Euchred

“Imagine the worst thing one human being could do to another and know it has been done”
Gavin DeBecker - The Gift of Fear

http://penetanguishenementalhealth.blogspot.com/2009/09/penetanguishene-mental-health-centre.html

The role of the Office of Chief Coroner for Ontario, according to their own mission statement located on their website is “We speak for the dead to protect the living.” It then goes on to explain, “…serves the living through high quality investigations and inquests to ensure that no death be overlooked, concealed or ignored. The findings are used to generate recommendations to help improve public safety and prevent deaths in similar circumstances”. Unfortunately that could depend on what nationality you are and if you are diagnosed with a mental illness. It might also depend on who knows who or who’s turn it is to scratch who’s back.

On March 14, 2009, 22 year old patient Kulmiye Aganeh died while in the care of Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre, run by the government of Ontario. Some believe this facility is unfit for human habitation and one of the most barbaric treatment centers in Canada.

Kulmiye had been held involuntarily at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre for 15 months. Prior to that, he was held at the Whitby Mental Health Centre for a period of 2 years, all the while his doctors experimented with medications that did not make him better but made him more depressed and more vulnerable. He was scared, isolated and lonely. He was also at the mercy of the staff at Penetanguishene. He had been transfered from a minimum security mental health facility in Whitby to Penetanguishene’s maximum security facility because he did not agree with the medication and treatment they were subjecting him to. He believed the drugs were making him ill, and they were!

Kulmiye had been admitted to the facility for treatment as a result of stealing a car. The young man was found not criminally responsible. At the time that Kulmiye stole the car he was hallucinating. Many believe this was the symptom of an illness, though it could have also been the side effects of the drugs he was taking.

He was assessed and diagnosed with schizophrenia. Prior to this diagnosis it was believed that he had bipolar disorder. However, when Kulmiye’s sister Ubah Aganeh spoke with his doctor from Penetanguishene, he told her that he did not have schizophrenia. During the act of committing the crime, violence was NOT involved. There were no weapons. According to family members Kulmiye was a gentle giant. Penetanguishene and comments left by Penetanguishene sympathisers “close to the situation” create their own version of Kulmiye as the big scary black man. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Going back four years, Kulmiye became depressed at the age of 18. It was then that he was likely mis-diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He was heavily medicated. The medication made him hallucinate and the side effects made him more depressed. This deeper depression as a result of the medication is more common than the pharma industry would like us to believe. It was then, while on medication, he began to hallucinate and stole the car. He also tried to stop taking his medication “cold turkey”. Now for those of us who are very familiar with psychiatric medications (practically and in theory) we know what the consequences are if you stop those meds “cold turkey”. Kulmiye believed that the medications were making him ill. He was likely right about that but four years ago, the truth about psychiatric medications were not as widely reported as they are today.

In July, Bob Fiddaman, author of Seroxat Sufferers, uploaded a story called “Leading The Lambs To Slaughter“. It was another story about Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre and the abuse of staff power. Many residents of Penetanguishene, who either work there themselves or have family members that work there, were angry about the story. Two months later, when Kulmiye’s story hit the news, it was reproduced on the blog. An interested party left a comment. Notice that not once did they refer to the victim by name. Not only that, they implied anyone whom expressed concern and disgust with Penetanguishene was obviously mentally ill and must be familiar with the wrong side of the law. The respondent referred to these people as “Obviously former patients of Oakridge”, which was completely false. The author who left the comment seemed completely at ease leading readers to believe Kulmiye deserved what he got as though he were some barbarian that had been on the loose. She also pointed out that the picture supplied for the news papers original report of Kulmiye’s death was not the way he looked while at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre. As though a person’s physical appearance makes him more or less of a monster. Ubah Aganeh, Kulmiye’s sister told me that the picture had been taken in 2008 while at the Whitby Mental Health Centre. “Of course he did not look like that when he was at Penetanguishene. He had no water and was unable to shower daily”

Furthermore, the author of the comment did not express any sympathy to the family or the victim. This brazen and cold reply is a reminder of how dangerous an ignorant mind can be and that the problems we face as a society, with stigmas against mental health patients, is very real and heart breaking especially considering what we now know about Kulmiye Aganeh’s time spent at Penetanguishene.

While at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre, Kulmiye was clearly abused by the staff. His rights were violated at nearly every single turn. Was his race the issue? Ubah Aganeh, Kulmiye’s sister, pointed out to me that in her brother’s medical records he was listed as a “landed Immigrant”. He was not. He was and will forever remain a Canadian citizen. Staff made it impossible for him to pray. The Muslim community should be outraged. I believe race may have been an issue. I also believe that this is simply the way Penetanguishene runs their facility. I believe this is as much about race as it is a side effect of the stigma that breeds uncontrollably at Penetanguishene. I believe it is about abuse of power.

In 2008 Kulmiye was held in isolation, most often restrained, at least 10 times and for as long as 46 consecutive days. In 2009, between January and March 14th he was confined to the same kind of barbaric isolation for at least 55 of the 73 days. Try to imagine being away from the people that you love and in a cell like this with no one to comfort you, nothing to draw your attention away from your circumstances. Just you, your mind and a staff that constantly reminds you that you have no control over your life and you are at their mercy with less rights than an animal.

When a patient is ordered to remain in isolation for longer than seven days, the hospital must present the patient’s case to a review board to prevent abuse of the system. Penetanguishene clearly thinks they run this province as they never did inform the review board at any time. His room where he was kept isolated and restrained for 23 hours a day was hidden behind a steel door that was behind bars, located behind a window. Kulmiye was denied a mattress to sleep on. He slept on a cloth such as the one you might use on your dining room table and only the use of a toilet. There was no sink or running water to maintain his own personal hygiene nor clean himself to prepare for his daily prayer which is a right in this country. Even if you murder another human being in cold blood, which the 22 yr old did NOT do, we all have a right to pray.

According to family members and his sister, whom he was very close to all of his life, her brother was a warm, caring person that had dreams of going to law school and loved to write. He wanted to get married some day.

While Kulmiye was drugged and isolated, the staff were cruel to him and made him wear a muzzle like a dog. He was often in wrist to waist restraints. If this is not soul destroying I don’t know what is. Are we supposed to expect that we can treat people with an illness this way and they will suddenly be cured? Kulmiye endured this horrific treatment for 15 months at the hands of Penetanguishene Staff. The isolation and confinement he was forced to endure and the muzzle was because staff said they were concerned about his aggression. “They said he spit on them”, Ubah Aganeh told me in a private email. I don’t particularly like peoples DNA flying around but I would imagine many would spit on them at this point mentally ill or not. In case he did display any aggression did his doctor not wonder if perhaps the medication was the cause? Medication combined with this kind of treatment.

What I know of Penetanguishene is that they are notorious for provoking patient outbursts, taking away their rights and being cruel and then drugging them to shut them up. I’m not sure if it is a game to them or just a hobby to pass time but you can’t treat people like animals and expect compliance let alone cure an illness. You are going to get a negative reaction and not because the patient is mentally ill but because the patients are human beings fighting for their lives. They want what we all want; fairness, kindness and caring. They want to keep as much of their dignity as possible and like anyone with any illness whether its bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia or cancer, we just all want to be healthy and lead a normal life. That is sometimes too much to ask for from certain staff members at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre.

On the day he died, Kulmiye had been lead to “The sun room.” With him were four attendants. According to the staff “an altercation took place between Kulmiye and the attendants”. The attendants gained control of the situation and decided to take him back to the hole and isolation you would not condemn an animal to. They made the young man walk backwards. One attendant held him up by his chin. Once Kulmiye was back in his prison like cell which was more suited for Hannibal Lecter than a sick person with a legitimate illness that was there for treatment NOT punishment, the staff decided to inject him with 75 mgs of zuclopenthixol acuphase. This is a very powerful drug and is not without possible severe and life threatening side effects. Less than 10 minutes later Kulmiye Aganeh was lying dead on the floor. Staff had stood outside of the door, watching him die.

I’m curious to know why they injected him with 75mgs on this final day of his life when prior to that his medical records show he had been injected previously with no more than 50mgs. According to what I’ve read about this drug, that amount can be lethal. How could they not know that or did they?

The family lawyer’s first question was “Was the staff qualified to administer this type of medication?” According to the review I read on the drug that Kulmiye was injected with, the patient needs to remain in a upright position. That he was not leads me to believe the staff was either not qualified or else perhaps something else was going on. The staff put him on a mattress on the floor because he collapsed and could not stand up. What did they do at this point? Did they call for an ambulance? Did they call a code blue? No, they did neither.

Ironically Kulmiye died a few weeks after his sister wrote a letter of complaint. Initially Kulmiye did not want his sister to write the letter fearing the staff would retaliate and punish him for it. Ubah Aganeh wrote the letter. Penetanguishene received the letter but they did not acknowledge it to her directly nor to any other member of the family.

Not long after Penetangusishene had received the letter of complaint Kulmiye was allowed to make a phone call which had never happened at any time during the 15 months he was confined to Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre. Even in prison, inmates have a right to telephone their families but Kulmiye had been denied the right during his time at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre with the exception of that one phone call. The staff explained to his family that calling his family was a privilege not a right! Is this Canada? Is this not the 21st century? Is it Penetang making their own laws now? And just how long and how often have they been doing it?

On the very same day the nurse instructed him to phone his sister and tell her everything was OK, he had been moved to a better room with a sink for bathing. Kulmiye was obviously confused by the change in the staff’s behavior. He asked his sister “Did you write that letter?” Ubah told him she had. He thanked her for taking care of their mother and doing all the things for her that he could not do himself. During the same phone conversation he told his sister he was afraid he was going to die there. Some people may think it was just a schizophrenics paranoid fear but there was nothing paranoid about it. On March 13th 2009 Ubah Aganeh contacted Penetanguishene wanting to know why she had not heard from her brother. She told them that she would contact the police if she did not hear from him by the following day. She was told that phone calls to family members are a privilege not a right. Ubah told them that she felt he was being abused and his life was in jeopardy. The staff member she spoke with told her she was exaggerating. The following day Ubah received a phone call telling her that her brother was dead.

The police were called. When they arrived at the scene three hours later the staff had cleaned up the room where Aganeh had taken his final breath, inside the cage that became home. Again, Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre clearly believes they can operate by their own laws and are not accountable like the rest of us, by the laws of our province and country. Clean up a potential crime scene? An ambulance was never called at any time, not even when they realized he had no pulse.

Kulmiye Aganeh’s family buried their son, brother and friend with unexplained bruises that covered his body and were accompanied by a black eye.

Kulmiye Aganeh was failed by the system put in place to protect him by a government we blindly trust far too often and without question.

Not only is the Ontario Coroner’s Office denying this young man (the victim) and his family their rights, Dr. Andrew McCallum has made the unilateral decision that the cause of death will not be released until after the inquest and when the decision of whether or not there will be a criminal investigation. This is not acceptable!

The family has a right to know what the cause of death was. It is the corner’s duty to be the voice of the victim and in this case, one of our most vulnerable members of society, but Dr. Andrew McCallum has decided to make up his own creative and mind boggling rules. He has told the family and their lawyer that the results of the autopsy (cause of death) will not be made available to the family until after the inquest takes place and when they decide if the 22 yr olds death warrants a police investigation. This process could take years and like every other parent that has ever lost a child, not knowing is as devastating and emotionally crippling as the death itself, perhaps even more so. What a disgusting thing to do to a mother. Has this family not been through enough?

It seems to me that in this case cruelty, abuse and ignoring the rights of Ontario citizens knew no bounds. To add insult to injury, the Manager of Operations with the Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office, who’s job it is to protect and advocate on behalf of patients, is refusing to speak with family and lawyers until the police investigation is over. If this is the case, then why do we even have this service? What is the point? Are we just creating jobs and a false sense of security for patients and their families? Ontario should be bending over backwards to assist this family in pursuit of truth for their loved one as well as every other mental health patient in the province of Ontario. Not only are they not doing this, they are setting up road blocks at every turn. This is not sitting well with anyone.

When Kulmiye’s mother confronted his psychiatrist about her son, accusing him of killing him, the doctor slammed his fists on the table and went off on a five minute rant. There are so many things wrong with this picture that I’m not quite sure where to start. Slammed his fists on the table? If a single patient at Penetanugishene were witnessed doing the same, they would be medicated and thrown into seclusion. What does Penetanguishene do when their own staff members demonstrate aggressive outbursts? Again, despicable behavior from someone who is suppose to remain professional and ethical at all times.

While our government does everything they can to stall and prevent the family and public from knowing the truth, the doors at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre remain open. How many more patients will be subjected to this kind of treatment while we wait for the right people to do the right thing if there will ever be such a person in this case? Every single person or organization whose job it was to protect Kulmiye Aganeh failed. We want to know why. This is Canada, not a third world country. Those employed by the very government we elect don’t get to make up the rules as they go along. They don’t get to remove rights when it suits them.

As the present patients at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre are directly affected by the outcome of this case and its poor management to date, the patients have banded together, hired their own attorney as they wish to be part of the inquest. I’ve often wondered why there have not been more patients come forward about the mistreatment at Penetang, but I think this article already answers that question. I want the patients who have decided to be strong and join together to know how brave they are and they do have rights. I want them to know that even though the Penetanguishene staff would like them to believe nobody cares, I do! There are many more people that care too. Ubah Aganeh, Kulmiye’s sister, wants you to know that she cares too and she is not going to let this be swept under the rug. She could not save her brother, but she is determined to help you and make sure you don’t end up in the same situation Kulmiye did. “This is not going to go away” she said.

In recent years the Canadian Mental health Association along with other mental health care advocates and of course pharmaceutical companies, with a financial interest in mental illness, have tried desperately to eradicate stigmas hoping more people will get mental health treatment for their undiagnosed illnesses. “It’s OK. Trust us. We are here for you. We care. We want to help you. One in four people will develop some form of mental illness in their lifetime. You are not alone. You have rights.” said the spider to the fly.

Who is it exactly that Dr. Andrew McCallum is working for? And who said that the staff at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre could clean up a possible crime scene? Who said that Penetangusihene did not have to follow the rules when they subjected this young man to more than 7 days of isolation at any given time and without going before a review board? Who do they think they are to deny a person the right to pray? Who the hell is in charge in this Country and Province? We are! Not a bunch of shrinks, over paid coroners and psychiatric advocates appointed by the province who clearly don’t do what they are paid to do. I’m also wondering why all these organizations/people think they can get away with this. Is it because they have been doing it and getting away with it for a long time?

Kulmiye stole a car while under the influence of psychiatric medications with side effects that can easily mimic sever mental illness and can cause hallucinations. This could happen to anyone. Did the punishment fit the crime?

Dr. Andrew McCallum there is a mother that wants to know why her son is dead! The people of this province will be expecting you to fulfill your obligation in a timely manner.

“There is a funny smell coming from Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre. It smells like lies”

From the author; This is one of the most heart breaking stories I’ve ever heard. Hell will freeze over before I let it die.

Friday, September 4, 2009
Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre Abuse - Kulmiye Aganeh

“Imagine the worst thing one human being could do to another and know it has been done”
Gavin DeBecker - The Gift of Fear

The role of the Office of Chief Coroner for Ontario, according to their own mission statement located on their website is “We speak for the dead to protect the living.” It then goes on to explain, “…serves the living through high quality investigations and inquests to ensure that no death be overlooked, concealed or ignored. The findings are used to generate recommendations to help improve public safety and prevent deaths in similar circumstances”. Unfortunately that could depend on what nationality you are and if you are diagnosed with a mental illness. It might also depend on who knows who or who’s turn it is to scratch who’s back.

On March 14, 2009, 22 year old patient Kulmiye Aganeh died while in the care of Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre, run by the government of Ontario. Some believe this facility is unfit for human habitation and one of the most barbaric treatment centers in Canada.

Kulmiye had been held involuntarily at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre for 15 months. Prior to that, he was held at the Whitby Mental Health Centre for a period of 2 years, all the while his doctors experimented with medications that did not make him better but made him more depressed and more vulnerable. He was scared, isolated and lonely. He was also at the mercy of the staff at Penetanguishene. He had been transfered from a minimum security mental health facility in Whitby to Penetanguishene’s maximum security facility because he did not agree with the medication and treatment they were subjecting him to. He believed the drugs were making him ill, and they were!

Kulmiye had been admitted to the facility for treatment as a result of stealing a car. The young man was found not criminally responsible. At the time that Kulmiye stole the car he was hallucinating. Many believe this was the symptom of an illness, though it could have also been the side effects of the drugs he was taking.

He was assessed and diagnosed with schizophrenia. Prior to this diagnosis it was believed that he had bipolar disorder. However, when Kulmiye’s sister Ubah Aganeh spoke with his doctor from Penetanguishene, he told her that he did not have schizophrenia. During the act of committing the crime, violence was NOT involved. There were no weapons. According to family members Kulmiye was a gentle giant. Penetanguishene and comments left by Penetanguishene sympathisers “close to the situation” create their own version of Kulmiye as the big scary black man. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Going back four years, Kulmiye became depressed at the age of 18. It was then that he was likely mis-diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He was heavily medicated. The medication made him hallucinate and the side effects made him more depressed. This deeper depression as a result of the medication is more common than the pharma industry would like us to believe. It was then, while on medication, he began to hallucinate and stole the car. He also tried to stop taking his medication “cold turkey”. Now for those of us who are very familiar with psychiatric medications (practically and in theory) we know what the consequences are if you stop those meds “cold turkey”. Kulmiye believed that the medications were making him ill. He was likely right about that but four years ago, the truth about psychiatric medications were not as widely reported as they are today.

In July, Bob Fiddaman, author of Seroxat Sufferers, uploaded a story called “Leading The Lambs To Slaughter”. It was another story about Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre and the abuse of staff power. Many residents of Penetanguishene, who either work there themselves or have family members that work there, were angry about the story. Two months later, when Kulmiye’s story hit the news, it was reproduced on the blog. An interested party left a comment. Notice that not once did they refer to the victim by name. Not only that, they implied anyone whom expressed concern and disgust with Penetanguishene was obviously mentally ill and must be familiar with the wrong side of the law. The respondent referred to these people as “Obviously former patients of Oakridge”, which was completely false. The author who left the comment seemed completely at ease leading readers to believe Kulmiye deserved what he got as though he were some barbarian that had been on the loose. She also pointed out that the picture supplied for the news papers original report of Kulmiye’s death was not the way he looked while at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre. As though a person’s physical appearance makes him more or less of a monster. Ubah Aganeh, Kulmiye’s sister told me that the picture had been taken in 2008 while at the Whitby Mental Health Centre. “Of course he did not look like that when he was at Penetanguishene. He had no water and was unable to shower daily”

Furthermore, the author of the comment did not express any sympathy to the family or the victim. This brazen and cold reply is a reminder of how dangerous an ignorant mind can be and that the problems we face as a society, with stigmas against mental health patients, is very real and heart breaking especially considering what we now know about Kalumiye Aganeh’s time spent at Penetanguishene.

While at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre, Kulmiye was clearly abused by the staff. His rights were violated at nearly every single turn. Was his race the issue? Ubah Aganeh, Kulmiye’s sister, pointed out to me that in her brother’s medical records he was listed as a “landed Immigrant”. He was not. He was and will forever remain a Canadian citizen. Staff made it impossible for him to pray. The Muslim community should be outraged. I believe race may have been an issue. I also believe that this is simply the way Penetanguishene runs their facility. I believe this is as much about race as it is a side effect of the stigma that breeds uncontrollably at Penetanguishene. I believe it is about abuse of power.

In 2008 Kulmiye was held in isolation, most often restrained, at least 10 times and for as long as 46 consecutive days. In 2009, between January and March 14th he was confined to the same kind of barbaric isolation for at least 55 of the 73 days. Try to imagine being away from the people that you love and in a cell like this with no one to comfort you, nothing to draw your attention away from your circumstances. Just you, your mind and a staff that constantly reminds you that you have no control over your life and you are at their mercy with less rights than an animal.

When a patient is ordered to remain in isolation for longer than seven days, the hospital must present the patient’s case to a review board to prevent abuse of the system. Penetanguishene clearly thinks they run this province as they never did inform the review board at any time. His room where he was kept isolated and restrained for 23 hours a day was hidden behind a steel door that was behind bars, located behind a window. Kulmiye was denied a mattress to sleep on. He slept on a cloth such as the one you might use on your dining room table and only the use of a toilet. There was no sink or running water to maintain his own personal hygiene nor clean himself to prepare for his daily prayer which is a right in this country. Even if you murder another human being in cold blood, which the 22 yr old did NOT do, we all have a right to pray.

According to family members and his sister, whom he was very close to all of his life, her brother was a warm, caring person that had dreams of going to law school and loved to write. He wanted to get married some day.

While Kumliye was drugged and isolated, the staff were cruel to him and made him wear a muzzle like a dog. He was often in wrist to waist restraints. If this is not soul destroying I don’t know what is. Are we supposed to expect that we can treat people with an illness this way and they will suddenly be cured? Kulmiye endured this horrific treatment for 15 months at the hands of Penetanguishene Staff. The isolation and confinement he was forced to endure and the muzzle was because staff said they were concerned about his aggression. “They said he spit on them”, Ubah Aganeh told me in a private email. I don’t particularly like peoples DNA flying around but I would imagine many would spit on them at this point mentally ill or not. In case he did display any aggression did his doctor not wonder if perhaps the medication was the cause?

What I know of Penetanguishene is that they are notorious for provoking patient outbursts, taking away their rights and being cruel and then drugging them to shut them up. I’m not sure if it is a game to them or just a hobby to pass time but you can’t treat people like animals and expect compliance let alone cure an illness. You are going to get a negative reaction and not because the patient is mentally ill but because the patients are human beings fighting for their lives. They want what we all want; fairness, kindness and caring. They want to keep as much of their dignity as possible and like anyone with any illness whether its bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia or cancer, we just all want to be healthy and lead a normal life. That is sometimes too much to ask for from certain staff members at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre.

On the day he died, Kulmiye had been lead to “The sun room.” With him were four attendants. According to the staff “an altercation took place between Kulmiye and the attendants”. The attendants gained control of the situation and decided to take him back to the hole and isolation you would not condemn an animal to. They made the young man walk backwards. One attendant held him up by his chin. Once Kulmiye was back in his prison like cell which was more suited for Hannibal Lecter than a sick person with a legitimate illness that was there for treatment NOT punishment, the staff decided to inject him with 75 mgs of zuclopenthixol acuphase. This is a very powerful drug and is not without possible severe and life threatening side effects. Less than 10 minutes later Kulmiye Aganeh was lying dead on the floor. Staff had stood outside of the door, watching him die.

I’m curious to know why they injected him with 75mgs on this final day of his life when prior to that his medical records show he had been injected previously with no more than 50mgs. According to what I’ve read about this drug, that amount can be lethal. How could they not know that or did they?

The family lawyer’s first question was “Was the staff qualified to administer this type of medication?” According to the review I read on the drug that Kulmiye was injected with, the patient needs to remain in a upright position. That he was not leads me to believe the staff was either not qualified or else perhaps something else was going on. The staff put him on a mattress on the floor because he collapsed and could not stand up. What did they do at this point? Did they call for an ambulance? Did they call a code blue? No, they did neither.

Ironically Kulmiye died a few weeks after his sister wrote a letter of complaint. Initially Kulmiye did not want his sister to write the letter fearing the staff would retaliate and punish him for it. Ubah Aganeh wrote the letter. Penetanguishene received the letter but they did not acknowledge it to her directly nor to any other member of the family.

Not long after Penetangusishene had received the letter of complaint Kulmiye was allowed to make a phone call which had never happened at any time during the 15 months he was confined to Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre. Even in prison, inmates have a right to telephone their families but Kulmiye had been denied the right during his time at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre with the exception of that one phone call. The staff explained to his family that calling his family was a privilege not a right! Is this Canada? Is this not the 21st century? Is it Penetang making their own laws now? And just how long and how often have they been doing it?

On the very same day the nurse instructed him to phone his sister and tell her everything was OK, he had been moved to a better room with a sink for bathing. Kulmiye was obviously confused by the change in the staff’s behavior. He asked his sister “Did you write that letter?” Ubah told him she had. He thanked her for taking care of their mother and doing all the things for her that he could not do himself. During the same phone conversation he told his sister he was afraid he was going to die there. Some people may think it was just a schizophrenics paranoid fear but there was nothing paranoid about it. On March 13th 2009 Ubah Aganeh contacted Penetanguishene wanting to know why she had not heard from her brother. She told them that she would contact the police if she did not hear from him by the following day. She was told that phone calls to family members are a privilege not a right. Ubah told them that she felt he was being abused and his life was in jeopardy. The staff member she spoke with told her she was exaggerating. The following day Ubah received a phone call telling her that her brother was dead.

The police were called. When they arrived at the scene three hours later the staff had cleaned up the room where Aganha had taken his final breath, inside the cage that became home. Again, Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre clearly believes they can operate by their own laws and are not accountable like the rest of us, by the laws of our province and country. Clean up a potential crime scene? An ambulance was never called at any time, not even when they realized he had no pulse.

Kulmiye Aganeh’s family buried their son, brother and friend with unexplained bruises that covered his body and were accompanied by a black eye.

Kulmiye Aganeh was failed by the system put in place to protect him by a government we blindly trust far too often and without question.

Not only is the Ontario Coroner’s Office denying this young man (the victim) and his family their rights, Dr. Andrew McCallum has made the unilateral decision that the cause of death will not be released until after the inquest and when the decision of whether or not there will be a criminal investigation. This is not acceptable!

The family has a right to know what the cause of death was. It is the corner’s duty to be the voice of the victim and in this case, one of our most vulnerable members of society, but Dr. Andrew McCallum has decided to make up his own creative and mind boggling rules. He has told the family and their lawyer that the results of the autopsy (cause of death) will not be made available to the family until after the inquest takes place and when they decide if the 22 yr olds death warrants a police investigation. This process could take years and like every other parent that has ever lost a child, not knowing is as devastating and emotionally crippling as the death itself, perhaps even more so. What a disgusting thing to do to a mother. Has this family not been through enough?

It seems to me that in this case cruelty, abuse and ignoring the rights of Ontario citizens knew no bounds. To add insult to injury, the Manager of Operations with the Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office, who’s job it is to protect and advocate on behalf of patients, is refusing to speak with family and lawyers until the police investigation is over. If this is the case, then why do we even have this service? What is the point? Are we just creating jobs and a false sense of security for patients and their families? Ontario should be bending over backwards to assist this family in pursuit of truth for their loved one as well as every other mental health patient in the province of Ontario. Not only are they not doing this, they are setting up road blocks at every turn. This is not sitting well with anyone.

When Kulmiye’s mother confronted his psychiatrist about the death of her son, accusing him of killing him, the doctor slammed his fists on the table and went off on a five minute rant. There are so many things wrong with this picture that I’m not quite sure where to start. Slammed his fists on the table? If a single patient at Penetanugishene were witnessed doing the same, they would be medicated and thrown into seclusion. What does Penetanguishene do when their own staff members demonstrate aggressive outbursts aimed at woman who lost her son? Again, despicable behavior from someone who is suppose to remain professional and ethical at all times.

While our government does everything they can to stall and prevent the family and public from knowing the truth, the doors at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre remain open. How many more patients will be subjected to this kind of treatment while we wait for the right people to do the right thing if there will ever be such a person in this case? Every single person or organization whose job it was to protect Kulmiye Aganeh failed. We want to know why. This is Canada, not a third world country. Those employed by the very government we elect don’t get to make up the rules as they go along. They don’t get to remove rights when it suits them.

As the present patients at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre are directly affected by the outcome of this case and its poor management to date, the patients have banded together, hired their own attorney as they wish to be part of the inquest. I’ve often wondered why there have not been more patients come forward about the mistreatment at Penetang, but I think this article already answers that question. I want the patients who have decided to be strong and join together to know how brave they are and they do have rights. I want them to know that even though the Penetanguishene staff would like them to believe nobody cares, I do! There are many more people that care too. Ubah Aganeh, Kulmiye’s sister, wants you to know that she cares too and she is not going to let this be swept under the rug. She could not save her brother, but she is determined to help you and make sure you don’t end up in the same situation Kulmiye did. “This is not going to go away” she said.

In recent years the Canadian Mental health Association along with other mental health care advocates and of course pharmaceutical companies, with a financial interest in mental illness, have tried desperately to eradicate stigmas hoping more people will get mental health treatment for their undiagnosed illnesses. “It’s OK. Trust us. We are here for you. We care. We want to help you. One in four people will develop some form of mental illness in their lifetime. You are not alone. You have rights.” said the spider to the fly.

Who is it exactly that Dr. Andrew McCallum is working for? And who said that the staff at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre could clean up a possible crime scene? Who said that Penetangusihene did not have to follow the rules when they subjected this young man to more than 7 days of isolation at any given time and without going before a review board? Who do they think they are to deny a person the right to pray? Who the hell is in charge in this Country and Province? We are! Not a bunch of shrinks, over paid coroners and psychiatric advocates appointed by the province who clearly don’t do what they are paid to do.

Kulmyie stole a car while under the influence of psychiatric medications with side effects that can easily mimic sever mental illness and can cause hallucinations. This could happen to anyone. Did the punishment fit the crime?

Dr. Andrew McCallum there is a mother that wants to know why her son is dead! The people of this province will be expecting you to fulfill your obligation in a timely manner.

“There is a funny smell coming from Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre. It smells like lies”
www.penetanguishenementalhealth.blogspot.com

The pharmaceutical industry has contributed more to the well-being of humanity than any other. Arguably among other achievements it has helped to remove tuberculosis, gastroenteritis and diphtheria from among the ten leading causes of death in the western world. Yet the avoidable suffering caused by pharmaceutical companies, particularly to the poor of the world, seems at times beyond comprehension.

As both a consumer activist and a student of business ethics I have been struck by the large numbers of pharmaceutical executives I have met who, in their commitment to socially responsible business conduct, were so much more impressive than the average industrial decision maker. Yet corporate crime is a bigger problem in the pharmaceutical industry than any other. The pharmaceutical industry is a paradox of corruption and conscience.

By corruption, I mean first of all the paying of bribes. Every scholar who has surveyed the comparative evidence on bribery in international trade has concluded that pharmaceuticals is one of the most corrupt, if not the most corrupt, of industries. My own research1 found evidence of substantial bribery by 19 of the 20 largest American pharmaceutical companies. There is evidence of bribes being paid to every type of government official who could conceivably affect the interests of pharmaceutical companies: bribes to cabinet ministers to get drugs approved for marketing, bribes to social security bureaucrats who fix prices for subsidised drugs; to health inspectors who check pharmaceutical manufacturing plants; to customs officials, hospital administrators, tax assessors, political parties, and others.

But a much greater threat to world health than corruption is fraud in the safety testing of drugs. Rats die in trials on new drugs and are replaced with live animals; rats which develop tumors are replaced with healthy rats; doctors who are being paid $1,000 a patient to test a new product pour the pills down the toilet, making up the results in a way which tells the company what it wants to hear.2

But it is the less blatant forms of fraud against health authorities which have caused the greatest loss of life - companies telling half-truths to governments about the severity of side effects or covering up adverse reaction reports from concerned doctors. Last year Eli Lilly was fined $25,000 in the United States after it was charged with covering up deaths and illnesses caused by its anti-arthritic drug, benoxaprofen. The drug was withdrawn from sale in 1982 after it was found to be associated with 61 deaths in Britain and unknown numbers elsewhere. In 1984, Smith Kline was fined $100,000 on charges of covering up adverse reactions to their product Selacryn, which was associated with 36 deaths in the US. Similar allegations of covering up adverse reactions are being made against A. H. Robins in the litigation over the Dalkon Shield intrauterine device. A former company lawyer has testified that he was ordered by his superiors to shred sensitive evidence.

Beyond bribery and fraud, misrepresentation in advertising, breaches of laws which ensure the sterility and purity of products and antitrust offences, have all been widespread.

The reason for the paradox of corruption and conscience in the pharmaceutical industry is first that it attracts a lot of idealistic people keen to work on ways of solving health problems, but second that the realities of the pharmaceuticals’ market make the temptation for corporate crime unusually acute.

The pharmaceutical industry is very much like the aerospace and defence industries - the future of a company often depends on securing the support of a small number of people who can unlock a big market for a single product which has already cost the company a fortune to develop. Just as aerospace companies face great temptations to bribe defence chiefs to secure one big sale of their new supersonic fighter, pharmaceutical executives confront massive win-lose decision points when national health authorities decide whether to approve their new drug for marketing.

Often the product will have cost $50 million of company funds to develop. A single national market might recover that entire up-front expenditure. Equally, a single pricing decision by a social security bureaucrat on a company’s leading product will often decide whether the national subsidiary will run at a profit or a loss for the year. In this way companies which sell pills are different from those which sell breakfast cereals. The temptation to dishonestly secure the one big sale of cornflakes is not common; so one does not see the culture of corruption which characterizes the pharmaceutical industry.

How do honest people survive in an industry where so much unethical and downright criminal conduct occurs? They survive because they have no contact with it and mostly no knowledge of it. Organizational complexity in a large corporation makes it quite possible for the left hand not to know what its right hand is doing. And if the right hand is engaged in fraud and bribery, then organizational complexity is exaggerated to prevent knowledge of wrongdoing from spreading to other parts of the firm. The left hand would probably rather not know about it in any case.

Some American pharmaceutical companies take this to extraordinary lengths: they have ‘vice-presidents responsible for going to jail’ whose job it is to act as a scapegoat for corporate crime, to have the buck stop with them rather than taint the chief executive with knowledge of illegality.

But mostly the ways of protecting pharmaceutical executives from their own consciences are more straightforward. The quality control manager is an honest person who takes pride in producing a product which is always sterile, pure and made exactly to specifications. She or he is very busy at this important task and doesn’t take time to find out that these pills are being promoted in Brazil for totally inappropriate conditions or that the specifications she so meticulously follows are partially based on fraudulent testing. Moreover, the corporate culture has taught her that the activities of the Brazilian subsidiary are none of her business.

The difference between socially responsible and corrupt companies is that in the former, ethical questions are everyone’s business. In a socially responsible company there are mechanisms for a researcher who discovers a dangerous side-effect to blow the whistle within the company if his superiors cover up the discovery; the researcher can complain to an ethics committee of the board or an internal ombudsman if the Brazilian subsidiary ignores new information on the product.

However most pharmaceutical companies do not look to break down the barriers which protect the ethical majority of executives from their own consciences. That leaves it up to external critics to prick the consciences of the decent corporate employees. For it is insiders who, in the long run, are in the best position to prevent the day-to-day predations of the industry.

The international consumer movement, organized under the umbrella of Health Action International (see page 25), has been the most important of these outside forces.

The consumer movement has become increasingly sophisticated in the way it approaches the industry. There is now a realisation that most pharmaceutical industry executives do have consciences which can be stirred; and there are a great many ’sleepers’, covert supporters of the consumer movement’s campaigns. Further, because any pharmaceutical company is uniquely dependent on its reputation to sell products to doctors and hospital administrators in a way that companies which sell cornflakes or cigarettes are not, it is highly sensitive to publicity and community campaigns which tarnish its image.

So there are grounds for optimism that consumer activism can deliver reform. Indeed, there is already growing evidence of a willingness of the transnational pharmaceutical companies to respond constructively to the criticisms put publicly by activist groups.

Apart from internal critics and the threat of damage from unwelcome publicity, a further control mechanism to protect public interest is criminal law. It is an under-utilized weapon which can break down the barriers protecting honest executives from their own consciences. Criminal law is also the tonic needed for the consciences of many government officials. After all, with bribery it takes two to tango.

My research found that when bribes are paid to Latin American health ministers to secure government approval of a new product, the proposition is put as one of speeding up the inevitable approval of a product which will prevent much suffering or death. That is, the Minister’s conscience is protected because he accepts the company’s view that he is acting in the public interest by taking the bribe.

Criminal prosecutions would highlight publicly that when decisions on drug approvals are made on the basis of bribes rather than scientific assessment, lives will be lost, not saved. Fraud and crude misrepresentations in advertising for wonder drugs can have cruel repercussions on the community’s health. It is up to the community to enforce the criminal prosecutions needed to jolt the industry into reassessing misplaced priorities. Healthy people are more important than healthy corporate ledgers. And the two need not conflict.

John Braithwaite is Senior Research Fellow, School of Social Sciences, Australian National University as well as author of Inequality, Crime and Public Policy and Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry.

http://www.myfacenetworking.com/blog/view/id_245/title_the-avoidable-suffering-caused-by-pharmaceutical/

PSYCHIATRIC FASCISM

For almost 150 years, psychiatry has been masquerading as a medical science and as a branch of medicine.  It is not and never was a science or a type of health care.  Modern psychiatry is driven by unproved empirical assumptions, medical biases, and pseudo-scientific opinions.  There are no scientifically established, independently proven facts in psychiatry.  Psychiatry, in fact, has no laws or testable hypotheses and no coherent and comprehensive theory.  Psychiatry conspicuously lacks scientific proof or evidence to support its news-media-parroted claims of “mental illness” or “disorders”.

After about seventy years of psychiatric practices and research, there is still no diagnostic test for schizophrenia or any of the other three hundred so-called mental disorders listed in the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is essentially a list of class-driven moral judgements of allegedly abnormal behaviour, published and propagandized by the American Psychiatric Association.  The DSM is the official bible of organized psychiatry.  The DSM is the equivalent of the Malleus Maleficarum in the middle ages, which Spanish inquisitors used to identify, target, stigmatize and burn witches and heretics.  Today’s witches, heretics, and scapegoats are labeled mentally ill or schizophrenic.

Hospital psychiatry with its emphasis on the control of inmate behaviour through high risk behaviour modification programs, biological “treatments”, physical and mechanical restraints, locked doors and wards, and seclusion/isolation rooms, have always exhibited several fascist elements.  I want to focus on three: fear, force and fraud.  These are the guiding principles and policies used to control citizens and groups in the population whom government leaders and other authorities, including the police and so-called mental health experts, have judged to be dissident, problematic or difficult to control.  Hospital psychiatry is very similar to the prison system.  In the prison or correctional system psychiatrists have been used as consultants to design dangerous, unethical behaviour modification programs and to conduct high risk drug experiments on prisoners.  Both the psychiatric system and the prison system systematically use fear, force and fraud for the purpose of social control and punishment - not for purposes of treatment or rehabilitation, both of which are euphemisms.  It is or should be obvious that forced treatment is in fact punishment.  It is frequently cruel and usual and should therefore be banned in the United States under that nation’s Eighth constitutional amendment.  Virtually all treatments in psychiatric facilities are forced or administered without informed consent.  They are administered against the “patient’s” (the prisoner’s) will or with consent obtained by threatening the “patient” with worse consequences, or with consent obtained by keeping the “patient” unaware of important information about serious risks and alternatives.  Informed consent in psychiatry is a cruel sham.  It doesn’t exist.

Fear/Terror - “Terror acts powerfully upon the body through the medium of the mind and should be employed in the cure of madness.  Fear accompanied with pain and the sense of shame has sometimes cured the disease”.  That was written almost two centuries ago in 1818 by Dr. Benjamin Rush, father of American psychiatry, and the first president of the APA, whose face still appears on the official seal of the American Psychiatric Association.  Dr. Rush advocated and practiced terror by designing and using the straitjacket, the tranquilizer chair and “fear of death” on numerous inmates in 19th century lunatic asylums.  Rush once had his son locked up in an insane asylum - some father!

Fear is a powerful motivator in enforcing conformity, obedience and making people submit to authority.  Historically, inducing and manipulating fear or masked terror has always been a key policy and practice in all fascist regimes, such as Italy under Mussolini, Nazi Germany under Hitler, and the Soviet Union under Stalin - in fact, under any dictatorship.  The threat of punishment, torture and the threat of being killed is enough to cause fear, panic, and terror if most of us.  We do as we’re told or else.

As used in psychiatry, fear or terror is more selective but is widespread and powerful.  In the institution, psychiatry frequently resorts to blackmail to control the more “uncontrollable” and difficult or non-compliant patient.  Psychiatrists and other therapists threaten their patients with longer incarceration, higher doses of forced neuroleptics or “antidepressants”, and/or threatened transfers to more severe maximum security institutions if they misbehave, fail to follow doctors’ orders, refuse to take their “medication”, refuse to follow institutional rules, or annoy their captors in other ways.  Generally aimed at captive populations of involuntary patients, these threats typically strike fear in many of them, and psychiatrists know it.  For example, some years ago, several patients and former patients of Queen Street Mental Health Centre, Toronto’s notorious mental hospital or psycho-prison, told me and other activist-critics that psychiatrists have threatened, if they didn’t calm down or control themselves, to transfer them to Penetang, the Oakridge division of Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre, a maximum security behaviour modification facility in Ontario, known for its harsh and brutal environment.  Penetang was and still is recognized as punishment, one of the most barbaric psycho-prisons in Canada.  It should have been shut down years ago, especially after a scathing report about many of its abuses by psychiatrist Steven Harper.

Threatening patients with physical restraints or solitary confinement is also extremely effective in arousing fear or panic in patients.  On virtually every psychiatric ward or unit, there is a place, euphemistically called “The Quiet Room”, a barren and forbidden cell-like room, with a mattress or sink, usually no toilet or blankets.  While languishing the quiet room, patients are sometimes further restrained by leather cuffs, two-point and four-point restraints, tightly wrapped around their wrists and/or ankles so they can barely move, for hours at a time.  The mere threat of loss of freedom, involuntary committal, or being locked up in a psychiatric ward or institution against your will, and without any trial or public hearing, is enough to frighten most of us.  In virtually every province and territory in Canada, these are the main criteria or reasons for being locked up or committed to a psychiatric institution: judgement of mental illness or disorder; judgement of threatening to physically hurt yourself or another person; judgement of being unable to look after yourself.  Note that these criteria are subjective moral judgements of dissident behaviour based on observation and opinion, not medical or scientific facts.  Despite the fact that mental illness or mental disorder, which in my opinion is a metaphor for dissidence, has never been officially classified as a medical disease or illness, only physicians are legally authorized to make these non-medical and fateful judgements.

In Ontario, any doctor can sign a committal form which forces an individual to be locked up in any psychiatric facility for the first 72 hours for observation and assessment.  Two other doctors can sign a form authorizing an individual’s imprisonment for another 2-4 weeks.  During the last few years, approximately 50% of thousands of people treated in Ontario’s nine psychiatric hospitals were involuntarily committed.

The threat or fact of losing your freedom being locked up in a psychiatric facility for days or months at a time is terrifying.  The minimal or non-existent advocacy currently provided in Ontario makes the right to appeal or protest a sham, and this serves to heighten people’s fear and despair.  The mere threat of forced psychiatric treatment as well as the treatment itself can be terrorizing - e.g., electroshock, also called electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), but more accurately called electro-convulsive brainwashing by shock survivor critics such as Leonard Frank.  My close friend Mel told me of being dragged by several aids along the hallway to a hospital shockroom.  I can imagine his terror and the terror of others who suffered the same fate.  I suffered a similar terror when I was forcibly subjected to over 50 subcoma insulin shocks in the 1950s.  To the surprise of many people, this barbaric brain-damaging and memory destroying treatment not only exists, but is expanding in Canada and the United States.  Its main targets are women and the elderly, particularly elderly women.

There is also the threat of psychiatric drugs, euphemistically called “medication”.  These chemicals such as minor tranquilizers, antidepressants and the anti-psychotics such as Haldol, Modicate, Thorazine, and the so-called mood modifier Lithium, are not natural substances but are manufactured poisons, aptly called neurotoxins by psychiatrist and psychiatry critic Peter Breggin in several of his books and Joseph Glenmullen, a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, in his book Prozac Backlash.  These chemicals have no scientifically proven medical value or benefit.  What they do is control or subdue any problematic or disturbing behaviour, mood and emotion.  These toxins, particularly neuroleptics like Haldol, Modicate, Chlorpromazine, are so disabling, powerful and fearsome that many psychiatric survivors and other critics call them chemical lobotomies or chemical straitjackets.  These drugs have many serious and disabling effects, called “side effects” to minimize how they are perceived, such as trembling, uncontrollable shaking or movement of the hands or other parts of the body (which occur in the neurological disorder such as Parkinsonism or tardive dyskenisia), powerful muscular cramps, blurred vision, restless pacing, nightmares, sudden outbursts of anger, agitation, memory loss, fainting, blood disorders, seizures, and sudden death.  These so-called side effects are the drugs’ intended effects.  This fear of psychiatric drugs is compounded by ignorance and uncertainty, because psychiatrists and other doctors fail to inform patients of the drugs’ horrific effects.

Without the use or threat of force, fascism could not exist.  Machiavelli, Mussolini, Hitler knew this.  All dictators, would-be dictators, and bullies know this basic fact.  And this is the case with psychiatry.  Without the use and threat of force, institutional psychiatry would die.  Lots of psychiatrists would be out of a job.  I wish that would happen! Psychiatry gets its authority and power to force, imprison, involuntarily commit, and treat individuals against their will from the state.

Mental health legislation gives psychiatrists and other physicians the power to involuntarily commit any person they “believe”, after only minutes of examination, to be dangerous to themselves or others.  This is problematic.  The Mental Health Act wrongly assumes that doctors can predict dangerous and violent behaviour, which they cannot do.  It is worth emphasizing that Ontario’s Mental Health Act, as with other mental health acts across Canada and the United States, legally sanction the state to use force to detain or imprison people for days, weeks or months at a time.  Unfortunately, there has never been a public outcry or protest over the fact that people judged or assumed to be crazy or dangerous, but not charged with any crime, can nevertheless be locked up without a trial or the legal rights accorded to people charged with crimes such as murder or rape.  This is prevention detention, which is illegal in Canada and other so-called democratic countries, but it is legal and a common practice in all police states and totalitarian countries.  I know of no lawsuit challenge to involuntary committal as preventive detention and therefore as unconstitutional.

In institutional psychiatry in fascist states, forced treatment is the rule, not the exception.  Forced treatment and tortuous terminal medical experiments inflicted on thousands of Jews, gypsies, political prisoners, women and children, were carried out in death camps during World War II throughout Nazi Germany.  There is now irrefutable, documentary evidence that it was the German psychiatrists, particularly prominent professors of psychiatry, and psychiatry department heads, who were chiefly responsible for initiating and administering the infamous T4 program, which involved the mass murder of over 200,000 mental patients and thousands of sick and disabled children and adults during the holocaust.  The term euthanasia and mercy death to describe this murderous program is a cruel euphemism.

Much of biological psychiatry, which is largely based on unproved assumptions about the biological and genetic causes of schizophrenia and other mental disorders, can be traced back to the racist, eugenics-driven psychiatrist in Nazi Germany, Ernst Rudin, who propagated the myth that schizophrenia is a genetic disease.  He, along with hundreds of other psychiatrists in the T4 program of mass murder of psychiatric patients, is still cited in some psychiatric journal articles, as documented by researcher-activist Lenny Lapon in his brilliant book, Mass Murderers in White Coats: Psychiatric Genocide in Nazi Germany.  He states that several German psychiatrists from the Nazi era emigrated to the United States and Canada and succeeded in indoctrinating many of his colleagues in his biological, genetic and racist theories of mental illness.  Heinz Layman who emigrated to Canada in 1937, is chiefly responsible for introducing Thorazine or Chlorpromazine, and propagated the use of psychiatric drugs in Canada.

We now have an epidemic of brain damage caused by psychiatric drugs, partly due to Layman and all the other doctors he taught.  In one 1954 journal article, Layman admitted that Thorazine was a “pharmacological substitute for lobotomy”.  Despite publicly acknowledging this alarming fact, it never stopped Layman from using it on many “schizophrenic” patients in Montreal’s Douglas Hospital.  Layman also persuaded Ewen Cameron to administer chlorpromazine and many other drugs and massive amounts of electroshock.  Chlorpromazine, considered an experimental drug at the time, was widely used on many patients during Cameron’s infamous brainwashing experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute in the 1950s and 1960s.

There was no informed consent then, and there is none now.  During the Nazi years, the doctors didn’t seek permission.  According to Nazi ideology, these were “useless eaters”, “subhumans”.  This is a mindset that still rules in biological psychiatry throughout North America.  Another legacy of psychiatry in Nazi Germany is the widespread acceptance and justification of abuse to break the will of non-compliant or rebellious patients.  Physical or mechanical restraints such as straps, ropes, belts, handcuffs and solitary confinement are used in psychiatric institutions not to treat or protect but to punish people for dissident or rebellious behaviour.  It is this naked display of force and threats against patients by hospital staff which resembles the awesome brutality of German psychiatric staff during the holocaust.

Fraud: A very apt quote by Leonard Roy Frank, author of Influencing Minds is “Mystification is psychiatry’s defense against the danger of being found out”.  Many of the labels or diagnoses used by psychiatrists do not refer to real psychiatric problems or to actual illnesses.  Psychiatry professor Thomas Szasz has exposed the fraud and the myth of the concept of mental illness in many books, starting with his classic The Myth of Mental Illness.  This misrepresentation one of the greatest scientific scandals in our scientific age.  The code words that are now used in biological psychiatry such as anti-depressants do not assist people with overcoming depression or get at the causes of depression.  The term “Quiet Room” is a fraudulent code for solitary confinement.  The word “medication” is also a misleading euphemism and misrepresentation for toxic substances to which many of us have been subjected.

I’ve tried to show that institutional, coercive psychiatry has a fascist history and that biological psychiatry as practiced today in psychiatric facilities in Canada and the United States is still based on fear, force and fraud.  Psychiatry does not deserve public or government support.  We must work to abolish psychiatry.  We must also continue working to create self-help advocacy groups, more drop-in centers, and more affordable, supportive housing in our communities.  We need to create our own alternatives to the monstrous and evil mental health system.  By doing this, we empower ourselves.  This is our work, our challenge, and our hope.

I saw you today, walking to the pier, the way we once did.  It’s been a long time since you walked that stretch of land with the earth between your toes.  I am always here, walking endlessly and have been for years, consumed with thoughts of you and reprisal, my soul filled with memories, regret and dreams I will never fulfill.  Dreams you stole from me, the me you stole from me.

It took you a long time to return to your old hunting ground.  Years have passed.  I had nearly given up hope that we would ever meet again. You were not alone today on the beach that was once our beach with our sand and our water.  Instead of my hand in yours, there was another, the one that you replaced me with had her fingers intertwined with yours.

You appeared to be in one of your joyful moods that over time became few and far between, as I recall.  The sunshine and soft sand with waves all around always did put a smile on your face.  I think it reminded you of a home you had to escape from long ago, but all those memories of once upon a time followed you here and settled within you. You shared them with me several times, baiting me with your childhood endearment. I had nearly forgotten those moments, but seeing you there, like that, brought back a wave of memories and tales you told me, crashing up against me without warning. I spotted that sweet look of vulnerability that I had forgotten you possessed.  For so long now my thoughts of you were filled with the arrogance and evil that lives and thrives within you, the beast that long ago took over your soul because you fed it and then allowed it to feed upon those that loved you and trusted you.

For a long time, your presence had refused to abandon me, every bone in my body, every muscle, every dead moment, and every breath hurting and angry.  At you, at myself.  Angry for abandoning morality and common sense, angry for failing to protect me, angry for knowing the end would be ice cold and cruel, but committing to it anyways, for making such a rash decision and not being wise enough to know life would go on.  Even in that all consuming weakness, I would regain strength and a new improved future would reveal itself. Hurting, for allowing you to rape me of everything I had been, everything I could be.  Hurting, for having believed that I could make the difference in you, that you would not be so careless with my heart the way you had been with all the others before me.

You walked with her and kept a steady pace.  I was behind you for awhile.  Then I was in front of you.  Finally I found the nerve to walk beside you the way I had so many times before, so very long ago, as though I were searching for those moments, wanting to bathe in them one last time, needing to understand what had kept me there until you’d had your fill of me.

You did not see me but you sensed something.  You kept looking back hoping to find the negative aura that floated around you, a familiarity you couldn’t put your finger on.  You were always like that.  A little paranoid, I would tell you.  But not this time.  This time your sixth sense was dead on. I was amused by the invisible power I realized I had and that amusement filled me with life once again.  You and I had unfinished business I reminded myself, remembering why I had come, why my very essence had chosen to stay and wait for you all this time.

You kept walking with your hand clutching hers. I caught a glimpse of the expression on her face and realized she too had been hypnotized by you the way I had once been.  I slowed my own pace, stayed at a safe distance never loosing sight of you. I did not want the anxiety you would begin to feel, force you to turn around and walk back to safety.  I wanted you to keep going, stay on the same path you and I had traveled.  It would not take long before you would reach the pier.  The summer heat was still a couple of months away. The snow and ice had only just melted. I knew the water there, at the end of the pier was very deep, dark and cold.  I knew because I had invited those same waters to swallow me many springs ago.

You walked with her until the sand ran out and the concrete walk replaced it.  You walked in the direction I knew you would.  There were others, a few amateur fishermen with high hopes, standing at the end of the walk way, their rods hanging over the edge, waiting patiently for their first catch of the season.

As you reached the end of the pier you lifted yourself up and swung your legs around. She followed your lead as the two of you sat there perched perfectly as we once had, with legs and feet dangling over the edge, the open lake only a few feet below you.  I could not have asked for a more appropriate opportunity.

I caught up to you quickly and before I knew it I was standing right behind you.  I could not ignore the irony.  Finally your life was in my hands the way mine had been in yours so long ago.  I hesitated for a moment.  I listened to you begin to recount tales of long ago and far away, the way you had done with me.  The anger and hurt began to well within a heart that no could no longer beat but still feel.  I felt a rage build beyond human comprehension and without warning your body plunged from the rock wall into the deep dark waters below.  I fell back into the foreground, watching the long anticipated drama unfold before me. I could hear her calling your name, hear the panic in her voice and you, shocked in disbelief by the invisible force that grabbed hold of you keeping you under the water, gasping in fear your hands and legs flailing suddenly slowed to a near stop, barely treading. You were paralyzed by disbelief and fear that filled you to the core of your being.  At that very moment, without reason, I came to mind but you shook me from your consciousness.  You resumed the fight for your life again the way I had with my own. An invisible force attempting to keep you there pinned to the water, your lungs loosing air, the murky Lake not yet recovered from a relentless winter, waiting patiently to fill them. I could almost see life drain from you.  Again, I was amused.  Your water logged clothing weighing you down and holding you under as you fought your way to the surface, your heart pounding like a drum.

Her hand reached out to you pulling you onto shore. I was nearly touched by her gesture as I watched from a distance. The two of you still in shock, you more than her for reasons you couldn’t explain just then.  The fisherman rushing to help you, offering their heavy spring jackets to warm your blue skin, your body shaking. You stayed with the men you had barely taken notice of earlier, trying to catch your breath and make sense of it all in silence, as she rushed back in the same direction you had come from, getting the car that would cradle you and calm you, take you home to where you would be safe and warm once again.  They kept asking you questions but you could not answer.  Instead you kept looking at the edge of the Pier where you had been sitting before you felt that bolt of force on your back.

Finally the car pulled up and you got in thanking the strangers that felt sorry and concern.  Strangers you would have ignored under any other circumstance because they had nothing to offer you.

Later that night, after the hot shower had taken away the bitter cold sting, after all had died down, you snuck to the computer while she slept.  You entered my name into a search bar.  It took a few minutes but finally you found what you were looking for. There I was. My face on the screen as it had been earlier that day somewhere in the dark, cold water. The face you could recognize and knew well from many years ago in the archived obituaries of a local news paper. The life that you had taken and destroyed without care or regret.  I watched you from across the room in the shadows. Again, your heart began to pound in fear as you sat there in silence trying to make sense of it all. You did not know that I had taken my own life using those same waters as an instrument of my own death. You had left me destroyed and never bothered to wonder what had become of me. Invisible to you, I reached over to the glass cabinet that carefully housed her collection of figurines.  The 5 foot tall mahogany cabinet came crashing down without any means of explanation and it was then, at that very moment that you knew.  Not only had I been there walking with you to the Pier, forcing you into the waters but that I had somehow managed to followed you home.