Man who committed minor offence seeks freedom from Mental Institution after 25 years

TheyKnowMyIP

This dude was kept for quater of a ****ing century because some quack(s) decided he represented a "threat" to society. At least if you murder someone, you might have some idea of if/when you get out. Imagine being kept in a locked facility for such a long time under mere opinion.

A closed consensus does not represent justice, it represents oppression. This really is beyond criminal.

I am actually gobsmacked at this. Forensic psychiatrist? Don't make me laugh. What a farce. Science my balls.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/historic-hearing-begins-into-broadmoor-patient-seeking-his-freedom-2362090.html

im invisible

He was first brought to Broadmoor in 1986 after pleading guilty to two counts of attempted wounding.

"My clinical view is that Mr Haines is presenting with paranoid psychosis, in the sense that his preoccupation with the injustice he believes the psychiatric system has caused him is out of proportion with reality," Dr Romero-Urcelay said. "He believes that we are persecuting him".

fu(k sake...

Chuck Stone

"My clinical view is that Mr Haines is presenting with paranoid psychosis, in the sense that his preoccupation with the injustice he believes the psychiatric system has caused him is out of proportion with reality," Dr Romero-Urcelay said. "He believes that we are persecuting him".

In a statement given to the tribunal, Mr Haines explained: "I am labelled as having a mental disorder which I do not accept. So long as I am in a psychiatric setting I will be seen as a patient who needs treatment. Everything I do or say will be interpreted on this basis."

'If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail'.
Abraham Maslow

AlmightyCushion

"I am labelled as having a mental disorder which I do not accept. So long as I am in a psychiatric setting I will be seen as a patient who needs treatment. Everything I do or say will be interpreted on this basis." He said through his representative, Bob, a sock puppet who Mr Haines believes is the reincarnated spirit of Napoleon Bonaparte.

AlmightyCushion

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

"I am labelled as having a mental disorder which I do not accept. So long as I am in a psychiatric setting I will be seen as a patient who needs treatment. Everything I do or say will be interpreted on this basis." He said through his representative, Bob, a sock puppet who Mr Haines believes is the reincarnated spirit of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Spat coffee onto my laptop just there.

Bravo sir.

Oranage2

Its good to hear a happy ending. It only took 27 years to cure the guy that must of took a lot of perseverance and patience from the fine doctors! Everything is possible these days.

Icyseanfitz

bit crazy alright, hope he gets out seeing as he has spent half his life in there (tbh that would nearly drive anyone a bit crazy)

TheyKnowMyIP

In fairness they are at the forefront of "Discovery" and all that jazz that dwarfs the minds of mere simpletons like ourselves. Gotta love gems like:

Al Frances says something that seems to surprise even him. Just now, for instance, in the predawn darkness of his comfortable, rambling home in Carmel, California, he has broken off his exercise routine to declare that “there is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bull****

"Allen Frances, lead editor of the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (universally known as the DSM-IV), the guy who wrote the book on mental illness, confessing that “these concepts are virtually impossible to define precisely with bright lines at the boundaries.” For the first time in two days, the conversation comes to an awkward halt."

Lordy - http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_dsmv/all/1

4leto

With the battery of observational evidence on psychopaths and deviants we will probably get more of this.

What do you do? just suppose you have 2 kids which have a high probability of committing a school mass murder. Or a person who wishes to martyr themselves. Or you diagnosed the paranoid narcissism of Anders Behring Breivik before he committed that act. Or you had in your care someone who may hurt a child.

But that is the problem you can't keep someone locked up because they might commit a crime. So I am sure there is more to this case then meets the eye. But I don't know, maybe it was just a case of someone trapped in a system.

TheyKnowMyIP

4leto wrote: »

But that is the problem you can't keep someone locked up because they might commit a crime. So I am sure there is more to this case then meets the eye. But I don't know, maybe it was just a case of someone trapped in a system.

Tell that to the godlike Psychiatric profession. The people that put him there should be locked up instead to be honest. This is a miscarriage of justice for sure. No wonder people put such little faith into the mental health system with cases like the above coming to light. I feel sick.

4leto

TheyKnowMyIP wrote: »

Tell that to the godlike Psychiatric profession. The people that put him there should be locked up instead to be honest. This is a miscarriage of justice for sure. No wonder people put such little faith into the mental health system with cases like the above coming to light. I feel sick.

Godlike maybe but also responsible and perhaps liable.

What if he was a potential mass murderer, what then?

I am not condoning what happened, the physciatric industry is quackery most the time, but they can only work with what they know.

TheyKnowMyIP

4leto wrote: »

Godlike maybe but also responsible and perhaps liable.

What if he was a potential mass murderer, what then?

I am not condoning what happened, the physciatric industry is quackery most the time, but they can only work with what they know.

Being held indefinitely without any sort of due process available to non psychiatric criminals is the criminal part of this case.

4leto

TheyKnowMyIP wrote: »

Being held indefinitely without any sort of due process available to non psychiatric criminals is the criminal part of this case.

I agree, but I have no idea how you would fix it. The russians use to do this all the time, lock up their dissidents in "mental institutions" and not very nice ones. There were also abuses in America with mental health institutions right up to the 70s. So its easy to abuse and a threat to our liberties somewhere down the road.

You could give them a court proceeding but the opinions of the court would be influenced by the doctors treating the patient who of course could be easily corrupted.

There was a good film based on a true story staring Angelina Jolie "Changeling" which depicts well how bad things could get and in a democracy.

TheyKnowMyIP

"You will conform"

TheyKnowMyIP

Is belief in religion a mental illness yet? It should not be. Every person has a fundamental right to believe what they want. This should not be compromised.

reprazant

TheyKnowMyIP wrote: »

Tell that to the godlike Psychiatric profession. The people that put him there should be locked up instead to be honest. This is a miscarriage of justice for sure. No wonder people put such little faith into the mental health system with cases like the above coming to light. I feel sick.

So if gets released and then promptly kills 10 kids, who is at fault then?

Just because he believes he is not a danger to himself or others, does not mean that he is not.

TheyKnowMyIP

reprazant wrote: »

So if gets released and then promptly kills 10 kids, who is at fault then?

Just because he believes he is not a danger to himself or others, does not mean that he is not.

Last time I checked, he didn't kill anybody. The decision as to whether he represents a danger to society is a criminal matter, not a Psychiatric one. Hitler knew what he was doing.

US psychiatrist Daniel Carlat of Tufts University in Boston says: “There is no question that among the medical professions, psychiatry is the most scientifically primitive. We have no more than a rudimentary understanding of the pathophysiology of mental illness and we have resorted to tenuous and ever-shifting theories of how our treatments work.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sciencetoday/2011/0811/1224302221300.html

What the above in mind, do you not think that maybe, just maybe, these "Doctors" could be wrong?

Statistician

I'm aware of someone who was put into a mental institution in Ireland in their early teens for petty theft. They are still there now (50-60 years later), and will probably die there.
They've long become institutionalised.

StephenHendry

reminds me of the film one flew over the cuckoo's nest where jack nicholsons characters pretends to be crazy to stay in there

Son Of A Vidic

"My clinical view is that Mr Haines is presenting with paranoid psychosis, in the sense that his preoccupation with the injustice he believes the psychiatric system has caused him is out of proportion with reality," Dr Romero-Urcelay said. "He believes that we are persecuting him".

His preoccupation with the injustice? That has got to be one of the craziest things I have ever read. Maybe his 'preoccupation' is merely a reactive symptom of the disgraceful injustice he has suffered? What a complete idiot!

TheyKnowMyIP

Corvus Maximus wrote: »

His preoccupation with the injustice? That has got to be one of the craziest things I have ever read. Maybe his 'preoccupation' is merely a reactive symptom of the disgraceful injustice he has suffered? What a complete idiot!

Interesting to read John Nash's account: Memoir

*Edit - fair use applies for this material*

reprazant

TheyKnowMyIP wrote: »

What the above in mind, do you not think that maybe, just maybe, these "Doctors" could be wrong?

Maybe they were wrong, maybe there we correct. I don't know enough about the case or about psychiatry to make that call. How much of this case do you know, other then that article you have posted?

I do know that I have a friend who has been diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, who has admitted to hearing voices in the past and has attacked his parents on two occasions when he went off his meds. He has claimed that there is nothing wrong with him so I am a bit wary when it comes to people who say they are perfectly healthy.

The man in question has attacked only himself, no others. What form of attack did he use? What weapon did he use to attack himself? What was the build up to him attacking himself?

Seachmall

Anyone sympathising with this man clearly has a preoccupation with the injustice ye believe the psychiatric system has caused this man and it is out of proportion with reality.

Ye should all be locked up for life imo.

Seachmall

reprazant wrote: »

He has claimed that there is nothing wrong with him so I am a bit wary when it comes to people who say they are perfectly healthy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieK1PTXmopE

Son Of A Vidic

Seachmall wrote: »

Anyone sympathising with this man clearly has a preoccupation with the injustice ye believe the psychiatric system has caused this man and it is out of proportion with reality.

Ye should all be locked up for life imo.

To use the famous quote from General McAuliffe, commander of the 101st US Airborne Division during The Battle of the Bulge. When asked to surrender by the Germans, his reply was simply "Nuts"!.

Such a reply is also appropriate for the above post.

TheyKnowMyIP

Seachmall wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieK1PTXmopE

This isn't funny. You are comparing apples and oranges here. I hope you don't ever have to put up with what the guy in the OP has. Putting someone away for a quater of a century under the guise of hostilic "care" is dodgy.

Seachmall

TheyKnowMyIP wrote: »

This isn't funny. You are comparing apples and oranges here.

The point being a crazy man won't believe he's crazy.

Of course the point the doctor made is batshit insane itself.

Either way we don't know enough about the case to pass an opinion or criticize anyone.

TheyKnowMyIP

Seachmall wrote: »

Either way we don't know enough about the case to pass an opinion or criticize anyone.

I think the material contained within the article at least raises the question: Do Psychiatrists have the implicit god given right to lock people away based on mere opinion? There is enough information in the article to infer the decisions are at least somewhat rigged from the outset.

Closed voting? I smell a rat...

Seachmall

TheyKnowMyIP wrote: »

There is enough information in the article to infer the decisions are at least somewhat rigged from the outset.

No there's not, we don't know how they came to their conclusion. For all we know he's told his psychiatrists about fantasies of rape or murder.

Maybe they are full of ****, maybe they aren't but we don't know enough to even speculate intelligently.

reprazant

TheyKnowMyIP wrote: »

I think the material contained within the article at least raises the question: Do Psychiatrists have the implicit god given right to lock people away based on mere opinion? There is enough information in the article to infer the decisions are at least somewhat rigged from the outset.

Closed voting? I smell a rat...

What? Where in the article does it infer the decisions are at least somewhat rigged from the outset?

You seem to know nothing of this case other then what is in that article yet have decided, based on minimum information, that the guy is complete sane and that the doctors were incorrect in their original diagnosis. You don't even know what he did to get locked up in the first place. Now, the guy might well be sane and a major miscarriage of justice may have taken place but I would prefer to know a lot more details before making that sort of judgement.

TheyKnowMyIP

Seachmall wrote: »

No there's not, we don't know how they came to their conclusion. For all we know he's told his psychiatrists about fantasies of rape or murder.

Maybe they are full of ****, maybe they aren't but we don't know enough to even speculate intelligently.

We will know for certain once the hearing is carried out publically. Should be interesting. I do accept your point though.

joseph brand

25 long years.

It's around 6-8 for murder. 0- 3 for rape. The system definitely works.

When he gets out he should 'look up' the doctor who kept him there. Pop in unexpected for a short chat.

sbsquarepants

"He believes that we are persecuting him"

And all we done is lock him up for 25 years - paranoid fúcker, he should be locked up!:D

Reminds me of a story i read a few years back about a guy who feigned mental illness when faced with a G.B.H. charge, he wrongly believed that the "hospital" would be a cushy number compared to jail. When he got to there he wasn't long changing his mind, turns out insane asylums aren't that pleasant a place to stay!
He spent something like 20 years trying to prove his sanity and repeatedly failing as one of the key "symptoms" of his "illness" was refusal to accept he had the illness. He's still locked up as far as i know!

Chuck Stone

Doc: Now listen here you - you're not getting out of here untill you accept our diagnosis that you're mad.

Patient: Okay then; I'm mad, happy now?

Doc: Ah ha! You're going nowhere crazy person - it's another 20 years in here untill we cure you.

WTMF??

It really seems as if that guy is caught in a catch 22 situation. The more he proclaims that he's well the more they undermine his protestations by saying they are a manifestation of his illness!

robindch

The Independent wrote:

"My clinical view is that Mr Haines is presenting with paranoid psychosis, in the sense that his preoccupation with the injustice he believes the psychiatric system has caused him is out of proportion with reality," Dr Romero-Urcelay said. "He believes that we are persecuting him".

He's not religious, by any chance, is he?

TheyKnowMyIP

robindch wrote: »

He's not religious, by any chance, is he?

No, religious people don't suffer from delusions. It's okay to believe in a god, just don't tell me a pink elephant is outside your room. That can get you sectioned.

I would be more jovial about this, it's just this chap has basically lost most of his life over these power tripping prison wardens.

ItsAWindUp

I'd say he's mad to get out.

Oranage2

Edz87 wrote: »

Spat coffee onto my laptop just there.

Bravo sir.

Would you like a tissue?

TheyKnowMyIP

ItsAWindUp wrote: »

I'd say he's mad to get out.

It's simply a manifestation of his delusion.

upandcumming

Edz87 wrote: »

Spat coffee onto my laptop just there.

Bravo sir.

The amount of people that read mildly amusing posts with a mouth full of coffee/tea and "spit" it all over their laptops is shocking.

CorsetIsTight

im invisible wrote: »

He was first brought to Broadmoor in 1986 after pleading guilty to two counts of attempted wounding.

"My clinical view is that Mr Haines is presenting with paranoid psychosis, in the sense that his preoccupation with the injustice he believes the psychiatric system has caused him is out of proportion with reality," Dr Romero-Urcelay said. "He believes that we are persecuting him".

fu(k sake...

It goes to prove that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Green Back

TheyKnowMyIP wrote: »

This dude was kept for quater of a ****ing century because some quack(s) decided he represented a "threat" to society. At least if you murder someone, you might have some idea of if/when you get out. Imagine being kept in a locked facility for such a long time under mere opinion.

A closed consensus does not represent justice, it represents oppression. This really is beyond criminal.

I am actually gobsmacked at this. Forensic psychiatrist? Don't make me laugh. What a farce. Science my balls.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/historic-hearing-begins-into-broadmoor-patient-seeking-his-freedom-2362090.html

He wasnt plucked out of thin air to spend 25 years in a mental hospital:

"Haines was first detained in Broadmoor in 1986, following two convictions of attempted wounding. Brandishing a machete, he had threatened mental health staff at Maudsley hospital in London."

"She also said he consistently assaults or threatens Broadmoor staff, and was racist toward black nurses."

And his 'medical' supporters are less than inspiring:

"Speaking for Haines' counsel, Jonathan Watkins, an independent social worker, told the tribunal that, although not a clinician, he did not think Haines had a mental illness."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/sep/28/broadmoor-patient-appeal-detention-tribunal

TheyKnowMyIP

Green Back wrote: »

"Speaking for Haines' counsel, Jonathan Watkins, an independent social worker, told the tribunal that, although not a clinician, he did not think Haines had a mental illness."

Interesting. How should the line between "sane" and "insane" be drawn? The lead author of the DSM-IV thinks it's bull****, maybe we should ask him?

BurnsCarpenter

TheyKnowMyIP wrote: »

Is belief in religion a mental illness yet? It should not be. Every person has a fundamental right to believe what they want. This should not be compromised.

Are you suggesting having a religious belief is equivalent to having a mental illness?
I'm guessing you don't know anyone who's had a psychotic episode.

Green Back

TheyKnowMyIP wrote: »

Interesting. How should the line between "sane" and "insane" be drawn? The lead author of the DSM-IV thinks it's bull****, maybe we should ask him?

Clearly you should be locked up!!!!!!!!!
Only joking.

Surely it's not wrong to draw a line between 'sane' and 'insane' without getting in to a debate about existentialism for the sake of it?
Do you think there are insane people?

TheyKnowMyIP

BurnsCarpenter wrote: »

Are you suggesting having a religious belief is equivalent to having a mental illness?
I'm guessing you don't know anyone who's had a psychotic episode.

Not yet at least. They haven't considered that yet, but don't rule it out. Opposition to Authority is a mental illness now. It's only a matter of time before everything they don't agree with becomes one!

Psychosis is serious stuff, but I believe the vast majority of these cases are either temporary drug induced binges, or the result of a brain(neurological) injury. I would visit a Neurologist quicker than a Psychiatrist if I ever had to deal with Psychosis.

TheyKnowMyIP

Green Back wrote: »

Do you think there are insane people

Interesting question. Personally, I think the term "insane" is a social construct. What could be termed "insane" in one country, might be fine in another. It's certainly not as "hard" empirically speaking as someone with a disease.

Charles Bronson was sent "to the funny farm", yet was retrospectively considered "sane". That at least raises questions about the diagnostic criteria. Insanity is relative to a belief someone holds about you. It's more of a legal concept than anything else.

NSFW(Not safe for work) http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=mTY5-HD9JN4&gl=US

TheyKnowMyIP

Nutcases do exist though, I can't argue with that. My neighbour for example:P

Seachmall

TheyKnowMyIP wrote: »

My neighbour for example:P

If you don't want me watching don't shower with the curtains open!

steddyeddy

Well I didnt think I was rehabilitated but I guess they needed the extra bed!

TheyKnowMyIP

steddyeddy wrote: »

Well I didnt think I was rehabilitated but I guess they needed the extra bed!

That is just your delusion, said the Doctor! Now get back in for bingo. It won't work either way.