A Day in the Life

It has been a long-held bugbear of mine that there seems little provision within mental health services for those who feel themselves well enough to return to some form of work. Particularly for those with diagnoses like mine, which indicate a "severe and enduring" condition, there seems to be a culture of low expectation, which I feel I have experienced, which serves, perhaps, to mire people within the system. Instead of moving on with our lives, then, many seem to languish on incapacity or disability benefits, creating problems of social isolation, low self-esteem, and a general lack of structure and meaning to life. Of course, only those well enough and capable enough should even be expected to find work, but with many people I have seen, who have degrees, masters degrees and even PhDs , the overwhelming impression one gets is of an enormous waste of talent and experience. So, now I find myself in the position of wanting to "move on". Despite the work I already d...

As you may know, one of my enduring interests is film. I wrote about this in a blog entitled "Confessions of a Cinephile , or, Whatever Happened to Hollywood". Now, I don't quite know why, other than because of my "enduring and severe" ill health, but I haven't actually been to the cinema to see a film for a long time. Most of the films I see I either watch on TV or rent from my local DVD store in Smallthorne . It was good, then, to actually go and see a film at my local Odeon in Festival Park along with other members of the Pathways Group. The film we chose was Christopher Nolan's "Inception", starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and it was a rather long and convoluted tale of a group of, what might be termed, industrial spies, who enter the dreams of their targets and, on behalf of wealthy and powerful clients, either steal or plant ideas. The notion of "inception" is concerned with actually "planting" an idea in a target's h...

A short while ago I wrote a blog entitled, "Fear and Loathing in Stoke-on-Trent". It was in response to a recent seeming rise in support in Stoke-on-Trent for political groups and parties like the EDL (English Defence League), who led a, it must be said, fiercely opposed, demonstration in our city centre, and the BNP (British National Party), whose leader, Nick Griffin, also visited Stoke with his suitably yob-looking entourage. I pointed to a various number of circumstances, such as the decline in our local industry and years of social and economic deprivation , as the apparent causes of this rise in support, leading to, I think, seven BNP representatives being elected to our local council. I am glad now to report, however, that despite the attempts of such groups to take a strong-hold in Stoke, with Nick Griffin even turning up in our local council chambers to launch the BNP's manifesto, at the last election the people of Stoke-on-Trent did me proud by not supportin...

You may recall that in August last year I sadly reported that a member of our group for those with severe or sometimes long-term mental ill health (the "Pathways to Recovery" group) had passed away. His name was Matthew Aitken and was known to his many friends simply as "Matt". In my blog about his passing (Dave's Progress. Chapter 34: In Memoriam) I tried to say that Matt was a much-valued member of our little enclave; that he was a warm, witty and bright individual, not without his talents, who was so much more than the label which had been applied to him, that of "schizophrenia". Now, as Matt's death has been the subject of an inquest, our local paper, "The Sentinel", has seen fit to report the circumstances of his untimely death. And so, in the brazen, insensitive way of the media, the first paragraph of the report reads, "A SCHIZOPHRENIC died from a combination of health problems aggravated by his heavy drinking". Not a ma...