Sunday 31 July 2011

A call to arms for treatment in the community for the mentally ill, Hope not Dope

First published in the Guardian


John Hoggett, Speak Out Against Psychiatry
Ritalin, an anti-depressant used to treat children who have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.  
I am sick of seeing friends who are seriously mentally distressed neglected and damaged by mainstream psychiatry. I am fed up hearing about people being detained, locked up and forced to take damaging medication before anyone has found out why they are distressed. I am angry about children being forced to take addictive psychoactive drugs by health professionals because no one could be bothered to work out why they are playing up. I met some others who wanted to change things and together we formed an organisation called Speak Out Against Psychiatry.

Speak Out Against Psychiatry is a group of service users, carers and advocates with direct experience of the psychiatric industry. We know that people who are mentally distressed need compassionate understanding and intense social support. We know that there have been many successful units around the world that have helped people resolve their problems with little or no medication. They have been relatively cheap and successful yet they are not being taken up in the UK. Why not?

Take Western Lapland, in Finland. There, the mental health system is based on a method called Open Dialogue: lots of long conversations with family and friends. It has the best outcomes for first episode psychosis in the developed world. About 80% of participants are back at work or training within two years. Very little medication is used. These results should be the envy of the medical professional yet it is mainly ignored. Similarly, the Family Care Foundation in Gothenburg, Sweden, allows seriously disturbed people to live with rural families for a year or more. They get therapy and the family can regularly talk over how things are going. It gets people off medication, a frightening contrast with the standard treatment from the NHS.

Here, psychiatrists' main activity is diagnosis, yet many people do not find this helpful. They find talking about their lives and their symptoms helpful. Yet talking about hearing voices or the unusual ideas expressed by people experiencing psychosis is discouraged by mainstream psychiatry.

Most people who are extremely distressed have experienced immense personal trauma. Two-thirds of people diagnosed with schizophrenia had experienced physical or sexual abuse. Most psychiatrists ignore the evidence and prefer to talk about unproven brain disorders and imbalances in neurotransmitters. So the causes of mental distress are not fed back into wider social policy.

Then there are the drugs. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has no scientific basis and concerns about the drug Ritalin, used to 'treat' it are well documented. There are other ways of helping children who are in conflict with their parents and teachers that do not use potentially addictive medication. Equally, the prescribing of major tranquillisers such as Haloperidol to elderly people in hospital and nursing homes can be dangerous yet is becoming standard practice instead of developing staff skills in dealing with people experiencing dementia. Meanwhile, anti-depressants may be no more effective than a placebo. The serotonin hypothesis of depression is rubbish. It is a marketing ploy by drug companies. Anti-depressants are potentially addictive and sometimes dangerous, yet one in three women take them some time in their lives. On top of this, electroconvulsive therapy is still used yet there has been ample research showing its dangers and it is just about useless.

Speak Out Against Psychiatry  wants  to hear your stories and they want the Royal College to hear them too.

All the evidence shows that mainstream psychiatry and psychiatric medication is a waste of public money. There are better ways of helping people who are mentally distressed and we need to start using them.

Saturday 30 July 2011

The Sickness of War Theory, Air Force Cites New Testament, Ex-Nazi, to Train Officers on Ethics of Launching Nuclear Weaponsperverted by the US Military

This is a link to a power point presentation used in training nuclear defence operatives for the US Military.
Really stomach churning, brain washing propaganda. Well done to Truthout for doing what they do best. This has been pulled for "review" following the Truthout report last week which is here


For more on the Christian Theory of War which dates back to St Augustine, 
An Ancient Teaching:
The Catholic Church’s teaching on just war developed very early. St. Augustine of Hippo(354-430) was the first Christian writer to describe the four conditions that must be met in order for a war to be just, but the roots of just-war theory go back even to non-Christian Romans, particularly the Roman orator Cicero.
Two Types of Justice Concerning War:
The Catholic Church distinguishes between two types of justice concerning war: jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Most of the time, when people discuss just-war theory, they mean jus ad bellum (justice before the war)—the four conditions by which we determine whether a war is just before we go to war. Jus in bello (justice during the war) refers to how the war is conducted once it has started. It is possible for a country to fight a war that is just, and yet to fight it unjustly—by, for example, targeting innocent people in the enemy’s country.
The Four Conditions for Jus Ad Bellum:
The current Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 2309) defines the four conditions for determining the justice of a war as:
  1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
  2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
  3. there must be serious prospects of success;
  4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.
These are hard conditions to fulfill; the Church teaches that war should always be the last resort.
A Matter of Prudence:
That decision is left to the civil authorities: “The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.” In the United States, for instance, that means Congress, which has the power under the Constitution (Article I, Section 8) to declare war, and the President, who can ask Congress for a declaration of war.
When the Catechism states that the decision to go to war is ultimately a prudential judgment, that means that the civil authorities bear the responsibility for making sure that a war is just before they fight it.
The Role of Modern Weaponry:
While the Catechism mentions that “the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated,” it also states that “The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.” Here, the Church is concerned about the possible use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, the effects of which, by their very nature, cannot easily be confined to combatants in a war.
The injury or killing of the innocent during war is always forbidden; however, if a bullet goes astray, or an innocent person is killed by a bomb dropped on a military installation, the Church recognizes that these deaths are not intended. With modern weaponry, however, the calculation changes, because governments know that the use of nuclear bombs, for instance, will always kill or injure some who are innocent.
Because of that, the Church warns that the possibility of the use of such weapons must be considered when deciding whether a war is just. In fact, Pope John Paul II suggested that the threshold for a just war has been raised very high by the existence of these weapons of mass destruction, and he is the source of the teaching in the Catechism.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, went even further, telling the Italian Catholic magazine 30 Days in April 2003 that "we must begin asking ourselves whether as things stand, with new weapons that cause destruction that goes well beyond the groups involved in the fight, it is still licit to allow that a 'just war' might exist."
Furthermore, once a war has begun, the use of such weapons may violate jus in bello, meaning that the war is not being fought justly. The temptation for a country that is fighting a just war to use such weapons (and, thus, to act unjustly) is just one reason why the Church teaches that “The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating” the justice of a war.

Wernher Von Braun, a former member of the Nazi Party who used Jews imprisoned in concentration camps, captured French anti-Nazi partisans and civilians, and others to help build the V-2 rocket for Hitler's Third Reich, is cited in an Air Force PowerPoint presentation about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons. 
Image: Department of the Air Force




Locking up women with mental health needs.

 The female population in custody has different demographic characteristics to the male population, with 19% being foreign nationals, and 29% being of an ethnic minority compared to 13% and 27% respectively for men (Prison Service, 2010). Half the women in prison have experienced domestic violence, and women are
twice as likely as men to have experienced some form of mental illness in the year preceding their
admission to custody (Singleton et al., 1998).
Sixty-five per cent of imprisoned women have substance use problems, compared to 70% of men (Social Exclusion Task Force, 2009). Worryingly, 83% of women in prison have a longstanding illness, compared with 32% of the general female population, and many are on prescription medication (HM Chief Inspector of
Prisons, 2009).
From a report by the Centre for Mental Health
http://www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/pdfs/under_the_radar.pdf

Monday 25 July 2011

Wise words from Russell Brand regarding addiction.


Russell Brand on Amy Winehouse: 'We have lost a beautiful, talented woman'

We need to review the way society treats addicts – not as criminals but as sick people in need of care
Russell Brand and Amy Winehouse
Russell Brand: 'Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death.' Photograph: Dave Hogan/Getty Images
When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they've had enough, that they're ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it's too late, she's gone.
Frustratingly it's not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.
I've known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma.
Carl Barât told me that Winehouse (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it's kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as a bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance: "Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric," I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable.
I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they're not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but unignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his speedboat, there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they're looking through you to somewhere else they'd rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.
From time to time I'd bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was a character but that world was riddled with half-cut, doped-up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn't especially register.
Then she became massively famous and I was pleased to see her acknowledged but mostly baffled because I'd not experienced her work. This not being the 1950s, I wondered how a jazz singer had achieved such cultural prominence. I wasn't curious enough to do anything so extreme as listen to her music or go to one of her gigs, I was becoming famous myself at the time and that was an all consuming experience. It was only by chance that I attended a Paul Weller gig at the Roundhouse that I ever saw her live.
I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal. Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I'd only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound.
So now I knew. She wasn't just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed-up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a fucking genius.
Shallow fool that I am, I now regarded her in a different light, the light that blazed down from heaven when she sang. That lit her up now and a new phase in our friendship began. She came on a few of my TV and radio shows, I still saw her about but now attended to her with a little more interest. Publicly though, Amy increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood-soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that YouTube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition.
Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre Focus 12 I found recovery. Through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts that are very easy to find and open to anybody with a desire to stop drinking and without which I would not be alive.
Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy's incredible talent. Or Kurt's or Jimi's or Janis's. Some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill.
We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn't even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call.

Saturday 23 July 2011

Another day another war hero's life in tatters

Downfall of a war hero: Master sniper who took out Taliban chief a mile away faces court for attack on girlfriend

this article by Paul harris first appeared in the Daily Mail, July 22nd 2011
His selfless bravery and outstanding skill made him a hero of the war in Afghanistan.
Corporal Christopher Reynolds’s repeated acts of gallantry – plus an extraordinary sniper shot that took out a Taliban commander from more than a mile away – earned him the Military Cross.

But when the Queen presented him with his medal last July, his pride hid a dark depression. The 26-year-old Black Watch sniper commander was battling a breakdown.
This led to a vicious attack on his live-in girlfriend, whom he repeatedly punched in the face before throwing a glass at her.

Had it not been for a judge’s understanding of Cpl Reynolds’s plight, he would today be behind bars.

However ‘the strain of warfare’ and his deteriorating mental health were accepted as being to blame for the assault a month before the medal ceremony on 29-year-old Catherine Aitken, who was said to have been ‘put through hell’.

This week at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court, he was ordered to pay her £500 compensation but avoided a prison sentence.

The harrowing tale of a hero’s descent into depression began after Reynolds, who had already served in Iraq, embarked on a six-month tour of duty with the Black Watch in April 2009. According to his medal citation, in one incident he stood up in the face of ‘considerable’ enemy fire, emptied his sniper rifle, picked up another one and started firing it – then grabbed a machine gun to spray a Taliban strongpoint from a rooftop ‘while fully exposed to enemy fire’. The sniper’s ‘outstanding technical ability’ helped  to credit him with taking out 32 insurgents.
But it was a seemingly impossible shot on a Taliban warlord more than 2,000 yards away which launched Cpl Reynolds to military glory.
He hid on a shop roof for three days to wait for perfect conditions to shoot a terrorist commander known as Mula, said to have co-ordinated a series of attacks against British and U.S. troops.
Long distance death: Snipers can strike from more than a mile away - as Reynolds demonstrated when he took down a Taliban chief
Long distance death: Snipers can strike from more than a mile away - as Reynolds demonstrated when he took down a Taliban chief

He and a spotter saw a group of five Taliban in the distance. ‘I identified one straight away as the commander because I watched him through the scope,’ he said. ‘When he spoke on the radio, the other one would do what he said. I saw that he had a weapon, an AK47. 
‘I have to admit the first round landed next to him. We were so far away that he didn’t even realise he was being shot at.’
With the next shot, Reynolds hit Mula in the chest at a distance of 1,853 metres (6,079ft). It was roughly the equivalent of firing from St Paul’s Cathedral and hitting Lord Nelson atop his column in Trafalgar Square. As he later put it: ‘He’d been given a lead sleeping tablet. I was quite proud of that shot.’ 
The soldier was separated from  his wife Becca but still in touch with her and their four-year-old son Joshua. At the time she revealed she still phoned him once a week in Afghanistan.
She said she was ‘so proud’ of her hero, who undoubtedly saved many lives through the acts of bravery underlying his celebrated sniper shot. ‘He really takes his job seriously,’ she said. ‘He loves it. He’s really got his head screwed on.’
Back in the day: The Military Cross was awarded to Corporal Christopher Sean Reynolds,l left, for his skilled work in Afghanistan
Back in the day: The Military Cross was awarded to Corporal Christopher Sean Reynolds,l left, for his skilled work in Afghanistan

Compare that with the dark story which unfolded in Kirkcaldy this week, in which Miss Aitken, a youth worker, became the innocent victim of his mental turmoil.
The court heard she had become deeply concerned about his increasingly violent temper since coming home from the war.
He launched the brutal attack on her in an argument at the home they shared in the town.
Reynolds was accompanied in court by a captain from his regiment. His solicitor, Krista Johnston, said he had gone AWOL for more than four months and his mental health appeared to  have deteriorated.

But she added that ‘all being well he will continue in the Army’. The court heard he could be transferred to another regiment.
Outside court, Miss Aitken, who is no longer in contact with him, said she did not want to speak about the case and was ‘just looking forward to moving on’.
The Combat Stress charity, which has worked with more than 100,000 veterans since it was founded after the First World War, is helping more than 600 British ex-servicemen and women who returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some are so traumatised, or unable to come down from a state of hyper-alertness, that they cannot cope with everyday situations such as shopping in crowds.

Spokesman Neil Cox said the numbers being cared for rise steadily. ‘There is often a long gap, on average just over 13 years, between people leaving the Forces and seeking help. It’s particularly difficult for strong guys or so-called macho men who are less able or willing to accept what would be perceived by them as a weakness.’



Friday 22 July 2011

Former bank robber dreams of academies to help prisoners go straight

A former bank robber is working to set up a series of academies to help ex-prisoners start afresh 
Bob Cummines, OBE, FRSA and chief executive of Unlock, the national association of ex-offenders
Bob Cummines, OBE, FRSA and chief executive of Unlock, the national association of ex-offenders, was formerly a notorious bank robber. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian
"Education liberated me from a life of crime," says Bobby Cummines, now a life fellow of the RSA, soon to receive an honorary master's from the Open University, and, last month, awarded the OBE by the Queen at Buckingham Palace for his services to reformed offenders. It's not bad for a former armed robber who spent a total of 13 years in high security prisons before deciding he needed to change for the better.
As founder member and chief executive of Unlock, the national association of reformed offenders, Cummines has spent the last 12 years campaigning against the social exclusion and discrimination that stymies the efforts of many reformed offenders to "go straight."
He leads a team of four staff operating from a tiny office above a dentist in Snodland, Kent. Unlock receives no government funding and relies on charity donations for its existence. But the organisation thinks big and boasts some significant successes in its fight for the right of offenders who have served their sentences and have a desire to live crime-free, productive lives to be treated by fairly by the rest of society.
A notable success was persuading sections of the insurance and banking industries of the merits of welcoming prisoners and ex-prisoners as customers. Unlock has established a specialist insurance broker service and now has a list of 17 insurers on its Insurance and Convictions Consumer Guidance leaflet. Working with Halifax and Barclays, Cummines has developed a guide to enable prison staff to assist people in prison or on the verge of release to open bank accounts. "The emphasis of our work is to reduce the likelihood of re-offending by people who have served their sentences," he says. "Without bank accounts people cannot access the financial services the rest of us take for granted."
It is hard to imagine that Cummines was ever part of a criminal culture. But like many who end up in prison, he started young. "I was a bright kid, but I never played by the rules. I was from a big Irish family of eight children. We lived in King's Cross in London when it was at its worst with drugs, gangs, prostitutes, you name it. To get out of the slums you became a bricklayer, joined the army or became a villain. Thieving was quite acceptable, so long as you didn't rob your own people."
He left school at 15 with no qualifications, but got a job in a shipping office. He puts the wrong turn his life took down to his first encounter with the police. "I was in a park with my mates when somebody let off a starting pistol. The police were called and began bullying us. I stood up to them." He says the police returned later and produced a cut-throat razor they said was his. "It was a fit-up," he says. "My dad said the police don't tell lies, plead guilty, you'll get a fine and it'll be forgotten about in a few years."
He got the fine, but his bosses at the shipping office saw his guilty plea and sacked him. "I was gutted," he says. "I thought, if you want me to be bad I'll show you how bad I can be." Within a year he was sentenced to six months in a detention centre for the possession of a sawn off shotgun. "It was supposed to be a short sharp shock, but it was just violence practised against vulnerable kids. I came out of there tougher and angrier than ever."
Over the next two decades Cummines established himself as a hard-core professional criminal. "If I had carried on, I would either have been shot dead by the police or innocent members of the public could have been shot."
The change came while he was serving a 12-year sentence and he credits a prison education officer, a prison probation officer and a former south London gang boss. "I started studying social science and psychology with the Open University. I began reading about deviant behaviour and thought, 'I'm reading about me!' The more I read, the more I realised I didn't have to be the way I was. The high I used to get from crime was replaced by a bigger high from learning."
Cummines left prison for the last time almost 25 years ago. He struggled to get work and fit into the "straight" world, but eventually succeeded, getting a degree at Greenwich University and going on to hold senior positions with various employers. "Getting work was hard because I had to make up my employment history," he says. "To live an honest life, I had to be dishonest about my past. That was one of my motivations for joining Unlock and one of the things we are campaigning to resolve," he says. As chief executive he has been a member of the home affairs select committee inquiry into the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, an expert witness on to the home affairs select committee on prisoner education and a specialist adviser in the 2004 public inquiry into murder of Zahid Mubarek in Feltham Young Offenders Institution.
"Prison doesn't work, education works," Cummines concludes. His one big dream is for a series of super academies, which he has christened the Diamond Project. The aim would be to provide training, education, advice and guidance for low tariff offenders and those at risk of breaking the law. Cummines and his colleagues have spent years working on the proposals. They held talks with the last Labour government and have met the coalition government. During his last meeting with Lord McNally, minister of state for justice, the peer promised to arrange meetings between Unlock and other senior officials.
The recent government review of prisoner education pledged to put education and training at the heart of Ken Clarke's promised "rehabilitation revolution" in our jails. Cummines, who has already secured the promise of several hundred million pounds' worth of private finance for the project, is hopeful. "I told Lord McNally, 'People usually come here to ask you for money, but I want to give you money,'" he says, smiling.
With an average cost of £37,000 a year to keep someone in prison and the cost of re-offending estimated by the home office at between £9bn and £13bn a year perhaps he has a point.
"They would be investing in good behaviour. You can educate people out of crime. Or you can educate people into crime, by giving them no education and banging them up with experienced criminals."

Friday 15 July 2011

We can glorify them in wooden boxes when they come home dead and vilify them in prison when they can't cope.


Erwin James: why are so many former soldiers in prison?

Jimmy Johnson was jailed for murder after leaving the army in 1973. After his release he killed again. But is he just one of thousands who didn't receive help for post traumatic stress disorder?

'All I'm trying to do is get the government to acknowledge the truth," says Jimmy Johnson, 63, once a model soldier and now a model prisoner. Johnson, currently in Frankland maximum-security prison in Durham, where for the last 25 years he has been serving his second life sentence for murder, is a man with a mission. "The prison system is awash with ex-servicemen," he says, "and unless the government, and in particular the Ministry of Justice, starts taking this problem seriously, things are going to get much much worse."
Johnson's particular concern is what he feels is the complacent attitude shown by the government not just to veterans who end up in prison, but to the related issue of those suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – many unknowingly. "This is an even bigger problem," he says, "and the way we are going with this war in Afghanistan it is going to get bigger. This needs to be addressed honestly and urgently."
Johnson was first jailed for life in 1974, less than a year after his honourable discharge from the Royal Tank Regiment following 10 years of "exemplary service". But when he left the army, he explains, his life quickly began to fall apart. Struggling to adjust, he began drinking heavily and experiencing mood swings which impacted badly on his relationship with his wife and two children. He managed to find some casual work "here and there", but without any real sense of purpose he drank more, and became more and more depressed. "I drank to dull the pain," he says, "but it never really went away."
One afternoon, four months after Johnson signed his army discharge papers, he reached his lowest point. He had tried to go for a drink in a social club, but it required an identity card to gain access. He did not have one. "They turned me away. 'You're not a soldier now,' they said. Nobody wanted to know me." He walked away.
A short while later, a van pulled up alongside him. It was driven by an acquaintance who worked as a security guard. He asked Johnson if he wanted a lift. "I had nothing planned," he says, "and just got in." As the van made towards the next stop on the driver's round – a factory – it slowed down to pass a group of children playing football. Suddenly there was a loud bang on the side of the van. Johnson thinks it was either the ball being kicked against it or a brick that had been thrown. Whatever it was, the sound triggered a horrific reaction in the former soldier. As soon as they arrived at the factory and alighted from the van, Johnson remembers grabbing hold of his acquaintance by the arm and neck and "running him". What he does not remember is then picking up a scaffold pole and beating the man to death with it.
Arrested the next day, Johnson had no explanation for what he had done. "But I knew that I had killed a man. That's why I pleaded guilty at my trial."
For that offence he spent a little over nine years in prison before being released on licence. While inside he expressed remorse for his actions but still could give no explanation. He received no therapy or counselling or indeed any kind of in-depth analysis to try to ascertain why he had behaved the way he did. His army discipline combined with regulated prison life made it easy for him to present himself as a "model prisoner".
These were the days when, other than perfunctory call-ups by prison staff, there was little focus on the motivations behind so-called offending behaviour. The closest Johnson came to any sense of rationalising what he had done was when, some years into that first life sentence, his father suggested during a visit that he was suffering from what many Americans returning from the Vietnam war had experienced. "My dad said to me, 'You've got what a lot of those yanks had after Vietnam,' meaning nightmares, flashbacks and other weird stuff. He meant PTSD but he didn't know that's what it was called and it was a long time later before I ever heard of it."
Johnson joined the army aged 17, and was first involved in action in Aden in the 1960s, where he demonstrated the leadership qualities that led to his promotion to corporal and tank commander. Later he served two tours of duty in Northern Ireland, during which he was involved in suppressing riots, controlling missile-throwing crowds, and clearing areas where bombs had been laid.
'The woman looked like a large rag doll smashed to pieces'
The incident that affected him most profoundly occurred while he was leading a mobile patrol of two Land Rovers and seven men through the centre of Lurgan in March 1972. A massive explosion a hundred yards in front of Johnson's vehicle brought the patrol to a halt. A bomb had been detonated in an underground toilet. Johnson saw people scattering through swirling clouds of thick black smoke. Within minutes he had cordoned off the area and mounted guards to provide cover against snipers in case it was a set-up.
Raised voices caught his attention. A man was screaming at a policeman and pointing at the toilet. "He was shouting, 'My wife's in there! My wife's in there!'" Johnson raced towards the man. "He was becoming hysterical and the policeman, looking terrified, was adamant the toilet was empty. But I could see by the man's face that he knew. He knew. I grabbed the policeman's torch and took two of my men down the gaping hole in the ground, climbing over rubble, slabs of brick and concrete and gushing water. In the thick smoke the torch was useless. We scrabbled around blindly. Then we heard a loudhailer above calling for us to get out fast as there was a car parked overhead with 500lb of explosives inside.
"I was about to give the order when one of my men found a woman's shoe. We dug frantically with our bare hands. Then I found her. She looked like a large rag doll smashed to pieces. All that was left of her clothing was a piece of rag around her neck; other parts of her had been blown off. Even her toes were missing. I covered her with my combat jacket and carried her out to an ambulance."
Johnson says he remembers shouting at the doctor in the back of the ambulance, "Save her!" Her says her face reminded him of his wife's face. "The doctor turned to me and very quietly said, 'Sorry son, but she's dead.' Outside the ambulance I started to shake and tremble and sweat like I had never sweated before. Someone led me into the back of a Land Rover where I sat and tried to smoke a cigarette. I heard women's voices and laughter, and then a woman leaned into the open back door of the vehicle and said, 'Don't worry, son, she was only a catholic." That night he was injected with a tranquilliser to help him sleep. "I never thought I'd be able to sleep again," he says.
Dealing with disturbances, which often developed into riots, was a routine duty for British soldiers in Northern Ireland during the troubles. They learned their techniques at "tin city" in Sennelager in Germany; a mock-up of streets and walkways, complete with shops and pubs that blared out Irish rebel songs. The facility had been specially built as a close-quarter combat range. There they learned how to fight pitched battles, with colleagues dressed as rioters hurling bricks and petrol bombs. They were conditioned to relish "aggro" and many were geared up and keen for the real thing once out on patrol on Northern Ireland's streets. "We carried personal weapons such as cut-down baseball bats, lead pipes and coshes, most of which had been handed down by troops that had been relieved," explains Johnson. "But towards the end of my time, and especially after the bombing of the woman, I was worn down by it."
The final straw for Johnson was an incident during a riot when he chased and caught a rioter who had attacked one of his men. "I began smashing him with the baton gun. I smashed him over and over regardless of the blood that was gushing from his head and oblivious to his screams. The next thing I remember is one of my men screaming at me, "Jimmy! He's had enough!" – that brought me back to my senses." Later, he says, his officers made light of the damage his out-of-control violence inflicted on the rioter.
For his actions in trying to save the woman's life in the underground toilet, Johnson received a "mentioned in despatches" – an award given in recognition of exceptional heroism or other noteworthy action. It was the highest award earned by somebody in his unit since the Korean war. But procedures to help soldiers deal with the aftermath of traumatic events relating to their service activities then were scant. There were few options available to help the soldiers wind down or de-stress after bombings or riots or incidents such as Johnson's beating of the rioter. Alcohol was the main medication. "We just went to the mess and drank ourselves out of it," says Johnson.
Finally he could face no more conflict and, despite the best efforts of his superior officers to persuade him otherwise, he bought himself out of the army in December 1973.
'Jimmy, you never laugh or smile like you used to'
When his father suggested during that prison visit that it was his traumatic army experiences that were behind his bouts of uncontrolled violence, Johnson was reluctant to make the connection. "I was a soldier. That was my job. It was only much later that I found out about PTSD. That's when it all started to make sense."
That there was something seriously wrong with Johnson is beyond dispute. Despite what she had had to cope with when her husband first came out of the army, and the shock of his arrest and conviction, his wife stood by him throughout his nine years in prison. But when he returned home following his release, it was clear that the problems he had been grappling with before were still there; indeed they had become worse.
"She said to me, 'Jimmy, you've changed. You never laugh or smile like you used to. I feel like I don't know you any more.' When she eventually left me I was lost. I started living like I had before, drinking, doing bits of casual work on building sites. I had a few ex-army mates I knocked around with, but nobody to talk to about my deepening anxieties. Even if I had I probably wouldn't have, as I still just thought it was me not coping for some reason."
Eighteen months after his release on licence, Johnson killed again. A week or so before it happened, he had read a newspaper report about an army friend who had been killed in Northern Ireland and his anxieties were exacerbated. While doing some building work for a man he had worked with before, he began to feel "agitated". He says he found himself staring out of a window, across the roofs and listening to the shrill sounds of children down below. "The next thing I knew I was hiding under a stairwell," Johnson says. "That's pretty much all I remember."
Sometime between staring out of the window and hiding under the stairs, he had picked up a lump hammer and beaten the man he was working for to death. Again he was arrested quickly and again he pleaded guilty at his trial. This time he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation from his judge that he serve a minimum term of 20 years, later raised by the home secretary to 30 years.
Yet again, little was made of Johnson's past military experiences, particularly those relating to his time in Northern Ireland. He knew he had killed another man and accepted his punishment. The only thing he did not know was what had triggered the two motiveless killings.
In 1985 he was transferred to Frankland prison, where he has remained ever since as high-security category A prisoner. It was in his early days at Frankland that he met and became friends with a fellow "cat A" also serving life – a man who had been an eminent medical doctor on the outside. He was interested to hear about Johnson's military experiences. "He said to me that he thought I was suffering from PTSD," Johnson says. "That was the first time I'd heard of it. He also gave me the contact details of a former colleague of his who specialised in it. So I wrote to him. This other doctor wrote back and explained that he had helped many ex-servicemen with various levels of trauma exposure, but I was the first he had heard of in prison. His letter was a godsend to me. Suddenly I had some understanding of what might have been going on."
Aly Renwick, author of Hidden Wounds: the Problems of Northern Ireland Veterans in Civvy Street and himself a veteran of that conflict, spent a number of years researching the history of PTSD-related criminal behaviour among British combat veterans. Renwick's conclusion in relation to Northern Ireland was that, "Probably more deaths and injuries have been inflicted on the civilian population in Britain by our returning soldiers than by IRA bombings."
Dr Claudia Herbert, a renowned PTSD expert who leads a team of specialists as director of the Oxford Stress and Trauma Centre, has worked with many ex-service personnel with experience of conflicts including Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. Herbert's explanation of how PTSD affects those who have been traumatised is revelatory. "Military personnel are trained to deal with extreme situations," she says. "They may understand the theory of how to react, but when the action occurs the reality of what they are faced with can make them react very differently. What happens in a situation of extreme trauma is that the higher order processes, the cognitive processes, tend to shut down and the body tends to predominantly operate on autonomic functioning, which is geared solely towards survival."
In a life-or-death situation, explains Herbert, the event experienced gets stored in the memory system of the body, the mind and the brain. "Left unprocessed it remains a 'body memory'." The part of the brain that translates feeling into communicating the experience is often shut down during trauma, so that the trauma is stored but the person cannot say what has happened to them. "They may then experience it, relive it, through 'flashback'," Herbert says, "but can't actually talk about it."
Problems arise when military personnel leave the forces and try to fit back into normal life. "They are running around with a body full of stored memories and, because these have not been processed, they can be triggered by what otherwise seem like normal everyday events. A sudden noise or movement may trigger an extreme reaction over which they have no mental control. It is a survival mechanism. Such people who have been trained to kill are dangerous, perhaps not per se, but their bodies have been trained to be killing machines."
'Many people turn to alcohol or drugs to cope'
Not all who suffer from PTSD experience flashbacks, or become violent. "The symptoms are very uncomfortable," says Herbert. "They can lead to social withdrawal, emotional detachment, depression and difficulties in maintaining relationships. Many people turn to alcohol or drugs as a means of coping. But this can lead to even more problems." Herbert's big concern, like Johnson's, is that there is little official acknowledgment of the potential scale of the problem, given the fierceness of the many conflicts in which British forces have been involved over the last 40 years, and in particular the current conflict in Afghanistan where the close-quarter combat is the most sustained since the second world war. "The numbers actually affected might be far greater then we allow ourselves to believe," she says.
According to the Ministry of Defence, forces personnel now receive training to increase awareness of mental-health issues and stress management throughout their careers, and particularly prior to and after deployment. But is it enough? Increasing use is being made of Trauma Risk Management (TRiM), a model of peer-group mentoring and support in the aftermath of traumatic events, and the MoD's Medical Assessment Programme is also available to all veterans deployed on operations since 1982 who feel their mental health has been affected by their service experience.
Last month, health minister Mike O'Brien announced a joint government initiative with Combat Stress, the highly regarded veterans' mental health charity. The intention is that Combat Stress workers will work within NHS mental health trusts to ensure that veterans receive the treatment that they need in a "culturally acceptable" way.
But for some service personnel, doubts remain about the efficacy of the schemes. The culture in the forces, especially in the army, is to encourage high levels of controlled aggression and fearlessness. The conditioning is so powerful that it makes it almost impossible for anyone who feels troubled to step up and ask for help. One soldier, who does not want to be named, spoke about his experience during a 72-hour "decompression" period in a military base in Cyprus following several months on combat patrol in Afghanistan. "We spent three days getting legless and then they asked us if we had any problems," he said.
The Ministry of Justice claims just 2,500 prisoners were once in the forces. That figure some find hard to believe. Johnson for one is incredulous. "That's scandalous," he says. "I know from being in here for so long that there are thousands more than that."
While the Ministry of Justice admits that its research is incomplete, the discrepancy between its figure and the one produced by the National Association of Probation Officers (Napo) last year is huge. According to Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo, this is because of flawed methodology. "The MoD database lacks many first names or dates of birth and it doesn't include reservists," he says. "And since it only goes back to 1979, anyone over the age of 50, say, would be screened out."
Last year, the probation service carried out probably the most accurate research so far, reaching the conclusion that there were around 20,000 people in the criminal justice system who were ex-forces; 8,500 of whom were in prison – around 10% of the prisoner population. The survey also showed that the number of veterans in prison had risen by 30% in the previous five years.
Johnson decided to appeal against his murder convictions in 1996. He intended to cite his PTSD as a mitigating factor and hoped that the convictions would be reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. A psychologist confirmed that he was being treated for PTSD and he was granted legal aid. Due to a number of factors, not least the struggle to find new evidence, time and money ran out and the appeal was never lodged.
Since then Johnson has spent his years in prison collating as much information as he could on PTSD and its effects on the mind. Since 2003 he has been self-publishing his widely respected Survival Guide for Veterans and Their Families, which is sent free to any ex-service personnel in prison who requests a copy. He is currently preparing a fresh application for appeal.
Johnson's story is a tragedy for his victims and their families, and for him and his family. But once he served his country well, as a leader of men into what were often the most unimaginably difficult situations. His breakdown following his discharge from the army should have been given serious attention a long time ago. As the conflict in Afghanistan moves towards possibly its most intense stage yet, Johnson's experiences should serve as a warning of the potential danger posed by undiagnosed hidden trauma. "After all," says Fletcher, "if these lads are good enough to be brought home in boxes at Wootton Bassett, they are good enough to get proper support and counselling before they end up in the criminal justice system."
The Survival Guide for Veterans and their Families by Jimmy Johnson and Hidden Wounds by Aly Renwick are both available from vetsinprison.org.uk