John Mc Carthy’s presentation to Dail Commitee Feb 23rd 2010

www.madprideireland.ie

Mental Health Act 2001 23 Feb 2010

Thank you minister for your invitation to speak here today on this issue, an issue that breaches the human rights of so many citizens of this country. May I also pay a sincere thanks to Senator Dan Boyle who has worked with me over the last years to bring this debate to the political arena, and finally, may I thank Deidre De Burca and Sen. David Norris in using private members time to propose this amendment in the Senate.
May I also commend the courage of Dr Pat Bracken, the previous speaker. I think we all know how the medical profession closes ranks and hates controversy. It takes a particular man to speak out against the established view and we are lucky to have such a man as Dr Pat Bracken.

So ends the nice bits it is all downhill from here. I have 10 minutes.
I am going to try to encompass the abused lives of 6 people into the first 3 minutes
So Anne 1. A sixty 63 year old grandmother. She was forced incarcerated over 80 times, forced treated, forced ECT I have a statement from her saying she could not stand the inhuman and degrading treatment she was being subjected to by this state in the name of care and she hung herself.
Anne 2. Raped at 16, locked into a mental hospital at seventeen. Seems she got a bit odd her brother told us, there was nothing else her family could do. A neighbour advised them to lock her up and the Dr and her father signed her in. I mean what else could they do? Subjected to forced ECT, forced feeding, forced treatment and assaulted by staff. We interviewed her for a documentary I am producing with RTE right now. She is s78 now, she never got out. Strange that Anne 2 signed herself in as a voluntary patient prior to your enactment of this 2001 Mental Health Act so now of course she has no need of a tribunal hearing, she is so institutionalised she puts a value on nothing but how many cigarettes she has and we have forgotten her.
Anne 3, one of three sisters all put into care as children by this state, all sexually abused. Anne 3 is presently in her third year of incarceration. She is 27. She got drunk and disorderly, had a mental health record. The arresting guard knew her so he kindly arrested her under the Mental Health Act. Had she been arrested under criminal law she would have been released the following day. Her sisters believe they will never get their sister back she is being so radically changed by the treatment and medication, including being forced to take contraceptives, and part of the reasons being given and accepted by her tribunal hearings to prove that she is mentally ill is that she is in danger of being promiscuous if she is released . Let me repeat that she is in danger of being promiscuous if released.

Michael 1. This man’s story breaks my heart. Michael spent nearly sixty years of his life in the so called care of the medical model, the power of which you can begin to dismantle today. What got to me about Michael was how the staff spoke of him.”Michael is such a lovely man, he’s never any trouble, never complains a lovely man” they had cured the life and spirit out of him. I visited Michael every week for six years he eventually got to know me. Nobody spoke to Michael so he lost the art of communication so to fill the silence we, and I have no religion would say the rosary Michael liked that. At 16 Michael won a scholarship from the ESB first in Ireland. I signed on as his next of kin he had family but they were ashamed of him. When he died I went to see his body at one in the morning he had been moved from his private room to public ward to die and the other patients were wandering around in distress. I pulled the sheet from Michael’s face and his head was tied onto the back of the bed with a piece of dirty bandage looped through a roll of toilet paper.
Michael 2 Entered the care of the state at 5, was sexually abused, released at 16, picked up within months as a vagrant locked into a psytchiatric unit and died there at 55 yrs old, 4 years ago. In his life forced ECT, forced treated and forced fed. He is buried in a mass grave that is currently in use in Cork in an unmarked grave
Michael 3. He is 29, I was asked to take up his case last week, he is in his fourth year of incarceration, he is locked up by this law you passed to protect him. When he came into the waiting room ushered in by a lovely young nurse I could smell him from 6 feet, his teeth are rotten stumps from Locatol he tells me and he is dressed in rags.
This has to stop and today can be a beginning delete 59b.
Reality in the medical model of care in 2010 Today. Now, not the past.
This debate is and should not be about services and or resources this debate should be about people. People, you have sworn to protect, to protect their human rights as citizens of this country. The remarkable thing about all of the above is they have never broke any law they were different just that, different in appearance behaviour odd. They lost control as I did of their emotions until it became a crisis, and it is only at the crisis point that you have intervention. Early intervention is not possible because of stigma. Do you think I could admit to my colleagues I was developing the normality of madness? Stigma is fuelled by fear. This law that abuses my rights as an equal citizen of Ireland is the primary force behind that fear and ignorance. How do we all know that Psych institutions are not nice places yet we are all aware of that fact. In as much as my generation knew that Magdalene laundries were not nice places yet we knew and to my shame were silent.
I am not spreading a rumour here, our Inspectors of mental hospitals tell us these places are not fit for human habitation yet that same mental health commission gives a licence to that unit to carry on the abuse. This is a fact for over 20 years. And you in this house do nothing meaningful to stop this. As an honest Td stated in this house recently there are no votes in mental health.
Close them down until the abuse stops.
Establish places like the runaway house where we could have early intervention where I could go in times of distress and given space to allow that distress to dissipate without the fear of force. I know when depression is arriving. Yet there is not an institution in this country where I would feel confident enough to go to for help.
Here is a remarkable thing about those stories I told you. I have told those stories and many more like them to the following:
At the UN New York, the UN, To the EU the EC. To reps of the dept. of Justice, Health, HSE, Mental health commission. To the last two junior Ministers for mental health. To Maurice Manning of the Human rights Commission. I have spoken to Dial deputies Senators and their staff. I have gone to Colm O’Gorman of Amnesty but here is the remarkable thing not one has asked me for a name or address of any of these alleged victims so they could speak for themselves and tell their own stories. Is that strange or is it just me.
We all listened to the Ryan and Murphy reports to the evidence of the victims of how they were so hurt by the silence of those in power to make a difference and by the fact that they did nothing.
Strange is it not how so many of the victims listed in the Ryan report were diagnosed by the medical model with various diseases of the brain while those who abused them and committed these atrocities walked among society not just freely but with dignity. (if Senator David Norris was not such a strong man he could so easily have been given ECT against his will after all the diagnostic box of the medical model listed homosexuality as a disease and one method of cure was ECT)
Its time to stop this delete Section 59b.
I watched it all again on prime time last week of the hopelessness of the victims of a respected medical profession again, Obsitricians, defended their silence at the time the abuse was taking place.
UN Convention on the Rights of the Disabled the purpose of which was to give the same human rights to the disabled, as had been granted to every other citizen of this world by other UN Conventions.
Article 17 states every person with disabilities has a right to respect for his or her physical and mental integrity on an equal basis with others.
This article was to have four sub sections which would have made an exception again of people with so called mental illness and allowed for force. It was impressive to see the united front of every imaginable disability say that there would be no exceptions to the human rights of any person with any disability and if the convention did not apply to all then they would not accept it.
We won the day despite the objections of the Irish delegation. So now, to overturn the power of that convention which Ireland has yet to ratify you are going to be asked to pass into law the new Capacity Act which would disempower Article 17 and allow for the continuation of force and abuse of citizens of Ireland based on no medical evidence whatsoever simply that their behaviour is different
Let me read to you how the Mental Health Act 2001 defines me. Article 3.1, in this Act “Mental Disorder” means mental illness, severe dementia or significant intellectual disability. How can I expect a fair judgement of my capacity when those that are judging me believe that I exist in the same space as somebody with dementia or intellectual disability. People like me, those that live with the normality of madness in our lives are very simply different. We feel at a deep emotional level and we sometimes lose control of those emotional feelings and because of that deep level of emotion we are those that give you music, poetry, art and you stigmatise, abuse and punish us for our difference.
This has to stop we have to delete Section 59 B.
The vast majority of my friends locked into psychiatric institutions in this country against their will have never committed a crime. Their sin is that society has no tolerance for the different ways in which we behave and view life. Article 59B allows for the opinion of 2 psyciatrists without any scientific tests whatsoever to force them to take ECT against their will. This has to stop.
Eugenics There is a basic problem here and that that is you do not believe that those of who live with the normality of madness can exist without force to control us, and you have the research and science to back up that belief. Remember eugenics the science that proved some people were inferior to others! There was a time when I could have paraded research and science before you to prove that women, black people, gays, were inferior. Not only that but i could also have paraded women, black people, and gays who would have stated that this was a fact.
You will witness that reality next week. You have no idea of the weight of fear and ignorance that descends on you when you when you become a victim of stigma as I did when I lost control of my emotions at 45 I am 60 now and it has taken nearly 10 years of campaigning to say this to you .
Get this law off our backs begin by deleting section 59b.
Also that those who purport to speak on our behalf do not in the dark recesses of their minds believe we are equal they simply believe we are not capable orwill allow us of live life on our terms. It makes them feel good to speak out on our behalf, they do nothing but harm.
Despite all I have said, I feel a great sense of optimism that change is about to happen. With the election and appointment of Mr John Moloney as Junior Minister, with the selection and appointment of Mr Martin Rogan in the new position of Head of Mental Health in the HSE (we must give him control of his own budget if he is to be really effective) and with the recent appointment of Mr Hugh Kane as CEO of the Mental Health Commission I sincerely believe that my optimism is based on reality and not just another manifestation madness.
Finally I have told these stories to the office of President Mary Mc Aleese and I have heard not a word. I listened to president Mc Aleese recently state how on reading the Murphy and Ryan reports she was sorry and distressed to hear that those in power who had been informed of the abuse while it was going on; did nothing. She was referring to you today and to herself. The abuse is ongoing in psychiatric units. I would ask her to visit these long term psychiatric units and to talk to the patients without the staff present, to listen and then decide.
So I am today asking, no pleading with President Mary Mc Aleese to be proactive and to open the doors of the Arus and allow these people to tell the conscience of Ireland, their stories, and tell her of their lives not lived but wasted in the long term care of this State in lock up wards across the country. Because of this insane law the 2001 Mental Health Act of Ireland. You can begin the process of reconciliation today by supporting our efforts to delete Section 59B, this is a beginning not an end to a long, long process.
This is not about politics this is way above that, this is about human rights and my right as a citizen to live without fear of this repressive law in my own home, in my own country.
John McCarthy
Mad Pride Ireland.
Johnfmccarthy_90@hotmail.comMy brush with ECT in St Pats Vhi.
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