A Day in the Life

So, the dystopic science fiction film, "The Girl With All the Gifts", recently opened to largely favourable reviews in UK cinemas. The film stars, among others, Glenn Close, Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine and newcomer Sennia Nanua. It's set in the near future where humanity has been ravaged by a fungal disease, with those affected losing their ability to think freely, eventually turning into flesh-eating, zombie-like creatures known by survivors as "hungries". The only hope for humanity's survival is a small group of hybrid children who also crave human flesh, but somehow retain their ability to feel and think. The movie has been widely advertised and, as I have said, has garnered several favourable reviews, some calling it an unusually intelligent addition to the zombie genre. However, what you may not know is that a small portion of the film was shot right here in my home city of Stoke-on-Trent. A few years back our city centre, Hanley, acquir...

I don't know whether you're aware (then  again how could you not be), but the Paralympics recently took place in sunny Rio. It was a particularly edifying Games for our Team GB, as they are affectionately called, who returned to Britain this week triumphant, having won an incredible number of medals (64 of which were gold) and coming in second place with only China doing better. How could one fail to be proud of such a magnificent, almost super-human achievement? How could one fail to be inspired? How could one fail to have one's mind opened about what disabled people are truly capable of? Indeed, it seems to have been an aim of Team GB and the Games itself to inspire a whole new generation of Paralympians, and they appear to have been successful even in that regard. But, enter, stage left, one cynical, old fart: i.e. me. Don't get me wrong, I'm as impressed by our athletes as the next person, and when I see people like Ellie Simmonds or Sarah Storey clutching ...

After writing in my last post about how the Tories, under Theresa May's leadership, seem to want to convince us that it is they who are the true party of social justice, I thought I'd just give a taste of what's happened to mental health services in Stoke-on-Trent since the Conservatives took office. It's a sorry tale, told from my own perspective, full of sound and fury and signifying, hopefully, a great deal. As I take the pulse of our beloved NHS, it's once mighty pounding now seems but a faint, hollow, weak ticking, drowned out by the roar of the philosophies of free marketism and austerity. It has always been my aim in this blog to give a positive spin on people's ability to recover from even the most severe of mental illnesses. By using my own experience as an example, I have sought to say, in numerous posts, that leading a so-called "normal" life is possible, given the right support and treatment. However, as I look at the sorry state mental he...

So, after "Brexit" and all the ensuing hue and cry, here in the UK we are finally getting a new Prime Minister. After David Cameron's resignation later today, Theresa May will go boldly where only Margaret Thatcher has gone before her by becoming the second female Prime Minister of our green and pleasant land. Indeed, it seems that May wants to usher in something of a new era for the Conservative Party, and has spoken of being that much fabled of things, a "One Nation" Tory. As such, it seems she wants to create a land of social justice, where opportunity is open to all, not just the privileged few, and  where things like tax avoidance and evasion by large corporations are scorned and tackled with an iron fist. But, hold on a minute, before we get carried away here, this is Theresa May isn't it? That would be the same Theresa May who was previously Home Secretary and, as part of the last cabinet, oversaw some of the most divisive and destructive policies to ...

Walking into my local multiplex cinema the other day, I noticed a rather large poster advertising a forthcoming attraction. It was for a film called "Last Vegas" and it stars Robert DeNiro, Kevin Kline, Morgan Freeman and Michael Douglas, and by all accounts is a sort of version of "The Hangover" for older people. As I walked by though, all I could think of were the strains of "Panic", the song by "The Smiths" in which Morrissey implores his listeners to "Burn down the disco/ Hang the blessed DJ/ Because the music that they constantly play/ It says nothing to me about my life." OK, so this isn't music, but surely the same sentiment could be applied to film distributors and producers, because the films that they constantly make and peddle, well, they say nothing to me about my life. So, I began to wonder why it is that the great majority of films shown at cinemas like the one I was walking through are Hollywood products which appear ...

When I was at university in the heady old days of the early '90s, I read a book as part of my research for my dissertation on African-American literature called "Writing from the Nadir". I can't remember now who wrote the book, but the title has stuck in my mind, being, to me at least, somewhat poetic. The idea of writing as a means of improving one's lot appealed to me greatly. and it was as if the title of this book was suggesting that even if one was stuck at the bottom of the social, political and economic heap, one could at least write to explain one's position and attempt to educate wider society, and by doing so even effect change. Indeed, I found out that the first so-called "slave narratives" were such instructive texts, written largely in the hope of expressing the plight of the enslaved African-American community to a wider, white readership, in the process aiding the abolitionist cause. Perhaps one could go even further and suggest that s...

"When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least:..." From Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare. It just struck me that I've been beavering away at this little blog for nearly nine years now. My first   post, somewhat prosaically titled, "Is there any alternative to medication?", was published on 11th July 2007. In those nine years I've covered many issues surrounding mental health, but most of the posts have been merely my own observations on mental illness, its treatment, the stigma which surrounds it, and my own experience of it. As you may have noted from the "About Me" section to the right of this page, as such the ...

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." George Orwell, "Animal Farm". A while ago I wrote a blog entitled "In the Ghetto", in which I argued that having a long-term mental illness can sometimes result in  making you feel as if you've somehow been cordoned off from mainstream society. In this post I wanted to expand that idea a little by saying that not only does having mental health issues often put you in some kind of ghetto for those with such problems, but that, in a strange inversion of the rest of society, it can also mean living in a world of a sort of enforced equality where one's qualifications, achievements, level of intelligence and general aptitude seem not to matter so much. As Orwell's words above would appear to point to the hypocrisy and inherent unfairness of wider society, it is as if in the world of mental health this unfairness is borne by those who are more capable rather than less. We liv...

Firstly, to anyone who may read this humble, little blog, may I wish a belated Happy Christmas and New Year. The absence of any Christmas or New Year message was entirely due to terminal laziness and apathy on my part! But, to get to the point, I've recently been involved in some work with the Psychology Department at our local psychiatric hospital, The Harplands. The work has partly involved helping to write leaflets on various aspects of mental ill health in a patient-friendly format. The last leaflet we wrote was on hearing voices. Although I don't have that much experience of the old auditory hallucinations, I did, at some points in my own journey through mental illness, experience the odd disembodied vocal sound. In my case, the voices I heard were usually familiar to me, being either that of my mother or father, and they were definitely emanating from outside rather than inside my head. For others the experience is entirely different. While I can probably pinpoint the n...