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Allan Foreman on his fight to expose truth behind the prescribed drug-induced condition he now faces.

As a school teacher, residential social worker, and youth and community worker, I am told that I have much experience in educating, informing, and sorting out truths from falsehoods. As a service user, these qualities have stood me in good stead.

In the mental health and disability field, Mind's yellow card scheme is achieving much to provide an accurate, patient-led picture of the side-effects of drugs.

The scheme has highlighted many of the problems that service users have about informed consent to taking psychiatric drugs and the lack of talking treatments. It invites them not only to report side-effects, but to have these side-effects made known and professionally analysed. Information can then be shared and made public. A survey of 501 people who returned Mind's yellow cards found 858 side-effects were reported, 191 of which were from anti-psychotics, for example chlorpromazine and haloperidol. Side-effects from anti-manic drugs such as lithium also rated highly.

One condition that was mentioned by way of a warning in this survey was tardive dyskinesia (TD). I have an acute form of this condition. It is a permanent, severely disabling, prescribed drug-induced brain damage disorder. It is a type of dystonia, which is a neurological disorder where the muscles of the neck and shoulders go into spasms. In my case it meant I couldn't drive and that Ilost my job as a teacher.

I was prescribed many tranquillisers without informed consent between 1986 and 1992. I had to be admitted to an acute ward when the largactil I had been given brought on signs of TD. Initially diagnosed and labelled manic depressive, I was never officially informed that TD existed. Seven years later, and after research on my part, I was able to tell my doctor what I suffered from. After a long silence, he admitted that I was right. "You do suffer in this way," he said, "and you are the worst case I've ever seen."

"How are the side-effects today, Allan?" my doctors used to ask. But I always suspected that this enquiry about side-effects was a cover-up for what was really a condition in its own right. And my psychiatrist knew too. They wanted to cover it up because these drugs damage you psychologically for life.

By chance I discovered the existence of the Dystonia Society, a self-help group. I became an activist. I wanted the medics to admit that over-prescribing had caused brain damage. I invited doctors and psychiatrists to join my campaign, maybe give a lecture on the topic of brain damage because of over-prescribing. Surprise, surprise, my psychiatrist said no, I'm too busy. None of the doctors locally was interested. But I have had plenty of successes, appearing on radio and television to publicise the issue.

When it started, my son Tom, now 10, had to cope with seeing his father holding a carrier bag full of shopping above his head because I had been unable to control my arm movements. When kissing him good night, I have sometimes inadvertently thumped him with my other arm. It is a chilling thought.

Allan Foreman is a teacher and social worker. He has prescribed drug-induced tardive dyskinesia