A Day in the Life

A "dual diagnosis", in the mental health field, is usually applied when a patient/service user presents with both a mental health condition and a substance abuse problem. It is often the case that those experiencing mental illness can "self-medicate" with alcohol or other drugs. Conversely, the consumption of such drugs can lead to mental illness. The professional is then left with a serious dilemma- is the mental illness driving the substance abuse, or is the substance abuse driving the mental illness? It is often difficult for mental health staff to know the answer to this question, and treating those who abuse alcohol, for example, can be a lot more difficult than those who present with a mental health condition alone. What is known, though, is that instances of those presenting with substance abuse and mental health problems is on the increase. If I recall correctly, in a meeting of the steering group for the treatment of psychosis in my area, an outreach worker...

One of the first questions I asked when coming into mental health services was, if there is no such thing as "normal", why is anyone locked away in a psychiatric institution? It is only the concept of apparent "normality" which results in its binary opposite, "madness". So, despite the protests of those in practice who continually suggested to me that there was no such thing as "normal", I could not get over the fact, and the glaring contradiction, that psychiatric services would want us all to lead a "normal" life. It also seemed to me that creative people, often a little eccentric in their ways, may come into conflict with mental health services simply because of the way they are. What would happen, I wondered, were, for example, William Blake to walk through the door of my local residential unit, a man so fuelled by imagination that, in his writings, he seemed to create an entire world. Would it be possible that the "normalising...

The other day me and a friend from the Pathways Group went, to use the Stoke parlance, "up 'anley, duck"; meaning, we went to Hanley, one of the six towns which make up the Potteries, now regarded as the City Centre. The reason we did this was to take some photos for the "Local People, Local Lives" project. To bring you up to date, my piece for the project, entitled "Remembering the ABC Cinema", has now been completed and is ready to be distributed to various venues throughout the Potteries. The hope is that members of the public will relate to a story about their own locality, perhaps sparking off memories of their own. The anti-stigma message is, then, subtly conveyed, with me mentioning my diagnosis only towards the end of the piece. We found that other campaigns, which are more "in your face" about mental illness and seem laden with facts about it, are perhaps a little off putting. So, by using modern social marketing techniques, we hope...

Most people don't like being used. There's something about the very phrase that implies exploitation. I, on the other hand, would love to be "used". I would love for someone to come along and say, "David, we could use you", in this or that capacity. "Yes, we could certainly use you, David", in fact, would be music to my ears. After a life-time of education, and moreover, thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands being spent on me by the state, I simply wonder, is this the best that can be made of my talents, whatever they may be? And, I think, there must be a lot of people asking the same question. So, after watching a programme on BBC 2 the other night, entitled "Who Gets The Best Jobs?", one possible answer became apparent. According to the programme, the gap between rich and poor in this country is growing ever wider. The "social mobility" of which I spoke in a previous chapter, also, seems to be becoming a thing of the pa...

"And I always thought that it would make me smarter,  But it's only made me harder." R.E.M., "Near Wild Heaven". I took a trip down memory lane earlier today by listening to some music I hadn't heard in, perhaps, twenty odd years. It was music that I used to listen to around the time of my initial experience of mental ill health, and, boy, did it pack an emotional punch. It reminded me of the time, around 1990, when I first left for university and a, supposedly, bright, new existence. Only thing was, I was going through the most emotionally turbulent time of my life. My girlfriend and I were in the process of splitting up, I was leaving home for the first time and all my friends, it seemed, were displeased with me for a variety of reasons, not least of which was an abiding low mood which had appeared to have come out of nowhere. The more I look back on it, though, the more I find it hard to delineate whether it was the low mood that appeared first, or if...