Le Greffe
Cour Europeenne des Droits de l'Homme
Conseil de l'Europe
F-67075 STRASBOURG CEDEX.
8 november 2012
uw kenmerk: 69389/12
mijn kenmerk: 20121108-1
In and about the year 2000, the government of the Netherlands, through the industry of the GGZ, the mental healthcare business, introduced an adapted method of treating people with a serious mental illness, that would be cheaper than the version it was derived from.
The original treatement recognized that for people with such a sickness there is a prerequirement for healing that is called the continuity of care. People who have to deal with things that are not there, can get it so difficult dealing with that, that they need to have access to someone who can help them with those situations 24 hours a day. This is a necessity. Without this garantuee there is no chance of recovery from the illness for the patient. Because without this support the situation can get unbearble and people deprive themselves from their lives to escape the hell they are living in.
When schizophrenic people hallucinate they are actually dreaming when being conscious (awake, there in reality) as well. Because one is awake and dreaming at the same time, for us, what we dream is real.
By introduction of the new system in the Netherlands, this 24/7 support is taken away from the patient and replace by a front-end back-end system, where the front-end decides whether the situation of the patient is severe enough to take action. A diagnose of this front-end that further help is not immediately necessary, is a death cause for patients with serious mental illnesses. The refusal to even acknowledge that the patient is in dire need, to tell him to wait until monday to get some real help, put this patient in a situation where he has to deal with himself not wanting to be here any more for more than 45 hours.
The terror, horror, fear, panic, dispair of people that can no longer hold it in this life during this period is enormous. Not only because of the sickness, but mostely due to the knowledge that there will be no help.
It is left alone, we don’t care if you die, have a nice weekend !!
This new method (FACT - Functional Assertive Community Treatement) is never tested. The effects of the new elements that were introduced with this method of treatement, were never tested. People in the psychiatric field knew this, the directive for the treatement of schizophrenic people here in the Netherlands says that this treatement should be tested before deployment of it on a wider scale can happen.
The industry has not listened to this advice. Right now there are 150 teams in the Netherlands that are taking away support for sick people in the weekend. Plans are to grown this number to 500 in the coming years.
This treatement is sold to the government on the promise to reduce the need for hospitalisation of patients here in the Netherlands. After 10 years of using this treatement with out any testing, the first research shows that the treatement does NOT lead to less need for hospitalisation. What is to be expected when the patient is without help the whole weekend. Most suicides happen in the weekend.
Antipsychotica zijn dodelijk en zonder verpleging is behandeling moord.
(F)ACT bied niet de noodzakelijke verpleging die behandeling met antipsychotica verantwoord maken: