On The Human Rights Of “Mental” People
Australia, has become one of the worst countries in the developed world for the abuse of people suffering with mental health problems. If you are one of the 5 million or so Australians who at the moment are feeling anxious, depressed, hopeless or are struggling to cope and you turn to any of the public mental health services for help or support you are at risk of being involuntarily confined, restrained, assaulted and subjected against your will to injections of long acting addictive medication that some describe as “torture”. If you don’t co-operate you could be subjected to electro shock (ECT) treatment. You may also be deprived of all your legal rights and are likely to receive a questionable diagnosis that will subject you to public stigmatization and label you as “mad” for the rest of your life.
According to the The United Nations Human Rights Commision, the field of mental disorder has been co-opted for purposes that suit the state and the psychiatric industry, not for purposes that suit the sufferers.
It is not only the patients who are complaining. Many mental health practitioners are also fed up with the abuses they see on a daily basis.
Most are afraid to speak out. To do so is to risk not only losing their jobs but also their professional accreditation. Many are moving on to other fields creating a shortage of competent, capable mental health professionals.
But some professionals are speaking out. One of then is an experienced Australian psychiatrist who has worked in both the prison system and with indigenous communities. Here is what Dr Niall McLaren has to say about the human rights of “Mental” people. More …
Niall McLaren On Critical Psychiatry
Niall is a retired Australian psychiatrist with a lifetime of practical clinical experience. He generally takes an adversarial position towards main stream psychiatric practices. While views expressed in his articles are obviously his own, we have read some of his books and many of his publications and generally support what we regard as his common sense approach to mental health.
Subscribe directly to his articles here. If you are in a position to do so, please support his work with a donation that would undoubtedly be appreciated.
The Pink Panther Story
Back in late 2022, a few friends with lived mental health experience got together with a view of setting up a movement to try and do something about Australia’s mental health system.
To say that we were angry hardly describes the way most of us felt about the dysfunctional mental health services and practices that have become commonplace throughout Australia. We had also lost all confidence in both governments and organisations who claimed to want to help or represent us.
In reality, our needs and voices were simply being ignored.
Many of us have been subjected to considerable violence by the Australian mental health system.
We have also noticed how passive pleas for change to government over many years has had no effect. It is generally conceded that mental health services in Australia have gotten worse.
Activism can take many forms. People like Mahatma Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King Jr in the USA were staunch supporters of non violent protest while organisations like the Black Panther Party, dealing with the same issues as Luther King took up arms against racial inequality and police brutality.
All of these people can be looked to in terms of their spirit, passion and commitment but any form of violent protest was not an option for us. It only adds to a person’s trauma and makes mental health problems worse. This is something the Australian government and many mental health practitioners seem completely unaware of.
We needed a positive way forward. We heard about something called Soteria houses that exist in various countries. They claim to offer a supportive, non-restrictive environment where individuals are treated with kindness and respect and empowered to work through their crises at their own pace. This approach seemed almost too good to be true. It has since become not only the basis for the reforms we would like to see take place in Australia but also our credo for what future mental health policy should look like.
At the time, one of our musically inclined members had been learning Henry Mancini’s well known composition “The Pink Panther Theme” for an upcoming performance. From these unrelated entities, the idea for a name and even the somewhat spirited ethos somehow, spontaneously arose.
We changed the word “Black” in The Black Panther Movement to “Pink” and The Pink Panther Movement was born.
We are a fiercely independent peer owned, operated and self funded organisation. We operate on a shoestring budget and accomplish more than many of the heavily government subsidised organisations do.
Building a Soteria Community In Australia
Soteria community houses have been around for over 50 years and have proven themselves as a gentler, kinder and more effective solution to serious (psychotic) mental health problems than institutional psychiatric wards and hospitals. These days, Soteria type houses are mostly found in Europe but why not in Australia?
Soteria houses are a part of what is becoming known around the world as the Recovery Model of mental health. It challenges the traditional mainstream psychiatric approach which claims serious mental health to be the result of an incurable lifelong brain disease. The recovery movement involves a number of different live in residential programs including Diabasis, I-Ward and Soteria as well as family and social support networks such as Open Dialogue and the Hearing Voices network. They all take a similar approach and overall have been successful in helping people.
Our article “It’s Time For Soteria:An Australian perspective” was published on Mad In America- Click Here To Read It. It has been distributed to a number of senior Federal politicians with whom we are currently discussing the establishment of Soteria Houses throughout Australia on a trial basis.
The Soteria Message is a plain and simple one
Mental Health is a complex phenomena which affects or impacts the whole of our society.
There is no simple or one size fits all solution but things can be dramatically improved.
You don’t have to be a psychiatrist or psychologist to realise that providing an already badly traumatised person with a safe, supportive, kind and understanding environment has to have a better long term outcome than physical restraint, violence, and involuntary drugging.
Our Pink Panther Business Group meets online using Zoom on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month at 7:00pm Sydney/Melbourne time to discuss this and other related issues. Anyone is welcome to attend. Members are welcome to raise issues but should do so in writing a few days before hand so that they can be included on the meeting agenda and interested people notified.
Please see the events page for further details.
The Soteria Support Group
Soteria support groups are an essential part of the Soteria residential program we are endeavouring to promote nation wide. There is little point in engaging someone in a residential program, getting them back on track and then sending them back to the same unsupported environment where they came from. That would just be an open invitation for a relapse.
Our first attempt at establishing an online support group was unsuccessful. Looking back there was various reasons for this but at least one important reason was that we were working with an approach that was long out of date. It was missing key elements which these days would be considered essential for a support group for people who have psychotic and extreme experiences. A significant amount of research and experience has taken place over the last 30 years or so in both the USA and Europe. That knowledge needs to be incorporated into any new support group.
The first step will be to establish a training program for people interested in learning how to facilitate these sorts of groups. This sort of training is much needed in Australia but does not appear to be currently available.
Once we have some suitably trained facilitators we will be in a position to start running Soteria support groups again.
In the meantime, if anyone wants to discuss the Soteria Support group or training program, or has any other mental health issues or concerns please contact me via members chat if you are a ‘Panther member or the “Contact Us” page for non members. One-on-one Zoom sessions can usually be easily arranged, at short notice. Please note that we are not a psychiatrists, psychologists or trained therapists. All we can offer in accordance with Soteria and Recovery Model principles is to listen to you, hopefully with empathy and share our own lived experiences with you.
Promoting Mental Health Reform
This is a place to build relationships with like minded people who want to try and collectively do something about the sometimes horrific mental health practices taking place in Australia. As individuals acting alone we typically find ourselves isolated and without a public voice. We are also very vulnerable to those who are all too ready to take advantage of our situation.
Dealing with mental health problems is difficult enough. We don’t need the additional burden of individuals or organisations who think they have the right to treat us like children or worse. We can also do without poor quality, unaffordable or unavailable services as well as laws that deprive us of our human rights, justify institutionalized abuse and believe it or not even condone involuntary archaic practices that are commonly considered dangerous, ineffective and regarded by some as torture.
Telling Our Stories
We would welcome help from anyone who is an expert in social media as well as visual artists, writers, musical composers and anyone interested in animation, preferably using the free animation software program Blender. Our first Mad Music Video called Sanity and Madness is currently in production and is scheduled for public release at the end of April 2024. We anticipate producing a number of these music videos. Their purpose is to address the false information about mental health that has been widely spread around the world by vested interests. This is particularly the case for many young people who have sometimes been woefully misinformed by state mental health services and others.
Please note that like every job in our organisation, these are voluntary.
What You Can do –
- Join this movement. Every member counts. We need numbers to make our concerns and opinions count.
- Volunteer to become a “committee member” and become involved in the day to day discussions and our efforts in lobbying members of parliament and others who drive mental health policy in Australia.
- Become aware of what is going on and talk to anyone who will listen.
- Have your say online by responding to articles or write an article yourself.
- Help where you can. This is a voluntary organisation where we try and help each other to the best of our abilities. There are lots of jobs, both large and small that need doing to keep a movement like this going and getting results.
We are not anti-psychiatry, anti-psychology, anti-medication, anti-government nor are we mental illness deniers.
We are opposed to involuntary treatment, involuntary confinement, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment including punishment or torture in accordance with the World Health Organisation (WHO) Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2030 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
We are also opposed to treating human beings who are unfortunate enough to succumb to mental health problems (it can happen to anybody) as sub humans who deserve contempt and abuse, rather than compassionate help and support.
We are aware that many people working in mental health services share these concerns but often feel powerless to do much about the current situation.
We support the international Mad Pride movement including Mad In America, website and magazine. Some of the best and kindest people in the world refer to themselves as mad. Turn your madness into an asset and at the same time, help put a stop to those who think of us or try and treat us as broken or inferior.