Matthew has autism. So why is he locked away in a unit for mentally ill patients?
HE WAS the ‘big teddy bear’ of the family – the first to offer a hug and reassuring smile in times of need.
Although Matthew Johnson cannot speak owing to his profound autism and learning difficulties, he showed his family he loved them through cuddles and affection.
Four Christmases ago, Matthew, his mother Linda Johnson and his two siblings were curled up on the sofa, happily watching DVDs and sharing presents.
It may seem an unremarkable image of family life, but for Matthew’s mother it is a cherished memory she longs to recreate.
Her 19-year-old son has been locked up under mental health laws in a secure psychiatric unit for seven months and has no set date for getting out.
In what is another tragic case of autistic people in Scotland receiving allegedly ‘inappropriate’ treatment, Matthew has no criminal record or mental health issues – his only crime is to have been born with autism.
The teenager, who has a mental age of three, spends his days scared and lonely, physically restrained and heavily sedated with mindnumbing drugs, his mother said.
His plight comes after The Scottish Mail on Sunday told last month how Kyle Gibbon, a 31-year-old man with autism and complex needs, had been detained in the State Hospital at Carstairs, Lanarkshire, among killers and rapists.
Now, in devastating testimony, Mrs Johnson, 53, demands her son be released amid fears for his safety. Speaking exclusively to this newspaper, she said: ‘He shouldn’t be in there, he isn’t mentally ill.
‘He’s not even properly supervised. I want him to come home with a proper care package. I only have to look at him to know he is scared, I know what he’s thinking.’
She added: ‘He stays in his room because he can’t cope with the noise on the ward. One of the patients has had trouble with drug and alcohol addiction and now has psychosis. One girl self-harms.
‘I once walked into his room and a girl had him in a headlock. He didn’t move, he didn’t fight the restraint, he just complied. But I could see he was frightened.’
Mrs Johnson said that to keep Matthew calm the hospital gives him powerful drugs, adding: ‘Sometimes you go in and he won’t engage because he’s off his face. The first couple of times I saw him, his head was rolling back and his eyes were rolling back.’
A troubling video seen by this newspaper shows Matthew – thought to be under the influence of potent drugs – trying to engage with his mother. His eyes droop closed as he breathes heavily and tries to focus on a phone camera.
It is a far cry from smiling images taken of him as a child.
Despite his autism diagnosis at 20 months, he had a happy childhood with his younger sister and brother in East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, splitting his time between mainstream and specialist nurseries. A residential secondary school run by a charity helped him with his communication skills and eating. But when a new boy arrived when Matthew was 17, his progress halted.
The boy, who also had autism but was able to communicate verbally, would threaten him, his mother said, once allegedly telling her: ‘Matthew’s scared of me.’
So began what Mrs Johnson believes was a campaign of bullying, culminating in a brutal and unprovoked attack in January 2017.
The boy allegedly beat Matthew up as she looked on, calling for help. She said: ‘I still have flashbacks. Matthew didn’t have the sense to put his arms up and defend himself.’ After that, Matthew’s behaviour got worse – Mrs Johnson believes he was frightened.
After he absconded one too many times, and lashed out at staff, the school said it was unable to look after him and terminated his school contract last June.
He was taken to an assessment treatment unit, Kylepark at Kirklands Hospital in Bothwell, Lanarkshire, and sectioned without his mother’s knowledge, she claims.
Mrs Johnson said: ‘When I first heard Matthew was going to hospital I was hysterical. I asked, “Why is he going to hospital? He’s not mentally ill, he has autism.” I never thought in a million years that he’d be sectioned.’
There, she says, he is surrounded by loud mental health patients and loaded with risperidone and diazepam drugs. For the first 89 days of his detention, Mrs Johnson said he was barred from going outside and getting fresh air. He spent his first couple of weeks standing at the door to his room, she claims.
Mrs Johnson said: ‘The patients know how vulnerable he is, and I feel the rest of them are all quite streetwise. He’s just a big baby.’
On January 3, she lost a challenge to Matthew’s section order at a mental welfare tribunal.
She said: ‘I feel as if I’ve let him down. He looks really quite lost.’
Margaret Serrels, a service manager at NHS Lanarkshire’s mental health and learning disability services, said all detention and patient care decisions were made with a parent or carer involved, and that medication programmes were based on specialist clinical diagnoses and regularly reviewed.
Miss Serrels said: ‘We regret any instance where someone feels we have failed to provide the highest standards of care and have a formal complaints processes.’