High-handed treatment by the PA Hospital

I am angry. After giving him the benefit of the doubt, despite our history, Professor Mark Taylor has betrayed my trust in him and his considered judgement. I should have been more wary – in 2001 he wrote that I had a psychotic illness when I said (and wrote) that AIDS is man-made. At the time, he opined that before I became “ill” I had a paranoid, narcissistic personality disorder. This character assassination and drugging was at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne and I had hoped that the last 17 years would have improved Mark Taylor’s judgement and medical practice. A competent psychiatrist can ascertain whether a person is mad or sane in a few minutes, and can do it over the phone.

Last week I received a note in the mail from Raghavan ‘Raghy’ Raman who has been appointed my “case manager” since the English nurse Nigel Lewin went on long-service leave a few months ago. Lewin had been injecting me on the orders of a succession of psychiatrists at the PA since 2012, when I was locked up for 2 months for maintaining that my father was a supporter of Tamil Tiger terrorism and had worked as a lobbyist of the organization. The hospital refused to look at the evidence that I provided of my claims and put me under the authority of an Indian Tamil psychiatrist many years my junior who is known to my father.

The note Raghy sent informed me that “my” injection will be due today but that he would be on leave for two weeks. I was asked to come in for the injection, to be given by one of the other 200 staff of the MSAMHS. I was given a number to ring – that of the “psychosis team”.

I rang the number and asked to speak to Balaji Motamarri, the long-time director of MSAMHS, who also qualified in India, before coming to Australia in 1998. “We don’t have a Dr Motamarri working here”. I said that he was the director of the organization and I was put through, instead to Sharon Locke, the “team leader”. I have spoken to this woman many times in the past, and expressed my objections to the PA Hospital’s negligent, high-handed treatment of its patients, including myself. She listens and notes things down, but says she can’t comment on matters that I need to “discuss with the doctor”, including my diagnosis and need for treatment.

When I met Mark Taylor after 17 years I had 24-hours notice to prepare. I had been phoned by Raghy Raman the day before to say that rather than Ghazala Watt, I would be seeing “Dr Taylor”. I told him that Mark Taylor had been responsible for locking me up in Melbourne in 2001, and was one of the psychiatrists I had named in the Statement of Claim I sent to the hospital, but was not accepted by the courts. The hospital psychiatrists referred to this as my being “litiginous” and further evidence that I was mentally ill.

In 2001 Mark Taylor wrote that I was deluded about “AIDS, eugenics etc” and misrepresented my statement to him that my father was a supporter of Tamil Tiger terrorism, and was trying to stop me from asking him what he knew about biological warfare. Taylor wrote that I believed that my father was spreading AIDS and that he is a “biological terrorist”. He wrote that these beliefs (about AIDS, eugenics and my father) were evidence of schizophrenia and recommended that I be injected with zuclopenthixol (Clopixol) against my will under a “Community Treatment Order” (CTO). I successfully appealed against the CTO was was released from forced treatment by the Alfred Hospital, but now Mark Taylor has turned up again, and has been given power over me.

I answered Mark Taylor’s questions about me honestly but did not get a chance to show him any of the evidence of my sanity that I had carefully packed in my briefcase to show him. The opportunity never arose, since he was sitting in front of the computer screen and typing my responses to his interrogation of me. He was particularly interested in my drug intake but also asked general questions about my health. I was relieved to speak to somebody who was fluent in English and encouraged by his assessment that I was “no longer” psychotic and his promise that would consider reducing the injections.

After I expressed my concerns to Sharon Locke last week, Mark Taylor phoned me back and asked how he could help me. This is a first from psychiatrists at the PA Hospital. I said he had said he would think about stopping or reducing the injection. He agreed he had done so, but wanted to be sure that I was “stable” fiirst. I assured them that I was, and the only problem I have is side-effects from the 100 mg of paliperidone that Ghazala Watt had insisted be injected into me when my father contacted the “service” complaining about me again.

Rather than assessing my mental state over the phone, Mark Taylor said he wanted to “check with your case manager Raghy”. This is ridiculous and negligent. I have already told Taylor how Raman, who is an Indian Tamil with poor English skills, thought that the Tamil Tigers were “activists” rather than terrorists, and was clearly sympathetic to the terrorist organzation I have long been opposed to and my father supported. Today I told Sharon Locke more disturbing facts about Raghy Raman that I had not shared before, since he asked me to keep his confidence. These related to his own medical problems, including the cause of his psoriasis and hypertension. He was blaming the antihypertensives he was on for worsening his psoriasis, but I suggested that maybe stress was a common factor in both. He agreed that he was stressed, but blamed his wife’s behaviour towards him as the cause of the stress, and that there was nothing he could do about it. He then told me he expected to commit suicide when he was forced by his age to retire. This man is not in a position to judge the sanity of me or anyone else.

The injections don’t need to be reduced, they need to be stopped. It is patently obvious that I don’t have schizophrenia, if the the term is to be understood by the contents of psychiatric texts.