Tortured by the Mental Health System Due to Misdiagnosis of Schizophrenia

By
-
22
2598

My name is Andrew Seefeldt and I have been a victim of horrific abuse by the mental health system of Australia for over a decade.

I received a misdiagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia due to psychiatrists repeatedly mistaking my behaviours and actions that actually resulted from severe abuse and neglect (both as a child and adult) for “symptoms” of “paranoid schizophrenia.” They also mistook my claims of more recent sexual assault as “paranoid delusions” and “psychosis,” when in fact they were true. As a result I was, and to this day still am, being injected against my will with antipsychotic depots.

I am still trying to escape the psychiatric imprisonment I have suffered enormously from, involving forced drugging, repeated abductions (by police, paramedics and mental health workers) and the many involuntary hospital admissions I have endured. I have been injected against my will with the antipsychotic depots paliperidone and olanzapine for a total of over 10 years, under the thumb of Community Treatment Orders (CTOs). This resulted in horrific side effects that amount to physical and psychological torture.

Here are some examples of the times I have been kidnapped from my home by mental health professionals:

On the 16th of January 2024, I tried to get help from police for my historical sexual assault, and I suppose the police didn’t believe me because of my mental health history and thought I was suffering a “psychotic” episode, because they had an ambulance arrive instead of the detective I requested. The paramedics lured me into the ambulance by telling me I was going for a voluntary “assessment,” which would only be “overnight,” but they tricked me. Once I was in the ambulance they revealed that I was being detained involuntarily under the Mental Health Act and I was imprisoned in the mental hospital against my will for three weeks.

Another time when I refused to receive my antipsychotic injection under the conditions of my forced treatment order, the mental health team called armed police who broke down my door with a battering ram and arrested me with guns drawn. Despite having committed no crime, I was frog-marched into an ambulance and taken to a mental hospital, held against a wall by police officers and injected in my buttocks with an antipsychotic depot then imprisoned without leave for six weeks.

A third time I was kidnapped was due to me losing weight because I deliberately went on a diet, and police opened my door and walked into my home without needing a warrant simply because the mental health team thought I was too mentally incompetent to properly feed myself adequate food, and I was imprisoned for a week of “observation” after being placed in an ambulance and strapped down with restraints.

Because of the unexpected involuntary commitments which caught me off guard and disrupted my life, they revoked my welfare payments because I didn’t fulfill my biweekly reporting habits (by reason of being imprisoned in a mental hospital), and I have been unable to get them back. I am living off of my meagre savings now and when my money runs out I will be destitute and unable to pay my rent. They also refused my repeated requests to access my own medical records and to receive a full-panel hepatitis test (I became infected with hepatitis D following childhood sexual abuse and have been unable to receive any treatment or follow-up since being diagnosed in 2012).

While in hospital on several occasions when I refused the antipsychotic injections, I was picked up and carried by nurses down the hallway in front of the other patients and taken to a room in the high-dependency unit of Canberra mental hospital. There I was violently pinned down on a mattress on the floor and injected in my buttocks with antipsychotic depots and sedatives while I was screaming desperately for my partner (they didn’t bat an eyelid).

Another time I was pinned down on the floor by security guards while a nurse pulled down my trousers and injected me in the buttocks with antipsychotics while I was screaming “You’re RAPING ME, you’re f***ing RAPING ME!” Obviously, as a victim of sexual assault, having my trousers pulled down to expose my buttocks and being injected in my backside with a needle caused me to feel extremely violated, hence my very understandable reaction.

In addition to the violent forced injections, other times I was simply not given any option, such as when several nurses ominously surrounded me and said the “doctor” was waiting to speak to me in what I knew was the injecting room, in an attempt to trick me and lure me to my doom. I knew I had no choice but to get injected or face another violently forced injection, so I resigned and accepted my fate.

When I was allowed back into the community as a voluntary patient, I was still a prisoner of the system. The mental health team repeatedly came into my backyard without my permission and when I refused to show up for an antipsychotic injection, they threatened me with an “Assessment Order” (kidnapping and imprisonment in hospital for “assessment”) if I didn’t receive the injection. I was officially a “voluntary” patient for a number of years and compliant with the injections because I had no choice. Despite this, when I made any hint that I didn’t want to take the olanzapine they threatened to put me back on a forced treatment order if I didn’t comply. If I didn’t go along with the treatment they would say I have “poor insight” into my “schizophrenia” and therefore cannot be trusted to voluntarily accept the injections, and didn’t have the mental capacity to consent to voluntary “treatment.”

They also stated that I was “treatment-resistant” simply because I voiced my objection that I was not a schizophrenic, which they said was a sign that my “schizophrenia” wasn’t responding to treatment because I didn’t have the “insight” to realise that I was schizophrenic. Yes, that is seriously the reasoning they use.

The only way to get the doctors off my back was to comply with the forced injections and lie through my teeth that the injections (“meds”) were “helping.” I couldn’t even tell them the full extent of the side effects because they would, believe it or not, increase the dosage (due to me being “treatment-resistant”), put me on other antipsychotics with even worse side effect profiles, or put me on even more drugs to counteract the side effects — drugs which themselves cause even more side effects.

I have suffered in silent torment from horrific side effects directly caused by involuntary administrations of antipsychotic drugs which were given against my will by means of a Community Treatment Order, and as I mentioned, several of the injections were forced upon me in hospital using violence. The side effects I have suffered include akathisia, a rash that permanently scarred my face and chest, tardive dyskinesia, and chemical castration, including loss of libido and little to no orgasm with only a small amount of clear semen. The worst of the suffering was the pronounced, unbearable akathisia caused by olanzapine, which amounted to chemical torture and for which there was no remedy.

The antipsychotic depots also caused me to sleep for up to 20 hours each day, and over the years I have been on them I have lost several thousand hours of my life due to excessive sleep — hours that I will never get back. Following the injections I would drink a dozen spoonfuls of instant coffee powder and still pass out due to the overwhelming lethargy caused by the olanzapine. After the injections I would fall asleep for three days straight, awakening only for a few hours each day in a lethargic daze. Obviously this made it difficult to drive a car or hold a 9-to-5 job.

While on the olanzapine depots they test my blood for monitoring purposes due to the deleterious effects of the injections, and the psychiatrist said I am “starting to go down the path of developing diabetes.” I read online that antipsychotics cause previously healthy people to develop diabetes and I’m absolutely terrified by this. I am still being injected with antipsychotics (olanzapine at what I believe is near the maximum allowable dose) against my will at the time of writing and there is no end in sight, save for living in a tent in the forest (which I have done previously to escape for a brief moment) to hide from the mental health professionals who have made my life a living hell. The worst consequence of the forced injections is suffering akathisia out the ass. Akathisia is a hellish condition that feels like literal torture.

My akathisia manifested as a nightmarish discomfort all over my body, especially my legs, which made it unbearable to lie down. It feels similar to how I imagine being trapped underground in a confined space, such as a coffin, would feel like. Often in the days following the olanzapine injections I would wake up repeatedly throughout the night in sheer agony, and the only relief I could find would be to bolt up out of bed, run outside and pace around moaning and swearing in pain.

Eventually it got so bad that I couldn’t sleep at all for approximately 40 hours following the olanzapine injections, and every time I fell asleep I would immediately jolt awake, like a shock to my system, with extreme akathisia all over my body. At the worst of it, the akathisia caused me to lash out violently due to the unbearable feeling of torture all over my body, and I beat my arm with a drum stick until it was swollen and bruised. If the doctors found out I did this, they would have misinterpreted my self-harm as a further symptom of my “mental illness” and increased the dosage of the antipsychotics, resulting in even more akathisia. This amounts to nothing less than chemical torture and a human rights abuse.

During these worst periods of akathisia I became addicted to tobacco due to smoking compulsively in a vain attempt to mitigate the effects of the olanzapine (I had read medical journals which found that smoking tobacco reduces blood-plasma levels of olanzapine by 50%, but it turned out to be ineffective in my case). I also tried self-medicating with recreational drugs because the propranolol and benzodiazepines the psychiatrists provided did nothing to alleviate my suffering. They repeatedly refused to take the most glaringly obvious course of action, which would be to STOP INJECTING ME WITH POISON (antipsychotics).

I suffered akathisia out the ass while locked up involuntarily in the high-dependency mental unit of Canberra hospital and placed back on the olanzapine injections after my brief escape (as I mentioned, I escaped the psychiatrists by hiding in a tent in the forest). All I could do was walk around in circles for 12 hours a day during my six-week imprisonment.

The police think my non-existent “schizophrenia” makes me a danger to the community, and the mental health system shares my confidential medical records with police here in Australia. If I don’t show up for my injections I’m subject to police arrest and kidnapping from my home, which has happened on multiple occasions. Even as a voluntary outpatient I was still forced to accept the olanzapine injections, as I would have been put back on the forced treatment order if I didn’t go along with it. I was trapped like this for several years, even when not on the CTO, so as you can see there’s nothing “voluntary” about being a voluntary mental patient.

My mistreatment by ACT Mental Health has been nothing short of a human rights abuse, and recently they extended my forced treatment order for yet another six months. In total I have been injected against my will on over 120 occasions and for me there is no end in sight.

I managed to capture one of my forced antipsychotic injections on camera, which you can view here:

Only God can help me now.

***

Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

22 COMMENTS

  2. All diagnosis is the torture of misdiagnosis because water is water. Air is air. You are you, not a psychiatric concept invented in order to label and manage you without ever understanding you. Only you can see and understand yourself, and this is not a diagnosis and therefore can never be a misdiagnosis. Only your socially conditioned interpretations of what you are is misdiagnosis, and it is society misdiagnosing you through it’s social conditioning of your brain. But psychiatrists and mental health professionals are lost. There is no hope for them or the society which created them. Don’t waste your time or energy on anything else but yourself. Everybody is in a nexus of interconnected confusion, a diseased structure of dysfunctional relationships within which you are all caught. Break free and understand yourself in that freedom, and care about yourself, and do everything you can to break free of all social binds because the only way you will survive is to be light footed and ready to go like a wild animal escaping a forest fire at a moments notice. Those who are too rooted in society will burn like sycamore trees.

    Report comment

  4. Reading about your experience helped me understand some of the symptoms my elderly mother began to experience after being prescribed two different antipsychotics for her dementia. It was a connection I hadn’t made until today and something none of the professionals involved seemed aware of.

    Or if they were aware, they never mentioned it. This was before I was on the internet and began researching everything myself.

    Against their advice, I stopped giving her one of them and she quickly came back to life, but then I naively placed her on another one they prescribed.

    I’m sorry for what you’ve had to endure and continue to endure but appreciate what you’ve shared. Hopefully it will help other people like me make better choices when choice is an option. I hope things get better for you, Andrew.

    Report comment

  5. The mental health story here is one of the horrific stories that I hope millions of innocent people around the world with mental health problems experience as well. These kinds of true stories are very important. Because.. None of the psychiatric drugs can fix ‘mental health’ (cannot cure, treat) …

    1) ‘Mind and mental illnesses’ are not something in the brain, but something in the soul. (You can’t fix something that isn’t in the brain.)

    2) Psychiatric medications are not designed to fix mental health. Pharmaceutical companies produce psychiatric drugs to ‘control’ people and ‘damage their brain chemistry (chemical brain damage)’. That is, it is used to ‘silence’ people, to make them stay silent and turn into a zombie.

    However… Pharmaceutical companies know that psychiatric drugs do not treat ‘mental health’. Despite this, pharmaceutical companies put phrases like “treats mental health” in their prospectuses in order to “deceive and deceive” people.

    ———–

    Psychiatric medications all contain chemical poisons that are quite toxic to the brain (and body). From the moment they are first used, they begin to fill the brain with these chemical poisons. However, it usually causes permanent chemical brain damage over long periods of time (months and/or years). (This can sometimes happen in the short term. From the moment it is first used, it begins to fill the brain chemistry with chemicals. And it works to change the ‘natural chemical makeup’ of brain chemistry. Thus, toxic artificial chemicals from drugs replace the brain’s natural chemical makeup.) In addition, chemical brain damage caused by psychiatric drugs makes existing ‘natural psychological problems’ permanent.

    The problem is… Chemical brain damage from psychiatric drugs can sometimes occur from the moment they are first used. And because of this chemical brain damage, some involuntary movements may occur. Psychiatry and pharmaceutical companies may falsely label these chemically induced involuntary movements as ‘mental illness’. (And they are already doing that. Because it works for them. This way they can more easily prescribe toxic psychiatric medications to people. This means that the coffers of psychiatry and pharmaceutical companies are filled with money.)

    ——–

    Cases of violence, murder and suicide can also occur due to “involuntary movements” caused by “chemical brain damage” caused by psychiatric drugs. Those who reveal these facts are honest psychiatrists. These are the findings of honest psychiatrists and other experts and researchers such as ‘Peter Breggin, David Healy’ who have served as expert witnesses in courts for years.

    Therefore.. Psychiatric medications cause damage (chemical brain damage) to people’s healthy brains. It causes some will-out ‘involuntary movements’. These involuntary movements are wrongly labeled as ‘mental illness.’ If medication is continued, these involuntary movements become permanent. And it also makes the existing natural psychological problems permanent.

    ————–

    For these reasons… Psychiatric drugs are a much more dangerous type of weapon than even firearms. (It is a type of biological weapon.) Firearms injure or kill people quickly. Psychiatric drugs slowly poison people, injure them, and then kill them.

    “You have a chance to escape death from firearms. But you have no chance of escaping death from psychiatric medications. Death from psychiatric medication is inevitable.”

    For these reasons… Psychiatric drugs absolutely kill people. First it cripples (brain damage, cancer, heart problems, etc.) and then it kills.; (it wounds and kills by slowly poisoning)

    Psychiatric drugs are biological weapons that are more dangerous than firearms. And it is even more dangerous than the illegal street drugs sold on the street. (Because it has a feature that can easily enter every home around the world. IT IS LEGAL.) SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY BANNED.

    While all these facts are obvious… The fact that psychiatric drugs are still on the market means that millions of people around the world continue to be injured and killed by psychiatric drugs. (They are being injured and killed in plain sight.)

    In fact, ‘psychiatry and pharmaceutical companies’ are committing a crime. ‘Courts and police’ are also committing crimes. The ‘governments and politicians’ who allow this to happen are also committing crimes.

    Exposing people to poisonous psychiatric drugs with court orders and police force is causing people to experience chemical-induced brain damage. And then to cause him (her) to catch various diseases and die in the future.

    Under the guise of mental health treatment…
    -What a terrible thing it is to be subjected to ‘chemical brain damage’ by court orders..
    -How awful it is to have your ‘natural psychological problems’ made permanent by court decisions..
    -What a terrible situation it is to be injured and then killed by being poisoned with psychiatric drugs by court orders.

    Courts, governments and politicians must now know the terrible truth about psychiatric drugs. Psychiatric drugs should be banned. Mental health systems should switch to ‘drug-free treatment methods’.

    And finally… According to a study, unusual plastics (plastic particles) were found in the brain. In my estimation… Could it be that these artificial chemicals (toxic from psychiatric drugs) that invade brain chemistry also turn into plastic? A serious issue that needs to be investigated.. Best regards..

    With my sincerest wishes. Y.E. (Researcher blog writer (Blogger))

    Report comment

    • I hope you continue your research. Your point (#1) is the lynchpin that is causing cataclysmic strife and division in the (Western) world today…most people (including academics) are totally unaware of the destruction being perpetrated. Thank you.

      Report comment

  6. See if you can swap that out..try flupenthixol injection..12 to 16hrs sleep..5 days..12s & tens..till the next f/night injection..way less madness..and sleep..(as an observer)- than Olanzapine..otherwise known as Zyprexa… the Zyprexa Papers..Jim Gottstein.. good read… get a good withdrawal book..Maudsley- Peter Goetz– MIAs got a list..make a withdrawal plan..show them..they can be the heros, you can get off the drugs..and get away from them…get your life back..and your brain..maybe..not the same..but at least back..:-)..

    Report comment

  8. I’m sorry you have been subjected to so much appalling psychiatric abuse and “torture,” Andrew. And I do pray God helps you escape, and thrive.

    I will tell you, I’ve personally had some success in dealing with psychiatrists and mainstream medical doctors by politely mentioning that I have become an independent psychopharmacology researcher. And mentioning that the antipsychotics can create both the positive and negative symptoms of “schizophrenia,” via anticholinergic toxidrome and neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxidrome
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroleptic-induced_deficit_syndrome

    But on a different note, I will say kudos to you, for not gaining huge amounts of weight on the olanzapine … that alone shows something about your inner strength.

    And thank you for sharing your important story about systemic psychiatric abuses.

    Report comment

  9. It is an abomination that anyone could be treated as you have been. There are some who are trying to get the mental health “industry” to see people in a different light–not as “patients” but simply as individuals who are having existential problems. After all, everyone suffers in one way or another. However, no one should be subjected to forced medication and your video is truly heartbreaking.

    Report comment

  11. Dear dear Andrew Seefeldt. I did a search for alternative psychiatrists in Australia, and got for example a hit for this place https://zenwavesclinic.net/integrative-psychiatrists-sydney/ I don’t know if they would be able to take over your case, and listen to your story, and help you thus. But it’s worth a try, perhaps. You aren’t alone, we’re with you. There’s always an answer, despite it’s “crazy” to think so. All that can happen within this “impossibility” called “crazy”…… Don’t give up……

    Report comment

  12. Dear Mr. Seefeld, dear Andrew,
    Thank you for sharing. It was heartbreaking for me to read your experiences.
    I lost my son William in 2007 after 12 and a half years in care of the psychiatric health system in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
    When he died, the psychiatric reply was to call his death a suïcide.
    To me and his friends and family it was the result of years of psychological and psychiatric
    harassement. As a result it took ourselves years to live on with the trauma of his loss, knowing that we had been misled and were victimised by the violation of trust.
    I am a graphic artist and I could not work for 13 years. Finally I managed to paint a portrait of my son, followed by portraits of friends, family and even one psychiatrist who had been able to al least listen to us. That happened after an article was written by an independent journalist, called Maurice Timmermans, about my son’s case. which appeared in a well respected national newspaper. His interview with me gave me again the trust in myself which I had lost, due to all catastrophic and dehumanizing events around my son’s life.
    The mental health organisation, although we tried for a long time, refuses till today, to
    talk with us about moral deliberation. Still avoiding their role and responsibility this way.
    One good thing came of it though. The exhibition of “17 Portraits”, with personal stories
    of the people portraited beside their pictures, people who stood beside me all these years and helped me to go on living, will be shown on one of their locations
    from April-May-June 2025. This is a miracle by itself due to the fact, in my opinion, that the knowledge about mental health and the abuse which goes often with it, is being questioned.
    I wished you could be here to be with us because we know what you have to go through.
    We want to let you know that we think of you and support your battle against stupidity and misuse of power. May you find people who will help you, with all my love, marian.

    Report comment

  15. Dear Andrew
    What hell you are living in. Sorry to hear what has been done to you and by the sound of it will continue to be done.You are a very resilient man to have survived thus far. CTO is worse than being formed because it gives the false impression you somehow have freedom when in fact you don’t.The deck is stacked against you if you try to appeal as the power lies with the “Professionals”.
    Love and sympathy from a different Australian state. K

    Report comment

  17. l live in turkey. l said to psychiatrist ‘l hear a voice ‘ this was lie. psychiatrist diagnosed schizophrenia by force.psychiatrists forced me to take medication. When I told the psychiatrists that I was lying, they got angry with me and asked me to bring a relative.I complained. They found the institution innocent.A relative does not come because the report will be cancelled. Even if a relative does come, they lie and the psychiatrists decides with their lies on me.lies science psychiatry. Thomas Szazs

    Report comment

LEAVE A REPLY