individuals and institutions
further thoughts on those caught in the net
On the back of my last post, I feel compelled to share some further thoughts. My response to the opinion piece written by psychiatrist Jeremy Walker was, well... scathing – mainly about his tone and turns of phrase, but also more generally about the NHS mental health services which he represents. I want to dig into this, because while it was intended as a rebuttal to his opinion piece, it was not intended as an across-the-board criticism of those who are employed by and engaged in mental health services.
Let me explain: in my personal experience, these services are delivered by a range of human beings, each possessing a range of skills, talents, personalities, blind spots, gifts, shortcomings, and levels of effort and commitment. Some of these individuals do indeed care about service-users, in that they listen and act with respect and patience to the suffering that is unpacked in their presence. And like any human being, they connect with some and not with others. We're all people, and sometimes we click and sometimes we don't.
For example, when I was an outpatient with the NHS mental health team, my CPN (community psychiatric nurse) was a godsend to me. She was incredibly grounded, full of humour and compassion, and I am so grateful to her for the time she spent with me and the conversations we had together, as I navigated life post-psychosis. We clicked.
On the other hand, when I was first hospitalised I refused to take medication because I was scared of ingesting an unknown substance, and found myself in a standoff with the team who insisted that I must. It ended with me in a sterile, clinical room being needled against my will by a brusque, unsympathetic doctor. We didn't click.
On the whole, throughout my experience over the years, I have been treated well enough by people - particularly when I've been unchallenging and compliant. On balance, I've been very fortunate. Many sources of survivor testimony (for example those in the pages of Asylum Magazine, or the series of books published by Cuckoo's Nest ) reveal personal stories of abuse and mistreatment at the hands of those who act in the name of 'care.'
The relationship between individuals and institutions is a complex topic, far too immense for a single blog post. I guess I just wanted to come back to my response to the subject spotlighted in Jeremy Walker's opinion piece. It's an emotive topic, clearly, that three innocent people lost their lives in what many are claiming were preventable circumstances – but I wonder: where is the same outrage for the preventable deaths in mental health wards?
Hundreds die in 'hidden world' of mental hospitals
The mental health patients dying on NHS wards from starvation and neglect
Institutions can be dehumanising – for people dealing with them from outside the system but also for professional people inside the system. The mad movement asks us to look beyond the institutions which have been built to contain and eradicate madness, sometimes at the expense of the mad themselves. It asks us to recall that madness has always been a part of the human experience, and it invites us to find different ways of responding.
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