Dear Luise: A story of power and powerlessness in Denmark's psychiatric care system Paperback – November 2, 2012

At around age ten the smart, funny, quirky, and loving little Luise is misdiagnosed. When really she has Aspergers, it is said she has a form of epilepsy. She is medicated with potent anti-seizure medications for which she initially needs hospitalization to get the dosage right.The kind of hospital ward most familiar with these meds? A psychiatric ward. From this moment on Luise's carefree, joyful, adventurous life is afflicted with erroneous psychiatric diagnoses, unneeded drugs that make her dangerously physically ill, and sheer, reckless mistreatment until she dies in psychiatric 'care' aged 32.Luise's heart breaking tale is poignantly told by her mother. First person accounts of her life with Luise are interspersed with actual letters she wrote Luise when she was out of reach - either mentally, or physically (Luise was locked on psych wards, at times strapped down in isolation for days) that Luise never gets to read before her absolutely preventable death.Luise's experience happens in Denmark, and it would be a relief to those in other countries to think this couldn't happen there. This is sadly untrue as treatment like Luise's is occurring right now on psychiatric wards the world wide.Mental health patients need to read Dear Luise to see if they might recognize their experience in Luise's. Families of mental health patients need to read Dear Luise to see if they might recognize their experience in Luise's mother's. Mental health professionals need to read Dear Luise to see if they might see their treatment and conduct in that of Luise's carers.This book has the potential to save and change the quality of many lives.We tend to think we have evolved so far for the better in relation to stigmatizing differences, judging differences, in our prejudices, and in relation to segregation, and discrimination. Luise was a gorgeous kid who happened to be a `bit different', and she was persecuted for it, to death.Perhaps we still have a bit of a way to go . . .

Luise dies at the age of 32 in psychiatric care of an overdoes of medicine. Through the book Dorrit Cato Christensen gives an account of her and her daughter's struggle in the psychiatric Danish system. As a Dane you think - is this really going on in my country? And yes, it is - Luise is not the only one to die of doctors insistent on more medicine - more medicine.The book was originally planned to be written by Luise and her mother, but Luise was done for before - so the mother courageously wrote it on her own.I think this book is not only for doctors and relatives to patients in psychiatric hospitals. It is a mother's fight against a system of experts unwilling to listen to both mother and child.Luise said at one point to her mother that on her tombstone should stand "Medication killed me" - and so it does.It is a very touching story - told with so much love. Read - be touched - and learn. Are such things going on in your country?

A predictably "beyond tragic" narrative documenting the enforced use of profoundly toxic "specific" psycho-pharmacology through alleged iatro-genic grievous bodily harm to premature death, described by the "care system" as "an unintended event".The last photograph of Luise perhaps serves to illustrate profound metabolic syndrome associated with injudicious psycholeptic drug use for an implausible "diagnosis".Then add the serial incarceration, separation from family and friend's support and the insight preserved in Luise and her mother as they tried to fight an arrogant and cruel system which is, on occasion, the reality of "orthodox western psychiatry."Perhaps "Dear Luise" might be most clearly understood when read alongside: - Rebekah Beddoe - Dying for a Cure, Dr. Peter Gotzsche : Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime in chapters 17 and 18, A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Diagnosis by Lucy Johnston, The Bitterest Pills by Dr.Joanna Moncrieff, Saving Normal by Allen Frances MD (Chair of the DSM-IV Task Force) and other books of sincere and erudite questioning.From those who did find compassion, diagnostic re-consideration, acceptance of the abscence of any psychiatric morbidity and understanding of how ill-judged psychiatric prescibing can produce entirely drug induced behavioural toxicities, acceptance that an acute general medical admission for skilled supportive medical management would have prevented serial detention, we can only record profound gratitude for such unassuming psychiatric professional integrity.

Dear Luise is something close to a masterpiece. Mainstream medicine learnt 50 years ago to listen to the concerns of a mother even when the diagnostic apparatus didn't support what she was saying. It hadn't always been like that. But within mental health, the culture not only fails to listen to mothers and family but will often demonize them, call them schizophrenogenic, or over-involved or expressing too much emotion when they question what is happening a family member.In brief and understated vignettes Dorrit Cato Christensen outlines the sequence of events that killed her daughter. It feels like a Drug Traffic Accident happening in slow motion in front of you leaving the reader paralyzed.This a book for anyone who is a patient, a relative or friend, an advocate or a mental health professional. Its not about some rare event. There is almost certainly a case like this happening every day of the week in every psychiatric unit in the land. Few books make a difference - this one might.