Hannah Rodger pens an excellent article about the tenuous rights of those subject to compulsory psychiatric intervention (Revealed: more than 900 Scots sectioned without safeguards under Mental Health Act, News, January 17).
The UK Government has promised to implement “parity of esteem” for mental and physical illnesses. But with which physical illness does a non-take-up of treatment by the patient – perhaps because the medicine is dehumanising, has severe side-effects, or is simply useless – result in violent consequences?
“I was restrained as it was suggested I had tried to punch and kick. However, I had no movement in my legs or arms,” said one sectioned patient. In extremis, undoubtedly force is used occasionally with the physically ill; but a wholesale and profound disregard for basic rights is disturbingly routine where mental health is concerned. The hallmarks of all non-consensual psychiatric responses are secrecy, complacency, dissembling and the pre-eminence of the safety of the community: phenomena which are often present for the least noble of reasons.
Archie Beaton
Inverness
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