Part 1

Rob talks with Bernadine about his book "Your Consent is Not Required: The Rise in Psychiatric Detentions, Forced Treatment and Abusive Guardianships" and about the fallible nature of diagnoses, psychiatric medications and treatment along with the inherent problems that occur in the mental health industry that leave psychiatric survivors victimized and trapped for a long time.

One of the stories he shares in this book is about Vince Geisler, who was laid off over the phone and I'm not going to read the whole story verbatim, but I hope to give you a good sense of what happened to Vince. He was a field technician for a Vancouver company, and he and the human resources director never got along. After hanging up, Geisler did some welding and then wanted to go for lunch. However, when he stepped outside, he saw a van and police officers with guns drawn. Rob writes, according to the police records, the street had been cordoned off by about 10 officers including an emergency tactical team with assault rifles and a sniper. They called Geisler out. Over perplexed, Geisler was calm and cooperative, stated the police records, police told Geisler that he was being arrested under the Mental Health Law, slapped handcuffs on him and loaded him into a van Geisler was dumbfounded and asked to speak with a lawyer. He would ask several more times to do so to no avail. At the hospital, a psychiatrist asked Geisler how he was feeling and he said he was a little stressed out because he had just been laid off and then basically kidnapped, brought to the hospital and denied a lawyer. Apparently, and I'm going to quote here, the human resources director had called the police alleging that Geisler had said to her, I may as well walk off put a gun in my mouth and blow my brains out. By his recollection, Geisler believed he said, I feel like I've been shot. HIs wife agree that Giesler sometimes used dramatic language when he was upset. The police discovered that Geisler, a hunter, owned guns and when they attended his home and he didn't answer to their knocking, they assumed he had barricaded himself in. BUt that wouldn't be the only misinterpretation.

Geisler was asked at the hospital by the psychiatrist if he had been feeling excessively under stress. He denied that and said he didn't understand why the police had arrested him, to which the psychiatrist noted in his file that Geisler appeared limited in his insight about police concerns, and perhaps not totally truthful about his stress level. When asked what medication he was on Geisler listed a couple but forgot to mention the antidepressant. When reminded, Geisler told the psychiatrists it was for his ADHD to which the psychiatrist wrote quote, it certainly would appear from his prescription of antidepressants that he has been on for some time that he has been depressed and which he has denied. Given his lack of honesty or forthrightness for his safety, he has been detained. Geisler was locked in seclusion, ordered to change into a hospital gown, and his wife was prevented from seeing him. His psychiatric record was stamped incapable of appreciating the nature of treatment and his need for it. And when Geisler expressed outrage at being detained and continued to ask for a lawyer, security guards came with a nurse demanding he take medication. He woke up 16 hours later, he had been given four different antipsychotics and a sedative. The next morning, a second psychiatrists saw him and noted that Geisler was neither suicidal or homicidal, and now he had no evidence of having a serious mental disorder. And he was discharged.

Geisler felt he had been mentally raped and noted that cattle have more rights being transported to the slaughterhouse, then people do under BC's Mental Health Act.

Think this doesn’t happen often? Rob Wipond is here to tell us how often this can occur to just about any one of us.
music by Shari Ulrich