Lacking Insight - Community Law

Lacking InsightOne carer, the mother of a man in his early thirties,speaks about the frustration of having to watch theadverse reactions that her son has to prescribedmedication, and the sense of hopelessness withwhich he greets his circumstances.[My son’s way of thinking at this stage is] tocomply with everything because he doesn’t wantit to be worse. In the past they’ve given himdepot injections because he’s not been happywith the treatment so they’ve forced it on himand he’s had bad reactions from the injections.Of which we were told that when he was firstadmitted that they’d gone back through the filesand they didn’t find anything about reactions tohis medication. The private psychiatrist said that’snot possible because he was on heavy-dutymedication and I saw what happened to him. Hehad massive nose bleeds, he passed out, he splithis head open, his spine was twisted, he couldn’twalk he had to crawl. You know he really had alot of side effects and yet they told me there wasnothing recorded on the file and already he’s onthe full throttle of medications and he’s only beenin there ten weeks. I’m noting . . . the side effects.Because of the dreadful side effects before,he’s quite scared of getting to a point wherethey might do that again. So he’s complying. Hefeels he is damned if he does and damned if hedoesn’t. And I feel the same way.CarerA matter of desensitisation?What are some of the reasons for a hearing havingan ongoing negative impact on a person’s life? OneBoard member suggests that a hearing may beparticularly unsuccessful if the members who hearthe matter have become desensitised to the effectsof their decisions. The Board member believes thatafter a certain length of time on the Board matters ofprocedure can begin to take priority over the needsof the individual.One of the unusual characteristics of the Board- and I’m not sure it’s necessarily a good one - isthat people, a cross-section, have spent a longtime on this Board. There are many members ofthis Board who have been there for more than 10years and I’m not sure that’s that healthy for themactually because it does lead to a loss of vocationand a desensitisation. You start to lose yourresponsiveness to things and however technicallygood they are, and competent and so on, I thinkthe edge comes off people after 6 years, andwhen you’re looking at a significant number ofpeople who’ve been there between 10 and 15who are in positions where others tend to deferto them, I think that generates the kind of culturewhich can detract from appreciation of the realityof the awfulness of being detained. A lot of timepeople sometimes lose that awareness and that’sbad. As soon as you lose that I think you shouldbe gone, because it’s such a heavy decision tokeep someone where they don’t want to be orto make them turn up for injections that haveadverse effects on them and which make themdopey and interfere with their lives and stigmatisethem and everything. It’s a really, really majorencroachment on people’s lives and I think theimmediacy and reality of that is perhaps not aspresent for a lot people whereas maybe it needsto be. It should be there all the time.Board Member (Legal)76