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The Deceased MP and his Mental Health
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It would surely be difficult even for the ordinary man in the street who rarely buys a copy of a daily paper to avoid noticing the extent to which the subject of mental health is an increasingly compelling issue in today’s society; stories about persons released into a/the community from Institutions often claiming to be unable to treat them due to financial shortfall or policy dogma who have subsequently committed various atrocities even gruesome murders may not be too numerous to to mention but they have certainly made an impact even in the nations literate and well to do households. In the sort of neighbourhoods where for example one would be unlikely to see other manifestations of the question in general, such as drinking on street corners, glue sniffing, various sorts of antisocial behaviour and worse. Related Documents
Some More Truth About Medicine and the Health Service Obviously there may be many more varied attitudes to this particular question than the casual observer might surmise ; or perhaps no-one whose life has ever been touched by the fact of any incident or event connected with the question has ever really given the matter much thought beyond a vague irritation when another of those odd stories about a schizophrenic or psychotic patient of some sort who has been released onto the streets somewhere and has murdered a stray citizen or two crops up in the news and if only because it gets in the way of trying to find page three or the soccer results. The purpose of this Essay is not to argue the whys and wherefores of the question in general, the philosophic, ethical and moral issues that necessarily ramify from the decision of a particular nation, state or society to provide a certain level of free healthcare to its’ citizens as is the norm in Western Europe : given this fact such societies are obviously faced with significantly more complex questions than those which apply to a society in which entitlement to medical provision is purely, or almost entirely based on the ability and propensity to buy it, for in such a society the question as to whether for example, a life saving blood transfusion or surgical procedure should be imposed on an individual against their will, for whatever reason, does not arise quite so readily. We are in the UK at the moment faced with an increasingly bewildering debate, it would probably be more correct to say argument, and not a very well informed one either, about the rights and wrongs of what have typically been labelled the public & private sectors and the relative costs of maintaining : nationalised industries ; the National Health Service ; the state Education System in particular. One only has to examine some of the statements that have been made during recent Prime Minister’s question time to see that there is a great deal of dishonesty and misrepresentation about actual facts and figures to such an extent that the leaders of the main parties seem almost collaborating in a contrived attempt to confuse the layman and keep themselves employed at obvious expense to the public purse. The Chancellor will typically make a statement about tax to the effect that it hasn’t risen appreciably because of so many percentage points on his calculator or what have you ; The PM will back him up and then the Leader of the Opposition will make other wild unfathomable claims about the increase in ‘real terms ‘ or something such and produce some hypothesis as to why the Chancellor is mistaken and the only real result of this is that no-one really has a clue what is being spent and how unless they are a senior civil servant or an economist with letters after his/her name. If like myself you are not, you may also be rather confused due to lack of relevant information in the emotive rhetoric that the subject engenders and finding more questions than answers in seeking to answer simple questions about government finance. In the case of mental health it seems relevant to ask for example such questions as : how many claimants of state benefits on the basis of psychological malfunctioning, of one form or another are there in the UK today ; how much of an increase is this over five ten or thirty years ; how much better off are they than those on ordinary state benefits ; what percentage of them have already committed at least one or two or three crimes of violence in their medical/legal histories ; what proportion of these would appear to have at least a partial problem with violence in the shape of a more extensive record of infractions against the person and could perhaps be fairly deemed as troublesome to the community ; how many murders are committed by psychiatric patients in the UK or England & Wales each year ; what proportion of all murders solved and unsolved are reckoned to be committed by psychiatric patients. Such figures are I believe unlikely to be made available to members of the public or even to low ranking health employees because they have a habit of leaking out to the press from the pockets of those that are not well lined and because we have something of a culture of secrecy in our constitutional monarchy : it is easy to find widely differing opinions as to the likely usefulness of the Home Secretary’s Freedom of Information Bill, my own suggestion was that, ’it ought to be printed on soft paper so as to endow it with a usefulness that it would otherwise obviously lack.’ The purpose of this brief article is to briefly explore the ethical issues that the NHS and its employees face in the 21st century with particular regard to the uses to which the mental health acts are being put and to provide a striking example of the cynical contempt being displayed toward the taxpayer, the merely concerned citizen who is unable to contribute financially to the nations’ coffers, by professional politicians, bureaucrats and newspaper owners. In my home town of Ipswich the county town of Suffolk on the English East Coast some seven years ago there was a striking series of stories about the shortcomings of the local mental health hospital known as St Clements when an outpatient who had not been found by any of the staff to be ‘dangerous’ committed three gruesome murders including the beheading and dismemberment of his own Father. Subsequent to this event the local Member of Parliament was seen to be voicing public concern on the matter, the local newspaper ran a series of lengthy articles including many huge front page pictures of the tattooed satanist who had so terrorised the district and was highly critical of so called inquiries into the running of the establishment which blamed methods and procedures and disciplined no-one even when outside agencies repeatedly criticised the Institution as ‘unsanitary.’ At the time the story first broke I was in the process of seeking some form of redress against the same department ; this is the text of a letter that I addressed to the Editor of the local paper after dedicating some years to the task (there is only one in Ipswich) the Evening Star which is a subsidiary of the East Anglian Daily Times (EADT). - -
04 / 10 / 98
Dear Editor
Perhaps I may be emailing the wrong Editor as I know little of the precise manner in which the Star is linked to the EADT : in either case I should like to briefly crave your indulgence.
What concerns the fact firstly : that you published a great deal of material since 1994 about the shortcomings of the psychiatric unit at St Clement’s Hospital ; that you also published the fact that the MP was interested in the matter and that he plans to raise the matter in the House in connection with standards of competence of staff there, which asfar as I know is still the case, giving him in the process a great deal of scope for self advertisement ; you covered the Jason Mitchell story in a fantastic amount of depth right down to almost every inane mumble that he ever uttered ; you continued to cover the event of a whitewash of an investigation into that institution which blamed 'procedures and methods' as I recall ; in the following months and years you continued to give a certain amount of vent to public indignation at the level of incompetence which had been displayed with interesting stories about suicides there ;
about the health service’s own reports which slammed the place as unsanitary ; more recently and even more interestingly from my point of view you have made it known their computer equipment had been stolen twice in succession.
I write to ask you why, when I went to a significant amount of trouble to put such documents as this before a certain reporter working for you by the name of Ian Evans that I was insulted and the material ignored and more than likely surreptitiously copied.
CR/AW / 6140:3:3.
Dr N Renshaw
Re: Mr Frederick Whiting - 27. 07. 64
(0riginal Documenthad 14 crossed out and replaced with 17)
The above named was admitted on 09. 03. 94 on a Section 2 following a DV
by Dr Kupersmitt (Please see Dr Kupersmitt's letter dated 22. 03. 94). He
reported that he had smashed a window at Suffolk College because he was
angry that one particular lecturer was not coming in for lectures on time,
he had consumed some alcohol prior to this. He also said that he wanted to
be arrested to draw attention to the local Education Department and an MP.
He was born in Gravesend in 1964 both parents are alive and have remarried
after they separated when the patient was six . He reported that he did
not get on well with his parents and did not have much contact with them.
He went to six different schools as his Father had to move around, he
stated that he was bullied at school and he reported that he sat his GCSE's
and got four good pass grades but was refused the opportunity to do his
'A' levels. After leaving school he worked with Builders and Engineers
and at the same time did private research in Biological Science, West
European History, English Language and Literature and British and
North American Sociology. He spent some time in Thailand with his Father
who was a lecturer in a Polytechnic. He has no significant past medical
history. He smokes ten to twelve cigarettes a day and consumes 4-5 pints
of beer per week and occasionally spirits. He has abused Cannabis
occasionally and also Heroin, Cocaine LSD and amphetamines. His hobbies
were sports, reading and listening to music.
On admission he was casually dressed with poor self hygiene. He had
relevant conversation with big words (and described his mood as medium),
there were no auditory hallucinations but there were some paranoid ideas
about people. There was no suicidal ideation and he lacked insight into
his condition. His physical examination was unremarkable and he was
treated with Chlorpromazine and Procyclidine on a prn basis.
He settled down well on the Ward and his section was rescinded on 16.03.
94.The following day he insisted on taking his own discharge against
medical advice. He stated that he had exams in June and his mood was
fine. He appeared perplexed but not suicidal, there were no problems with
sleep or appetite. He had no delusions or hallucinations but he felt that
at times people dropped hints about him. He was orientated in time, person
and place. He denied the abuse of drugs since 1984. Although he was
persuaded to stay for a fortnight for observation, he insisted on taking
his own discharge against medical advice and he was discharged on 17. 03.
94 and weshall see him in the out patient clinic in due course.
Yours Sincerely
I think the truth is that he (Mr Evans) found himself a little overwhelmed
by the profusion of ancillary material which I had been and am in the
process of engendering as a counter to the attack on my good name and
reputation which this report represents. If you can spare me another few
minutes I hope to convince you that the material is certainly newsworthy
and provides a much more substantial basis to substantiate the allegation
that those responsible for assessing Mitchell’s condition had certainly in
this case deliberately and cynically created bald lies as official medical
record(s) and that it was precisely such practise that led to his
inadvisable release. A copy of the report above, was given to me by a new
head of the psychiatric unit following my receipt of this one (below) from
an official at the college with whom I was not acquainted as part of an
attempt to substantiate that I had not been accused of anything of the sort
that Dr Hall professes I have, his opinion remaining the basis for my
exclusion from further education despite all the government’s promises
and the real, imagined or feigned concerns of the MP.
You will of course note that I have been told that I must prove my innocence in the face of unsubstantiated accusations despite something like 700 years legal tradition to effect that the burden of proof is on the accuser ; as to the allegations that the Police gave him such and such a reason for this constraint I cannot comment as they have consistently refused to discuss anything whatsoever with me including : the whereabouts of sundry items of personal property ; a prized family heirloom in
particular ; the conduct of my legal aid Solicitor and the nature of charges of which I have been found guilty, which was something of a formality in view of the fact that I was unable to get a not guilty plea entered on my behalf but that is another story which is obviously nothing to do with the fact that I had been making noises about this at the College where the lecturer Father of another possible suspect for the Burglary in question which happened to be at my father’s home and the place I had been living for a year, happens to have an influential job and suffice it to say that it isn’t in the least bit likely that this is the real reason for one’s exclusion from the premises.
Regarding the former document , firstly : the date given as my DoB is incorrect I was in fact born on 22 / 07 / 64 ; secondly the dates given as those of the detention are in fact also incorrect, the document makes no mention anywhere of the fact that I refused to stay at the hospital, returned home within minutes of being admitted and was not returned by the Constabulary for almost a week by which time, amongst other things, my Landlord had refused to co-operate with them in their efforts to gain entrance to my home. I was then subjected to something like ten days confinement and did not return home until approximately the 28th I believe, during which time I was threatened with six months arbitrary strait jacketed solitary confinement for refusing to undress and display my nether regions to one member of staff there by the name of John Morton : these little clerical errors (especially over the dating of the detention which was quite obviously made up for some reason) must surely betray to such a learned professional analytic mind as your own that the document was drawn up under a conspiratorial air in which some senior figure directed a clerk of some sort to record certain fictions which he or she guiltily lacked the nerve to carry out effectively.
Let us take the first paragraph : I did not report that I had smashed a window at the Suffolk College, it should have been imparted by the senior Police Officer on the morning of the 9th that I had broken a window, but it was in the neighbourhood of Norwich Road and a full stop should have been inserted after that remark not a comma. There are three other specific statements in the first paragraph : that I consumed some alcohol prior to becoming angry ; that I wanted to be arrested in order to draw attention to the local Education Department ; that I wished to be arrested in order to draw attention to an MP. The casual reader would be likely to interpret this as a reference to either a Military Policeman or a Member of Parliament, do you not agree ?
Should anyone ever smash windows with the intention of drawing attention to apparently unconnected third parties one would indeed obviously be likely to question their state of mind would one not ? My version of what occurred on the morning of March the 9th 1994 is as follows.
I had been doing one or two jobs of refurbishing the state of the grounds of the house in which my flat is located the previous evening for which I receive the use of it’s garage : you understand that those involved in any such endeavour tend not to resemble well groomed young reporters I'm sure.
I had been reflecting upon the fact that the previous year I had resigned from a College course because I was not getting my work marked or returned to me and was being refused the necessary information, amongst other things, that I required in order to make an application for a University place and was also thinking quite angrily about the fact that I believed that this might have been as a result of the son of a senior lecturer knowing more about a burglary for which I think I was convicted , than I actually knew myself, and that the Police had routinely ignored representations I had made since at least 1986 to that effect, and in other related matters: at present I have official complaints proceeding against: the, one hesitates to say Gentleman, the person who last (represented?), me in Court, which was in mid 1985 ; against the Police
with the supposedly newly revamped Police Complaints Authority ; and against the staff of St Clement’s of course.
I had recently witnessed that three Negro men who mugged me were not convicted despite incontrovertible evidence, on some technicality, (of which I have not been kept informed and is part of the substance of my complaining), involving the employment of a number of solicitors and judicial figures at monstrous expense and had thereforereasoned that a similar display of petty vandalism such as happened to those items of mine which were not stolen during the attack would be likely to evoke
such legal aid assistance subsequent to the formality of being charged with criminal damage : I feel sure that you must agree that this is a perfectly logical train of thought. I should add at this point to facilitate understanding that I had been and still am pursuing the Constabulary for information as to the whereabouts of a certain family heirloom which had gone missing in 1984 during the course of being bullied
illegally into overlooking essentials of my defence against a charge of Burglary on the grounds that I had opened the door of a lodger who had refused rent over a period of several months ; who had been actually burgled along with myself by a person or persons who remain unknown and thanks to an overzealous Thatcherite Solicitor by the name of Anthony Smythe of Bates, Wells and Braithwaite, Lower Brook St, Ipswich, unpunished. As a matter of fact he declined the notion that I had any right to a defence at all on the grounds that he considered that I wasn't enthusiastically looking for a Job and
because Mr Peter Murray-Cowen the Lodger had a part time job as an army reservist. As it happens Mr Cowen was soon to be dismissed from the Army for breaking and entering into an ex girlfriends flat and urinating and defecating in the pockets of garments belonging to his ex girlfriend and a love rival.
The garbled reference to an MP probably derives from the fact that I had mentioned that I had written to him about these matters having known him since the age of 15. That in the years subsequent to these events he has not exercised his authority to remedy any of these matters despite having sought to portray himself as concerned with the gullible assistance of the Editor of the local rag may stem from some nervousness about being blamed for persons of barely School leaving age having developed drug habits and
psychiatric ailments whilst socialising with his rag tag and bobtail. When you consider that his supporters are also it could fairly be said largely in control of the Psychiatric hospital in question and perhaps to a lesser extent, of the lower ranking Constabulary and ancillary staff in the local Police Station. One good friend of mine from those days back in the early '80s Conrad Payne, eventually stabbed himself in the chest and leapt from the top floor of his dismal crime ridden windowless apartment after listening to years of empty boasts and fulminations about how the Tories would one day be sent to the salt mines or how the IRA would deal with his political enemies.
I had only consumed a modest nip of brandy to nerve myself to the task after deciding on the course of action that would surely lead to the acquisition of legal advice I was supposedly guaranteed by Magna Carta and my Doctor has pointed out that I have never been the subject of any complaint about ungentlemanly conduct of any sort.
If I may return briefly from that point in time at which I first saw this report to, the morning of the 9th of March, it may serve to make matters clearer with regard to so much in the remainder of the report which is so clearly the reverse of anything I had mentioned in passing (especially with regard to the remarks about personal hygiene) to the persons whom I would adduce had put it together . At no time did I make any serious
comment to the psychiatric personnel beyond the statement that I was there
against my every wish and that the consequences were likely to be disingenuous to say
the least. It is common knowledge locally that I spent several years on the streets after leaving school and I therefore have a familiarity with not only the world of drugs and counter culture, but that of prostitution and all sorts of unsavoury matters.
I had been signed in by the arresting Officer and checked my belongings into the desk Sergeant’s locker and so forth and had a brief word with the duty Solicitor who advised me that they were only able to detain me for so long without making charges and so on when the balding Officer who was apparently in charge of the Station asked me to speak to a social worker and a Police Surgeon.
At that point I had no serious suspicion that he might be trying to put over what he was/is because the thought is just so utterly risible, ludicrous beyond belief. I have had and do have reputation for some arguably questionable things, has anyone not, and during the quarter of a century that I have lived in the town have made the acquaintanceship of thousands of people, probably tens of thousands of people most of whom would probably remember me as a shabbily dressed urchin who was curiously well spoken for someone of that appearance from a third rate Maisonette on Chantry Estate (one of the biggest housing estates in Europe): this tends to stem from the fact that my father was the boss of Chantry Library in the late sixties amongst other things, and that I am, as are most of My Father’s side of the family, quite literate and well spoken if you like. All sorts of people, the humble and the proud, the great and the lowly, the witless and the wise, no-one had ever accused me of being less than
thoroughly of a ‘ mens sana in corpore sano ‘ to borrow a Latin phrase.
I was flattered at first and sought briefly to recount why I had perpetrated the dastardly act of breaking a few quidsworth of someones’ windows to the Police Surgeon whose name I did not learn but was distinctive by his youth and pristine clean shaven appearance. The two did indeed make a stark contrast for the single immediate striking distinctive feature of the Social Worker was her disgusting smell which in a tiny
windowless subterranean boxroom was simply foul . The second was the fact that she could scarcely speak English which is obviously why she could not understand a single thing that was being said, and has presented this incredible garbled first paragraph in which this is all too palpable. I mean, this is making sense to you isn’t it ? You do understand what I am saying ?
It may help to mollify your no doubt law abiding nature if I tell you that between 1980 and 1983 : I had been robbed of £60 in my home by an known party (unprosecuted) ; had my wrist fractured in a road rage incident by some two dozen heavyweight Negroes (unprosecuted) ; and had a pair of boots confiscated by the Police besides numerous other incidents in which I was an aggrieved party including that of my having been beaten and mugged of a watch and fifty pounds in 1991 out of which matter someone
has as I say has made a rather expensive charade of apparently pretending
to prosecute.
Regarding paragraph two : again the first sentence is common knowledge the second obviously less so, but suffice it so say that there are always perfectly good reasons for anyone not to wish to discuss matters that might be of some real importance with persons who cannot even remember what the date is.
As for paragraph three I have only to say that it is not the case that I have made any statement as such to any of the persons involved in compiling this report other than to the effect that I was not willing to accept any treatment, and that which I did was under the express threat of six months sedated and strait jacketed solitary confinement which I swore would incur a nemesis. The remainder has been cajoled out of some poor
ancillary nurse in view of the lack of any noticeable symptoms of any mental malaise and consists of nothing more than idle gossip and hearsay. I didn’t have four ‘good’ O levels I had four ‘bad’ or average O levels and that just goes to show that nothing at all was being said beyond an expectation that County Council employees would contrive some excuse for not conceding information to complainants.
In paragraph four the basic dissembling intent of the document all too evident from it’s general appearance is revealed. It wasn’t the Psychiatrist who couldn’t speak English "conversation with big words" and desperately needed a bath "poor self hygiene" but the "paranoid person" who lacked "auditory hallucinations " or "suicidal inclinations." There is no such word as "ideation.’’ The same person whose conversation
was yet "relevant" So whoever wrote the document is saying at this point that something is supposed to be wrong with this person who in the final analysis, only has "paranoid ideas about people." The only trouble is that the same person for some reason failed to remember what they were !
In paragraph five the document is drawn to a close with a string of mystifying statements : I was probably still at large by the 16th and was certainly ‘under arrest’ for several days beyond that date ; when I was returned I was perplexed, by the thought that anyone would want to prejudice their professional reputations by acting in any other manner than to dismiss the ridiculous suggestion that my behaviour was anything other than logical or predictable. My mood was not fine, far from it, I did not have any exams that June, I did not settle down well and constantly protested my innocence and I have not desisted from so doing. I did not eat anything for several days and eventually again did so under duress : that’s just the bits of gossip that are back to front.
Before proceeding further I should like you to confirm that with the best will in the world that I could not have been "persuaded to stay " for a fortnight "under observation," between the 9th and the 17th of the month. Again it is said that I was not deluded or suicidal and was "orientated in time person and place," in short in five paragraphs we find a description of someone who has failed to exhibit all these symptoms of psychosis, but according to the author is nonetheless paranoid and feels
that people drop hints about him. These, without any further mention of these hints or as to what the subject was paranoid about, as you probably are aware are what is known as unsubstantiated and possibly unsubstantiable accusations : the invitation to the outpatient’s clinic if it was actualy made at all was ignored, I think it was just another invention made to pad out the report and make it seem reasonable.
Not wanting to bore your well meaning journalistic aspirations with any comment about how stupid you might be likely to look if were to surface insensitively that you have been giving the MP and the powers that be all this publicity about how responsibly they have been looking into peoples’ concerns, whilst others’ futures, and their loved ones lie buried, but it is in fact the case that you claim to be keeping people informed about these serious social issues. The amount of letters I have written on this matter has run into hundreds already : the last public watchdog body that I spoke to failed to disagree that the report was incompetent and duplicitous and said despite the fact that I had been onto a new head of the Psychiatric department at St Clements within weeks of receiving the letter from Dr Hall of the Suffolk College that it could do nothing
because I had not done anything within a year of these matters coming to light. Many of the letters on my list had been written by the time the public investigation was undertaken and I consider it dishonest of them not to have included such material which was known about , in any appraisal of the allegation that standards at St Clements were
unacceptably low and to have the record set straight by having the allegations dismissed as inaccurate. David Long Chief Executive of the Local Area Health Authority continues to describe the report including the fitting of a fortnight into eight days as "a factual report of the Consultant's clinical opinion." These are people who gross £25 to 30,000a year of taxpayers cash.
Whilst I cannot remember the precise dates of my degrading incarceration at this minute I can certainly remember that someone had seen fit to bathe her in the interim.
Yours Sincerely
In this collection of documents we can see all too clearly that people who like to think of themselves as movers and shakers have a profound contempt for the ordinary man in the street who pays pound sterling taxes for these services. The fact of the matter is that I had tried to say to the balding Officer that the differences of opinions over confiscations etc was increasingly serious, the MP for the Town had, so he says,
written previously to the Police Department about these matters and, on the morning of the 9th March ‘93 I tried to persuade the officer in question that I should be allowed to discuss the fact of my having only the odd English relative, despite having been born here, and that the bulk of those who formed a family audience to these differences were in fact rebel Irish and that it would be wise to take note of this, insofar
as the response their actions was not likely to be what was apparently being imagined. It is a fact that once the MP Mr Jamie Cann had extracted the maximum benefit to his reputation from posturing his concern at the goings on at St Clements that further letters on the subject were binned or ignored.
Now it isn’t of course in the least bit true that failure to listen to more specific warnings about the vulnerability of the RUC which I made some weeks later led to the deaths of dozens of UK citizens, neither is it in the least bit true that the British army have raided police stations and destroyed evidence of their complicity in the assassinations of Catholics within the last ten years, or that the Suffolk Police are
directly responsible for these deaths in failing to act on inspired guesswork from a comparatively well informed member of the public ; it remains to be seen what the likely actions of the minister responsible for investigating these matters might be once he has finished sucking his thumb and goggling at the practical audacity of the Army.
The present head of the Suffolk College is a person by the name of Muller who makes a great fuss about his rustic accent and sends out internal memos to staff in pidgin German complete with Nazi cartoons etc. his concerns haven’t stretched to barring at least one citizen of Irish-German extraction who never tires of telling all and sundry how he wished he had been able to take part in the nazi atrocities in Eastern Europe, who has a string of convictions for violent behaviour and has managed to enjoy
attending Performing Arts courses and despite presently undergoing treatment for drug addiction is able to look forward to starting an expensive computer course this September the year 2001.
I was routinely assaulted by my head of year at Secondary school whose real name was Heinkel and resent and reject the so called justice of the British state which has forcibly and illegally sought to elicit unearned and undeserved respect and would accept invitations to live elsewhere under almost any circumstance: Life without honour is no life at all, my Father's family can record having fought Enemies of the Kingdom as far back as Napoleon and beyond. I remain utterly outraged at these scandalous
insults and have no intention of swallowing this crock of shite that has been served up by the self interested individuals who claim to be serving this community !
Today October the 2nd, 2000 a new Human Rights Act came into force in the UK
: the Home Secretary Jack Straw said of the new Act 'it will bring justice
home.'As an ex Labour party member my views on the subject were privately
canvassed some two years ago. My response to the question,'Do you think that
a new Act would be a good idea ?' Was, 'So long as it is printed on soft
paper to thereby endow it with a usefulness that it would obviously otherwise
lack.'
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