I have already touched upon my views of clinical psychiatrists. In the very hierarchical mental health system, they are treated by their minions like omnipotent gods, they are never questioned and never have to question themselves. My parents called Dr Longton "The Big Cheese", and that's the way he is seen and the way he sees himself.
Now I would like to turn to the other professionals who work in the mental health system, the psychiatric nurses, and psychiatric social workers. All of these people believe in the "chemical imbalance" theory (it has yet to be proven). As a result, like the psychiatrists, they do not think it is wise for patients or ex-patients to even attempt to stop their medication. This is considered heresy. In fact, even wanting to try to come off medication is seen as a sign of "illness" in itself. Dire warnings are issued about "becoming unwell again" and this is enough to make most people in this situation keep taking their drugs.
The fact is that when people do try to come off their drugs they are usually advised by their psychiatrist or GP to reduce the dose a lot quicker than even the drug manufacturers advise. This can cause severe withdrawal symptoms, which mimic the original sympoms of the "illness", and so the person thinks the doctors were right all along, they do need the drugs to stay well. They start taking them again and the unpleasant symptoms go away and everyone is happy, not least the drug companies.
I have never met a mental health professional who did not adhere to this theory that drug therapy should be constant and continue for a life-time. This is inspite of the fact that the side-effects of long-term use are known to be extremely disabling, such as facial tics, jerky and unnatural movements and so on. (Imagine that your tongue suddenly shot out of your mouth every few minutes, how would this affect your life?)
Before I get on to the subject of psychiatric nurses I have known who really should not be in that job, I should point out that I have also known nurses who were angels and who really did care about their charges. I have already mentioned Chris the night nurse who was a wonderful person, and there were a few others who were almost as wonderful. So don't let me give you the impression that all of them were evil! But some of them were.
I don't think it is appropriate for a nurse looking after psychiatric patients to have 2-inch long fingernails painted black. This particular nurse admitted to me that it was her way of scaring disturbed patients into obedience. It is not appropriate for a nurse to say in reply to an innoccent enquiry about what time it is, "It's midnight - the witching hour" in a creepy voice. It is also not at all funny to call someone a "whore" while half-disguising it as a cough. And for a nurse to interview you ostensibly about your problems, but then use this as an opportunity to off-load all of her problems about having to care for an invalid mother and struggling to pay the mortgage, is so selfish and unkind.
Sometimes the worst nurses were young agency nurses who were enjoying their first taste of power. There was a young man who was always picking on me and deliberately saying weird things to unsettle me. For example, he said he had something to show me and he took me to see a picture which was hanging in the nurses' office. It was one of those strange pencil drawings of a building where the stairs go around and around but do not actually go anywhere. I don't know who it was by, I am not very well up on artists. He let me look at the painting for a while and then he said, "It's a bit like your predicament, isn't it?"
The first time I was on my usual psychiatric ward, there was a good atmosphere where the patients were kind to each other. However, when the ward manager's job had been taken over by a particularly unpleasant woman, the atmosphere became one of bullying and teasing. The nurses teased and bullied the patients and so they were like this to each other. It was not unusual to be kicked or slapped by another patient, and if you told a member of staff they did not believe you.
There was a particularly horrible male nurse who, after I had been forcibly injected with drugs in the usual rape-like way, got a kick out sidling up to me and whispering "I was there". He used to be a cook in the hospital but then decided to train to be a nurse because of the opportunities for sexual harrassment.
There was a night nurse who was a bitch and everyone hated her. When Peter, a patient who she knew had no family or friends to look out for him, staggered up to the night medicine trolley in a daze, with his pyjama bottoms undone and accidentally exposing himself, she called him "disgusting", and followed this with a tirade of abuse. The next day, Peter walked down to the railway line and took his own life.
During one of my stays on the ward I had extremely blistered feet. But because I was on numbing medication, I did not realise how sore they really were. So when a male nurse asked me if I would like to go for a walk, I jumped at the chance because I had been indoors for days. On the way back, my feet started to hurt like hell, even through the medication, so I must have really been damaging them. I was walking like a cripple, wincing with every step, and my nurse escort said, "Well, we all have to do a bit of penance now and then, don't we, Anne?"
I don't think they did it on purpose, but the nurses did not seem to be aware that the numbing effect of the medications they made you take, meant that your lips could not feel if a drink or food was too hot to swallow. They often gave patients scalding hot drinks of chocolate, and the puddings they served up were always covered in extremely hot custard. I have a friend who even now, years later, likes to drink her tea cold, because of the experience of waking up in the morning with a severely burnt throat (and probably oesophagus) which she did not feel until the night medication wore off. I often had to run to the loos and drink gallons of cold water because I had eaten or drunk something too hot. It is something which is indicative of the lack of consideration or thought which is often manifest among the staff. I was always given antibiotics which are supposed to be taken with food, on an empty stomach, which renders them useless. When I was eventually aware enough to point this out to a nurse, she shrugged and said, "well, you can always help yourself to some milk", but there was never any milk left in the evenings, and anyway, it was not up to me to make sure I was taking medicines correctly.
It may seem like a nasty comment here and there is a trivial thing, but when a person is going through a mental health crisis, such comments can cause sleepless nights, increases in medication, and a great deal of suffering.
Some nurses are cruel by omission, by the things they don't bother to do, like talking to patients and trying to make their time in the ward a little more bearable by taking an interest in them. It is very easy to do very little during a shift. I knew one nurse who would literally sit on a chair doing nothing for the whole of his shift, if he possibly could. I have also often seen two nurses playing Scrabble or cards with each other - what is the point of this? Why bother to do courses and get qualifications if in the end you just ignore the people you are supposed to be helping?
Complaints made by mental health service users are never, but never, taken seriously. Nurses know this, and they therefore can get away with anything. Angels or devils, they can be whatever they want to be, and nobody cares, least of all the consultant psychiatrist, who will not have a bad word said about them.
Community Psychiatric Nurses were nurses who visited patients at home once they were discharged. These days it is more usual just to call CPNs and Psychiatric Social Workers "Mental Health Workers" and they can come from a nursing or a social work background. My CPN was a man and he used to come to my home to give me the injections of modecate which I was told I would have to have for "at least five years" (this was like a death sentence, as modecate zombies are the living dead). For these injections, we used to go into the bedroom, and, because the female nurses did it like this in the hospital, I would lie on the bed with my trousers down, exposing my whole bum, to have the injection. It was only later, when I had the injections at a clinic, that I realised the injections could be given with me standing up and just exposing a tiny part of my buttock. Why did this male CPN let me undress and lie down like this every time, without telling me it was not necessary? Perks of the job I suppose!
After I was discharged form hospital my Social Worker suggested that I might like to have a look at a hostel in Oxford, as an alternative to living with my parents. She drove me to the hostel but left me there on my own for the whole afternoon while she went shopping in Oxford. When she picked me up the back seat of her car was full of shopping bags from Harvey Nicks and Laura Ashley. She said that she did not really want to be a social worker, but she was studying accupuncture. She also got me to visit people I had met on the ward who she said were "lonely and needed cheering up". So I was like an unpaid social worker myself. And I did not really want to be one either.
I was taken to do my weekly food shopping by a social worker who on the way dropped off some clothes for her son who had been to a party the night before and needed some clean stuff to wear. She parked illegally and left me in the car while she did this. She was gone for ages and a vicar came out of a nearby church to tell me off for parking there. Once we were at the supermarket she did her own shopping at the same time. She was being paid for looking after me as well as getting a petrol allowance, while she just did her own thing.
But on a more positive note, I did eventually find a lovely social worker who was completely dedicated and she helped me enormously, even coming to my son's school with me to talk to the headmaster about problems we were having. She was the social work equivalent of Chris the wonderful night nurse. But unfortunately, as is often the way, because she was so exceptional, she was promoted to head of department and I lost her as my worker. Now she spends most of her days in meetings where she is, in my view, wasted.
My most recent social worker is a kind person and she works hard too, but for some reason she would not let go of my case when I said I no longer needed support. When I said I did not want any more appointments, she wanted me to phone her every week to let her know how things were going. I did not see why I should "report in" like this, so I did not bother, and then she started turning up at my house without an appointment. In the end I had to involve the abovementioned head of department to get her to leave us alone! I think that because by then I was home educating my son, she and her immediate boss were worried that if I was not looking after him properly, there were no teachers in our life to notice this. If this is the case, it is extremely insulting to say the least. She also did not seem to understand how autonomous home education works, and she thought because we did not do "school-at-home" (sitting at a table with work books - yawn!) that he was not getting an education. Well he's 16 now and at FE college doing brilliantly, so there Miss Busybody!!
I will be talking about psychiatric social workers again later when I tell the story of what it is like to be pregnant when you have be labelled "mentally ill". You will not believe what they put people through, just because they want to be like everyone else and have a child.
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