When I first discovered that Suzie had died, it was
from a newspaper cutting that came to me from my partner at the time.
Suzie had been spending time at a psychiatric hospital under
instructions from certain members of her family, who believed she needed
that kind of help. I had no doubt the newspaper cutting was about
Suzie, as it mentioned the names of her bereaving family members, but it did not elaborate on the cause of her demise or the
circumstances; just that she had died.
Due to the memory of her situation during my last contact with her,
where she was being held in a psychiatric ward in the Concord Mental
Health facility as an involuntary patient, I drew a conclusion based on
knowing her personally, and about the events of her life and family
relationship.
She was clearly physically under weight and troubled
at the time of her committal, and I had
reason to believe that the use of ECT would be resorted to
as seemed to be common in those days for what she seemed to be
experiencing. It was my worst fear for her safety, as I knew how afraid
of psychiatry she was. But I had been warned
by her father not to take or try to take her out of the hospital; that
she needed "treatment".
I did not feel at the time able to intervene or be
closely involved as I had no experience with Mental Health Services
except for what I saw when I was a member of CCHR in Sydney and I saw
some of the results of Psychiatric treatment on a special tour organised
for CCHR of certain mental hospitals at the time. So it would be true to
say that I was a Scientologist indoctrinated into the all encompassing belief that...
"Mental Health [Psychiatric] treatments were brutal and
overwhelming, without any belief or understanding of the spiritual nature
of a human being...."
I knew that Suzie's view of life was definitely
very spiritually based, and did not regard her thoughts and feelings as a
result of chemical reactions or abreactions, nor chemical or biological
mechanisms. I did not believe they had the moral right to take her
against her will and treat her with methods that were unacceptable to
her as the patient.
So I had no faith that things would be well for her
there, and after that very day I left in awful fear and trepidation for
her future, and nursed those feelings for many months as her
hospitalisation coincided with me being forced to leave Sydney and its
high rents and try to
rebuild my life up in the Hunter Valley far away from her in Sydney.
I guess part
of me was trying to have faith that it couldn't be all bad as many
people did survive Psychiatric treatments though I had never actually
met anyone who did not appear "damaged" in one way or another by their
experience of the more extreme methods of it. All "survivors" I had known lived their lives in
suppressed protest of, and focused on their past treatments as
very unpleasant or even horrifying. Even the milder forms of "treatment"
left a person dependent and addicted to drugs (medications) for long periods and even
for life.
Had I not left Sydney and taken my girlfriend up to
live in the Maitland area near her parents, I would have been around
Suzie to watch over her and give my support that I had always given for
years before I had met my then current girlfriend.
A few occasions as the months passed, my anxiety
about her led me to have nightmares and they were sickening and
horrible. I even awoke experiencing the sense of electric shocks
and could hear her calling to me. Such was my concern, and of course I
know that was a manifestation of my own personal coping mechanism.
So what was my best conclusion based on her history,
my fears, my attempt at logic based on little information? That she had died
from her psychiatric treatments of course. There was no logical other cause in
the life of such a young girl, knowing who she was, that could have led
to her death, so I wrote......
