Denmark: Analysis and comments to Karina Hansen's journal from when she was sectioned at Hammel Neurocenter

What a poor girl. It must have been a nightmare. I'm not surprised she broke down in the end. There is only so much daily torture in the form of forced exercise that one can handle.

PACE is of used to justify this kind of nonsense as it is cited as evidence that rehabilitation is possible.
 
So, Per Fink who ?initiated the unlawful sectioning was invited to talk at this year's BACME conference in March, when Dr Gabrielle Murphy was Chair.

and ... NICE wonders why we are "concerned" about her and other members of BACME, being on the Guideline Development Committee.

NB I cannot easily access the 2019 Conference agenda via Google atm. Will post link to S4ME thread when I find it.

ETA: Summary of BACME conference here, #6
https://www.s4me.info/threads/bacme-meeting-14-15-march.3017/#post-53648

I think that GM may have been replaced as chair prior to the conference. Libuse Ratcliffe is noted as Chair of BACME as in attendance at theCMRC meeting per minutes on 8 Nov 2018
 
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“Pervasive Refusal Syndrome is often seen as developing in response to violent abuse or unbearable and uncontrollable situations.

These geniuses then put her into an abusive, unbearable and uncontrollable situation for three years.

I think it is very interesting that those people always find a way to exactly describe what monstrous thing they are doing, but ascribe it to either their immediate victim or some part of a victim's support/coping system. I guess it is an attempt at not feeling like a monster when in fact, you very much are one. Which implies that a part of them knows what they are doing. And they keep on doing it.
 
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Karina Hansen's forced hospitalization and treatment at the Hammel Neurocenter
By Bente Stenfalk and shared with permission by Karina Hansen

12.2.13, Quote from the admission journal from Hammel Neurocenter:
“The initial triggering cause may be related to mononucleosis, but this is uncertain.
Along the way, patient has been examined for various medical conditions without one being able to give a specific diagnosis. Chronic fatigue syndrome/ME has been considered, but overall the diagnosis code has been uncertain. It's more and more developed into a unified picture where functional disorder is suspected. This is the background for moving the patient to Hammel Neurocenter for further assesment and treatment for this condition. "

In other words, Karina Hansen has been sectioned based on "considerations" and "suspicions" about functional disorders. Her original diagnosis has been called into question, even though it was given by leading specialists from home and abroad, and as far as mononucleosis is concerned, antibodies can be measured in the blood with certainty, even long after the disease, and there must also be journal notes about it, from when it was ascertained.

3 years and 8 months being sectioned based on indications and not reading the journal. This overturns my faith to the legal system.

Per Fink stated on DR TV on 20.5.19 in the programme "The Psychiatry's Dilemma" that 3 years and 8 months after hospitalization, one still doesn't know what Karina Hansen suffers from …
Furthermore, the journal says on the day of admission from Hammel Neurocenter: quote: Karina Hansen ”currently seems relatively unaffected, she moves freely in bed. There is eye contact. She responds to being spoken to. There are signs of anemia, but otherwise nothing immediately noticeable. ”…” She has no signs of bed sores despite staying much in bed, but she is good at turning herself around”

Where is the reason for the forced hospitalization?

Karina Hansen's treatment at the Hammel Neurocenter, from journal notes
The daily treatment/exercise was to push K a little further than she felt she could handle. Coercion was also used. If K didn't do what was demanded, the exercise still got carried out by several people 'helping' K over to the exercise bench, and only if Karina Hansen broke down completely, the exercise was cut short or skipped for a day, only to be resumed the next day in order not to 'break the good routine'. Many times Karina Hansen resigned and did what was demanded while crying.

Daily treatment: bath, tilting while counting up to a certain number, massage, stretching of muscles and tendons, visualization exercises, breathing exercises, standing in a support chair, ball blanket exercises, ball exercises, balloon exercises and pool exercises , all in order to strengthen her body, and everything done for a little longer than K could hold, which is why K often broke down crying several times a day.

If K didn't want to attend the exercise, but rather stay in bed, the duvet was removed and the headboard raised. If K didn't show up to treatment, she was told that some of the staff would come and physically move her to an exercise or bathing bench.

K was supposed to eat sitting and up, and should as a minimum fetch her own food from a table far from the bed. If she didn't pick it up or she didn't want to get up, the food got removed. (However, this was sometimes relaxed out of fear of K losing weight. If K subsequently became too unhappy and insisted on staying in bed, she was sometimes allowed to eat in bed).

K had to sit in a wheelchair and take part in cooking and cleaning in the kitchen, or lie in bed in the kitchen and watch the food being made.
K was to take part in the change of bedding, laundry and hanging up and folding clothes.

If K was in her living room, she often had to accept staff sitting there reading magazines, writing on PC, arranging laundry, cooking, blending smoothies, knitting, drinking coffee, talking and making noise (deliberately, allegedly in order to get K used to it).

Later, K should eat sitting in the kitchen, living room or ward, often together with staff, even if she'd rather eat alone.

In addition, every day K had to go to the garden in the bed and later in a wheelchair. K had to drink a juice while in the garden, otherwise they wouldn’t go back in again.
Sometimes the door to the ward was open, despite the noise of the hallway and despite K reacting to the noise.

The window was left open, despite the outside noise, which K couldn't stand, and only closed when K asked for it.
K was sometimes asked to take the earplugs out, even though she would rather keep them in.


Some of the most transboundary K was exposed to, was when K was exposed daily to people (Nils Balle Christensen and the staff) who thought she wasn't speaking intentionally and that she could just start talking, if she wanted to. In this situation, empathy were lacking in the staff, who often seemed annoyed that K didn't open up to them through speech.

Again and again, K was encouraged to talk about her thoughts and feelings, thinking it would help her, but K never did.

When Nils Balle Christensen became too overbearing, not only did K turn her back to him (which she always did when he arrived), she also occasionally put her fingers in her ears.

K was pushed daily beyond her boundaries, allegedly to accustom her to ordinary life. It was believed that they could make her well by forcing her beyond her comfort zone. K cried and sobbed daily, and when that happened, the staff was supposed to stay with her, even if K asked to be alone or said OUT.

Sometimes K said she would like to go home, but it was ignored, even AFTER it was pointed out by Nils Balle Christensen at a meeting on 7.5.14 that K was there voluntarily, but apparently this was something K was never told, and she got no help in this matter.

When K said she wanted to go home, K was explained that she was lucky to be there, because they had the resources to make her well. Occasionally, K said in despair that they might as well kill her. Occasionally she asked for the staff to kill her ...

When K responded by acting out and asked to be alone, the staff should say: I don't feel like leaving you as long as you feel like this! And then they stayed in the ward for ½ to 1 hour afterwards.

Despite good eye contact, and although K was able to respond to being spoken to, she was constantly deemed unfit by Nils Balle Christensen, who also persistently believed that contact with the family would be detrimental to the treatment.

K was prevented on daily basis from going to bed when she wanted to. If she was in the garden in bed or wheelchair, they would not go back in until she had finished her juice. When exercising, the exercise would always be kept a little longer, for instance by talking a little slower. When the TV was turned on, the time was dragged a little longer than what K would prefer before it was turned off again. When K had finished eating, she would often have to eat some more or stay a little longer sitting in the chair. All allegedly in order to train K for ordinary life.

K often had to pick up drinks in a wheelchair from a refrigerator far from the ward, but often K wasn’t able to and resisted. Sometimes she was pushed down there in the wheelchair by the staff, or a sympathetic nurse assistant would bring it to her if K wasn’t at all able to.

K chose not to take iron tablets because she had experienced her stomach not tolerating them. Despite the fact that some of the staff had promised not to fool her, they still tried to hide iron drops in for instance cola or pouring them on top of her porridge, which was unsuccessful. (iron drops doesn't taste good)

When K chose not to take vitamin D, they put drops on her rye bread.

But both treatments had to be given up in the end, as they caused too many conflicts in K's relationship with the staff. Instead the diet was changed, so that K could get iron and vitamin D, which was a much better solution and something one could have initiated much earlier.

K weighed about 55 kg throughout the stay, slightly below and slightly above. K lost weight at some point during her stay at the Hammel Neurocenter, and was given a so-called wish diet. She was then allowed to buy ice cream, chips and cola herself on the later accompanying tours to the city in wheelchair.

She also got daily for instance pizza, burger buns and pita bread for evening meal, and bags of chips, cola, ice cream, desserts, biscuits, cake, chocolate biscuits, chocolate and popcorn …

K was exposed to many well-meaning caregivers, all of whom did what Nils Balle Christensen demanded of them, but fortunately they didn't do it very persistently. If you read the 1000-page journal, a picture of more or less compassionate and more or less zealous caregivers appears, and you can clearly see that some of them were gentle with K, while others provoked several bad situations and experiences, and to them, K spoke up far more often.

Karina Hansen's reaction to the treatment

K has a strong personality when she managed to hold onto who she is every day, despite illness and exhausting treatment and massive 'persuasion' attempts by the staff and Nils Balle Christensen to make her believe she was suffering of functional disorder and not of ME, and that they could make her well if she did what they said.

K mostly did what was demanded of her, but she spoke up from time to time when it all became too tiring and she "won" many of her small “battles" against the treatment during her stay by speaking clearly up.

Society has failed miserably in this awful case. How can one believe that a young intelligent woman who has completed 1st grade will just 'surrender' to her 'abductor' and trust him, as Nils Balle Christensen imagined? At no time did K fall for the Stockholm Syndrome, the mental state in which prisoners or victims of a kidnapping develop affiliation with their guardians.

The physician who sections a patient shouldn't also be the attending physician.
A physician should not be responsible for both hospitalization and treatment, for such a physician will be tempted to produce wrong claims about the patient, in order to legitimize his decision of hospitalization.

This is also seen in this case, where K in these psychiatrists' self-understanding is "poised" more ill, malnourished and un-nurtured than she was. The family, especially the mother, also ‘pose' ill and is responsible for her daughter's illness without prior reasonable investigation and assesment.

Psychiatrist Per Fink, psychiatrist Nils Balle Christensen and the Research Clinic for Functional Disorders had interests in curing an ME patient. Just a few months before the forced hospitalization they opened an ME-Knowledge Center where they wanted to present a success story. (To my knowledge, this center still has not produced anything that has been published 7 years after opening)

The whole process is completely condemnable and steeped in power abuse, which we cannot stand for in front of an adult ill citizen who herself had decided where she wanted to be.

New and impartial doctors should be included in such cases. The patient should be re-examined and measures other than forced admission should be tried first.


Thank you so much for sharing this. I was wondering if any of the information can be used?

In the UK there has been a young lady called Gigi who has been battling to stay out of secure Mental unit or out of a hospital that agrees with keeping severe ME patients active beyond their ability to cope.

We hope that Gigi will be released from hospital and back to her family home shortly and as soon as everything for her care is put into place.

I have written on Gigi behalf complaints about how the family have been treated (especially the mum) and how they have handled Gigi's care against her wishes.

I would like to quote from this information on a more general note also. Before I stepped in to help Gigi I already put in a complaint to the Family Courts, GMC, NICE, Ombudsman and minister for Disability with a view to send this all to the children's commissioner.

It is deeply distressing how many young people are in this position and never are heard of and I think we have to change the ability of those in power to be able to hide them and hide behind mental health.

I am full of admiration for Karena and Gigi and all those who went before, what we loose through this folly is criminal.

Moderator note:
This post has been copied an subsequent posts moved to a new thread:
UK: Problems faced by young people with very severe ME and their families
 
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The local Danish newspaper Fredericia Avisen has two articles today about the court case concerning Stig Gerdes' licence to practice as doctor. He lost it when he became Karina Hansen's doctor after she had returned to her family because he reduced the medications she'd been put on.

Karina Hansens far: "Stig skal frifindes, alt andet er absurd"
google translation: Karina Hansen's father: "Stig must be acquitted. Anything else is absurd"

What is it like to see and feel that your daughter's doctor is in court today?
- “It's absolutely awful. If anything he's someone who has helped our daughter. It can't be right that when you want to help people, you'll get punished just for saying your opinion once in a while ”


dr. Mogens Unden om Stig Gerdes sagen: Det er vanvittigt. Ren Monty Python!
google translation: dr. Mogens Unden about the Stig Gerdes case: It's crazy. It's like Monty Python!

What do you think of the Karina case, is she treated correctly in your opinion?
-“In no way has she been treated correctly in the course I know of, but Stig Gerdes has done everything according to the book in his treatment. I am therefore completely at loss of why he lost the licence, "Mogens Unden says, and concludes:

“I believe and hope he gets acquitted. If he is deprived of the right to be a doctor, all clinically relevant rules on how to act as a doctor will be violated if he is convicted or detained on this basis. It's so grotesque that it should be included in Monty Python's circus the next time it's aired. "
 
The local Danish newspaper Fredericia Avisen has two articles today about the court case concerning Stig Gerdes' licence to practice as doctor. He lost it when he became Karina Hansen's doctor after she had returned to her family because he reduced the medications she'd been put on.

Karina Hansens far: "Stig skal frifindes, alt andet er absurd"
google translation: Karina Hansen's father: "Stig must be acquitted. Anything else is absurd"

What is it like to see and feel that your daughter's doctor is in court today?
- “It's absolutely awful. If anything he's someone who has helped our daughter. It can't be right that when you want to help people, you'll get punished just for saying your opinion once in a while ”


dr. Mogens Unden om Stig Gerdes sagen: Det er vanvittigt. Ren Monty Python!
google translation: dr. Mogens Unden about the Stig Gerdes case: It's crazy. It's like Monty Python!

What do you think of the Karina case, is she treated correctly in your opinion?
-“In no way has she been treated correctly in the course I know of, but Stig Gerdes has done everything according to the book in his treatment. I am therefore completely at loss of why he lost the licence, "Mogens Unden says, and concludes:

“I believe and hope he gets acquitted. If he is deprived of the right to be a doctor, all clinically relevant rules on how to act as a doctor will be violated if he is convicted or detained on this basis. It's so grotesque that it should be included in Monty Python's circus the next time it's aired. "
Seems there were two more articles today, four in total

En halv million i juridiske omkostninger
google translation: half a million in legal costs
The criticism from Gerdes in his various statements about HPV, job centers and psychiatry was not always well received. Some of the doctors he has criticized consider him a derelict doctor. In the files of Stig Gerdes it can be read that some have asked the authorities to withdraw his authorization. But it is also the conditions that have been for Gerdes to defend himself that make him angry:

“The authorities have endless resources for this trial. They use the chamber attorney. So far, I have spent over £ 400,000 on my legal defense, and I think we will reach half a million before the first hearing. Such is the legal certainty of a doctor in this country. They take your authorization temporarily. Then you have to close your practice. It costs a fortune. Then you have to scrape the money together for your defense while the case is dragging along. Before a court decision has ever been made, the damage is already so great that it is impossible to recover what you have lost. "


Gerdes fremlagde sin sag i retten: Jeg vil frifindes
google translation: Gerdes presented his case in court: I want to be acquitted

How do you think the hearing has gone today?
- “It's hard to assess. The Attorney General adheres to what the Forensic Council has said, which means that the Forensic Council is the board, and if those arguments are the way it is difficult, but I do not think they have anything to come by. Time shows that I have improved her (Karina Hansen's) state. As a physician, it is the primary thing for me - namely that the patient gets better, then the rules are secondary to me,
 
The local Danish newspaper Fredericia Avisen has two articles today about the court case concerning Stig Gerdes' licence to practice as doctor. He lost it when he became Karina Hansen's doctor after she had returned to her family because he reduced the medications she'd been put on.

Karina Hansens far: "Stig skal frifindes, alt andet er absurd"
google translation: Karina Hansen's father: "Stig must be acquitted. Anything else is absurd"

What is it like to see and feel that your daughter's doctor is in court today?
- “It's absolutely awful. If anything he's someone who has helped our daughter. It can't be right that when you want to help people, you'll get punished just for saying your opinion once in a while ”


dr. Mogens Unden om Stig Gerdes sagen: Det er vanvittigt. Ren Monty Python!
google translation: dr. Mogens Unden about the Stig Gerdes case: It's crazy. It's like Monty Python!

What do you think of the Karina case, is she treated correctly in your opinion?
-“In no way has she been treated correctly in the course I know of, but Stig Gerdes has done everything according to the book in his treatment. I am therefore completely at loss of why he lost the licence, "Mogens Unden says, and concludes:

“I believe and hope he gets acquitted. If he is deprived of the right to be a doctor, all clinically relevant rules on how to act as a doctor will be violated if he is convicted or detained on this basis. It's so grotesque that it should be included in Monty Python's circus the next time it's aired. "
Unfortunately, Stig Gerdes lost the case. He's still not allowed to practice as a doctor. He says to the local newspaper:
- But I'm ready to fight till the end. The assault towards me and Karina can't be allowed. I will appeal.

Fredericia Dagblad
Gerdes-advokat: Man klipper pladerne på en ældre læge, som ellers ikke har væltet sig i klager

It was not possible to google translate the article
 
So very sad and appalled to hear this news. All we can hope for is that he wins Appeal. Will be thinking of Stig Gerdes over the next weeks and months, and sending all good wishes to him from Wales, and from Liverpool when I go home later this month. This was a travesty of justice.
 
Unfortunately, Stig Gerdes lost the case. He's still not allowed to practice as a doctor. He says to the local newspaper:
- But I'm ready to fight till the end. The assault towards me and Karina can't be allowed. I will appeal.

Fredericia Dagblad
Gerdes-advokat: Man klipper pladerne på en ældre læge, som ellers ikke har væltet sig i klager

It was not possible to google translate the article
So the position of the medical board is that:
  1. It's OK and good to detain a very ill person against their will, without a valid reason, and perform untested medical experiments on them against explicit objection in a way that deliberately inflicts suffering based on a belief that the suffering is a valid treatment
  2. It is not OK to object to that forced detainment, to the point where intervening will lead to a loss of medical license
Which, summed up, means:
  1. It's OK to harm vulnerable sick people in violation of informed consent
  2. It is not OK to stop that harm
OK, then. Not quite how most people think medicine should operate.
 
Awful news. Really sends a message to people with ME that even if your doctor can be trusted, the health authority certainly can't. And of course it sends a message to the BPS crowd that their abuses of vulnerable patients are just fine and dandy.

I hope his appeal goes well.
 
Stig Gerdes is appealing and taking his case to the High Court. The lawyer thinks it might take a year before it starts.

The local newspaper Fredericia Dagblad has a short article about the appeal:
Stig Gerdes reduced Karina Hansen's medicine without consulting her guardian, a treatment which has been continued also after Gerdes is no longer her doctor. According to lawyer Anders Qvistgaard, the district court didn't consider whether the treatment of the young woman had worked.

Fredericia Dagblad: Stig Gerdes tabte retssag: Nu anker han til landretten
google translation not possible.
 
Stig Gerdes is appealing and taking his case to the High Court. The lawyer thinks it might take a year before it starts.

The local newspaper Fredericia Dagblad has a short article about the appeal:
Stig Gerdes reduced Karina Hansen's medicine without consulting her guardian, a treatment which has been continued also after Gerdes is no longer her doctor. According to lawyer Anders Qvistgaard, the district court didn't consider whether the treatment of the young woman had worked.

Fredericia Dagblad: Stig Gerdes tabte retssag: Nu anker han til landretten
google translation not possible.

Former doctor Stig Gerdes appeals his case to the national court. But it has long prospects for a decision, his lawyer says.

Fredericia: Former doctor Stig Gerdes appeals the verdict in his lawsuit against the Danish Agency for Patient Safety.

On September 30, he was told he had lost the lawsuit, seeking to overturn his authorization suspension.

Now he has appealed to the High Court. Stig Gerdes wants to be acquitted.

According to Stig Gerdes 'lawyer Anders Qvistgaard, there are only a few similar cases as Stig Gerdes'.

- This type of case is rare, says Anders Qvistgaard.

The grounds of the district court emphasized that Stig Gerdes should have shown gross negligence in her treatment of the young woman Karina Hansen, who is central to the case. It is on this basis that the district court found that it was in order, the Danish Board of Patient Safety deprived Stig Gerdes of his authorization as a doctor.

Long time to the national court
Stig Gerdes stepped down Karina Hansen into medicine without consulting her guardian - a treatment that has continued, after Stig Gerdes is no longer her doctor. According to lawyer Anders Qvistgaard, the district court did not consider whether the treatment of the young woman worked.

- Legally, we have rules that are not bent in neon, and that will be a very technical, theoretical judgment, says Anders Qvistgaaard, who wants to ask more questions to the forensic council.

However, it may have long prospects for Stig Gerdes and his lawyer to end the case.

- I don't think we're in the national court until about a year's time, he says.

- How is Stig Gerdes doing?

- Stig Gerdes is in good courage. It is hard. He has a hard time accepting that he should have put the woman at risk, explains Anders Qvistgaard.
 
To Minister of Justice Nick Hekkerup and the Ministry of Justice
14 Nov 2019
In a lawsuit for a physician authorization waiver and a patient, Karina Hansen (forcibly discharged under the Psychiatric Functional Disorders, which, following several experts' statements and medical statements, suffered from ME, myalgic encephalomyelitis, a PHYSICAL DISEASE), and whose physician, Stig Gerdes is deprived of his license because he helped her (at her will) to drop a bit into the Olanzapine dose, without asking her guardian, (a former police officer, Kaj Stendorf, and an unnamed psychiatrist at Risskov) on 'law' to it, the Forensic Council was composed of three doctors / psychiatrists, one of whom works in Risskov, psychiatrist Poul Videbech, where Karina Hansen has been hospitalized for a short time and where he and the other of them, psychiatrist Niels Damsbo, have claimed functional disorders in public writing, and where the third works in psychiatry with anxiety, psychiatrist Niels Siebuhr.

So three doctors / psychiatrists, who ALL work in psychiatry and for the two of them with clear interests in functional disorders.
This is NOT an INVALID Forensic Council, as might be expected. to come up with impartial and fair statements, such as goes against psychiatry and those responsible for forced hospitalization, colleagues, psychiatrists, Per Fink and Nils Balle Christensen from the Functional Disorders Clinic.

The Parliament has decided that the ME disease should be below the somatics, where all ME experts, ME patients and the ME association also think it should be. Doctor Stig Gerdes also believes that ME is a physical condition and, as I said, he helped Karina Hansen with a very small reduction in the dose of Olanzapine, with which she was very overdosed, which clearly showed blood tests.

Why should Stig Gerdes be 'judged' / assessed ONLY by psychiatrists when Karina Hansen's basic illness is PHYSICAL and thus the medication with psycho-medication was the wrong treatment? It does not seem fair, on the contrary, so one can calculate the outcome of the three psychiatrists' assessment in advance.
With the working conditions and interests in psychiatry and functional disorders, at least the two psychiatrists should have been declared incompetent in this case.

The Forensic Council SHOULD also have called on an ME expert to advise the Forensic Council on ME disease, and there SHOULD have been doctors from the somatic area between the three from the Forensic Council who were appointed to comment on the case.

It is incomprehensible to anyone who has closely followed the case how a physician can get his or her authorization to help a patient with a small drop in the dose of Olanzapine that she herself wanted and which she got significantly BETTER.
My questions to the Minister of Justice / Ministry of Justice, to which I want answers:

1. How / where can one complain about the composition of a forensic council when the council, in a trial of, among other things, does somatic illness consist solely of psychiatrists with distinct communities of interest, such as conflicts with plaintiff's interests?

  • If the same composition of the Judicial Council is repeated when the case comes before the High Court, will the Minister of Justice / Ministry of Justice then intervene and demand a more impartial and justly composed Judicial Council?
  • The proportionality principle implies that there must be a reasonable relationship between the passing and the outcome of the case.
Will the Minister of Justice and the Ministry of Justice consider, decide and respond to the principle of proportionality in this case, cf. last part of my testimony about the witness Dr. Karsten Bech's medical behavior towards MORE HUNDRED CANCER PATIENTS, compared to Stig Gerdes' behavior in this case about A patient who got the better? Karsten Bech is still a doctor, it is not Stig Gerdes

full blog here
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=da&u=https://fredericiaavisen.dk/&prev=search
 
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