In Defence of the Liberty of the Individual in Society Against the Mental Health Act 2001 (Ireland)

In Defence of the Liberty of the Individual in Society Against the Mental Health Act 2001 (Ireland).

By

Gavin Bushe MLIS, B.A. (Hons), Cert.

The Unique Individual.

I am different. We are all different from each other. To live in society is to share your unique signature with others, to live beside them in harmony and mutual purpose in order achieve the goal of community which is a happy life for all concerned.  Here in Ireland we have a law written by Fianna Fáil which threatens the right to be different.  It is called the Mental Health Act 2001.

Would we not all like to live in a brotherhood or a society with others – for good or for bad?  Yes.  Then who will be his brother’s oppresser?  Noone.  The right of difference of the unique individual stands firmly as a jewel of human rights that is to be guarded against the politics of some people.

I have personally been the target of the Mental Health Act 2001 on the 17^th of May 2020.  I was walking in my Islamic Dress.  (It’s called an Ihram, normally used by people on the pilgrimage).  I was travelling to the supermarket when some people from among the community including Brian Leech, candidate for the Solidarity Party, approached me with vain concerns about my mental health status.  They repeatedly asked me was I “alright”, as though I could not discern or speak for myself while rebuking them, and carefully feigned an arrest under the Mental Health Act 2001.  Garda R215 was the arresting officer.  She understands that it was a farce.

I was taken to Tallaght Garda Station where Doctor Moloney asked me two questions before signing me into involuntary detention. I then spent 26 days in involuntary detention in Tallaght Acute Psychiatric Unit.  While there I was group-assaulted twice by clinical staff for refusing to take psychiatric medication via injection.

All of this was the creation of an impersonal legal machinery called the Mental Health Act 2001.

The Revolution and the Liberty of the Individual.

The purpose of Ireland’s Unfinished Revolution was to establish the rights and liberties of the individual as against foreign tyranny.  The Unfinished Revolution created an Irish State that was inherited from the foreign tyrants.  Today that State still fundamentally exists within the country.  It is an ominous legacy from 1923.

The point of the politics is to establish a free Ireland.

How can this be achieved under the framework of the Mental Health Act 2001?  It cannot.  When I was sent to the hospital it was a kicking-in of the most reactionary legal structure in the present land.  It must be opposed.

The Problem is The State.

“Where there is a state there is no freedom, and where there will be freedom there will be no state”, said Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin).  Lenin would say, “Smash the State”.  The State has no place here except as a Welfare State.  We must rally round each other and reflect on what this represents to us to have a law like the Mental Health Act 2001.  It is a wooden mallet that hovers over our heads.

The State is the gravest threat to the liberty and individual personhood of the human being.  When acting like a machine it depersonalises and destroys.  It makes bullies out of human beings.  It makes victims out of human beings.  The ultimate end must be the Repeal of the Mental Health Act 2001.

Only when the Mental Health Act 2001 is repealed, particularly in its social control mechanisms, will we be able to enjoy free mental health.  Until then we are prisoners of the State that empowers some and victimises certain individuals who for whatever reasons are brought under its gaze.  The law is a basilisk.  The law is a cockatrice.  The law is a medusa.  It turns you to stone as its victim. It must be repealed.

Community Advocates are Necessary.

Pending the repeal of the Mental Health Act 2001, mandatory advocates must be assigned to every person who is detained under the law.  I have witnessed dozens of community members who have been left to lady luck for their human rights at the hospital: people who are detained on an ongoing and perhaps indefinite period of time while the mental health machine keeps turning and churning on.

The best defence for us is to have an advocate assigned to each detainee.  The Irish Advocacy Network (IAN) already exists.  It must immediately be funded and expanded so that it can do the job it was created for.  It was the brainchild of Paddy MacGowan.  Paddy was detained for 10 years within the system before he got out.  His story is an immense one.  He set-up the Irish Advocacy Network (IAN).  Now it must be funded and expanded. Sallynoggin College of Further Education (SCFE) provides a course in “Information, Advice, and Advocacy Practice”.  It is a QQI Level 6 course designed for the purpose I mentioned.  The College is based in Dun Laoghaire.

The Law Must be Voluntary.

The entire idea of a republic is to create more freedom than it takes away.  Only right-wing actors confuse the moral problem by making difference a problem.  The Mental Health Act 2001 has got to go.  In its place we must have a system of mental health care that is attractive not coercive.  Only when people will be attracted to a service can it really start to aid them.  Currently the service is undermined by its domineering coercive nature.

I envisage a time when people involved in mental health will breathe a relief from the individualist slaughter that they have been engaged in – and they must know it.  A fully voluntary service could help others whose mental health has deteriorated.  It could give them mental breathing space.  No forced medications.  No forced Electroshock.  No atrocities against the unique individual with his/her own unique DNA and human fingerprint. 

I will be different. 

Gavin Bushe