Let’s remind her who holds the power.
The system holds the power.
It decides who gets listened to,
who gets shut out of the room,
and who ends up restrained
for daring to name the truth.
I’m left reeling from the CPA sucker punch.
My husband is tearing up his room —
because they used control of him to silence me.
Flanked on either side by a CMHT and Heads of Nursing
but I’m not in the room.
My words hang in the subtext of the “Professionals Meeting” agenda —
a ghost presence in a system that knows how to erase people politely.
Can I come?
No, you can’t. We don’t have carers in here.
I’ll have to take advice.
We’ll get back to you.
Radio silence.
Why is Housing in the room?
They breached my husband’s confidentiality.
They surveilled his every move.
Oh, we need them — they’re very important.
No, they’re not.
We’ll get back to you.
You don’t have consent.
We’ll get back to you.
Do you know what this is?
I call it Institutional Retaliation.
I held a flame to the feet of a failing mental health system.
It burned.
And in the ashes lay the devastation of care and treatment that was never
provided.
I made them look — really look — until they saw what I saw:
• A service in tatters
• A CMHT with no functioning care pathway for a seriously ill person
• An Out of Hours Crisis Team with no service at all
“Oh yes, your husband is open to us.”
“No, there’s no care plan on the system.”
“And no, we don’t actually do anything.”And now I have to shut up — because they’ve reminded me how much power
they have.
The power to override discharge plans.
To renege on treatment agreements.
To take the path of most harm, just because they can.
When is a CPA not a CPA?
When the consultant tells you the CMHT staff didn’t stay around
to face the consequences of their clinical decisions from the previous
meeting.
What is this meeting then?
It’s where we finally get to put you in your place.
So this is what they did.
The CMHT forced a plan into being — not because it was clinically sound,
but because they couldn’t manage my husband in the community.
They lacked the resources.
They lacked the will.
So they chose to control and contain him with a depot.
Not just any depot injection — but one that lingers in the body for
months.
A drug that only needs to be administered three or four times a year.
A drug that he has said,
“If you give me that again, I cannot go on living.”
We’re going to give it again anyway.
Longer lasting, so you have no agency.
This is not a trauma informed treatment plan.
It’s not therapeutic.
It’s a chemical cosh.
A tag.
A reminder.
A message — not just to him, but to me:
“You said we failed.
You made us look.
The report agreed with you.
So here’s our answer:
An ironclad plan to keep him quiet — and to put you back in your place.”
It took thirteen months post serious incident to get here, to another
admission,with a promise of better oversight,born of learning and
understanding of what went wrong.
Oh but wait.
No, that’s not it at all.
“Learning and understanding” now means:
We interpret the Action Plan however we want.
We shape the outcome to suit ourselves.
We ensure you never get space to complain again.See what we did here?
Any carer’s response now?
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Mad in the UK hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.