When novelist and former mental health nurse Nathan Filer met a patient who wouldn’t take his pills, it started him on a journey into the complex and contradictory world of schizophrenia
I remember the first time I forcibly medicated a person against his will. It was 13 years ago, not long after I’d qualified as a mental health nurse, and I had started my career working on a psychiatric ward providing assessment and treatment for adults in acute phases of serious mental illness.
There was a patient (or service user or client or son or brother or friend, depending on who you ask) whom I’ll call Amit. Amit had been refusing any medication for nearly three weeks and with good reason. The medicine we were offering him contained a poison. It had been prescribed by a doctor who wished to harm him. In fact, this doctor – a consultant psychiatrist – had been struck off the medical register for his abuse of Amit during previous admissions and so was now working illegally on the ward. Many of the nursing staff knew this, and were in on it.
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