Victims

We all outraged at the victims stories of child chemical abuse.

Rightly so. There is a side to this that should also be debated but is not. How the victims were treated by society in general, and in particular the medical model of treatment with regard to mental health.

I have and had some friends who were victims all of them that I know were diagnosed with a mental illness a disease of the brain.

All my friends got angry at the unfairness of it all. Some of them became aggressive at that unfairness. Those that screamed out loud at this unfair treatment, were locked up not in gaol but in mental hospitals.

One friend self harmed in frustration, the best help on offer in the medical model is force. He was forced incarcerated; he was forced treated with medications and with ECT. He was locked into an isolation cell for 9 months.

He covered his body in scars in frustration.

When he was released from his “gaol” mental institution, As Part of his “parole” he was ordered to call to his local garda station once a week, strip naked and prove he had not further self harmed.

All of this was his own fault or so he told me his doctors and the gardai told him he refused all help.

When he spoke to me as he did many times over the years, he would say they never listened to him.

They denied his truth, he went the home of the new priest he shut the door.  His family got tired of his disease, they shut the door. His friends got tired of his disease they shut the door.

The medical model offered him pills for his disease they did not work. When the pills did not work there was nothing else on offer so they applied force for his disease that did not work.

So he hung himself.

When in the name of God will we learn that emotion distress caused by life events is not a disease and cannot be treated as one?

And most certainly cannot be cured as a disease, sure you can control it with pills and some users of the system are grateful and indeed glad to be under that control. Others like my friend and I abhor it.

But the real sadness is there is nothing else.

So who is to ask the question on behalf of my dead a silenced friend what part did the medical model play in this scandal we are all so outraged about.

So many of the victims locked up so few of the perpetrators.