Ubik commited to mental institution, tries to sue everyone

[The Larch]

According to this article from a Portuguese gaming site (http://bgamer.sapo.pt/index.php/noticias/article/15734-produtor-de-videojogos-portugues-internado-por-problemas-mentais) that gives a second hand version of the events from Ubik's side, it's all because of personal enmity with his father, who dislikes him putting long hours at work from home without seeing other people, something that has always rubbed his family the wrong way, and that after a six month ordeal he is now medically cleared from any psychiatric issue. They end up with a "game developers are such a misunderstood bunch" spiel, complaining that the videogame industry is frequently misjudged by those who don't understand it, thinking that hours in front of the computer are not real work, and wondering if construction workers that put up 16h workdays like programmers should be committed as well.

[Martim Silva]

Thanks for the article, Larch.

It is illustrated with a photo of Ubik giving them a past interview, as well as screenshots from Magna Mundi.

Here is the translation:

Portuguese producer committed for mental issues

Carlos Gustavo, the producer of Magna Mundi and World Stage, experienced months of horror when he was forcibly committed by his family due to "mental issues".

This sounds like a title typical of a generalist and sensationalist publication, but the story of Carlos Gustavo has ran through different media due to the bizarre way that he was treated. This would have been another ocasional and curious-to-read case, but the person in question is connected to the videogame industry, and BGamer, knowing him personally, could not bypass this story. To know in-depth the bizarre narration of Carlos, forcibly commited in the psychiatrical ward of the Egas Moniz Hospital, you can read the stories published by Ionline and PUBLICO [this last one is the one translated in the Opening Post - ms]

The story came to the attention of our colleague Bruno Mendonça, which was following this case due to curiosity, but he was amazed when the last news about the affair indicated a turnaround, illustrated with a photo of Carlos. Some years ago, Rui Parreira and Bruno Mendonça had interviewed the producer at BGamer's redaction, about World Stage. Already at the time, he had told us about his story of conflict with Paradox about the cancellation of Magna Mundi, and even some confidences about problems with the family, related to his work as videogame producer, but BGamer never published these because they were out of context.

Summing up his story, the endless hours around the computer have never been well seen by his family. In his 40s, divorced and with an underage daughter, he always felt harassed by his own father, who accused him of isolation, acusing him of spending more time at the computer than with his friends. The tight deadlines for the delivery of the projects translated into long work sessions.

Forcibly commited

One day, while he was working normally in his home, he recieved the visit of four police officers, with a warrant for his immediate commitment. The warrant, according to what is described in the newspaper stories, was written by his own sister-in-law, a doctor, and whithout specialized verification. Over several months Carlos was not only kept in a mental facility, but also medicated with different anti-psychotic drugs, even when he had never been diagnosed with any of the psychic issues that he was accused of. The first doctor that observed him had evaluated his behaviour of denial of the disease as one of the symptoms of the same... to make his ordeal worse, the use of a laptop and cellphone was denied to him, and to read he could only consult the library of the hospital.

The end of the story is bittersweet. After almost six months it was proven that Carlos did not suffer from any problem, and he is now free from any decree that he is "insane"; but his resistance against medication and psychological pressure left him with serious scars: a deep depression and a denigration of his professional image, having lost projects of international companies.

Carlos Gustavo has already filed a judicial action in court against the five doctors that erroneously diagnosed him throughout the process. His family still alleges that Carlos has mental issues, noting a family precedent - his grandfather had schizophrenia.

Regardless of being a case of bad medical decisions, it stands out the way as the activity around the videogame industry is judged by those that do not understand it. The hours passed in front of the computer are seen as amusement, and with no future - even if the person in qustion is paid and independent? What if the same person worked in the Civil Construction and was forced to work 16 hours a day (as it happens to many programmers), would he be committed? This is food for thought...

From the BGamer's redaction, we feel we have to give a strong hug to Carlos for the courage to overcome this situation and wish him a fast return to his projects.

[Neil]

Maybe next they can do OHGamer.

[jimmy olsen]

Maybe next they can do OHGamer.

I feel bad for laughing

[Eddie Teach]

Maybe next they can do OHGamer.

Whatever for?

[DontSayBanana]

Not sure how Portugal does it, but here, if he wasn't at least borderline on something serious, they would have taken him in for usually 7 days of observation (21 days is the longest I've heard of for just an observation), then just cleared him and put him back out on the street.

Again, not familiar with how Portuguese mental health facilities function, but here, 71 days sounds like at least an isolated breakdown took place (granted, there's a chicken-egg question of how a forcible commitment could be traumatic enough to trigger an isolated breakdown).

[garbon]

He's right that they fucked his life over.

How so?

Getting him branded as crazy and ruining his chances of having a normal life.

Granted...maybe he is. But if he isn't, the damage is done.

Is it really that damaging to get branded as crazy on the p'dox boards? I mean I guess the drama unfolded further but that was in large par his own making. Besides, if you can't make it in a small subset of the gaming industry - your chances of having a normal life are ruined?

We're not talking about what is posted on the Paradox forums.  We're talking about being involuntarily confined for 2 1/2 months, and potential employers thinking that you're a nutjob.

Granted, I take his claims that he had no mental health problems and that it was just a matter of his family and doctors screwing him over with a grain of salt.  His family might have had ulterior motive (or simply been wrong about his mental state), but it's harder to credibly think that about the doctors.  And while I have no idea what the situation is in Portugal, in the US it's almost impossible to get someone involuntarily committed unless they are very clearly a danger to themselves or others.

I totally misread what MIM was saying!

On to what you said though - it seems like the "them" in question would be the media then. After all, it seems like it would be possible to live a normal life after an involuntary hold if it wasn't widespread knowledge.

[Martim Silva]

This is the story that came out on the 'I', another top newspaper.

http://www.ionline.pt/artigos/portugal/carlos-ficou-tres-meses-num-manicomio-onde-so-ele-nao-estava-doido-0/pag/-1

Rather grim:


Carlos was three months inside a madhouse where only he wasn't mad

The family didn't want him to spend so much time in front of the computer. And he was committed without being seen or heard.

That Monday, Carlos opened his eyes and he was the only one that was not insane.

He wondered the hallways of the psychiatric ward of the Egas Moniz Hospital and tried to explain to the doctors that it was all a mistake. That he never had stopped being the IT technician, that he made games for major European companies. In that day, as in the following months, he invariably heard what he did not wanted: "One of the characteristics of your psychopathology is that you have no notion of your problem. You need to stay here to be treated".

During almost three months, Carlos would always end these conversations trying to reconstruct the last years. He would remember the arguments he had had with his father over his health, but none of the arguments that the family had presented to him justified that four police officers [PSP] had gone to fetch him at his home on a Sunday with a warrant to lead him to the hospital.

He just had lunch and was going to sit in front of his computer to advance the projects that had a tighter deadline. The hardship of making projects for several companies was to spend his days around the monitor and the keyboard. He had less and less time for his friends. He almost never had thought about it, but now he had time to make a balance of what had gone well and what he would not do again.

What had he done to be there, under medication with injectable antipsychotics and sedatives? The cold walls and the iron beds were not helping him to find an answer. And it wasn't just him saying that he had no psychopathology. The doctor that took him at the Hospital of São José, in Lisbon, also did not found any relevant sign: "During the interview, was not possible to gain evidence of any aspect compatible with psychopathology, with the exception of a certain secretism, slight inconsistencies that he tried to avoid by reaffirming the truth f the facts that he experienced, denoting some tension". Yet, the psychiatrist Anabela A. Barbosa wrote in the urgency file that she decided on his interment on the basis of an interview with his parents and in what the patient was writing on Facebook.

The decision relaxed the father, who did not agree with the course that the son was taking. Ever since Carlos decided, one year ago, to divorce his wife, he spent even more time on his computer than with friends, leading many to speculate about the possibility that, at age 41, he could be developing the paranoid schizophrenia of his paternal grandfather.

He never listened to what they told him. He did not saw any sense in those concerns, since he led an independent life and claimed to be socially integrated.

His sister-in-law, doctor in the National Health Service, would have been an important element in the whole process of compulsive internment. The doctor that made the first clinical evaluation on which is interment was based on is clear: the patient was not seen, but the reports of the family are "worthy of credibility (the sister-in-law is my colleague)".

Formally, it all started on October 11th, 2013. Without seeing the patient, the doctor Maria Madalena Serra writes, black on white in the clinical information that it is a "delirious pathology that has had a long time to evolve without any kind of treatment". She finishes noting that considers his interment to be important.

Two hours later, the health deputy was already issuing a warrant that lead to an urgent placement at the hospital, due to the existence of "an acute deterioration of his health condition". In this document, and again without having been seen nor heard, Carlos now became the "carrier of a psychic anomaly".

Far away from what was happening at the Hospital of São Francisco Xavier and at the warnings of the health authorities, he busied his days doing the same as always, distracted himself hours at a time in front of the computer, working, and tried to overcome some problems that had arisen with the end of his relationship, of which he has a daughter.

At the internal record of the Hospital Egas Moniz it would be recorded that days before "he would have called his parents to his home, to tell them that he wanted to go to court to prove that he was not insane and that everyone else was wrong". This attitude and an alleged "incompatibilization" with some relatives was what led them to "activate the process of retrieval by the Psychiatric Urgencies Service".

SHALL WE GO TO THE DOCTOR? "Good afternoon, we have a warrant and you sir will have to come with us". The surprise of seeing four PSP officers at his door was that of those that do not have a criminal record: "Good afternoon. Excuse me, but for what reason?"

On the way to the Hospital de São José his nerves did not take away his hope that his truth would be confirmed by a clinical evaluation. And that ended up happening. The doctor did not detect anything that was an evidence of psychopathology, but what Carlos though or the doctor's analysis was of little use.  He was transferred at 19h20 of Sunday to the Egas Moniz Hospital.

"From the interview with his parents it is underlined by those a behavior that is compatible with persistent persecutory ideaction addressed towards his parents, associated with publications on Facebook", said the psychiatrist to justify her decision to transfer the patient to internment.

After he was checked in at Egas Moniz, his problems increased. The IT technician was without access to a computer, tablet or cellphone. The doctor that initially followed his case was, without his knowledge, the same one that days before had done the clinical report based on the description of his sister-in-law.

Betweent he sleep of the medication and the conscience of the movie he was stuck in, Carlos began to try to revert all that had happened to him in the court. His official lawyer asked for an habeas corpus, that is, immediate release, but it was not accepted. "In these situations, it is hard for the courts to go against the diagnosis of a doctor. As a rule, you do not take a chance", explained a judicial source to the 'I'. That could our not have been the reason.

Since he had to stay, Carlos sought refuge in books – but he slammed into the prohibition to read any work that was not in the hospital's library. He wanted to move forward with the several projects he had underway during the visits by friends and colleagues, but every day that passed he became more broken by the medication.

In the beginning, he still tried to fight against it without the doctors finding out, but he was soon caught. In internal documents to which the 'I' had acces, the doctors say that the patient "began treatment with oral antipsychotics, which revealed itself ineffective due to the patient's evasive manouvers (occultation of medication, elimination of the pills in the toilet or in the trash, etc)". They also add that, to go around that situation "it has been initiated the treatment with an intra-muscular antipsychotic [i.e. injections – ms] that was in Depot".

NEW LAWYER This process began with information given by relatives, but Carlos always counted with the support of this friends to find a lawyer that could handle his case with more attention than the one the State had provided him. "Not that there was any incompatibility between them", said a source close to the process. But even that turned itself against him. In consulted papers, the doctors justify the change of lawyer with "the disease" and say that Carlos did it because he considered that the State lawyer was in cahoots with his family.

"He was appointed a lawyer that the patient refuses, as he includes him in his delirious sphere", it is read, for example, in the hospital report of Deceber 19th – the day of the first victory of Carlos. In the internal note, he is still labelled as a sick person with "delirious perturbation", but now he can do the treatment at home, having to report himself every 15 days.

The exit of the Egas Moniz happened when he was already having doubts and that the one wrong in the whole affair was him, that maybe he was sick and did not realize it. Under the doses of Carbamazepine, Olanzapin, Risperdal and Lrazepam, all was all a doubt, but seeing the gates of the hospital behind gave him strength to fight for his truth.

With the leave, the medication kept being reduced. And it was already in April, five months after having been committed, that a report of psychiatrical evaluation revealed that, despite the reduced doseages, there was no change to his behavior.

This report, that was asked to the Criminal Instruction Court at the district of Northeast Great Lisbon-Sintra area in December, when Carlos had left in ambulatory regime, had arrived some months late, but left no margin for doubts: he was not sick.

Even though he did not present signs of psychopathology, the months he underwent under medication, the fact that he was denied every time he claimed to be the victim of an error left their mark. The 41-year-old IT technician underwent a state of clinical depression, and since he was released that he has been under surveillance by the hospital of his area of residence, to minimize the sequels.

COURT DECISION It was not however the evaluation of independent doctors that brought some respite, but rather the recognition by the Justice that, after all, he was not insane. In June, with an almost normal routine and ever more disconnected from his family – which insisted in his alleged illness – Carlos saw the court of Northeast Lisbon recognize his mental health. "It is verified, on one hand, that at this date there are no traces of psycothic streaks in the committed person [which, according to the assistant doctor, would have been remitted], being accurate that [...] it is not identified [...] a concrete situation of danger to the juridical assets of himself or of others".

The judge also assures that "the requirements necessary for the maintenance in compulsive interment of any kind of the subject are not present". And she concludes: "I determine the end of the same internment without putting aside a voluntary treatment".

Ever since the beginning that the Defense sustained that "several rights have been denied to Carlos in this process". Now that the case has reached the end, explains Pedro Silva Lopes, the "constitutional right to freedom, the right to personal integrity nor the right to a personality" were taken into account. At a meeting in Cascais, the lawyer expained to the 'i' that the whole process left marks on his cliente that will not be cured only with the discovery of the truth.

Carlos has already managed to rebuild part of his old life, has already been present at events in the United States of Amerca to present some informatics projects, but there is still much to recover. He does not want to say where he is, he wants to know who was goaded by his parents and managed what in Portugal is only done in the most serious cases: a compulsive interment without seeing the patient.

[CountDeMoney]

   Poor bastard.

"I'm not crazy!"
*patient demonstrates denial ideations*

[DontSayBanana]

Wow.  Hopefully this results in a restraining order or whatever Portuguese analog exists- that sounds like a relationship that's not worth repairing.

[DGuller]

  Poor bastard.

"I'm not crazy!"
*patient demonstrates denial ideations*

Reminds me of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment.

[Martim Silva]

  Poor bastard.

"I'm not crazy!"
*patient demonstrates denial ideations*

Indeed.

If you admit you're crazy, you're crazy.

If you say you're not, you're a crazyman in denial.

That's a... Paradox, I think 

[MadImmortalMan]

It's like Hitchcock wrote this.

[dps]

in the US it's almost impossible to get someone involuntarily committed unless they are very clearly a danger to themselves or others.

Yeah right. That's not what I've seen in all those movies.

???  Don't know what movies you're watching.  If you're talking about ones like the one where Jessica Lange played Frances Farmer, yeah, back before the early-to-mid 1970's it was much easier to have someone involuntarily committed.

[CountDeMoney]

Under the doses of Carbamazepine, Olanzapin, Risperdal and Lrazepam,

Jesus.  Talk about being forced into a fog.  Or Capetan Mihali's usual late-afternoon wind-down cocktail.