A Day in the Life

Around this time of year, I usually print a little Christmas message to everyone who may read or comment on this blog. It usually goes something like this: hasn't Christmas just become an exercise in wanton materialism? And, for many, especially those experiencing mental ill health, it can be one of the most isolating and lonely times of year. As I have repeated this message now for going on four years, I thought I would change it slightly by printing a little picture of where I live, as we have just had our first Christmas snowfall. I do this in the hope that it will inspire all of us to feel a little yuletide cheer, and divert our minds from some of our current woes. So, here it is. OK, so it's not all that impressive. But you can see just a little sprinkling of snow on the pavement and on the roof of my neighbour's house. Apart from that everything looks a little soggy and grey. My mission to inspire some heartfelt Christmas bonhomie may, then, have fallen flat on i...

I have sometimes written in this blog (somewhat boastfully, perhaps) of how I managed to get a book of my poetry published in 2004. The book in question, though, sold very few copies (an embarrassingly low amount, if truth be told) and now the publishers have gone into liquidation, so the book, as far as I know, will, in the very near future, no longer be available for public consumption. And, the reason I haven't publicised my book more in this blog (by letting you know its title, for example) is that I have always felt an excruciating blend of pride and embarrassment at what I have written. While I am quite pleased with some of the book, there are parts of it which I now find particularly dark, and which perhaps reflect my mindset at that time. Written on the cusp of a psychotic episode, it deals with subjects and contains vocabulary which I can only say that many would find off-putting. So, I am often loath to have those I know read i...

I turn 40 in a few days' time, on December 5th, to be precise, and, I have to say, somewhat surprisingly, that I am looking forward to becoming officially middle aged. You could say that even reaching this age for me is an achievement and, indeed, getting here has often proved to be a long and difficult road. My experience of mental illness has meant that I've had to forgo many of the things that many would consider constitute a "normal" existence. Opportunities of work, marriage and children, I think, have all been reduced due to my painful, somewhat arrested, development. And, in a post entitled "Birthday Blues", which I wrote three years ago, I complained of the consequences of my illness, and made the following assessment:   "...as I sit in my comfy chair, is it really so comfortable? What, as I approach the dreaded 40, do I have to look forward to? More free time? More getting bored? More impecuniousness, penury and poverty with no holidays beca...

"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn, At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, We will remember them." From "For the Fallen", a poem by Laurence Binyon, a.k.a. the "Ode of Remembrance". On November 11th, 2011, at 11 am, silence fell over all Britain as people remembered those who had given their lives in service of their country. I was one of those who maintained this respectful silence. However, as I did this, I was not filled with pride at the thought of the many who have fought, died or been injured in war. Rather, I thought of what a terrible and tragic waste of life war always brings. And so, as I stood there, I was not wearing a poppy, as, although the poppy is an internationally recognized symbol of remembrance, I feel it also, of late, has been used to glorify that which I find resolutely inglorious. I suppose me and my family have always had a s...

The above words are spoken by the character of Polonius in Shakespeare's play, "Hamlet", and refer to the main protagonist's state of mind, which, although seemingly unbalanced, appears to contain elements of reason. Thus there are doubts expressed throughout the play as to whether the most famous melancholic of them all, Hamlet, is truly mad or simply, as he says himself, putting on an "antic disposition". If Hamlet's madness is genuine, though, it is interesting that it is suffused with apparent significance, which got me wondering whether one can actually find a meaning in madness, particularly in terms of psychotic illness; whether one can, as Karl Jaspers, the German psychiatrist and philosopher, put it, render understandable that which, by definition, is "un-understandable". I suppose that the stereotypical image of the "mad man" is one of someone who babbles incoherently. He is mad precisely because he doesn't make any sen...

As one of my major interests is film, and as the major subject of this blog is mental health, I thought I would try to bring the two together with a little biographical story about the Danish film director and screen writer Lars von Trier. Von Trier started out as a prodigious talent, directing his first film at the age of eleven after receiving a Super-8 camera as a gift, and continued to be involved in independent movie making throughout his high school years. But, perhaps, cinema was an emotional outlet for the young auteur, being raised in a way which has been described as having "complex results for his personality and development". Indeed, while his mother considered herself a communist, his father was a social democrat, and both were committed nudists who regarded the disciplining of children reactionary. They are said to have not allowed much room in their household for "feelings, religion, or enjoyment" and refused to set any clear boundaries for their chi...

Quite recently, me and a friend from the Pathways Group were invited to an informal lunch at the Bennett Centre, our local mental health resource unit. We were invited in order to give a service user perspective on our local mental health services. Amongst the members of staff who attended, there were also two representatives from the West Midlands Quality Review Service. At the meeting, the provision of "crisis" care was discussed and, upon my friend saying that I had something of a story to tell, I was invited to say what had happened in terms of my own care. Unfortunately, I was unable to give a glowing review of my local mental health services. I say unfortunately, because now, having made such a good recovery, I get on well with many members of staff and have a new-found understanding and respect for what they do. It is indeed unfortunate, then, that, in the past, I was on the receiving end of what my then psychiatrist even called, "bad practice". I...

So, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the diagnosis of "schizophrenia". According to that ever-abundant source of information, Wikipedia, the term was actually coined by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1908. One can only presume, as various mental health charities have marked this year as the 100th anniversary of its usage, that it took a further three years for the term to be used in practice as a diagnostic category. Or is it that Wikipedia have got it wrong. Why, surely that could never be! Eugen Bleuler, psychiatrist and originator of the term, "schizophrenia".  The stigma, fear and discrimination surrounding the term is well-known, and this, to my mind, is due in no small part to sheer semantic confusion. Derived from the Greek words "schizein" (which actually sounds a bit Germanic to my ear), meaning "to split", and "phren", meaning "mind", "schizophrenia" roughly transl...

When I was growing up in Stoke, the reputation of our local psychiatric hospital took on almost mythic qualities. Based in Cheddleton, the St.Edward's hospital was the subject of many, possibly apocryphal, stories, and whenever anyone would act a little "crazy", people would always say "be careful, you'll end up at Cheddleton". The remark was usually delivered in a derisory or humorous fashion, and what it made clear was that those who actually did find themselves "at Cheddleton" were separate from the rest of us. "They" were the insane, while we were, to quote Foucault, shining examples of "a reason sure of itself". So, the element of stigma was clear. The inmates of St.Edward's weren't like us. They were almost a different species, the insane, and I remember thinking very clearly that I would never end up in such a place. Little did I know. St.Edward's Psychiatric Hospital, Cheddleton. But what this got me ...

This will be just a short post to say thank you to my very dear friend Gary, aka klahanie, who has seen fit to pass on the "friendly blogger" award to me. I would just say that I don't think I deserve this award half as much as Gary does. I know he spends hours at his computer communicating back and forth with other bloggers, offering them his kind, warm-hearted friendship. Gary often tells me that he is sometimes "exhausted" by all the communication he so selflessly gives to others, but being the type of guy he is, I don't think he ever fails to respond to some one's comment or email or, if you're like me, telephone call. So here's to you, Gary, my hirsute, hippy pal! Anyway, as it is expected of me to pass on this award to other bloggers, I thought I would mention just the few who always leave me kind and supportive comments. They are as follows: The Manic Chef. bazza at "To Discover Ice". Dixie at "dcrelief". Occas...

For those of you who live outside the UK, you won't know that quite recently we experienced something of an Indian Summer. Indeed, on Saturday October 1st, temperatures reached an astounding (well, for us anyway) 30 degrees centigrade. That's the hottest temperature for that time of year ever recorded in Britain. So, as the weather was so nice, I got out my camera, went outside, and took some photos of what I saw. There is, perhaps, nothing more cliched than a picture of a sunset, but we were having such remarkable ones at around that time, that I thought it would be nice to capture them for posterity. The following are actually pictures of the sky around where I live at dawn. I think you will agree that they are quite beautiful, with their astonishing amalgams of pinks, yellows and blues. I don't know why it is, but I've always been fascinated by the sky- that little bit of atmosphere that protects us from the dark chill of space. So, as I mentioned sunse...

The above title is taken from a quote by George Orwell, one which was more recently updated by Martin Amis, who said that "by the age of 40, everyone has the face they can afford." Amis' little saying may be the more apposite for our times, but there is something about the original Orwell, with its implications that all our experience, all our sins and virtues, may be written on our visages, that captured my imagination. So, as I pass 40 this year, on December 5th, to be precise, I thought I would print here what my own face actually looks like. Up until now, readers of this blog will only have seen the picture I use of myself as a child. So, for the first time, here is what the nearly 40 year old David looks like. Oh my, what a handsome chap I am! Seriously, though, if all our sins and virtues do happen to be written on our faces by this age, then I think, perhaps, I'm not doing too bad. Indeed, I am now quite happy with the way I look, but this was not always th...

"There are three sides to every story: my side, your side and the truth. And no one is lying."   Robert Evans, "The Kid Stays in the Picture".     It just struck me that most of the posts on this blog are simply "my side" of a long and protracted story. The story of how I became unwell. The story of what I felt was mistreatment at the hands of some in mental health services. The story of my own experience of stigma, and of course how this impacts on others in the same situation. And in my last post, there was a little bit of politics, which has been the subject now of quite a few of my blogs. The thing is, all this is from one perspective. My own. And, as Robert Evans, Hollywood producer, attests above, there may not be only one, but three sides to every story. So, what struck me most was the question, am I an unreliable narrator? I try to make this blog, particularly in terms of mental illness, as factually accurate as I can, but there are so...

I recently watched a TV series on BBC2, called "The Hour". Set during the 1950s at the time of the Suez Crisis, it used a basic thriller format to ask wider questions about the nature of democracy. Our democracy. But what struck me most in the programme was a small segment in which footage was shown of the Labour politician Aneurin Bevan delivering a speech in Trafalgar Square. The speech was delivered in a voice seldom heard today. It was a voice of disagreement and dissent. It was the voice of the "old" left. And, to me, it was inspiring. Bevan had the guts, it appeared to me, to actually say what he thought about our involvement in the crisis, a crisis which, as far as I can make out, seems to have parallels with our current situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, I think this may be why the programme makers chose this particular moment in history as the subject of their drama- to make us think about what is happening today. I remember very well the...

Having taken part in the Viewpoint Survey, which I spoke of in my last post, the questions I was asked made me aware of something which, I think, may be a problem for many who have experience of mental ill health, and that is that during or after being unwell, one's social network can become not only altered, but also very limited. We know that because of stigma many can lose friends, face hostility from those they live near, and even become estranged from family. But also, even if one does make it through such difficult periods of adjustment and manage to forge a new existence and make new friends, it seems to me that one may still have a limited social network because this new existence may be one entirely based around mental illness. It seems that those within mental health services would want service users to develop as wide a social network as possible, moving into circles which are outside the realms of the mental health field. But, if my own case is...

After a couple of quite negative postings, I thought I would attempt to portray a more positive side of mental health by saying what is actually being done to combat the stigma surrounding it. The Viewpoint Survey is currently being carried out by the national mental health charity, Rethink, and The Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London. It is asking mental health service users about how they are treated by others, with interviews being carried out over the telephone. The questions being asked cover a variety of topics, including how people have been treated in different areas of their lives, whether they have changed their behaviour because of their mental health diagnosis, whether they have educated people about, or challenged stigmatising views, and whether they have access to sources of practical help. I learnt about the survey because I was randomly chosen to take part. The interview I took part in lasted around 30 minutes and covered all the above issue...

"'There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral--immoral from the scientific point of view.' 'Why?' 'Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of ...

I have just watched a film called "Roommate". It was one of those stalker movies which seem to have proliferated since the release of "Single White Female", I believe in the early '90s. And the thing about "Roommate" is, that aside from being a bad film, it is also one of the most grossly misrepresentative of mental illness I have seen in recent years. The action, if you can call it that, centres around one young girl, Sara, as she goes off to college for the first time. Needless to say, Sara is attractive, Sara is popular, Sara has a good relationship with her family, Sara soon meets a boy, who is also good looking, and Sara is talented in the area of fashion design. In short, Sara is so banally perfect that she makes you feel like being sick. However, there is one fly in Sarah's designer ointment, and that is her roommate, Rebecca, who at first appears, like all "psychos" in such films, to be sweet and charming, but later turns into a...

Today is two days before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York, an event which took thousands of lives, but shook the entire world, possibly being the defining influence on U.S. foreign policy for the last decade. It seems, like with other age-defining moments in history, everybody remembers where they were when the attacks took place. I remember at that time that I was very ill, staying in bed all day, only to awake, bleary-eyed, some time in the early evening. So it was that I awoke around 6 pm, and, turning on the TV, found the BBC news running constantly, relaying the story and pictures from across the Atlantic. At first, like so many, I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing. Was this a film? Was this real? Did it really happen? I was in genuine shock at the events which had unfolded and at the gradual realisation that, yes, this was real. This was not a film. This had really happened. With the unfolding of the ye...

I can't remember exactly when it was. It could have been the summer of '95. Or maybe it was earlier than that. '94 perhaps. But it was definitely summer, and the sun shone brightly on us as we (me and two other friends from university) went to see R.E.M. in concert at the Milton Keynes Bowl. I had first travelled to London to meet up with my friends, who were also big fans, like me, of Michael Stipe and his band. As so many people that day were travelling from London to see the concert, the journey by train to Milton Keynes took longer and was more arduous than expected. There was much queueing and waiting around. So much so that my feet began to ache even before we got to our destination, due to a lack of available seats. When we finally arrived, though, the day turned out to be worth all the trouble. I can't really believe now the bands that we saw who played in support of the main act. Radiohead, then not nearly as big as they later became, played a brilliant set be...

There is an often bandied about statistic in mental health circles which would seem to prove that mental illness is more common than one might think, and that is that mental ill health will affect one in four people at some stage in their lives. Such statistics are often used by anti-stigma campaigners to show that mental ill health is really quite common and should not, therefore, be the subject of so many negative attitudes and behaviours. However, in an article in "The Guardian" last year ("Antidepressant use rises as recession feeds wave of worry", 11.6.2010) it was revealed that the number of people being treated for mental illness could be even greater than the one in four statistic suggests. According to the article, the number of prescriptions handed out for antidepressants had risen from 20.1 million in 1999, to a staggering 39.1 million in 2009, a 95% increase over only ten years. The article, as its title suggests, attributed this new "wave" of...

The other week, I was at the "China Gardens" at the Festival Park in Etruria, where myself and other volunteers at the Media Action Group for Mental Health stopped off for a little light refreshment after taking a walk through the park area of the site as part of an art project we are currently undertaking with the help of a local artist. As I sat there sipping my coffee, I looked over to the right, where I saw, out of the corner of my eye, that someone had scratched some kind of message into one of the wooden tables which populate the garden area. Upon closer inspection I could see that the message inscribed simply read, "I like boobs". In fact, it didn't even make that much grammatical sense, and in truth all it really said was, "I like boob". As I sat there, I pondered the level of a mind that would write such an inanity, with Philip Larkin's poem "Sunny Prestatyn" going through my mind, but ended up thinking, well, I suppose I like bo...