Tag: human rights

Eugenics and Modern Psychiatry

opening chapter

Dr. Romesh SENEWIRATNE-ALAGARATNAM

©1998

                                      Chapter 1

                LEGACIES OF A PRISON COLONY

When the first large asylum was built in Australia, at Tarban Creek in New South Wales, the Superintendent made a requisition that hints at the treatment the inmates were to receive when the “lunatic asylum” opened:

“63 iron bedsteads, six chairs for violent cases, 16 cribs of wood for dirty cases, 12 pairs of leather hobbles of various sizes for males and females, 12 hard belts of strong leather and iron cuffs attached to them with straps, 12 cuffs and belts for the hands in less violent [cases]” (Dax, 1975)

The Tarban Creek Asylum was opened in 1838, and it accepted patients from Victoria who were transported there by ship from Melbourne. The state of Victoria had not yet been founded, and the area was still administered by the British colonists from New South Wales. Prior to this a smaller asylum had been opened in 1811 in New South Wales, before which the insane were kept in jails. The close connection between the prisons system and the psychiatric system has persisted to the present.

The next asylum was built in Tasmania (Van Dieman’s Land) which was then a prison colony along with Norfolk Island, to the east of Tasmania. This occurred in 1829 and was followed by an additional larger asylum at Port Arthur in 1842. The Australian psychiatrist Professor Eric Cunningham Dax wrote of Port Arthur in A World History of Psychiatry (1975):

“In 1842 an asylum was opened at Port Arthur. There were four dormitories, a central hall, 24 cells, and a padded room. One patient spent long hours in a cage. Port Arthur then had an evil reputation, and Britain, in a wave of belated guilt, ordered the penal settlement to be abandoned, so that by 1879 only 64 prisoners, 126 paupers (presumably housed in the invalid block), and 69 lunatics remained. They were called “imperial lunatics”!

“Another matter of psychiatric interest at Port Arthur was an adjacent establishment at Point Puer which contained up to 730 delinquent boys, mostly aged 9 to 18. Some were transported for trivial offences. It appears that Governor Arthur made a real attempt to educate and train them as stonemasons, sawyers, and in other trades.” (p.707)

The training and retraining of young people was one of the many agendas of psychiatrists and mental hygienists, but they had to compete for the minds of the young with the Churches, which had a longer history of both teaching children and looking after the poor and disadvantaged. It was the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church in Australia that controlled most of the primary and high school education in these areas in Australian schools, but this was to change, according to the plans of the mental hygiene movement and medical profession.

One way in which the psychiatric profession formed an unholy alliance with the Anglican and Catholic Churches, was by providing the initial incarceration, enforcement of ‘compliance’ (obedience) and drug treatment of young people and collaborating with Church organizations in their subsequent training in menial occupations, whilst providing on-going supervision and enforcement of drug treatment. Cunningham Dax refers to such programs  in From Asylum to Community, and continued developments of this alliance are evident in an examination of today’s youth-training programs and psychiatric treatment and followup programs. Dax wrote, of the then new system in the late 1950s:

“Prior to 1954 there were no full-time chaplains within the mental hospitals. Since that time the Anglican Church have appointed five and the Presbyterians one, and it is hoped that three other full-time chaplains from the Catholic and the Methodist churches and another Anglican will be engaged before long. They are jointly appointed by the Church and the Mental Hygiene Department. There is a chaplains’ advisory committee which discusses the terms and the conditions of appointment, and the training. Opportunities are available for the chaplains of the various denominations to discuss their work together and a series of successful seminars have been held which have extended from a single day up to a full residential week. Three Anglican chaplains have been abroad for training.” (p.34)

Dax does not say which countries the chaplains were trained in but it was undoubtedly Britain or America. Dax, who was born in Britain and graduated in medicine at the University of London in 1935, is Anglocentric in his perspective, and, along with common medical views of British and British trained psychiatrists had fundamental belief in “physical treatments” and drug treatment over “talk therapies” and psychotherapy of a more gentle nature. This has been a feature of Australian psychiatry since the time of Cunningham Dax, especially in the public hospital system, where the only treatment is drugs and electric shocks. Psychotherapy is generally held “to not work for serious mental illness”, and “psychoanalysis”, by which is usually meant Freudian analysis, is suspected (with good reason) to confuse the psychotic further. Dax does not mention psychoanalysis, or Freud, and makes only passing references to psychotherapy, which he says the psychologists employed by the Mental Hygiene Authority and public hospitals were actively discouraged from doing. He writes:

“Neither the psychologists nor the social workers are encouraged to do psychotherapy as it is felt that they are more usefully used in their own special fields. On the other hand, it is hoped to extend the group activities for both these associates within their own specialties” (p.34)

In territorial fashion he defines what he sees the role of psychologists to be in this new empire controlled and dominated by psychiatrists:

“Nine years ago there was an establishment of seven psychologists; now there are nineteen. They have not as yet been widely used in the mental hospitals, but more within the clinics and particularly in those for children. The ways in which they have been occupied within the Department are therefore as follows:

Intellectual Deficiency Here the psychologists are particularly concerned with assessing the intellectual abilities of the patient and his capacity for development. They give remedial teaching, so the child may develop to the maximum of his ability. They supervise the patients’ activities so as to direct them towards gaining a therapeutic benefit. They are able to guide the patients into appropriate occupations or activities towards training them to live in the community.

Children  In child guidance clinics some of the psychologists are used for play therapy or counselling, but the practice varies. Intellectual and vocational testing, educational assessment and advice on overcoming difficulties, and remedial educational therapy are regarded as some of the psychologist’s functions in this field. They do valuable work in the instruction of the staffs of institutions for adolescents and children, especially through group activities. Also they usefully undertake the management of parents; group discussions for remedial training.

Adults  In this field the psychologists undertake the intelligence, educational, vocational and projective testing, and they direct the junction with the occupational therapists. They can set out patients’ records in such a way that they will supply the needed data for statistical records. Similarly they can prepare and plan controlled psychiatric experiments in a way capable of statistical analysis.

Research They carry out research into the various aspects of human behaviour and the best means by which patients, in all the psychiatric fields can be taught fully to use their abilities and skills.” (p.34)

As far as spiritual needs of his patients, and of the Australian population generally, Dax assumes that the Church can provide this:

“Chaplain’s functions within the hospitals relate to the patients’ spiritual needs and welfare and to their way of life, and therefore the duties of the chaplain may be defined as follows:   

To see whether each patient admitted wants, or is likely to want, his spiritual help, and always to be available at a definite time for patients to visit him.

To arrange for prayers, services and religious observance for the patients of his own denomination.

To supervise the care of the hospital chapel.

To co-operate with the chaplains of the other denominations for the welfare of the patients.

To act as educational officer in the hospital and so to interest himself in such items as the library, debates, drama, English lessons, recreations, current affair discussions, choral societies, music, and the patients’ magazine.

To be available to see patients’ relatives and to communicate, as needs be, with their clergy.

To participate with the other medical associates in the treatment, resocialization and rehabilitation of the patients.

To further the understanding between the mental hospitals and the general public by interpreting the hospitals’ functions to the community” (p.35)

In other words, the mental hygiene movement seconded the Christian Churches, starting with the Anglican Church, as public relations agents for the treatments, diagnoses and propaganda provided by the psychiatric profession, which controlled the “mental hospitals”, despite the fact that what they were doing and teaching were the very antithesis of what Jesus of Nazareth did and taught. They also seconded the psychology profession, which competes with the psychiatry profession, to implement psychiatrist-designed treatment programs, administer psychiatrist-approved “intelligence tests” and “personality tests” for psychiatric diagnoses made by the psychiatrists (not the psychologists), and process statistics which could be used by the medical and psychiatric profession, and, it turns out, the pharmaceutical industry.

The care of intellectually deficient children was already a self-appointed responsibility of the Christian Churches in Australia, and the conditions in which these children were kept from the earliest days of British colonization is a national disgrace. Although Dax does not write about mistreatment of psychiatric patients during his own years of office, his description of the conditions at the Kew Cottages in the 1950s gives some indication of how unwanted children were treated in Melbourne:

“There were open drains, children caught worms by drinking the water, there was little storage accomodation, the paint was drab and peeling. The children’s clothing was awful; the small boys had unlaced boots, long moleskin trousers turned up at the bottom, adult football jerseys which had been given to the cottages by a football club with old army jackets on top and whatever hats they could collect. They were dirty and had very little washing accomodation indeed. Many played in a shed during the day in a half-nude state, there was a battery of lavatories with eight or ten adjoining seats but there was no way of swilling the excreta out of the trough except by walking thirty yards for water. They passed urine into the open drains. The patients ate from tins with their fingers, slept on straw mattresses and the place smelt of stale food and excreta and unsatisfactory drainage.” (p.125)

Although there were improvements in the cosmetic appearance of many of the metropolitan institutions in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s, the abusive treatment of young people in Australia, including forced labour, separation from families, and arbitrary punishment were to continue under the joint supervision of the Mental Hygiene/Health Authority (and its successors) and Church Organizations, later accompanied by bigger and bigger doses and combinations of crippling drugs. Dax explains:

“The intellectual deficiency colonies are partly under the care of the Mental Hygiene Authority and partly of several voluntary organizations. One of the latter is really a day-centre, organized on a residential basis because it is in the middle of a sparsely populated district, where the pupils cannot come by transport each day, in other ways it is similar to the retarded children’s day-centres. There are eighteen boarders there who go home for holidays and frequently for weekends. A few day-children are taken. The other two voluntary residential colonies are run by the Catholic Church. Marillac House for retarded children from 6 to 16 was opened in 1943 by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul. In 1961, there were ninety-six girls, of a higher intellectual level than the children in the retarded children’s centres and mostly of about special school standard.

“The Brothers of St John of God opened an institution in New South Wales in 1947 for the training of intellectually handicapped boys, and another in 1953 in Victoria. The children in the main training centre are at the special school level, but a lodge adjoining was later opened for those who were no more than the day-centre level. In 1957 they opened a farm colony and there are now 95 boys in the residential unit, and 40 in the farm colony.” (p.124)

The Church directly sold out to the corporate interests of the chemical industry and psychiatric profession by selling Churches for conversion into psychiatric treatment centres, where the treatments were inevitably chemicals, combined, at times, with surgical mutilation and electric shocks, physical restraint and solitary confinement, forced labour and brainwashing. Dax writes:

“The Clarendon Clinic [in East Melbourne] was formed by redesigning a church, its vestry, a church hall and an adjacent house. The body of the church has been converted into a therapeutic workshop and the vestry into four consulting rooms. The church hall has been made into a cloak-room, sitting- and dining-room, and a hall for the rooms, offices and staff rooms and a female toilet block.

“The clinic was designed to supply the needs of those patients who had been many years in hospital, had been rehabilitated there by the new methods used, and were now fit for community care. However many of them were unable to earn a living at first or to find accomodation except by the use, at least on a temporary basis, of one of the departmental hostels. Moreover, many of them still needed some medical care, and were therefore followed up by their own medical staff who could visit the Clarendon Clinic to see them.”

The “new methods used” are inadequately described by Dax, but included insulin comas, chemical shock using cardiazol, injected and ingested tranquillisers, electric shocks (an older treatment) and brain mutilation by “psychosurgery”. He explains of the upgrading of “Larundel receiving house” into a major treatment centre, which it remains today:

“Larundel has a residential early-treatment unit and a short-term rehabilitation hospital attached. At Mont Park [the adjoining hospital] there is a longer term treatment hospital with a long-term rehabilitation hospital attached; this has a subdivision consisting of the general, medical and the surgical services and the neurosurgical unit, together with a geriatric hospital. Opposite to Larundel is a repatriation hospital for psychiatric cases attributable to war service. Within two miles is the old private hospital which is being used for geriatric patients but which may be converted later into a short-term alcoholism treatment centre” (p.177)

As they plotted to convert a general hospital for the elderly to an “alcoholism treatment centre”, the Mental Hygiene Authority and associated hospitals explored new treatments for their captives and converts with the aid of the then new “Mental Health Research Institute” in Parkville, Melbourne. Dax writes:

“In 1954 the Chief Clinical Officer, Dr Alan Stoller, was appointed, but much of his time in that year was spent in an Australia-wide survey of mental health needs and facilities, so he did not take up his position until 1955. Shortly after this the Mental Health Research Institute was built and officially opened by the late Sir Ian Clunies-Ross.       

“In 1955 a Mental Health Research Fund was founded consisting of an annual grant by the Victorian government to the University of Melbourne…Within the first year the University Department of Anatomy was able to demonstrate its work on the neuro-anatomical basis of emotion and growth on mongoloid children. The Departments of Physiology and Pharmacology were working on cerebral sedatives and analeptics while the Department of Pathology was doing research on cerebral arteriosclerosis.

“By the beginning of 1956 the Mental Health Research Institute was able to give demonstrations of the work proceeding in the Department on the incidence of schizophrenia, Huntington’s Chorea, juvenile delinquency, the clinical effects of tranquilizing drugs, electro-encephalographic studies of brain-damaged children and the results of infero-medial leucotomy [psychosurgery]. Studies had also been made on the treatment of excitement with lithium and its effects were being tried out at several hospitals.” (p.139)

The passage above reveals the connection between the mental hygiene movement, the University of Melbourne, the Mental Health Research Institute in Parkville and the public hospitals, including Royal Park Hospital, also in Parkville. In all these institutions the main focus was on drug treatments, although Dax was also enthusiastic about brain surgery for the treatment of psychological problems. At Royal Park Hospital, Larundel and other psychiatric hospitals electric shocks to the brain were also used for various conditions, the names of which have been changed over the past forty years. Electric shocks to the brain, usually called ECT in Australia, are used against people’s wishes in dozens of hospitals in Australia, today. The use of electrical shocks in Australia dates back to the 19th century, and it has been an unchanging feature of Australian psychiatry over the past century, although the “discovery” of ECT is usually attributed to Cerletti in Italy in the 1940s. Such is the nature of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment terminology as well as history: it is subject to frequent changes. Thus electric shocks to the brain have been called “electroconvulsive therapy” or ECT, “shock treatment”, “electroshock”, “electroplexy” and “electro-therapy”. The same class of drugs have been called “analeptics”, “neuroleptics”, “anti-psychotics”, “major tranquillisers” and “psychotropics”. The use of lithium was experimented with, in Dax’s terminology, for “excitement” (a suspect indication, indeed), but now it is used for “mania” and “bipolar affective disorder”. Previously “bipolar affective disorder” (BAD) was called “manic depression”.

Lithium was first used on psychiatric patients by the then 39 year old superintendent of Bundoora repatriation hospital in Victoria, Dr John Cade. This occurred in the 1940s, and since then the Victorian and Australian psychiatric hospitals have been avid dispensers of lithium, often referred to as a “mood stabiliser”. Although it may indeed prevent fluctuations in mood, the ingestion of lithium is accompanied by a range of unpleasant and dangerous side-effects and is extremely toxic in overdose. Lithium is toxic to the kidneys and thyroid in particular, and, since the toxicity margin is recognised to be low, regular blood tests to check lithium levels (also used to check compliance with drug-taking) are necessary if this drug is prescribed, as it often is done in Australia. It also dulls emotional reactions generally and produces a range of unpleasant mental side-effects in many who are forced to take the drug under threat of incarceration if they “fail to comply” with treatment.

The medical education system in Australia has, since its inception, like the military, been rigidly hierarchical, with professors at the top and medical students at the bottom, and the ladder is climbed by the acquisition of degrees and publications, together with less easily identified factors, which come into operation in the mysterious “upper echelons” of the academic world, an area where global politics plays a greater role than most people realise.

The Mental Health Research Institute in Parkville, Melbourne is Victoria’s biggest psychiatry research institution and is affiliated with the University of Melbourne, the city’s oldest university. The Institute was initially set up at Royal Park psychiatric hospital in the 1950s, shortly after, as was revealed in the press recently, several Nazi ‘scientists’ were smuggled into Melbourne.

The previous director of Royal Park Hospital, the psychiatrist Norman James, was, after the closure of the notorious hospital, appointed Chief Psychiatrist of Victoria during the autocratic reign of Premier Jeff Kennett (who, after being voted out of office assumed the lucrative job of CEO of ‘Beyond Blue’, part of the Federal Government’s ‘depression initiative’, which will be examined later). James wrote the opening chapter in the undergraduate textbook Foundations of Clinical Psychiatry (1994) titled “A Historical Context”.

In it he wrote:

“It was in the asylums that the first widely available and effective biological treatments were developed. Freud himself trained in neurology and recognised that the severely mentally ill required organic forms of treatment. The discovery of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) by Cerletti and Bini who worked in a mental hospital in Rome in 1938 led to a simple and readily applied treatment for those who suffered from severe depressive illness and related disorders. Despite the advent of World War II, ECT was rapidly adopted as a treatment internationally.

“The discovery of lithium in 1949 as a treatment for mania and as a prophylaxis for bipolar disorder (manic depression) was made by Dr John Cade, a distinguished Australian Psychiatrist. This was soon followed by the development of major tranquillisers, the neuroleptics, by Delay and Deniker in Paris in 1952, although the initial idea of their application in psychiatry occurred in a general hospital when it was noted that they were effective tranquillisers for patients undergoing surgery. Shortly after this Nathan Kline made the discovery that a drug being tested for its effect in tuberculous patients had an antidepressant action and thus the first specific antidepressants were discovered, again in a large mental hospital and this time in Orangeburg, New York”.

Professor Edward Shorter, in A History of Psychiatry (1997) gives more details of John Cade’s less than exacting methodology in his rapturous description of the “medical discovery” of lithium:

“The story began in 1949 with John Cade, the 37-year-old superintendent of the Repatriation Mental Hospital in Bundoora, Australia [Victoria]. Cade, like Neil Macleod in late-nineteenth-century Shanghai, had not lost his scientific curiosity despite his provincial isolation. He was determined to see if the cause of mania was some toxic product manufactured by the body itself, analogous to thyrotoxicosis from the thyroid. Not having any idea what, exactly, he might be searching for, he began taking urine from his manic patients and, in a disused hospital kitchen, injecting it into the bellies of guinea pigs. Sure enough, the guinea pigs died, as they did when injected with the urine of controls. Cade began investigating the various components of urine – urea, uric acid and so forth – and realized that to make urine soluble for purposes of injection he would have to mix it with lithium, an element that had been used medically since the nineteenth century (in the mistaken belief that it could serve as a solvent of uric acid in the treatment of gout).

“Then Cade, on a whim, tried injecting the guinea pigs with lithium alone, just to see what would happen. The guinea pigs became very lethargic. “Those who have experimented with guinea pigs”, he wrote, “know to what degree a ready startle reaction is part of their makeup. It was thus even more startling to the experimenter that after the injection of a solution of lithium carbonate they could be turned on their backs and that, instead of their usual frantic righting reflex behavior, they merely lay there and gazed placidly back at him.”

“Cade had stumbled into a discovery of staggering importance, yet he was able to develop it only because of his resoluteness in taking the next step. He decided to inject manic patients with lithium… he injected 10 of his manic patients, 6 schizophrenics, and 3 chronic psychotic depressives. The lithium produced no impact on the depressed patients; it calmed somewhat the restlessness of the schizophrenics. But its effect on the manic patients was flamboyant: All ten of them improved, though several discontinued the medication and were still in hospital at the time Cade wrote his article late in 1949. Five were discharged well, though on maintenance doses of lithium.” (p.256)

No mention is made in this book, or in Professor James’ account, of the toxicity and risks associated with swallowing (or injecting lithium), which are, in particular damage to the kidneys and thyroid. So dangerous is this drug, that regular blood tests must be done to guard against acute and chronic toxicity. According to the MIMS Annual (1993), its “adverse reactions”, better described as “dangers and toxicity”, are briefly described as follows:

“Administration of lithium carbonate may precipitate goitre requiring treatment with thyroxine, but this regresses when treatment is discontinued. The ECG [electrocardiograph] may show flattening of the T wave. Hypercalcaemia, hypermagnesaemia, weight gain and oedema may occur, and skin conditions may be aggravated. The toxic symptoms are referable to the gastrointestinal tract and the central nervous system. These must be known by the patient and his or her nurses and relatives. Those referable to the gastrointestinal tract are anorexia, nausea, vomiting, severe abdominal discomfort and diarrhoea. Those referable to the central nervous system are lassitude, ataxia, slurred speech, tremor (marked) and agitation. If none of these are present, the patient is not intoxicated. Patients suffering from lithium toxicity look sick, pale, grey, drawn and asthenic. It is vital to bear in mind that lithium can be fatal, if prescribed or ingested in excess…At serum lithium levels above 2 to 3 mmol/L, increasing disorientation and loss of consciousness may be followed by seizures, coma and death.”

Heralding the “discovery” of lithium by Cade by a Victorian psychiatrist as a great moment in medical science, the Victorian medical establishment, including Professor Norman James, has long been insistent on the treatment of “manic” and even “hypomanic” people with lithium. This is despite the known risks and toxicity of the drug.

Lithium is said, by Australian psychiatrists, to “stabilise the mood”, and it is assumed that people who have had even brief episodes of “elevation” or “abnormal excitement” need long term mood stabilization with the drug. This includes single episodes of “hypomania”, which is described in the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM IV as follows:

“A Hypomanic Episode is defined as a distinct period during which there is an abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood that lasts for at least 4 days (Criterion A). This period of abnormal mood must be accompanied by at least three additional symptoms from a list that includes inflated self-esteem or grandiosity (nondelusional), decreased need for sleep, pressure of speech, flight of ideas, distractibility, increased involvement in goal-directed activities or psychomotor retardation, and excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (Criterion B)”. (p.335)

As if it makes the diagnostic criteria “precise” and “specific”, the DSM adds that:

“If the mood is irritable rather than elevated or expansive [which are not further defined in the DSM IV], at least four of the above symptoms must be present.”

It is incredible that “increased goal directed activities” and “non-delusional increase in self-esteem” could be cited as evidence of mental illhealth rather than an indication of improved health. Furthermore DSM IV  adds that:

“The change in functioning for some individuals may take the form of a marked increase in efficiency, accomplishments or creativity.” (p.335)

It is strange that this mental state should be viewed as an “abnormal” one, but at least the American Psychiatric Association (unlike the Australian psychiatric establishment) does not advocate incarceration or forced drugging for “hypomania”. The reference manual says:

“In contrast to a Manic Episode, a Hypomanic Episode is not severe enough to cause marked impairment in social or occupational functioning or to require hospitalization, and there are no psychotic features.”

The University of Melbourne’s Foundations of Clinical Psychiatry is not as clear in their distinction between “hypomania” and “mania” and “hypomania” has only two references to it, one relating to diagnosis and one relating to treatment. Under “Abnormal states of mood elevation” is written:

“Far less commonly [than depression], a persistent elevated mood occurs. Similarly, a continuum of severity if found with the mild states difficult to distinguish from normality. Moderate severity Hypomania, or severe state Mania, are obvious, the patient’s behaviour having serious consequences if treatment is not swiftly initiated. Most manic patients also experience depressive swings, and this condition is therefore referred to as Bipolar Mood Disorder.” (p129)

The recommended treatment is described under “management of elevated mood states”:

“The assessment and treatment of the patient suffering from acute hypomania or mania is essentially the management of the acutely psychotic patient. Organic conditions, including drug-induced states, need to be excluded. For reasons of safety, most patients need hospitalisation which, because of the lack of insight, may need to be recommended. The mainstay of pharmacotherapy are the neuroleptics, such as Haloperidol or Chlorpromazine. Although lithium carbonate is an effective antimanic agent at relatively high concentrations risks of toxicity discourage its use. Occasionally, for particularly severe cases, ECT is needed.” (p.144)

The drugs recommended for the treatment of “hypomania” and “mania” turn out to be the same ones recommended for “schizophrenia” and “ECT” is electroconvulsive treatment (shock treatment), which is used for “depression” as well as its “opposite”, “mania” and also for severe or “intractable” psychosis (including that supposedly due to “schizophrenia” or “schizoaffective disorder”). Unlike many other parts of the world, where ECT has been banned or seriously restricted, in Australia the use of electrical shocks has increased in recent years and is used more widely (in more centres and for more reasons). Most of the psychiatric hospitals in Australian cities give patients ECT, often against their will.

Involuntary ECT in the State of Victoria is said to be restricted to “emergency cases”, but it is left to the individual psychiatrist to define what constitutes an “emergency”. The systems of appeal open to the protesting patient are very limited. They can appeal to the Chief Psychiatrist, Norman James, who has the authority to stop the abusive use of drugs or ECT. It is most unlikely that he would, however. James, who was previously head of psychiatry at the Royal Park Hospital is a keen advocate of both ECT and the use of “neuroleptic drugs”. It is he who wrote the opening chapter of Foundations of Clinical Psychiatry. In it, he wrote an intriguing passage:

“The asylums inaugurated as a result of humanistic urges soon became grossly overcrowded, despite the fact that some were among the largest and most expensive buildings erected by the governments of the day. Numerous difficulties beset them. As a result of their isolation they became large, impersonal, human warehouses. Patients had few if any rights and were completely at the mercy of their carer – a largely untrained workforce from which has arisen the modern profession of psychiatric nursing. There was a total lack of any specific physical treatment for mental illness until the advent of ECT [so much for walking in gardens, music and warm baths]. Those who did improve did so largely by the passage of time and the happy advent of a spontaneous remission [not ‘recovery’]. These conditions led to a cycle of scandals, public inquiries, usually some temporary improvement and then a relapse into previous conditions or worse.” (p.9)

 It could be time for another public inquiry.

In psychiatric wards and Mental Health Review Board hearings the psychiatric patient is judged guilty unless proven innocent. Unfortunately innocence (of ‘mental illness’ or ‘personality disorder’) cannot actually be proved according to prevailing psychiatric theory which does not view humans in terms of “guilty” or “innocent”. All psychiatric patients are “officially innocent”, just “unfortunately inflicted with an (invisible) illness”. One which “unfortunately tends to run in families”. Thus entire families are stigmatised without laying blame on any individual. It is not the fault of the family or the individual to be afflicted with illness: it is “just one of those things”. Maybe genetics plays a role. That way individuals in the family can scan their relatives (and in-laws) for evidence of insanity.

As for the diagnosed patient, regardless of whether he or she is called a “mental patient”, “schizophrenic”, “nutcase”, “client” or “consumer” there is no escape from the judgement of “defective” and the accompanying stigma. Even if no evidence can be found at a particular time of mental illness, the patient can be accused of “masking” (hiding) their madness or be in remission.

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.

Tarun Sehgal’s Negligence

Tarun Sehgal’s additions to the Framing

©2019-04-11

Dr Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam

I have met “Dr” Tarun Sehgal twice, a month apart. After the second visit on 18 February 2019, he amended a “clinical report” to the MHRT (Mental Health Review Tribunal) that the PA Hospital has been using to oppose my freedom since 2014.

The first amendment is to add to the “primary” diagnosis of “paranoid schizophrenia” two “secondary” diagnoses

  1. Mental and behavioural disorders due to use of cannabinoids, harmful use
  2. Other specific personality disorders

The second amendment is in the section titled “Brief History of Mental Illness” most of which has remained unchanged since 2014, when it was written by the psychiatrist Daniel Varghese who has since left the service. The framing and character-assassination by Daniel Varghese and his registrar David Nguyen has been retained (with spelling and grammatical errors as well as errors of fact) by a series of PA Hospital psychiatrists including Falih Al-Sudani, Justin O’Brien, Jumoke Banjo and Ghazala Watt.

Sehgal has added:

“Last medical review (Dr Tarun Sehgal, Cons) on 18th Feb 2019

He feels he is doing better with the reduction in the dose. He reported sedation from it lasting for the first 4-5 days each time after the depot.

He stated his achievement in terms of having – 10K ‘Linked-in’ connections, – 3.5K ‘Facebook’ friends and several followers on Youtube, Twitter and FB business site. He reported that has not being paid his royalties from APRA (Australian Performing Right Association) because he is a member of APRA. He has submitted around 80-100 songs to APRA and these are performance rights. You tube pays royalties to him but he is not getting from FB or google. He has lost about 5kg in weight. He is eating well and he is a good cook according to him. Sleep is good.

He has never ever had problem with sleep unless when he had viral meningitis at 23 yo. At present, no issues with his neighbours. The only problem is that “being harassed by this hospital”. No admission since Jan 2017. Denies any concerns at present. He reported that the main issue was that he went against his father and it caused the problem. He believed that his father was a key organiser/chair leader for Tamil Tigers. He opposed to Tamil Tigers and his father ‘discredited and dispossessed’ him. Since then his father caused the problem for him. He was a family doctor until 2003 but because of his father he has not been able to get back to same job.

The interview had themes around ongoing discussion on disagreements related to diagnosis, need to take medication, inappropriate treatment by psychiatric services including negligence by MH services. He did not talk about his cannabis use in the appointment. He admitted to ongoing cannabis use in his last appointment. “

The next section “Circumstances leading to the initiation of involuntary treatment” is retained unchanged since 2014.

Sehgal’s only other addition to the report (other than changing and adding “personality disorders” to the diagnosis of ‘paranoid schizophrenia’ on the opening page) is the section “Provide details of the current mental health assessment”:

“MSE by Dr Tarun Sehgal (cons) 18/2/19

He presented with average personal hygiene, unshaven, appropriately dressed and rapport was difficult to establish. His speech was normal in tone, vol and rhythm. His mood was euthymic with mildly irritable affect. No delusional or perceptual abnormality reported. Cognitively – he was grossly intact. He lacks to have insight into his mental health condition and need to have treatment.”

It appears that Tarun Sehgal lacks insight into his lack of English literacy as well as psychiatric and medical knowledge. Paranoid schizophrenia, according to psychiatric texts, is a disease characterised by hallucinations and delusions, as well as other problems including flat affect, lack of motivation, lack of social skills, disorganization in thought and speech, superstitiousness and magical thinking. I have never had any of these problems and was well within my rights to debate them with the psychiatrist who was authorising drug treatments against my will under threat of being locked up again if I refuse.

In his “report” Sehgal has left out two important facts. These are that I lent him a copy of my 1997 book “Psychiatric Tales and Words About Life” to read and tried to discuss AIDS with him. His response to my asking him if he thought AIDS is man-made was to refuse to answer. When I pressed him on the matter he said he would be “naïve” to say what he thought. This is the first time anyone has responded in this way to this question, and I have asked it of many people, including the case managers Raghavan Raman and Nigel Lewin, both of who are qualified as nurses. Raghavan Raman said, unequivocally, “yes, it is”, while Lewin said, “it wouldn’t surprise me”.  I think Tarun Sehgal should blame himself if he had difficulty establishing rapport with me. I am very easy to talk to, but I don’t like being pathologised.

Transitional Justice and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka

©2018 Dr Romesh Senewiratne-Alagaratnam

In March 2018 a short article was published online in The Diplomat titled “Transitional Justice in Sri Lanka: From Denial to Delay”. It was authored by a Swiss-trained Indian lawyer by the name of Yashasvi Nain, who the article says is working as a Programme Officer at the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative where he leads its international advocacy program at the UN Human Rights Council. His Linkedin profile says that he studied at the Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law (Punjab) from 2008-2013 followed by training in international criminal law and International refugee law at the University of Geneva. He has also worked with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a female Tamil Tiger (LTTE) suicide bomber in 1991.

Nain claims that Sri Lanka has failed to live up to its promises and that a UN report by the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights “specifically highlights the delays in constituting the long promised transitional justice mechanism on the atrocities and human rights abuses committed by both the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)”.

The LTTE was militarily defeated in May 2009, when its military leader, who had led the organization’s “armed struggle” for “Tamil Eelam”, Vellupillai Prabakaran, was killed. This ended a 30-year civil war, but not the calls for “Tamil Eelam” among the Tamil expatriates who had backed the Tamil Tigers and the separatist war. The “struggle” for Tamil Eelam was continued by the so-called “Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam” (TGTE) headed by the Tamil Tigers’ New York-based lawyer Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran, who calls himself the ‘Prime Minister’ of the TGTE. The TGTE has established offices in 10 nations, namely the USA, UK, Canada, Norway, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, New Zealand and Australia, but notably not in India or Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka formerly banned the TGTE, which still flies the LTTE flags at its events and broadcasts (despite the LTTE being banned as a terrorist organization in several nations in which the TGTE is active).  Wikipedia describes the TGTE as a “government in exile” but the organization is a farce and does not have the support of the vast majority of Sri Lankan Tamils. The TGTE claims to be democratic (unlike the LTTE) and committed to achieving Tamil Eelam by peaceful political means, but has wasted a lot of money trying to mount vexatious legal action against the Sri Lankan military leaders that defeated the LTTE and charge the Sri Lankan government with ‘genocide’. In truth, if there was genocide committed in Sri Lanka, it was conducted by the LTTE, and not the government. It was the LTTE that tried to rid the “north and east” of Sri Lanka of Singhalese and Muslims.

The legal concept of ‘transitional justice’ was developed after the Nuremberg Trials following World War Two, when Nazi and Japanese war criminals were tried by military tribunals and imprisoned or executed. It was justice of the victors, followed by efforts to de-Nazify Germany. However, under Operation Paperclip many of those involved in atrocities, including psychological warfare, human experimentation and collection of human tissue for study, were not prosecuted. Both the Soviets and the Allies competed for known war criminals with what was regarded as valuable scientific knowledge.

According to the Nuremberg precedent, it is Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan military who should be trying the defeated forces – the LTTE – which started a separatist war, with foreign backing, in 1977. This was a war of aggression and it is a war crime to start a war. The war was also a front in the Cold War, something that is not fully appreciated and little written about. However, a close study of the war in Sri Lanka, the Korean War and the Vietnam War as related fronts in the Allied war on Asia, helps one understand the duplicitous role that several ‘Western’ nations played in the war and why the separatist propagandists talked about the Tigers being armed with “AK 47s” (Russian-made Kalashnikov assault rifles) which are depicted on the Tamil Tiger flag, along with a ring of AK 47 bullets surrounding a charging Chola Tiger. The LTTE claimed to be secular and socialist, but never democratic. The military wing was hierarchical, and Prabakaran was the boss of the military wing, but the LTTE’s international operations were more opaque and less hierarchical. The Tamil Tigers were big on cult-worship, fear, violence and terrorism but small on ideology.

Transitional justice includes judicial measures, like criminal prosecutions and non-judicial measures like truth commissions and reparation programs. Nain wrote in March this year that “the government had not yet made public the draft Bills for a Reparations Office and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission”. He fails to mention the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) that was held immediately after the war. The LLRC made several sensible recommendations and was not the government white-wash its critics had predicted it would be.

The matter of reparations is one that needs holistic appraisal. Who should compensate the people in Sri Lanka who suffered in this war and how should the compensation and reparations be paid? To settle this matter the war needs to be looked at in its entirety, and those who profiteered through the war (and there were many war profiteers) should be identified and charged. It is those who waged war against the small but sovereign nation of Sri Lanka that should pay reparations. The governments that overtly or, more usually, covertly supported the LTTE included India, Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Israel. The USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand form the ‘Five Eyes’ (or Eschelon) alliance, that shares intelligence and runs joint psy-ops. The ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky wrote in his book By Way of Deception how the Mossad (the Israeli secret service) trained both the Sri Lankan forces and the Tamil Tigers, at the same time.

 

Nain does not mention reparations by the LTTE’s backers and focuses on allegations of human rights abuses by the Sri Lankan government, police and military. It is common knowledge, however, that India armed and trained the LTTE and rival Tamil gangs of youths before unleashing them on Sri Lanka in the early 1980s. Later India sent troops to Sri Lanka (the IPKF or Indian Peace-Keeping Force) to disarm the gangs it had trained and the only gang that refused to disarm was the LTTE. The LTTE had, by then, eliminated the rival Tamil leadership of other separatist gangs (‘armed groups’). They also murdered several Tamil leaders who they accused of being ‘traitors’ for being prepared to work with the Colombo government, including the much-loved Tamil mayor of Jaffna Alfred Duraiappah, who was killed by Prabakaran himself in 1975. The mayor was in his sixties and had gone to a Hindu temple to pray, though he was a Christian, and was gunned down after he greeted the young Tamil lads who had taken out the contract to kill him. The gang was led by Prabakaran who was 21 and had formed his first armed gang, called the Tamil New Tigers (TNT), in 1972, when he was only 17 years old.

Though Prabakaran was known as the leader of the LTTE, the self-declared “theoretician and strategist” of the organization was an older man by the name of Anton Balasingham. In traditional Tamil culture the older brother – anna – has rank and authority over the younger brother – thambi. In the LTTE Balasingham was known as “Anna”, while Prabakaran was known as “Thambi”. Balasingham was the brains while Prabakaran was the brawn. But the real brains behind Balasingham was his second wife, the Australian-born and trained nurse Adele Ann Wilby, who met Balasingham in England when he was nursing his terminally ill wife Pearl, and married him in 1978. It was she who wrote the notes at the repeatedly unsuccessful peace talks that the LTTE held with the Sri Lankan government, in which her husband was the chief negotiator and “strategist” for the LTTE.

Anton Balasingham was raised a Roman Catholic but became a self-professed Marxist. Marx famously said that religion is the opium of the masses. In the 1960s Balasingham worked in Colombo as a journalist and editor, translating foreign news into Tamil, before getting a job as a translator (Tamil and English) for the British High Commission. It was the British High Commission that arranged for him to go with his wife Pearl, who he had married in 1968, for medical treatment in England. This was in 1971 and she died in 1976, with a diagnosis of chronic renal failure due to chronic pyelonephritis. During her illness Balasingham met Adele, who had trained as a nurse in Warragul in rural Victoria (in Australia).

Balasingham was recruited into the LTTE by the organization’s London representative and moved to Tamil Nadu with Adele. In 1986 he accompanied Prabakaran when the LTTE leader met Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian Prime Minister who he later assassinated using a programmed suicide bomber. The Balasingham couple orchestrated the LTTE’s activities from Madras, but moved to Jaffna, temporarily, in 1987. In 1987 war erupted between the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) and the Tamil Tigers and the Balasinghams fled back to London.

In 1990 the Balasinghams returned to Sri Lanka to lead the LTTE delegation in the peace talks in Colombo. The peace talks failed, but the IPKF withdrew and the Tamil Tigers took over the Jaffna peninsula. The Balasinghams were in Jaffna at this time, when the LTTE gave Muslim citizens 24 hours to get out of Jaffna or be killed in a clear act of “ethnic cleansing”. Ethnic cleansing is a euphemism for genocide. The LTTE’s intent was to rid ‘Tamil Eelam’ of both the Singhalese and the Muslims, who were mostly Tamil-speaking as their mother tongue, but identified themselves as Muslims, Moors or Sri Lankans rather than ‘Tamils’.

After the Sri Lankan Armed Forces retook the Jaffna Peninsula in 1995, the LTTE forced thousands of Tamil civilians to accompany them as a human shield, as they retreated into the jungles of the Vanni, where they established what they called their ‘capital’ in the village of Kilinochchi. This was when Adele Balasingham was filmed by an Australian film crew handing out necklaces of cyanide to young Tamil girls – ‘cadres’ of the ‘Women’s Wing’ of which she was the boss. They respectfully called her “Aunty”. The girls were ordered to swallow the cyanide if they were captured, and terrorised that they would be raped and tortured by the “brutal” Sri Lankan soldiers if they were taken alive. They were told to swallow the poison to “protect their honour”. The real reason was to protect the secrets of the organization. Cyanide poisoning is a particularly unpleasant way to die.

The Balasinghams returned to London in 1999 and flew on to Oslo, Norway, after Anton Balasingham developed renal failure (he was a long-standing diabetic). In Oslo he had a kidney transplant with a kidney donated by a young Tamil Sri Lankan and was able to continue his political leadership of the LTTE, leading discussions with the Norwegian government that resulted in the February  2002 ceasefire followed by peace talks in Thailand, Norway, Germany, Japan and Switzerland. These talks were not held in good faith by the LTTE, which used the opportunity to collect funds and prepare for the next “Eelam War”.

It has been said that truth is the first casualty of war. Balasingham was a propagandist. He was based in London, the centre of dissemination of British colonial and neo-colonial propaganda, and worked for the British High Commission. The British gave him a base to wage war against the sovereign nation of Sri Lanka that they used to rule as the Dominion of Ceylon. The British continued to arm and train the Sri Lankan military while also giving a base to the LTTE in London and elsewhere in Britain. After the war ended they are providing a base for the TGTE, which still flies the LTTE flag and is actively rewriting history and concealing the truth about the LTTE and its crimes against humanity. Furthermore, Sri Lanka is not the only nation in which Britain has contributed to warfare and division. “Divide and rule” was an accepted strategy of the British imperialists and colonists, and employed throughout what is now called the Commonwealth of Nations.

After she returned to England from Sri Lanka, Adele Balasingham wrote the autobiographical The Will to Freedom about her years as the boss of the LTTE’s women’s wing. In it she argued that the fact that the LTTE allowed women to fight was a sign of women’s liberation and the fact that that they wore cyanide necklaces was a sign of their commitment to the cause. Nothing could be further from the truth. The young women were carefully programmed, through slogans and images of the “leader” to be prepared to sacrifice their lives to protect the secrets and especially the whereabouts of the mainly male leadership. The suicide bombers were given their own name – the Black Tigers – and their last meal was the “honour” of dinner with Prabakaran himself. Balasingham and the real masterminds of the LTTE created a cult figure out of Prabakaran and  promoted a glorified image of the killer as a “liberator of Tamils” in Tamil Nadu and among the Tamil ‘Diaspora’ (expatriates). This propaganda is readily evident on the Internet, but began before there was an Internet.

 

Transitional Justice

 

Transitional justice includes both judicial measures such as criminal prosecutions and non-judicial measures like truth commissions and reparations programs.

Transitional justice implies transition from authoritarian, repressive regimes or civil conflicts to a more peaceful, democratic future. This is part of the movement to promote democracy as a system of government, as opposed to the Chinese (or Communist) system. The LTTE claimed to be Marxists and to be against the caste system, but in practice the war involved poor “low caste” Tamils in Sri Lanka being killed and maimed and being indoctrinated into a suicidal, militaristic mindset while the rich “high caste” Tamils enjoyed the luxury of professional life in the West, while sending money to buy weapons for the poor Tamils and Singhalese to be killed. Millions of dollars were collected every year in the USA and UK, and later in Canada and Europe. Meanwhile the sob stories of would-be asylum seekers and refugees were repeated without due scrutiny by various Western NGOs, human rights organizations and media outlets. Over the 30 years of the war the LTTE built up a considerable international propaganda network.

The fact is that Sri Lanka has had a democratic system of government since it obtained independence from Britain. Though President Mahinda Rajapaksa was widely denounced in the West as “dictatorial” and “authoritarian”, when he lost the election in 2015 he left power without calling in the military to protect his “rule” as some of his enemies predicted he would. The efforts to demonise President Rajapaksa and his brother Lt Col Gotabaya Rajapaksa were extreme, with comparisons with Hitler’s regime by people entirely devoid of historical knowledge and good sense.

Criminal prosecutions for transitional justice can be held in international or domestic courts. Sri Lanka is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC), but there are several individuals who led the LTTE that live in countries that are signatories, including Adele Balasingham and Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran.

After the war many LTTE cadres and leaders were given amnesty after de-radicalisation and rehabilitation by the Sri Lankan government. Some were given employment in the military and have been involved in the dangerous work of clearing mines. The progress of mine-clearing in Sri Lanka compares well with the situation in other nations in which landmines have been sown. As part of the transitional justice measures the end-user certificates and sales and use of landmines by both sides should be examined, as well as the source of other weapons, including chemical weapons like cyanide and explosives. Possible links to Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and Orica (the ICI subsidiary based in Australia that exports cyanide, explosives and electronic detonators) should be explored as part of the investigation into the truth about the war and who profited from it.

Truth Commissions

 

Some of the questions that might be investigated by the truth commission:

  1. Who sold the weapons and who purchased them?
  2. What weapons were bought by Prabakaran and his outfit since 1972?
  3. Trace end-user certificates for weapons
  4. How many casualties from LTTE attacks?
  5. How many injured in LTTE attacks?
  6. How many fatalities from LTTE attacks?
  7. Names of civilians killed by LTTE
  8. Ages of civilians killed by LTTE
  9. Mode of death/cause of death as per death certificate if issued
  10. Names of people killed in LTTE attacks
  • Names of civilians and armed forces injured by LTTE
  • Names of civilians killed/injured in government attacks
  • Names of injured requiring hospital care
  • Names of hospitals treating injured
  • Nature of treated injuries
  • List of drugs used in treatments
  • Fatalities/deaths in hospital
  • Cause and mode of death as recorded by hospital
  • DNA analysis of remains
  • Names of missing persons in all 3 languages

 

According to Wikipedia, transitional justice aims at

  1. Halting ongoing human rights abuses
  2. Identifying past crimes
  3. Identifying those responsible for human rights violations
  4. Imposing sanctions on those responsible
  5. Providing reparations to victims
  6. Preventing future abuses
  7. Security sector reform
  8. Preserving and enhancing peace
  9. Fostering individual and national reconciliation

Nain claims that there is ongoing torture by Sri Lankan police and that “attacks, death threats, surveillance and harassment of human rights defenders and victims of violations has continued”. This needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Sri Lanka has a history of being maligned by India and the West by critics who fail to examine their own countries for egregious human rights abuses. The psychiatric system in the UK and India are cases in point.  There is also the problem of embellished or false reports by Sri Lankans seeking asylum in the West, for which they need to prove ongoing persecution. This is a big industry, which the TGTE boss Rudrakumaran is part of as a “refugee lawyer”.

Regarding the identification of past crimes it is worth noting that in the Nuremberg Trials the crimes of the ANZAC and Allied victors were not investigated or prosecuted. The Sri Lankan government has extended amnesty to many thousands of LTTE cadres that have committed crimes against the state, and chosen not to prosecute known LTTE leaders who cooperated with the armed forces, police and government. This has only been done if people have renounced violence. Some of the recalcitrant LTTE fighters are still in jail. It is reasonable to ask that these people be charged or released and their names made available for the missing persons investigations.

Imposing sanctions on those responsible requires tracing the LTTE funding and propaganda networks, which are international and requires an international policing effort. This is a job for the Sri Lankan police and Interpol.

Providing reparations to victims requires the identification of the victims and identification of the perpetrators of their suffering. These perpetrators are those who financed and orchestrated the war, especially those who duplicitously supported both sides in the war.

Preventing future abuses, in this case preventing a return to conflict, is a complex matter that I have given thought to for many years. In 2002 I developed my first Peace Plan for Sri Lanka, a 40-proposal peace plan of which the first proposal was the promotion of tri-lingual education in Sinhala, Tamil and English from primary school onwards. This will break down the language barrier that is one of the roots of the conflict. The other proposals in my peace plan can be found by searching “Peace Plan for Sri Lanka” on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAkLVReimbw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rrJA3xnoUk

 

Reform of the Sri Lankan military and police (the security system) is ongoing and there have been efforts to recruit and train Tamil-speaking and ethnic Tamil youths to serve in the armed forces and police. This is welcome. Cultural exchange is the best way to heal divisions.

Sri Lanka has long had laws against torture, but there have not been prosecutions of police and security forces for torture, as far as I know. This implies a culture of impunity, as has been alleged. It should be noted, however, that torture is engaged in by the Western armed forces as well, and to a greater degree. There is also the systematic torture of “mental patients” in the West, with the same abusive drugs and treatments being used both by the LTTE (they ran a ‘psychiatric hospital’) and the Sri Lankan government. The chemical restraints used in the West are also used in Sri Lanka and the Western diagnostic system, which constitutes labels of incurable disease, blamed on “chemical imbalances” is used around the world, including Sri Lanka, under the influence of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the British Royal College of Psychiatrists, which has trained successive generations of senior Sri Lankan psychiatrists.

The Sri Lankan military have shown exemplary leadership to the world in combating terrorism and making peace after the long war. Several military leaders gave up their military careers and entered the diplomatic service, actively promoting reconciliation and peace-building, like General Shavendra Silva. The military were involved in de-radicalising the LTTE cadres and rehabilitating them for civilian life as well as reconstruction projects. They were also involved in business ventures in tourism and agriculture in what had been LTTE-controlled areas and is still claimed by the separatists as “Tamil Eelam”. These have been criticised, with some justification. The separatists are angry that talk of separatism is against Sri Lankan law, and angry at the presence of military bases in “Tamil areas”. They are also angry, and have been for many decades, about what was unfortunately termed “colonization schemes” where poor Singhalese were given land and settled in the Eastern Province in areas (around Batticaloa and Trincomalee) that had mainly been inhabited by Tamils (and Muslims, who were mainly Tamil-speaking, though many were bilingual or trilingual). Granting land to the landless should be based on need, not religion or ethnicity. Everyone needs a home.

One of the root causes of the conflict was the division of Tamils and Singhalese in the education system. This worsened in the 1970s with laws that were intended to foster the national languages of Sinhala and Tamil at the expense of English. When I studied at Trinity College in the 1970s boys whose parents were ‘Sinhalese’ had to study in the “Sinhala medium”, boys with Tamil parents had to study in Tamil, while those boys with mixed parentage (Singhalese/Tamil), were Muslim (Moor or Malay) or Burger were allowed to study in English, Sinhala or Tamil. It was a disastrous policy. It also led to many English-speaking professionals leaving the country for their children’s education. This had been the intent; the measures were taken partly to counter the so-called “brain drain”, where Ceylonese professionals, fluent in English, were accepting better paid jobs with better conditions in the West, notably doctors and engineers.

These are some of my suggestions for preserving and enhancing peace:

  • Promote trilingualism and multilingualism
  • Wealth redistribution to poor
  • Land redistribution to landless and needy
  • Education – a computer for every classroom aiming towards a laptop/tablet for every student
  • Health promotion not drug promotion
  • Holistic approach to health
  • Program of reforestation
  • Promote nature awareness and love of nature
  • Restriction of weapons to military and police
  • Security cameras
  • Electricity grid access
  • National electricity grid
  • Focus on renewable/sustainable/green energy
  • Reconstruction – roads, railways, schools
  • Green architecture and housing
  • Develop hi-tech industry and training
  • Promote Colombo as beautiful metropolis
  • Promote ecotourism

 

Fostering individual and national reconciliation is a simple matter if people identify as Sri Lankan rather than according to their language, religion or ethnic group. Patriotism is to be encouraged along with Sri Lankan nationalism rather than tribalism. However, reconciliation between rival Singhalese, Tamil and Muslim views of Sri Lankan history is not easy – there are deep differences in the myths and legends that are venerated by Singhalese Buddhists, Singhalese Christians, Tamil Hindus, Tamil Christians and Sri Lankan Muslims. Every religion has its own myths and legends about human origins and history, often at odds with each other. There are deep differences between the beliefs of Catholics and Protestants and between members of the different Protestant churches.

Then there is the scientific view, which reports that the first human remains found in the island, those of Balangoda Man, date back to more than 30,000 years ago. The view of archaeology is also a scientific view; the archaeologist Paul Pieris surmised a century ago, that when Prince Vijaya arrived in the country, according to the Mahawamsa legend on the day of the Buddha’s death (543 BC) there were already several Hindu (Shaivite) temples on the island. More recent archaeological studies in the ancient city of Anuradhapura, long the capital of the Rajarata kingdom shows evidence of settlement several hundred years before the legendary arrival of Prince Vijaya. Reconciliation does not require one to accept the other’s perspective on all matters, however. Diversity in beliefs and views is to be encouraged, along with respect for different opinions; tribalism, racism and intolerance are not.

Finally, Sri Lanka needs transnational justice as well as transitional justice. The nations that attacked Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and supported the LTTE during the 30-year war should pay reparations to the people of Sri Lanka. These include India and the United Kingdom. Justice delayed is justice denied.

 

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.

On Balaji Motamarri’s Directions

©2018 Romesh Senewiratne-Alagartatnam (MD)

I am writing this to express my strongest condemnation of the thinking and actions of Dr Balaji Motamarri towards me at the Princess Alexandra (PA) Hospital and Metro South Addiction and Mental Health Services (MSAMHS) of which he is the director.

I have never met Dr Motamarri, and he has refused to speak to me, even on the phone, but I have been subjected to abusive diagnosis and treatment by a series of psychiatrists at the PA Hospital and its outpatient clinics since 2002, when I was locked up 5 times under the authority of Dr Paul Schneider, who continues to work as a senior psychiatrist at the hospital to this day. Schneider was acting on the wishes of my father, Dr Brian Senewiratne, who was a long-time consultant at the same hospital and a colleague of his. My father was also a long-time propagandist and lobbyist for the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) travelling the world campaigning for the Tamil Tigers to be de-banned. He claimed that the Tigers were “freedom fighters” rather than terrorists and argued, citing the example of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), that a “guerrilla army using guerrilla tactics on guerrilla soil” could never be defeated, though the fight may go on for hundreds of years.

My father began getting me locked up in 1995, when I first publicly criticised him. A man who holds grudges, he has had me locked up numerous times since then, prevented me from earning my living as doctor, and tried to discredit me by claiming that I was “in and out of mental hospitals” (which was true, but mainly because of his insistence that I had a “serious psychotic disorder” that required “assertive treatment”). To run salt into my wounds, my father presents himself as a champion of human rights and the rights of the oppressed.

Balaji Motamarri, my father and I all have Linkedin and Facebook accounts. What I know about Dr Motamarri comes from what he has made publicly available about himself and his qualifications, rather than personal discussions with him. I have seen him once, when he was pointed out by nursing staff one weekend, when I had been locked up again in 2016. It was a weekend and he was the on-call psychiatrist for the PA. I had been locked up for more than a week and wanted to go home. I wanted to see him so that he could see for himself that I was of sound mind. He didn’t even acknowledge my presence and ignored me completely. I have not seen him since, though the Nigerian psychiatrist who had got me locked up (again on the wishes of my father) kept me locked up for a few more days, and tried to convince me that I had “paranoid schizophrenia”. I pointed out that my long-standing claims that my father was a supporter and lobbyist for the LTTE was not paranoid, it was factual. She ordered that I be injected with the antipsychotic drug paliperidone and placed on an Involuntary Treatment Order (ITO) to enable easier return to the hospital if I become “unwell” again or refuse (the abusive) “treatment”.

Balaji Motamarri’s Linkedin page indicates that he speaks Hindi and Telugu and graduated in medicine at the Andhra Medical College in 1987. His Linkedin page says he has been a psychiatrist in Australia and “Clinical Director, Psychosis Academic Clinical Unit” for 19 years and 8 months (since Oct 1998). Below this it states that he has been ‘Clincal [sic] Director” of MSAMHS since 2012. Since he has been the clinical director of the “Psychosis Academic Clinical Unit” I have been locked up and injected on more than 20 occasions, always at the PA Hospital (one of several hospitals on Brisbane’s south-side that comes under the authority of the MSAMHS).

Despite graduating (in India) some years after I graduated at the University of Queensland, Balaji Motamarri’s Linkedin and Facebook pages do not suggest that he is computer literate. He also has an almost complete absence of academic publications to his name, yet he is supposedly the clinical director of the “Psychosis Academic Clinical Unit”.  As testament to his carelessness, even when confronted with the relatively simple task of listing his experience for Linkedin he made several typographical errors (in addition to ‘clincal’ instead of clinical): He says he is now (since October 2016) the Executive Director of “Clincial Services” of “Metrosouth Mental Health Services”. He hasn’t even got his own title right. This is the “Executive Director of the Metro South Addiction and Mental Health Services (MSAMHS)”.

Balaji Motamarri has 161 Linkedin contacts, including 14 mutual contacts with me. I have about 3500 contacts, including psychologists and psychiatrists from many countries, including India. I also have contacts relevant to my other areas of interest – neuroscience, medicine, meditation, music, human rights, law, Buddhism, journalism and politics. I have posted links to my music and publications on my Linkedin page, which are available to be read by my peers, including Balaji Motamarri. I have sent him a contact request but he hasn’t accepted it yet.

The University of Queensland lists one and only one publication co-authored by Balaji Motamarri. From 2012, and published in “Current Medical Research and Opinion” it is titled “Practical guidelines on the use of paliperidone palmitate on the treatment of schizophrenia”. PubMed lists 3 other papers for which he was a co-author, all published in Australian psychiatry newsletters and all promoting long-acting injectables, like paliperidone. Since I was locked up at the PA in 2012 I have been injected monthly with paliperidone on the orders of a series of psychiatrists answering to Balaji Motamarri. They started off by saying I had schizophrenia, then revised it to “psychotic disorder – not otherwise specified” before changing back to schizophrenia. My protestations that I have never had hallucinations, am motivated and sociable with a stable mood, am well-organized, rational and logical and am obviously of sound mind has fallen on deaf ears. The psychiatrists have consistently taken the side of my father against me and declared me to be “psychotic” and “delusional” to believe that he was maliciously motivated towards me, and that he was a propagandist and lobbyist for the LTTE.

Balaji Motamarri’s Facebook page provides a window into his social life in 2010. There are only 2 postings, from 26 December 2009 “Merry Christmas to all” and from 25 January 2010, when he has posted on his wall what he intended as a personal message to his friend Manju:

“Hi Manju. My apologies for not replying earlier. As you can understand we are ‘recovering’ from our trip – the trip of ‘Telengana Bandhs’. Hyderabad has become a city of uncertain nightmares. And to add to the issue, our daughter’s school is starting in 2 days time and you know the dramas associated with this – just imagine ‘school after 10 weeks on holidays’ – what a nightmare to the parents.”

Balaji Motamarri seems to be feeling sorry for himself because his daughter has to go back to school after 10 weeks of holiday (which he claims he needs to recover from) and this is a “nightmare to the parents”. I have never had nightmares about my daughters going to school, but I have had many nightmares about being locked up by Balaji Motamarri’s unit. In these nightmares I am trying to prove my sanity but am interminably kept waiting. Sometimes I am assaulted by men with needles. Sometimes I am looking for my bed but am faced with endless corridors. My most consistent nightmare is being kept waiting in the confines of the PA Hospital. I am also uncertain about what he meant my Hyderabad becoming a “city of uncertain nightmares”. I am certain about my nightmares. They are very vivid.

Balaji Motamarri has only 182 Facebook friends, and hasn’t made any new ones in recent years. However, when he first filled in the questionnaire for Facebook he enthusiastically listed the Indian educational establishments he studied at. His Intro lists:

Works at MSAMHS

Worked at CNAHS

Studied psychiatry at PGIMER Chandigarh

Studied MBBS at Andhra Medical College, Visakhapatman, India

He also includes three high schools, including one in Chennai, where he matriculated in 1979 (before starting medicine in 1981).

 

Everybody should be treated with respect, but seniority is an important concept in society and in the medical and academic hierarchies. One is expected to respect ones seniors, as one is expected to respect ones elders. This has a long tradition in the West as well as the East (including India). The MSAHMS boasts that it provides “respect” as ones of its core values. I matriculated in 1978, winning the Tyrwitt Cup for best academic student at the Church of England Grammar School in Brisbane. I was working as a young doctor looking after desperately sick children and at the Royal Children’s Hospital and Prince Charles Hospital when Balaji Motamarri was still a medical student in India. While Motamarri was studying to become a psychiatrist I was looking after a community of 1000 mainly elderly patients, including many with complex illnesses (including mental health problems) as a family doctor in Melbourne. I have researched and lectured on mind-body medicine at Swinburne University in Melbourne, and my lectures can be viewed on YouTube, if Balaji Motomarri and his staff are interested to see what my state of mind was like in 2001 (when I was first misdiagnosed as having schizophrenia). They can even see the interview I gave in 1998 when I discussed my research into the pineal gland with Micheal Adami and the documentaries I have made about eugenics, psychiatry and AIDS (the theories that were diagnosed as ‘delusional’ by the psychiatrists in Melbourne).

I think I am owed the respect of a phone call with him to explain how and why his hospital is misguided to force a disease label and anti-psychotic drugs on me. I am also owed an apology for being locked up for raising uncomfortable truths and being denied my freedom of speech and my physical freedom. I am owed an apology, too, for being poisoned with drugs that have harmed my health and brought me no benefit, as well as putting me at risk of a range of iatrogenic adverse effects. At least I don’t have the added trauma of believing that I have an incurable brain disease.

The Melbourne Establishment’s Response to my AIDS Thesis

I began researching AIDS in Melbourne in 1996. I had initially been struck by the similarity of the negative eugenics targets of the Nazis (notably homosexuals and drug addicts) and the epidemiology of AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s – notably that it was a heterosexual disease affecting women and children in Africa (Pattern 2 countries) while it was mainly confined to homosexuals and injecting drug users in the West (Pattern 1 countries, as they were called).

Following 5 years of research and writing I finished ‘Eugenics and Genocide in the Modern World – the cause of the AIDS epidemic?” in 2001. At the time I was a visiting lecturer at Swinburne University’s Graduate School of Medicine, so I sent copies to Professor Avni Sali, the head of the graduate school and Professor Richard Silberstein, head of Swinburne University’s Brain Sciences Institute. I also discussed my theories about AIDS with Professor Sali in person, and with Professors Gustav Nossal and John Mills over the phone. I discussed it, too, with Associate Professor Mike Toole, head of the Burnet Institute’s International Health Unit and with psychiatrists at the Alfred Hospital, who later claimed that my theories where the paranoid delusions of ‘paranoid schizophrenia’.

Professor Sali, who is a surgeon, said that he too thought AIDS was man-made and could not find flaws in the reasoning of the thesis. He said, however, that there was little he or I could do and that it’s a “big program”. He then suggested that I share my thesis with a man called Noel Campbell. Campbell, trained as a dentist, had been given a “research professorship” at Swinburne by Sali and met me in Lygon Street, Carlton for dinner. He told me that he was 90% certain that AIDS was man-made and developed by the USA, and told me about a lawyer by the name of Boyd Graves, who was supposedly taking the US Government to court for developing the Human Immunodefieciency Virus (HIV) as a biological weapon to target Black people. I later discovered that this was a fraud, Boyd Graves worked for the US Navy and was trying to make money from distributing a flow chart of the 1970s “Special Cancer Virus Program” which he said “proved” that AIDS was man-made. Graves also claimed that he himself was cured of HIV infection by a single injection of a drug called Imusil which had been patented by a Jewish businessman by the name of Marvin Antelsman. I found that Antelsman had Israeli military connections and that he had been involved in setting up computer systems for Israeli submarines. Also Imusil is a preparation of colloidal silver that had long been used as an anti-fungal skin preparation by the Israeli military.

Mike Toole, who I met in the street when I was busking and later rang at the Burnet Institute trained as an epidemiologist at Monash University in Melbourne. He is the long-time head of the institute’s International Health Unit (IHU) that has NGO status and advises on AIDS management in numerous countries in the Asia Pacific region. He said “we prefer to the leave the politics out of it and focus on strategies that work”. These were barrier methods of contraception (notably condoms) and early intervention with drugs, though the institute is also involved in promoting childhood vaccination as a major part of its international health programs. Toole’s boss at the Burnet Institute, the Harvard-trained microbiologist John Mills intially supported my opposition to biological weapons, but hung up the phone on me when I suggested that HIV was a bioweapon.

I had several conversations with Sir Gustav Nossal, who was involved in the WHO immunization programs in Africa that may be implicated in the introduction of HIV to Africa (notably the smallpox and polio eradication programs). He asked me to send him a copy of my thesis, which I did. When I rang him later to discuss it with him he and raised the possibility that the USA had developed HIV as a bioweapon to counter the “Third World Overpopulation” concerns that were stridently expressed in the West in the 1960s, he rebuked me, “Dr Senewiratne, this conversation is going outside the realms of a normal scientific discussion”.

The most dramatic of the responses was from Professor Richard Silberstein of Swinburne’s Brian Sciences Institute, when I rang him. I remember the date, because it was September 11, 2001. “Sorry Romesh, I can’t talk now. Turn on your TV. Some of our people are there.”

I turned on the TV and watched the second plane hit the twin towers.

I also gave a copy of my thesis to the psychiatrists at the Alfred Hospital. They refused to comment on it, but said that my belief that AIDS was man-made and involved Australian institutions was a paranoid delusion and a symptom of schizophrenia. This had the effect of silencing me for a while, though I continued to find evidence to support the hypothesis, including the historian Philip Dorling’s discovery in 2001, that Frank Macfarlane Burnet (after whom the Burnet Institute is named) secretly advised the Australian government and military to focus on developing our chemical and biological warfare capability and use it offensively (though illegally) to attack “the teeming hordes” of “coloured people” to our North, which he and other White Australian intellectuals thought were breeding too fast.

This is the 2010 edition of the book, reduced from 600 to less than 300 pages.