also using broom sticks. This type of violence

is something you wouldn’t expect in Italian prisons, this can only happen in OPGs, where there is a regime closer to Nazi Lagers, where the institute promotes kapos amongst the inmates in exchange for privileges.

In OPG psychiatrists use 5-point restraints instead of the usual 4-points: besides strapping the limbs they also apply a strap over the chest. We call this strap “the fifth strap”.

I recall a man over 60 years old who was put in a 5-point restraint even though he had three pace-makers (he was immediately unstrapped when the doctors realised they made a “mistake”). A man over 65 years old was put in a 5-point restraint for four days and four nights in a row, even though he had a bad lung disease. He was restrained because he insulted a doctor. Sometimes bed-restraining could last weeks.

Muslims were put in 5-point restraints without any consideration for their need to perform the Islamic five daily obligatory prayers, and they were forced to take drugs during the fast of Ramadan. The right to practice one’s religion is totally obliterated by the common Italian psychiatric practices.

Being myself a Muslim, I can say without hesitation that Muslims are discriminated against in psychiatry. In almost every forensic report, psychiatrists wrote at length about my religious background — something that unavoidably would bear a political weight of influence on the court decisions, especially since many of these reports were written during the aftermath of 9/11. Indulging in religious details during forensic reports is reserved only to non-Christians, here in Italy. I remember that Buddhist inmates also were subjected to reports highlighting their religious “difference”.

In Italian prisons, when inmates not belonging to the European Union try to hunger strike in protest for some violation of their rights, they are often moved to an OPG for “psychiatric monitoring”. This is a crystal clear example (as well as a frequently occurring one) of how psychiatry is still employed in Italy, today as an instrument of social control for the suppression of dissent and protest.

I’ve seen a man who had a physical disability (since birth) being beaten by the OPG guards, thrown down the stairs of the Villa, and they kicked him and punched him while he rolled down the stairs – all this because he insulted a police guard and spat in his face. This is how suffering people get “cured” in Italian psychiatric State

My experience allowed me to grasp that in psychiatry the patient’s destiny is largely influenced by his social ranking of origin, his financial resources, and his acquaintances outside the institute (especially if they include influential, rich, or dangerous people). Many high ranked exponents of the Mafia manage to bypass the special anti-Mafia law measures that rule the prison system, by the services of psychiatric experts who declare them “insane and incompatible with the prison system”.

so that there is no longer any balance in the service of the punishment: someone might punch a person in the face and end up locked up for twelve years, whilst someone else might commit up to six murders and be locked up for only six years.

In a country like Italy, which has a long history of Mafia and government malpractices, this alliance between State, judicial system and psychiatry is creating a huge damage that violates the rights of every citizen and jeopardizes the country’s efforts to put an end to its inner chaos.

I am relating all this because I want to speak for all the people whom I’ve left behind psychiatric bars, who’ll probably never see freedom again, and for all those who died at the hand of psychiatry. I don’t seek revenge but justice, but no justice can take place unless the truth of what happens in Italian psychiatric institutes gets heard in Europe.

There is a great fuss about an alleged psychiatric reform in Italy. All of this is nonsense and falsehood. The claims that forced hospitalization is gradually being abandoned and replaced by more “humane practices” is false, it’s something you hear about in conferences and on TV, but coercion is still implemented (as always). Our government has stopped providing statistics on mental health for a few years (a duty which is binding on ISTAT3 ), so we have no real way to know how many people receive involuntary hospitalization, enforced drugging, or anything else.