Choice for Wellness
~ A Patient's Rights Advocacy (Waikato) Inc. Website ~
Every good thought you think is contributing its share to the ultimate result of your life.
-- Grenville Kleiser
Welcome to the Choice for Wellness website
This is a Patient's Rights Advocacy (Waikato) Incorporated website.
What is Patients Rights Advocacy (Waikato) Incorporated all about?
- PRAWI assists patients to exercise their rights in the health area
- PRAWI provides people with information and knowledge to enable them to be responsible for their own health
- PRAWI organises seminars and study days.
- PRAWI has books, tapes, videos and DVDs for members to borrow, to raise awareness of what is available.
Patient's Rights Advocacy is totally independent from any government funded health, education and advocacy providers.
Patients Rights Advocacy (Waikato) Incorporated is based in Hamilton, New Zealand.
65 Tawa Street
Hamilton
New Zealand
Phone/Fax 64-7-8435837
The Utter Travesty of Mental Health in New Zealand
By Anna de JongeThe Annual Report for 2006 from the Director of Mental Health is available now, revealing the mindset of the Ministry of Health. This is 60 pages about Power and Control, Compulsory Treatment Orders and forced Electro Convulsive Shocking. It was not about caring, listening, psychotherapy and support. Of particular interest is that the age of patients given Electro Convulsive shock 'treatments' ranges between 20-94 years and while 142 females endured this treatment, only 70 men did. One has to wonder why more females suffered under this than males.
Furthermore, the language used in this report concealed the reality. It whitewashed Electro Convulsive Shock as a 'treatment' and a 'therapy'. It is neither. It is a cruel, inhumane and degrading assault which causes irreversible brain damage and memory loss. Indeed, some of those who have been shocked can end up unable to function normally again. (1)
I could find no mention of how many people had been wrongfully committed although we know that this occurs. A good example was Clare Swinney's case, when in mid-2006, three psychiatrists who worked together, all wrongly concluded that this well-informed journalist was deluded on the basis of her political beliefs and so forced her to take anti-psychotic medication against her will because she told them 9/11 was an inside job. Why was there no mention of such errors in the Annual Report?
Serious errors are being swept under the carpet rather than being addressed and corrected. In light of this, I think it is high time the Mental Health Act was amended in order to ensure psychiatrists are held accountable for their mistakes and their victims. suffering acknowledged.
What needs to be changed?
- Section 8A, proposed patient . . . A proposed patient has fewer rights than a criminal. A proposed patient may be already drugged before the assessment takes place. This is wrong, because a patient suffering from the effects of a pharmaceutical drug could be mistaken for someone who has mental health problems when their behaviour/cognition could be quite normal in an undrugged state.
- Under Section 59 and Section 60 of the Mental Health Act, a person can be forced to be shocked against their will. This needs to be removed from the Act.
- Section 122 needs to be amended also. It states:
Matters of justification or excuse (1) Every person in charge of a hospital, responsible clinician, duly authorized officer, member of the police, or other person who relies on any notice purportedly given under section 8 or section 11 or section 13 of this Act, or any order purporting to be a compulsory treatment order, shall be protected from criminal responsibility if he or she acts in good faith under the belief that the notice was properly given by a person having authority to give it or the order was properly made by a Court having jurisdiction to make it.
[1] See the H Sackeim report in Neuropsychopharmacology (2007)32 ,page 244-254 Permanent Irreversible Damage and Brain-Disabling Treatment in Psychiatry, Drugs, Electroshock and the Psycho-pharmaceutical Complex by Peter Breggin, 2008.
Patients Rights Advocacy Committee members
From left to right: Noeline Lofthouse, Joan Gregory, Anna de Jonge, Howard May, Georgina Musson, John Sinclair, Gloria Decke, Rens de Jonge.