Activist confronts doctors’ diagnosis

JOHN McCARTHY, the founder of the advocacy group, Mad Pride, has challenged the country’s leading psychiatrists to prove that he ever suffered a mental illness to justify him being locked up and forcibly medicated.

Mr McCarthy, who was in the care of the psychiatric service for over a decade and was locked up for a year, said yesterday it was wrong that anyone should be deprived of their freedom on the basis of guesswork by doctors.

“I will offer myself up to any member or group of members of the College of Psychiatrists to test me for any one of the four diagnoses that I was told by my psychiatrist I would have for the rest of my life, namely manic depression, unipolar depression, dysphoricilation — whatever that is — and paranoia.