ALI-G MEETS THE USERS FORUM

Ali-G: I am eer talking to Nick Dent at the Mental Health Forum, to discuss services for mental people with problems.

Nick Dent: People with mental health problems.

Ali-G: Ie! I know they do! Nick Dent: Yeah, cos we don’t say "mental people".

Ali-G: Ie! Me with it! So, wot is the User movement? Is it like people using a place to plan to kill all the Daily Mail readers, or something like that? Why is they using you like that?! Why?!

Nick Dent: No, it means Users of mental health services, which we try to work with people to improve and to give Users a voice.

Ali-G: Yeah, but why do you let them use you to kill all de Daily Mail readers?! What have they done to deserve that for reading the Daily Mail and the Sun, or whatever?!

Nick Dent: Most people who have mental health problems are not violent, and don’t threaten or hurt others any more than anyone else.

Ali-G: Yeah, but if they didn’t go around mad all the time, shouting and killing innocent people like, then they wouldn’t need any form or Forum services.

Nick Dent: This isn’t a service - this is to empower people for their say in their mental health services.

Ali-G: But you is not a service then?

Nick: Yes. Well no... er ...

Ali-G: Why is them like mad then? Is it cos they tried to kill their mum and shag their dad like Signet Freud said?

Nick Dent: No, a lot of it is poverty and oppression, and people who have gone through stages and struggles in their lives, or they have a lack of social skills.

Ali-G: So if me not have social skills, is that because I’m mad, or because me black?

Nick Dent: Well, I think we all lack social skills, but some more than others.

Ali-G: Wot if me black?

Nick Dent: No. Not necessarily.

Ali-G: Wot is like social skills? Is it getting wicki at getting all the money out of the social to say you is mental?

Nick Dent: Mental health problems you mean ..

Ali-G: Ie! Is that wot social skills are then?

Nick Dent: Social skills are about people learning to communicate better ...

Ali-G: Ie! Me figure!

Nick Dent: ... function more healthily ...

Ali-G: Ie! Me figure!

Nick Dent: ... and have esteem about themselves and others.

Ali-G: Why can’t they let off steam elsewhere?

Nick Dent: No "esteem"! Confidence, y’know, self-confidence.

Ali-G: That’s what me said about letting off the steam for it innit.

Nick Dent: Yeah that’s, well yeah.

Ali-G: So if these people not mental and off their nutters like, why do they psychiatrists keep putting them in the straight jackets and locking em up in loony bins? Are the psychiatrists mad?

Nick Dent: Well some of us think they are.

Ali-G: Me figured!

Nick Dent: They go there for protection, or because people can’t handle them or understand them, because of all the prejudice and discrimination in society, and the mentalism.

Ali-G: Well then the psychiatrists should stay locked up then.

Nick Dent (laughs): Yeah, that’s right.

Ali-G: I has been rapping and a-boppin wid Nick Dent of de Mental Problems Users Forum ... Boom shaka! Boom shaka! Viva la struggle!

Nick Dent: Cheers.

Ali-G: Keep the peace!

ALI-G MEETS MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELLORS

ALI-G: I is eer kickin’ it wid counsellors Bob Spittlequork and Casandra Bloomgoats, to see why they has to talk to people wid mental problems. What is a counsellor? Is it like Derrick Hatton who started all the poll tax? Why do mad people need someone like that to talk to?

BOB SPITTLEQUORK: No, were not political people or protestors - we listen to people, and give them advice on their problems so they can make good individual choices, and so we help them to see things in new perspectives.

Ali-G: Ie! So you is like my boys from the hood to get the word on what’s rappin’?CaSandra Bloomgoats: It’s about empathy and reassurance, yar.ALI-G: But what do they talk about? Is it about them being mad?

BOB SPITTLEQUORK: Well, we try to be good listeners to all their problems, and not to keep interrupting all the time!

ALI-G: Me with it! But what do they actually say to you?

CASANDRA BLOOMGOATS: About their problems and ...ALI-G: Yeah but what do they actually say without interpreting you all the time innit?

BOB SPITTLEQUORK: Interrupting, or butting in rudely you mean!

ALI-G: Ie! Me know I do!

CASANDRA BLOOMGOATS: We can’t exactly say what they tell us, that’s professional confidential information.

ALI-G: So you is like the CIA then?

BOB BLOOMGOATS: It’s about respecting the professional relationship and people’s privacy.

ALI-G: But what if one of them tell you they is weirdo's who are shagging their sister Like Signet Freud said?

BOB SPITTLEQUORK: Well we listen to what they want to tell us and ...

ALI-G: ... and what if you is drunk wid your mates, and you start telling em about these mad people, who kill all the Daily Mail readers and shag their sisters? What do you do then?! What?!

CASANDRA BLOOMGOATS: Well we share information amongst our own mental health team, but not outside with the public or with our friends.

ALI-G: So you can’t have a good laugh about all the nutters then?

BOB SPITTLEQUORK: Well, there’s a lot of humour in our work, but we try to take what our clients tell us seriously, and we try to get them to take things much more seriously about themselves and others.

CASANDRA BLOOMGOATS: Yar, life isn’t just a joke is it, y’know.

ALI-G: What, so them can’t have a good laugh at you then, and take the piss back?

CASANDRA BLOOMGOATS: We laugh with people sometimes, but not at them.ALI-G: So you can all be nutters together like - me got it!

BOB SPITTLEQUORK: And we don’t use words like "mad" or "nutters".

CASANDRA BLOOMGOATS: Yar.

ALI-G: Why not? Are you mad as well?

CASANDRA BLOOMGOATS: Because we don’t think it’s very polite or civilised.

ALI-G: No, because them might beat you up like, me know, so you do it when they is not looking.

CASANDRA BLOOMGOATS: We don’t tolerate threats or abusive langauge.

ALI-G: Ie!

BOB SPITTLEQUORK: Yes, we’re not at liberty to tell others the actual content of what our clients tell us, but they often have worries about their parents, their families or friends, or about who they are, their mental health symptoms, or their sexuality.

ALI-G: Do you give advice on how to shag a woman if they has given it to some woman up the wrong end like?

CASANDRA BLOOMGOATS: That is not our job, we’re are not sex-therapists or prostitutes.

ALI-G: Because them like couldn’t afford it, me know, or they could like go and see my sister for a one-hand shandy for a fiver.

BOB SPITTLEQUORK: Yes, that wouldn’t be regarded as very desirable or therapuetic on the NHS.ALI-G: Maybe it should be, if them feel a bit randy like.

CASANDRA BLOOMGOATS: No.

ALI-G: So how many times do they see you for the rappin’ and the chillin like?

BOB SPITTLEQUORK: Well, we have a long waiting list, and people come to us through their GPs, their doctors or psychiatrists, but we terminate the sessions after a while if there’s no progress or real understanding.

ALI-G: You is like the terminators, me know.

CASANDRA BLOOMGOATS: Yes, because the patients can form an unhealthy attachment.

ALI-G: You mean if they start getting the bronco for you, or jacking off on you like when they go back home?

BOB SPITTLEQUORK: Clients can also sometimes form child-parent attachments, and then they make an unhealthy parental transference with therapists.

ALI-G: Ie! Me know what transfers are.

CASANDRA BLOOMGOATS: Yar.

ALI-G: I am now going to terminate this session, but I as been rappin’ and a boppin it wid Bob Spittlequork and Casandra Bloomgoats, counsellors for people wid mental-talk problems. Boom shaka! Boom shaka! Respect!

Equinox: Sweden, Sex and the disappearing Doctors

"Let me tell you about Sweden. The only country where the clouds are interesting. Big brother says it's the place to go. Too much time to think, too little to do - because it's all quiet, on the Western front".
The Stranglers

The Channel 4 Equinox programme called Sweden, Sex and the Disappearing Doctors, questioned how it could be that doctors, priests, and social workers, could have gone along with the Swedish Socialist government's policy in law - between 1935-1975 - to sterilise 63,000 people in the name of eugenics, and in the name of "better people leading better lives" and "creating a healthier and less poorer society". Doctors carried out the Swedish Socialist government's sterilisation policy, from fear of losing their jobs if they protested, and not one of them spoke out against it at the time.

Those people who were sterilised were mostly single mothers and young women who were very sexually active, and who were coerced with psychiatric incarceration on the grounds that they would be released if they accepted sterilisation. The diagnosis of schizophrenia was used as an excuse to incarcerate and sterilise young working-class males, who were deemed to be "anti-social" because they were influenced by the teddy-boy subculture of the 1950s, and who seemed to reject conventional Swedish society.

The sterilisation policy was based upon eugenics theory, derived from experiments on peas, that peas that were wrinkled had recessive genes, and those which were smooth had dominant genes, and so the peas with dominant genes had to be inter-bred to make smooth peas. This theory was then applied to human beings. The Swedish government's sterilisation policy remained until the late 1970s, after middle-class feminists with free-time on their hands in the 1960s, protested and campaigned for free abortion, contraception, and the rights of women's sexual freedom.

The women's movement against the destructive laws of the State, was hugely beneficial and instrumental in abolishing the Swedish government's sterilisation policy, although whatever a persons political principles, this can be in contradiction to their work roles, especially where the power of the State is concerned. At one time positive discrimination was a socially integrative idea, about integrating people at ground level into society with equal rights in work, leisure, education, and so on, but it came to mean putting minorities into State power over and above the same and other minorities.

The present Swedish Social Democrat minister for the environment, said she refused to talk about Sweden's 1935-1975 sterilisation policy, because it was an issue that had already been discussed and cleared up, and that all governments went along with the Swedish Socialist government's policy - which destroyed the lives of unmarried women and ethnic groups regarded as "feeble-minded" and "recessive", and those deemed "anti-social" because they rejected a conventional lifestyle due to cramped and inadequate housing for couples to have sex or reproduce.

Although the reasons for the sterilisation policy were based upon an over-simplified and false genetics theory at the time - because the Channel 4 programme said that all humans contain a high number of recessive genes - the sterilisation policy was also carried out for social and economic reasons, and to eradicate poverty - and so biological and social and economic theory were both behind the Swedish government's policy of sterilisation, and one theory was used to justify the other.