I really, REALLY wish I was making this up.
Sadly, I am not.
http://www.publico.pt/sociedade/not...ternaram-a-forca-e-o-deram-como-louco-1675130
As you can check, this is one of our country's top newspapers. Also, if you google the title, you'll see it is on all our press. His photo is there, too.
It is in Portuguese, so I will translate:
Carlos Rodrigues [Gustavo, which you know as Ubik of Magna Mundi], the programmer that was forcibly committed during 71 days under the Mental Health Act, has decided to sue five of the doctors that were involved in several stages of his clinical process. The first criminal complaint was filed at the Oeiras Court on September 22nd. This is not the first time that compulsively committed people appeal to the courts against this kind of decision. The relatives, who ordered the commitment, defend that Carlos suffers from "delirious disturbances" and that doesn't want to treat himself.
Carlos Rodrigues, 42 years old, says he had never been to a psychiatrist in his whole life, that he never took any psychiatric medication and that, nevertheless, on October 13th last year, four police officers [PSP] knocked on his door to lead him to the hospital. They had with them a warrant. It was claimed that he was "carrier of a psychic anomaly", that his health condition had "deteriorated", that he represented a danger and refused treatment.
He ended up being committed for 71 days at the Psychiatric and Mental Health Department at the Egas Moniz Hospital in Lisbon, got medicated with injectable antipsychotics. He claims that his "professional life got ruined", that he got a depression because of the commitment and the medication, and that the stigma of his alleged madness will remain forever as a scar.
(...)
In the case of Carlos, it was his relatives, his parents, his brother and sister-in-law, who is a doctor, who asked for his commitment because they were convinced that he suffers from a mental illness of prolonged evolution. At the basis of this conviction by the relatives would be information that he supposedly put on the Internet, claims Carlos. So as the fact that in the family, his paternal grandfather, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. The programmer adds that, at the time of his commitment, he had cut relations with his parents, precisely because they had been saying to his friends, underage daughter and professional contacts that he suffers from a mental illness, something that destroyed his credibility and brought him several problems at work.
His relatives, however, claim that Carlos suffers from "delirious ideas", "that he started to tape conversations with his family saying that they were harming him", that he was being watched with video surveillance cameras, and considering "his father as the main culprit of the conspiracy", says the report about his case, made by the Psychiatric Center of Lisbon, which took part in the process of compulsive internment and was appreciated at the Criminal Court of Lisbon. The family tried, for several times, to take him to the psychiatrist and Carlos did not accept, said the relatives.
Carlos has now moved a lawsuit against the doctors, because he claims to have been commited unfairly and that he does not suffer from any mental problem. He especially denies "a clinical information" that was at the origin of his commitment, that was asked by his relatives and is signed by a intern in psychiatrics (still in her graduation period). In the note, the then intern says that the information that was passed to her was given to the intern by the relatives and by the sister-in-law, "worthy of credibility", because it was her "colleague", as it is written in the clinical information of October 11th, 2013, to which the PUBLICO had access.
In the clinical information, even though she never saw him, the doctor takes as granted that Carlos suffers from "delirious perturbances with a long evolution period". She makes reference to his social isolation and severance of his ties with his family. At his first psychiatric evaluation, at the Urgencies of the Hospital S. José, to where he was taken by the police, another doctor wrote that Carlos suffers from "persistant delusional psychosis". Carlos claims that this doctor barely spoke with him, read the clinical information of the other doctor and took informations only near his relatives
Pedro Silva Lopes, Carlo's lawyer, that, for the first time, exposed the case in an opinion article in PUBLICO, says that the document which was the basis of the commitment was requested by him since the beguinning, but was "intentionally hidden during six months" by the hospital. Only on April 9th this year, already after the patient had had leave from the hospital, was the paper given to him. The psychiatrist in question works at the Hospital Egas Moniz, where Carlos was committed.
Carlos Rodrigues asks: "How can you pass a paper saying that a person is a complete looney without having seen him? There are no reports of any misbehaviour". Carlos Rodrigues claims to have a programming company that recieves european funding and that several deals were lost due to the commitment and the strong antipsychotic medication to which he was forcibly subjected to, besides the fact that he became stymgatized. "This will be with me for the rest of my life. If I have a problem in the bone of my leg and the wrong leg is cut off, I will complain, but an alleged mental patient doesn't have credibility for anything."
