Playwright held in Broadmoor forced to take 'zombie' drugs

Janet Cresswell, the award-winning playwright who has spent the past 22 years in Broadmoor, has been placed on a regime of mind-altering drugs for daring to oppose the hospital authorities.

The Independent on Sunday highlighted her plight three months ago when the Broadmoor authorities confiscated her computer.

Ms Cresswell, whose play The One Sided Wall has been performed at London's Bush Theatre, was the victim of a Home Office ban on patients in secure hospitals owning computers after inmates elsewhere were found downloading internet porn.

Just days after the story was published, she was taken to the intensive care wing at Broadmoor and forced to take anti-psychotic medication against her will.

Ms Cresswell, 67, is in Broadmoor because she slashed her psychiatrist's buttocks with a vegetable knife. Yet she has been kept behind bars for 22 years.

This is because she has insists she is not mad and has always refused to go under the supervision of a Home Office psychiatrist.

Under the Mental Health Act, patients can be placed on compulsory medication for up to three months, after which the case is reviewed. But in the last 10 years, only one patient has been taken off the medication.

Friends insist she is being victimised by the authorities. They say Ms Cresswell is forced to sleep on a mattress on the floor and is only allowed to write letters with a three-inch pen. They fear she will be kept on the drugs for the rest of her life, destroying her ability to write creatively.

Peter Crozier, a friend of Ms Cresswell, said she has been treated heavy-handedly and there is no reason for her to be on the drugs. "These drugs diminish the need to think creatively and the patient turns into a zombie," he said. "For Janet suddenly to be placed on these drugs is unacceptable."

His views are shared by Mind, the mental health charity, which is calling for the Government to reconsider its policy on compulsory medication.

"This is a major moral and ethical concern," said Simon Foster, principal solicitor for Mind. "We are concerned about the use of medication for people who have the capacity to accept or realise."

Broadmoor Hospital said last night that it was unable to comment on individual patients but that they were protected under the Mental Health Act.

"There is an ability for a patient to be compulsorily medicated if there is a need to do so but no one can be medicated against their will without the protection of the Mental Health Act. There are strict procedures which have to be followed," a spokesman said.