Nina Hagen explains the clever psychiatric advance directive

Insane? Your own Choice!

(translated from German by René Talbot)

Nina Hagen hardly needs any introduction, as she is a singer, songwriter and actress, is a world star and not least known as the “Godmother of Punk”. In addition to her commitment to peace, love and solidarity, she is an advocate and patroness of the PatVerfue, an initiative against coercive psychiatry and for an autonomous life. – > Patverfue.de
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Since my earliest childhood, I have been educated by my parents to be a conscious and independent humanist. I know from my father, Hans Hagen, that he and his family had to suffer many traumatic experiences during the Nazi dictatorship, the Holocaust and World War II. He had to cope with the fact that he could no longer help his Jewish father. My grandfather, Herman Hagen, was first abducted by the Nazis to a psychiatric ward and then to the concentration camp, where he was tortured and murdered. Later, they also interned my father in a prison where he was severely mistreated and was imprisoned and tortured in a hole for months in a cowered state. Thankfully, this darkest chapter of our history of mankind was ended on May 8, 1945. And, since I can think, I struggle for the implementation of human rights and human dignity. Meanwhile, I am not only an actress and singer, but also the patroness of several non-profit organizations and associations.

As the patroness of the www.PatVerfue.de, I am committed to the human rights that the United Nations has always called for, and I try as much as possible to strengthen other people and to speak, sing and to inform about as well as discuss our rights. If I could wish for one thing: I wish wholeheartedly for a non-violent psychiatry in our country. For example, as already practised at the Heidenheim Hospital in Baden-Wuerttemberg. I think that it is only out of a lack of knowledge that those who have no PatVerfue are now in an emergency that is forced against their will and are deprived of their most elementary human rights and dignity. The PatVerfue is very important for every citizen of our country! The PatVerfue ensures self-determination!

Freedom, at least, means being free from being coerced or blackmailed by others in a particular decision. The fact that a decision has consequences is a truism, but that it has been taken without coercion is at the same time the necessary condition for the responsibility for its consequences. Contracts should make the consequences calculable. This is all a matter of course, but unfortunately people can be discriminated against by medical practitioners as allegedly “mentally ill” and then be deprived of their rights with the help of a set of laws. They can be imprisoned in the closed or semi-open psychiatric wards – yes, they even have to endure violent bodily intervention in the form of psychiatric coercive treatment. Instead of being protected by the state from the deprivation of liberty and bodily harm, the fundamental and human rights are instigated by the state being systematically violated by corrupt doctors, courts and alleged “caregivers”. This is particularly perfidious because people who were “mentally ill” were the first to be killed in gas chambers in Germany in 1939. Until 1949, even when the Nazis no longer protected the doctors, the murdering continued in the psychiatric wards. After that, in coercive psychiatry in the East and the West, imprisonment and torture continued, as if that were quite normal, even though in 1948 human rights for all people had been adopted by the United Nations.

All those for whom human rights are a concern should welcome the fact that the Medical Advance Directive law (“Patientenverfügungsgesetz” ) § 1901a German Civil Code came into force on 1.9.2009. It offers the possibility of a real alternative to this system of psychiatric degradation.

For the first time it was made possible by law – i.e. legally valid! – to prohibit a psychiatric medical examination and thus a diagnosis. In order to make any psychiatric incarceration and coercive treatment in psychiatry individually impossible in each case, this must have been prohibited in writing in a specially formulated Medical Advance Directive, the PatVerfue®. Previously, remaining silent at the psychiatrist was of no use, because either old files were simply copied, i.e. a copy-“appraisal” was made, or being silent was declared, for example, as being a “symtomatic weak autistic psychosis”, as the famous “false” senior doctor Gert Postel has made known from the inner-circle of doctors. He can be believed when he says, “Psychiatry is a subject matter that lives on word acrobatics. They can establish every diagnosis by use of the psychiatric language and also pronounce the opposite and the opposite of the opposite – there are no limits to the imagination.” And: “Those who master the psychiatric language can freely formulate any nonsense and put it in the guise of the academic”.

A prime example of this is how in 1994 the head of the Psychiatric University Hospital in Munich, Prof. Hans-Jürgen Möller, diagnosed Eberhart Herrmann, the well-known carpet art dealer, with a mental illness and a danger “to self or others”, without ever having talked to Mr. Herrmann personally. In his “expert psychiatric opinion on incarceration in a psychiatric hospital” it was claimed that Mr. Herrmann’s immediate incarceration was imperative (see Court of Appeal Munich, judgment of 4 February 2010, AZ. 1 u 4650/08).

The prerequisites for the conviction by Prof. Hans-Jürgen Möller after a 16-year-old procedure was that Mr. Herrmann had heard about his planned capture, he understood the danger he was in and immediately moved abroad. But few are likely to have both the financial resources and perseverance to lead a 16-year fight for rehabilitation from a psychiatric slander.

Because psychiatric diagnonsens is an arbitrary slander, in contrast to all medical disciplines, psychiatry must also regularly make use of coercion and violence against it’s patients. Only in this way can the victims be coerced into the so-called “illness insight”, so that through this confession, through pressure or by direct force, the whole procedure can supposedly be declared to be “medical”. If, on the other hand, the coerced person claims to be insane, but the doctors do not want to believe it, then they diagnose a “fake illness insight” as a particularly stubborn “disease” symptom and the blackmail continues.

Legal practitioners have now distilled the “disease-related inability to consent” from lack of “disease control” in order to rightly bend their justification of coercion and violence. In principle, no one who denies the existence of a disease can still agree to its treatment. No matter what additional conditions may be formulated, any legalized attempt to force this confession violates the absolute prohibition of torture!

By now it should have become clear why the question of whether a “mental illness” exists at all, or whether the assertion of it’s existence is a category error, is not a minor dispute, because human action has reasons and is not a bioelectrochemical reaction. Even if it also seems ideological, the special laws that are to be justified with “mental illness” are the most serious punishments before the death penalty: coercive psychiatric treatment, especially with conscious-changing drugs and electroshocking. For this one gets locked up and tied up, the so-called “fixation”. The current laws with which the corrupt doctors and judges can legalise these serious abuses are:

• 16 “public” regional state laws on compulsory incarceration and coercive treatment in psychiatry in most states, the so-called “mental health laws” (PsychKG), in Bavaria and in Saarland the “incarceration law”.

• The disenfranchisement called “care”, § 1896 German Civil Code, a federal civil law, with which a court, against the stated will of the persons in question, can also impose on them a guardian called “carer” as a legal representative. „Caregivers“ are particularly loyal servants of the court if they exercise this business as professional “carers”, since the court orders them. By the use of guardians the courts make things permanently easy for themselves. They only need to check their request for forced incarceration according to § 1906, in order to then wave it through. Since 22.7.2017, the new, intensified § 1906a has entered into force in Germany, so that the “cared for” person can be treated for all diseases in all stationary wards of a hospital, also with coercion and violence against their will – if they have no PatVerfue. No one should expose themself to such a risk and go without a PatVerfue!
  In a disenfranchisement procedure, there are no plaintiffs and defendants whose arguments the judges (should) consider fairly in order to come to a verdict. In such proceedings, the judge is the powerful instance and is the adversary of the person concerned, since judges regularly seek ways to disregard their self-determination. This is why my friends from the Werner-Fuss Center recommend that the PatVerfue be notarized. Each judge then respects such a document, because it has already been certified by another juridical person. If, in addition, some doctor certifies the legal competence at the time of certification and the PatVerfue has been registered with the Federal Chamber of Notaries, the PatVerfue is “bullet-proof”, so to speak.
• The § 63 Penal Code, admission to a forensic psychiatry (forced hospitalization), a so-called “special sacrifice” that the Nazis introduced on 24.11.1933, in order, after a crime, to treat with force psychiatrically slandered persons as dangerously insane and to be able to incarcerate them indefinitely. Once again the investigation and diagnosis is the central element for justifying this arbitrary imprisonment with torture-like bodily injury with the help of the corresponding psychiatric expert opinions. Regularly, the “63’s” are imprisoned much longer than for the same offences in prison sentences. This is simply a reversal of the illegal burden of proof, because the prisoner has to prove a prognosis of “harmlessness” in a forensic to enable his release, which is simply impossible, thus only results in medical astrology. The fact that the PatVerfue protects in a criminal case against a coercive medical examination because of § 63 is not yet definitively proven, but a good basis for denying this. A cartel of lawyers against § 63 is prepared for a corresponding defense. Important: Never voluntarily cooperate in such a psychiatric medical examination, never try to justify yourself, rather always remain completely silent. The defending lawyer can then use the PatVerfue to prevent the worst, namely the § 63.

The aforementioned are all special laws. In contrast to the laws that apply to all adult citizens, they are subject to special legislation for the specific deprivation of rights of the alleged or genuinely “mentally ill”. All have a psychiatrist’s opinion as a necessary condition for their application. In order to prevent this, the PatVerfue is the only psychiatric advance directive to specifically use this part of the psychiatric advance directive § 1901a Civil Code, first paragraph:

“In the event of his/her inability to consent, a competent adult has determined in writing whether he/her, at the time of imminent examination of his/her state of health, cure treatment or medical intervention, permits or rejects them (medical advance directive), the guardian checks whether these stipulations apply to the current life and treatment situation. If this is the case, the guardian has to give validity to the will of the person concerned.”

Beyond the controversy as to whether mental illness exists at all, the legislator has acknowledged that any medical examination and diagnosis of an actual or supposed mental illness can thus according to § 1901a be legally prohibited by a (usually written) advance medical directive. The PatVerfue also provides for appointing a specific person in a representation agreement. In this way the judge is deprived of the opportunity to impose another carer, since a representation agreement is principally a priority for “care”. The fact that the PatVerfue in any case puts a stop to the medical examination for the medical attribution of a mental illness additionally discourages the judges in their willingness to disenfranchise a person. Furthermore, there are one or even several persons who can assist in the refusal of psychiatric medical examination and treatment and, if necessary, give additional emphasis to the claim.

Using these possibilities of the advance medical directive law is the unique selling point of the PatVerfue, in contrast to practically all other advance medical directives. Thus, it is the means of choice to prevent coercive treatments, etc., as it closes the gateway for all further coercive measures. Without a diagnosis, there is no mental illness and without mental illness, none of the aforementioned special laws for the deprivation of rights can be applied.

At the same time, it proves that by the possibility to make a PatVerfue, it is a personal decision as to whether one can become mentally ill at all, because physicians are only allowed to establish such a disease for persons not protected by PatVerfue, i.e. only under this condition can they determine a mental illness. That is why the PatVerfue is the spearhead of self-determination even in a difficult situation. It guarantees an adult the right to be able to say no.

I would like to put two possible misunderstandings to rest:

• Anyone who denies that there are mental illnesses does not deny that there are conspicuous behaviors and disturbing thoughts and feelings of others. The only dispute is that this is a disease and that medical healing is to be consulted. Since the lawful state can sanction any version of conduct that violates or endangers the rights, property or body of others, also without the construction of special deprivation of rights on “mental illness”, there are no loopholes in the law that can justify this far-reaching and arbitrary detention and degradation in psychiatry.
  By means of coercive psychiatry, medicine offers the state power only an additional punishment apparatus for breaking the will, monitoring, coercion, intimidation, threat and fear of adult citizens – a kind of thought police.
• Anyone who thinks that a psychiatric sojourn is good for them should be able to claim it as a customer on a voluntary and contractual basis. Whether this must be part of the benefits of a health insurance is another matter. There should also be no constraints on consenting to be diagnosed as “mentally ill” – Insane? Your own choice!
  All individuals should be free to agree to psychiatric coercive measures for themselves by means of a corresponding advance medical directive beforehand – although I would advise against this, but it must be allowed, just like masochistic sexual practices, if one day the special psychiatric laws are to be abolished and we then have a non-violent psychiatry.