More of My Story

Dr. Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam Arya Chakravarti

aryachakravarti@icloud.com

romeshsenewiratne@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/DrAryaChakravarti

Yesterday I went to the Upper Mt Gravatt Police Station, opposite the euphemistically-named ‘Garden City’, to collect $1,200 of new $50 notes that had been ‘seized’ by the Queensland Police on 29 May this year, after they abducted me from outside my house at Fegen Drive and took me to the Princess Alexandra Hospital where I was locked up for a week and poisoned with antipsychotic drugs – though I was obviously not psychotic.

The grim woman at the counter asked me if I had an appointment for the return of the money. I told her that I had been given a report number to quote and that I would be given the money. I had been told it was taken to the Upper Mt Gravatt Station because the Moorooka Station did not have a safe. I also explained that the notes were new $50 notes in close-to mint condition that are worth much more than their face value. I had previously explained this to officers from the Moorooka Station.

The lady asked me for identification and I gave her my driver’s license. I was asked to wait while she spoke on the phone and then went to another room. When she returned, she told me that the money had been banked with the rest of Queensland Government revenue and that I will need to wait for two months for the station to give me a cheque for the money. She said that the matter of return of the actual notes required me to “take up the matter” with Sergeant Lee Slatter, whom I had heard her mentioning on the phone. She offered to send Slatter an email to contact me. I said it was not Slatter who took the money but a Sergeant Bernie Quinlan. She said she’s send Quinlan an email to contact me, too.

I had noticed that some of my money was missing when I was allowed home by Nakul Parashar, the Indian psychiatrist who had been put in charge of me. Parashar, who I had never met before, said he had discussed me with Anup Joseph, who is also Indian, as is Manaan Kar Ray who took over as Director of Psychiatry in 2016 from Balaji Motamarri (who is also Indian). I discussed my father with Motamarri over the phone (you can see it on YouTube) and also with Anup Joseph, the previous psychiatrist Tarun Sehgal (also Indian) and Nakul Parashar (who would not tell me his first name or where he qualified).

Joseph said my claim that my father supported the Tamil Tigers was “far-fetched” and that he was increasing the dose of the abusive injection I was being subjected to. This injection made the sialorrhoea (hypersalivation) and slurred speech that I had developed from the years of dopamine-blocker injections much worse. Saliva was falling from my mouth constantly, staining all my clothes. People couldn’t understand what I was saying over the phone. The injections also sterilised me and I started developing a peripheral neuropathy with numbness in my toes.

I had already told this to Joseph, who graduated in Manipal in 2003 and came to Australia through the “regional doctors program” by taking a job at the infamous Bundaberg Hospital (that previously employed the notorious Dr Patel dubbed “Dr Death” by the Australian media). Terun Sehgal graduated from the MGR University, established by the film director and Tamil Nadu politician MG Ramachandran. According the Tamil Tiger arms procurer Kumaran Pathmanathan (KP) “MGR” as he was called was a key financier of the Tamil Tigers.

The day after I was locked up Nakul Parashar told me he had discussed me with Anup Joseph and they wanted to “restart the injections”. The injections had been stopped several months before this after the case manager Raghavan Raman refused to give me any more injections after observing the deterioration in my health.While I was locked up in hospital I was given tablets of an “antipsychotic” drug by the name of aripiprazole. The nurses had orders to inject me if i refused, so I swallowed the tablets. The drooling became worse. I complained about it to the nurses. One of them offered me a bib. The charge nurse accused me of faking it and drooling on purpose. I was furious, but knew not to show it.

I was told that I would not be discharged until I had an injection of depot aripiprazole. I agreed to accept the injection, though I told them it would make the drooling worse and asked them to give me a small dose. This request was ignored and I was injected with 400 mg of the drug and then told I could leave.

A couple of days after I was allowed home I was visited by two police officers, an obese middle-aged man with a young woman. I recognised his accent as English, which he confirmed. He told me his name was Sergeant Slatter from the South Brisbane station and that he had come to question me about some “cannabis” that had been found by the police in my house. I asked him about the missing money and he confirmed that about $!,000 had been taken for “safekeeping” by Constable Anthony Gallagher, who was the “arresting officer” on 29 May. He asked if I had not been given a receipt for it (as is required by law). I said I had not. I also told him I was happy to talk to them and asked them to verify that what had been seized by the police were molasses of hemp drained of THC and poisoned with arsenic. The policewoman asked “you mean it was tampered with?” I said they have been poisoning Black people in Australia with arsenic for a long time.

I also tried to tell them about corruption at the PA Hospital. I began by saying how the registrar Sagir Parkar had told me that “we all know that pharmaceutical corruption is rampant” back in 2013. Parkar, who is also Indian was brought to my house several times by the case manager Nigel Lewin.

Sgt Slatter stopped me. “This is way above my pay grade” he said.

He then told me he could not take a statement from me because I was “affected” by the injection but was issuing me with an order to go to the Upper Mount Gravatt station to be fingerprinted and an order to appear in the Roma Street Magistrate’s Court in the Brisbane City to answer a charge of “possession of dangerous drugs”. He said I could ask about the seized money when I went to the station to be fingerprinted. I said the police already have my fingerprints (and handprints) but he said it had to be done again. I then asked why it could not be done at the local Moorooka Station and he said they did not have the necessary equipment.

I did not attend court or go to the Mt Gravatt station to be fingerprinted. Shortly after I was supposed to be in court I was visited and arrested by Sergeant Michael Walters and a junior officer from Moorooka station for failure to appear in court and taken to the City Watchhouse. My clothes were dirty and stained. Dirty because I was gardening when the police arrived and stained because of the saliva that was falling from my mouth. I asked who had ordered the arrest and they said the Officer in Charge was Senior Sergeant Tony Collins.

I was told by the rude police woman it the watch house that I was being given “another chance” to appear in court and got me to sign documents agreeing to it. She said she didn’t want to hear any of my “excuses” for not attending court. She said, though that if I pleaded not guilty I would need to “come back to court”. I had to pay $30.00 to get home in a taxi.

Before I hailed the taxi I went to the Magistrate’s Court to ask how I could present my defence online using Skype. The officer I asked conferred with a colleague and told me I had to request it in an email to the “JAG”. He told me this is the “Justice and Attorney-General’s Department”.When I got home I investigated the JAG and Sergeants Collins and Quinlan online. I had been told by Constable Anthony Gallagher who had come to my house some days earlier that the officer who took the money for “safekeeping” was a Sergeant Bernie Quinlan, the boss of the “Vulnerable Persons and Domestic Violence Unit” who had been called to assist Mel Rodgers and Gallagher when I refused to go with them to the PA Hospital on the 29th of May. I said I did not give them permission to enter my house and that they were obliged to tell me about taking the money and give me a receipt for it.

I found a photo online of the boss of the Moorooka station, Senior Sergeant Anthony Collins posing while cutting a cake to celebrate 100 years of the Moorooka Police Station of which he has been the Officer in Charge since 2013. There were also photos of him posing, at the same event, with the politicians Graham Perrett and Steve Griffiths. Griffiths, my local councillor is the son of Colin Griffiths who works in his son’s office and advised my neighbour Miller to keep a “diary” of my actions in 2015 and contacted the police for Miller at this time (Miller has written in his handwritten “diary” on 28.8.2015 – “Col called Police on my behalf, $12-30 approx.). This was prior to my being locked up, chemically tortured and robbed on 22 September 2015 (my 55th birthday) after another series of false and malicious reports by both Miller and my father, Brian Senewiratne.

I had been told, back in 2014, that his boss was Tony Collins by an officer by the name of Darren Boersma, when he abducted me from my lounge room at 9.00 pm at night, breaking my front door when I would not let him, handcuffing me and taking me to the PA Hospital. He did not secure the glass door panel he had broken and some of my valuables were stolen while I was locked up.

I then checked out Bernie Quinlan who had arrived in a second police car with an obese middle-aged Englishman who said he was “mental health worker” on 29 May (I don’t remember his name, but I didn’t like him or his actions which were to approve that I be taken forcibly to the ‘hospital’). There was a photo of Quinlan posing with the ex-police prosecutor Atul Bhagwan, whose online biography indicates was a Major in the Indian Army before he came to Australia, became a lawyer and promoted to the position of Chief Police Prosecutor. He held this position for about 10 years and is now offering his private legal services. The photo with Quinlan was taken at a fund-raising event for a “safe house” for South Asian women, misleadingly called “Sahara”.

I also contacted the Justice and Attorney-General’s department by phone and sent the Director of JAG, David Mackie, a connection request on LinkedIn. I was pleasantly surprised when he accepted the request. When I rang the JAG I was told I was put through, after a delay, to a man with an Indian accent who told me that I needed to contact the court but that they would only allow the case to be transferred to the (closer and more accessible) Holland Park Magistrate’s Court if I pleaded guilty. I asked Constable Gallagher about this. “I don’t think that’s right”, he said.

I then sent a submission to the Roma Street Magistrates Court asking that the charges be dropped or transferred to the Holland Park Magistrates Court. I also asked to present my case by videoconferencing. The latter request was ignored and I received a letter the next week saying the case had been adjourned till 9 December at the Holland Park Magistrate’s Court.I have been robbed several times after being taken to the PA Hospital by the Moorooka Police, including in 2015, 2016 and 2017. The thefts have included my valuable coin collection, stamp collection, musical equipment, recording equipment, cameras, computers and memory sticks. I reported these robberies to the police several times.

I gathered from what I was told by the PA Hospital, that my next-door neighbour Jeff Miller had claimed that I was “pacing up and down the street”. I wasn’t. I was checking the flow of water from my property into the storm water drain in Whittle Street, behind my house. You can see this from my YouTube channel.Two officers arrived in a car that pulled up in front of Miller’s house. Both were wearing sunglasses and armed with guns and tasers. I knew the first police officer who approached me by name. Her name is Melissa Rodgers, but calls herself ‘Mel’. She calls me “Dr Romesh’ and she has abducted me from my home several times since 2013, when she did it the first time. This was following false reports about me from the same source – my next door neighbour Jeffrey Mitchell Miller, who lives at 74 Fegen Drive.

Miller has been my neighbour since Sara and I moved into number 76 on 16 October 2008. I remember the date because it was Sara’s birthday. I extended my hand in friendship towards him and his family when we first moved in, inviting them for dinner and to our daughter Zoe’s first birthday party. When we first moved here there was only a wire mesh half-height fence between our properties enabling Miller and I to observe each other and talk to each other when we were in our “back yards” as they call what the British call “back gardens”. My back garden has many trees and I tried growing vegetables in a small “veggie patch” I made under the shade of a Flamboyant (Royal Poinciana) Tree. I watered the plants laboriously with a watering can. Miller used to laugh at me, but I took it with good humour.

I was locked up at the PA ‘Hospital’ for 5 days soon after Zoe was born on 30 August 2009. It broke my heart.This cruel imprisonment did not involve Miller, as far as I know. It was because of a false report by a man by the name of Pawel (“Paul”) Obrocki, whom I had met in 2006 when I was camping alone in the Border Ranges National Park. I had been introduced to this national park in northern New South Wales as a place to catch butterflies by a fellow medical student back in 1978 when it was still a logging forest called “Wiangaree State Forest”. At the time it was difficult to access the forest from Queensland and one had to circuit Wullubin and travel up Lion’s Road to get there. Wullubin or Wooloobin is the rocky core of a giant shield volcano (the Tweed Volcano). The so-called “Scenic Rim’ in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales, with their lush forests and waterfalls are the rim of this huge volcano that Captain Cook named “Mount Warning”.

I heard Obrocki before I met him. He has a loud voice and was saying to someone with a quiet voice that he would “kill for a coffee”. I didn’t take it literally and offered them some of mine. I found that his accent, which I had thought might be Swiss, was actually Polish and his companion, a young woman called Astrid was a tourist from France. I was surprised by her ambition, which was to become a butcher.

When we shared coffee and a few joints Obrocki told me he was a “green architect”. He also told me he and his partner, who was in Brisbane, did not watch TV. He asked me to write a limerick for him (after explaining what it was) and to give him my phone number. I obliged. He also asked me if I thought it was possible to remove a full-grown tree from a forest. He said the reason he was asking was that he had found a hole in the ground that looked like a giant tree had been removed and that he and Astrid had slept in this hole.

I later found that it was not true that he was an architect, let alone a “green architect”. He repeatedly told me, “never let truth get in the way of a good story”. This is the motto of a liar. The truth, which I gathered when I was living for a year in his garage, was that he had been unable to complete his written thesis for his architecture degree which was supposed to be on “healthy houses”. This was despite the help of his partner Gosia Osielska, who was and is far more literate. Gosia is an overweight physiotherapist, and Pawel’s qualification is as an “occupational therapist”. He was not qualified as a builder or an architect, but had been doing house “modifications” when he was working for what was then called the “Spastic Society”.

When I lived with them I discovered that Obrocki abused alcohol and was an aggressive drunk who picked arguments with people after he’d been drinking. He was also violent towards his young sons. From under their bedrooms I would hear him shouting, a thump or two, followed by the sound of them crying. I was very upset by this and tried discussing it with Gosia. Her response shocked me, “I don’t have to use the belt anymore, all I have to do is threaten to get it”. Shortly after I met him in the forest Obrocki invited me to their home at 33 Arras Street, Yeronga for dinner. I met Gosia and his two sons and enjoyed the evening. Obrocki uses flattery to achieve his ends and told me he wanted me to be his “mentor” and offered me a job to do a “mosaic” in tiles at a house he was renovating in Inala. He said that he needed my “artistic skills” and was insistent that it did not matter that I had never done it before. I was desperately in need of money after escaping from torture in Melbourne penniless so I accepted.

Over the years I worked out Obrocki’s modus operandi. This was to seduce older women and convince them to register as “owner builders” while he did the building on the cheap using his dodgy Polish mates. This is said in the Australian vernacular.The first of these women that I met was the owner of the house that I was commissioned to do a “mosaic” for while Obrocki did the design and all the building single-handedly except for the electrical connections, which were done by a Polish man who was morbidly fearful of magnetic fields by the name of Marek. (I met him later when he asked me to look at his psychiatric records and documents while I was living in Obrocki’s garage in 2008). I noticed, with disapproval, that Obrocki was giving this lady “relationship advice” regarding her husband with whom she was having marital difficulties and also was flirting with her, saying how much he liked older women. I tried discussing it with him, but he defended his actions. Later I met another middle-aged woman whom Obrocki had built a plywood attachment for. In my presence he told her how attractive she was and how he was attracted to older women. She, too, had been convinced to register as an “owner-builder” for Obrocki to do the building.

Immediately after we moved into this house (from Obrocki’s garage, where Sara had joined me from Melbourne) Pawel tried to convince Sara and I to employ him to build an attachment to the house. Sara was in agreement and offered him $60,000 to built it. The condition was that she become part owner of the house with her name on the title deeds.

Sara’s brother Guido (“Andrew”) was getting married for the second time, this time to a girl called May from Cambodia. I was told that her family owned a bicycle shop but that’s all. Sara and her mother Rosario (“Charo”) attended the wedding. Before she left for Cambodia Sara rang me from Melbourne and told me she was pregnant. I was overjoyed. That night I recorded “Groove for Our New Baby”. It shows how happy I was.

I was very attentive to Sara’s needs while she was pregnant with awareness of the auditory environment of the baby inside her. We did not argue even once and I complied with her wishes most of the time. She was interested in “hypnobirthing” and I helped her make a personal hypnosis CD. I also recorded a couple of CDs of “birthing music” consisting of her favourite music and tried to learn basic shiatsu pressure points. She used to watch a DVD on “yoga for pregnancy” that Obrocki gave her. However, I refused her request for me to do a home delivery. Consequently, Zoe was born in the Mater Hospital.

I brought Sara home from the hospital the day after Zoe was born. Sara has described it subsequently as an ecstatic experience, but I found it stressful because of how the doctors and nurses at the hospital reacted to the fact that Zoe was born with “intact membranes” (the amniotic sac had not ruptured). The nurses panicked as said Sara might need a Caesarean Section. They called the obstetric registrar who was fortunately sensible and just ruptured the membranes and reassured us, though she said the baby needed to be monitored with a CTG.

As it turned out Sara wanted to give birth standing up. She refused all pain killers and held onto me while she gave birth. It was she who wanted to call our daughter Zoe Raven Jade Senewiratne-Di Genova. I had some reservations about the name but I agreed to it. She said she wanted to call her “Raven” because of the black birds in our skies. I later found out that they are crows, not ravens. I also found out that Jade is the middle name of my sister Shireen’s daughter Talita. My main objection to the name Zoe is that there is no Z in Singhala or Tamil, so my Singhalese and Tamil brethren would have difficulty saying it.

Anyway, after I had brought Sara and Zoe from the hospital. my mother Kamalini rang me up to tell me that she and my father were planning on coming around to see our new baby. That evening they came around, and stayed a short while. The next day my mother rang and asked me to speak to my father and she handed him the phone. I decided to try and have a frank and honest conversation with him. I was very angry after the way he had treated both Sara and me as well as his propaganda activities in support of the LTTE (Tamil Tigers). I told him for the first time that it was I who had reported him to the Federal Police for his support of the Tamil Tigers and not a cousin of his in Sri Lanka, as he had supposed. Needless to say, he was furious.

The next day my mother came around and told me that my father had “abused” her badly and was crying about his plight, fearing that he may go to jail. He had told her that his friends in Melbourne and Sydney were being “rounded up”. She said “he thinks you’re ill and wanted to know if you would go in voluntarily for an injection.”

I rang Gosia the following morning. I had not told Sara or anyone else about reporting my father on the National Security Hotline in May 2009 or the information and interview I had given the Federal Police (while Sara was out of this house). This was in the final stages of the war against the Tamil Tigers, after I had seen footage on TV of the LTTE shooting people who were trying to leave them and cross to the government side. I tried telling my mother this but she wouldn’t believe it and accused me of being “brainwashed by Rajapaksa”.

I had also carefully watched the “13 DVDs” that my father had been boasting about to the expatriate Tamil community as a “major contribution” that had been “hailed as God’s gift to mankind”. I provided the 13 DVDs to the counter-terrorism investigator who came to my house and asked me to give her and her (middle aged male) colleague a recorded interview. She said her name was “Nicole East” but I noted that the card she gave me had an email address of “n.scott”. Some weeks after the end of the war the DVDs were returned to me. A couple of years ago I was informed that the Federal Police had completed an investigation into claims that my father had supported the LTTE in July 2009 and found that they were false.

Returning to my story, when I rang Gosia I asked her to come around so that I could talk to her without Pawel. I trusted her judgement and advice while I did not trust Obrockis. I told her I wanted to discuss my father with her. I had discussed him with her many times before, though they had never met. I then walked down to the shops on Beaudesert Road to buy some milk and a newspaper.

When I returned I was surprised to find both Pawel’s and Gosia’s cars parked outside. Pawel was in the street talking on a mobile phone and Gosia was standing in the front garden with her mother Anya. I told Gosia I wanted to speak to her alone and walked past her, opening the front door. To my surprise there was a man hiding behind the door. He was Pawel’s Colombian mate Carlos Martinez, who I had met many times at Arras Street. Obrocki had told me how he, Carlos and Ziggy (who was Yugoslavian) were the “bad boys of architecture”. The three of them had used and, by the sound of it, abused a young New Guinean architecture student by the name of Carl when they were required to do a group architecture project at the University of Queensland. Carl’s had designed what was called a “Wind House”. It is a traditional New Guinean design. Obrocki used this design as well as Carl’s labour to build what he called “The Shack” on a 50-acre block of land that his mother Dana owned in Mount Tambourine.

He then fleeced his wealthy mother out of $200,000 for “designing” a house that he promised to build on the land. Obrocki did not have the first idea how to build a whole house, and despite many years and excuses the house never got built. He got his mother, who is morbidly obese, to plant an avenue of trees leading up to the site of the promised house but they and the road were washed away by the next heavy rain. As well as this, he had done renovations and built a new bathroom in the house at 33 Arras Street, but they could not use the shower for more than a year because water was dripping into the room below, which he had rented out to his friend Marchek (who was living next to me while I was in the garage).

Carlos was a captain in the Colombian army before he escaped justice, fled to Australia and studied architecture. He told me his version of the story at some length when I was living in Obrocki’s garage. I had met him and his partner many times by then. Carlos told me he escaped Colombia to avoid being arrested for supplying weapons to ‘right wing militias’ who were fighting against the “FARC rebels”. I asked him if the accusation was true. “Everyone was doing it”, was his self-serving response.

I was furious when I found Carlos hiding behind the door and ordered him out of the house. Then I went into the bedroom to see that Zoe and Sara were OK. I picked up Zoe gently, carried her to the garden and sat down with her in my arms. I told Obrocki and Osielska to leave. I did not raise my voice. Then the police arrived. Zoe was still asleep in my arms.

I later found out, by reading the PA Hospital reports, that Obrocki had told the police that I had “barricaded’ myself in my house with my newborn baby and that I had “a history” of “barricading” myself “in houses with children”. When I questioned him over the phone about this some years ago he admitted he had said I had such a history, but he wouldn’t divulge the source of the lie. He maintained that I was “running around shouting” with my baby in my arms and he had decided to “put the child’s health ahead of our friendship”. I also asked him why he had brought Carlos and he said that he needed “moral support” because he had “limited experience in dealing with people who are crazy”. When I rang Carlos Martinez about it he denied ever coming to my house.

As I have said, when the police arrived I had not barricaded myself anywhere. I was seated in the garden with our baby in my arms. They asked me to give Zoe to Sara, who had hobbled out of the house. I did so. Then they grabbed me, handcuffed me, and took me to the PA Hospital. While in the police car I told them about Pawel Obrocki and Gosia Osielska. The hospital has recorded that I had persecutory delusions about Ozzie Osborne!

I was then deprived of experiencing Zoe’s first days, and forced to take antipsychotic drugs by the psychiatrist Daniel Varghese. Varghese is the son of the psychiatrist Frank Varghese whose real name is Thomas. I was told this by Daniel’s uncle (and Frank’s younger brother) Paul, who was in my batch and a good friend of mine when we studied medicine. Paul has been the Director of Geriatrics at the PA Hospital for many years. Frank used to be the Director of Psychiatry when my father was working on the medical wards and my sister training as a surgeon. He replaced Brett Emmerson who first got me locked up back in 1995, again on the instigation of my father. Brett’s father Bryan Emmerson was the professor who offered my father a job at the hospital back in 1975 and it was Brett who met us at the airport when we first arrived from Sri Lanka in January 1975. In 1995, when my father brought Brett to his house to certify me (after I had escaped from the Royal Park Hospital in Victoria) Brett was the director of Logan Hospital after a brief tenure as Chief Psychiatrist of Queensland. He is now the Director of Psychiatry at Metro North (which includes the Royal Brisbane Hospital and Prince Charles Hospital).

While I was locked up under Daniel Varghese my father flew to Melbourne to seek legal advice. I don’t know what this advice was or from whom. Varghese himself claimed that he was not an “investigator” and could not confirm or refute what I said about my father, but nevertheless denied me my freedom and claimed that I was “psychotic”. He also prescribed oral antipsychotic drugs which I agreed to take, since the alternative he presented me with was a depot injection. I was allowed to leave the hospital after five days, but he illegally put me on an “Involuntary Treatment Order” and got his registrar to contest my appeal for release at the Mental Health Review Board. Over the next few years he did this several times.

I have copies of about 10 MHRT reports dating back to 2009. I also have the Statement of Reasons provided by the tribunal justifying their decision on 15 December 2009 to confirm the ITO Varghese had illegally put me on. He did not attend the hearing himself but sent his registrar, an English doctor by the name of Steven Bower (who was older than Varghese himself) and a fat occupational therapist by the name of Jenny Pike who had been appointed my “case manager”. I did not like Pike but I quite liked Steven Bower. Bower told me that he would have been angry too if he had been subjected to what had been written about me, and defended the theory that AIDS was man-made as legitimate (Varghese had initially classed it as a delusion as had the psychiatrists in Melbourne).

I did not take the tablets, but I attended the appointments I was given to see Steven Bower. However I refused to see Jenny Pike the appointed ‘case manager’. Despite this, Steven Bower took me off the ITO after a few visits. He told the tribunal that this was because I was “cooperating with the treatment team and accepting treatment” and that he thought I could be “managed in a less restrictive environment”.

“However”, the report continues, “it didn’t take him long to stop his cooperation. He did continue to see Dr Bower but refused to see his case manager and was selective about who else he would see, such as which consulting psychiatrist”. I had objected to being diagnosed and treated by Varghese who was many years my junior and whose family I had known for many years. The report of Dr Bower’s testimony continues, “He only saw Dr Bower two or three times after the Involuntary Treatment Order was revoked and then stopped. He also ceased his prescribed medication. His mother contacted the mental health services with concerns about Dr Senewiratne’s behaviour and as a result a new Involuntary Treatment Order dated 25 October 2009 was instituted and he was admitted to the acute observation area (AOA) of the Princess Alexandra Hospital mental health ward”

To be continued….

Messages to Kieran Kinsella, Executive Director of Metro South Addiction and Mental Health Services (MSAMHS)

  • Hi Kieran,
  • Thanks for connecting.
  • JUL 19View Romesh’s profile
  • Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam 3:40 PM
  • Hi Kieran,
  • I am appealing to you for help and to ensure that I am not further harrassed and assaulted by the PA Hospital.
  • I will fill you in on some of the relevant details. I was first locked up at the PA under Dr Monica Des Arts and Dr Paul Schneider in 2002 on the instigation of my father Dr Brian Senewiratne, who was angry at my opposition to his medical and political actions. Medically I was opposed to his over-use of drugs and politically I was opposed to the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) and their efforts to divide Sri Lanka.
  • My father and family first got me locked up as a mental patient in 1995, when I was 34 years old and the director of my own medical practice in South Dandenong (Willow Lodge Medical Centre) where I had worked since moving to Melbourne from Brisbane in 1988. I graduated at the University of Queensland and did my hospital residency as well as two years as a paediatric registrar at the Royal Children’s Hospital before entering general practice. Prior to entering university I had been the top academic student (dux) of the Church of England Grammar School after we migrated from Sri Lanka in 1976. I had also been the top academic student at Trinity College, Kandy (Sri Lanka) and won many prizes and a scholarship at school.
  • According to Queensland law, people cannot legally have psychiatric treatment forced on them unless they have a mental illness that put themselves or the public at risk. This law is misused frequently with the claim that patients’ mental health will suffer if they don’t have drug treatment and they therefore place themselves at risk by refusing treatment. In addition, refusal to agree that you are mentally ill is regarded as “lack of insight” and evidence that the person is “ill”.
  • I am not mentally ill, and my 11,000+ connections on Linkedin indicate that I have a good professional network. I also have 3500 Facebook friends and YouTube and Scribd sites to which I upload my work.
  • A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by Rebecca Ibbotsen, the Psychosis Unit ‘team leader’ to tell me that I am not under Tarun Sehgal any more. This man had the temerity to ‘diagnose’ me as having ‘paranoid schizophrenia’ AND ‘personality disorders’ after two half-hour consultations three months apart and refused to read any of my work (which proves beyond reasonable doubt that I am not mentally ill).
  • I have been sterilized by the injections of Paliperidone which are now causing a peripheral neuropathy, slurring of my speech and hypersalivation. I complained to Sehgal and Dr Balaji Motamarri about this but the injection (which is not clinically justified in the first place) was not reduced let alone stopped, as it should be.
  • I left a message for you to call me to discuss this serious matter with me personally. My number is (07) 3277-2010
  • my email address is:
  • romeshsenewiratne@gmail.com
  • Thanks
  • Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam
  • JUL 29View Romesh’s profile
  • Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam 7:18 PM
  • Hi Kieran,
  • I was visited unannounced by the ‘case manager’ Nigel Lewin at my home and the headquarters of the Holistic University Network (HUN).
  • The HUN is a network of virtual universities that I began establishing in 2011 following the foundation of the Holistic University of Brisbane (HUB) in 2009, when I moved up to Brisbane from Melbourne.
  • I first met Ngel Lewin when he was working at the ‘Burke Street Clinic’ located next to the PA Hospital. His job was to inject patient after patient in the ‘treatment room’ under the orders of the psychiatrists and psychiatric registrars who precribed the depot injections. This was under the directorship of Dr Balaji Motamarri who was then the executive director of MSAHMS.
  • Nigel Lewin has been harassing me for years and comes to my house and leaves phone messages that I am to come to the ‘clinic’ for another injection. He calls himself a ‘clinical nurse’ and told me that he has a masters degree in tropical medicine as well as nursing qualifications but did not know what the amygdala is, and had not heard of Walter Cannon (the Harvard physiologist who coined the terms ‘fight and flight’ and ‘rest and digest’ to describe the functions of the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system). Yet he told me he was teaching nursing at several universities in Queensland before he started working for the PA Hospital (and later Metro South Hospital and Health Service).
  • Lewin had admitted to me in the past that I do not show signs of schizophrenia and today said he did not think I had a personality disorder. He says, though that this is because I am ‘under treatment’ (for what?)
  • The Indian psychiatrist Tarun Sehgal, who I have seen twice for a short period of time each time (in a small room with no windows) while he typed into a small DELL laptop on his desk rather than having a normal conversation with me, has written in a report to the Mental Health Review Tribunal (MHRT) that I have ‘paranoid schizophrenia’ as well as ‘specific personality disorders’. He refused to stop the dopamine-blocking drug despite the lack of clinical indication and the adverse affects I am suffering from. I know this because I trained in medicine at the University of Queensland, whereas Sehgal trained in an obscure medical school in Tamil Nadu (graduating many years after I did and without a comparable academic record),
  • The report the “psychosis team” submitted to the MHRT is full of false and misleading claims about me and amounts to a serious character assassination. It has been added to and embellished by serial psychiatrists and psychiatry registrars since 2011 and my repeated efforts to correct what is an official record about me have gone unheeded.
  • I told Lewin two months ago that I am claiming $2m compensation from him for his actions against me over the past 7 years and that it will go up by $1m for every subsequent injection I am given against my will and despite all the evidence I have provided of my sanity over the years.
  • I told him that I am now claiming $4m from him (he has injected me twice since I advised him of my intention to sue) and also claiming $4m from Tarun Sehgal as well as $5m from Dr Balaji Motamarri. This is in addition to my claims against the PA Hospital, Metro South Addiction and Mental Health Services (MSAMHS) and Metro South Hospital and Health Service (MSHHS).
  • I advised Lewin again that I do not want to be contacted by the PA Hospital, MSAHMS or MSHHS except through your lawyers MinterEllison.
  • Details of my claim can be found on the HUB Legal Department Facebook page:
  • https://www.facebook.com/HUBLegalDepartment
  • Thanks

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  • Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam 12:25 PM
  • Hi Kieran,
  • I have received two notes, one in the mail and one hand-delivered by a nurse by the name of Ian McKenzie. He said he had replaced Nigel Lewin as “my” case manager.
  • I am not a case but I have a case against the PA Hospital and Nigel Lewin. Details of my claims have been published and I am transparent in my actions.
  • McKenzie told me that another Indian psychiatrist by the name of Anup Joseph is now “my doctor”. I am not in need of a doctor and have a history of being disrespected, defamed and poisoned by a series of psychiatrists at the PA Hospital. I have also been locked up many times for refusing the abusive injections and refuting the negligent misdiagnosis of schizophrenia and was told that this would likely happen again if I do not attend the appointment with Joseph. I asked to speak to Anup Joseph on the phone but my request was refused.
  • This is high-handed abusive treatment, Kieran and I want it to stop. It is illegal to keep me on a treatment authority (TA) when I am in obviously good mental health and my postings on Linkedin, Facebook and YouTube prove this to have been the case for many years.
  • Please intervene in this serious matter and ensure that I am not persecuted and tortured further.
  • TODAYView Romesh’s profile
  • Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam 11:30 AM
  • Hi Kieran,
  • 10 weeks ago I attended an appointment with Dr Anup Joseph who qualified in the Manipal University in India many years after I graduated in Medicine at the University of Queensland.
  • I attended the appointment under duress following messages from Ian McKenzie advising me that if I failed to attend the appointment police would be sent to my house to return me to the hospital by force.
  • Prior to seeing him I rang Anup Joseph who told me he couldn’t give me the time I needed and that he knew it was a “serious matter”. I objected that I was suffering from sciatica and did not want to drive because of the pain in my left leg and back. He was unconcerned and insisted that I come in and see him, which I did despite the pain and discomfort.
  • I told him about the adverse effects of slurred speech, anhedonia, drooling (hypersalivation), sterility (no ejaculate), and peripheral neuropathy and asked that the injections be ceased since it is patently obvious that I am in good mental health and do not suffer from schizophrenia or any other mental illness. I do not have a ‘personality disorder’ either as was claimed by Tarun Sehgal, the previous psychiatrist who also graduated in India many years before I graduated in Australia.
  • Throughout the ‘consultation’ Anup Joseph was reading the CIMHA entries rather than maintaining eye contact and concentrating on what I was saying. This is basic courtesy and essential to follow the complexities of my conversation and narrative. It is also essential for a proper mental health examination and evaluation. You cannot listen and read about something else at the same time. My ten year old daughter knows this.
  • During the 45-minute interview he asked me about my father and the Mafia after reading what was on the PA hospital’s report for the MHRT. This forced me into a discussion about my father and the Genovese Mafia rather than my work as I had intended. I had taken two of my works with me to show him, “Eugenics and Genocide in the Modern World” (2010) and ‘The Politics of Schizophrenia” (2001). He scan read the contents page of the latter and read part of the section on “aetiological theories of schizophrenia”. He didn’t even scan-read the rest of the 300-paged book. He didn’t look at “Eugenics and Genocide in the Modern World” and changed the topic when I tried to discuss its contents with him.
  • Anup Joseph told me he is a “nominal Catholic” and that he comes from Kerala in South India. It so happens that this is where the Varghese family is from. I went to medical school with Paul Varghese who has long been the Director of Geriatrics at the PA and was one of his wedding guests. I have visited their family home many times and had long discussions with the brothers’ late father, George, who was a lecturer at the University of Queensland.
  • In a profound betrayal of my friendship with the Varghese Family I was locked up at the PA Hospital under Daniel Varghese in 2009 and 2010 on the instigation of my father, Brian Senewiratne, who also knows the family. I was not mentally ill at the time as can be verified by looking at my YouTube site which dates back to 2008.
  • https://www.youtube.com/romeshsenewiratne
  • Much to my horror, Anup Joseph who, as I said, hadn’t been concentrating on my speech and eye movements (essential for understanding and effective communication), told me he was INCREASING the abusive injection back to 100 mg of Paliperidone, despite the side-effects I was suffering from and despite the fact that I clearly do not have schizophrenia. This drug is a treatment for schizophrenia whose efficacy has been demonstrated only on the basis of improved PANSS scores (Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale) The case manager Nigel Lewin who trained as a mental health nurse in Britain has admitted that I do not rate highly on a PANSS score and never have.
  • The one criterion I rate highly on is the scale on “poor insight and judgement”, which is defined as denial of mental illness. This is the basis of monstrous human rights abuses in the USA and around the world.
  • I have very good judgement. I am also reflective and self-critical but I don’t like being subjected to character assassination and defamation. I also don’t like being poisoned and regard these abusive injections as assault constituting Grievous Bodily Harm.
  • The increased dose that I was subjected to on the orders of Joseph made my slurring and drooling so bad that Nigel Lewin refused to inject me with the 100 mg injection again. He agreed, however to inject me with 75mg, though Joseph at first wanted to leave the higher dose as it was.
  • It is now 6 weeks since this injection and I am improving steadily in my health. The salivation has lessened, my speech is clearer and I have a little bit of ejaculate. The strength of my hands, which had decreased and my dexterity playing the piano have improved – though still far short of my ability when I am not being subjected to drugs that block dopamine receptors in the brain.
  • I agreed to see Anup Joseph again in two days time, and hope he will obey the law and revoke the illegal treatment authority (TA) that the hospital has been using against me.
  • Please ensure that my right to refuse is respected.
  • Yours truly
  • Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam
  • romeshsenewiratne@gmail.com
  • Phone: 617- 3277 2010

Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam Arya Chakravarti

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Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam

Founder and Director at Holistic University Network (HUN)
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I have an appointment to see Anup Joseph again in 2 days time and have sent Kieran Kinsella another message on Linkedin. hashtagpsychiatry hashtaghumanrights

Anup Joseph’s Crazy Opinion

The PA Hospital psychiatrist Anup Joseph accused me of “living in a shell” and told me he hoped that increasing the dose of the abusive paliperidone injections the hospital has me on would help me “think and see more clearly”.

This short-sighted man does not think and see clearly himself. I showed him one of my folders of original theoretical work on music and the brain and turned the pages for him.

He looked at it through his glasses before saying “I don’t think I would understand most of this” and that he is “not a music person”. He was kind to himself – it means that he does not appreciate music.

I looked up “living in a shell” on Google, having never heard the phrase before. It came up with “being in ones shell”, meaning shy. It gives the example, “Jim is extremely shy. If you try to get him to talk he immediately goes into his shell.”

I am sociable and a good conversationalist with a broad range of interests. I have just reached 12,500 connections on LinkedIn. Anup Joseph is not even on LinkedIn. I have uploaded over 200 videos to my YouTube site including my music and work on holistic health promotion. Anup Joseph is not on YouTube or even on Facebook.

I was only able to find one publication credited to Anup Joseph. This was a paper co-written with other Indian psychiatrists when he was working at Manipal in India where he graduated in 2003. This paper was a study of weight gain on the Eli Lilly ‘antipsychotic’ drug Zyprexa (olanzapine) and involved giving psychiatric patients CT scans to measure their intra-abdominal fat deposits. It is common knowledge that Zyprexa causes unhealthy weight gain and obesity as well as diabetes. I told him this and that exposing patients to CT scans would increase their risk of cancer. He defended his bad science saying it was up to the ethics committee and that they were the first to demonstrate weight gain from Zyprexa in South Asia.

I tried to speak to Anup Joseph and his boss Manaan Kar Ray on the phone but they refused. Anup Joseph lost his temper when I wouldn’t tell him how I got his number. He has poor temper control in addition to being criminally negligent and egregiously corrupt.

Mark Taylor Won’t Budge

I went to see Associate Professor Mark Taylor again today. I went prepared, but was disappointed in the result. Though not surprised.

It was I who made the appointment, on my last visit to the new Woolloongabba Community Health Service building, of which the second floor is fully occupied by the Metro South Addiction and Mental Health Services (MSAMHS), supposedly a “service” to the people of Brisbane. The 2nd floor operation is effectively an outpatient clinic of the Princess Alexandra (PA) Hospital, and most of the patients were previously inpatients in one of the locked wards in Building 19.

I have been locked up many times in Building 19, usually in ‘West Wing Ward’ but also in ‘East Wing Ward’ and the euphemistically-named ‘Acute Observation Area’ (AOA) also called the High Dependency Unit (HDU). This is a double-locked ward that holds about 10 patients and is a hellish place. I was locked up there for 2 weeks in 2011, which is when I met Raghavan ‘Raghy’ Raman, who has now been appointed my ‘Case Manager’, responsible for “monitoring” my mental state for MSAHMS and recording and reporting his observations. Raghy Raman sat in on my interview with Mark Taylor, though he wasn’t present when I was last injected. This was about two weeks ago and was done by a very nice student nurse, who was polite enough to offer her hand to be shaken at the end of our encounter.

The nurse was learning to give injections in what is called the “Treatment Room”. Music and art are not among the treatments, needless to say. It is a tiny room with a set of scales, two fridges and cupboards with boxes of pre-filled depot injections, each with the name of a reluctant “client”. They now call patients “clients” to their faces but patients are referred to in the PA Hospital literature as “consumers”.

A couple of years ago Nigel Lewin, the British case manager who has been replaced by Raghy, told me that he thought I would make a “great consumer advocate”. I told him my objections to this manifestation of the “consumer culture”. I am not a consumer of psychiatric “services” or drugs – they are being forced into me by injection against my will. I am a victim and a survivor and I am also an extremely patient patient. The term patient has a long history and the term describes the attitude necessary for those who sought “treatment”.

The student nurse was nervous, so I didn’t alarm her by telling her that it was an assault. I had already told Raghy Raman, Nigel Lewin and the other case managers that I was submitting myself to be what is a monthly assault because if I refuse I will be taken back to the hospital by police, held down by security guards and injected anyway. Then I would be locked up again. For this reason I have allowed them to assault me every month for the past two years.

When I checked in at the long desk at the MSAMHS to be injected I introduced myself by saying “I’m here to be assaulted again”. The guy at the desk laughed. I’ve known him for many years and he doesn’t think I’m mad (and has told me so). He told me that Raghy was away but I’d have my injection given by the “Injection Nurse”. This was a hideous, grim woman who spends her day injecting “client” after “client” with neurotoxic drugs ordered by the doctors. She does not believe in talking to the patients, doesn’t smile or tell you her full name. She wears rubber gloves and doesn’t shake people’s hands before injecting them. On the second visit – in front of the student nurse – she asked me a few questions about my mood, eating and sleeping and recorded down my complaint about side-effects.

The student nurse was completely different in her attitude. When I told them that I was writing a book about music and the brain she said “how exciting”. She asked me if it was OK if she gave the injection and that I could give her “tips”. I told her that it was important to let the alcohol dry after swabbing the skin. “That stops it stinging”. The older nurse said “I do that too”, but she lied – the last time, when it was she who injected me she said “I won’t keep you waiting, so let’s get on with it” and hurried through the injection. I pointedly told the student to inject slowly, because that caused less tissue damage. The student nurse thanked me for the tips and extended her hand when I was leaving. There is hope for the future of nursing. But better still if they were confident enough to publicly disagree with the doctors.

I prepared for the interview with Mark Taylor by bringing with me four folders of my work. I told him I had brought some of my work to show him and prove my sanity.

“Oh good,” he said, but carried on typing, while looking at the screen and not at the folders.

I put the first one on the desk. It was my work-in-progress on psychoimmunology which I said was my short-term project.

“There’s a lot of interest in that,” he said, but he didn’t look through the 40-pages I have written so far.

I then showed him my long-term project, a book titled “Music, Instincts and Health”, telling him that I had written 350 pages so far and also had folders of research from the Internet on the topic, as well as folders of original theoretical work. He glanced at the contents and returned to his typing.

I then showed him a folder for HUB Music, including promotions of my music on Soundcloud, YouTube and Facebook. He asked me what I meant by “my music”. I explained that I had been recording my musical compositions for 30 years and had posted it on the net over many years. I told him that, however, my most watched videos on YouTube were not my music but my documentaries on eugenics and AIDS.

“I didn’t know you had researched eugenics and AIDS” he said, to my surprise. Either he has a poor memory or a selective one. In 2001 he wrote in the notes of the Alfred Hospital that my beliefs about “the eugenics of AIDS” were delusional and indicative of psychosis. He also wrote, at this time, that before I became “psychotic” I had a “paranoid and narcissistic personality”. It was a thorough character-assassination. I reminded him of this the last time we met, which was about 6 weeks ago.

“I saw you only recently” he said “A month ago. Nothing has really changed”.

I showed my the fourth folder I had brought with me, which was my current networking on Linkedin, where I have almost 6000 professional contacts around the world, from a wide range of academic disciplines including medicine and mental health. He wasn’t interested. One of numerous Mark Taylors, his own Linkedin page has only 10 contacts and he is not active on it. He has not even updated his current employment or uploaded a photo of himself.

“How have you been in your mental health?” he asked. I told him again about the fact the the injection was sterilizing me, making me salivate and making me sleep in the day. “You told me that last time”. I objected that though I told him he hadn’t budged on lowering the drug.

I told him that I had been watching YouTube clips of psychiatrists who were much more critical of the overuse of psychiatric drugs than himself. “Oh good” he said again. I named Daniel Carlat (who he had not heard of). Pat McGorry (who he had), Sami Timimi (who he had heard of but dismissed as “radical” and mistakenly thought was a woman), and Robert Whitaker. He had heard of Robert Whitaker and I told him that he was one of my friends on Facebook. “He’s not a psychiatrist, though”, he said.

“I wanted to ask you that – how much time do you spend in front of your computer?”

I knew he was trying to pathologise my behaviour. I said I spend only a couple of hours a week on Facebook but more time on Linkedin and Youtube. He said he did not follow “social media” and asked me how well known I am.

“Are you say one of the five best known people in Brisbane?”

This was another trap. He was looking for grandiosity.

“Of course not”, I laughed. “Most people wouldn’t know me from a bar of soap”.

“Do you get the recognition you deserve?” he asked, looking for evidence of me being what psychiatrists call “entitled”.

“I’m not looking for recognition, but it is nice to be appreciated”.

Conveniently forgetting his character-assassination of me in 2001, and his role in having me falsely incarcerated, Taylor said “The doctors at CFOS say you have posted things that are defamatory about me”. He said he hadn’t seen them himself but that he had been told about it by CFOS – which he pronounced as “see-fos”. This is a new organization called the “Community Forensic Outreach Service” – which I have been told by Raghy Raman is part of the health department and not the court system, but that he couldn’t tell me more about it other than that I had been referred to CFOS because he felt obliged to “escalate the matter” of my posting material about the “Queensland Health staff” on what he calls “the social media”. He is furious that I posted footage of him assaulting me in my own home on YouTube.

It was Raghy who informed me, by email and phone, that I had been referred to CFOS. I wanted to know what powers this new body had over me, and asked him who they were. He said he didn’t know and the decision to “escalate the matter” of my refusing to take down the YouTube clips was made by the “team leader” a woman called Sharon Locke. I have spoken to Locke on the phone but never met her and have now been told that she is no longer the team leader. Mark Taylor said I had refused to meet CFOS when we had last met and I told him I was prepared to talk to them on the phone or communicate with them over the net but would not come in to be interviewed (and framed, though I didn’t use the term) in the Woolloongabba Community Health Centre.

I told Taylor that Professor Pat McGorry has said that the antipsychotic drugs used to be used at 10 times the necessary dose and now are used at 2 to 3 times the necessary dose. His retort was “did you know that Pat McGorry has accepted payments from many drug companies?” I said I did. “Do you think Ibuprofen (an anti-inlammatory and alalgesic drug that is available over the counter) is over-used?”

“I’m sure it is. Many drugs are over-prescribed. The drug companies’ primary motive is money. They bribe those doctors who are prepared to accept bribes.”

“You haven’t answered. Did you post defamatory things about me?” he persisted.

I answered that I had posted things about him on Facebook, Linkedin and YouTube and explained that I had discussed his links with the drug companies, pointing to a video of him presenting his conflict of interest at a lecture in Scotland some years ago. I called it “accepting bribes”. Some people might interpret that as defamatory.

“That was about 7 years ago, and I think it is a good thing to disclose information,” he said, then saying that it was a private lecture and should not have been posted (though he knew who it was). In this clip he says, in reference to a statement by one of his psychiatric colleagues that “when it comes to industry you are either abstinent or promiscuous – you can see on which side I fall”. He then showed a slide disclosing that he had accepted “fees and/or hospitality” from 5 different drug companies. His audience laughed, but it was posted on YouTube by an audience member who wasn’t amused.

Taylor asked me if I had ever accepted a sandwich from a drug company – “that’s included in hospitality”. He also challenged Pat McGorry’s assertion that Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) should be used ahead of drugs in the treatment of psychosis, saying that “the problem is that CBT doesn’t work in psychosis”. When I contested this he claimed that it has been proved by “Cochrane”, meaning the Cochrane Collaboration. I said that I had discussed this with Peter Gotszche, the Director of the Nordic Cochrane Collaboration, who had written books about the ineffectiveness and harmfulness of psychiatric drugs including dopamine blockers and SSRI antidepressants.

“What do you hope to achieve by blocking my dopamine receptors?” I asked.

“We want you to remain stable and not have mood fluctuations”. He raised the risk of suicide. I told him that I had never been suicidal, though I lied. I have entertained fleeting thoughts of suicide on two and only two occasions in my life. One was when I was 34 and locked up at the Royal Park Hospital in Melbourne and the other time was when I was 55 and locked up at the psychogeriatric Grevillea Ward of the Princess Alexandra Hospital. In both instances it was a response to being disbelieved, locked up and drugged.

Mark Taylor said he wanted me to be “stable” over time and that he would “think about” lowering the dose. He said he didn’t want to see me for 3 months and that our time had run out. In contrast, the private psychiatrist Frank New spent 3 hours with me before writing a 13-paged report stating that he was confident that I did not have a mental illness and why he formed this well-considered opinion. But that was many years ago and the PA Hospital has been reluctant to speak to any doctors who do not agree that I am mad.

Raghy Raman stayed silent throughout the interview until I raised the fact that it was he who reported that I had “elevated speech” to Ghazala Watt, resulting in Watt, who trained in Pakistan and Britain, to abusively increase the dose of Paliperidone (ironically called Invega) from 75 to 100 mg. Raghy flew into a rage. “Why do you keep going back to this, over and over?” he shouted. “I said you had elevated mood but I retracted it and apologised. But you keep on raising this over and over. I apologised! And what I said had nothing to do with you being injected. No! The doctors make their own decisions. It had nothing to do with me”.

I pointed out that Ghazala Watt had written to the Mental Health Review Tribunal that the injection was increased “because the treating team reported elevated speech” – and that the same report recorded the “treating team” as only Watt and Raghy Raman. I also pointed out that it was Raghy that was getting angry and not me and that I have a very stable mood. I told Taylor that I am not prone to depression but have been said to have an elevated mood at times.

He said he had observed that I was talkative and laughed a lot – he didn’t need to mention that these are “symptoms” of “hypomania”, mania and mood elevation. I explained that this was my personality – I have been like that since I was a child. Though I can be shy when I first meet people I enjoy conversations and laugh a lot in conversation.

Mark Taylor had to admit that Raghy was angry so he said “we’d better end the inteview now”. He stressed again that he didn’t want to see me for 3 months. In the meantime that’s 3 more injections, each at the cost of more that $400 to the taxpayer.

Taylor said I should consider what to say at the next Mental Health Review Tribunal (MHRT). I pointed out that claiming not to be ill is immediately interpeted as “lack of insight” and that the MHRT discharges less than 5% of patients and inevitably sides with the hospitals. Losing a MHRT hearing is just another trauma. Right now I can’t be bothered appealing.

Case against the Alfred Hospital

©2018 Dr Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam

  1. Between 1999 and 2002 I was locked up and assaulted with injections of antipsychotic drugs several times at the Alfred Hospital (Prahran, Melbourne).
  2. I was not suffering from a diagnosable mental illness at the time but I was punitively diagnosed with several serious mental disorders including “schizo-affective disorder” by two psychiatrists (Kym Jenkins and Robert Shields), and “psychotic disorder (Schizomanic type) superimposed on narcissistic and paranoid personality disorder” by another (Mark Taylor).
  3. These disease labels seriously damaged my personal and professional reputation.
  4. Psychiatrists at the Alfred Hospital also contacted the Medical Board of Victoria claiming that I had “schizoaffective disorder”, in an effort to stop me from working as a doctor.
  5. The Director of Psychiatry at the Alfred (Dr Peter Doherty) also provided selected documents to the Medical Board of Queensland in 2002 in a further effort to stop me from working as a doctor.
  6. When I was locked up between 1999 and 2002 I provided ample evidence of my sanity in the form of my writings and publications but these were pathologised and misrepresented as “hypergraphia” and evidence of mental illness.
  7. My claim to be doing research on the brain was also described as a grandiose delusion.
  8. My concern about the Stolen Children, human rights abuses against Aboriginal people and the role of eugenics in causing genocide were misrepresented and presented as evidence of mental illness.
  9. My support of the allegation (first made by others) that HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) was developed as a biological weapon was pathologised and referred to as further evidence of mental illness and “paranoid delusions”.
  • My concern that the medical system and government were dominated by Freemasons was pathologised by the psychiatrist Mark Taylor as evidence of mental illness.
  • My concern about the possible role of the Mossad and a cabal of Jewish psychiatrists in persecuting me and calling me mad/mentally ill was pathologised as evidence of paranoid delusions by psychiatrists at the Alfred (including Peter Braun and David Lowenstern who are Jewish).
  • My concern about the possible role of MI5 in my incarceration was likewise pathologised as evidence of mental illness and paranoid delusions by Mark Taylor and Kym Jenkins, who are both British; Kym Jenkins went on to become the President of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP); Mark Taylor moved to Scotland in 2002 but is now working in Brisbane and has been made my “treating psychiatrist” by Metro South and the Princess Alexandra (PA) Hospital.
  • My claim that my father was a supporter of terrorism for his support, propaganda and lobbying efforts for the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) was likewise pathologised as evidence of mental illness.
  1. The repeated false claims of my hostile father that I was “paranoid” and “psychotic” were uncritically acted upon by the hospital CATT team (Crisis and Assessment Team) without checking the veracity of his and my claims.
  2. During each admission my behaviour and observations of it were not consistent with the claims of the admitting doctors, but I was still held for several days in the LSA (Low Stimulus Area) and unnecessarily (and abusively) injected with short-acting Zuclopentixol Accuphase injections, which caused involuntary spasms in my back and legs as well as difficulty speaking (a single injection only on three of the admissions).
  3. Despite the fact that I have never suffered from hallucinations, I was recorded to have ‘thought disorder’ by some, but not other, psychiatrists.
  • My justified anger at being abducted from my home and locked up for no good reason was pathologised as an “irritable mood” and “hostility”.
  • My statement that I was talking legal action against the hospital for deprivation of my rights was pathologised as well, with records that I was “litigious”.
  • My 40-point Peace Plan for Timor was pathologised as an “extremely thought-disordered letter sent to Kofi Annan of the UN”; it was a list of proposals not a letter and was not sent anywhere (I gave a copy to the Jewish GP who had employed me to do sessions for him at what he called “Melbourne Wholistic Medicine”, Abraham “Abe” Mass – it was Mass who referred me to the Alfred Hospital on 16 September 1999 with the claim that I had “schizoaffective disorder”).
  1. The hospital recorded that Abraham Mass was my GP and not my colleague, though the psychiatrists referred to the fact that I had been referred in by a “GP colleague”.
  2. I stopped working for Mass at this stage and the hospital recorded that I was an “unemployed medical practitioner” qualifying that it was “as of last week”.
  • Mass attempted to change from being my employer to being my doctor after the first admission (which he arranged) though I had not and would not seek his medical advice.
  • On discharge from the Alfred Hospital I was ordered to attend Dr Peter Braun of the Waiora Clinic (an outpatient clinic of the Alfred); I confronted Braun with my suspicion that he was working for the Mossad, which he did not deny but wrote to the Mental Health Review Board that my concern that “doctors” work for the Mossad were evidence of mental illness and paranoia. Braun also confirmed during our discussions that the Israeli military had trained both sides in the war in Sri Lanka, but defended this action on their part.
  • In 2001, following another report about me my father (and a resultant admission), the decision was made to start me on injections of a depot antipsychotic – Zuclopenthixol (Clopixol) to be given every 2 weeks under as Community Treatment Order (CTO); this decision made me leave the State of Victoria and seek safety back in Queensland, where I went to school and graduated as a doctor, despite the fact that my father lives here; I hoped, at this stage, to convince him of my sanity.

    Particulars:

Admission from 16 September 1999 to 27 September 1999.

16.9.1999 – Referral by Abraham Mass of 257 Tucker Road, Ormond

Abducted by Ian Katz and Victoria Police from 149 Bambra Road, Caulfield and taken in handcuffs to the Alfred Hospital

House was rented from Avi Jawarowski via real estate agent Hiam Sharp of Caulfield. Avi Jawarowski’s brother Sol is a psychiatrist, who worked previously for the Alfred Hospital but has now returned to Israel. Avi Jawarowski who is a chemist is listed in the Burnet Institute Annual Report as a Senior Lecturer at the institute. The Burnet Institute is located at the Alfred Hospital and part of the Alfred Medical Research and Education Precinct (AMREP).

Katz wrote (in all capitals):

39 YO SINGLE UNEMPLOYED MEDICAL PRACTITIONER, ADM INVOL VIA ISCATT

BACKGROUND/

PSYCHOTIC DISORDER, VARIABLE DIAGNOSES (BIPOLAR, DELUSIONAL DISORDER ETC)

ADM (Admissions) X 5       1995 X 2

1998 X 3

HOPC (History of Presenting Complaint)

2-3/7 OF PARANOID IDEAS, IRRITABLE, LITIGIOUS, HYPER-GRAPHIA, GRANDIOSE

NON-COMPLIANT RECENTLY

ΨTRIST – DR PROCTOR

REFERRED VIA COLLEGUE GP

DR (Omits the name – Abraham Mass)

MSE/ HYPERAROUSED, IRRITABLE STOCKY MAN OF DARK COMPLEXION IRRITABLE, THOUGHT DISORDERED, GRANDIOSE, BIZARRE PERSECUTORY DELUSIONS OF POLITICAL/SCIENTIFIC THEMES, NO INSIGHT, PRESSURE OF SPEECH

ASST (Assessment)/

EXAC (Exacerbation) OF PSYCHOSIS

?SCHIZOAFFECTIVE

ADM INVOL (Admit Involuntarily)

MEDICAL BOARD INFORMED AS PER STAT LEGAL REQUIREMENT

I KATZ

Seen by Kym Jenkins (psychiatrist) who wrote:

STAT REVIEW

39 yo unemployed (as of this week) medical practitioner. Referred to CAT team by a medical colleague [again omits name]

Recommended under MH Act [by Ian Katz] because of grandiose and persecutory delusions

PΨHx (past psychiatric history) – delusional disorder/hypomania

MSE/

Well groomed

suspicious

hostile

verbally aggressive

speech pressured

some flight of ideas

Content of thought:

Delusional belief that he is persecuted by a Jewish mafia, British colonial regime

Belief that he is involved in research into the brain – grandiose delusions re this

Delusional belief that Alfred Hospital staff responsible for disseminating HIV to 3rd World, East Timor and sending letter to Kofi Annan at UN [This is a misrepresentation of my views and behaviour – I did not send a letter to Kofi Annan or anyone else – I was working on my 40-point Peace Plan for Timor but had not sent it to anyone; the reference to Alfred Hospital staff “disseminating” HIV to Third World countries this was a reference to my writings on the Burnet Institute which had recently relocated to the premises of the Alfred Hospital – details can be found in my book ‘Eugenics and Genocide in the Modern World’]

?disorders of perception

Insight: nil. Thinks he is in hospital as part of plot/persecution

Imp (Impression): psychotic episode hypomanic presentation

ΔΔ (differential diagnosis)

Schizoaffective disorder/Bipolar Affective Disorder

Plan/

Certification upheld

Patient informed of this & has “rights” leaflets

Very close observation LSA

At risk to others if absconds

Collateral Hx – Private Ψ

Length of psychosis

Past treatments and response

Medical Board to be informed

Commence antipsychotic Rx – rispiradone 2mg nocte

Needs full organic work up – admits to cannabis usage

Needs mood stabilizer ?not been on lithium

Kym Jenkins

 

17.9.1999

Seen again by Kym Jenkins while being kept in the “LSA”

She wrote:

Remains hostile, guarded ++, thought disordered, speech less pressured, totally insightless.

Believes there is a political plot against him and continues to have grandiose and persecutory delusions.

Stat dose 100 mg Zuclopenthixol (Acuphase)

Romesh would like a 2nd opinion.

 

 

 

 

 

20.9.1999

Seen again by Kym Jenkins with registrar Tejpal Singh

After the interview Jenkins wrote:

Romesh presents :- much less elevated

More pleasant

Not openly hostile

Speech not pressured

Thought stream slowed – no flight of ideas

Apologising for previous insulting behaviour on admission

Decrease in grandiose and persecutory ideation

Impression/    Hypomanic episode resolving

Plan/

Can be nursed in open ward

Needs close obs (absconding risk)

Continue rispiradone

Reassess MSE tomorrow – may be masking psychotic Sx [symptoms]

Discharge planning – will need assertive follow up to ensure compliance

Address issues re medical registration.

 

To be continued…..

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.

Debating Psychiatry with the PA Hospital

 

This is a debate from two years ago (February 2016) between me and Nigel Lewin, an English psychiatric nurse from the Princess Alexandra (PA) Hospital.

Nigel had been appointed my ‘case manager’ and I was being made a “medical case” and “mental case” by my medical colleagues at the hospital that empoyed my father from 1976, when my family migrated to Australia from Sri Lanka. I was 15 then and remember staying in a house on the grounds of the hospital when we first arrived. Later, I avoided the hospital where my father and sister worked, and had a poor opinion of it, reinforced by my father’s claims (for which he was eventually sacked) that the hospital was “in chaos”. This was in 2001 and he got me locked up at the “chaotic” hospital (in his own written opinion) in 2002. In fact, he got me locked up 5 times in 4 months, culminating in my rib and finger being broken by security guards and male “nurses” immobilising me so that I could be injected with a drug called Zuclopenthixol, a treatment for ‘schizophrenia’ and other ‘psychotic disorders’

I began my debate with Nigel by asking him what he thought about “Psychotic Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified”, the label the hospital was trying to pin on me at the time, after revising the diagnosis from one of schizophrenia. Now, under the treatment of Jumoke Banjo (from Nigeria) and Ghazala Watt (from Pakistan) the diagnosis has been changed back to “paranoid schizophrenia”. Nigel Lewin has now gone on long service leave and a new case manager, an Indian man by the name of Raghy Raman, has been appointed. Raghy has expressed the opinion that the leader of the Tamil Tigers, Vellupillai Prabakaran was an “activist” rather than a terrorist, and described me as having “elevated speech” when I debated with him about the Tamil Tigers. In response to this, the psychiatrist Ghazala Watt increased the dose of depot antipsychotic she has abusively ordered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Considering ‘Insight’

©2018 Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam (MD)

Being insightful is considered a virtue. It is similar to being thoughtful, but insight implies intuitive knowledge and perception of truth. There has been much study of insight in psychology in recent years, mainly looking at the phenomenon from the perspective of problem solving. It has been found that insight is promoted by good mood and sleep, which help solve problems. An insight is described as an “aha moment”, “penny-drop moment”, “eureka moment” or epiphany.

However, ‘insight and judgment’ mean something quite different in psychiatry – in this medical specialty, insight specifically means willingness to accept that you are, and have been, mentally ill. This is problematic and constitutes a widely used circular argument – that refusal to agree you are mentally ill is itself evidence of mental illness. It means that mentally healthy people who are mistakenly admitted as psychiatric patients harm their chances of discharge if they maintain that they are not mentally ill.

 

The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), widely used in evaluating antipsychotic drugs for schizophrenia, is explicit about this. Section G12, titled “Lack of Judgment and Insight” states that ‘extreme’ (grade 7) lack of insight is to be recorded due to:

“Emphatic denial of past and present psychiatric illness. Current hospitalization and treatment are given a delusional interpretation (e.g., as punishment for misdeeds, as persecution by tormentors etc.), and the patient may thus refuse to cooperate with the therapists, medication or other aspects of treatment.”

 

Good judgment involves the ability to make sound decisions, based on knowledge of what is true and what is false. It is insulting to accuse someone of poor judgment, and uncalled for if the accusation is based on reasonable refutation of an incurable mental illness label. People can make sound judgments about many things, but not be convinced that they are mentally ill, especially if the illness is claimed to be due to unmeasurable chemical imbalances in their brains that are of uncertain origin, the dominant paradigm in psychiatry.

 

This item in the PANSS is one of 16 items taken from the older Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), which was developed in the USA in the 1960s and used to evaluate “general psychopathology”, as well as to evaluate psychoactive drugs. The PANSS also includes 7 “positive symptoms” and 7 “negative symptoms” for a total of 30 items that are evaluated. This results in a score from 30 to 210. “Improving” scores on the PANSS constitute the main claims for efficacy of the newer antipsychotic drugs; the older drugs were evaluated by the BPRS and other scales, usually when compared to the “benchmark drugs” chlorpromazine and haloperidol, rather than placebo.

 

A glaring problem with the PANSS and BPRS is the fact that known side-effects of dopamine-blocking drugs, such as “flattened affect” are described as signs of schizophrenia, rather than the treatment of the condition. Other signs such as hostility and uncooperativeness can be explained as legitimate objection to being called mad (or insane), by whatever name.

Predictably, people with some mental illness diagnoses resist the label of “illness” more than others. People with phobias, anxiety and depression often come to see doctors for help and so do people with auditory hallucinations (usually diagnosed as schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder). In these people the diagnosis of illness can be a relief, and they accept drug treatment without objection. In other cases, patients resist the label of illness vehemently, especially when they are said to have elevated mood (diagnosed as hypomania and mania) or delusions.

It is not surprising that many people accused of having an elevated mood resist the judgement. The BPRS grades “moderately severe” elevated mood (rating 5 on a scale from 1 to 7) as:

“Reports excessive or unrealistic feelings of well-being, confidence or optimism inappropriate to circumstances, much of the time. May describe feeling ‘on top of the world’, ‘like everything is falling into place’ or ‘better than ever before’. OR several instances of marked elevated mood with euphoria”.

Needless to say, people who feel on top of the world, better than ever before, or for whom everything is falling into place, are often not inclined to think they are mentally ill, and with good reason. Likewise people with an increase in goal-directed activities, increased zest for life those who see connections they didn’t see before and have insights. Ironically, the process of coming to conclusions through insight, especially if they are unique or ‘idiosyncratic’, is itself viewed as a sign of mental illness.

The Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS) rates elevated mood on a scale from 1 to 5, with grade 3 being:

“Definite subjective elevation; optimistic, self-confident, cheerful, inappropriate to content.”

The key to the diagnosis is the subjective evaluation of what is “inappropriate to content” or “inappropriate to circumstances”. This is done by the interviewer, and depends on his or her own belief system, judgement and understanding of the patient’s circumstances.

Persecution by Tormentors and Punishment for Misdeeds

 

The belief that one is persecuted is not necessarily delusional. Many people, over the ages, have been persecuted, for various reasons including their race, their ‘caste’ and their beliefs. People are sometimes tormented by the families, or by their peers (for example victims of bullies at school or work). Siblings sometimes torment each other, and so do cousins and other relatives. Sometimes it is neighbours who do the tormenting. People often gang up against people who are stigmatised as strange, mad, crazy or odd and this can amount to persecution. Children are often punished for disobedience and it is not unreasonable for people to regard their imprisonment as mental patients a punishment. This is not helped by a punitive culture in the mental health systems of many nations.

 

There are many dysfunctional families, and family dysfunction comes in many forms. Some families are very competitive and sibling rivalry, as well as competition between parents and children, can be a problem. Some parents, especially fathers, are very authoritarian and demand obedience from their children. Disobedient children are labelled as “difficult” and taken to doctors for diagnosis and treatment. Here the power imbalance is obvious. The child has little power to resist being labelled as the “problem”, however much the doctors protest that they can’t help their behaviour because they have a chemical imbalance in their brains. When the children misbehave it is inevitable that the adults and siblings blame the “illness” and ask if they are complying with taking their their tablets.

The adults in this situation include parents and other family members as well as teachers. Some teachers are inclined to suspect their students of having “attention deficit disorder” when they are not interested in their lessons, and become visibly bored, restless and fidgety. Teachers provide a large number of the referrals for ADD and ADHD. It is rarely asked as to whether the teacher is to blame for being boring and failing to engage the student. This requires introspection, which is sometimes lacking in any profession, including teaching.

Apart from scape-goating a particular family member, there are problems with looking for a chemical solution or “magic bullet” to life’s difficulties. This can form a pattern of behaviour in the child and in their carers and family. When they are down, rather than looking for activities and experiences that will bring them back up, the tendency is to take an antidepressant. When they are anxious, instead of listening to music or going for a walk, or any of a wide range of actions that can lessen anxiety, they look for a benzodiazepine.

It is also a problem when children are medicated for what is basically disobedience. The drugs that are used for ADHD are stimulants, related to amphetamines, known on the street as ‘speed’. Though they can improve concentration and keep you awake when you are tired, it has been known for over a century that amphetamines are addictive, and can also cause psychosis. Despite this they were widely used as weight loss drugs and “pep pills” in the 1960s and were again promoted in the 1990s for the newly-named “mental disorder” known as ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). In the 1980s it was said that only 1 in 200 children had ADD; this rocketed up to 1 in 20 with the new label, with a corresponding explosion in prescriptions for stimulant drugs. This was in the 1990s, and was a precursor to the explosion in addiction to amphetamines a decade later. Many of the youth who are addicted to metamphetamine (‘ice’) were initially diagnosed as having ADHD and given stimulant drugs.

 

Family abuse occurs at all ages. Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable and can easily be pathologised for being “difficult”. Rebellious adolescents are also vulnerable to being given a disease label for their behaviour, as well as young people who reject the religious beliefs of their parents and embrace other philosophies and religions.

 

The concept of insight should be considered holistically. There is a difference between insight (introspection) and insights (epiphanies). One aspect of introspection is to be able to look critically at our own mistakes, flaws, vices and poor judgements in the past. It requires us to challenge our indoctrination from various sources as we grew up. The process of growing up and learning from our environment (including family and school) inevitably results in some false beliefs and delusions. Some of our beliefs are not congruous with reality, and it is a challenge, throughout life, to rid ourselves of such delusions. Sometimes, when one realises ones previous error, especially about long-held beliefs, it comes as an insight. Such insights are often pleasant, and can be exciting. They can elevate the mood.

Seeing connections you didn’t notice before and making new associations can also be exciting and elevate the mood. Elevating the mood itself has the effect of increasing insights and insightful thinking. How many potentially beneficial insights have been suppressed or destroyed by the practice of regarding “gaining insight” as a synonym for accepting that you are mentally ill?