The Campaign to Free John

spiritual_emergency · May 19, 2011

The practice of tonglen...

In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.
In particular, to care about other people who are fearful, angry, jealous, overpowered by addictions of all kinds, arrogant, proud, miserly, selfish, mean —you name it— to have compassion and to care for these people, means not to run from the pain of finding these things in ourselves. In fact, one's whole attitude toward pain can change. Instead of fending it off and hiding from it, one could open one's heart and allow oneself to feel that pain, feel it as something that will soften and purify us and make us far more loving and kind.
The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with suffering —ours and that which is all around us— everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us, no matter how cruel or cold we might seem to be.
We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person we know to be hurting and who we wish to help. For instance, if you know of a child who is being hurt, you breathe in the wish to take away all the pain and fear of that child. Then, as you breathe out, you send the child happiness, joy or whatever would relieve their pain. This is the core of the practice: breathing in other's pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you feel would bring them relief and happiness. However, we often cannot do this practice because we come face to face with our own fear, our own resistance, anger, or whatever our personal pain, our personal stuckness happens to be at that moment.
At that point you can change the focus and begin to do tonglen for what you are feeling and for millions of others just like you who at that very moment of time are feeling exactly the same stuckness and misery. Maybe you are able to name your pain. You recognize it clearly as terror or revulsion or anger or wanting to get revenge. So you breathe in for all the people who are caught with that same emotion and you send out relief or whatever opens up the space for yourself and all those countless others. Maybe you can't name what you're feeling. But you can feel it —a tightness in the stomach, a heavy darkness or whatever. Just contact what you are feeling and breathe in, take it in —for all of us and send out relief to all of us.
People often say that this practice goes against the grain of how we usually hold ourselves together. Truthfully, this practice does go against the grain of wanting things on our own terms, of wanting it to work out for ourselves no matter what happens to the others. The practice dissolves the armor of self-protection we've tried so hard to create around ourselves. In Buddhist language one would say that it dissolves the fixation and clinging of ego.
Tonglen reverses the usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure and, in the process, we become liberated from a very ancient prison of selfishness. We begin to feel love both for ourselves and others and also we begin to take care of ourselves and others. It awakens our compassion and it also introduces us to a far larger view of reality. It introduces us to the unlimited spaciousness that Buddhists call shunyata. By doing the practice, we begin to connect with the open dimension of our being. At first we experience this as things not being such a big deal or so solid as they seemed before.
Tonglen can be done for those who are ill, those who are dying or have just died, or for those that are in pain of any kind. It can be done either as a formal meditation practice or right on the spot at any time. For example, if you are out walking and you see someone in pain —right on the spot you can begin to breathe in their pain and send some out some relief. Or, more likely, you might see someone in pain and look away because it brings up your fear or anger; it brings up your resistance and confusion.
So on the spot you can do tonglen for all the people who are just like you, for everyone who wishes to be compassionate but instead is afraid, for everyone who wishes to be brave but instead is a coward.
Rather than beating yourself up, use your own stuckness as a stepping stone to understanding what people are up against all over the world.
Breathe in for all of us and breathe out for all of us.
Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
Source: Tonglen
Music of the Hour:
See also: The Places That Scare You

spiritual_emergency · June 3, 2011

And I know why...

... The Caged Bird Sings
The free bird leaps
on the back of the win
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and is tune is heard
on the distant hillfor the caged bird
sings of freedom
The free bird thinks of another breeze
an the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
~ Maya Angelou
Music of the Hour:

shanrucas · June 6, 2011

SE, I fear I have not kept up on many posts here. Thank you for sharing the information on the practice of Tonglen...it all makes sense to me.. and thanks also for sharing the poem of Maya Angelou..such beautiful and powerful words.

spiritual_emergency · June 27, 2011

John is no longer allowed visitors. It's for his "own good" of course. Upon hearing this news, he lashed out and struck his nurse. He might as well be a black man in Mississippi a hundred years ago who tried to defend himself against the man who "owned" him. There will be no fair trial. This will be used as justification for why his doctors were right all along. He's schizophrenic! He's violent! He must be locked up for the safety of society at large.

The dilemma that is John Hunt is the perfect example of the dilemma that faces the entire mental health service. Who knows the real reason that John Hunt has for getting angry and lashing out? Why he is so restless and discontented in his spirit? He is not a criminal yet he is locked up.
His family are tired and at their wits' end. Those on the staff in Carraig Mór have no real answer. They can continue to pile on the medication, sedate him, control him, but they cannot cure him, they cannot bring peace to this man’s spirit. It appears they do not know how. His doctor has forbidden visitors. I called up to see John, and a decent nurse explained “you can’t see John”, doctor’s orders. In John Hunt's “best interests” of course.
John lost it and hit one of the staff. John had no right to do that.
John Hunt is 29. He has been locked up and force-treated “in his best interest” for the past five years. I do believe if I was locked away at 24, without trial before judge or jury, from my family and friends I would lash out at everybody around me.
If I had never been allowed to run and play with my son, born when I was locked up (he is 5), I would lash out. Not being allowed to love the woman I loved, I would lash out. Not allowed to go for a pint, I would lash out. Not allowed to sing, not allowed to live life, I would lash out. No matter how often they told me “it is in your best interest”.
Would you lash out, be angry?
What of John’s rights, who will speak for John Hunt if he is accused of assault? Everything that happened during “the incident” occurred behind the locked doors of a public hospital. Who will write the account of what happened, interpret the circumstances, from John’s point of view?
Was John at the end of his tether, and that poor nurse a victim of timing? The last straw!
Did the anti-psychotics John is being forced to take, have anything to do with his violent reaction, who will ask that question, and of whom?
Will the Mental Health Commission (MHC) - the statutory body empowered to protect John - intervene? Can they? Under the current legal restrictions imposed on them I doubt that they can. Will they discover the root of the truth? I have requested the MHC to do so.
Secrecy and silence paramount “in the patient's best interest” of course.
How can John Hunt speak his truth? He is locked away and drugged up to his eyeballs, not allowed visitors? A reporter from a national newspaper and I had scheduled an interview with John last week, cancelled!
If the case goes to court and his doctor states John Hunt does not have the capacity to speak for himself, and in reality he does not right now, because of legal forced drugging.
Not that he lacks intelligence - he is an artist - but he is drugged out of his mind by legal force. Has no voice.
The predetermined result of circuit court, is as I understand it, John will be sent to the Central Mental Hospital for review. What future then for John?
As far as I know the judge has no leeway under the law in that decision. He has a solicitor now, Mr Eamonn Moloney, we wish him and John safe passage through this legal/moral quagmire.
The doctor and the system have total sway, complete authority, who is going to risk going against the “opinion” of a doctor, if the doctor states, John Hunt “might be a danger to himself and to others”, if released, under the current mental health law? Released into a society that completely lacks the support systems John needs to rehabilitate himself back into “normal” society.
This legal medical review, if it is carried out, it will be undertaken by the colleagues of those who legally forced John to become an addict within the system in the first place “in his best interest”!
Who will speak for John? Those that believe they have the right to force treat; to cure the theory of the chemical imbalance with drugs! He has a strong spirit, refuses to comply. That is John’s gift but his cross in the mental health system. Where to be cured you must comply. Indeed you will be legally forced “to show insight”.
The UN is asking questions of this state with regard to the fact that the Gardai arrested the women who escaped from the Magdalene Laundries in the past and forced them back into the convent “in the women’s best interest” of course.
But what are the staff members to do? John Hunt is now a drug addict. He has been legally forced to become a drug addict. He has been forced to be addicted to legally prescribed drugs by the staff that care for him in Carraig Mór. Because they have been educated to believe that John Hunt has a disease in his brain called “mental illness”, and they can cure it with legal addictive drugs.
All who know John now believe that his future is bleak. How can his partner Gráinne now be expected to take John back into her life? He is an addict now, totally dependent on the drugs he has been forced to take while in the care of this state, “in his best interest” of course.
I don’t have a solution for John, his family, or the staff in Carraig Mór. This is such a complicated convoluted area. The more solutions you find the more problems you create.
But if we have learned one lesson from child abuse and the Magdalene laundries, it is this: If you take the right of force out of the hands of those in positions of power, then the level of abuse drops dramatically. Allow the abused the protection of the common law as equal citizens of Ireland, and the institutional abuse stops!
We must dismantle the legal power to be judge, jury and jailer that we, Irish society, have passed to Psychiatry when they care for those we are tired of.
There are too many rumours out there of abuse in psychiatric units not to demand answers on behalf of those powerless and voiceless to ask questions.
Our elderly, we are now learning, are also being drugged into compliance with damaging psychotropic medications.
It is society’s dilemma now and we have to solve what we have allowed to evolve. Everybody is being abused here; the staff and the patients.
Source: Cork Independent - John Hunt

spiritual_emergency · July 26, 2011

More, out of Ireland...

Patient spent 2,000 hours in seclusion
A MENTALLY ill patient had spent nearly 2,000 hours in seclusion while being held as an involuntary patient at St Luke’s Psychiatric Hospital in Clonmel, a judge has been told.
The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was locked up for more than 100 hours at a time and yesterday described his eventual transfer to the Central Mental Hospital, in Dundrum, Dublin, as “my salvation”.
The man, who has been locked up for more than a decade, told Circuit Court president Mr Justice Matthew Deery that because of the cocktail of drugs he was given while in Clonmel, he was grossly overweight when he arrived at Dundrum. ... “The complete story of my treatment in Clonmel has not been told in this court today.”
The St Luke’s psychiatric unit at the Clonmel Hospital came in for serious criticism by the Mental Health Commission in 2009 for the unnecessary use of patient seclusion and the locking of ward doors.
Barrister Sara Phelan, appealing a Mental Health Tribunal decision to detain her client, said he had regained his normal weight and believed, as a result of improved treatment in Dundrum, he could be allowed to resume his life in the community. ...
“I am mentally well, relaxed in myself and I would have a lot of close family support. I have completed 297 pages of my memoirs and I can assure the court I will continue taking my new medication,” he said.
A consultant psychiatrist said the man did not accept he had a mental illness. He suffered from schizophrenia and could prove a risk to himself or others if he broke with his medication regime. He could not recommend his release. ...
While he had made progress, the court, on the evidence of the consultant psychiatrist, could not overturn the decision of the tribunal.
Source: Patient spent 2,000 hours in seclusion

There are many, many "Johns" in Ireland.

See also: Overhaul of Mental Health Act 2001 now urgently required

spiritual_emergency · July 26, 2011

Just in...

The closure of a Cork psychiatric centre is on the agenda according to the Junior Minister with responsibility for Mental Health, Kathleen Lynch TD. The move is part of a nationwide closure of bigger mental health institutions.
Deputy Lynch said the institution, Carraig Mór in Shanakiel, was just one of the larger centres that would eventually be shut down, as set out in the recommendations of the 2006 Department of Health report, 'A Vision For Change'.
The Labour TD told the Cork Independent this week that while ‘A Vision for Change’ had stalled, it needed to be followed up to change the way mental health services were provided. She listed Cork's Carraig Mór as one of the institutions that needed to close.
“There are no plans as of yet but that's not to say that there won’t be," she said, referring to the residential centre in Shanakiel which, according to the HSE, provides accommodation for 21 patients.
She said the larger centres would be closed "because it’s not where we want to be delivering mental health services".
Carraig Mór provides accommodation for patients ranging in age from 30 to 78 years. It provides secure psychiatric intensive care and caters for some continuing care patients, former residents of Our Lady’s Hospital...
She said a new approach to delivering mental health services was now needed, one which included the patient, and consulted with family, friends and advocates of the patient...
She said an in-depth review of the Mental Health Act 2001 will be complete by December of this year, stressing that psychiatric services hold too much power in Ireland.
“In saying that, it’s power they hold because we insist they hold it. If you demand of someone in legislation that they do something, and then when they do it, you say they have too much power - then that’s not their problem. That’s an issue for the legislators,” she said.
“We need to put a human rights slant on legislation. I feel that the day has long passed when you give total and absolute control to anyone. You must allow the person receiving the service to have a say.”
She insisted that the same family consultations must be provided when speaking of individual’s treatment and recovery.
“There is never a difficulty with the family coming in and sitting down with healthcare professionals to speak about the treatment and recovery. Why should mental illness be any different?”
She said the ideal scenario would result in patients with serious mental health episodes being stabilised and then placed back into their community with necessary support...
Source: Cork Independent: Carraig Mor to Close

As the article above attests, that doesn't mean things will get better for John -- the same old attitudes can persist in a different location. But maybe, maybe, maybe...

I'm dumbfounded. I didn't expect this news. Turning the hope back on is going to hurt. Still, I can hope... for John and all others like him.

Incidentally, these changes have come about because there's a new Health Minister -- Kathleen Lynch. I hope she holds true to her promises. "Eventually" is a long time. It might be forever to some.

Music of the Hour:

spiritual_emergency · August 2, 2011

There's now a Wiki entry regarding John...

... John Hunt is a talented artist and writer and a resident of Cork city.[1] In 2005 he experienced a breakdown [2] while his partner, Gráinne Humphrys, was pregnant with their child, Joshua. Frightened for his safety, Hunt's mother, Marion Hunt, instigated committal proceedings against her son.[1] As he was deemed a danger to himself,[3] this led to his involuntary committal at the Carrig Mór Centre, a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit in Shanakiel, Cork city, Ireland.[4] Subsequent to his admission, he received a variety of diagnoses including Drug-induced psychosis, Bipolar disorder and Schizophrenia.[5] He remains an involuntary in-patient of this facility to the present day under the legal provisions of the Mental Health Act 2001.
Source: John Hunt - Psychiatric Patient

finding my way · August 2, 2011

I'm glad a little hope is trickling in, SE

spiritual_emergency · August 3, 2011

Thank you fmw. Me too.

As a result of the actions that took place between John and the nurse he struck, John is to be transferred to a new hospital although I don't know when that action will take place. It's always possible that a change in attending staff will make a difference.

Meantime, Kathleen Lynch, the new health minister seems dedicated to making some sweeping changes to the legislation that governs the Mental Health Act in Ireland. Those changes may also be months, even years away.

The situation is not going to change soon for John. Still, it will change at some point and that allows room for a little hope.

~ Namaste

lagrima · August 3, 2011

---------------------------

spiritual_emergency · August 5, 2011

The latest article on John...

Grainne Humphrys has spent years fighting a mental health system that she claims is doing her former partner more harm that good
JOHN HUNT turned 30 recently, but spent his birthday — like the previous five — locked up in a psychiatric unit in Cork city.
A physically healthy man when he first went into the mental health system, he is now a shell of his former self due to the quantities and varieties of medication he has been prescribed over the years in an attempt to make him better. His teeth and gums are rotten, he gets the shakes, he is at times incontinent and his passion for life appears to be gone.
The story of John’s "incarceration" is a complex and heartbreaking one, and one to which there are no easy answers. But what is clear is that the medical model of treatment alone is no longer acceptable for cases like John — and for a modern mental health service.
Gráinne Humphrys, John’s former partner and the mother of his son Joshua, has also felt locked into this situation for almost six long years.
Campaigning tirelessly and employing powerful language to describe the "chemical restraints" used to control a non-compliant patient — as John is at times — she has garnered much attention for his case by conjuring up images of a lost soul imprisoned against his will.
Broken from the years of campaigning, battling and heartache, Gráinne recently reached her brick wall and, after much consideration, ended her relationship with John.
"The situation was making me unwell and holding me back," she said. "I had two opponents: the system and John. I need to focus more on our son Joshua and myself. It took me a long time and it was very painful, because I really did love him and still do. He is the father of my son and I will always advocate for him, but not at the same level.
"We had a telephone relationship for five years and he still rings. He is quite lonely at times."
The reality is far more stark, and far less simple. This is a man locked up 24/7 in a psychiatric institution because there is nowhere else to try and rehabilitate him...
Source: Trapped in a System Without Hope

chisa · August 9, 2011

Wow. It's strange to think how different the approach is between here and there. They say in some of the articles that it's not typical, but also that it's not uncommon, so I'm curious now to find out more about what they mean by that and how they actually deal with mental illness over there.

I know that I speak quite a lot (though not really here) about how frustrating it is that we do practically nothing in reguards to those that need treatment but are unwilling to stick to it, but it seems that they have gone so far to the other side of the spectrum that it does paint a nasty picture of where the road to seeking more easily-forced treatment policies can take us. There has to be a middle ground though, surely?

It doesn't sound like they were really interested in the treatment part of it at all anymore. I've signed the petition, and I've also posted the story and link in the forum that I more frequently post in. I'm not sure how much help these things are, but what the hey-- more signitures definitely can't hurt, yeah?

spiritual_emergency · August 18, 2011

John has been transferred. His immediate family is fighting the transfer...

The family of a young man who has been incarcerated in a Cork psychiatric unit against his will and against the wishes of his family, has said they will fight a recent decision to transfer him to the Central Mental Hospital.
Separated from his family, including his five-year-old son, Josh, John Hunt (31) was transferred to the Central Mental Hospital this week following a violent outburst at a staff member in June.
His family is calling for answers into the decision to transfer him to the Dundrum facility and asking why they were not consulted...
He was first signed in by Marion after he suffered a breakdown and was diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia in 2006. However, efforts by her to release him have failed as he is being kept in care under the Mental Health Act 2001 under which the clinical director believes him to be a risk to the safety of his family...
John has been prescribed anti-psychotics Solian and Clopixol, sleeping tablets, anti-anxiety tablets and Largactil, which has caused some of his teeth to rot and fall out.
He is now incontinent and has severe problems with his liver and kidneys.
“I’m so worried about him now. If he does not get better in Dundrum, what will come of him? I don’t want to lose my son,” she told the Cork Independent.
“He was not getting the treatment he needed. He just sits there, drugged up.
“They have not investigated why he struck out or what emotional state he is in. It was his son’s fifth birthday, he had broken up with his partner and he was frustrated and drugged up. The mental health system cannot be allowed to rule over a person like this. No wonder he is so frustrated and angry.”
... while John Hunt’s own solicitor sits on the Commission’s tribunal legal board and was chosen by his family, he was not chosen to represent John at the tribunal. Neither was his family allowed or invited to attend.
“Who spoke up for John’s rights? We don’t even know if he has been transferred. We are being told nothing,” his distraught mother said.
Response
A HSE spokesperson stated that the aim of the mental health service was to “work in a collaborative way with patients and their families to ensure the best outcome possible for people who need mental health services”.
Source: Cork Independent - Locked up and lost

That's an interesting legal system they have where even the lawyers are silenced.

spiritual_emergency · August 18, 2011

The Campaign to Free John

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