A Letter to the Lesser Hitchens Brother

Mr. Hitchens,

While elements of your case against anti-depressants may be valid, you are undermining your case by blaming them for just about every terrible thing that happens anywhere on the planet. LIke Scientology and its video on You Tube ‘PSYCHIATRY: THE INDUSTRY OF DEATH’ although even they make some valid points.

I noticed that you mentioned the Hannah Bonser case a few months back in the context of anti-psychotics. (‘She was also prescribed ‘antipsychotic’ drugs, and who knows what effect they may have had?’) If you have read Theodore Dalrymple’s ‘If Symptoms Persist’ he writes about a young woman in the manic phase of her disorder who had (and these are the good doctor’s words, not mine.) ‘taken to hearing voices’ and gloating over the fact that he orders his ‘underlings’ (aka: nurses) to forcibly medicate her ‘in the buttocks’.

I fear for the future of journalism when mere fact checking is interpreted as an ad hominem attack.

In response to this.

…

Talking of Collective Guilt

Peter Hitchens has some rather interesting things to say about psychiatry.

He has taken the debate to a whole new level.  Thus far the mainstream media have focused on the pharmaceutical industry.  But they merely produce, they do not prescribe.  This task is in the hands of psychiatrists.  There is an understandable reluctance to criticize doctors.  We have elevated them to the status of minor deities who, even when they do wrong, are acting as a result of the purest of intentions but this does not accord with contemporary and historical reality.  The reason people wind up on pedestals is because other people put them there.

 

Now This Really is Priceless

‘But roughly from the end of the Victorian age until the Second World War, we based our policing and justice and prisons on the belief that people should be and were free in almost all aspects of life, but if they broke known laws they would be treated with some harshness, and deliberately punished, through loss of liberty and honour, compulsory hard work, separation from the world outside, deprivation of pleasures, austere living conditions etc.’

Now, don’t laugh, this could be true.  On whichever planet Mr. Hitchens (Future PM and Leader of the Free World) happens to be posting from.

The death rattle of a thoroughly discredited generation.

The Rage Against God

On the Relative Courtesy of Bullets

And now, somewhat belatedly, I come to the verdict of the Inquest into the Death of City Barrister, Mark Saunders.  The Coroner’s Court yielded to common sense and returned a verdict of lawful killing.  So it is now, thankfully, at an end.  My favourite newspaper  The Daily Mail seems determined to squeeze the last few drops of blood out of the case.

I wonder what the Daily Mail’s traditional readers would make of Peter Hitchens’ comments in his column two weeks ago, in which he attributes Mr Saunders’ behaviour to the fact that he had been taking anti-depressants: Oh, and please note, the crazed, shotgun-wielding barrister Mark Saunders was taking ant-depressants – another connection everyone refuses to see.’

Yes, Mr Hitchens, Mr Saunders was indeed taking anti-depressants but he had also imbibed alcohol and taken cocaine along with a whole host of other legal/illegal drugs, non of which would have been compatible with one another.  A doctor can only go so far in ensuring that a non-compliant patient (who is not a candidate for a section) adheres to the drug regime that has been prescribed for him.

And now another ‘Daily Hate’ columnist is in on the act.  Max Hastings claims that the police shot Mark Saunders like a ‘mad dog’.  (Is it common for armed police officers to launch into lengthy negotiations with mad dogs before they eventually shoot them?  And who is in charge of negotiations?  I knew police dogs were smarter than your average pooch but still…).  It is, Hastings asserts, ‘an affront to the values of a decent society.’  And to have simply left him to get on with it would have been a lesser affront?  Hastings is at pains to emphasize that Mr. Saunders was ‘drunken and depressed’.  So, wouldn’t that have made him even more dangerous to the public then?  And intoxication itself is no defence in law.  Hastings proceeds to berate the police officers on the scene for denying Mrs Saunders access to her husband.  Given that they were separated, it is hard to see what good that would have done.  Now let’s imagine what would have happened if the police had permitted Mrs Saunders contact with her husband and she had been harmed in any way.  There would have been an outcry, of course, led by The Daily Mail itself.

It occurred to me that Max Hastings and the tabloid for which he writes have chanced upon some scientific evidence which reveals a difference in lethality between the bullets from a gun fired by a city barrister from his 2.2 million pound home and the bullets fired by the gun of some ‘yob’ from a Liverpool council estate.  Perhaps the brilliant barrister’s bullets were gentler, more civilised, more refined.  Perhaps each one presents a summing up before it tears through your flesh and turns your insides to mush.  Lesson learnt: if you must get yourself shot, get yourself shot by a barrister

All Aboard the Gravy Train

Interesting comment by Peter Hitchens in his Mail on Sunday Column.  And, God forgive me, I agree with him.  I feel all dirty now.  I’m going to be scrubbing my skin with scouring pad and bleach for the next week.

My mother, a psychiatric nurse in inner city Birmingham, on an acute ward told me how the addiction gravy train works. Here’s what happens: police bring addict in to the acute ward.  The next day they meet with the consultant psychiatrist and key nurse and a care plan is drawn up.  One of the conditions of that care plan will be that if the addict leaves the hospital and returns obviously under the influence of drugs they will be discharged.  In numerous cases this is exactly what they will do – leave the hospital and return clearly under the influence of their drug of choice.  The nurses will recommend discharge.  The patient will meet with his/her consultant and the nurses will almost invariably be overruled, proving that the care plan is, quite literally, not worth the paper it’s written on.

Treating addicts as helpless victims is not always helpful and, in many cases, it can be downright destructive.  Because the hidden message is that they will always be addicts, that they are not capable of anything else; that this is all they are and this is all they ever will be.  By failing to treat addicts as autonomous beings who are responsible for their own actions, you are depriving them of their humanity. And that’s more insulting than a thousand ‘right wing tirades’ could ever be.

Sometimes kindness can kill.

Still the Same Old, Same Old…

Tories.

Dave’s words of wisdom:

We talk about people being “at risk of obesity” instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise. We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it’s as if these things – obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction – are purely external events like a plague or bad weather. “Of course, circumstances – where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school, and the choices your parents make – have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make.

Speaking of being at risk of obesity, has anyone noticed that ‘Dave’ himself is looking a tad, well, portly, recently. Look at those pink, chubby cheeks. He’s not exactly the Tory answer to Kate Moss now, is he? I might write to him with a few tips on how to shed that extra weight.

And in other news: Apparently, Dave no 2 (Mini Me 0r David Davis) cost the taxpayer £80,000 with his little gesture. I wonder if the Mail on Sunday will be bitchin’ about that. We might get a line or two from the gorgeous Peter Hitchens, who is right on the money, by the way, when he comments on how easily fooled these people are. I guess if you stand for nothing you fall for everything.

And tell me Dave, what action are you going to take against ‘fat’ (aka: devoid of self discipline*) members of your own party:

(I is furry scared.  Imaginary kitties, ghostly felines, blurred lines, landmines.  Tired but afraid to sleep.  Need a kitty to cuddle but GhostCat might chase real cats away.  They shall have their revenge)

*This is not what I believe. by the way.  I am no more ‘morally superior’ to these ‘corpulent MPs) because, at the age of fourteen, I learnt to purge.