Preceding correspondence

30 April 2008

Ian Pearson MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

Dear Mr Pearson

I am writing you another letter now because my mind seems clearer of improper influence (from mind-altering drugs for example) than it has been in a long while. If it has seemed to you that I am mentally ill I can assure you I am not, although naturally you should retain an open mind as yet.

The difficulties I face stem from treatment over decades with antipsychotic drugs, but further to this an inadequate control over dosages (and introduction of improper adjunctory treatment, especially with stimulant drugs).

There are matters it is necessary to complain to the police about, not least among which is the improper diversion of phonecalls I made from home on our then Virgin Media line last June. I believe that some calls I made thinking I was speaking to the police were diverted and in fact I was not speaking to them. In one of these calls I requested that they look into the origin of my decades of treatment, which was back in 1980 when I was improperly (without my foreknowledge or consent) given amphetamine so that I presented a syndrome which a psychiatrist called Anthony Dew Armond treated as schizophrenia, detaining me in November 1980 under the 1959 Mental Health Act in fact. I have no documentation from that detention, and it is not impossible it was an illegal detention: but I do not know what documents I should have been served under the old Act. The response of those I took to be police (in June 2007) was to say it was too long ago to look into. However as it has led to such extended and severe consequences for me I think it should be looked into. Certainly the covert administration or supply of amphetamine was improper and presumably illegal.

Armond was my psychiatrist when I was detained three years later too, in March 1984, although originally it was a Dr R V Cope. I do not understand why she was removed and Armond substituted. After my release from hospital in the April (1984) Armond continued the arrangement of holding me on ‘long leave’, in fact until 26 July 1986. He required me to sleep one night in the hospital every few months so that I could be said to be resident there. I have read that this subterfuge was found in other cases to be an illegal means of insisting that patients who were not truly in-patients take medication. It is my view (in fact it is my certain knowledge) that I needed no such medication, and Armond may have had ulterior reasons for insisting.

For a number of years I was attending a Day Centre (at Armond’s insistence) but in the later 1980s I took on a course at Wolverhampton Poly. I agreed to continue medication from 1987 onwards for one thing because my father felt I would not do well without it. I lived with my parents till they died in 2003 and then felt able to discontinue the medication when I moved to Retford in Nottinghamshire.

In recent years I have, as in 1980, been covertly administered or supplied improper drugs. It is my belief the true reason has been to restrict my forthcoming about the matters referred to above, relating to the 1980s, but police and others (I believe) have been told what is going on is an investigation into schizophrenia using drugs of relevance to schizophrenia. The effect of this distortion is that police are less than ordinarily enthusiastic to assist me, although lately they seem to have been told something of the truth, that drugs given to me unknowing may affect my behaviour.

I object to being given drugs which distort the functioning of my mind, especially as often they cause me to seem mentally ill and further to have the unpleasant experience a mentally ill person has. If at all possible I should like the origin of these difficulties looked into and appropriate action taken, although my main priority is to put a stop to the drugging I suffer supposedly as part of an investigation of schizophrenia.

I trust you can give me your help.

Yours sincerely

Colin Barrass-Brough