Closer Understanding

The night before this night just ended - that is, the night between Wednesday and Thursday - I got up in the middle of the night and flushed a lot of bread down the toilet, mainly Hovis bought a day or two previous from Sainsbury’s Merry Hill. I did this because I felt effects of drugs - a combination of stimulant and ASM [antischizophrenic medication] - and not understanding why I should continue to be drugged, was fearful - certainly suspicious - that the intention was to entrap me in continuing drugging such as I have suffered in the past. The way this has been perpetrated was to reduce my ability to think for myself, that is my ability to take into account longer range considerations in forming decisions what to do. Certain mixtures of stimulant and ASM have this effect on me, of reducing or zeroing my ability to take account of longer range considerations. It is the antischizophrenic component of the mixture which causes this problem, and with no stimulant admixed (or insufficient stimulant) I become very little active because I find little to motivate me. Under ordinary circumstances - that is, undrugged - the motivations I find for taking action relate exclusively to longer range considerations, that is longer term into the future. I know there are other motivations to be found - for example enjoyment of food - and when I have been on some combinations of drugs - notably in the early years of the new Millennium, that is from about the year 2000 on for a year or two - I have performed activities based on such motivations. Unfortunately I was nowhere near as happy under those circumstances, that is without my usual longer range motivations.
A further problem arising out of my particular history, from being given drugs which deprive me of longer range motivations, is that I become too subject to advice given by speaking to me when I am less than fully aware. (I have reason to believe such advice has been given when my awareness has been subdued - for example I have been heavily asleep, perhaps - by a drug like opium.) Because I have no genuine motivations arising within myself (that is, because the drugs I have been given when this has occurred have removed the motivation available from longer range considerations), when I am given stimulant drugs affecting me in the waking period (usually the daytime but sometimes I have been kept wakeful at night) which give me a feeling of drive which if not put into effect causes frustration (which can manifest in angry outbursts) and certainly distraction (in that the stimulant while in my metabolism puts me constantly on the look-out for action I might take), if I am given suggestion akin to hypnotic suggestion I act on that suggestion too readily.
Thus what has happened is that my ability to think for myself has been reduced near to zero with antischizophrenic drugs and then the actions I take have been too subject to the suggestion I have mentioned, akin to hypnotic suggestion. This suggestion has been used to persuade me to purchase foodstuffs which have been drugged, this leading to continuation in the entrapment I refer to. It has been more difficult to evade the entrapment when there have been fewer choices of places to shop for food: for example in the Harworth area of Nottinghamshire where we (my wife and I) had our park home and where we came close to settling permanently. Where we are living now in Kingswinford, there are so many easily accessible food stores that slight randomisation in our purchasing of food has a very beneficial effect in negativing any ‘hypnotic’ suggestion. The upshot is that those wishing to persuade me to continue to take in drugged foods and drinks find it impossible. Sometimes still when I do not see things as clearly as this morning I have fear of entrapment, for example through drugging of our water supply from South Staffs Water (which I am sure is a thing capable of being done and which has been done in months past).
The question why these people wish me to continue to take drugs of this nature - reducing near to zero my ability to think for myself - is one I find difficulty answering, and I suppose there must be complex factors arising out of my history. I was first given antischizophrenic drugs in the 1970s as part of a scheme to try to ‘treat’ the schizoid personality I had, which those giving the drugs seemingly felt was undesirable in itself (it is a widely held view that to be sociable is desirable) and probably felt might lead to schizophrenia with ‘positive’ symptoms which would be more widely agreed to be undesirable. Unfortunately they had insufficient understanding of the effects of the drugs given, as well as insufficient understanding of schizoid personality and of schizophrenia, and moreover they were very negligent in not assaying (at all, it seems to me, incredible though this may sound) the effects in practice of giving me the drugs surreptitiously.
The consequence of this sequence of drug administration - first surreptitiously, as I say, and in 1980, and subsequently, by compulsion (this leading through the effect on my ability to think for myself to continued acceptance by me of the abusive drugs) - was that I was under treatment with these drugs for almost twenty-five years.
In 2003 after my parents died I left the town where I had lived since the age of three and went to live in Retford in Nottinghamshire (although I have now returned to Kingswinford). Regrettably the people following the course of the treatment I had been receiving (successors to the original perpetrators from the time I was a student at Cambridge University) took the view that I needed to have antischizophrenic medication. I presume the reasons they had were not unethical reasons but rather were related to their mistaken way of understanding schizophrenia and its treatment. The sequence which followed from the time I started living in Retford was that in 2004 I was given powerful stimulant drugs which (in combination with antischizophrenic drugs given at the same time) caused me to behave in a confused and sometimes aggressive-seeming manner which resulted in the September in my arrest in Bristol and conveyance (under circumstances which I myself deplore extremely) back to Nottinghamshire and in fact to detention in Bassetlaw Hospital.
While in hospital there I met Dawn who is now my wife. The people following the course of my life and who had power (evidently) to order that I be given drugs, sometimes surreptitiously and sometimes by compulsion (when I was under a ‘section’ of the Mental Health Act improperly applied, in my view), seemingly felt that my choice of Dawn as a marriage partner was undesirable. Factors accidentally arising - for example the ‘talking-therapy’ treatment which had been applied around Easter of 2004 to a friend I had made on the internet (Caroline, who lived in Bristol) which had most unfortunate consequences for her and for me (again blameable on the mistaken way psychiatrists in Britain - including those promoting ‘talking-therapy’ treatments, evidently - have of understanding schizophrenia) - led now to a sort of panic in those following the course of my life (mistakenly believing I was schizophrenic and that they were gathering knowledge of the life of someone schizophrenic under treatment for schizophrenia in an ordinary British scheme of treatment). This is the best way I can find to explain events. In 2004 I had lost a lot of money online gambling, this resulting from the drugs I had been given (and possibly from ‘hypnotising’ advice in combination), and as I say Caroline had been caused a lot of heartache and general distress from the foolish treatment she had been subject to, so the perpetrators must have panicked, coming close to realising the error of their ways and (perhaps having the mens rea as I have suggested recently and surely having regret for the sequence resulting from their inadequate understanding) feeling they must brave things out and try to promote (or prove, as they may have presented it to themselves) the diagnosis I had of schizophrenia thus justifying the treatment I had been meted.
My fears change according to the mixtures of drugs I am given from time to time, but this morning I feel that surely what is going on now is not a further attempt to entrap me but rather an endeavour to obtain evidence, directly on the effects of drugs given to me surreptitiously (for example in recent days in bread) and further from what I say about events over the years, and from documents I produce (and publish on the internet) relating to what has happened over the years.

Exposition of abuse

10 May 2008

Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust
Duncan Macmillan House
Porchester Road
Nottingham NG3 6AA

Dear Sirs

I am writing to complain formally that I did not receive adequate consultation and information when my wife was detained at Bassetlaw Hospital mental unit last December.

Also I wish to alert you to the fact that when I myself was detained at Bassetlaw Hospital in September 2005 (for a number of weeks) improper influence was brought to bear on my RMO Dr G. Somebody without adequate authority advised him - and others of the ‘team’ - of the urgent necessity for me to be medicated, which because of my detestation for the effect on the functioning of my mind of antidopamine drugs could only be achieved with a threat of force. I recall that at the time great care was taken that independent observers (other nurses) were present when compulsion was offered. I was grateful for this as it meant I would not suffer undue violence, but I do suggest it is in itself evidence that I was being treated in a special way. From my point of view it was a specially hurtful way as it meant I was subdued - and have remained for months since subdued - by antidopamine drugs. People there with practical experience - such as my named nurse - could see that I was not in need of such medication.

While I was in detention from September 2005 for a number of weeks my wife was also detained, and conveyed to be held at Sutton-in-Ashfield in another part of the county. At the beginning of 2006 I wrote to you complaining that she had not been discharged when I as nearest relative ordered it on 18 September 2005. You sent me your findings following this complaint in a letter dated 11 April 2006.

In the letter I originally sent to the Milbrook Unit at Sutton-in-Ashfield where my wife was held, in September 2005, I complained that I had not been informed, as nearest relative, of her detention. I had had trouble even finding the address of the Milbrook Unit to write to. In the reply I received from Lynne Murtagh (described as Modern Matron) no explanation was offered why I had not been informed. It was said that my wife’s rights had been explained to her on a number of occasions but she was confused. Around this time someone supplied me with a misleading document numbered Patient’s Information Leaflet 21 purporting to explain the rights and responsibilities of the nearest relative.

I attach a section copied from the Mental Health Act 1983 clearly stating that persons are not to be detained without consulting the nearest relative.

I regret I have to tell you that the same breach occurred last December when my wife was detained under section 4 (cases of emergency). When I telephoned Ward B2 at Bassetlaw Hospital to enquire if my wife was there the answer was I could not be told because of Data Protection legislation. This is ridiculous. It turned out my wife was there, persuaded to remain for a number of days following the 72 hours covered by the emergency detention. (I mention that in such cases the seeming consent of the detained patient is affected by drugs given as well as by sometimes the implied threat that compulsion can again be used to detain longer.)

I ask that you investigate the facts of this matter as soon as possible and provide a satisfactory response to this formal complaint.

Yours faithfully

Colin Barrass-Brough



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10 May 2008

Mental Health Act Commission
Maid Marian House
56 Hounds Gate
Nottingham NG1 6BG

Dear Sirs

I enclose for your information a complaint I am sending to Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust. As part of the question goes back to late 2005 when both my wife and I were in detention in Nottinghamshire, I am also sending you a copy of a letter purportedly from the Mental Health Act Commission regretting an error in advice given to me in a preceding letter also seemingly from the Mental Health Act Commission. The reason I am sending this is that it is unbelievable the Mental Health Act Commission would give such mistaken advice and I conclude the letters may have been false. I ask you to look into this question.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully

Colin Barrass-Brough