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DEAR DOCTORS
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An open letter to the psychiatry doctors
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OCTOBER 2016
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Dear Psychiatric Clinic Doctors,

There is a storm just beginning outside my house, and I am not calm and
very disconcerted about something. I sense the storm is driving me to pen this
letter. I am one of your patients. I need to write this letter, but inwardly I am
apprehensive if writing this letter would make me end up in one of your
wards again. I will not place my name below it.

I am sorry, but this is one of my fears: Your wards put in me an

overwhelming torrent of fear.

Nobody is treated well there, on the contrary we are neglected mentally and
physically every day. The attendants dislike us, they hurt us, they intimidate
us and the doctors cover everything up. This was my experience when I was
put in WKL and the GH psychiatric wards on several occasions.

Dear Dr. X, “You have done so, so well at helm of the WKL ward. Because
you hated your job and you hated us with all your heart. Thank you for your
chastisements in the form of 4 ECTs just because I told you one of the
attendants kicked a patient in the face.” May Providence bless your
retirement. Hope you are not practicing medicine any more. God forbid. We
want you to fail no more as you have consistently failed us. People speak well
of you. We, as your patients, don’t. You are known as a legend outside the
ward. We, in the ward, knew of your elusive flaws. You have done us mischief
with your dispassion care.

We were harmed in your wards. We lost our dignity here.

You doctors and the attendants have despised us. We were unsystematically
disregarded and laughed at. We were beaten and treated like convicted
criminals. We were being shouted at. The doctors and attendants prepare to
turn the other way when we say something to them. “Ignore them and the
patients will give up trying to talk to us.”

Do they not fear God?

1
We see them in their chairs, with their legs on the tables, laughing among
them. We, as patients, are coerced to think the worse of them. Even today I
can see their horrid expressions in my mind. Their image grips on us as mud
clinging to our clothes and faces. We wonder how they prepare their hearts
before they come to work every day. “Ignore them, as brute humans, treat
them as their sickness do to their minds. They are unworthy of my respect
and care.” I still can remember a young man, an attendant in the ward. His
haunting smile troubles me. The kind of smile that display pure contempt and
loathing for life. This boy (I wish God would forgive and help him change)
hated us with his whole heart. He would come every night, would do almost
nothing. He would put on his hateful smile and give us medicines.

You couldn’t love your job if you couldn’t love the people you are supposed to
care.

He would then sit flatly on his chair and rest his feet on the table. He prefers
to turn the other way, not looking at us, until he wakes up the next morning.
But, we wish that God would be kind to him. Dear doctors, how would you
feel if someone hates you for no reason at all? I am sorry, but I had secretly
wished the worst for him. I am ashamed for having this thought. I wish that
neither I nor my children will be like him. He has forgotten that we are
human just like him. Why can’t he talk or listen, or even force a fictitious
smile or look at us when dealing with us? I am sure this young attendant has
maltreated some of his patients, and found gratification in it. I am sure of this
because I have discovered this in the days I was in the ward by just by looking
at him and his reactions towards the sick and diseased. Doctors, would you
love this young man if he had done this to you or to one of your loved ones?
But, I pray that this attendant would be forgiven. This young attendant is one
of the many, many unfeeling staffs in your wards. The reader of this letter
may overlook this point as nothing, but try being a patient in one of your own
wards, being despised and ignored continuously and consistently.

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Doctors, close your eyes and imagine.

You are a mental patient. You are admitted into the psychiatric ward, forced
to be separated from your loved ones. The physicians claim you shall be
made better here, cared for and loved. They promise you decent and worthy
treatment. Alas! You are being misled and neglected. You are being mocked.
You cannot breath. The walls are like prison cells. And you feel the walls hate
you together with the staffs. You are unloved, favored as dangerous convicts.
You are being trodden, reproached and unloved. The wards shall make you
sicker. You wish to escape, or to end you sorry life. I have tried that and was
unsuccessful. How do you feel, dear doctors, when men treat you like filth?

They refuse to touch you, or talk to you. They answer your questions with
hurtful, scornful retorts.

But you would not give up on your questions or cry for understanding. The
staffs would respond further with effective, ‘pious’ quietness. Their passivity
will make you passive eventually, just like them. They would treat you as
panhandlers. You would wish they would throw in an insignificant coin in
your pan. But you have received nothing. This will make your disease worse
and drive you further into self-pity. When men have no pity towards you, self-
pity seems like a great self-reinforcement.

You wish you can open your eyes and remind yourselves that you are not like
us.

Thank God, you say.

But the absence of love and devotion within you should be looked upon as a
mental disease too before God. You seemed unkind. Unkindness is worse kind
of sickness. Look at yourselves. You think you are well and healthy. You are
not. You reckon you are capable of fulfilling your calling as psychiatrics. You
are not. You think you are doing a great service as doctors. You are a living
monument of failure. You are walking historic ruins. You think you have
done more than enough for us. You have not even started anything good for
us. You are as sad as your diagnoses on us. You fail us and you have failed the
test of life.

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You have disdained us with your detached words and deeds.

I thank you for taking the time to read my letter. I am sorry, because I am
about to write what that is true. Nobody likes the truth, especially when we
are confronted personally by it. And there is no escape from It. Truth forces
its way to you no matter what. I also think that it is my right that my
wretched contemplations are known to you. My periodical appointments are
mostly a waste of time. Your time and mine. When I see the doctors, I feel like
an orphaned and unloved child. I feel your work is mostly unkind, harsh and
cold. Please forgive me. This is how I feel. Ask yourselves if I am right. I am
sure I am right. Though I wish I am wrong. I sincerely do.

I wish no one is hurt by my letter; though I wish for you to be offended.

I am too weak to hurt anyone; the grounds are crying for my burial.

I am asking for a change of heart. We, the patients, want the doctors to care
genuinely for us. We need your help. We deserve the best from every one of
you. You have the best in you. We don’t understand why you are not bringing
it out. Or maybe there is no good thing in you. You could be brimming with
spite in your hearts. You seemed to wish for our sickness to get worse. This
could be the case. I could be wrong.

Appointments seem like undignified interrogation.

When I am with you I feel uncared for, receiving meaningless assault of

questions that make me worse before I entered into your rooms. You
punished us with questions than we cannot answer, if the appointments are
tests, if they are, I would fail but so would you. I see you as stony beings in
doctors’ garb. Again, if my words seemed punitive, forgive me. This is the
infinite fact coming from my mouth.

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I keep telling myself doctors are not wolves in the sheep clothing. My heart
refuses to believe what my mouth says. You unconsciously, consciously have
harmed us. You have not healed us, you have impaired us. I forgive you
because I am a sinner too. I am so a great believer in forgiveness. But if you
are seemed resolute on your own insensitive ways… I would still forgive you.

However, truth confronts you, in this case, not with kindness.

Truth approaches us with kindness, initially. Truth hopes and wishes for your
real remorse. Truth stands in front of you, blinding everything behind it, so
you can see nothing but the truth begging you to change.

But, history, as we know it, treats truth as a foul being.

As I said it before, when truth makes its self known the second time, it would
arrive with an awful blight. You would wish you had done better. Again, the
reparation is almost impossible after this, to us, as patients, and towards you,
as medical practitioners.

We are forced to think of you as wolves in sheep’s clothing, full of evil intend,
bound to wound us. Who wouldn’t as you have recurrently failed us? You
failed us yet you think otherwise. You think you have done well. You have
not, we have become your personal has-beens. We have lost control of our
bodies and minds because of your dealings. Do not be deceived, dear doctors;
you have destroyed our lives. Come to our homes and see.

We wish to be part of your life.

I don’t know how you can go on with your life, but, you do not think of us as
your life. You do not think of us at all. We are like a cough in the dark to you.
You seemed to care less for our suffering and pain. You would to have no
part in our distress. We wish for you to understand us. We wish if you would
really practise the true call of your vocation. Doctorship is no duty, more to a
vocation. God has ordained you to help us, understand us, cry with us and
suffer with us.

Doctors in uniforms but not in heart.

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We cannot look on you as physicians, by fact, in our diagnoses, you seemed as
executors and extortionists. You have acted as such. You do it so well. Actual
doctors wish us well; executors wish us death. Tell us who you really are? Six
years of study; what did it do to you? Underneath you garbs and your rib-
cage, where your hearts pumps life into your whole body all the necessary
oxygen into your every tissue. Would your heart pump life into our dying
beings too? Share us some life, we are suffocating.

We wish for life.

The psychiatry clinic is a place where the spirits of heartlessness and sin
seemed to dwell, the spirits thrive over there. You don’t love us. We would
wish you would hate us, as the feeling of hatred is better than the feeling of
forgetfulness. You have not remembered us. You wish that the offensiveness
of our remembrance would not be lodged in your minds. We are filth and
scum; yes, we hate ourselves, because you seemed to have helped us to hate
ourselves. You wish that the remembrance of us would not even defile the
‘sanctity’ of your ‘pure’ minds.

We are being forgotten.

We seek your remembrance, yet you wish for our disremembrance.

I am persuaded that you do not abhor us. You simply do not think and
remember us. The latter is worse.

When I look at you, we seemed better than you. You are sicker than us.
Balms of any kind would not suffice to make you well. I do not want to say
that you are like ‘well-washed tombs filled with smelly rotting flesh and bones
underneath’. Substantiate my claims that you are not sincere and ambitioned
to treat and heal us or possess a noble desire for our well-being. There is no
desire because there is no love in you for us. We are desperately ill. You are
desperately ill. You are sufferers because of you many transgressions. We
pray for your redemption. We intercede to our Maker that He forgives you
and heals you. We pray that He would heal you, that you may become better
doctors, better creatures of God.

We pray for your healing.

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Strengthen us as we strengthen you with our prayers.

My letter is getting very harsh. But you must understand that I love you. But
we wish the best for you. We love you. We want you to be happy with your
family. We pray that your family members would not be afflicted with the
diseases we have. We would not wish that your loved ones suffer as we do. We
would not ask God to punish you as you have punished us. We want you to be
healthy and successful. But, think for a while what if you or your loved ones
are being harmed and ill-treated as we are?

What if your children suffer from psychological illnesses?

Would you want anyone to care for your child as you cared for us? Upsetting
isn’t it? Dear doctors, this must not happen. We pray for your children and
your spouses and parents. We pray for you. Nobody should bear the brunt of
our diseases, nobody, including you.

We are helpless, but we are not dead. We are wallowing in the dust; do not
bury us yet.

But, you wish that we would leave you alone with our ever-flowing tears for
mercy that causes great irritability to your spirits.

Recently, I had an appointment with one of your specialists. I was, initially,

happy for the opportunity. I hoped for kindness and gracious words from the
head doctor. The moment she saw me, she was filled with anxiety. She
received me with her grave and unforgiving demeanor. Her language
reflected her unkind heart. She said she had given up on me, with all the
other doctors. She accused me of irritability, yet she was full of it. She told me
that my family has forsaken me. I was heart-broken by this summation. I
thought my family loved me, despite my illness. Her unkind words were
uttered without a hint of reservation, towards me. Her words have done
inestimable ruination to my soul. Yet, I perceived her as ruin herself. Her
hands were doing something else as she spoke to me.

She looked so kindhearted and pretty whenever she was out of the clinic.

7
Inside the clinic, she is overwhelmed by torrents of worries and anxieties. She
refused to let me talk and explain. I sincerely thought she needs some urgent
need of care. I am not being flippant. This is how I saw her. This is how she
presented herself to me. Her language was filled with derision, contextual
miscalculations of my life, unfitting judgments and pure antipathy for me.

I presumed that she was promoted as Head of the Department. I thought she
loved the promotion, yet she eschewed the responsibilities and the
accountabilities. Who wouldn’t love promotions? Yet this doctor received the
promotion and reject fully teased me. After I left her room, she made a call to
my wife and advised her to ask the police to take me to the psychiatric ward.

My wife didn’t make the call.

The head doctor has a subtle form of sadness in her heart. I saw her heart
and I secretly wished she would get some kind of help.

We pray for this new Head of the Department. We pray for her success and
well-being. We wish she would change for good and the others would make an
model of her. We wish she would realize that promotion is not step towards
repression, but servant hood. We wish she would overcome the sadness in her
and succeed. We pray for her remission and spiritual health. We need for her
to perform and thrive in her seat.

But if she sees the seat of leadership as a way to fulfill her dissolute pride; if
she sees her seat as a way of gaining self-prominence, and veneration from the
doctors around her; and if she has already been trapped by the vanities of the
unconscious spirit of cruelty; we will continue to pray for her change. But the
consequences of her fallen headship would not fail to further hurt us together
with the other doctors.

And our eyes look eternally for your kindness.

We have been rejected by you. Yet we love you still. You are so important to
us. Your kindness and gentleness will provide better healing than your
prescriptions. Your medicines may fail us, but we wish for your kindness to
lift us up again. These are our childish fantasies. We deceive ourselves. The
devils are hissing in our ears, “They will never change, because they don’t
8
cherish all of you as beings of God. They don’t care. They can’t because they
don’t have the godly character in them. Hope on.” The Devil, called the father
of lies, has become the father of truth. Help us; this must not be the case.

You wish and petition to God to help you to not remember us and to forget
us. You have petitioned to God that He would help you disremember us.

I want to believe this is not so.

Reciprocate our tears with genuine care.

Your prescriptions are a scandal. You claim that they would do us good. I
have had my life messed up because of your prescriptions. My family could
not keep up with my fresh habits caused by them. They don’t want me in
their life. My career is being destroyed. Your prescriptions bear similar
marks as you are: heartlessness, lovelessness and unfeelingness. You have
been reckless with your diagnoses. You have been reckless with your words.
You care less if we suffer from dire side-effects of the medicine. “We will
change it”, you say, “We will make you better.” How can you do this to us?
One of my relatives committed suicide because of the side-effects of your
prescription. But you would have numerous, endless pretexts to explain why
the medicines don’t work.

Your medicines have made us zombies, rotting logs, diabetic, erratic, heart-
diseased and sleep-addicts.

I thought of committing suicide after I was injected with one of your ‘break-
throughs’ in pharmacology. The injection costs about RM780.00, you say.
And I was one of the ‘lucky ones’ to receive it. I said ‘what the hell, let’s do
it.’ I was like a lamb taken to the slaughter house…

I had Akathesia, I could not sleep, I was fearful of everything – the walls, the
paintings, fear of death, fear of everything. I would stay in my room – I
couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t walk, my tongue was half-numbed, and my
speech was not without effort. I couldn’t sit; I was wretched for two months.
Thank you for your kind administration of medicines. I thought this was the
end of everything. I wished I was stricken dead. But even Death would not
have me in its abode. I couldn’t lie down. I refuse to stay still. I was a
9
complete pain for my family. They suffered with me. I am afraid of being left
alone. I begged my wife to hold me always. There is no word in the English
vocabulary, or in any language, I presume, that would describe the severity of
the side-effects of the injection. I do not want to hold you accountable for this
heartless error, and I would forgive you again and again. You were nearly
successful in destroying me. When I saw a specialist, she said, I had a
different reaction to it. As she smilingly put it to me, “Our other recipients
reacted positively.” You would not apologise nor admit your wrongdoings.
Your unapologetic words…how could you not accept your guilt?

I have nearly taken my life. My family could have been orphaned because of
your escapades.

Yet, I must and I will forgive you.

Our neuro-function capabilities are being disabled. We carry additional

disease because of the prescriptions. For the past 3 years I had been
prescribed Seroquel. Very expensive drug, with very expensive side-effects.
The hospital bore the cost of the medicine and I bore the impact of the
unforgiving side-effects. This medicine has a record of 10 thousand lawsuits
in US alone. Yet, you seemed to wish that I am worth the 10 thousand and one
risk of a lawsuit. When one reads the instructional brochure in the medicine
box, it is like reading a horror novel. The side-effects are manifold. I have
read them, and I assured myself that I am consuming poison. Organ failure,
risk of heart disease, liver damage, nausea, headaches etc. The producers and
the prescribing doctors count us as fools. Yes, we are fools.

We trusted in you rather than the information in the medicine box.

10
We seem unimportant to you; but you are so important to us.

We are your dying children; we need you desperately. Do not disown us. But
our crying needs often fall on deaf ears. Doctors, you have made yourself
hardened and callous. You have been occupied with non-patient related
works of the Health Ministry factory, as I would call it. No new programs
would help us if nothing is done to change your errant heart. We need a
change of attitude and a revolution of the inner man. We do not need new
programmes or a new regimen of treatment but we need a good transformed
heart in doctors.

You are so tired with paper works and red tapes. You seemed tired of us also.

Your Maker will not judge you according to your file-work; He will be
unhappy if you do not function with a heart of love. Your performances are a
bad reflection of your files and the words you put within them. Extreme red
tapes have made you ineffective, irresponsible and hypocritical.

Your vision and your mission in your files seems as complete hypocrisy.

You say that you are so tired, trodden and misunderstood. You cannot love us
because you don’t love yourselves. You have ceased to be humans as you stop
looking at us as one. You cannot care for us as you cannot care for yourselves.
You detest you job. Every time you lie down to sleep, you wish there would
not be a tomorrow. You wish that the morning sun will never rise. You wish
the earth would stop revolving and night would stay. The sight and smell of
the hospital and the psychiatric clinic makes you noxious and ill; they linger
in your nostrils even when you are at home. You wish to have a day off. You

11
want to be under the cover of your blankets forever. You wish you are not
doctors.

We are so sorry and your hours are too long and awfully punishing.

I have read about the doctors in the US. They are an unhappy knot of
workers. The suicide rates among them are disturbing and upsetting. They
take self-prescribed medicines -- psychiatric medicines. The doctors here
could be suffering from similar problems. Some of you have become as one of
us. I am sorry if there are no welcome mats for you. We wish that you would
not be plagued with our disease. But if there are, we will receive you as
brothers and sisters; we would love you and treat you even better than your
colleagues.

You wish you could turn back time and find other careers.

You cling to the little life you have within you. You have misplaced the will-
power to do good. You have become all that you would wish to avoid. You are
worn out, because you have lost this feeling. We pity you. We will pray for
you.

You have made yourselves doctors. You hate your job. But we love you so
much. We really do. You are like kings and queens to us. Every time we see
you we are so elated and full of good wishes. But you have devastated us, and
you are destroying yourselves too. I am not cursing any one of you.

How can I pronounce a curse on you, since I have so much hope put it you?

You can be such good, performing medical practitioners if you first love your
job. You do not love your job. You love to be known as doctors but you refuse
to work as one. You want the glory but you have mortified yourselves as you
have mortified us. You are so highly esteemed by the society, highly esteemed
12
but remain unloved by community. You love walking the hospital pathways
with your uniform and the statoscopes around your shoulders. You love the
respectful stares of the people when you walk pass them. Elders stand up
when walk to them. Children love looking at you.

And you love the attention you get. But you would not have it the other way.

Why would you ever choose this career?

You wished to become doctors as for the glory of it, not the humble sacrifices
needed. You wish to be honoured, and loved, but you refuse to practice these
virtues on us. You wish to be respected but we feel as dehumanized by you.
You wish to be remembered, but you have forgotten us. You wish to be well-
treated, yet you have allowed us to be abused and beaten. You have scorned
us; you have despised us and worst, you have forgotten us.

We can endure your ill-treatment; we can take the beatings and abuse; but
when you forget us, it’s beyond our strength to endure. We perish at your
disremembrance.

It is remarkable that doctors hold the best profession on earth.

You do. You save lives. You have the power of healing. You make us feel
better. We respect you more than we respect our priests and politicians. And
surely you lust for praise and good standing in society. You lust for
prominence. You love answering strangers when they ask you want you are
doing for a living. “I am a doctor,” you would never tire of answering this
question. The stranger will open wide his/her eyes wide and his/her lower jaw
dropping with reverence. You would respond with your usual false humility.
Parents pray to their gods that their children would be doctors. Doctors are
so divine. We should put you in temples and offer you our vigorous worship.

If doctors were gods, humanity would have perished long ago.

But the fruit of your doings are sour and bad. You have not performed. If the
society can read your hearts, you shall be an abomination to the society that
unknowingly respects and loves you. Thank God we could not read your

13
contemptuous minds. If we could, animosity would have not boundary. We
assume you have good thoughts.

If you cannot do us any good, please do us no harm.

We plead; we bend our knees to you.

If the prescriptions cannot help, surely the practice of proximity can. It really
can help us. Even sooth our dismaying hearts. Think us as helpless babies.
Some of you are fathers and mothers. Uncles and aunts. Human beings. Tell
us, you would do the best you can. The best you can is our best prescription.
Show us your genuine smile. Fake a smile if you must; we would assume it as
unpretentious. Place us in one of the corners of your hearts. Know that you
are the best. If you have lost the love to practice medicine, go back to the
cross roads. Search yourselves. Ask your Maker to cleanse and purify your
hearts and minds.

Reach for us, as our untiring hands do.

Before I end this letter, I would like you to know I have the best wishes for
your future. I want God to bless you in these areas:

1. That you would have a happy, abundant life with your family; that
there would be no violence and corruption within your household; that
you will have good obedient off springs that would love you back, and
not hate your discipline; that your sons and daughters would love you
till the end; that they would care lovingly in your old age;
2. That God would protect you wherever you go and that no one would
harm you, and find pleasure in harming you; that the sun would not
hurt you in the day and the moon and stars’ light would be enough to
guide you in the night; that you will be cared for wherever you go;

14
 3. That you would be successful people and whenever you are
disheartened, there will always be beings who would gladly lift you up
and not give up on you, and would not mock you when you fall and not
bury you beneath the dust of the ground;
4. That people will love you and not isolate you; that people would wish
for your companionship and touch; that they will reciprocate your
kindness with kindness, love with love;
5. That the doctors who treat you when you are sick, would treat you with
love, kindness and dignity and prescribe you the right medicine; and
they would apologise when they make erroneous advise on
prescriptions;
6. That you or anyone of your family members would not be afflicted with
our kind of mental illnesses; that you must not be broken with illnesses
afflicting your family; your heart will not suffer the pain of looking
your loved ones agonise in terrible wounds of affliction of mental
diseases;
7. Or any other kinds of diseases;
8. When you go to your temples and pray, we wish for you to be heard
and answered favourably; we wish that your offerings be accepted by
God, and He will reply you with great riches; that His blessings will
always remain in your house forever;
9. That you would gain entrance into Paradise after your days on earth;
that God would give you eternal rewards of pleasure and joy;
10.That you would not grieve your past failures and sinful endeavors; you
have been forgiven by us and God; that you would rest without guilt,
for God has cleansed you forever from all impurities.

We love you so much. Thank you for the little kindness you have shown us.
We have made you as one of our families. It’s like finding great treasure. We
wish you that the best of everything good would take hold of you firmly and
eternally. Thank you.

15
DO NO HARM.

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