'Degrading Treatment' paper by Hunter Watson Oct17 #ECHR #HumanRights

Received by Email from Scottish human rights campaigner Hunter today, sent to Government Ministers, Civil Servants, Academics, activists and others:

"... any individual who had been detained on the basis of a short-term detention certificate would seem to have an excellent chance of raising a successful action against the Scottish Ministers as Robert Napier had done over a decade ago on the grounds that his treatment as a prisoner in Barlinnie had violated his Convention rights. The then Scottish Executive had failed to appreciate that "The ECHR is, in the words of the European Court of Human Rights, a 'living instrument' which must be interpreted in the light of present-day conditions" (section 3.3 of the Guide to the Human Rights Act). It is my hope that the current Scottish Government will be aware of this fact and give a positive response to the Public Petitions Committee when it comments on my petition PE01667 as requested by that Committee.

                    Best wishes,

                              Hunter Watson"

 

 

 

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W Hunter Watson Papers and Articles

"I will have to raise complaint with University, you leave me no option"

Email just sent to Judy Thomson, Director of Psychology, NHS Education for Scotland, regarding bullying letter sent to me from Dr Hamish McLeod:

"Dear Judy

I am very unhappy that NES is not supporting my complaint about the bullying letter from Dr Hamish McLeod.  

I would prefer not to have to raise another complaint, it's very stressful for me as an unwaged Carer.  If I'm stressed then my son gets stressed, he lives with me.  However you leave me no option but to raise a complaint with the University of Glasgow.  I cannot let this go.  Although I suspect that, as with Edinburgh, my complaint will not be upheld.

Again it feels very unfair that I should have to do the work of NHS Scotland, for nothing, in fact it will cost me.  As usual.

It's very distressing but I have to continue with the complaint.  You didn't support me last time I asked for your help.  It's very disappointing.

I discussed it with my son, he got distressed about it.  As with last time.  It's never-ending, the stress caused by Scottish Government civil servants failing to act on behalf of unwaged Carers and mental health service users.  We are on our own when it comes to abuse and bullying. 

Regards, Chrys

cc Dr Hamish McLeod, Prof Andrew Gumley, Prof Jill Pell, Paul Gray"

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Formal Complaint to NHS Education for Scotland: "I've been judged on hearsay and tittle tattle"

Dr McLeod on left, 13May13 [Innovations at Lighthouse]

Today I sent a formal complaint by Email to Ms Judy Thomson, Director of Psychology, NHS Education for Scotland, about the bullying letter I received from Dr Hamish McLeod, DClinPsy Programme Director, Mental Health and Wellbeing Unit, Gartnavel, University of Glasgow:

Strapline: Fwd: Letter about involvement with the Glasgow DClinPsy programme: raising an Official Complaint with NHS Education for Scotland

"Dear Ms Thomson

Please see forwarded letter from Dr McLeod, Programme Lead at the DClinPsy MHW unit, Glasgow, which I received on 11 October and read on Friday the 13th.  I expected it would be negative and it was worse than I'd imagined.

I wish to raise a complaint about this letter, the tone, the slanderous attacks, the undermining of my character and the upset it caused me, and is still causing me.  I want to complain about the fact that Dr McLeod has never sat down and spoken with me about these allegations.  He hasn't interviewed me or invited me to defend myself in person.  I've been judged on hearsay and tittle tattle.  It's very unfair.

I don't deserve this disrespectful letter from a Clinical Psychologist senior academic in Scotland.  I contend that Dr McLeod is unfit to lead a training course of would-be Clinical Psychologists.  Scotland needs well-trained CPs who can listen to people with lived experience, and their carers.  To listen and not judge.  To listen and care.  DClinPsy programmes need survivor voices teaching and leading, a variety of stories, to inform trainees and prepare them for therapeutic listening.

For over 8 years I've tried to be meaningfully involved voluntarily in the Glasgow CP training programme and have continually been marginalised.  I'm an unwaged Carer and pensioner of 65yrs.  I write and campaign voluntarily so as to improve MH services in Scotland.  So that other Mothers won't be blamed for psychiatric abuse.  To promote safer alternatives to coercive drugging and risky practices within psychiatric settings.  To research and develop Safe haven crisis Houses in Scotland so that my family and others will be free from harm and lack of care when experiencing psychosis, altered mind states and emotional distress due to life trauma.  

Please accept this Email as an official complaint which I want NES to investigate on my behalf.  I am concerned that CP trainees will be at risk of receiving the same bullying treatment if they speak out about the teaching or have an independent voice.  They deserve better.  And so do I.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Yours sincerely,

Chrys Muirhead (Mrs)

cc Paul Gray, Geoff Huggins, Prof Gumley, Professor Pell

'Risk of relapse in psychosis: facing the fear, resisting mental illness': Chrys Muirhead; Psychosis Journal

Pages 367-368 | Received 11 Sep 2017, Accepted 11 Sep 2017, Published online: 06 Oct 2017

doi.org/10.1080/17522439.2017.1381757

Protesting peacefully at Mental Health & Wellbeing Unit Glasgow 21Sep17:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1fus_LrsSg&t=74s

Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic, public lecture Cupar, Fife, Scotland, 19 November 2011:

https://vimeo.com/40373667

Chrys Muirhead
Safe Houses for Psychosis
writer, researcher, activist; cyclist, photographer, gardener, swimmer
ChrysMuirheadWrites.blogspot.co.uk
@ChrysMuirhead

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#PsychosisCMHF @HamishJMcleod pic.twitter.com/kW3ZkXlokN

— Chrys Muirhead (@ChrysMuirhead) March 24, 2017

'Hard to reach: Coercive system or defective gene?' DCP-Scotland Review Aug17

"your behaviour is deemed unacceptable" DClinPsy Programme Director @UofGMHW

Here is a letter I received by Email on Wednesday 11 October 2017 from Dr Hamish McLeod, Programme Director, DClinPsy, University of Glasgow.  At first I decided not to read it because I thought it would be undermining, based on past experiences of engaging with Dr McLeod since January, over the phone and by Email.  Then yesterday I changed my mind and looked at the letter.  It was even worse than I imagined:

I have made a response to this letter by Email, yesterday, and will be making a formal complaint about Dr McLeod.  I think this letter demonstrates that he is not fit to be the DClinPsy Programme Director.  Attacking an unwaged Carer and psychiatric survivor for no good reason is unacceptable.  I was not interviewed about these allegations.  

Dr McLeod has never sat down and spoken to me in person in the 6 years that I have "known" him, either in the MH Wellbeing unit or for a cuppa.  I don't know him personally, know nothing about him because he's never spoken to me personally.  Whereas I know Professor Andrew Gumley personally because he has shared personal experiences with me, mostly by Email and a few times in person.

Because of this personal attack by Dr McLeod I will have to raise a complaint with the University of Glasgow, and with NHS Education for Scotland, highlighting why I think he is unfit for the post of Programme Director.  I will also be raising concerns about the Programme's teaching and practice supervision, based on the 4 July meeting and the behaviour of a trainee.

Clinical Psychology Doctorate trainees deserve the best of teaching and training, to prepare them for the task of supporting people/patients in mental distress.  Above all, in my experience, they have to be good listeners, non-judgemental, fair, transparent, clear thinking, seeing the person as they are, not based on the opinions of others or what's written in the Notes or in tweets or blog posts or any other social media. 

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Surviving Psychosis/Psychiatry teaching 8May17 Mental Health & Wellbeing Unit Glasgow

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Prof Gumley's reference for my PhD 5Dec16: "I believe that Chrys has what it takes"

Clinical Psychology in Scotland: the impossibility of level playing fields

Thinking back over 8 years of trying to be meaningfully involved in Clinical Psychology training at both Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities, and how impossible it has been to be treated as an equal, a professional, someone who had a life before and after "mental illness".  The label has gotten in the way.  The clinical gaze.

There was, and is, in my experience, containment and division.  Lack of trust.  Silencing of voices.  Hierarchy.  Favouring some over others.  Conferring status on some over others.  Saying one thing, doing another.  Lack of congruence, openness, transparency.  

What do they have to hide?

I don't know.

But it's detrimental to the wellbeing of mental health services in Scotland and undermines the Expert by Experience who has endured iatrogenic drug treatment and survived mental illness.  In my opinion.

And I'm entitled to have an opinion and to express it.  Regardless of some clinical psychologists who may find my words offensive.  I say to them: Walk in my shoes, try them on for size and see if they fit.

Psychiatric survivors deserve respect and to be heard in Clinical Psychology settings, both academic and practice.  We have a lot to offer and it's way beyond time that the corridors were widened and the playing fields levelled.

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My presentation teaching on Psychosis module DClinPsy programme Glasgow 8 May 2017:
Surviving Psychosis/Psychiatry: Resilience, Resistance, Recovery; Rescue, Respite, Risk, Renewal

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Published on Sep 22, 2017

Five short talks to camera outside the University of Glasgow MH & Wellbeing Unit, Gartnavel Hospital grounds, about my experience of trying to be meaningfully involved in the Clinical Psychology Doctorate training course, from the lived experience, psychiatric survivor perspective.

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PhD Clinical Psychology University of Edinburgh - Withdrawal of Offer 9May17

24Jan16: clinical psychology in academia: the lack of learning, level playing fields and therapeutic relationships

from 2002: "Are you tearful?""No. I'm flat" [correct answer]; anhedonia

This was the usual script at psychiatrist appointments in 2002 after I had been put on, coercively drugged with, Risperidone in Lomond Ward, Stratheden psychiatric Hospital, springtime, which took away my agency and gradually made me clinically depressed.

1977 oldest son

I had experienced a menopausal psychosis, altered mind states at the change of life, in my 50th year.  It wasn't unpleasant, rather at times it was spiritually uplifting (I'm a Christian) however not getting sleep was a major problem as my mind became overactive and my body got tired.  So my two older sons took me into Lomond acute ward and I went in voluntarily, to be detained for 72hrs until I agreed to swallow the antipsychotic. 

I knew the score, having been a mental patient twice before, in 1978 and 1984, with pueperal psychosis, forcibly injected with Chlorpromazine, separated from my babies, had to stop breastfeeding, I still very much resent that, at 65yrs of age.  They stopped me feeding my child.  I'd breastfed my first son for 10 months until he got teeth.  It's a special bond between mother and baby.  Psychiatry invaded the space between my younger two sons and me, by interfering.  

my 3 sons c1986 taken in Perth on day out

My 3 sons were all forced out of me at childbirth, by nurses and doctors using oxytocin by drip to hasten the births, to deliver on the day shift.  Traumatic experiences, extreme pain during the labour of my younger two sons due to insufficient pain relief.  My reactive psychoses were forms of post-traumatic stress.  I got punished for externally expressing my distress by more drugs forced in when I resisted.  I determined to get off the drugs/meds within the year, making a full recovery, and so I did, getting back on with my life, without interference.

1998 with my 3 sons

In 2002 after the antipsychotic depressed me, unlike in earlier episodes where I just was left to get on with it, the psychiatrist put me on Venlafaxine antidepressant, which caused suicidal impulse and I swallowed a bottle of them, being rushed by ambulance to Ninewells Hospital, on oxygen.  

me aged about 11

Psychiatrist upped the dose to maximum despite my request to be put on a different antidepressant.  The "Are you tearful?""No. I'm flat" [correct answer] routine went on for a while and so he prescribed Lithium to "augment" the antidepressant.  Whatever that means.  Well it didn't do anything.  I was still flat as a pancake, couldn't sing, had very little sense of humour, was most unlike myself, and so I had to do something about it.  I had to take charge of my own mental health.

I didn't like being flattened.

1999 with my 3 sons at my middle sister's wedding in Fife; I was Maid of Honour

this summer on ferry to Rothesay with bike; day trip from Springfield, Fife

 
Published on Jul 27, 2017

"On the island, walking around Arinagour, from Tigh-na-Mara guest house, seeing Border Leicester sheep, at Church of Scotland, on way to An Cridhe for Barbara Dickson fundraising concert."

my latest submission to @EMPOWER_EWS app survey on "hearing voices" messages

just completed the 3 boxes for Hearing Voices on @EMPOWER_EWS app survey; with a qualifying statement because I don't "hear voices" internally although when experiencing #psychosis the voices of others can become very loud; fyi @andygumley https://t.co/RdgiW3Hszn pic.twitter.com/CjxqGq1m5n

— Chrys Muirhead (@ChrysMuirhead) October 1, 2017

Had already completed the survey, doing it in a oner.  Thought I'd have another go, taking it slower, reflecting more during the process, thinking back to my own experiences of psychosis and coming through.  This may be useful to other folk.

Prof Gumley's reference for my PhD 5Dec16: "I believe that Chrys has what it takes"

Was reflecting again on my PhD aspirations which came to nothing, at the University of Edinburgh, Clinical Psychology department.  And in particular the very good reference which Professor Andrew Gumley gave about my suitability for the PhD, researching safe haven crisis houses in the UK and abroad.

In which he said:

"Chrys brings considerable and important strengths from her experiences in community development, as a survivor of mental health services and as a carer of family members who themselves have experienced mental health services. Through her work as a blogger and writer, Chrys has been an active campaigner for culture change in mental health services. This experience and energy places Chrys in an exceptionally strong position to pursue her interests in developing Crisis Houses / Safe Havens as an alternative to psychiatric admission, which is the topic of her PhD application."

Here it is: