Pubdate: Sun, 26 Oct 2003
Source: Observer, The (UK)
Copyright: 2003 The Observer
Contact:  http://www.observer.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/315
Author: Jo Revill

'HE TURNED AND TOLD ME HE WAS GOD'

For years, Andrew had been smoking joints, hanging around with boys 
slightly older than himself in his Worcestershire village. An intensely 
bright student who took all his exams two years early, it seemed to do him 
no harm. It was on a trip to New Zealand to see relatives that this 
changed. He had backpacked around the islands, smoked a fair amount of 
dope, made some new friends. 'He came back a different person,' his mother 
Pauline recalled. 'At first I thought it was jet lag, but then I realised 
this was something different. He turned to me and said he was God, and 
could blow out all the windows in our town just by thinking about it.'

At age 17 Andrew became a patient in the local psychiatric unit run by the 
Worcestershire Mental Health Trust. He would spend the next two and a half 
years being admitted and then discharged.

His father, Peter, was astonished at the ease with which his son could 
obtain the drug, even on the ward where he was being treated for 
cannabis-induced psychosis. 'I remember one day when I gave him UKP5, 
because he had no money on him. We were sitting outside in the corridor 
after visiting him, and this guy walked past. He waved a UKP5 at me, the 
same one I'd given my son. We'd seen this man walk into the ward with a bag 
which obviously contained drugs. The staff didn't want to know.'

Their situation reached a crisis last August, when Andrew disappeared from 
his ward. He had withdrawn more than UKP250 in benefits from the hospital 
accounts department, and had his passport on him. He went to Paris, and 
spent eight days there, sleeping rough, once even walking into a hospital. 
On 29 August Pauline received a call from the British Embassy in Paris, who 
told her they were putting her son on the next Eurostar train to London, 
unescorted, and demanding her credit card number for payment.

Andrew got back home that Friday night. 'He was exhausted, dirty, hungry, 
completely wiped out by the experience,' his mother said. Worse was to 
come. Against his parents' wishes, a mental health team, two police cars 
and three social security officers arrived at 4am on the Sunday to take 
Andrew to a private psychiatric ward in London.

'We had begged them to let him sleep because he was so tired. But instead 
they completely overreacted, and insisted on him leaving immediately, 
arguing that he might be dangerous - yet he's never been violent or 
aggressive.'

Andrew was put into the back of a private minivan, with barred windows, 
separated from his mother who was in the back of the van, and driven down 
to London. Her son is now in a private clinic in east London, but his care 
is paid for by the NHS.

The security there is far tighter and every package taken in is searched. 
'For the first time, he's having to manage without cannabis,' his father 
said. 'What I dread is that he'll come back here and go straight out and 
get some again, and the delusions and the voices will start up.'

Their case is the subject of an investigation by an independent official, 
who will decide whether there should be a fuller independent inquiry. 
Worcestershire Mental Health Trust did not want to comment on the case, on 
the grounds of patient confidentiality.

. The family's names have been altered to protect their anonymity.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman