Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/08/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]on 29/8/00 9:12 pm, Frank Filippone at red735i@earthlink.net wrote: > John and others..... when you make a documentary with the aid of the > psychologist ( or other menatl health professional) you are working with the > team that knows the patient. Their job, in this regard is to ensure the > safety of the patient, secondarily allowing the public to view the scene. Actually, not one of my films was done 'with the permission of' psychiatrists, psychologists et al. Two of them were vehemently critical of abuses within the system and both led to reforms, one to a public inquiry, one to new powers for an oversight body. Fundamentally, inless the person concerned has been committed (or 'sectioned' as the law has it in the UK) they are perfectly free to make their own decisions and even if they are 'sectioned' or 'committed' I believe ethically the onus of proof remains on the powers that confine them to show that they are unable to make rational decisions. The notion that as soon as someone has some identifiable mental problem in whatever degree they can no longer make decisions for themselves and instead a committee of 'professionals' must be deferred to is, IMHO, an extremely dangerous and troubling one. I have seen the results first hand (see below). Human beings are human beings. One of the things I DID learn in my travels was 'they' aren't 'they', they're 'us'. Anyone who wants further proof of any of this should go to their public library and order up the reports of the 1992 committee of inquiry into Ashworth Hospital, chaired by Sir Louis Blom Cooper, and read the whole thing if they can stomach it. When you get to the bit about the way Sean Walton died locked in an isolation cell after being hit over the head with a snooker cue by staff at the hospital in front of several witnesses, remind yourself that until a bunch of filmmakers, who were opposed at every turn by the Hospital professionals (with one or two very noble exceptions), started talking to patients and ex-patients WITHOUT permission, no-one on the outside of the hospital had the faintest idea of the circumstances surrounding the poor lad's death. That really WAS my last word on the subject in this forum apart from this one: Good luck to Kyle. Over & out. - -- Johnny Deadman http://www.pinkheadedbug.com