Detainees Mental Health is Latest Legal Battle
In relation to experiences of a closed head injury being not too dissimilar to a rather solitary existance.
I have cut and pasted some of the relevant segments of the article; obviously not all of the front page's work was (and on reading much of the rest of the article, my solicitude wains).
They say Mr. Hamdan [bin Laden's driver, who has been in Guantánamo for some time] has essentially been driven crazy by solitary confinement.... where he spends at least 22 hours a day.... hears voices, has flashbacks, talks to himself and says the restrictions of Guantánamo "boil his mind."
Critics have long asserted that Guantánamo's climate-controlled isolation is a breeding ground for madness.
Guantánamo, a military spokeswoman said [has] "single-occupancy cells."
Many describe the men as depressed of delusional.
Some of the men are increasingly paranoid and some are losing touch with reality.
Last month a lawyer for nine of the detainees who are members of China's Uighur ethnic minority told a Congressional committee that one of them, Huzaifa Parhat, said that life in Guantánamo was like having already died.
On this article I can reflect....
The earlist memory I have of my time in a hospital ward was in asking whether I had gone insane or mad,
Hamdans talking to himself and hearing voices reflects my own recollection of talking to the ceiling, the trees, or my imaginary friends (who were so very real at the time).
Guantánamo detainees - I am merely observing the
similarities (of a behavioural kind) that reside in a closed head injury.
