Journalist Clare Swinney Held In A Psychiatric Ward & Called ‘Delusional’ For Saying 9/11 Was An Inside Job.

Clare Swinney brought a complaint to the Broadcasting Standards Authority pointing out that TVNZ’s claim that Osama bin Laden carried out the attacks of 9/11 was an outright lie. Shortly afterwards, she was threatened and then incarcerated in a psychiatric ward. Following a week of compulsory treatment, the head psychiatrist told a judge that she should remain in hospital, as her belief that 9/11 was an inside job was evidence she was ‘delusional.’ The judge agreed. This is her extraordinary story:

By Clare Swinney, Member of Scholars For 9/11 Truth & Justice.

I was wrongly diagnosed as delusional by the psychiatric staff of Ward 7 at Northland Base Hospital in Whangarei and held against my will for 11 days in mid-2006, because I maintained the attacks of 9/11 were orchestrated by criminal elements inside the US Administration.

In light of the definition, one of the most astounding aspects to the ordeal was that when I met with the chief psychiatrist, Dr Carlos Zubaran for two formal mental health assessments,  I held Issue 3 of Uncensored, which is shown in the picture above, and asked him to look at information related to the 9/11 attacks.  This magazine contained an article I’d written entitled: Why Does TVNZ Lie To Us About 9/11?, which cited evidence that proved the official fable was a lie – yet reminiscent of the fabled vampires afraid of the light of day, he refused to even cast his eyes over it, during both of the so-called ‘assessments.’

Another astounding aspect to what occurred was that Section 4 of the New Zealand Mental Health Act makes it clear that no one can be judged to be mentally ill solely on the basis of their political beliefs.   The District Inspector for Mental Health – Northland, barrister Julie Young; Bridget Westenra, the lawyer she appointed to assist me and the staff of Ward 7, including the chief psychiatrist, did not appear to know this.   As can be seen, it is written in layman’s language on page 33 of Chapter 2 of Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992,  which is on the Ministry of Health’s own website:  ‘You cannot be considered to have a mental disorder just because of your:   political, religious or cultural beliefs’’.

As this Judgement shows, because of his reluctance to scrutinize the evidence related to 9/11 and apparent lack of awareness of  Section 4 of the Act,  nine days into my incarceration, Dr Zubaran still held the belief I suffered from a ‘delusional disorder‘ because of my political beliefs.

On the morning of June the 6th 2006, two social workers came to the door and advised that they’d come to take me to the public hospital’s psychiatric facility, as they’d heard I might be suicidal. Although I ventured to enlighten them I wasn’t, they didn’t listen as their unit had received a phone call from an ill-informed family member who’d said I might be on the verge of killing myself. As it was apparent from their demeanour that my psychological state was a foregone conclusion, I asked if my flatmate, Brian Kennedy could come with us and attest that I was fine and most certainly not suicidal.

I picked up my bag and appropriate evidence for the meeting and walked anxiously to their car, where one of them warned that the two police officers who had driven into the driveway, were there to stop me from running away.  In retrospect, I probably would have done if I’d known the emotional cost of what lay ahead.

[..]

Nonetheless, to my horror, at my assessment’s completion, Dr Abass told me I would be held in the secure unit under the Mental Health Act for 5 days for further assessment. And as if this news wasn’t bad enough, he told me I hadn’t been threatened, I had misinterpreted the messages and that was because I was suffering from a delusional disorder. He said he was prescribing antipsychotic medication to combat this problem and as I was depressed, he told me I should go on a course of antidepressants also.
I sat stunned, the reality of my predicament closing over me like a grave. I was in a prison for the mentally ill, wrongly diagnosed as depressed, delusional and suicidal because of a case of what I believed to be medical incompetence. I choked down the bile from my anger, approached the door and said: ‘OK. Take me to my room!’
It came as no surprise, when I demanded to peruse my file with one of my nurses a few days later, to find it littered with misleading comments – and it was mentioned that Brian was deemed delusional too!  I had been perceived, interpreted, construed and categorized incorrectly. Dr Abass had given me a score of 14 on a suicide scale for which anything over 12 is regarded as ‘risky.’ As my mother had committed suicide, my score was raised from what would have been 11 to 14, and as he’d made inferences based on incomplete information, the full score belied my condition warranted hospitalization.

Contents Of Magazine Article I’d Written Proved I Was Not “Delusional”

A young nurse escorted me down a foreboding corridor, to a small dowdy room with two single beds, two cupboards and a hand basin in it. I felt so disempowered; I lay face down on my bed for over four hours, agonizing that I was vulnerable to misdiagnosis by other staff members because of what I knew as a journalist. As Aldous Huxley had put it, ‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.’
I found my first day in Ward 7 very troubling to say the least, for a number of reasons. Nurses came in to check on me and although I hadn’t had anything to eat for around 20 hours, ( as I didn’t have the chance to eat my breakfast before being picked up from home), I was offered Valium before I was offered food or a cup of tea. It didn’t seem to concern the staff either that I only had the clothes I was wearing with me. Consequently, I phoned Brian and got him to bring in some personal effects, fruit, chocolate bars and enough clothing to last for 5 days.
As a polite way of telling the staff to ‘piss off and leave me alone,’ shortly after arriving I stuck a notice above my bed: ‘WHILE MY HUMAN RIGHTS ARE BEING COMPROMISED LIKE THIS, PLEASE DO NOT EXPECT ME TO PARTAKE IN ANY SO-CALLED ‘TREATMENT’.’ Of course, it didn’t work. At night-time, I was forced to take Risperidone, a mind-altering medication administered to treat schizophrenia. I’d read about its dangerous side effects from a website I subscribe to called Mercola.com, so utterly resented being forced to swallow this poison by a zealous nurse who stood over me like a guard in a Soviet camp for political dissidents.

The consultant psychiatrist, Dr Carlos Zubaran, approached me cheerfully that day and said he wished to talk to me. As I presumed there’d be no difficulty in correcting my misdiagnoses and as Dr Zubaran had the position of authority, I retrieved my evidence and strutted hopefully into the meeting room, thinking, ‘At last, he’ll realize I’m not mad and I’ll be released!’ However, no sooner had I sat down than it became apparent that the self-assured Brazilian had accepted Dr Abass’s diagnoses without question and was eager to commence treating my purported cases of delusional disorder and depression. It was so awful for me at that moment, realizing I was imprisoned, and the head warden was going to play a part in this surreal ordeal.
In a beleaguered manner, as the Risperidone was making me drowsy, I tried to describe my frightening ordeal and show him my e-mails and my article, Why Does TVNZ Lie to Us About 9/11? but he wouldn’t even spare 10 seconds to lean over and look at them. He said he didn’t want to hear about them and told me I was ‘delusional’ because I believed 9/11 was an inside job.

[..]

Although, Dr Zubaran acknowledged I wasn’t suicidal, he persisted in returning to his view that I should remain in hospital because my belief that 9/11 was an inside job was clear evidence of ‘a delusional disorder.’ Fortunately, however, after approximately 15 minutes of a discussion with the Advocate mediating, to my jubilation and relief, he agreed that I could go home that day, in spite of my political beliefs, on the condition that I saw a psychologist, as well as a community nurse at regular intervals. We shook hands and I gave him DVD copies of Confronting the Evidence, The Oil Factor and 9/11: The Road to Tyranny, and said I hoped once he’d watched them, he would apologize to me.  He shook his head and said he didn’t think that that would happen.
For the sake of future patients, I made a complaint to the Clinical Director of Mental Health at Whangarei Hospital and supplied psychiatric staff with new documentaries regarding the rise of fascism and government-sponsored terror, including America: Freedom to Fascism and Terrorstorm. Not surprisingly, Dr Zubaran failed to issue an apology, although he did succeed in writing in a letter he dated September 11, 2006, ‘Thanks for offering an alternative look to such a puzzling issue.’

My case has highlighted quite a number of issues, but perhaps most significantly, how dangerous it is to give psychiatrists the power to detain people on the basis of minimal and/or questionable evidence, without making their duty to abide by the provisions in the Mental Health Act clear to them. In particular, that people can not be regarded as mentally ill on the grounds of their political beliefs. Psychiatry was abused by the state in Soviet Russia to incarcerate dissenters – this has shown how easily it can happen in New Zealand, whether it is the result of ignorance or an inordinate unwillingness to face the truth.

Source/read the full lenght all article here:
http://clareswinney.wordpress.com/incarcerated-in-a-psychiatric-ward-because-i-said-911-was-an-inside-job/