By: Nina Lakhani, The Independent
Sunday, 5 October 2008
Campaigners plan to use World Mental Health Day to highlight discrimination within the medical profession against some of its most vulnerable patients.
Daniel Galvin died of a heart attack in August. He was six stone overweight and had high blood pressure; his hair was falling out and he was incapacitated by trembling legs. He was 29.
Daniel’s family believe his symptoms, and his untimely death, were caused by side effects from the powerful psychiatric drugs he had been taking for 14 years. He is, they think, one of thousands of people with mental health problems who have died prematurely because their physical health was neglected.
Rufus May, a clinical psychologist, said yesterday: “The real tragedy about Daniel’s death is that it symbolises how little things have changed in psychiatry. Young lives are still being wasted because we fail to listen to people and simply prescribe powerful drugs with little regard for their physical well being.
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